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      Abraham Lincoln is America's better angel – Joe Biden must draw on his spirit | Ted Widmer

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      When the President-elect Joe Biden gives his inaugural address on Wednesday, one former president will tower above all others, and not merely because of his celebrated stovepipe hat.Abraham Lincoln is always famous, but he turns into something more than that when Americans are bitterly divided. In moments of crisis, he becomes a kind of guardian angel, not unlike the phrase he was looking for when he closed out his own inaugural address in 1861. Given “guardian angel” by his adviser, the New York senator William Seward, he improved it to “better angel”.So surely did he find the moment that politicians are still laboring to come up with anything new. After the Capitol putsch of 6 January, the House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, lamely called on Republicans to find their “better angels”, after they sought to garotte the vice-president.Centuries from now, archeologists may have trouble piecing together the values that drove the US between 2017 and 2021. There may be a few signs – a golf cart here … a My Pillow there … and all of the phones, by the millions, rusting in the shallow waters that cover Washington, with just the statue of Armed Freedom pointing above the waves.But the actual ethics of this complex society may be elusive, as remains the case with other four-year realms.That is why Lincoln still speaks to us, unlike so many presidents. His moral compass worked. He was elected at a time when no one in their right mind would have wanted the job. Despite constant hatred from his enemies, he fought to unite Americans and in doing so he restored a measure of racial justice. He reminded them that their own words were important, and the truth mattered. That helped the country live up to its ideals, as expressed in the declaration of independence. He did all of these things while writing in a kind of prose poetry that still sounds musical.Lincoln delivered two inaugural addresses, each clairvoyant about problems the nation would face. In 1861, he asked Americans not to go to war; in 1865, he asked them to come back together, “with malice toward none; with charity for all.” Those two speeches, standing like bookends at the beginning and end of the civil war, feel especially relevant in the dark winter of 2020-21, when charity is in such short supply.Lincoln appeared briefly on 6 January, the night of the Capitol putsch, as Biden quoted from the 1862 annual message, in an attempt to calm the waters.It would not be surprising if Lincoln returned during the inaugural address at the Capitol on 20 January. In 1861, the Capitol was already a battleground, filled with treasonous southern politicians who had stayed in Washington while their colleagues were leading an effort to launch a new country, founded upon slavery. Lincoln deftly walked through those landmines, delivering an effective speech that pleaded for Americans to remain a single country. It was a lawyer’s speech, rejecting the argument for secession, but it included a poet’s peroration, the final paragraph in which Lincoln asked the south to pause before separating.“We are not enemies, but friends,” he wrote, in language that would sound just as resonant in 2021. “We must not be enemies.”Four years later, Lincoln returned for another inaugural. This time he was more preacher than lawyer, seeking to explain the shocking sacrifice of 750,000, a number we continue to revise upward. Americans badly needed a message of redemption.Lincoln found it, using his gift for language and some stagecraft too. Behind him, the same Capitol that had looked so forlorn four years earlier was now completed, with a sparkling new dome and that curious statue on top – cast by an African American liberated by Lincoln. As the president spoke, he stood next to a table constructed from materials used to complete the dome.But Lincoln was too honest to simply say good had prevailed over evil. With a deceptive simplicity – there were only 703 words, 505 with one-syllable – he delivered a kind of theological self-assessment unlike any other presidential speech. It acknowledged blame for “American slavery” – notably, he did not say “southern slavery”. But it also accused slavery’s defenders of a gaudy and insincere patriotism, fortified by violence rather than truth, as evidenced by their willingness to “make war rather than let the nation survive”. In the end, resorting to violence was a shabby way to promote democracy.Lincoln quoted the Bible liberally, to explore the ways in which Americans might atone for their sins. That was new territory for a president, especially one with unconventional views of his own. But Lincoln’s faith had intensified, perhaps in some measure because of his own severe trauma as the parent of a beloved child who died. After proposing that God might have wanted the civil war to come, to atone for the crime of slavery, Lincoln softened again, as he did at the end of the first inaugural.He concluded by asking Americans to be gentle with each other, to take care of the widows and orphans dotting the landscape, and the amputees attending the ceremony. African American soldiers were out in force as well, as seen in one striking photograph from that day.That was another improvement: African Americans were not allowed on the grounds of the Capitol at previous inaugurations.In 1865, as recounted by a fine book, Edward Achorn’s Every Drop of Blood, many distinguished Americans attended. Among them were a well-known actor, John Wilkes Booth, and a leading African American author, Frederick Douglass, each feeling quite differently as Lincoln summoned a kind of Old Testament anger against the sin of racial injustice. Lincoln and Booth both loved Shakespeare. Booth may have felt he was on another stage, contemplating the murder of a Caesar, likewise killed in a Capitol.That tragedy played out six weeks later. But Booth could not extinguish Lincoln’s words. Instead of giving Americans a simplistic message of self-congratulation, Lincoln had delivered a sterner measure, one that offered the tools for self-salvation. In a country still struggling to live up to its ideals, that remains a potent message. More

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      Washington: man arrested with fake inaugural ID and loaded gun – report

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      Officers in Washington DC arrested a Virginia man who tried to pass through a Capitol police checkpoint carrying fake inaugural credentials, a loaded handgun and more than 500 rounds of ammunition, CNN reported, citing a police report and a law enforcement source.Capitol police officials could not immediately be reached for comment.Responding to news of the arrest, the Democratic US representative Don Beyer of Virginia said the danger was real and the city was on edge as Joe Biden’s inauguration approaches.“Anyone who can avoid the area around the Capitol and Mall this week should do so,” Beyer wrote on Twitter.US law enforcement officials are gearing up for pro-Trump marches in Washington and all 50 state capitals this weekend, erecting barriers and deploying thousands of national guard troops to try to prevent the kind of violent attack that rattled the nation when Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol on 6 January.The FBI warned police agencies of possible armed protests outside all 50 state capitol buildings starting on Saturday and through Biden’s inauguration on Wednesday, fueled by supporters of Donald Trump who believe his false claims of electoral fraud.Michigan, Virginia, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Washington were among states that activated their national guards to strengthen security. Texas closed its capitol through inauguration day.Steve McCraw, the director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, said in a statement late Friday that intelligence indicated “violent extremists” could seek to exploit planned armed protests in Austin to “conduct criminal acts”.The attack on the US Capitol in Washington was carried out by Trump supporters, some of whom planned to kidnap members of Congress and called for the death of the vice-president Mike Pence as he presided over the certification of Biden’s victory.The Democratic leaders of four congressional committees said on Saturday they had opened a review of the events and had written to the FBI and other intelligence and security agencies to find out what was known about threats, whether the information was shared and whether foreign influence played any role.“This still-emerging story is one of astounding bravery by some US Capitol police and other officers; of staggering treachery by violent criminals; and of apparent and high-level failures – in particular, with respect to intelligence and security preparedness,” the letter said.It was signed by the House intelligence chair, Adam Schiff, the homeland security chair, Bennie Thompson, the oversight chair, Carolyn Maloney, and the judiciary chair, Jerrold Nadler.Officials have trained much of their focus on Sunday, when the anti-government “boogaloo” movement flagged plans to hold rallies in all 50 states.In Michigan, a fence was erected around the capitol in Lansing and troopers were mobilized. The legislature canceled meetings next week, citing credible threats.“We are prepared for the worst but we remain hopeful that those who choose to demonstrate at our Capitol do so peacefully,” the Michigan state police director, Joe Gasper, said.The perception that the 6 January insurrection was a success could embolden domestic extremists motivated by anti-government, racial and partisan grievances, spurring them to further violence, according to a government intelligence bulletin dated Wednesday first reported by Yahoo News.The Joint Intelligence Bulletin, produced by the FBI, Department of Homeland Security and National Counterterrorism Center, further warned that “false narratives” about electoral fraud would serve as an ongoing catalyst for extremists.Thousands of armed national guard troops were in the streets in Washington in an unprecedented show of force after the assault on the Capitol. Bridges into the city were to be closed along with dozens of roads. The National Mall and other landmarks were blocked off.Experts say the capitals of battleground states such as Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Arizona are at most risk of violence. But even states not seen as likely flashpoints are taking precautions.The Illinois governor, JB Pritzker, said on Friday that while his state had not received any specific threats he was beefing up security around the capitol in Springfield, including adding about 250 state national guard troops.The alarm extended beyond legislatures. The United Church of Christ, a Protestant denomination of more than 4,900 churches, warned its 800,000 members of reports “liberal” churches could be attacked.Suzanne Spaulding, a former undersecretary for the Department of Homeland Security, said disclosing enhanced security measures can be an effective deterrent.“One of the ways you can potentially de-escalate a problem is with a strong security posture,” said Spaulding, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “You try to deter people from trying anything.“ More

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      If Trump looks like a fascist and acts like a fascist, then maybe he is one | Nick Cohen

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      Assurances that “fascism couldn’t happen here” are always appealing in Anglo-Saxon countries that think themselves immune because “it” never did. The US and UK did not experience rule by Nazism or communism in the 20th century and the ignorance our lucky histories fostered has weakened our defences in the 21st.Even after all that has happened in Washington, apparently serious voices insist we cannot compare Donald Trump to any variety of fascist. Conservatives habitually say that liberals call everything they don’t like fascist, forgetting that the moral of Aesop’s fable was that the boy who cried wolf was right in the end. They used to chortle about “Trump derangement syndrome” that spreads in stages like cancer until sufferers “cannot distinguish fantasy from reality”. They have bitten their tongues now that the reality of Trumpism is deranged mobs trying to overthrow democracy.Their silence was broken last week by the historian of Nazism, Richard Evans, who with the effortless ability to miss every point a professorship at Cambridge bestows, decided now was the moment to denounce his colleagues, Timothy Snyder and Sarah Churchwell. They might compare the Trump and fascist movements but “few who have described Trump as a fascist can be called real experts in the field”, he wrote in the New Statesman with an audible sniff. “Genuine specialists”, such as, and since you asked, himself, “agree that whatever else he is, Trump is not a fascist”.Before we get to why the argument matters, I should say the New Statesman needs to expand its fact-checking department. Snyder, whose work on how democracies turn into dictatorships is essential reading, does not say that the Trump movement is “fascist”. He writes that “post-truth is pre-fascism and Trump has been our post-truth president”. Churchwell’s astonishing studies of how German Nazis and American white supremacists fed off each other are a revelation. (And I come from the old left and thought I had learned about everything that was rotten with America at my mother’s knee.) When asked, she says she too is careful and characterises the Trump movement as “neo-fascist”.The use of “fascism” in political debate is both a call to arms and a declaration of war. For once you say you are fighting fascism there can be no retreat. By talking of “pre-fascism” or “neo-fascism”, you acknowledge that the F-word is not a bomb you should detonate lightly; you also acknowledge the gravity of the times.The alternatives look like the euphemisms of formerly safe societies that, like Caliban, cannot bear to see their face in the mirror. The Trump leadership cult, the attacks on any source of information the leader does not authorise, the racist conspiracy theories, the servile media that amplify the leader’s lies are not “conservative” in any understanding of the term. How about populist? If it means anything today, populism is supporting the people against the elite. But what could be more elitist than denying the result of the people’s vote with the big lie, the Joseph Goebbels lie, that Trump won the election he lost and then inciting brainwashed followers to storm democratic institutions? Followers, I should add, who included men dressed in “Camp Auschwitz” T-shirts and waving Confederate flags and wannabe stormtroopers crying “sieg heil!” and “total negro death”. “Far right” and “extreme right” are no help. They are just polite ways of saying neo-fascist.In his The Anatomy of Fascism, Robert Paxton, the pre-eminent authority on its ideology, wrote that the Ku Klux Klan in 1867 rather than Mussolini’s squadristi in 1920 could be seen as the first fascist movement. As with the Nazi party, the embittered officers of a defeated army formed the Klan. They mourned the defeat of the Confederacy and did not accept the legitimacy of the US government. They had uniforms, white robes rather than leather jackets, the fantasies of racial supremacy and deployed terror to maintain the subjugation of African Americans. Last week, police sources told the Washington Post they were shocked to see “former law enforcement and military personnel as well as senior business executives” among the Washington mob. If they had known the history of military and bourgeois support for fascism, they would have been less surprised. It isn’t always powered by “the left behind”.Paxton said last week that he had “resisted for a long time applying the fascist label to Donald J Trump”, but Trump’s incitement of the invasion of the Capitol “removes my objection to the fascist label”.Republicans fear assassination if they vote to impeach Trump. Rupert Murdoch’s broadcasters are delivering barely veiled threats of violent insurrection if the Democrats pursue impeachment. “We see what’s happening around this country, how 50 state houses are being threatened on Inauguration Day,” warned one. “This is the last thing you want to do.” I can see three objections to calling a large section of the Republican party pre-fascist. The first can be dismissed with a flick of the fingers as it comes from a self-interested right that has to pretend it is not in the grip of a deep sickness – and not only in the United States. The second is the old soothing “it can’t happen here” exceptionalism of the Anglo-Saxon west, which has yet to learn that the US and UK are exceptional in the 21st century for all the wrong reasons. The third sounds intelligent but is the dumbest of all. You should not call Trump or any other leader a pre- or neo-fascist or any kind of fascist until he has gone the whole hog and transformed his society into a totalitarian war machine.The example of the stages of cancer, so beloved by believers in Trump derangement syndrome, explains the stupidity. Imagine you are a doctor looking at pre-cancerous cells or an early-stage cancer that has not grown deeply into tissue. The door bursts open and a chorus of Fox News presenters and Cambridge dons cry that “real experts in the field” agree that on no account should you call it cancer until it has metastasised and spread through the whole body. A competent doctor would insist on calling a fatal disease by its real name and not leave treatment until it was too late to stop it. So should you.• Nick Cohen is an Observer columnist More

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      US health secretary Alex Azar tells Trump Capitol attack threatens legacy

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      The US health secretary, Alex Azar, warned Donald Trump in a letter that last week’s attack on the Capitol threatened the administration’s legacy, and he urged the president to support a peaceful transfer of power.
      In the two-page, formal resignation letter, dated 12 January, Azar recited what he saw as the administration’s key accomplishments but voiced concern that last week’s siege in Washington and Trump’s false claims of widespread voter fraud “threaten to tarnish these and other historic legacies of this administration”.
      “The attacks on the Capitol were an assault on our democracy and on the tradition of peaceful transitions of power,” Azar wrote.
      “I implore you to continue to condemn unequivocally any form of violence, to demand that no one attempt to disrupt the inaugural activities in Washington or elsewhere, and to continue to support unreservedly the peaceful and orderly transition of power on January 20, 2021,” he added.
      Azar says he will resign at noon on 20 January, when Joe Biden is sworn in.
      Azar is not the first member of Trump’s cabinet to issue strong words in the wake of the attack, in which five people died and which led to the president’s second impeachment.
      Betsy DeVos, Trump’s education secretary, resigned after of the attack, saying in a letter to the president that she blamed his “rhetoric” for “the mess caused by violent protestors overrunning the US Capitol in an attempt to undermine the people’s business”.
      Elaine Chao, Trump’s transportation secretary, also resigned, calling the attacks “traumatic and entirely avoidable”.
      Azar took up the role of health secretary in 2018, overseeing the department during the unprecedented coronavirus crisis, which has so far claimed the lives of nearly 400,000 Americans. Some experts are estimating half a million deaths could be possible by the end of February.
      Earlier on Friday, Azar told NBC News the US did not have a reserve stockpile of Covid-19 vaccines, but it was confident that there would be enough produced for second doses.
      “We now have enough confidence that our ongoing production will be quality and available to provide the second dose for people. So we’re not sitting on a reserve any more. We’ve made that available to the states to order,” Azar said.
      The news on Friday came as Joe Biden called for a vast expansion of federal aid in order to vaccinate 100 million Americans in his first 100 days in office. Biden has tapped Xavier Becerra, the attorney general of California, to lead the health department. More

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      Nancy Pelosi says lawmakers who aided in Capitol attack may be prosecuted

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      House speaker Nancy Pelosi has said it is possible that members of Congress could face prosecution if found to have “aided and abetted” the violent attack on the Capitol earlier this month that left five people dead.“Justice is called for as we address insurrection perpetrated against the Capitol last week,” the Democratic speaker told reporters on Friday.“If, in fact, it is found that members of Congress were accomplices to this insurrection,” the Democratic speaker said on Friday. “If they aided and abetted the crime, there may have to be actions taken beyond the Congress in terms of prosecution for that.”Pelosi’s comments came after Mikie Sherrill, a Democratic congresswoman of New Jersey, said she saw colleagues leading groups on “reconnaissance” tours of the Capitol a day before the riot.More than 30 Democrats have signed on to a letter, spearheaded by Sherrill, seeking more information about the tours that took place at the Capitol on 5 January.At the press conference – her first since the House impeached Donald Trump for a second time over his role in encouraging the pro-Trump mob – Pelosi announced there would be a review of Capitol security.She said retired Lt Gen Russel Honoré was being tapped to lead a security review of the US Capitol in the wake of last week’s deadly insurrection.Honoré is perhaps best known for overseeing humanitarian aid efforts in Louisiana following Hurricane Katrina. Pelosi says Honoré will conduct an immediate review of security and inter-agency interaction and Capitol “command and control”.Pelosi would not provide specific details on when she would transmit the article of impeachment to the Senate.“They’re now working on taking this to trial,” the speaker said of the impeachment managers. “You’ll be the first to know when we announce that we’re going over there.”Once the Senate receives the article, the chamber must begin a trial to determine whether the president should be convicted and removed from office.Though the trial will probably conclude after president-elect Joe Biden has taken the oath of office on 20 January, a conviction would prevent Trump from running for president again. A handful of Republican senators have already criticized Trump and signaled that they have not decided whether to support conviction, but at least 17 would need to break ranks to convict.Meanwhile, the justice department inspector general announced on Friday that it was launching a review of the department’s role in the riot. The inspector general, Michael Horowitz, said his office would “assess whether there are any weaknesses in DoJ protocols, policies, or procedures that adversely affected the ability of DoJ or its components to prepare effectively for and respond to the events at the US Capitol on January 6”.The justice department has already opened 175 criminal investigations in connection to the Capitol riot, and that number is expected to surpass 300 by the end of Friday, a federal prosecutor said.Speaking at a press conference, Michael Sherwin, the acting US attorney for the District of Columbia, said his office is exploring “more significant felony charges” against those involved in the riot.Sherwin said there are also growing indications that law enforcement officers, both current and former, participated in the riot.“We don’t care what your profession is,” Sherwin said. “We will charge you, and you will be arrested.”Steven D’Antuono, the FBI assistant director who leads the Washington field office, said even friends and family of the rioters are providing tips to the bureau.D’Antuono said, “You might want to turn yourselves in instead of wondering when we’re going to knock on your door – because we will.” More

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      Far-right website 8kun again loses internet service protection following Capitol attack

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      Sign up for the Guardian Today US newsletterA far-right website that was among the platforms used to organize the deadly violence at the US Capitol has again been forced to find new internet service protection after a shell company owned by two Russians and registered in Scotland cut ties with the platform’s internet host.The website 8kun, which was previously known as 8chan, has long been one of the preferred platforms of the far right and followers of the baseless conspiracy theory QAnon. It was used by rioters ahead of the 6 January attack to mobilize other “patriots” to “help storm the Capitol”, with some on the message board debating which politicians to kill once they got inside.In the aftermath of the riot, users continued to post content fomenting violence, including maps of government buildings to target and combat techniques for a proposed civil war.It wasn’t the first time the platform was linked to acts of violence. Its predecessor site 8chan was linked to a series of white nationalist terrorist attacks, including the massacres in Christchurch, New Zealand and El Paso, Texas.8kun has faced significant hurdles to remain online since at least 2019, when the El Paso attack occurred. All websites on the internet are kept online by a network of services including web hosts and domain name registrars. 8kun has had a loyal internet provider in Washington state-based VanwaTech, whose CEO has repeatedly defended its connections to the hate site in the name of freedom of speech.But the site also cannot function without platform protection services that prevent DDoS attacks, or distributed denial of service attacks, and few providers have been willing to work with it.Following its removal from Cloudflare, 8kun, throughVanwaTech, worked with Oregon-based CNServers LLC for DDoS protection. That company, too, cut ties with 8kun when it was alerted to the site’s violent history.Since October 2020, 8kun received DDoS protection from DDoS-Guard, a company that provides protection to a number of controversial websites, including neo-Nazi site the Daily Stormer. 8kun’s ties to DDoS-Guard were first reported by the security researcher and journalist Brian Krebs.This week, DDoS became the latest company to cut ties with 8kun’s hosting company VanwaTech, following inquiries from the Guardian.8kun is now being hosted by the US-based firm FiberHub, which is based in Las Vegas, Nevada, according to analysis from independent web researcher Ron Guilmette viewed by the Guardian.FiberHub does not provide infrastructure directly to 8chan but does support VanwaTech as a client, the co-founder and chief technology officer Rob Tyree confirmed to the Guardian by email.“We have received no reports that content hosted by VanwaTech supported by our infrastructure is in violation of our terms of service or acceptable use policy, which includes a requirement to abide by all US federal and state laws and regulations,” Tyree said. “Should we receive any such reports, we would follow our internal policies and observe any legal requirements to resolve those matters as swiftly as possible.”DDoS-Guard, the company that provided services to VanwaTech until earlier this week, was registered under a limited partnership, a financial structure in Scotland that allows non-residents to create companies with little scrutiny, on 24 November 2017 by Aleksei Likhachev and Evgeniy Marchenko – two Russian businessmen who remain owners of the company today. The partnership under which DDoS-Guard is registered is called Cognitive Cloud, and is listed at an address in Edinburgh’s Forth Street.Speaking from the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don earlier this week, Marchenko told the Guardian that 8kun was not a direct client of DDoS-Guard, but that his company provided services to VanwaTech. He described DDoS-Guard as a global information security service. It hosted “thousands of websites”, he said, adding that it merely provided VanwaTech with “transit protection services” to stop it from falling victim to DDoS or other “brute force” attacks.“It looks like they host some dubious sites like Qanon/8chan/8kun. I still don’t understand what are they about and have no information about their content or activity,” he added.“We are not related to any politic issues and don’t want to be associated inany sense with customer hosting such toxic sites like QAnon/8chan,” Machenko said after the company severed ties with VanwaTech.Asked why he used a company based in Scotland, Marchenko said: “Why not? The UK is very comfortable for business. I visited London one time, 14 years ago.” He said: “We don’t support any illegal activity. We know nothing about what happened in Washington or support one side or another. This company [VanwaTech] is just one of our many customers.”DDoS-Guard’s other clients include the Russian ministry of defence, as well as media organisations in Moscow. The firm’s webpage links to an official ministry history, which sets out recent steps the Kremlin has taken to ban the use of smartphones by Russian soldiers, after a series of leaks.“It’s OK to earn money from the Russian government or from any other government. It’s just business,” Marchenko said.DDoS-Guard’s Edinburgh office is at 18 Forth Street, a terrace of small Georgian townhouses in the eastern part of Edinburgh’s new town, There was no evidence of any office belonging to Cognitive Cloud at that address or any of the five other neighbouring townhouses. An employee at a neighbouring business said in his 7 years working there he had never met anyone from Cognitive Cloud but had frequently fielded requests to take mail and parcels for the firm. A manager at Edinburgh Office said Cognitive Cloud was not a tenant at the address but referred the Guardian to another company of a different name based in London, to which she said mail addressed to Cognitive Cloud is meant to be forwarded.The Scottish number listed on the site for DDoS-guard is disconnected. A tech support representative contacted through the Russian phone number on the site said the majority of its clients are based in Russia and declined to answer any other questions.Marchenko said its Edinburgh office was an “EU subdivision” staffed by a “representative”.VanwaTech did not respond to request for comment. More

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      Washington and state capitols brace for violence from armed Trump supporters

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      Washington DC and capitols across the US are bracing for violence this weekend after law enforcement officials warned that armed pro-Trump insurrectionists are planning to swarm the cities in the days before President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration
      Security measures have been dramatically strengthened following the 6 January attack on the Capitol by supporters of Donald Trump and members of far-right groups that left five people dead, including a police officer.
      The planned demonstrations and threat of violence, which come as the country still battles the coronavirus pandemic, have had a chilling effect on plans for Biden and Kamala Harris’s inauguration on 20 January. Trump is expected to leave the White House for the final time that morning.
      An inauguration rehearsal ceremony that was set for Sunday was postponed until Monday over security concerns, Politico reported. The National Mall is expected to be closed to the public on inauguration day.
      Following a briefing from Secret Service and FBI authorities, Biden also canceled his plans to ride the Amtrak train from his home town of Wilmington, Delaware, to Washington for the inauguration.
      The House oversight committee sent letters to 27 prominent travel companies on Friday, urging them to use “screening measures” to prevent their services from being used to facilitate plots ahead of Biden’s inauguration. The companies included car rental giants Avis and Hertz and hotel chains Marriott and Hyatt.
      In an internal FBI memo first reported by ABC earlier this week, officials warned: “Armed protests are being planned at all 50 state capitols.”
      “The FBI received information about an identified armed group intending to travel to Washington, DC on [Saturday] 16 January … They have warned that if Congress attempts to remove Potus via the 25th amendment, a huge uprising will occur,” the document noted.
      The memo also said the group planned “to ‘storm’ government offices including in the District of Columbia and in every state” on 20 January.
      Efforts to remove the president from office faltered, but on Wednesday, Trump became the first US president to be impeached twice, after the House of Representatives condemned him for inciting a violent insurrection and encouraging a mob of his supporters to storm the US Capitol.
      Organizers of the planned unrest are believe to have moved their activities from mainstream social media websites to more secretive online forums to avoid detection, but some details about plans have emerged. In an online advert for a “Million Militia March” scheduled for inauguration day in Washington, a caption read: “The Trumpists will be keeping DC and the military busy on the 20th as you can see.”
      The FBI is also reported to be monitoring “various threats to harm President-Elect Biden ahead of the presidential inauguration” and “additional reports indicate threats against VP-Elect Harris and Speaker Pelosi”.
      Security measures to stave off violence in Washington and across the country have been extensive. Federal and local authorities have already set up a security zone downtown and 20,000 national guard members will deploy to Washington. Federal security authorities have also asked officials in Virginia to close all crossings into downtown Washington between 6am Saturday and 6am on 21 January, the Washington Post reported.
      State capitols, some of which have already seen the resumption of legislative sessions, started ramping up security this week. The New York police department is sending 200 officers to the state Capitol to assist with security, a top NYPD official said on Thursday. And national guard members were sent to Olympia, Washington, to support security efforts this week — arresting two protesters who tried to enter the capitol building without authorization, NPR reported.
      Safety concerns have spurred Michigan officials to erect a 6ft fence around the state’s capitol building. The last time authorities used fencing at the capital was in 1994 – when the Klu Klux Klan held a demonstration there, Mlive.com reported.
      Michigan capitol authorities have also banned the open carry of guns inside the building following an armed anti-lockdown protest this spring. Several participants in that demonstration were later accused of plotting to kidnap Michigan’s Democratic governor, Gretchen Whitmer.
      In Austin, Texas, national guard members and state troopers secured the capitol building when the legislature met on Tuesday. One man, a member of a group named Patriots for America, was removed from Capitol grounds for toting an AR-15 rifle.
      New details about the Capitol riot emerged on Friday, demonstrating just how close the violent mob got to the vice-president, who was overseeing the electoral vote certification of Biden’s victory when the building was breached.
      Pence was not evacuated from the Senate chamber for about 14 minutes after rioters entered the Capitol. Many shouted that Pence was a “traitor” as they made their way towards his location, according to the Washington Post. Pence was moved to a room off the chamber just moments before rioters entered the chamber.
      Federal prosecutors in Arizona this week described how the rioters involved in the 6 January attack on the Capitol had intended “to capture and assassinate elected officials”.
      The disclosure in a court filing came as prosecutors pushed for the detention of Jacob Chansley, the QAnon conspiracy theorist who was photographed wearing horns in the US Senate chamber and standing at Pence’s desk.
      “Strong evidence, including Chansley’s own words and actions at the Capitol, supports that the intent of the Capitol rioters was to capture and assassinate elected officials in the United States government,” prosecutors alleged.
      The charges against Chansley “involve active participation in an insurrection attempting to violently overthrow the United States government”; prosecutors also warned in their detention memo that “the insurrection is still in progress”. More