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Donald Trump incited a violent mob to storm the U.S. Capitol, after Mike Pence made clear that he couldn’t and wouldn’t intervene to block the certification of Joe Biden’s victory. Also, Democrats won control of the Senate. Folks…what a day.
- Congress suspended its process for certifying the electoral vote when hundreds of pro-Trump insurrectionists forced their way past police lines (or....were welcomed through) and breached the Capitol, prompting a lockdown and the evacuation of lawmakers from the building. During the unprecedented chaos, the predominantly white male mob entered the Senate chamber, waved Confederate flags in the halls, wandered into lawmakers’ offices, and took selfies with sympathetic cops. (Because everything must be terrifying and stupid in equal measure, the terrorists who shattered windows in their bid to overthrow the government were very careful to stay inside the velvet ropes.) One woman draped in a Trump flag was fatally shot just outside the Speaker’s Lobby, in a shockingly graphic scene. Insurrectionists also scattered improvised explosive devices on the grounds of the Capitol, the DNC, and the RNC.
- All of it came at the direction of President Law-and-Order. Addressing the crowd of loons he summoned to protest the certification of his defeat, Trump continued to falsely claim that Pence could overturn the entire election (even as Pence said publicly that he had no authority to contest the results), said “we will never concede,” vowed to destroy any Republicans who didn’t join the coup, and urged a mob to march on the Capitol. As rioters began to invade the building, Trump simply poured fuel on the fire: “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution...USA demands the truth!” Trump supporters were already brawling in the streets and screaming at Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) on Tuesday night; all they needed was a final word of encouragement.
- The same Republicans who spent the last two months gleefully spreading poisonous conspiracy theories and pledging to overturn the election were quick to try to distance themselves from the fruits of their labor. After several Republicans urged Trump to “call it off,” he obligingly released a video later removed by Twitter in which he told the “very special” domestic terrorists to “go home in peace,” saying, “we love you.” Joe Biden put it a little differently: “This is not dissent. It’s disorder. It’s chaos. It borders on sedition. And it must end. Now. I call on this mob to pull back and allow the work of democracy to go forward." Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) quickly came out with the most necessary response: “I am drawing up Articles of Impeachment,” while Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO) pledged to introduce a resolution calling for the expulsion of the Republicans in Congress who “incited this domestic terror attack.”
- That Capitol secured, lawmakers have begun returning to complete the election certification process. (One House Democrat sheltering in his office told a reporter, “Yep. We’re going back. Fuck these assholes.”) It remains unclear why the U.S. Capitol was left vulnerable to invasion by these assholes when the threat was readily apparent, and why it took so long for law enforcement to clear them out. The National Guard was mobilized only after the mob had breached the Capitol (and reportedly after the Defense Department denied deployment requests from both Congress and DC Mayor Muriel Bowser), and hours later DC police said they had so far made just 13 arrests. Compare that to the Justice Department’s militarized response to peaceful Black Lives Matter protesters over the summer, or the Capitol Police’s mass arrest of Brett Kavanaugh protesters, and things start to smell distinctly rotten.
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Wednesday’s mayhem was all the more jarring for its contrast with the pure uncut hope of Tuesday night, when Democrats swept Senate runoff races in Georgia and made genuine progress suddenly possible. In other words: We got Mitch.
- Rev. Raphael Warnock, in defeating the unelected, cartoonishly corrupt Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-GA), will become Georgia’s first Black Senator, and the first Black Democrat to ever represent a southern state in the Senate. Jon Ossoff, in defeating the almost-as-corrupt Sen. David Perdue (R-GA), will become the Senate’s youngest member, as well as (we can only assume) its first Imagine Dragons mega-fan. Both victories were made possible by high Black voter turnout, the result of years of unflagging work by Stacey Abrams and other Black organizers in Georgia.
- The distinct gap between Democrats’ closing message (“u want $2000?”) and Republicans’ (“elections are rigged, voting is for chumps, [pause for insider trading] here is some racism”) probably didn’t hurt either. On Wednesday, soon-to-be Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer pledged to make good on that: “One of the first things that I want to do when our new senators are seated, is deliver the $2,000 checks to the American families.” After that, much-needed democratic reforms and the boldest elements of the Biden administration agenda are all on the table, if Democrats accept the mandate to lead they’ve been handed.
Today’s attack on the Capitol was the horrific culmination of Donald Trump’s four-year-long attack on this country; it was the rejection of democracy that he represents, and it belongs to an era we’ve worked so hard to leave behind. It’s Democrats’ responsibility to make sure Trump gets left behind with it: If this country can’t impeach and remove a president for attempting a violent coup, and disqualify him from running for office again, we’ll be building our bright, bold Biden era on historically shaky ground.
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In this week's America Dissected, Abdul reflects on the lagging vaccine deployment and what it tells us about public health. He talks to Dr. Kizzmekia Corbett, an immunologist and lead vaccine researcher at the National Institutes of Health Vaccine Research Center, about the vaccine research process and why diversity in science matters so much. Check it out and subscribe wherever you get your pods →
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- Joe Biden has selected Merrick Garland as his attorney general, an appointment Mitch McConnell will not have the power to block.
- The mayhem at the U.S. Capitol naturally dominated the news, but armed Trump supporters also gathered at state Capitol buildings around the country, prompting lockdowns and evacuations.
- Twitter has locked Donald Trump out of his account for at least 12 hours, as a nation prepares for its first peaceful night of sleep in four years. (Your move, Congress.)
- The Louisville Metro Police Department has fired two officers involved in the fatal shooting of Breonna Taylor, Detectives Joshua Jaynes and Myles Cosgrove.
- That police department has found a new chief in Erika Shields, the former Atlanta police chief who resigned after the fatal police shooting of Rayshard Brooks.
- The Justice Department is the latest agency found to have been breached in the SolarWinds hack, with around three percent of the department’s emails accounts potentially accessed in the cyberattack.
- Hong Kong arrested more than 50 pro-democracy activists under China’s new national security law, the CCP’s largest crackdown yet on its political opposition.
- The Trump administration has finalized a rollback of protections for migratory birds, ignoring warnings that billions of birds could die as a result, and practically begging for an Alfred Hitchcock situation. (Good news for birds: Democrats winning both the House and Senate means they can undo these awful last-minute administrative actions much more easily.)
- Dr. Dre’s home was targeted by a burglar while he was hospitalized for a brain aneurysm. The burglars weren’t able to get in and Dr. Dre said he’s “doing great,” so whatever dark force is trying to destroy Dr. Dre can go kick rocks.
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The Trump administration has finalized a “transparency” rule designed to limit the EPA’s ability to implement public health protections. Rules don’t sound that scary on a day when shirtless losers are storming the Capitol, but this one’s distinctly not great. It’s inspired by a plan designed by tobacco industry consultants decades ago, to create obstacles for the EPA in using scientific studies to address the health impact of smoking. The rule requires that the EPA favor research that makes their underlying data public, which rules out population studies in which subjects offer personal data on the condition of privacy, and which have been the basis for some of the most important clean air and water regulations of the last 50 years. It’s safe to assume Joe Biden will quickly work to suspend and repeal it (and the newly Democratic-controlled Congress can swoop in here too), but it could interfere with urgent research on the relationship between air pollution and coronavirus vulnerability in the meantime.
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