Daily Archives: August 2, 2021

At the first House select-committee hearing on the January 6th insurrection, last week, four law-enforcement officers presented excruciating details of their efforts to protect the Capitol and the lawmakers inside it from the mob that sought to disrupt the certification of the Presidential election. Aquilino Gonell, a Capitol Police sergeant, recalled how rioters set upon him, doused him with chemical irritants, and flashed lasers into his eyes. Michael Fanone, of the D.C. Metropolitan Police, said that he was Tased and beaten unconscious, and suffered a heart attack. Harry Dunn told of being taunted with a racist epithet that no one had ever, ever called him while he was wearing the uniform of a CapitolPolice officer. Daniel Hodges, the youthful Metropolitan Police officerwho was recorded on video beingcrushed in a doorway, used a single word twenty-four times to describe the people who rampaged through Congress. He called them terrorists.

Shortly after the insurrection, R.P.Eddy, a former director of the National Security Council, suggested on NPRthat the reason the Department of Homeland Security and the F.B.I. had missed every glaring sign of what some members of the group that Donald Trump liked to call his army were planning for the sixth had to do with the invisible obvious. It was difficult for officials, Eddy explained, to realize that people who look just like them could want to commit this kind of unconstitutional violence. Representative Adam Kinzinger, of Illinois, one of two Republicans who joined the committee, against the wishes of the House MinorityLeader, Kevin McCarthy, noted something similar in his opening statement. We never imagined, he said, that this could happen: an attack by our own people fostered and encouraged by those granted power through the very system they sought to overturn.

When Officer Hodges used the word terrorist, he was demanding that the obvious be made visible. This is also the essential task of the committee: to assemble a comprehensive record of January 6th showing that those who entered the Capitol were not, as Trump said, a loving crowd but political extremists, incited by the President and abetted by Republican members of Congress and other government officials, whose deference to a seditious demagogue represents an ongoing threat to the country.

The insurrectionists, however, called themselves patriots, seeming to believe that bearing the American flag earned them that title. To most people, the flag symbolizes the freedoms enshrined in the Constitution. But at the Capitol it was brandished as a weaponalong with the Trump flag, the Confederate battle flag, and the thin-blue-line flagin an attempt to undermine what the committees chair, Representative Bennie Thompson, called the pillar of our democracy: the peaceful transfer of power. The insurrectionists, in calling themselves patriots, had absorbed a fundamental lesson of the Trump Presidencyhow to pervert language so that the things you say are the opposite of what they actually mean.

That lesson was on display on the morning of the hearing, when Representative Elise Stefanik, who was once a vocal critic of the former President but has since become his willing enabler, stepped up to a bank of microphones outside the Capitol, alongside McCarthy. The American people deserve to know the truththat Nancy Pelosi bears responsibility, as Speaker of the House, for the tragedy that occurred on January 6th, Stefanik said, alleging that Pelosi had prioritized her partisan political optics over the safety of the police. The Speaker of the House is not, in fact, in charge of security. But at least, one could argue, the woman who is now the third-ranking Republican member of the House recognizes that the events of January 6th were tragic.

Stefanik ascended to the leadership position because Representative Liz Cheney was ousted from it by her fellow-Republicans, this spring, for challenging Trumps lies that the election had been stolen. No member of Congress should now attempt to defend the indefensible, obstruct this investigation, or whitewash what happened that day, Cheney, who joined Kinzinger as the only other Republican on the committee, said at the hearing. Or, as Sergeant Gonell put it, What do you think people considering becoming law-enforcement officers think when they see elected leaders downplaying this? Nevertheless, both McCarthy and Mitch McConnell, the Senate Minority Leader, said that they had been too busy to watch the officers testimony.

Meanwhile, members of the now defunct America First caucusa small cadre of House Republicans led by Marjorie Taylor Greene, whose attempt to promote Anglo-Saxon political tradition proved too retrograde even for other Trump loyalists in Congressgathered outside the Department of Justice. Before hecklers could chase them away, they championed the more than five hundred people who have been charged so far in connection with the assault. Paul Gosar called those still in jail awaiting trial political prisoners, following the lead of Louie Gohmert, who, in May, on the House floor, said that they were political prisoners held hostage by their own government. This theme has become a talking point on the far right. Trump, too, has embraced it. Recently, on Fox News, he questioned why such tremendous people had been incarcerated.

The House select committee will reconvene sometime in August. Before that, according to Thompson, it is likely to begin issuing subpoenas to people, including some in the government, who may have known about events leading up to and surrounding the insurrection.Now that the Justice Department has allowed former officials to provide unrestricted testimony, Trumps Attorney General William Barr and his acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen are likely to be called. So are members of Trumps inner circle, including Representative Jim Jordan, who spoke with him that day. (Jordan was one of two Republicans nominated to the committee by McCarthy and rejected by Pelosi, for having challenged the legitimacy of the election and for calling the committee impeachment round three, after which McCarthy pulled all five of his nominees.) Its unclear if officialswill honor subpoenas or ignore them, as happened during Trumps two impeachments, potentially forcing a protracted legal battle.

If they choose to obstruct the committee, the obviousan invitation to incite and carry out future acts of insurrectionwill be visible for all to see. The pillar of American democracy may yet be the final casualty of January 6th.

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Why Republican Leaders Ignored the January 6th Hearing - The New Yorker

President Biden is in a tough spot: He campaigned on the ideas that he had the team to manage a pandemic and that his five-decade career as a Washington deal maker was just the ticket to overcome the countrys political polarization.

Thats not happening, not even a little.

Not only are Republicans resisting Mr. Bidens push to end the pandemic, some of them are actively hampering it. Republican governors slow-walked vaccination efforts and lifted mask mandates early. In Washington, G.O.P. leaders like Steve Scalise, the second-ranking House Republican who himself didnt get vaccinated until about two weeks ago mocked public health guidance that even vaccinated people should wear masks indoors as government control.

Theres little Mr. Biden can do. Nearly a year and a half of pandemic living has revealed precisely who will and wont abide by public health guidelines.

Just in the last week, in my Washington neighborhood, which has among the highest vaccination rates in the city and voted 92 percent for Mr. Biden, people began re-masking at supermarkets and even outdoors in parks.

In places like Arkansas, hospitals are over capacity with Covid patients and vaccination rates remain stubbornly low. The anti-mask sentiment is so strong that the states General Assembly passed legislation forbidding any mandate requiring them. On Thursday, Gov. Asa Hutchinson, a Republican, declared a special session of the legislature to amend that anti-mandate law he signed in April so that schools would be allowed to require masks for students too young to receive a vaccine. Good luck with that, his fellow Republicans in the legislature replied.

That leaves the president in a pickle. As the Delta variant shows itself to be far more contagious and dangerous than previous iterations of the virus, the people he most needs to hear his message on vaccines and masks are least likely to.

Six years of Donald J. Trump largely blocking out all other voices in his party have left Republicans without a credible messenger to push vaccines, even if they wanted to. Senator Mitch McConnell, the minority leader, may be using his campaign money to air pro-vaccine ads in his native Kentucky, but he is hardly a beloved figure within the party and is viewed by its base as just another member of the Washington establishment.

Coronavirus Pandemic and U.S. Life Expectancy

There are certainly other communities of vaccine resisters, including demographics of people who have historically been mistreated by the federal government (and also a small-but-vocal minority of professional athletes and Olympians), but it is Republicans and Republican-run states that have emerged as the biggest hurdle in Americas vaccination efforts.

With little ability to persuade the vaccine-hesitant and little help from the party he had pledged to work with, Mr. Biden and the federal government were left with a move he had resisted for weeks: make life more difficult for the unvaccinated, to try to force them to change their minds.

Which brings us to the presidents news conference on Thursday. Mr. Biden said that, for the first time, all federal employees would have to show proof that theyve been vaccinated (or else wear a mask at work), submit to weekly testing and maintain social distance.

He stopped short of a vaccine mandate, saying such a requirement was a decision for local governments, school districts and companies. He said that if things got worse, and those resisting vaccines were denied entry from jobs and public spaces, maybe then things would get better.

My guess is, if we dont start to make more progress, a lot of businesses and a lot of enterprises are going to require proof for you to be able to participate, Mr. Biden said.

This maneuver essentially a shifting of responsibility away from the federal government is consistent with the way that Mr. Biden often tries to project a hopeful tone while airbrushing the reality of a starkly divided nation.

Aug. 1, 2021, 3:54 p.m. ET

The market for disinformation in America is larger than ever, with Mr. Trump, despite starting the program that has led to the full vaccination of 164 million Americans, leading the charge to discredit the same program during the Biden administration.

But it wasnt Mr. Trump and Republicans who ran last year on ending the pandemic it was Mr. Biden and Democrats who successfully made the election a referendum on managing a once-in-a-century global public health crisis.

Now, just weeks after he celebrated the great progress made against the pandemic, Mr. Biden faces a new wave. And it probably wont be long before Republicans who have done all they could to resist measures to combat it start to blame the president for not getting the country out of the crisis he pledged to solve.

SO EXCITED. SO PROUD, Ka Lo, a Marathon County Board member, wrote in a series of jubilant text messages on Thursday. ITS SOOOOOO GOOD!!!

How much of a boost Ms. Lees triumph gives to local efforts for Hmong recognition in Wisconsin remains to be seen. Both Marathon County and Wausaus City Council have rejected Community for All resolutions, leading to a proliferation of Community for All yard signs and yet another effort to pass the measure at the county board.

The next vote of the county boards executive committee is scheduled for Aug. 12.

Sometimes even presidents get some schmutz on their chin.

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Biden, Republicans and the Pandemic Blame Game - The New York Times

For months, Republican leaders have downplayed the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob. But on Tuesday, ahead of the first hearing of a special committee to investigate the riot, they took their approach to new and misleading extremes, falsely blaming Speaker Nancy Pelosi for the violence.

The American people deserve to know the truth that Nancy Pelosi bears responsibility as speaker of the House for the tragedy that occurred on Jan. 6, said Representative Elise Stefanik, Republican of New York and the partys No. 3 leader.

It amounted to an audacious attempt to rewrite the history of the worst attack on the Capitol in two centuries and pre-empt the damning testimony of four police officers who were brutalized by the mob of Donald J. Trumps supporters. Heres how Republicans twisted the facts.

Looking past the motivations of the mob or Mr. Trump, Republicans said it had been up to Ms. Pelosi and her leadership team to protect the Capitol from the attack, particularly given that intelligence gathered in the weeks before it occurred pointed to the potential for violence against Congress.

On Jan. 6, these brave officers were put into a vulnerable, impossible position because the leadership at the top has failed, said Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the minority leader.

Ms. Pelosi has considerable influence as the speaker, but she is not responsible for the security of Congress. That is the job of the Capitol Police, an agency Ms. Pelosi only indirectly influences. Most decisions about securing the Capitol are made by the Capitol Police Board, a body that consists of the House and Senate sergeants-at-arms and the Architect of the Capitol.

Ms. Pelosi shares control of the Capitol with the Senate majority leader, who at the time was Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky. Republicans have made no attempt to blame Mr. McConnell for the security breach or for failing to prepare for attack.

That charge also contradicts a bipartisan report produced by a pair of Senate committees that found evidence of systematic failures across American intelligence, military and law enforcement agencies, which misjudged the threat leading up to Jan. 6 and were not properly trained to respond to it.

It also flatly contradicted congressional testimony, news reports and public accounts of that day, when Ms. Pelosi herself was one of the prime targets of the rioters, some of whom stalked the halls of the Capitol chanting ominously, NancyWhere are you Nancy?

Mr. McCarthy and others said that Ms. Pelosi had refused pleas by the Capitol Police to provide backup, like the National Guard, ahead of Jan. 6.

But the speaker of the House does not control the National Guard. And while Congress could have requested support in advance, that decision lies with the Capitol Police Board, not the speaker.

Members of the Capitol Police board have provided conflicting accounts of a debate that occurred on Jan. 4 over whether to request the help in advance. Steven A. Sund, then the chief of Capitol Police, has said he asked the board for the pre-emptive assistance but was rebuffed.

Among the reasons cited, Mr. Sund said, was a concern by the House sergeant-at-arms, Paul D. Irving, about the optics of bringing in reinforcements. Ms. Stefanik falsely attributed that concern to Ms. Pelosi, whose aides have said she only learned of the request days later.

A Times investigation detailed why it took nearly two hours to approve the deployment on Jan 6. After rioters breached the Capitol, Chief Sund called Mr. Irving at 1:09 p.m. with an urgent request for the National Guard. Mr. Irving approached Ms. Pelosis staff with the request at 1:40 p.m., and her chief of staff relayed it to her at 1:43 p.m., when she approved it. But it would be hours more before Pentagon officials signed off on the deployment and informed the District of Columbia National Guard commander that he had permission to deploy the troops.

Republicans repeatedly said that Ms. Pelosi had been warned as early as mid-December that demonstrations were being planned for Jan. 6 around Congresss joint session to count the electoral votes.

That appeared to be a reference to early intelligence reports and warnings that began to circulate inside the Capitol Police on Dec. 14, which were evidently never shared widely enough to be acted upon.

But Ms. Pelosis aides say she was not briefed at the time about the threat, and the Senates joint report found that the warning signs were mixed at best until just days before the attack.

Senators Republicans and Democrats alike instead said the blame was with the Capitol Police and intelligence agencies for failing to properly assess and warn about the threats.

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Republican Insurrection Claims That Blame Pelosi: Fact Check - The New York Times

Less than a year after a pro-Trump mob stormed the US Capitol, nearly half of Republican voters (47%) say that "a time will come when patriotic Americans have to take the law into their own hands," per a new nationwide survey by George Washington University's School of Media and Public Affairs.

Only about 29% of Americans agreed with this statement on some level, the poll found, including just 9% of Democrats. And 49% said they disagree or strongly disagree.

The poll also found that a majority of Republicans (55%) say "the traditional American way of life is disappearing so fast we may have to use force to save it." About 15% of Democrats agreed with this statement, but more Americans disagreed (46%) than agreed (34%).

More Republicans (27%) than Democrats (18%) said that "strong leaders sometimes have to bend the rules in order to get things done."

The poll also found extremely low levels of trust among Republicans when it comes to elections 82% said it's "hard to trust the results of elections when so many people will vote for anyone who offers a handout." Only 15% of Democrats were on the same page.

Echoing other recent polls on the 2020 election, the survey found that just 20% of Republicans were confident in the 2020 election results as compared to over 90% of Democrats.

The survey of of 1,753 registered US voters was conducted by YouGov from June 4 to 23.

Over the course of the Trump era, experts on democracy repeatedly raised concerns about the GOP's slide into authoritarianism. Democracy scholars have continued to raise alarm as the GOP-led legislatures in states across the country push for restrictive voter laws, employing similar justifications to President Donald Trump's baseless claims of mass voter fraud after he fairly lost the 2020 election. Along these lines, an ex-Trump administration official recently referred to the Republican party as the top national security threat to the US.

More than one quarter of Americans qualify as having right-wing authoritarian political beliefs, according to polling from Morning Consult released in late June.

Though Trump provoked an insurrection at the Capitol and stands as the only commander-in-chief in history to be impeached twice, he continues to be the leader of the Republican party. GOP leaders in Congress have also railed against a House investigation into the January 6 insurrection.

During a hearing on Tuesday held by the House select committee running the probe, four police officers testified about the violence they were subjected to by Trump's supporters at the Capitol. One officer referred to the insurrections as "terrorists," and another said the Capitol riot amounted to an "attempted coup."

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Most Republicans say force may be required to save 'traditional' America: poll - Business Insider

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After nearly a year and a half of telling their constituents that its their constitutional right to ignore coronavirus guidelines and public health restrictions, it seems to be dawning on leaders in the Republican Party that letting a deadly and very infectious disease run rampant through their states and localitiesnot to mention the rest of the countryis actually a terrible idea.

So now, as the highly contagious Delta variant is creating a new surge of infections, the time has come to reverse course. But theres an obvious problem: After feeding a large swath of the country a steady diet of potentially fatal misinformation, distrust in the government, and demonization of the other, while insisting that individual freedom is more important than the collective good, its nearly impossible to convince the true believers to do otherwise. For decades now, the conservative ethos has been predicated on a selfish individualism that informs everything from social and tax policies to medical care. And of course, this ideology, further amped up by a deranged president, has plagued the US response to COVID-19 since the beginning. Now, were all paying the price.

Unlike the early days of vaccine distribution, the US has an embarrassment of riches when it comes to vaccine supply, which has been scientifically proven to prevent serious illness, hospitalization, and death. Yet, according to the Washington Post, as of Julyonly 49 percent of eligible people in the US are fully vaccinated. And theres one major reason for this: GOP leadershipfrom state and local politicians to members of Congress to the conservative media amplification machine. So now, as 41 percent ofconservatives choose not to get vaccinated,cases are up nationwide but especially in states where vaccine rates are low. The repercussions are dire. In Florida and Arkansas, every county is recording high transmission rates. In Alabama, doctors describe dying patients begging for the vaccinebut its too late.

None of this is surprising. From encouraging lockdown proteststo eschewing masksand downplaying the severity of the virus, the GOP followed the lead of its president and underplayed science. Even when its standard bearer, former President Donald Trump, contracted the virus and was hospitalized, nothing changed. Trump had a particularly contradictory stance: at once whining about not getting enough credit for the vaccine, opting to get quietly vaccinated before he left office, and doing nothing to encourage his supporters to get their shots. He just further added to the politicization of it all by making fun of mask-wearing andinsisting the virus wasnothing to be afraid ofeven after his hospitalization.

Republican governors have had to contend with the tragic surge of cases firsthand. Last week, Alabama Republican Gov. Kay Ivey begged her constituents to get vaccinated. Since it is crucial to cast blame for rising COVID ratesnew infections are up 84 percent in her stateat anyone but Republicans, she targeted unvaccinated people. Its time to start blaming the unvaccinated folks, not the regular folks, she said. Its the unvaccinated folks that are letting us down. (And not the people who encouraged them.) But even though Ivey declared a state of emergency in her state in March 2020, shes been pushing the personal responsibility narrative, signaling that the danger has passed. Evidence clearly indicates that the worst is behind us, Ivey saidway back in May 2020,when she announced the lifting of restrictions.

In Arkansas, Republican Gov. Asa Hutchinson said on CNNs State of the Union that he blames the resistance to getting vaccinations on myths and false information. Not that he has any responsibility for the crisis unfolding in hisstate. I made the decision that its really not what the government can tell you to do, he told host Jake Tapper, but it is the community and their engagement and citizens talking to other citizens and trusted advisers. Hutchison does,however, believe the state government can tell you what to do when it comes to mask-wearing. Earlier this year, he approved a statewide ban on mask mandates. The law, which was introduced in March, does not allow any local jurisdictions to require masks.

Earlier this week, 16 of the 27 members of Tennessees GOP Senate caucus released a letter urging the public to get vaccinated. Unfortunately, efforts to get more people vaccinated have been hampered by politicization of COVID-19, the letter said. This should not be political. But earlier this week, under pressure from GOP lawmakers, the states health department halted all vaccine outreach to minorsfor all diseases, not just COVID-19.Only about39 percent of Tennesseans have received a COVID vaccine. As my colleague Hannah Levintova reported, a beloved Nashville conservative talk radio host was recently hospitalized with severe COVID and begged his listeners to ignore his previous skepticism and get the shot.

But perhaps most egregious of all is Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who is not even an elected official. Sanders, who is known for being former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabees daughter and Trumps press secretary for two years, is challenging Hutchison to be Arkansas next governor. So, naturally, she had to weigh in on the surge in her state in an op-edplacing the blame on none other thanPresident Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris! If President Biden, Vice President Harris, and others on the left truly care about increasing the vaccination rate and saving lives, she wrote, they should admit they were wrong to cast doubt on Operation Warp Speed and give President Trump and his team the credit.

When Trump was still in charge and downplaying the virus, he was also bragging about Operation Warp Speed, a government program that fast-tracked the vaccine. At presidential debates, Harris and Biden both said that they would take a vaccine, only if it had been approved by scientists and public health officialsnot the former president. (After all, Trump had once wondered aloud about ingesting bleach to kill the virus.) But Sanders took their comments out of context and said that because Harris and Biden had cast doubt on the vaccine, people in Arkansas are hesitant. Never mind the mind-blowing premise here. Does Sanders really expect us to believe that Republican voters are taking their cues from Biden and Harris?

The latest coronavirus surge has led the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to reissue a mask recommendation even for vaccinated individuals in states where there has been a surge of infections of the new variant. The current state of the public health crisis now feels eerily similar to summer 2020, when no vaccines were available. After all, Republican governors like Texas Gov. Greg Abbott yet again will contort that narrative in the most destructive way.

On a personal level, it can be frustrating to see so many people choose not to get vaccinated. Theyve made things more dangerous for everyone. But railing against them, as Ivey did, is misguided. The idea that personal freedom is more important than public health has become a do-or-die tenet for Republicansliterally. Theres something obscene about seeing them act surprised by what their own voters truly believe. The GOP leadership has turned masks, lockdowns, and now vaccines into a culture war. Conservatives spent so much time owning the libs, they forgot to care about the lives of their constituents. The increase in infections, hospitalizations, and deaths is indeed tragic for everyone. But Republican leaders have no one to blame but themselves.

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The Obscene Hypocrisy of Republicans Blaming Everyone But Themselves: The COVID Edition Mother Jones - Mother Jones

Just as striking as the officers testimony today is GOP lawmakers refusal to engage with it.

All along the hallways of the Capitol complex today, members of the Capitol Police stared at their phones and nearby TV screens. Four of their fellow officers were testifying before Congress for the first time about the treatment theyd endured on January 6. They described being beaten with metal flagpoles, sprayed in the eyes with wasp repellent, and shocked with their own Tasers. One of the men cried while he spoke; a colleague patted his back. Their hands shook as they took careful sips of water.

This mornings testimony was the first time Americans have heard such a vivid and agonizing account from the front lines of the attackthe officers growing panic as the mob surrounded them, how the rioters called them traitors and threatened to kill them with their own guns, the realization that they might die right there on the marble steps of the Capitol. But just as striking as the officers testimony is Republican lawmakers refusal to engage with it. The GOP response has been to minimize or even scoff at what occurred.

Early in the hearing, the officers who testified watched as the select committee chair, Bennie Thompson, played a compilation of footage and police recordings that stitched together the days events: the frantic calls between officers; the ominous sound of rioters banging on the glass outside the east entrance of the Capitol; Officer Eugene Goodman urging Senator Mitt Romney to flee the mob. A few minutes into the video, the C-SPAN camera panned away to capture Officer Daniel Hodges looking at himself on the screen, which showed him crushed against a door and struggling for air as a rioter pried off his gas mask. While he watched, Hodgess face was inscrutable, but his cheeks were flushed.

Read: How a rising Trump critic lost her nerve

As Hodges was preparing to relive what was perhaps the most traumatic day of his life, the Republican House conference chair, Elise Stefanik, was outside hosting a rival event: a press conference during which she blamed the January 6 violence on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. It is a fact that the U.S. Capitol Police raised concerns, and rather than providing them with the support and resources they deserved, she prioritized her partisan political optics over their safety, Stefanik said. (Pelosi does not oversee the operations of the U.S. Capitol Police.)

Stefaniks was only one excuse of many. Shortly after January 6, Donald Trumps allies spun up a story accusing antifa of infiltrating the mob and instigating the assault. In May, the GOP lawmaker Andrew Clyde of Georgia described the riot that threatened the lives of his colleagues as a normal tourist visit. Just this morning, a contributor to the far-right American Greatness magazine characterized the testifying officers as crisis actors, playing victims for liberal political ends.

Republicans would like nothing more than to stop talking about this day. Its why they voted to oust Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, a fierce Trump critic, from her leadership position earlier this summer, and its the reason so many GOP lawmakers voted against establishing an independent committee to investigate January 6. In a recent interview, the freshman Republican Nancy Mace offered a tidy summation of her partys broader feelings: I want to be done with that, she told me. I want to move forward.

Read: Republicans meet their monster

But the GOPs sweep-it-away approach will be difficult to sustain. According to Cheney, the select committee plans to investigate every phone call, every conversation, every meeting leading up to, during, and after the attack, which will keep the issue in the headlines for the coming weeks or months. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthys decision to pull his appointees from the committee after Pelosi refused to seat Representatives Jim Jordan of Ohio and Jim Banks of Indiana seems like it might have been a political miscalculation. Now the GOP has no one on the panel to counter or challenge the investigation. The only two Republicans on the panel are Trump detractors appointed by PelosiCheney and Adam Kinzinger of Illinoiswhich will underscore that there are still members of the party who hold the former president and many of their colleagues responsible for the insurrection.

During the hearing, the officers took turns recounting the days events. Sergeant Aquilino Gonell said hed been more frightened on January 6 than he was during his entire deployment in Iraq. Officer Harry Dunn said he was called the N-word. Officer Michael Fanone recounted being dragged into the crowd of rioters, beaten, and tased: Im sure I was screaming, but I dont think I could even hear my own voice. Hodges described how a man had hooked his finger into his right eye and tried to gouge it out.

By late morning, theyd finished making their statements, and the question-and-answer portion of the panel was about to begin. Televisions across the Capitol complex flashed with hearing coverage. A CNN reporter asked Clyde, the Republican whod described January 6 as a normal tourist visit, what he made of their testimony. I have not heard anything yet today, he responded.

With reporting from Christian Paz

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The GOP Ignored the Hearing on the Capitol Attack - The Atlantic

One Democrat in the Mississippi Senate Hob Bryan of Amory represents a district that does not have a majority African American population.

Republicans hold 36 of the seats in the 52-member chamber. There are currently 14 Democrats. Two Democrats resigned this summer and special elections have not been held to replace them. Those two vacant Senate seats as well as 13 other districts represented by Democrats not named Bryan have a Black population of more than 50%.

In the coming months, as U.S. Census data comes in, legislators will begin the task of redrawing the 52 Senate districts and 122 House districts to match population shifts found by the decennial census. Legislators on the committee tasked with overseeing the drawing of both state legislative districts and the four U.S. House seats will hold nine public hearings across the state, starting at 6 p.m. Aug. 5 at Meridian Community Colleges McCain Theatre, to garner public input. Then in the 2022 session, legislators will try to complete the redistricting process.

Presumably, Republicans who control the Senate could redraw the districts in a manner to increase their numbers, but at this point that would be just running up the score.

There are past federal court precedents that would seem to prevent the Legislature from reducing the number of Black majority districts. But in recent court rulings, the federal courts particularly the U.S. Supreme Court have seemed less willing in the eyes of some to protect minority voting rights.

Still, it is safe to assume the Senate leadership would have little interest in garnering national attention by reducing the number of African American districts.

And as far as Bryan is concerned, a district in northeast Mississippi most likely could be drawn to reduce his re-election chances. But it also is unlikely the Senate leadership is inclined to do that. Most senators have at some point cursed Bryans occasional outbursts and eccentricities. At the same time, most senators, including members of the leadership, have made no secret of their respect for his intellect and knowledge of the legislative process.

Perhaps that is best exemplified by the fact that Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann placed Bryan on the committee charged with redrawing the districts.

Over in the House, the situation is much the same. There are five Democrats who represent districts that were majority white when they were drawn in 2012.

Like in the Senate, the House Republicans, who control all the power with their 76 members, could increase their numbers through redistricting to the extent they would not be blocked by federal courts, but at some point such an effort might just look like poor sportsmanship.

There are currently 40 Black members in the House.

The point being that in the redistricting after the 2010 Census there was an urgency by both Republicans and Democrats to redistrict in such a manner to ensure their respective partys control of the Legislature. That fight is over. The Republicans won, and they won big.

If Democrats had prevailed in the 2011 election and controlled redistricting in the 2012 session, they could have drawn districts in a manner to give members of their party more of a fighting chance, particularly in the House.

But House Democrats, who held the majority before they lost the 2011 election by a narrow margin, lost the ability to control the redrawing of the districts in the 2012 session. The result was Republicans drew districts where they had significant advantages. For instance, before the redrawing of the districts in 2012, when Democrats controlled the House, there were 13 House districts drawn with significant but not dominant African American influence a Black population of more than 35% but less than a majority.

Conventional wisdom has been that such districts give white Democrats the best chance to win in Mississippi. During the last redistricting, after Republicans had wrestled control, that number dropped to two districts with a Black population of more than 35% but less than a majority. In the Senate, the change went from 11 districts with a Black population of more than 35% but less than a majority to three.

In other words, Republicans did their redistricting work in 2012 to ensure their legislative dominance. Redistricting this time will be more about maintaining.

But even if Democrats had won the House in the 2011 elections, there would have been no guarantee that they could have drawn districts that would have ensured their continued control of the House. The bottom line continues to be that in Mississippi the vast majority of white people vote Republican and most African Americans vote Democrat.

And any amount of legislative redistricting will not change that voting pattern and give Democrats a fighting chance to regain control of the Mississippi Legislature in the foreseeable future.

Central to our mission at Mississippi Today is inspiring civic engagement. We think critically about how we can foster healthy dialogue between people who think differently about government and politics. We believe that conversation raw, earnest talking and listening to better understand each other is vital to the future of Mississippi. We encourage you to engage with us and each other on our social media accounts, email our reporters directly or leave a comment for our editor by clicking the button below.

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by Bobby Harrison, Mississippi Today August 1, 2021

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

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Will Republicans run up the score when redistricting? - Mississippi Today

The Democrats are rolling out a counterintuitive new messaging strategy in anticipation of the 2022 elections: Republicans are defunding the police. Its an attempt by Democrats to counter attacks from the GOP about being weak on law enforcement; liberal lawmakers hope they can flip the right-wing narrative and argue that the legislative record shows the Democratic Party is in fact the fiercest ally of the police.

Liberal lawmakers hope they can flip the right-wing narrative and argue that the legislative record shows the Democratic Party is in fact the fiercest ally of the police.

Unfortunately this playbook is too cute by half to work well. In all likelihood it won't have the power to change minds. And by giving credence to what has always been a bad faith line of attack from the Republicans, it could make future internal debates over the scope of criminal justice reform all the more difficult.

Akela Lacy reported in The Intercept on Wednesday that Democrats have already started embracing the narrative that the GOP is to blame for defunding the police because every Republican in Congress voted against the American Rescue Plan the massive coronavirus relief bill passed in March that provided billions of dollars for funding local police departments. Democrats are also arguing that the GOPs attempt to avoid responsibility for the Capitol riot an attack that resulted in brutal injuries and death for Capitol Police officers reflects apathy toward law enforcement.

Democrats have accused Republicans of hypocrisy on defending police funding in the past, but the messaging is looking increasingly systematic. Several Democratic members of Congress like Reps. Ted Lieu of California, Val Demings of Florida and Madeleine Dean of Pennsylvania have been pushing this new message, as has the Democratic National Committee.

Republicans have spent an entire year essentially lying about what Democrats support and what Democrats have voted for, a Democratic aide told The Intercept. The fact that Democrats have really settled on a line here to push back on it, and to really go on offense, excites Democrats.

But as the Democrats prepare to double down on their new line of attack on Republicans, they should ask themselves two questions: Will this work, and is it worth it? On both fronts, there is good reason for skepticism.

The notion that Democrats can wrest the pro-police mantle from Republicans is far-fetched. The contours of the debate right now have little to do with staffing levels during economic recessions or how much police officers lives are respected or honored as they navigate their very difficult jobs. In reality, the debate is about what role the police should play in our society and what communities they're meant to be protecting.

The heart of the matter is a racialized culture war over law and order a reactionary concept with deep roots in American history that was popularized by Richard Nixons 1968 presidential run. Under the law-and-order ethos, aggressive policing represents a bulwark against social change and struggles for racial equality, and is seen as a way to deal with poverty and social dysfunction through imprisonment and surveillance. The law-and-order ethos was a critical tool in the Southern Strategy toolkit, an electoral strategy that sought to win over white voters in the South by appealing to racism against Black Americans.

Democrats simply cannot win the whos more aligned with the police debate unless they want to lean into the kind of white racial resentment politics that Republicans have mastered to monopolize the white conservative vote. That would mean giving up any ambition of reforming policing, dropping their commitment to multicultural democracy and turning their backs on anti-poverty programs as a way to deal with inequality. Fortunately, the Democrats are not going to do that. But thats bad news for this new pro-police pivot.

The other reason the Democrats strategy is unlikely to be effective is the fact that Republican narratives about liberal positions on policing were never grounded in reality in the first place. Its unclear how countermessaging or accusations of hypocrisy can overcome such an entrenched partisan mythology.

After the police killing of George Floyd in 2020, the Democratic establishment called for reforms but swiftly disavowed any association with defund the police movements, and as an analyst for Data for Progress noted in The Appeal, the movement to defund the police went essentially unrepresented at the ballot box. In fact, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., implied that police should be given more funds.

But that had no bearing on the messaging surrounding the presidential race: During the run-up to the 2020 elections, then-President Donald Trump and the Republicans consistently lied about the Democrats position on policing and portrayed them as radical police abolitionists. In other words, its hard to see Democrats changing Republican voters minds when the GOP and right-wing media conflate any criticism of police with abolitionism.

In addition to all this, though, the Democrats should consider the potential costs they could incur by playing this game.

In addition to all this, though, the Democrats should consider the potential costs they could incur by playing this game. While its understandable that mainstream Democrats wanted to avoid being associated with the defund slogan in the run-up to the election, the ideas the movement stands for reallocating some funding from the police to other social services and delegating many police duties to other agencies are good ones that have already been adopted to some extent by the growing left wing of the Democrats. And its safe to say these ideas are going to keep coming up each time viral incidents of police brutality spur debates about how policing should change.

Democrats dont have to adopt any defund-type slogan, but they should take the ideas seriously if they want to eventually create a more humane criminal justice system. Theyll be best-positioned to do that if they stake out a real progressive position on policing instead of replicating the GOPs bad faith playbook in an unconvincing style.

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Democrats want to flip 'defund the police' on Republicans. It could backfire. - MSNBC