U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic Leader Charles Schumer joined a growing bipartisan chorus urging Vice President Mike Pence and the cabinet to invoke the 25th amendment to the Constitution and remove President Donald Trump from office over his urging supporters to march on the U.S. Capitol. Pelosi said Trump is a “complete tool” of Russian President Vladimir Putin who “incited an armed insurrection against America” in an “attempted coup.” She called the resulting “desecration” of the seat of American democracy by far-right and white supremacist rioters “acts of sedition.” The California Democrat promised that “justice will be done.”  —David E. Rovella

Here are today’s top stories 

Less than two weeks before taking office (his electoral votes were finally confirmed overnight), President-elect Joe Biden called the mostly White rioters who attacked the Capitol “domestic terrorists” who would have been treated much more harshly by law enforcement had they been protesting U.S. police killings of minority Americans. “No one can tell me that if it had been a group of Black Lives Matter protesting yesterday, they wouldn’t have been treated very, very differently from the mob of thugs that stormed the Capitol,” Biden said. “We all know that’s true.”  

Members of the Washington D.C. National Guard cover the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on June 2 during a peaceful protest against American police killings of unarmed Black citizens, including George Floyd, who died in May at the hands of the Minneapolis Police Department. 

Photographer: Win McNamee/Getty Images North America

Meanwhile, America is under siege by the coronavirus, with thousands dying every day and a new, more easily transmitted variant appearing in more states. Covid-19 deaths in the U.S. are likely to maintain a near-record pace at least through the month as hospitalizations mount. The botched distribution of vaccines by the Trump administration and state officials means shots aren’t expected to make a meaningful dent in those numbers for some time. Almost 3,900 Americans were confirmed to have died from the coronavirus just yesterday. Cumulatively, the U.S. is expected to surpass 400,000 lives lost to the pathogen by the time Biden is inaugurated on Jan. 20.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio is looking into legal options to challenge state vaccination rules under Governor Andrew Cuomo, who he blames for leaving thousands of Covid-19 doses unused. New York and New Jersey, ground zero for the first wave in America, broke their own records for daily infection on Thursday. In Europe, cases and deaths in Italy slowed while in Spain infections surpassed 2 million. The United Arab Emirates also hit a new daily case record. Here is the latest on the pandemic, which has infected at least 87 million and killed 1.9 million. 

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, left, and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio at a news conference on the first confirmed case of Covid-19 in New York on March 2

Photographer: David Dee Delgado/Getty Images

Robinhood Markets is considering selling some of its shares directly to its own pajama-clad users when it goes public this year.

Wall Street exuberance showed no signs of slowing down on Thursday. Stocks rallied with about 70% of companies in the S&P 500 gaining, while Bitcoin cracked a record high above $40,000 and options activity soared. Here is your markets wrap.

Bitcoin’s historic rally is causing growing pains for the platforms where it’s traded, leaving investors unable to buy or sell it for hours at a time.

Democrats are set to take control of the Senate, House and presidency, paving the way for Biden to bring his legislative agenda to life and reshape the American economy. This is how that will look.

What you’ll need to know tomorrow 

• The U.S. Capitol police failure was widely condemned on Thursday.
• Iraq issues Trump arrest warrant over Iran general’s assassination.
• Boeing to pay $2.5 billion to settle 737 Max criminal fraud charges.
• That self-driving electric car by Apple? It’s at least five years away.
• Ford’s switch to a new F-150 pickup sends sales into tailspin.
• Thirty years at 2.65%: U.S. mortgage rates hit a new record low.
• Bloomberg Photos: Scenes from the assault on the U.S. Capitol.

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What you’ll want to read in Bloomberg Opinion

Does the 25th Amendment Apply to Trump?

In the aftermath of Trump’s provocation of a riot at the U.S. Capitol, there is fresh discussion of the two avenues for removing a sitting president. The first is impeachment. The second is the 25th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Cass R. Sunstein writes in Bloomberg Opinion that there is no question that Trump’s conduct was an impeachable “high crime and misdemeanor.” The applicability of the 25th Amendment to the Constitution, however, is a different matter entirely.

Original copies of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights at the National Archives in Washington.

Photographer: Alex Wong/Getty Images North America

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