James.galbraith

In light of Wednesday’s absolutely chilling armed insurrection on the U.S. Capitol, Democrats and progressives are calling for super right-wing Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri to resign. And if not, to be expelled from office. Why? Sometimes, a picture really is worth a thousand words. In this case, in an image that has since gone viral, Hawley appears to be raising a fist of solidarity toward the crowd of Trump supporters prior to their rioting invasion. We also know that Hawley, among a number of other Republican enablers, wanted to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and that he positively adores Donald Trump. Media editorials, as well as elected officials, have started pointing out that Hawley essentially has “blood on his hands” and urging him to resign.

As covered by The New York Times, people are also calling on Simon & Schuester to take a stand. What does a book publisher have to do with this? Well, Hawley has a book deal through the top publishing house set for release in June 2021. What’s the title? Oh, you know, just The Tyranny of Big Tech. The “tyranny” word choice is particularly mind-boggling given recent events, but no matter the subject, these are the last people who should be getting book deals. And in fact, that sentiment goes for the whole outgoing Trump administration. Let’s look at what the conversation on social media is like below.

First of all, if you feel like you vaguely remember Simon & Schuester facing public pressure over a political book deal in the past, you’re probably thinking of the publisher’s former deal with right-wing Milo Yiannopoulos. Thankfully, after much public outcry, the publisher did drop Yiannopoulos, who actually sued them over it, though he’s since dropped that effort. Let’s hope Simon & Schuester makes the same choice with Hawley. 

There’s also the related issue of who gets a platform, who gets financial backing, and who doesn’t. You might remember the viral PublishingPaidMe discussion Daily Kos covered back in 2019, when famous and established marginalized writers—mainly people of color, and in fact, mostly Black writers—shared their dramatically lower advances on book deals. And these weren’t just small-scale indie operations, either; powerhouses like Roxane Gay, Alexander Chee, and Jesmyn Ward shared shockingly low numbers. Platforms—including books with huge visibility, outreach, and publicity—do matter. And it’s time to call out media creators that are quietly complicit in giving terrifying voices real power. 

Here are some powerful perspectives and calls to action from Twitter.

And what does Hawley have to say for himself now? Just this measly statement via Twitter.

By the time Congress reconvened on Wednesday evening, National Guard forces had joined local police to escort insurrectionists from the building. Most of them left while waving their hands in triumph, without even a threat of arrest. From there, they retired to their luxury hotels to sit together and share stories and germs while celebrating the perfect day they will always remember. 

House members had a bit of a wait as Capitol maintenance staff, mostly Black workers who had been forced to shelter in place as armed white supremacists went screaming through the halls, cleaned up the mess and made their space ready to resume the nation’s business. While those things were happening, Republicans were also busy—busy deciding that they would explain away their failed attempt to overthrow the United States government on a movement founded on racism, hate, and lies … by spreading more racism, hate, and lies.

Representatives like Matt Gaetz returned to the House to claim it was not Trump supporters who had been wearing those Trump hats, waving those Trump banners, and shouting those Trump slogans. It was antifa. A whole busload of antifa. And as he told this lie, his Republican colleagues applauded.

Antifa does not exist. Many Americans—one would hope, a large majority—are, in fact, anti-fascist. But the big, organized, and apparently well-funded boogieman that Republicans invoke for every act of violence, or imagined violence, simply does not exist. There are small groups, especially in the Northwest, who like to show up at white supremacist rallies and confront their members. Had they been present in Washington on Wednesday, they would have been fighting against the Trump supporters, not with them.

By the time Gaetz made his false claims shortly after Congress reconvened in the desecrated Capitol, the antifa claims were already running regularly on Fox News and blazoned across every mention of the violence in right-wing media. There were secret antifa people hidden among the Trump supporters. Lots of them. Within minutes of the capital police giving way on the steps outside Congress, the narrative had already gelled—an unnamed former FBI agent had somehow identified “at least one busload of Antifa thugs” who had infiltrated peaceful Trump supporters. That claim didn’t just become widespread, it became the baseline for “reporting” by Fox and other right-wing sites.

These are not Trump supporters, lied guest, after reporter, after pundit. Not our people.

Except, of course, they were. In December, Donald Trump made it clear that he wanted people to come to Washington, D.C., on the day the electoral votes were counted for a “wild” protest. He used that term repeatedly in his invitations to supporters, along with claims that this was their last opportunity to “stop the steal.” This was, after all, the “march to save America.” From the outset, it was clear that those most enthusiastic about the march were the Proud Boys, militia groups, and others who clearly heard Trump’s wild talk as an invitation to come to D.C. and do their worst. That’s who came.

The Sparrow Project has flipped through just a few of the images from Wednesday’s assault and come up, not surprisingly, antifa-dry. The guy mocking the traditions of American Indians, was Arizona QAnon supporter Jake Angeli, a “fixture at right-wing political rallies.” With him is neo-Nazi Jason Tankersley. Another Nazi participant can be easily identified by his "Camp Auschwitz" hoodie. One of the people that right-wingers keep circling in pictures as a “known antifa member” happens to be actually known as white supremacist Matthew Heimbach. 

One of those who invaded Nancy Pelosi’s office, read her emails, and rifled through her files was right-wing reporter for Glenn Beck’s BlazeTV Elijah Schaffer. Others known to be in Pelosi’s office—where furniture was damaged, mail and other items were stolen, and Pelosi’s sign was ripped from the wall and destroyed—included holocaust-denying streamer Nick Fuentes and his Nazi buddy “Baked Alaska” Tim Gionet. Gionet is also a “very fine person,” who was a keynote speaker at the Charlottesville rally. Oh, and he recently tested positive for COVID-19. Have fun with that, other maskless invaders.

At least two of those who invaded the Capitol were actually elected Republican officials. That includes Derrick Evans of West Virginia who helpfully filmed himself committing multiple felonies. Another would be Steve Smith, who is not an elected Republican committeeman in Pennsylvania, but a member of the Keystone Skinheads.

It’s not as if many of these people were hiding their faces or their identifies. That includes heavy metal musician Jon Schaffer, the author of a “drain the swamp” song, who gave an interview after raging through the halls in a vest with Trump’s face.

The woman shot, and sadly killed, while trying to smash through a door into the House floor was Ashli Babbitt, a San Diego QAnon believer whose last post warned, “Nothing will stop us…. they can try and try and try but the storm is here and it is descending upon DC in less than 24 hours.” As usual, you have to hand it to antifa. Not only do they have the money to send people everywhere, and the stealth to slide those buses into place without notice, they apparently employ nothing but vampires who never show up on camera.

No matter how much or how loudly Republicans lie, these were white supremacists, neo-Nazis, QAnon fanatics, and plain old fascists—in other words, the people who now make up the base of their party. And efforts to lie about it have one purpose: To enable these people to do it again.

Let Congress know what you think about members like Matt Gaetz trying to cover for Nazis.

The mob that rampaged inside the halls of Congress on Wednesday might have taken a lot more than Americans’ illusions of invulnerability.

“National security equities” may have been among the records stolen from the Capitol on Wednesday when pro-Trump insurgents stormed the building and looted several congressional offices, the Justice Department said in a briefing Thursday.

Michael Sherwin, the acting U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C., said it will likely take “several days to flesh out exactly what happened, what was stolen, what wasn't,” noting that “items, electronic items were stolen from senators’ offices, documents and materials were stolen, and we have to identify what was done to mitigate that [damage].”

Lawmakers and congressional staffers are demanding answers about how a federal complex in the nation’s capital with its own police force was overrun in broad daylight, leading to four deaths and dozens of injuries.

But it’s not only the physical security of members, staff and other employees that was endangered by the breach—congressional offices were ransacked, and at least one laptop, belonging to Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), was stolen, Merkley said. Rioters were photographed sitting at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s desk and removing a piece of her mail from the building. And the Senate Parliamentarian’s office was raided, leaving piles of documents scattered across the floor and into the hallway.

“We have to do a full review of what was taken, or copied, or even left behind in terms of bugs and listening devices, etc.,” said Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.), raising the possibility that foreign adversaries could have easily infiltrated the crowd that encircled the Capitol.

The House Chief Administrative Office said in a memo to staff on Thursday evening that “at this time, there have been no indications that the House network was compromised,” noting that the office issued commands on Wednesday to lock computers and laptops and shut down wired network access amid the protests. Classified national security information, moreover, is supposed to be secured in Sensitive Compartmented Information Facilities in the capitol, which were not breached during the attack, congressional aides said.

But questions remain about whether the attackers were able to remove any physical documents containing personal identifying information, legislative strategy or sensitive logistical details. The failures of the Capitol Police, which prompted House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to request the police chief’s resignation on Thursday, and the risk that lawmakers might again be targeted makes it all the more urgent that officials get fully apprised what sensitive information — about members’ schedules, for example, or inauguration plans — was stolen, lawmakers said.

“If this were an organized, fully intent terrorist group — and there were certainly terrorist activities yesterday, but I mean, al Qaeda style — they could have killed a lot of representatives and god knows what else,” Gallego said. “There has to be a full accounting of what happened here.”

Gallego is one of dozens of lawmakers, staffers, capitol employees and journalists who were on the Hill on Wednesday when Capitol Police officers — a 2,000-person police force who were mostly in regular uniforms rather than riot gear — were swarmed by thousands of Trump supporters who had marched to the Capitol at the president’s urging to protest the results of the 2020 election.

Standing between the mob and the Capitol building — where lawmakers had assembled that morning to officially count the electoral votes for Biden and ultimately declare him the president-elect — were short, fairly lightweight barriers with “Area Closed” signs that protesters were seen simply ripping off before they charged the fences and the officers standing behind them.

Just over 100 people were arrested throughout the day, and dozens of Capitol Police and D.C. Metro Police officers were injured, law enforcement officials said on Thursday.

But Capitol Police are now facing a reckoning after appearing to feed the rioters’ perception that they would not be severely punished for their behavior, as one congressional staffer said — videos have circulated online appearing to show a Capitol police officer taking selfies with the protesters, and some Metro D.C. police officers were seen chatting and joking around with protesters who had breached the perimeter.

“The fact is that it’s explicitly because they were white dudes with the support of the president that law enforcement basically did nothing,” the staffer said.

One current Metro D.C. police officer said in a public Facebook post that off-duty police officers and members of the military, who were among the rioters, flashed their badges and I.D. cards as they attempted to overrun the building. “If these people can storm the Capitol building with no regard to punishment, you have to wonder how much they abuse their powers when they put on their uniforms,” the officer wrote.

“I agree they would take over the Capitol in minutes,” said another Democratic lawmaker when asked whether, on an average day with even looser security, an even more organized and militarized terrorist group might be able to breach the building. “Virtually every member is asking how this could happen,” he said.

The police on Thursday indicated that they were unprepared for the violence. D.C. Police Chief Robert Contee said in a press conference on Thursday that there was "no intelligence that suggested there would be a breach of the U.S. Capitol.” And Capitol Police chief Steven A. Sund, who is expected to resign on January 16 over the security failures, said in a statement that while the Capitol Police had a “robust plan established to address anticipated First Amendment activities … these mass riots were not First Amendment activities; they were criminal riotous behavior.”

It remains unclear why the police force was not prepared for the protests to escalate, given the repeated and explicit threats by many of Trump’s supporters — as recently as Tuesday night — that they were prepared to use force if necessary to enter the Capitol.

Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio), who sits on the House Appropriations Committee that oversees Capitol Police funding, told reporters on Thursday that he was “livid” with police leadership and said that while “the rank and file did everything they could,” they were only able to hold off the mob for just over an hour until they breached the building because there “was no expeditious plan.”

An investigation into the security failures, he added, has to be done “rather quickly because we've got the inauguration coming in two weeks.”

Olivia Beavers and Heather Caygle contributed reporting.

Congress has certified President-elect Joe Biden as the winner of the election — but some Republicans still objected.

While the majority of lawmakers voted to certify President-elect Joe Biden’s election victory on Wednesday, a staggering number of House Republicans — as well as several senators — chose to maintain their objections.

In a vote Wednesday evening, six Republicans in the Senate and 121 in the House backed objections to certifying Arizona’s electoral outcome, while seven Senate Republicans and 138 House Republicans supported an objection to certifying Pennsylvania’s electoral outcome. (We’ve included a full list at the end of this article.)

It was a somewhat surprising result following the violence and destruction by President Donald Trump’s supporters at the Capitol earlier that day, which prompted a number of Republicans to drop their previous challenges.

The lawmakers who upheld these objections, however, did so even though they were unfounded, won’t be going anywhere, and further amplify lies about a rigged election. Neither objection obtained a majority of votes in either chamber, and both failed.

Those who voted to challenge the results argued that they were representing concerns brought by constituents and legal questions that had been raised about the state’s election process. “This is the appropriate place for these concerns to be raised,” Hawley said in a floor speech, while speaking about Pennsylvania’s election laws.

Their decisions to make these objections suggests that some are still shockingly comfortable undermining the democratic process even after pro-Trump rioters stormed the Capitol to contest the validity of the election results.

It’s an attack that Republican lawmakers’ actions helped stoke, given their willingness to support Trump’s repeated, unproven claims about a fraudulent election.

There were some Republican reversals

Originally, about 14 Senate Republicans and roughly 140 House Republicans had planned to vote in favor of the objections, meaning some lawmakers did change their votes after the attack on the Capitol on Wednesday.

Those who did so have said they want to emphasize the legitimacy of Biden’s victory and to repudiate the violence that was perpetrated.

“I cannot now in good conscience object to the certification of these electors,” Sen. Kelly Loeffler said in a floor speech. “The violence, the lawlessness and siege of the halls of Congress are abhorrent and stand as a direct attack on the very institution my objection was intended to protect: the sanctity of the American democratic process.”

Others who reversed their positions included Sens. Steve Daines (R-MT) and James Lankford (R-OK), and Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA).

But these shifts came late: While they do send a message about the election outcome, they don’t obscure the role that many of these lawmakers also played in fueling the same doubts that led to rioters’ assault on the Capitol.

For months, Trump — and many of his Republican allies — have questioned the election results, and in doing so, they contributed to immense distrust of the outcome among both his core supporters and Republicans overall. (According to a November Vox/Data for Progress poll, 73 percent of Republicans questioned Biden’s win.)

Congress members’ plans to object to certain states’ election results only amplified this message. And those who wouldn’t change that position, in particular, seemed to completely ignore the stakes of their actions.

Here’s the full list of members of the Senate and House who objected to Arizona’s or Pennsylvania’s results (or both).

Senators who objected

Ted Cruz (TX)
Josh Hawley (MO)
Cindy Hyde-Smith (MS)
Cynthia Lummis (WY)
John Kennedy (LA)
Roger Marshall (KS)
Rick Scott (FL)
Tommy Tuberville (AL)

House members who objected

Robert Aderholt (AL)
Rick Allen (GA)
Jodey Arrington (TX)
Brian Babin (TX)
Jim Baird (IN)
Jim Banks (IN)
Cliff Bentz (OR)
Jack Bergman (MI)
Stephanie Bice (OK)
Andy Biggs (AZ)
Dan Bishop (NC)
Lauren Boebert (CO)
Mike Bost (IL)
Mo Brooks (AL)
Ted Budd (NC)
Tim Burchett (TN)
Michael Burgess (TX)
Ken Calvert (CA)
Kat Cammack (FL)
Jerry Carl (AL)
Buddy Carter (GA)
John Carter (TX)
Madison Cawthorn (NC)
Steve Chabot (OH)
Ben Cline (VA)
Michael Cloud (TX)
Andrew Clyde (GA)
Tom Cole (OK)
Rick Crawford (AK)
Warren Davidson (OH)
Scott DesJarlais (TN)
Mario Diaz-Balart (FL)
Byron Donalds (FL)
Jeff Duncan (SC)
Neal Dunn (FL)
Ron Estes (KS)
Pat Fallon (TX)
Michelle Fischbach (MN)
Scott Fitzgerald (WI)
Chuck Fleischmann (TN)
Virginia Foxx (NC)
Scott Franklin (FL)
Russ Fulcher (ID)
Matt Gaetz (FL)
Mike Garcia (CA)
Bob Gibbs (OH)
Carlos Gimenez (FL)
Louie Gohmert (TX)
Bob Good (VA)
Lance Gooden (TX)
Paul Gosar (AZ)
Garret Graves (LA)
Sam Graves (MO)
Mark Green (TN)
Marjorie Greene (GA)
Morgan Griffith (VA)
Michael Guest (MS)
Jim Hagedorn (MN)
Andy Harris (MD)
Diana Harshbarger (TN)
Vicky Hartzler (MO)
Kevin Hern (OK)
Yvette Herrell (NM)
Jody Hice (GA)
Clay Higgins (LA)
Richard Hudson (NC)
Darrell Issa (CA)
Ronny Jackson (TX)
Chris Jacobs (NY)
Mike Johnson (LA)
Bill Johnson (OH)
Jim Jordan (OH)
John Joyce (PA)
Fred Keller (PA)
Trent Kelly (MS)
Mike Kelly (PA)
David Kustoff (TN)
Doug LaMalfa (CA)
Doug Lamborn (CO)
Jacob LaTurner (KS)
Debbie Lesko (AZ)
Billy Long (MO)
Barry Loudermilk (GA)
Frank Lucas (OK)
Blaine Luetkemeyer (MO)
Nicole Malliotakis (NY)
Tracey Mann (KS)
Brian Mast (FL)
Kevin McCarthy (CA)
Lisa McClain (MI)
Daniel Meuser (PA)
Mary Miller (IL)
Carol Miller (WV)
Alex Mooney (WV)
Barry Moore (AL)
Markwayne Mullin (OK)
Gregory Murphy (NC)
Troy Nehls (TX)
Ralph Norman (SC)
Devin Nunes (CA)
Jay Obernolte (CA)
Burgess Owens (UT)
Steven Palazzo (MS)
Gary Palmer (AL)
Greg Pence (IN)
Scott Perry (PA)
August Pfluger (TX)
Bill Posey (FL)
Guy Reschenthaler (PA)
Tom Rice (SC)
Mike Rogers (AL)
Hal Rogers (KY)
John Rose (TN)
Matt Rosendale (MT)
David Rouzer (NC)
John Rutherford (FL)
Steve Scalise (LA)
David Schweikert (AZ)
Pete Sessions (TX)
Jason Smith (MO)
Adrian Smith (NE)
Lloyd Smucker (PA)
Elise Stefanik (NY)
Greg Steube (FL)
Chris Stewart (UT)
Glenn Thompson (PA)
Tom Tiffany (WI)
William Timmons (SC)
Jefferson Van Drew (NJ)
Beth Van Duyne (TX)
Tim Walberg (MI)
Jackie Walorski (IN)
Randy Weber (TX)
Daniel Webster (FL)
Roger Williams (TX)
Joe Wilson (SC)
Rob Wittman (VA)
Ron Wright (TX)
Lee Zeldin (NY)

[If a majority of the cabinet agrees to remove the President, Pelosi and McConnell could run out the clock till January 20.]

There are rumblings that President Trump's cabinet may invoke Section 4 of the 25th Amendment.

JUST IN: "This is not news we deliver lightly," @margbrennan says as she reports: Trump Cabinet secretaries are discussing invoking the 25th Amendment to remove President Trump. Nothing formal yet presented to VP Pence.

"I'm talking about actual members of the Cabinet," she says

— Ed O'Keefe (@edokeefe) January 7, 2021

I am deeply grateful to Professor Brian Kalt, who wrote the definitive book on this once-obscure provision of the Constitution. He created this helpful graphic to explain how the 25th Amendment operates.

Here, I wish to break down the logistics. There are currently 15 Cabinet Members who could vote on a 25th Amendment declaration. According to Professor Kalt, acting members should be allowed to vote. Professor Anne Joseph O'Connell disagrees.

The 15 current members are:

1. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo
2. Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin
3. Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller
4. Acting Attorney General Jeffrey A. Rosen
5. Secretary of the Interior David Bernhardt
6. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue
7. Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross
8. Secretary of Labor Eugene Scalia
9. Secretary of HHS Alex Azar
10. Secretary of HUD Ben Carson
11. Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao
12. Secretary of Energy Dan Brouillette
13. Secretary of Education Betsy De Vos
14. Secretary of Veterans Affairs Robert Wilkie
15. Acting Secretary of DHS Chad Wolf

If Vice President Pence, and eight of these fifteen cabinet members, "transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office," then Mike Pence immediately becomes Acting President. Because there is some debate about whether acting cabinet members can vote, it would be safe to have at least 8 confirmed cabinet members vote to remove.

At that point, Trump would "transmit[] to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that no inability exists." Thereafter, The Vice President, and the cabinet members have four days to take another vote. During that four day period, Pence remains as Acting President. If Pence and eight members of the cabinet agree that Trump is still "unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office," then Pence remains as Acting President.

At that point Congress has up to 21 days to determine whether Trump is "unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office." It would take 2/3 of the House and Senate to remove Trump from office. That vote would likely fail. But, we are less than 21 days till the inauguration. In theory, Speaker Pelosi and Leader McConnell could simply run out the clock, and not bring up a vote in two weeks. On January 20 at noon, Joe Biden will take the oath of office.

In short, if VP Pence and a majority of the cabinet vote to remove Trump, there is little chance that Trump would return to the Presidency–absent another election.

I raise one possible cliffhanger. Trump could preemptively fire everyone in his cabinet who does not pledge fealty, and then use the Vacancies Reform Act to install loyalists as acting cabinet heads. That could deprive Pence of a majority. It is also possible that cabinet members may resign. There are further rumblings of possible resignations.

Based on some of my conversations today I think 1600 is going to be a pretty solitary place for the next couple weeks.

— Jonathan Swan (@jonathanvswan) January 6, 2021

With resignations, Trump may also be able to appoint loyalists as cabinet members. The denominator remains 15, no matter what.

Now Trump would need help to execute that sort of Vacancies Reform Act move. I suspect White House Counsel Pat Cipollone would resign rather than help with this purge.

Stay tuned. And please email me if I made an error. I wrote this post in haste.

Update: Tonight I appeared on Houston's NBC Affiliate, and spoke briefly about the 25th Amendment.

This afternoon, a mob of pro-Trump extremists stormed the Capitol, where Congress had convened to certify Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election. The insurrectionists clashed with police, scaled walls, broke windows, and carried Confederate and Trump flags throughout the Capitol’s halls. Members of Congress and their staffers sheltered in place before being evacuated from the building. Collected here are a few images depicting the chaos of this American coup attempt, a scene unlike any other witnessed in recent U.S. history.

Impeachment and removal from office is what Donald Trump deserves. Of course, it was what Trump deserved a year ago when Republicans gave him a free ride through the Senate. Several of those—including Mitch McConnell—making loud noises today, were key to making sure that Trump sailed through without even having to face a single witness in a trial where they knew he was guilty. 

Rep. Cori Bush has already drawn up new articles of impeachment based on Trump’s support for the insurrection taking place on Wednesday. Over a dozen other Democratic members of Congress have already signed on. However, it’s unclear how quickly action could be taken to both impeach Trump a second time and remove him from power. And that’s assuming Republicans do something they haven’t done in decades: place nation ahead of party. But others are calling for a Trump to be removed through other means. It begins with Mike Pence transmitting to both Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and, for the moment at least, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. That letter would express that Trump is no longer able to carry out the duties of his office under the 25th Amendment.

And there are some people who believe that action is already underway.

Calls for the application of the 25th Amendment aren’t new when it comes to Trump. His 26,000+ documented lies, his frequent lapses into lengthy conspiracy theories, and his refusal to admit an error even when it’s obvious have made Trump’s ability to carry out any reasonable action long open to challenge. But in the light of what happened on Wednesday, with Trump both encouraging an invasion of the U.S. Capitol, and then reassuring the insurrectionists that they are “very special” and he “loves” them, the idea of moving Trump out immediately through this action has reached a new level.

Conservative organizations like the National Association of Manufacturers have called for Pence to remove Trump by invoking the 25th Amendment. So have members of Congress and former officials. 

But it goes beyond people calling for the 25th Amendment. Several people have wondered if that amendment has already been invoked. When the National Guard was finally authorized to come to D. C. and assist in regaining control of the Capitol building and surrounding area, it wasn’t Trump’s name on the order. It was Pence.

That has surprised a number of people, and led to some serious speculation. So have the statements about Pence that seem to be coming in from a number of Republicans.

Considering the frightening video that Trump put out on Wednesday afternoon, and the equally disturbing tweet he issued an hour later, this certainly seems justifiable. And it seems like even some of his staunchest Republican supporters might be finding that sticking with Trump is becoming more difficult.

If Pence has taken action … good. But that’s no reason to halt the efforts at impeachment. There is absolutely no law that says both actions can’t go be in the works at the same time.

By now you have seen and/or heard about the attempted coup d’etat taking place in our nation’s Capitol. The conspiracy-laden, evidence-free, faketriot bullshit of the last decade from the right-wing and far-right wing of the country has finally been exposed for what it is: a fascistic mob of the few, who want to reverse course on our country’s Constitution to become some kind of pedestrian oligarchy.

The images are shocking but not surprising. The fact that Black Lives Matter protests, which called for the defunding and redistribution of law enforcement funds, racial justice, and reform were met with a full military presence while this band of terrorists who have been calling for the overthrow of our democracy was met with non-riot geared police, made this possible. The Republican Party has hundreds of representatives who have been willing to go along with the charade that there are real questions concerning the results of the 2020 elections. There aren’t. The president of the United States has repeatedly called our democracy “rigged,” and has called for people to stop the certification of votes. 

That’s what is happening today. It could be seen as far back as 2015.

Let’s first point out that news outlets continue to say things like “no one was prepared for this,” and “no one saw this coming.” A lot of people did. In fact, they knew this was the real issue of blood in the streets, not peaceful Black Lives Matter protests.

Let’s see some people come around to it.

There are other people to blame and maybe charge?

Freedom of speech is very important in our country. But so is ridding our country of dictators and people that want to overthrow our democracy.

I wonder how the law and order patriots are going to see this.

And while we are here. Remember how we are in a pandemic and some of us have kids at home?

I just had to explain what “fascism” was to my 5-year-old (true story). But to be clear, what we are seeing right now is the most telling example of what law enforcement really means to the state.

And while Oregon begged federal law enforcement agents to leave their cities during protests, our nation’s Capitol, under attack, has been trying for over two hours to get help. Strange, right?

And it’s interesting to see news outlets very clearly identify them as “protesters,” while folks in a Target parking lot are rioters. Just saying.

And forget whether or not you care about racial justice for a second. Say, in fact, you are a blindingly fearful racist who just wants people of color, in all shapes and sizes, kept far away from you. Answer this:

And maybe we need to spend our money better.

And remind yourself how people you know (maybe even you yourself) respond when you see some kid with a TV set in some “riot” image. Think about what frequently happens to Black kids and adults who aren’t even doing anything wrong.

And here’s a shoutout!

And here’s a throwback!

Also important to remember. What’s happening today is “patriotic,” while someone taking a knee during the playing of a song is … disrespecting the troops?

And this, unlike whatever the hell Giuliani, Powell, Trump, Wood, et. al, have, is evidence of an attempt to overthrow the government to install a non-democratically elected bag of shit.

And here’s one of these QAnon pricks who hides behind child-sex trafficking while supporting a guy that was best friends with child sex traffickers.

And there are many people who have brought this to you.

Yup. 

That’s a fact.

But remember this.

And this.

But most importantly, remember this.

At every moment of the Trumpist assault on the U.S. Capitol, differences have been glaringly visible between how these overwhelmingly white, far-right people have been treated and how protesters for racial justice have been treated over the past year by the very same law enforcement agencies. From the fact that the Capitol prepared for Black Lives Matter protests with ranks of heavily armed officers while claiming to have been simply caught unawares by an assault on the Capitol that had been telegraphed in advance, to the violence meted out to racial justice protesters while members of the crowd that violently stormed the Capitol were “gently walked … down the stairs,” as CNN reported, it’s impossible not to see. (If you’re honest.)

But the moments keep piling up—on video for all of us to see—showing just how welcoming the police were to this insurrectionist mob. Like this one:

Wednesday, Jan 6, 2021 · 11:06:07 PM +00:00 · David Nir

Trump just tweeted further incitement. Twitter needs to ban his account immediately, before more people get killed.

Or this: 

After hours of rioters occupying the Capitol, police had reportedly made just 13 arrests. And it’s not just Black Lives Matter protesters this is a sharp contrast with.

Advocates for immigrants report similarly aggressive policing when they went to lobby Congress or protest. As do advocates for people with disabilities. The group that got special treatment was the group that actually breached the Capitol to stop Congress from doing its duty of counting the electoral votes as part of the peaceful transfer of power. And this special treatment didn’t just come from individual officers. It was inherent in the lack of preparation for a violent mob—the staffing decisions that had these rioters met by small numbers of cops in windbreakers and bike helmets came from the top. Law enforcement is complicit in this, whether intentionally or by a racist inability to see white people as a threat. The leadership of these agencies has to answer for that.

More images from the attempted coup to overturn the United States presidential elections.

Pro-Trump protesters have broken into the Capitol and overrun law enforcement there. Congress is under lockdown. And the display of white supremacy is on both sides: the protesters and the police who are letting them run rampant in support of a coup attempt.

Think back to last summer when peaceful Black Lives Matter protests were repeatedly suppressed in brutal fashion by the many law enforcement agencies of the District of Columbia. Those protests for racial justice were met by throngs of police in riot gear with tear gas. This literal assault on the United States Capitol building has been met by outmatched police in windbreakers. 

Donald Trump had Lafayette Square violently cleared for a photo op. Law enforcement has failed to prevent violent mobs from breaking into the Capitol to stop Congress from doing its duty under the law to count the Electoral College votes.

We’re accustomed—too accustomed—to seeing police respond with disproportionate violence to Black protesters while allowing violent white supremacists to do their violent white supremacist thing. But this is the United States Capitol, the Congress, the process of democracy. Was it unreasonable to hope that law enforcement would enforce the laws against white supremacists in defense of the Capitol and the Congress? This is white supremacy in action, not just from the mob but from the police who refused to see the threat of the mob until it was too late, because they were white. These people have told us for days on end exactly what they planned, and yet somehow we’re supposed to believe that no one in the leadership of the agencies responsible for protecting the District of Columbia could have anticipated it? No. Again: This is white people getting a pass to a truly outrageous, dangerous extent, and everyone involved in the decision-making about the response has to be held to account.

Call it the last stand of the confederacy: a Republican administration attempting to roll back decades of civil rights protections for American citizens. Before he left office, former Attorney General Bill Barr submitted a regulatory change to the White House that would narrow the department’s enforcement of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, the provision that strips federal funding away from entities discriminating against people of color and other groups, including women, people with disabilities, and LGBTQ people. The rule change would mean the civil rights division would only enforce the cases where it could prove intentional discrimination, getting rid of the "disparate impact" rule.

That rule is based on the legal doctrine that a policy is discriminatory if it adversely impacts a group based on that group's race, color, religion, sex, and, more expansively, sexual orientation. It's been applied in education, housing, transportation, health care—essentially every facet of government policy by previous administrations, but especially expanded under former President Barack Obama. Trump has been chipping away at it since Day One in individual departments like Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and Education, but now they're going for the whole shebang, just removing it from consideration overall in the Justice Department.

Civil rights groups have relied on disparate impact to demonstrate when patterns of behavior demonstrate discrimination, despite overriding policies that appear neutral. As an example, it’s relevant in education, where patterns of discipline have shown that Black and brown children are more likely to be punished. “Disparate impact analysis is important to create accountability at schools around the discriminatory effects of discipline policies, particularly since it’s difficult to prove racially motivated intent behind the policies,” Shiwali Patel, senior counsel for the National Women's Law Center, told The New York Times. Patel served in the Office for Civil Rights in the Obama administration, which investigated discipline rates in public schools to "look at policies and take into account harmful outcomes."

Under Trump's education secretary, Betsy DeVos, that investigation and the guidance document that resulted was actually blamed for the 2018 mass shooting at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. The gunman was characterized as a "troubled" white student who was somehow motivated by, well, who knows, but something to do with the fact that the Obama administration was going easy on Black and brown kids. DeVos rescinded the guidance from the Obama administration, saying it "relies on a disparate impact legal theory, but that theory lacks foundation in applicable law."

Trump's HUD secretary, Ben Carson, tried to do the same thing in housing but was stopped by a federal judge in October 2020. HUD was sued over a rule that would have made it harder for borrowers to prove discrimination claims under the Fair Housing Act. "These significant alterations, which run the risk of effectively neutering disparate impact liability under the Fair Housing Act, appear inadequately justified," Judge Mark Mastroianni of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts wrote in blocking the rule. That rule was even opposed by four of the country's biggest banks. Michael DeVito, executive vice president for home lending at Wells Fargo, wrote to Carson in opposition, saying that the government "should acknowledge that Americans’ attention to racial discrimination is more pronounced and expansive."

Barr pushed this through to the White House, which will undoubtedly implement it without submitting the new rule for public review or comment. That's required in the rule-making process, but Barr asserted that because this relates to loans, grant-making, and contracts by federal agencies, it’s exempted from the normal procedures. The incoming Biden attorney general, whoever it may be, can basically shelve the enactment of this rule, even though it can't be immediately reversed by the administration. It will also likely be challenged by progressive legal groups in court, which could be dangerous with a Trump Supreme Court that's demonstrably hostile to civil rights.

In four years, Donald Trump cost Republicans control of the House, the White House, and the Senate—so goes the celebratory refrain among liberals on Twitter. But the person who truly made the electoral demise of the Republican Party possible was the man who Washington reporters have praised for a decade as the GOP's master tactician—the puppeteer supposedly pulling strings behind the scenes while everyone else simply served as marionettes on his stage. 

That man, erstwhile Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, will almost surely be ordering new letterhead once all the votes are counted. In the two crucial Georgia Senate runoffs, Democrat Raphael Warnock has been declared the victor and the other Democrat, Jon Ossoff, felt confident enough about his growing lead to declare victory Wednesday morning. Sure, it was Trump's buffoonish domination of the spotlight over the past four years made the glare of the GOP's moral bankruptcy burn too bright for many moderate-to-conservative voters to ignore. But Trump was simply the outward manifestation of McConnell's inner decay.

In his relentless pursuit of power and securing a lasting legacy in the courts, McConnell happily abandoned his oath of office and any inkling of patriotism to play footsie with Trump throughout his grotesque tenure as de facto head of the GOP. In fact, McConnell helped clear the way for Trump's corrupt elevation to office when he refused to sign on to a bipartisan statement revealing Russian interference in the 2016 election. When Trump declared neo-Nazis "very fine people" in 2017, McConnell led Republicans in declining to condemn the comments. And after a mountain of evidence showed Trump had extorted the leader of Ukraine in his bid to smear a political rival and win reelection, McConnell lined up the Republican votes to acquit Trump of impeachment charges without hearing from a single witness in the Senate.

So when it came time for McConnell to shoot down Trump's effort to overturn the 2020 election results before it blossomed into a full-blown coup attempt, it came as no surprise that McConnell spent more than five weeks diddling around before finally acknowledging Joe Biden as the country's rightful president-elect.

But now, suddenly, as McConnell faces a return to the Senate minority, he and his allies apparently think it's time to wipe away that Trump stench and start anew.

"Emotions running high among McConnell-aligned Republicans early Wednesday am — after reality of what transpired in Georgia settled in," National Journal columnist Josh Kraushaar tweeted early Wednesday morning. "May be the heat of the moment, but mood is for declaring war on Team Trump. Want to marginalize Trump as they marginalized Steve Bannon in 2017."

Wow—now that Trump simultaneously alienated suburban voters while failing to turn out enough of his cultists to deliver wins in Georgia, McConnell and his cronies are going to take a stand. Bold.

Sorry, fellas, that ship has sailed. McConnell & Co. aided and abetted Trump for four solid years, presiding over the destruction of America's institutions and democratic norms and leaving the country in tatters. But now that the GOP's electoral future is in peril and the party is descending into a bitter civil war, McConnell and his allies think they can just brush Trump off their shoulders like a pesky bout of dandruff.

Go ahead, declare war on Trump. History will remember. And in the meantime, McConnell and the Republican Party will now reap what they sowed—total fucking chaos with no end in sight.

The Rev. Raphael Warnock has defeated Sen. Kelly Loeffler and Jon Ossoff has declared victory while holding a lead greater than President-elect Joe Biden’s margin of victory in Georgia. So while Republicans will likely do everything they can to drag things out before Warnock and Ossoff are seated in the Senate, Mitch McConnell’s days as majority leader are looking numbered. And that means new committee chairs. 

There’s a lot to be excited about on the list of Senate Democrats in line to chair important committees, especially since Sen. Dianne Feinstein took herself out of the running for the Judiciary Committee, with Sen. Dick Durbin now in line. At the top of the list: Sen. Bernie Sanders is expected to chair the Budget Committee. Last fall, in an interview about what he’d do as committee chair, he had a simple answer: “We’d create a budget that works for working families, and not the billionaire class.”

The Banking Committee is no less exciting, with Sen. Sherrod Brown expected to take over. “First thing: We do a major emergency rental assistance. I mean it’s all about housing. The word housing has essentially been left out of that committee the last three or four years. So it’s all about that,” he told Politico in October.

At the Finance Committee, Sen. Ron Wyden told Politico he expected to focus on trying to roll back the Republican tax law, and also, “We’re going to make sure that the lesson of the Great Recession is learned—you don’t take your foot off the gas in the middle of an economic recovery.”

Vermont is expected to have another major committee chair, with Sen. Pat Leahy at the Appropriations Committee. At Homeland Security, Sen. Gary Peters, recently off a narrow reelection, is in line to take charge. Also: Sen. Maria Cantwell at the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee; Sen. Tom Carper at the Environment and Public Works Committee; and Sen. Patty Murray at the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.

Anything would be an upgrade from the Republican nightmares currently leading many of these committees, and of course not every Democrat in line for a committee chair is the absolute best the party has to offer. Plus it would be very nice if there was a little more diversity heading the most important committees. But there are some pretty amazing things here.

Elections have consequences.

[If not now, then when?]

Unfortunately, Donald Trump has been playing with fire ever since he launched his first presidential campaign. Since he lost his bid for reelection, he has only intensified his efforts to subvert American democracy. The events of today are both shocking and yet all-too-foreseeable, and the president bears substantial responsibility for what has transpired. Moreover, he has shown no leadership since the attack on the capitol. His behavior is disgraceful. What is more, it is conduct completely incompatible with the duties and responsibilities of the office of the presidency. The president should resign in disgrace, but of course he will not.

The House should impeach the president for high crimes and misdemeanors as soon as is practical. The Senate should hold a trial and vote to impeach and remove the president from office as expeditiously as possible. The House should request that the Senate bar the president from holding future federal office, and the Senate should vote to apply that constitutional penalty upon conviction.

This need not be a lengthy process. The evidence of the president's actions are clear and available to all. The House does not need an elaborate inquiry. The Senate does not need a lengthy trial. House and Senate members need only determine whether they believe that the president's words and actions rise to the level of high crimes and misdemeanors and whether Donald Trump can be safely left to exercise the powers of the presidency until the scheduled inauguration of his elected successor. That does not seem like a difficult question, and the members of Congress should go on record with an answer to it.

Across the country, protesters have rallied outside, as well as inside, state capitol buildings over Trump’s false claims of voter fraud.

A mob of President Donald Trump’s supporters stormed the US Capitol building Wednesday afternoon, abruptly halting a session of Congress that was supposed to certify President-elect Joe Biden’s win.

Just hours after Trump encouraged the crowd at a rally to “take our country back” and his lawyer Rudy Guiliani suggested “trial by combat,” hundreds of people clad in Trump gear, some carrying Confederate flags, climbed the steps of the building, breached barricades, broke windows, and entered the halls of the Capitol — an insurrection that threatened the lives of lawmakers inside.

Two hours later, Trump posted a video to Twitter stating that while the election was stolen, “you have to go home now. We have to have peace. We have to have law and order. We have to respect our people in law and order.”

But it was too late. Moments before Trump’s statement, one person was shot and later died, according to DC Emergency Medical Services, with at least five others being transported to the hospital. And uprisings had already spread to other parts of the country.

Capitols across the country also saw rallies and violence

In conjunction with the Senate certification vote, protests were planned in cities across the country on Wednesday, in which organizers planned to “stop the steal” and contest the fact that Joe Biden won the presidential election. Though many protests remained peaceful, some turned odd, and others violent.

Arizona

Pro-Trump rioters in Arizona gathered by the hundreds to demonstrate anger and deny the election results. They could be seen in videos banging on the locked doors of the state capitol building in Phoenix. The group struck on the window until the glass fractured.

Another group brought a guillotine to the gathering, which they explained in a letter obtained by the Arizona Republic. The letter contained misinformation about the election outcome and voter fraud and expressed their feelings toward a potential war:

“You may ask why we are here, why do we have a guillotine with us? The answer is simple,” the document read. “For six weeks Americans have written emails, gathered peacefully, made phone calls and begged their elected officials to listen to their concerns. We have been ignored, ridiculed, scorned, dismissed, lied to, laughed at and essentially told, No Ones Cares.”

“Let it be known, if the Constitution, our way of life, and the Freedoms that we hold so dear are threatened by internal or external enemies, we will rise to the challenge and defend this great nation by all means necessary. While we pray for Peace, but we do not fear war.”

California

In Sacramento, Trump supporters, including right-wing militia group the Three Percenters and the far-right street-fighting group the Proud Boys, confronted counterprotesters. Groups rallied around the state capitol giving speeches that denied the results of the presidential election and cursed Gov. Gavin Newsom’s coronavirus rules. The Sacramento police announced on Twitter that they arrested individuals carrying pepper spray.

Colorado

Denver officials closed offices early as a precaution, and state police suited up in riot gear.

Florida

In Florida, about 150 Trump supporters, including dozens of Proud Boys, rallied outside the state’s capitol in support of the “Stop the Steal” movement. One publication described the gathering as tame, with protesters praying together as early as 8 am. By afternoon, the large crowd broke off into smaller groups.

Georgia

Just a day after Georgia held its runoff elections — with Democrats winning control of the Senate — senior staffers, including Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, were escorted out of the state capitol building as a group of demonstrators rallied outside. Tensions rose after the insurrection in DC unfolded.

Kansas

Demonstrators moved into the Kansas Statehouse on Wednesday afternoon after hundreds of people demonstrated outside the building earlier in the day. According to local news outlets WBIW and KSNT, protesters had permits and followed protocols as they contested the count of electoral votes in Washington, DC.

Minnesota

More than 500 Trump supporters in St. Paul cheered when they learned that a mob had breached the US Capitol on Wednesday. According to the Star Tribune, some in the group dressed in Colonial-era costumes and spoke about being ready for battle as they rallied for about four hours. State troopers guarded the state capitol and Gov. Tim Walz’s residence where the pro-Tump supporters landed. Among the group were Three Percenters, members of the Boogaloo Boys, and local Republican lawmakers who emboldened the Trump supporters.

New Mexico

Officials evacuated the Roundhouse in Santa Fe on Wednesday afternoon as an estimated 500 Trump supporters gathered outside of the building and terror escalated in Washington, DC. According to a local report, supporters arrived by car, truck, and horseback to fight the Electoral College ballot count. Participants placed signs around the Roundhouse that read “End the Lockdown” and “We want honest elections.”

New York

Outside the New York Capitol in Albany, where Gov. Cuomo was delivering an address about his coronavirus plan, two people were taken to the hospital and one person was taken into custody in connection with a stabbing. Law enforcement told reporters that the violence stemmed from a protest that was underway just outside the state capitol.

Ohio

At the statehouse, members of the Proud Boys and other Trump supporters clashed with Blacks Lives Matter supporters early in the afternoon. Video captured by the Columbus Dispatch showed a white man punching a Black man amid an altercation near the statehouse. Other videos show larger clashes involving dozens of participants, with police officers and Ohio Highway Patrol trying to deescalate the violence.

Oregon

In Oregon — where unrest continued for months in 2020 after the police killing of George Floyd, and federal agents abducted protesters in unmarked vehicles and counterprotesters escalated tensions — officials made the decision to close the capitol building to public and staff all day Wednesday. In the afternoon, hundreds of protesters marched around the capitol in Salem to contest the election and dispute the state’s coronavirus regulations. The crowd even burned an effigy of Gov. Kate Brown, according to Oregon Live. Just two weeks ago, about 50 people, including Patriot Prayer members, reportedly pepper-sprayed a line of officers and broke into Oregon’s capitol in protest over coronavirus restrictions.

Texas

At the Texas Capitol, hundreds of pro-Trump demonstrators gathered as the insurrection broke out in Washington. Officials were quick to shut down the building and surrounding complex to “maintain public order and address public threats,” according to the state’s department of public safety.

Utah

“Stop the Steal” proponents joined together at the Utah Capitol (all officials were evacuated in the afternoon), carrying thin blue line flags and signs that read “Election fraud is treason.” Though the gathering of hundreds remained mostly peaceful, according to the Associated Press, there were some clashes. A Trump supporter pepper-sprayed a Salt Lake City Tribune photographer. In response, the city’s mayor tweeted, “An assault on a journalist is an attack on freedom of press and democracy. This is unacceptable, and should not be allowed to go unchecked.”

According to the Salt Lake Tribune, the crowd of about 300 chanted “USA! USA! USA!” and “Recall Romney.” In the evening, Sen. Romney made his thoughts clear in a statement:

What happened here was an insurrection, incited by the President of the United States. Those who choose to continue to support his dangerous gambit by objecting to the results of a legitimate, democratic election will forever be seen as being complicit in an unprecedented attack against our democracy.

Washington

At least three rallies were planned in Olympia, Washington, where rallygoers protested the election results. At the capitol building, Patriot Prayer members made speeches about the need to “speak truth” and carried flags that read “Trump is our President.” When one participant announced that the US Capitol had been breached, people cheered and he claimed “It’s war now!” according to the Olympian. Dozens of protesters made their way to Gov. Inslee’s mansion, where they breached the gates. They were unable to enter the home.

In other parts of the country, capitol grounds were somewhat calmer — albeit filled with false rhetoric about the election. In Pennsylvania, rallies to stop the certification of the 2020 election largely took place on Monday. In Idaho, a rally run by an organization called MAGA Girl brought forward speakers who spewed false claims about the election, according to the Idaho Press, though it was relatively calm. In Baton Rouge, Louisiana, organizers gathered on the Capitol’s steps, flew “Don’t Tread on Me” and “Keep America Great” flags, and criticized Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy, who called on Trump to condemn the violence on Wednesday. Speakers at a rally in Oklahoma City disputed the results of the election and called Biden an illegitimate president; some attendees carried guns and wore body armor. In Michigan, an estimated 700 to 800 people, many without masks, kept their rally outside of the capitol building in Lansing, with protesters delivering speeches about how they doubted Michigan’s vote count.

Vice President Mike Pence on Wednesday demanded that Trump supporters who stormed the Capitol immediately evacuate the building, taking a harder line against the rioters than the president and others in the White House.

"The violence and destruction taking place at the US Capitol Must Stop and it Must Stop Now. Anyone involved must respect Law Enforcement officers and immediately leave the building," Pence wrote on Twitter.

"Peaceful protest is the right of every American," he continued, "but this attack on our Capitol will not be tolerated and those involved will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law."

The vice president's statement diverges from the president's tweets about the chaos, in that Pence explicitly urged the Trump supporters to leave the Capitol.

The breach took place on Wednesday afternoon, amid Congress' certification of President-elect Joe Biden's Electoral College victory.

Pence, who was presiding over the proceedings in the Senate, was rushed out of the chamber, and images from the House appeared to show an armed standoff at that chamber’s front door. Both the House and Senate were both forced into lockdown.

Earlier Wednesday, Trump encouraged his supporters at a rally outside the White House to march on the Capitol. He told them that "you'll never take back our country with weakness," and that "you have to show strength." Rudy Giuliani, the president's personal attorney who spoke before Trump, told rallygoers "let's have trial by combat."

As the violence escalated, Trump first tweeted an attack at Pence for not aiding his effort to overturn the election results. He later followed up with another post that did not order his supporters to vacate the Capitol complex.

“Please support our Capitol Police and Law Enforcement,” Trump wrote. “They are truly on the side of our Country. Stay peaceful!”

In a third tweet, Trump asked "for everyone at the U.S. Capitol to remain peaceful. No violence!"

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany also tweeted that at Trump's direction, National Guard officers were "on the way along with other federal protective services."

Donald Trump on Tuesday night disputed a report in the New York Times that Vice President Mike Pence had told the president that “he did not believe he had the power to block congressional certification of Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory in the presidential election despite Mr. Trump’s baseless insistence that he did.”

Pence is set to oversee certification of the election results on Wednesday. A coalition of Republican congressional allies is expected to object to those results amid that certification process.

Said Trump in a statement: “The New York Times report regarding comments Vice President Pence supposedly made to me today is fake news. He never said that. The Vice President and I are in total agreement that the Vice President has the power to act. Our Vice President has several options under the U.S. Constitution. He can decertify the results or send them back to the states for change and certification. He can also decertify the illegal and corrupt results and send them to the House of Representatives for the one vote for one state tabulation.”

Trump also tweeted on Wednesday: “If Vice President @Mike_Pence comes through for us, we will win the Presidency. Many States want to decertify the mistake they made in certifying incorrect & even fraudulent numbers in a process NOT approved by their State Legislatures (which it must be). Mike can send it back!”

Trump’s tweet was appended with a “disputed” tag by Twitter.

Vice President Mike Pence does not have the power to do Trump’s bidding in this case.

The NYT adds: “Even as he sought to make clear that he does not have the power Mr. Trump seems to think he has, Mr. Pence also indicated to the president that he would keep studying the issue up until the final hours before the joint session of Congress begins at 1 p.m. Wednesday, according to the people briefed on their conversation. One option being considered, according to a person close to Mr. Trump, was having Mr. Pence acknowledge the president’s claims about election fraud in some form during one or more of the Senate debates about the results from particular states before the certification.”

The post Trump Claims He and Pence are in ‘Total Agreement’ VP Can Decertify Results and Overturn U.S. Election appeared first on Towleroad Gay News.

Eric Trump threatened Republican lawmakers who don’t back the president’s attempt to overturn the U.S. election with the end of their political careers. Several Trump allies in Congress have already vowed to object to the certification of electors for Joe Biden on Wednesday but the move is not expected to change the election’s outcome.

Said Trump to Sean Hannity: “Tomorrow’s gonna tell you a lot about the country. I can tell you, Sean, any senator or any congressmen that does not — meaning on this side — that does not fight tomorrow, I’m telling you, will not…their political career is over, because the MAGA movement is going nowhere. My father has created the greatest political movement in American history. I’m telling you they will get primaried the next time around and they will lose if they don’t stand up and show some backbone and show some conviction.”

The post Eric Trump Threatens Republicans Who Don’t Back President’s Coup Attempt: ‘Their Political Career is Over, Because the MAGA Movement is Going Nowhere’ — WATCH appeared first on Towleroad Gay News.

Vice President Mike Pence and the Cabinet could declare Trump “unable” to serve. But there are some complications.

Chaos at the US Capitol on Wednesday as a group of Trump supporters stormed the building and halted Congress’s count of the electoral votes has raised the prospect that President Donald Trump’s final two weeks in office could get much, much uglier.

Should Trump further escalate his attempts to hold on to the White House, there is a way for top officials to quickly strip him of the powers of the presidency: by invoking Section 4 of the 25th Amendment to the Constitution. And Marg Brennan of CBS reported Wednesday night that some Cabinet secretaries are indeed considering this, though it’s unclear how serious this effort is. Axios’s Jonathan Swan and Margaret Talev also subsequently reported that officials were discussing this possibility.

Under that amendment, if the vice president and a majority of Cabinet secretaries conclude the president is “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office,” they can put that in writing and send it to congressional leaders. Once that happens, the vice president immediately becomes acting president. If the president disputes it, Congress decides the matter, with a two-thirds vote of both the House and Senate needed to keep the vice president in charge.

Section 4 has never been invoked. Before Trump, discussions of it mostly envisioned a president who became physically or mentally unwell (in the decades before it was ratified in 1967, several presidents had faced serious health problems). But due to Trump’s erratic governance, it’s come up often during his presidency — for instance, former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein discussed invoking it after Trump fired FBI director James Comey in 2017.

Since the crisis at the Capitol began earlier on Wednesday, there’s been renewed interest in the idea. Vermont’s Republican governor, Phil Scott, tweeted that Trump should either resign or be “removed from office by his Cabinet.” Jay Timmons, a former Republican operative now heading the National Association of Manufacturers lobbying group, also said Pence should “seriously consider” invoking the 25th Amendment.

Some members of Congress have called for a second impeachment of Trump as a way to remove him from the presidency before January 20 and to disqualify him from holding federal office in the future. But a number of congressional rules for how impeachment works could slow things down. If the House and Senate had unity in a crisis, they could change or disregard those rules. But Section 4 of the 25th Amendment is likely the faster solution — if enough members of Trump’s Cabinet agree, which is far from a sure thing.

How Section 4 of the 25th Amendment works

Section 4 empowers certain top government officials with the ability to make the assessment that the president is “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.”

The first person who has to be involved is Vice President Mike Pence — he has to be on board. And Pence needs to have a majority of “the principal officers of the executive departments” joining him.

A 1985 opinion from the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel interpreted that reference to “principal officers” to refer to the core Cabinet secretaries (rather than other Cabinet-level officials without secretary titles).

Currently, there are 15 such secretaries, though three are holding their posts on an acting basis. (It’s not clear whether “acting” officials get a say here, but the Office of Legal Counsel advised making sure to have a majority both with them and without them, just to be safe.) They are:

• Secretary of State Mike Pompeo
• Secretary of the Treasury Steve Mnuchin
• Acting Secretary of Defense Chris Miller
• Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen
• Secretary of the Interior David Bernhardt
• Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue
• Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross
• Secretary of Labor Eugene Scalia
• Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar
• Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson
• Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao
• Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos
• Secretary of Energy Dan Brouilette
• Secretary of Veterans’ Affairs Robert Wilkie
• Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Chad Wolf

So, Mike Pence and a majority of that group (at least 8 out of 15 people, maybe with an extra cushion if some of those are “acting”) would have to sign on to a “written declaration” that Trump is unable to discharge the powers of his office. (The Office of Legal Counsel says they don’t have to physically sign it, just “direct their names to be added to the document” in “a reliable fashion.”)

And if they do that, and send that declaration to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate president pro tem Chuck Grassley, Trump loses his powers, making Pence acting president.

Trump would still technically hold the title of the president, but he wouldn’t have legal authority to actually do anything anymore. (At least, that’s how it should work in theory — if Trump tried to totally ignore this, we’d be headed into fully illegal territory, and who knows how it will play out.)

Trump can try to get his presidential powers back — and Congress would have to resolve the issue

If Trump is stripped of his powers, Section 4 also provides a way he can try and get them back.

First, Trump has to send his own written declaration to Pelosi and Grassley that “no inability exists.” But then, the Vice President and Cabinet have four days in which they can reiterate their declaration that Trump is unable to serve. If they do so, per the amendment, “Congress shall decide the issue.”

Congress would then have 21 days to consider the matter. If, in that timespan, two-thirds of both the House and Senate vote that Trump is in fact “unable,” he will remain powerless. If not, he gets his powers back.

Interestingly, that 21-day specification means that, in the current situation, Congress wouldn’t have to do anything at all — Trump’s term in office expires in 14 days, at noon on January 20.

So Pence, plus about eight Cabinet secretaries, have the full authority to strip Trump of his powers for the rest of the term, if they want to do so. That is one legal and constitutional failsafe that remains to them — if things get truly out of control and they decide enough is enough.

Facebook has taken its most significant action against Trump yet, two weeks before the end of his presidency.

Social media companies are grappling with the reactions to the insurrection that broke out on Wednesday at the US Capitol. Despite plenty of time and warning, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube still seemed to be scrambling in their response to President Trump’s calls for an uprising in the wake of his election loss. In the aftermath of the Capitol violence, Twitter and Facebook are now implementing some of the toughest measures yet to limit Trump’s reach.

Twitter took the unprecedented action of locking Trump’s account for 12 hours — a period that was set to begin after Trump went into his own account and took down the tweets that violate its policies — and said it would suspend his account if the president, who has nearly 90 million followers on the platform, violated its rules on civic integrity or violent threats again. Following Twitter’s decision, Facebook announced that it would also implement a temporary ban and prevent Trump’s page from posting on the platform for 24 hours.

On Thursday, a Twitter spokesperson confirmed that the violating tweets had been deleted from inside the president’s account, which could mean that Trump is on track to have his ability to tweet restored.

Just minutes later on Thursday, Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that the company would be indefinitely suspending Trump’s ability to post on the platform. Zuckerberg said that Trump would be barred from posting on Facebook and Instagram for at least the next two weeks, the remainder of his presidency.

Facebook

“We believe the risks of allowing the President to continue to use our service during this period are simply too great,” Zuckerberg wrote. “Therefore, we are extending the block we have placed on his Facebook and Instagram accounts indefinitely and for at least the next two weeks until the peaceful transition of power is complete.”

The move marks the most significant action Facebook has ever taken against Trump. At the time of the update, a Twitter spokesperson could not comment on whether that platform still planned to restore Trump’s account.

Beyond that, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube have also used the tools they’ve employed in the past to handle sensitive events more proactively: adding labels, taking down posts that violate their rules, and elevating content from authoritative sources. But with insurrection that happened at the Capitol, it seems that, in the final days of the Trump presidency, the platforms still aren’t effectively clamping down on his misinformation or his attacks on US democracy. Before Twitter and Facebook suspended Trump’s ability to post, many prominent figures in tech and politics called on the companies to suspend Trump’s social media accounts altogether because of his continued incitement of violence.

In a statement on Wednesday afternoon, Facebook condemned the protests at the Capitol and said that “incitement and calls for violence” are banned on the site. Notably, Facebook was criticized vociferously after the platform left up a post from Trump that said “when the looting starts, the shooting starts” amid the 2020 protests over the police killing of George Floyd.

Trump has an immense megaphone on Facebook, where he has more than 35 million followers. In the hours before the violence, one of the most-engaged posts on the platform, according to the Facebook-owned tool CrowdTangle, was one from Trump encouraging his supporters to come to Washington, DC, on Wednesday, stating that the city “is being inundated with people who don’t want to see an election stolen.” The post included a Facebook-supplied label directing people to a page about election integrity on the Bipartisan Policy Center website, which is similar to the labels that Facebook applied to several of Trump’s recent posts.

The election integrity label was also applied to a video uploaded to Trump’s Facebook page as the insurrection was still unfolding on Capitol Hill. In it, Trump urged calm, but he repeated his false claims of a stolen election. Facebook took the video down just a couple hours after it was uploaded, but not before it had been viewed more than 2.7 million times.

A Facebook spokesperson also told Recode that it took other actions to quell disruption, including limiting the circulation of content Facebook predicts could violate its community standards and blocking the hashtag #StormTheCapitol. The spokesperson added that the company is in contact with law enforcement.

After those enforcement decisions, Facebook changed course again and announced its temporary ban on posting to Trump’s page. “We’ve assessed two policy violations against President Trump’s Page which will result in a 24-hour feature block, meaning he will lose the ability to post on the platform during that time,” the company said in a statement posted to Twitter.

In a statement posted to its platform on Wednesday afternoon, Twitter said calls to violence are against its policies and that the company is reducing engagement on tweets that could increase the risk of violence. Twitter added that it is exploring other “enforcement actions” to respond to the ongoing events at the Capitol. Later on Wednesday afternoon, Twitter took the rare action of deleting two of Trump’s tweets, including one falsely claiming that the election was “viciously stripped away” from him and one encouraging the rioters.

“In regard to the ongoing situation in Washington, D.C., we are working proactively to protect the health of the public conversation occurring on the service and will take action on any content that violates the Twitter Rules,” a tweet from the Twitter Safety account stated. “Threats of and calls to violence are against the Twitter Rules, and we are enforcing our policies accordingly.”

Several recent tweets posted by President Donald Trump at one point carried labels, which varied in severity. One post, in which Trump disparaged Vice President Mike Pence — and continued to call the US presidential election fraudulent — had a Twitter label stating this “claim of election fraud is disputed.” Users could no longer like, retweet, or comment on the tweet, though it can be quote tweeted, which allows users to retweet if they add their own commentary.

While a quote tweet allows people to provide their thoughts on what a public figure says, many of the quote tweets of Trump’s posts echo the president or his talking points, or criticize Twitter.

Nevertheless, Twitter took down Trump’s tweet about Pence on Wednesday evening.

The video of Trump addressing rioters that Facebook removed was also posted to his Twitter account. On Wednesday evening, its engagement was restricted: users could not “Like,” comment, retweet, or quote tweet the post. Twitter deleted the post not long thereafter. Still, the video had already been viewed there nearly 13 million times.

YouTube also took down the video of Trump addressing rioters, as well as several other videos that either promoted violence or included people carrying firearms.

“Our teams are working to quickly remove livestreams and other content that violates our policies, including those against incitement to violence or regarding footage of graphic violence,” Farshad Shadloo, a spokesperson for YouTube, told Recode, adding that the company is also amplifying authoritative sources on its homepage, in search results, and in recommendation letters.

On Parler, a small and largely unmoderated social media platform with a heavily conservative user base, there is significant discussion of the situation at the Capitol. The platform did not respond to Recode’s request for comment before publication.

Calls for platforms to do more

So far, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube have refrained from suspending Trump’s account or those of major groups that helped organize the protests, despite blocking his ability to post.

Many people — including prominent members of the tech and civil liberties communities — are criticizing these social media companies for not going further in limiting violent rhetoric.

Chris Sacca, an early Twitter investor, wrote that Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg have blood on their hands for allowing people to “incite violent treason” on their platforms, and called on the leaders and their employees to “shut it down.”

Stanford Internet Observatory director and former Facebook chief security officer Alex Stamos called for Twitter and Facebook to cut off Trump’s account.

Social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter have long argued that they have a responsibility to defend open communication on their platforms, even when it can be politically contentious. And in the rare cases where these companies have taken more extreme measures — such as when Twitter blocked a New York Post article containing disputed claims about Hunter Biden or Facebook’s removal of a Trump post containing false claims about Covid-19 and children — those actions have been met with sharp criticism from conservative politicians and some free-speech advocates.

But Wednesday’s events represent a serious test of whether incremental restrictions like a warning label go far enough, particularly in the scenario of a sitting president using social media to encourage a violent assault on US democracy.

And somehow, despite the fact that social media companies have had years to prepare for this moment, and plenty of warnings that Wednesday in particular could be a violent one, they still appeared indecisive and unprepared to handle the situation.

Update, January 7, 11:07 am ET: This story was updated to note that Facebook has extended its ban on Trump’s accounts.

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Lock them all up.

If America wants to prevent another event like Wednesday’s storming of the Capitol in Washington, DC, officials should make all efforts possible to arrest and prosecute every single person involved in the violent protests — events that some branded as an attempted coup by President Donald Trump and his supporters.

This is not simply a matter of vengeance. It’s a real-world example of a common concept in criminological theory focusing on the best way to use punishment to deter future crimes.

In criminology, there are three levers for fighting crime, as the late Mark Kleiman previously explained: swiftness (how quickly someone is punished), certainty (the likelihood someone is punished), and severity (how harsh a person’s punishment is) — established way back in the 1700s by an Italian criminologist called Cesare Beccaria.

Much of the attention in US debates about criminal justice policy goes to severity of punishment — essentially, debates over how harsh or long a prison sentence should be. This has been the lever that public policy has largely relied on over the past few decades, contributing to the buildup of mass incarceration.

But severity is, based on the available evidence, actually the weakest of these levers. So simply making punishments very harsh doesn’t seem effective for deterring crime. What criminologists have found is that the certainty of punishment is far more important.

A 2010 review of the research by the Sentencing Project supported this. It pointed to a study by the Institute of Criminology at Cambridge University in 1999 that concluded “the studies reviewed do not provide a basis for inferring that increasing the severity of sentences generally is capable of enhancing deterrent effects.” Other studies reviewed by the researchers found that an increased likelihood of apprehension and punishment — greater certainty — was linked to falling crime rates.

The US National Institute of Justice agreed in 2016: “Research shows clearly that the chance of being caught is a vastly more effective deterrent than even draconian punishment.”

To some degree, this is common sense: People tend to commit crimes thinking they’ll get away with them, so whether they’re punished by 10, 20, or 100 years in prison is really not important to their calculus of whether to commit a crime. But if you change their notion that they can get away with crime by making it more likely the criminal justice system will punish them, then you can make an impact.

To put it another way: If Wednesday’s rioters get away with violently shutting down the workings of the federal government, it will send a message to them — as well as to other people interested in carrying out political violence — that this behavior is, if not okay, at least something they can get away with. That would invite copycats.

The good news is, much of the day’s events were recorded and photographed, with some demonstrators gleefully streaming their actions and posing for photos as they trespassed and looted the Capitol and congressional offices. If they’re serious about punishing these wrongdoers, police could use this evidence, as well as typical investigative tactics, to track down the hundreds of people involved (beyond the 13 already reportedly arrested by the police).

But that’s the rub: Officials have to be serious about punishing these wrongdoers. Otherwise, they’ll send a signal that what transpired on Wednesday was actually fine, making it more likely to happen again.

Enlarge (credit: Elijah Schaffer)

Members of Congress fleeing a pro-Trump mob left their offices so quickly that at least one staffer left their computer on and logged into their official email, according to a screenshot posted by a conservative reporter. Elijah Schaffer, a reporter for the Glenn Beck publication The Blaze, wrote that he was "inside Nancy Pelosi’s office" with what he called "revolutionaries" who have "stormed the building."

"To put into perspective how quickly staff evacuated, emails are still on the screen along side a federal alert warning members of the current revolution," Schaffer wrote.

A text box on the lower-right corner of the staffer's screen read "Capitol: Internal Security Threat: Police Activity."

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Thanks to phones, you can't punish anyone because we're already in Hell.

McConnell makes his sharpest break with Trump yet.

In a set of somber remarks on Wednesday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell urged Republican lawmakers to approve the presidential election results — and refrain from challenging them as President Donald Trump has demanded.

“The voters, the courts, and the states have all spoken. They’ve all spoken. If we overrule them, it would damage our Republic forever,” he said in a speech that marked one of his sharpest breaks with the president yet.

McConnell’s speech extolled the virtues of democracy, exhorted his colleagues not to “declare ourselves a national board of elections on steroids,” and laid out the lack of evidence for Trump’s claims about fraud. But after a month of the top Senate Republican endorsing (or at least indulging) Trump’s attacks on the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election, the Wednesday remarks signaled not so much a return to normalcy as a clear view of the future divides in the Republican Party.

The Republican conference, after all, has already fractured on this issue, with at least 14 senators backing the president and announcing that they intend to vote in favor of objections that are raised, even though none of these challenges are poised to go anywhere. These senators are expected to challenge the vote counts from multiple states including Arizona, Georgia, and Pennsylvania, while many of their other colleagues have argued that such moves would undercut the democratic process and negate the will of the voters.

McConnell in his opening speech raised these very concerns, and cautioned his members against advancing such objections.

“If this election were overturned by mere allegations from the losing side, our democracy would enter a death spiral. We’d never see the nation accept an election again,” McConnell emphasized.

Republicans mounting these challenges, meanwhile, have broadly acknowledged that these objections will not move forward — implying that they are simply using them to send a message.

Some, like Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and James Lankford (R-OK), have used the threat of objections to push for more investigations into the election, while others have claimed that they want to represent the concerns of their constituents — while failing to acknowledge that they’ve played a role in stoking these very worries about election fraud. McConnell criticized this rationale in his speech, too, noting that such messaging moves were dangerous in themselves.

“I will not pretend this vote will be some harmless protest gesture while relying on others to do the right thing,” McConnell said.

The vote today highlights a stark divide among Senate Republicans and hints at ongoing fault lines within the party — with some lawmakers keen to tap into the anti-establishment support that Trump has received by raising these objections, as others emphasize the need to preserve trust within the electoral system. Trump is still poised to have strong sway over the party even after his presidency, given how much support he continues to receive from Republican base voters, but Wednesday’s vote signals that some leaders, including McConnell, are ready to move away from him.

“One of the biggest threats Republicans do face, especially if they come from red states, is the threat of a primary challenge if they’re seen as insufficiently pro-Trump,” Cook Political Report’s Jessica Taylor previously told me. “Probably nothing will matter more to Trump and his loyal base over the next few years unless you opposed the certification of electoral votes — even though it’s ultimately futile.”

McConnell highlighted the seriousness of these votes in his remarks and called on Republicans to weigh the institutional damage they could cause if they support these objections. “I’ve served 36 years in the Senate. This will be the most important vote I’ve ever cast,” he said.

The GOP’s effort to reverse 2020 is doomed. But it could still do serious damage to American democracy.

The incumbent president, who continues to claim victory two months after an election he clearly lost, was caught on tape attempting to bully a state election official into altering vote counts in his favor. He openly called on his second-in-command to toss out results, a power the deputy doesn’t have, citing disproven claims of electoral fraud. A significant bloc of his supporters in the national legislature are staging an unprecedented effort to nullify the election results. A group of former leaders of the nation’s armed forces felt the need to warn soldiers against military involvement in the presidential transition.

Prior to Donald Trump’s tenure in office, it would have been hard to imagine such a description of strongman-induced political chaos applying to the United States. The fact that it does — that the American president is brazenly attempting to overturn the results of a free and fair election with the backing of a large swath of his party, just one day after losing control of the Senate — illustrates that we are in the midst of a serious political crisis.

But identifying the stakes in this crisis are not as simple as it may seem. The president’s plots are destined to fail: It’s clear at this point that Trump and his allies will not be able to stop Joe Biden from assuming the presidency on January 20.

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

So if they can’t block Biden, how bad are things exactly? Some observers are painting the election theft efforts as an extinction-level threat for American democracy, the beginning of a confrontation over the system itself that could end in catastrophe. Others have argued that things aren’t so dire: that Trump’s attempt to bully Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger failed, the courts and state legislatures have rebuffed various Trump campaign election-stealing gambits, and that the congressional challenge to Biden’s victory will lose by a pretty hefty margin in both chambers.

The truth lies somewhere between the poles, though I think the pessimists are unfortunately closer to correct. While Trump won’t be able to crown himself president, the attempts to do so are inflicting serious damage on the foundations of American democracy.

In a two-party system, democracy depends on both major parties being willing to play by the rules of the electoral game. In the long run, the post-Trump struggle for the soul of the Republican Party could decide the overall fate of American democracy. By going down swinging, Trump is dragging the party down with him, putting the party’s voters and elites on a path that they may not easily be able to turn back from.

This process began well before Trump: think about the proliferation of state-level voting restrictions and the treatment of Barack Obama as a functionally illegitimate president. But Trump has been the most powerful accelerant imaginable, with the election stealing efforts potentially the most significant act of all.

A critical mass of Republican primary voters will now be convinced the electoral system is rigged against them, incentivizing ambitious politicians (like Sens. Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz) to cater to them in word and deed to get ahead. The result could be a party that becomes even more willing to engage in procedural radicalism to undermine election results — making a more organized and effective attempt at an authoritarian power grab more likely down the line.

Trump “leaves the legacy of a radicalized party,” says Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a historian of authoritarianism at New York University. “They know now that these forms of behavior have a market in America.”

The Republican Party’s authoritarian flux

The best way to think about the GOP in the Trump era is that it is undergoing an authoritarian conversion: a party that had previously been committed to the basics of the democratic system becoming more and more willing to subvert them. This is hardly an unprecedented process.

Hungary’s ruling party Fidesz, which has set up a subtle kind of one-party state, began life as a pro-democracy youth movement challenging an authoritarian communist regime. Turkey’s ruling AKP, a party that jails more journalists than any regime other than China’s, was once hailed as a pro-democracy force less than a decade ago for its efforts to combat the Turkish military’s longstanding habit of launching coups against elected leaders.

In these two cases, the process of authoritarian conversion was led by a Trump-esque party leader: Viktor Orbán in Hungary and Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey. But crucially, those two strongmen retained the top position in their party until the transformation was complete — until key positions were filled by apparatchiks willing to go along with an outright anti-democratic policy agenda.

The GOP is not so unified. If it had been, there would have been little resistance from the courts and state-level politicians to Trump’s power grab, yet it was Trump-appointed judges and Republican state officials like Raffensperger who played crucial roles in stopping his claims of voter fraud. A firm majority of Republicans in the Senate, including many from deep-red states, look set to oppose the election revision efforts in Congress.

But the reaction to Trump’s efforts also show that the party is further down this road than we’d like. As many as 70 percent of House Republicans are expected to vote for the congressional effort to challenge the Electoral College results, with support from House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy. The senators supporting the effort include leading 2024 hopefuls like Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley. While Mitch McConnell and Mike Pence may not be personally working to overturn the election results, they’re also not stopping Cruz and Hawley from trying.

Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call via Getty Images

The fact that these efforts are doomed given Democratic control of the House, and that their architects in Congress know it, is unusual: typically, authoritarian parties try to overturn elections when they actually think they can pull it off. In this case, the GOP might be doing it precisely because they can’t pull it off: trying to cater to the base without risking a constitutional crisis.

Steven Levitsky, a comparative politics scholar at Harvard, went so far as to call this insincere election-stealing attempt to subvert the election “unique” in global context. It stems from the GOP’s state of flux: not especially committed to democracy but perhaps not united in an authoritarian stance either, and capable of moving in either direction in the post-Trump era.

The best metric to judge what’s happening right now, then, is not whether Trump or the congressional GOP’s election nullification succeeds at denying Joe Biden the presidency. It’s what effect it has on the party’s behavior down the line: Does Trump and the congressional GOP’s current behavior make the party more likely to engage in authoritarian behaviors in the future — to the point it might make a unified effort to steal an election?

It would be one thing if the Trump years were some kind of aberration. But for the past few decades, Republican procedural extremism and anti-democratic behavior — from the impeachment of Bill Clinton’s presidency to Bush v. Gore to the push for restrictions on voting rights in GOP-controlled states — has gotten more and more serious.

After Democrats retook the House in 2018, leading Republicans ranging from Sen. Marco Rubio (FL) to then-House Speaker Paul Ryan labeled Democratic votes questionable and potentially fraudulent. “There are a lot of races [in California] we should have won,” Ryan said, blaming the GOP defeats on allegedly “bizarre” voting and vote-counting procedures in the state. At the time, I wrote that this set the stage for a crisis in 2020:

The GOP’s authoritarian streak predates Trump but intersects with his autocratic political instincts. The president’s rhetoric about illegitimate elections is the kind of language that, in some countries, has caused political crises — where a leader who loses an election then refuses to admit defeat. But the institutionalized Republican Party is unwilling to check Trump and in fact backs his play, because he’s on their team against the Democrats. ...

This is a recipe for a crisis, and 2018 showed us what the most likely flashpoint would be: a Trump defeat in the 2020 presidential election.

Now the predicted crisis is here. And its implications could be catastrophic.

The GOP’s vicious authoritarian cycle

The GOP’s accelerated turn against democracy in the Trump era has been an iterative process between party leadership and the rank-and-file: The president does something dangerous, rank-and-file voters come to believe in it because they believe in Trump, and party leaders align with him either out of genuine conviction or fear of the base.

It’s a vicious cycle: Each authoritarian act by Trump has created greater acceptance of and demand for authoritarian behavior by the rest of the party. There’s a straight line from the Ukraine call (asking the Ukrainian president to “do us a favor” and launch an investigation into Joe Biden) to the Georgia call (asking Raffensperger to “find 11,780 votes” in his favor and flip the state).

This final Trumpian attack on the electoral system is the most dangerous such escalation yet. By centering claims of fraud, it has successfully convinced Republican partisans that the entire electoral system is illegitimate and rigged against them.

Post-election polling has consistently found that large majorities of Republicans believe that the election was stolen from Trump; while losing partisans often say elections were rigged against them, the numbers this year are notably larger. A larger proportion of Republicans are telling pollsters that they’re “certain” of fraud than in years past, suggesting this is something different than the typical post-election sour grapes.

Widespread myths of fraud can persist: a 2019 YouGov poll found that 56 percent of Republicans still believed that Barack Obama was born in Kenya. During Obama’s tenure, Republicans became increasingly willing to engage in procedural extremism — from holding the debt ceiling hostage to blockading Merrick Garland. This was enabled by a base that was willing to countenance anything in the name of stymying a president they saw as illegitimate, a rotted form of partisanship that laid the groundwork for the emergence of Trump’s more overtly anti-democratic politics.

Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images

In the post-Trump era, Republicans will have incentives to go even further. Their base has now been convinced that the political system is rigged; challenging that belief will be politically costly, and playing into it politically beneficial. This pushes Republican officials toward future attempts to overturn elections and rig the rules in the GOP’s favor.

“My main concern is the extreme distrust that we’re seeing government, in authority, in expertise, and in our democratic institutions — now including elections,” says Jennifer McCoy, a political scientist at Georgia State University who studies democratic decline. “Distrust in all of those institutions what has led in other historical instances to the rise of demagogues.”

Some evidence for this dark assessment has already emerged at the state level.

Citing Trump’s baseless voter fraud claims, Republican legislators in the key swing states of Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Georgia are pushing new voting regulations like eliminating at-will absentee balloting and tightening voter ID requirements that would likely disenfranchise Democratic-leaning voters. The Georgia proposal has been endorsed by none other than Brad Raffensperger, indicating that the Republicans most willing to resist Trump aren’t exactly paragons of democratic virtue.

This is a somewhat different process of authoritarian conversion than what happened to party like Hungary’s Fidesz. There, a clever leader with an authoritarian plan stacked the party’s leadership with loyalists willing to help implement his vision. Here, a party is being dragged in a dangerous direction by a complex interplay of Trump’s personal tendencies, the voting base, and the ambitions of individual Republicans.

Non-Trump Republicans don’t really want to overturn the election, but that’s less reassuring than it might seem. Hawley and Cruz almost certainly don’t believe that their votes will hand the presidency to Trump, but their intentions are somewhat irrelevant: the issue is whether their actions contribute to the broader authoritarianism reshaping the GOP and, by extension, the country.

“Clearly, there was no plan to steal the election. It began almost entirely as an effort to humor Trump ... but [the erosion of democracy] often is not a plan,” Levitsky says. “We’re reaching a point where a huge part of the Republican base, not just voters but maybe even more so activists, are just beginning to cross the line into open embrace of authoritarianism.”

Of course, it is hardly inevitable that this process continues. Maybe Trump will disappear from the political scene after he leaves office, humiliated by his failure to steal the election and the Senate defeats in Georgia. Maybe this will cause his cult of personality to dissipate, and more level-headed Republicans will be in a position to retake the party from Hawley-types looking to continue his legacy. Maybe!

But the party’s drift in this dangerous direction predated Trump and arguably even Obama; it is buoyed by trends that will outlast his time in office. The most likely scenario looks to be a dark one: that the GOP becomes more and more comfortable being a party that aims to subvert democracy from within.