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President-elect Joe Biden has said he is not afraid to take the oath of office outside on 20 January following the violent riots at the US Capitol. Speaking after receiving his second Covid-19 vaccination, the 78-year-old added the focus now was on holding those who engaged in the riot to account More
Josh Hawley, a 41-year-old US senator from Missouri, has spent the last four years positioning himself as one of the political heirs to Donald Trump – a more polished successor who can unite rightwing nationalism with populist economic policies. He is widely expected to run for president in 2024.Hawley was the first Republican senator – soon joined by Ted Cruz – to announce that he would challenge the certification of the election results in Congress last Wednesday. Democrats, as well as several of Hawley’s Republican colleagues in the Senate, lambasted Hawley’s decision as irresponsible, inflammatory and politically cynical.There is no credible evidence of fraud in the presidential election, which Hawley, a Yale-trained lawyer, presumably knows. He pressed on, however, defending his vote against certification as a symbolic gesture and noting that Democrats made similar challenges after Republican presidential wins in 2000, 2004, and 2016. On his way to the US Capitol on the day of the certification vote, he raised a fist in salute to pro-Trump protesters gathered nearby. He looked “like a doofus,” a Republican strategist complained to NBC.Unlike Donald Trump, Hawley did not directly encourage the pro-Trump mob that stormed the Capitol last Wednesday. But his move to muddy the legitimacy of the election undoubtedly fanned the flames. Now, with five people dead, human excrement smeared on the walls of a building many Americans regard as close to sacred, and widespread calls for Trump to resign or face impeachment, Hawley may have succeeded in casting himself as a mini-Trump – and is facing an accordingly fiercebacklash.Although he condemned the violence at the Capitol, Hawley has doubled down on his decision to challenge the election. “I will never apologize for giving voice to the millions of Missourians and Americans who have concerns about the integrity of our elections,” he said in a public statement after the riot. “That’s my job, and I will keep doing it.”As blowback builds, the question is whether Hawley – now an overnight pariah in Washington – will suffer politically for his wild gamble to pander to a minority of Americans who are diehard Trump supporters, and include Qanon conspiracy theorists. His decision to cast his lot with would-be insurrectionists, if only indirectly, may have been a bridge too far for many Americans.Hawley’s mentor, the Republican former senator John Danforth, recently told the St Louis Post-Dispatch: “Supporting Josh and trying so hard to get him elected to the Senate was the worst mistake I ever made in my life.” Simon & Schuster has cancelled publication of a forthcoming book by Hawley. Several Democratic members of Congress have called for Hawley and Cruz to resign, as has his home state newspaper, the Kansas City Star.Over the past several years, Hawley’s political star had risen unsettlingly fast. In his arch-conservative intellectual credentials, willingness to cast aside Reaganite economic orthodoxies for more populist messaging, and all-around chutzpah, Hawley has sometimes been characterized as a more clever Trump – and, perhaps, for that reason, more dangerous. What if “Republicans come back in 2024 with a smarter, slicker, savvier version of Trump?” Mehdi Hasan speculated in The Intercept last year. “[D]on’t be fooled, progressives. Josh Hawley is not your friend.”Unlike Trump, an erratic and loud-mouthed reality TV star and real estate mogul with no previous political experience, Hawley has an impeccable conservative CV. He studied at Stanford and at Yale law school, clerked for US chief justice John Roberts, and at one point taught at St Paul’s School, an all-male London private school known for educating the British elite. In 2016, he was elected Missouri attorney general. After only two years in the post, he was elected to the US Senate in 2018, by defeating Claire McCaskill, a centrist Democrat whom Hawley painted as an out-of-touch liberal.Hawley, currently the youngest member of the Senate, is known for his modishly slim-cut suits and his general eagerness for media coverage. “[I]n a town full of thirsty people, Josh Hawley is a man crawling across the Kalahari,” Charles Pierce, a political columnist for Esquire, wrote last year. “The most dangerous place to stand in Washington DC is any place between Senator Josh Hawley and a live microphone.”Hawley is a conservative evangelical Christian who is ardently anti-abortion and known for railing against the “cosmopolitan elite”. Unusually for a Republican politician, however, he has also called to investigate and possibly break up major Silicon Valley tech companies and criticized corporations such as Walmart for underpaying their employees.In December, he formed an unexpected alliance with congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the socialist senator Bernie Sanders in an unsuccessful attempt to secure higher Covid relief checks. Hawley called the $600 checks which Congress ultimately issued insulting to struggling people.The senator’s favorite pet issue, however, is the evils of big tech. He has pushed for the government to investigate Facebook and Google for antitrust and consumer violations and has described social media as addictive and “a parasite” on society. In 2019, he introduced a bill in Congress that would automatically limit time on social media platforms to 30 minutes a day unless individual users opt out of the requirement. The unsuccessful bill also sought to ban functions such as “infinite scrolling” and autoplay.The libertarian wing of the conservative movement is, unsurprisingly, leery about Hawley and his enthusiasm for using the levers of the state to enforce morality. The libertarian magazine Reason has called Hawley “a first-rate demagogue” and “the ultimate Karen”.The extent to which Hawley is actually an economic populist, let alone economically leftwing, is questionable. He opposed raising the minimum wage in Missouri and has endorsed anti-union legislation. But he has a finger in the wind, and is keenly attuned to the fact that the Republican party, historically the party of the more educated and affluent, is increasingly becoming the party of the working class.Hawley appears to be placing his bets on a political realignment, one in which Trump was the beginning, not the culmination, of a political phenomenon. The Missouri senator has worked overtime to position himself as a voice for socially conservative, working-class Americans.The notion that Hawley – Ivy League-educated, the son of a banker – is a man of the people may be difficult to swallow. Then again, Trump, a billionaire, successfully ran for president by presenting himself as an outsider attacking an establishment elite.The question now is whether Hawley’s eagerness to court diehard Trump voters has helped his 2024 ambitions, or hindered them. His actions may be popular with part of his Republican base in Missouri, a state which Trump won by a more than 15% margin.It seems less likely, however, that the American public as a whole will be sympathetic. Hawley did “something that was really dumbass,” Senator Ben Sasse, a Republican from Nebraska, complained on NPR. “This was a stunt. It was a terrible, terrible idea.” More
A police officer is being hailed for his role steering an angry mob away from the Senate chambers during Wednesday’s deadly storming of the US Capitol by a pro-Trump mob.Capitol Police officer Eugene Goodman, identified by CNN reporter Kristin Wilson, could be seen in video footage distracting rioters away from the chamber as police raced to secure the area.In the confrontation, Goodman puts himself between a man wearing a black QAnon T-shirt and a hallway leading to the Senate chambers, then shoves the person to induce him and the crowd to chase Goodman towards officers in the opposite direction.Here’s the scary moment when protesters initially got into the building from the first floor and made their way outside Senate chamber. pic.twitter.com/CfVIBsgywK— Igor Bobic (@igorbobic) January 6, 2021
Capitol Police did not respond to a request regarding the identity of the officer. The efforts by Goodman, who is Black, gave police the time needed to race to lock the doors to the Senate chamber, according to the Washington Post.Several lawmakers have praised Goodman’s actions.Jaime Harrison, an associate chair of the Democratic National Committee, tweeted: “The word hero does not appropriately describe officer Eugene Goodman. His judgment & heroism may have saved our Republic.” Harrison called for Goodman to be considered for the congressional gold medal.Correction.. Congressional Gold Medal— Jaime Harrison (@harrisonjaime) January 10, 2021
US Representative Bill Pascrell wrote on Twitter on Sunday: “As Trump’s fascist mob ransacked the US Capitol, this brave USCP [United States Capitol police] officer kept murderous rioters away from the Senate chamber and saved the lives of those inside. God bless him for his courage.”Congressman Scott Peters tweeted: “Officer Eugene Goodman strategically led an angry mob away from the Senate floor during last week’s insurrection. His courage & decisive action likely saved lives. We owe Officer Goodman & many other law enforcement officers who kept us safe that day a debt of gratitude.”Several members of Congress with military experience, including Ruben Gallego and Jason Crow, have also been praised for calming frightened colleagues and helping with the evacuation during the chaos.Trump, who has sought unsuccessfully to overturn his November election loss to Joe Biden by falsely claiming widespread fraud, had called on supporters gathered in Washington to protest against the congressional counting of electoral votes certifying Biden’s victory.Five people including a Capitol police officer died as a result of Wednesday’s rioting and dozens of people have been charged.Among the mob who stormed the Capitol were individuals who waved Confederate flags and wore clothing carrying insignia and slogans espousing white supremacist beliefs.The chief of the Capitol police resigned after the attack and a federal prosecutor said he would charge any Capitol police member found to be complicit.Two Capitol police officers have been suspended as a result of their actions during the attack. Tim Ryan, a Democratic senator of Ohio, said on Monday that one of the officers took a selfie with someone and the other put on a “Make America Great Again” hat. He said of the latter that the “interim chief determined that to be qualifying for immediate suspension”. More
President-elect Joe Biden said he was not afraid to take the oath of office outside on 20 January following the violent riots at the US Capitol. Speaking after receiving his second Covid-19 vaccination, the 78-year-old added the focus now was on holding those who engaged in the riot to account
Acting US homeland security secretary Chad Wolf resigns – live More
Donald Trump is facing a historic second impeachment after Democrats in the House of Representatives formally charged him with one count of “incitement of insurrection” over the Capitol Hill riot.
Five people died in the attack last week, including a police officer, which Trump prompted when he told supporters to “fight like hell” in his attempt to overturn election defeat by Joe Biden. Emerging video footage has revealed just how close the mob came to a potentially deadly confrontation with members of Congress.
On Monday, security officials scrambled to ensure that Biden’s inauguration next week would not be marred by further violence.
The US Secret Service will begin carrying out its special security arrangements for the inauguration this Wednesday, almost a week earlier than originally planned.
And ABC News said it had obtained an internal FBI bulletin which detailed plans for “armed protests” and calls for the “storming” of state, local and federal courthouses and buildings across the country if Trump was removed from power before then.
On Capitol Hill, the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, who in an interview on Sunday called Trump “a deranged, unhinged, dangerous president”, initiated a plan in two parts.
“The president’s threat to America is urgent, and so too will be our action,” she said.
An initial resolution called on Mike Pence, the vice-president, to support removing Trump under the 25th amendment.
A clause in the amendment, never before invoked, describes how members of the cabinet can agree to remove a president under extreme circumstances. Pence, a staunch loyalist until the climax of Trump’s effort to overturn the election, has signaled no intention of joining such a move.
Republicans in the House duly blocked the Democratic resolution.
But it was followed by the introduction of an impeachment article citing “incitement of insurrection”. Trump was charged to have “engaged in high crimes and misdemeanors by inciting violence against the government of the United States” and thus having violated his oath of office.
The article cites 14th amendment prohibitions against any person “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against” the US from “hold[ing] any office … under the United States”.
The House could bring the single article to the floor for a vote by midweek. The Democratic congressman David Cicilline of Rhode Island, who introduced the measure, tweeted that Democrats now have sufficient votes to pass it and impeach Trump a second time – a first in American history. But for him to be removed would require conviction in the Senate.
The Senate is in recess until after the inauguration, and Democratic leaders have said they will not take up impeachment until after the Biden administration has had time to try to have nominees confirmed and to pass key legislation in its first 100 days.
A small number of Republicans in the Senate and House have joined Democrats’ effort to remove Trump.
Adam Schiff, the Democratic chairman of the House intelligence committee and a key figure in the first Trump impeachment, tweeted: “Every day Trump stays in office, he’s a threat to our democracy. Congress must act, and with urgency.”
But conviction in the Senate would be a long shot, as it was last time the president was impeached. Some Republicans have indicated support this time but about a dozen more will be needed for success.
Trump was charged with two articles of impeachment in December 2019 and acquitted in February 2020.
If Trump were convicted after he had left office, the Senate could decide to punish him by barring him from seeking office again, as opponents fear is his plan in 2024.
Since the attack on the US Capitol, the president has retreated from the public eye and been banned from Facebook and Twitter, condemned by former allies and vowed not to attend Biden’s inauguration on 20 January.
His silence was filled by full-throated calls from Democrats for his ejection from office – and meek pushback from some Republicans calling for national “unity” after their attempt to overturn the November election produced one of the most egregious acts of violence on Capitol Hill in two centuries.
There are now signs that diehard Trump loyalists are planning to march on the Capitol yet again, on inauguration day, in an event branded online as “A Million Militia March”.
The FBI has arrested dozens of participants in last week’s rioting and continued to circulate wanted posters of suspects, potentially dampening participation in another rally.
But with nine days to go to the inauguration, officials were planning to secure the area. The mayor of Washington, Muriel Bowser, asked the Department of Homeland Security to put new restrictions in place and urged people to avoid the city on 20 January.
The Pentagon, FBI, Secret Service and other agencies were reportedly placed on alert and the national guard said it would increase troops in Washington to at least 10,000 by Saturday. The National Park Service temporarily closed the Washington Monument “in response to credible threats to visitors and park resources”.
The inauguration will be attended by Barack and Michelle Obama, George and Laura Bush and Bill and Hillary Clinton. Biden, the incoming Vice-President, Kamala Harris, and their families will be joined by the former presidents and their families in a visit to Arlington national cemetery, ABC reported.
Such plans were made as the nation struggled to come to terms with the violence last week in which five died and dozens were injured.
On Monday, the 75-year-old New Jersey Democratic congresswoman Bonnie Watson Coleman said she had tested positive for coronavirus and believed she had become infected while locked down for hours at the Capitol during the riot last week with colleagues who were not wearing face masks.
Coleman is awaiting a more comprehensive Covid test, noting that she had already received the first shot of the two-dose vaccine. More
Michigan banned the open carry of guns inside its Capitol building on Monday, following mob violence last week at the US Capitol and last year’s storming of the Michigan statehouse.The Michigan ban came as reports detailed FBI warnings about possible violence at state capitols and in Washington in the run-up to the 20 January inauguration of Joe Biden.An FBI report on 29 December, quoted by Yahoo News, warned that “some [Trump] followers indicated willingness to commit violence in support of their ideology, created contingency plans in the event violence occurred at the events, and identified law enforcement security measures and possible countermeasures”.In Washington last Wednesday, a US Capitol police officer and four others were killed in an attack by Trump supporters. Political fallout from that event continues in parallel with a federal effort to arrest participants in the insurrection.Donald Trump has said he will leave power but has not dropped his baseless claim that his election defeat was caused by voter fraud.Security officials are preparing for a large crowd in Washington for the inauguration, and state officials are preparing for protests.On Monday, ABC News reported a similar FBI bulletin warning of armed protests “at all 50 state capitols” and in Washington, but neither the date of that bulletin nor the evidentiary basis for its advice was given.ABC reported that the FBI was monitoring plans for armed protests against Trump’s election defeat between Saturday and 20 January. The outlet said it had obtained an internal bulletin that detailed calls for the “storming” of state, local and federal courthouses and buildings, if Trump is removed from power before inauguration day.House Democrats formally introduced an article of impeachment on Monday, charging Trump with inciting an insurrection in regard to the riot at the US Capitol, which has led to multiple arrests.Democrats also called on Vice-President Mike Pence to implement the 25th amendment to the constitution and remove Trump from power. That effort seems unlikely to succeed. Any impeachment trial in the Senate is not likely to be held until after Trump has left office.Nonetheless, the ABC reporter Aaron Katersky said the FBI had “received information about an identified armed group intending to travel to Washington DC on 16 January [Saturday]. They have warned that if Congress attempts to remove [Trump] via the 25th amendment a huge uprising will occur.”Security around the Capitol has been stepped up.Armed men stormed the Michigan capitol in April, protesting social restrictions aimed at curbing the spread of Covid-19. It later emerged that a group had plotted to kidnap and perhaps kill the governor, the Democrat Gretchen Whitmer. More
A group of House Democrats has formally introduced an article of impeachment against Donald Trump. They have charged the president with ‘incitement to insurrection’ in connection to the violent riot at the Capitol last week
Article charges Trump with ‘incitement to insurrection’ More
Perhaps the most powerful shocks, the most painful surprises, are the ones that we saw coming yet refused to believe would happen. Our ability to fear something and, at the same time, assume it will never occur is one aspect of human nature that seems particularly ill-suited to our continued wellbeing and survival.Throughout the 6 January attack on the US Capitol, as journalists and politicians expressed their stunned astonishment, one couldn’t help wondering: hadn’t they heard about the hundreds of people, some of them armed, who stormed the Michigan state capitol building in April, objecting to Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s stay-at-home order? Had they forgotten that a young woman was killed during the August 2017 Unite the Right march in Charlottesville, Virginia – a neo-Nazi event that Donald Trump declined to unequivocally condemn? Had their interns not been keeping up with – and informing their bosses about – the popular Twitter feeds and Facebook pages of far-right hate groups and extremist conspiracy theorists? Had no one explained that the Proud Boys’ T-shirt insignia – 6MWE – means “Six Million [Jews] Weren’t Enough”?During the assault on the Capitol, as I listened to the panic and horror in the voices of the journalists who, until now, had reported on Donald Trump with something closer to detached disapproval, I wondered: is this what it takes to finally make them understand who this man is – and what he wants for our country? What did they think he meant when he tweeted about the gathering planned for 6 January: “Be there. It will be wild.”Even as the “wild” rioters were scaling the walls of the Capitol, some news media persisted in calling them “protesters” and “demonstrators”. These insurgents were far more than that. Images of politicians sheltering in “safe locations” in the Capitol complex reminded me of how, on 13 November 2015, my son – whose band was playing at the Trianon theater in Paris that evening – sheltered backstage while jihadis murdered 89 people at the Bataclan auditorium, a few blocks away.The difference between protesters and terrorists is critical. Demonstrators are expressing their response to a policy, an event or a series of events – systemic racism, for example. But terrorists plot violent mayhem, rehearse, fail, come up with a new plan, try again and again until they succeed. We all recall that the destruction of the World Trade Center was preceded by a 1993 attempt to bomb the WTC parking garage. The attack on the Michigan state capitol and the Charlottesville march were rehearsals for what transpired in DC last week.Donald Trump is clearly responsible for the 6 January attack. His speech to the crowd that day was an incitement to violence. But it would be a mistake to imagine that the fury and lawlessness of his supporters will disappear when he retires to Mar-a-Lago, goes to jail or begins campaigning for the 2024 presidential election. It’s important to recall that Trump has been the accelerant but not the fuel, not the kindling that has allowed the flames of hatred and bigotry, of anti-democratic rightwing fanaticism to blaze as brightly as they do now.Many of us have a film clip or photo, taken on 6 January, that most haunts us. A friend posted an image of some thugs trying to burn a heap of costly equipment – cameras, recorders, microphones – abandoned, during the rout, by Associated Press reporters. But the image I find most troubling is a short video clip of a dozen or so rioters idly wandering the Senate floor, picking up papers from the senators’ desk, then strolling on. If these Trump loyalists believe – as they kept chanting – that the duly-elected, soon-to-be Biden-Harris administration is not their government, it’s not only because their president told them so. And the framed portraits, the statuary, the gleaming chandeliers they saw in the Capitol building were unlikely to change their minds. The interlopers on the Senate floor looked less triumphant than bewildered, and their bewilderment is not unrelated to the sources of their rage: the massive income inequality, the epidemic unemployment, the opioid and Covid pandemics, the sense of being excluded and forgotten that helps inspire xenophobia, racism, sexism and violence. The rapid decline of our public educational system and the rise of far-right media are not unrelated; among the things that education gives us is the ability to think, to distinguish the truth from the lie, to process and evaluate the information we’re given.These are the problems and the perils that the Biden-Harris administration will have to deal with, and which all the palliative talk about unity, reconciliation, and “working across the aisle” is not going to come remotely close to fixing.Let’s be clear: the Biden-Harris administration has exactly four years to repair some large part of the damage that’s been done – a short time to begin a massive and necessary project. Otherwise, these violent groups are going to rehearse, retry, recoup, try again and again – until they succeed. With or without Donald Trump, the violence, if it ever goes away, will come roaring back. Lawmakers like Josh Hawley, loudly voicing their objections to the 2020 election results, are already campaigning for the job of anti-democratic dictator in 2024. Unless some substantive changes are made – something more sweeping than the middle-of-the-road policy tweaks that seem to be in the offing – the next coup attempt may very well succeed.And we’ll be left to marvel at something else that we always suspected was possible, but that we never believed would actually happen here, and certainly not to us. More
