Two impeachments, an attack on the Capitol and the COVID-19 death toll leave a scarred nation as Donald Trump's divisive presidency comes to an end.
How Donald Trump will be remembered after four tumultuous years as president
Month: January 2021
Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: Today is the day. Let the new Administration begin.
Peter Beinert/NY Times:
Why Are There So Few Courageous Senators?
Here’s what we need to do if we want more Mitt Romneys and fewer Josh Hawleys.
Now that Donald Trump has been defanged, leading Republicans are rushing to denounce him. It’s a little late. The circumstances were different then, but a year ago, only one Republican senator, Mitt Romney, backed impeachment. In a party that has been largely servile, Mr. Romney’s courage stands out.
Why, in the face of immense pressure, did Mr. Romney defend the rule of law? And what would it take to produce more senators like him? These questions are crucial if America’s constitutional system, which has been exposed as shockingly fragile, is to survive. The answer may be surprising: To get more courageous senators, Americans should elect more who are near the end of their political careers.
This doesn’t just mean old politicians — today’s average senator is, after all, over 60. It means senators with the stature to stand alone.
Actions by GOP attorneys general could damage credibility
By supporting efforts to overturn the results of the presidential election, most of the nation’s Republican state attorneys general may have undermined their offices’ long-held special status in federal courts.
In December, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed legal papers attempting to overturn the results of the presidential election based on unfounded claims of election fraud in four states that voted for President-elect Joe Biden. The Republican attorneys general for 17 other states made legal filings supporting his effort, which was rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Fox News Launches ‘Purge’ to ‘Get Rid of Real Journalists’
Fox News on Tuesday fired the political editor who was tasked with defending the network’s election night decisions that especially angered President Donald Trump and his allies.
Politics editor Chris Stirewalt’s exit from the network coincided with the sacking of at least 16 digital editorial staffers, including senior editors. People familiar with the situation said the layoffs—a “blood bath,” as multiple Fox News insiders described it—were perpetrated by Porter Berry, the Sean Hannity crony now in charge of remaking Fox’s digital properties in the image of its right-wing opinion programming.
Lou Zickar/USA Today:
Centrist Republicans, speak up! We must take a stand against the insurrectionists
If you are a principled centrist or principled conservative, now is not the time to remain silent.
For as the tragic events on Jan. 6 at the U.S. Capitol made clear, the divide in the Republican Party is no longer between the center and the right wing. The divide in today’s GOP is between the insurrectionist wing and everyone else.
David Leonhardt/NY times:
Underselling the Vaccine
And what else you need to know today.
Now a version of the mask story is repeating itself — this time involving the vaccines. Once again, the experts don’t seem to trust the public to hear the full truth.
This issue is important and complex enough that I’m going to make today’s newsletter a bit longer than usual. If you still have questions, don’t hesitate to email me at themorning@nytimes.com.
Right now, public discussion of the vaccines is full of warnings about their limitations: They’re not 100 percent effective. Even vaccinated people may be able to spread the virus. And people shouldn’t change their behavior once they get their shots.
These warnings have a basis in truth, just as it’s true that masks are imperfect. But the sum total of the warnings is misleading, as I heard from multiple doctors and epidemiologists last week.
“It’s driving me a little bit crazy,” Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown School of Public Health, told me.
“We’re underselling the vaccine,” Dr. Aaron Richterman, an infectious-disease specialist at the University of Pennsylvania, said.
“It’s going to save your life — that’s where the emphasis has to be right now,” Dr. Peter Hotez of the Baylor College of Medicine said.
The Moderna and Pfizer vaccines are “essentially 100 percent effective against serious disease,” Dr. Paul Offit, the director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, said. “It’s ridiculously encouraging.”
But still, don’t change your behavior immediately. Iit’s a short term thing but keep your guard up until community spread drops.
Trump leaves America at its most divided since the Civil War
The January 6 assault on the US Capitol capped four years in which Trump relentlessly stoked the nation's divisions and simultaneously provided oxygen for the growth of White nationalist extremism through his open embrace of racist language and conspiracy theories.In the process, Trump has not only shattered the barriers between the Republican Party and far-right extremists but also enormously intensified a trend that predated him: a growing willingness inside the GOP's mainstream to employ anti-small-d-democratic means to maintain power in a country demographically evolving away from the party.The result has been to raise the stakes in the ideological polarization of the parties that has been reshaping American politics for decades.
McKay Coppins/Atlantic:
The Coming Republican Amnesia
How will the GOP recover from the Trump era? Pretend it never happened.
As Donald Trump lurches through the disastrous final days of his presidency, Republicans are just beginning to survey the wreckage of his reign. Their party has been gutted, their leader is reviled, and after four years of excusing every presidential affront to “conservative values,” their credibility is shot. How will the GOP recover from the complicity and corruption of the Trump era? To many Republicans, the answer is simple: Pretend it never happened.
Authoritarianism Among Trump Voters
Among panelists who reported voting for Trump in the 2020 election, just over 4 in 10 score in the highest quartile of the Right Wing Authoritarianism (RWA) scale when the original survey weights from the 2019 survey are applied. This leaves just over half of Trump supporters who are not classified as having high authoritarian inclinations. [It should also be noted that only a handful of President-elect Joe Biden’s voters in the panel have a high RWA score – too few to break out in this analysis.]
Dave A Hopkins/Honest Graft:
In the End, the Trump Presidency Was a Failure on Its Own Terms
Trump succeeded in preventing Hillary Clinton from leading the country, but he wound up empowering Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, and Chuck Schumer instead. He railed against liberal elites who predominate within social institutions like universities, media organizations, and technology companies, but his time in office only saw a continued progression of leftward cultural change in American society and a parallel departure of highly-educated voters from the Republican Party. The conservative intellectual project has not suffered as much damage in many decades as it did over the past four years; conservative thinkers and writers were internally divided into pro- and anti-Trump factions, were exposed as holding a limited ability to speak for the conservative mass public, and were deprived by Trump's behavior of a precious claim to moral superiority over the left. And the fact that the Trump administration is leaving office complaining of being "silenced" and "canceled" by a multi-platform social media ban imposed on its leader is evidence enough of its lack of success in gaining influence over the tech sector.
A final, inadvertantly-acknowledged testimony to the failure of the Trump administration was its prevailing communication style. Both the outgoing president and his succession of spokespeople stood out for two distinctive traits: a lack of commitment to factual accuracy and a perpetually grouchy demeanor. The typical public statement from this White House was a misleading claim delivered with a sarcastic sneer. Of course, no member of the administration would admit on the record that the Trump presidency was anything less than a parade of unparalleled triumphs. But it doesn't make sense to lie so much unless the truth isn't on your side, and there's no good reason to act so aggrieved all the time if you're really succeeding as much as you claim.
Democrats torn on impeachment trial timing
Senate Democrats are torn on the timing of an impeachment trial for President Trump, worried it could delay President-elect Joe Biden’s agenda for a week or longer.Senate Democratic Leader Charles Schumer (N.Y.) has proposed that the Senate could...
Pelosi says Trump could be accessory to murder after Capitol riot
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says President Donald Trump could be an accessory to murder after this month’s deadly riots at the U.S. Capitol.
In an interview with MSNBC’s Joy Reid that aired Tuesday night, Pelosi repeatedly decried Trump’s role in inciting a violent insurrection on Jan. 6 that claimed the lives of five people, including a U.S. Capitol Police officer.
“Presidents’ words are important. They weigh a ton,” Pelosi said about Trump, who continuously stoked false claims of widespread election fraud on Twitter and encouraged supporters to march to the Capitol in a fiery speech given at a “Save America” rally not long before rioters stormed the building. “And they used his words to come here.”
The Speaker went a step further and said that if it were proven that some members of Congress collaborated with members of the group that attacked the Capitol, they — as well as Trump — would be accessories to crimes committed during the insurrection.
“And the crime, in some cases, was murder,” Pelosi said. “And this president is an accessory to that crime because he instigated that insurrection that caused those deaths and this destruction.”
While a number of officials, including District of Columbia Attorney General Karl Racine, have said they’re looking into the role Trump played in the riot, none have indicated so far that the president would be an accessory to the deaths that occurred as rioters tried to block the certification of President-elect Joe Biden's Electoral College win.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the speaker’s insinuation that Trump’s words led to deaths at the Capitol.
Pelosi’s comments represent the strongest language yet used by Democrats over Trump’s role in the riots.
While most Republicans have declined to cross Trump, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who has said little to defend the president since the riots, took to the Senate floor on Tuesday to place blame squarely on Trump.
“The mob was fed lies,” McConnell said. “They were provoked by the president and other powerful people. And they tried to use fear and violence to stop a specific proceeding of the first branch of the federal government which they did not like. But we pressed on.”
House Democrats, who were joined by 10 Republicans, voted to impeach Trump last week on a charge of incitement of insurrection. Pelosi has not said when the article of impeachment will be sent to the Senate to initiate a trial, but indicated in her interview that it would be “soon.”
Graham calls on McConnell to ‘unequivocally’ denounce second Trump impeachment effort
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., is fighting efforts to convict President Trump in the Senate after he was impeached for a second time by the House of Representatives, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., should do the same, Graham told Fox News’ "Hannity" Tuesday.
Abraham Lincoln explained exactly how we should respond to the insurrection of Jan. 6
Since the Jan. 6 attempted insurrection at the U.S. Capitol we’ve been treated to the spectacle of people like Rep.Kevin McCarthy, Sen. Ted Cruz, and others within the Republican party invoking a spirit of “unity” as they urge Democrats to temper their response to a crisis that Republicans themselves were responsible for causing.
As Sarah Churchwell, writing for the New York Review of Books, observes, these newfound calls for “unity” are from the exact same people who have constantly cast themselves as the “Party of Lincoln” at various times over the past four years.
Republican leaders enjoy flashing their badges as the “Party of Lincoln,” preening themselves on Lincoln’s moral victories and declaring themselves his rightful political heirs. “Our party, the Republican Party, was founded to defeat slavery. Abraham Lincoln, the first Republican president, signed the Emancipation Proclamation,” Senator Ted Cruz declaimed at the Republican National Convention in 2016, as a prelude to endorsing for president a man whom he had once called a “sniveling coward” and “pathological liar,” a man who had insulted Cruz’s wife and accused his father of conspiring to assassinate President John F. Kennedy. Senator Marco Rubio is another who presumes to speak for “the party of Lincoln,” including the time he tweeted, in February 2016, that Donald Trump would “never be the nominee of the party of Lincoln,” as does House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, who managed to recall a few familiar words from the Gettysburg Address in honor of Lincoln’s birthday last year.
But, as Churchwell illustrates, the real Abraham Lincoln had some strong opinions about the kind of treachery we witnessed on Jan. 6, one in which white supremacist seditionists perpetrated a mob-style attack on the seat of American government. And his opinions were not couched in any wishful concept of “unity.” His views, in fact, were unsparing and to the point:
Lincoln consistently likened the minoritarian efforts of the South to a mob, as it employed threats, intimidation, blackmail, political chicanery, voter fraud, and violence to coerce the majority into giving way to ever more unreasonable demands. “We must settle this question now, whether in a free government the minority have the right to break up the government whenever they choose,” he told John Hay, his private secretary. For Lincoln, as he said repeatedly, the Civil War was more than a question of the moral wrongs of slavery, as fundamental to the conflict as those were; the principles of democratic self-government and the political character of the nation were also at stake.
As applied to the events of Jan. 6, the Republicans’ vision of “unity” is one in which their party escapes blame for the horrifying spectacle of a treasonous, would-be despot inciting his rabid and deluded minions to violently desecrate our national heritage, all egged on and applauded by complicit state and federal officials within the Republican ranks.
As Churchwell suggests, not only would Lincoln have rejected any invocation of “unity” under such circumstances, he would have been appalled:
The actual party of Lincoln made the opposite decision, believing that the deep principles of preserving the Union far outweighed the superficial comity of false unity. Lincoln had been pressured on all sides to capitulate to Southern demands, including permitting the South to secede, to “let the erring sisters depart in peace!” But part of his reason for refusing to do so was, as the historian James M. McPherson put it in This Mighty Scourge: Perspectives on the Civil War (2007), the fear of setting a “fatal precedent,” one that could be “invoked by disaffected minorities in the future, perhaps by the losing side in another presidential election.” And so they made the apparently paradoxical decision to fight a civil war in an effort to achieve, not unity, but a more perfect union.
In fact what occurred on Jan. 6 was exactly what Lincoln foresaw as the ultimate test for our nation’s survival. As Churchwell points out, contrary to espousing any attempt at “unity” with such insurrectionists, Lincoln’s counsel was to bring the hammer down, hard, on attempts at insurrection by way of the mob.
In particular, Lincoln cautioned against turning a blind eye to mob violence in the futile effort to maintain a tenuous and self-devouring peace. Leaving the perpetrators of such violence “unpunished,” he held, would only embolden the mob and inevitably destroy democratic self-government, as “the lawless in spirit, are encouraged to become lawless in practice” and “absolutely unrestrained.” Without accountability, such a mob would “make a jubilee of the suspension of [the Government’s] operations; and pray for nothing so much, as its total annihilation.”
In reality, it’s not “unity” that Republicans want, but absolution. They want Americans to forget what we just witnessed and what we are now likely to witness over and over again as the delusional, poisonous racism fanned by the GOP over the last thirty years intrudes, unsolicited and unwanted, into Americans’ daily existence.
As Lincoln well understood, there can be no “unity” where our democratic traditions are under attack by an insensate, racist right-wing mob.
Omar demands McConnell start trial, but Pelosi hasn’t sent impeachment articles to the Senate
Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., urged Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., to "do [his] job and start the impeachment trial," but House Speaker Nancy Pelosi still has not sent the impeachment articles to the Senate. 
Republicans take on Biden’s Cabinet, but without the Trumpian fury
Senate Republicans are ready to move on from the chaos of Donald Trump’s presidency and revert to the ideological battle lines and policy disputes that previously characterized Washington.
Throughout a series of five back-to-back Cabinet confirmation hearings on Tuesday, Senate Republicans displayed a return-to-normal posture — staking out traditional conservative arguments and outlining their disagreements with the incoming Biden administration, but largely through a respectful back-and-forth with nominees.
It’s a stark departure from the tumultuous, freewheeling Cabinet fights that defined the Trump era. And it suggests that Joe Biden, a longtime creature of the Senate, has at least a chance of success in his bid to work with the GOP. Top Republicans signaled their interest in quickly confirming his intelligence chief, Treasury secretary and Homeland Security secretary.
“I think it’s very, very important that we have a secretary of Homeland Security in place as soon as possible,” Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) told reporters.
But Tuesday’s confirmation hearings also showed that Biden could soon run into the scorched-earth politics that Democrats lament have seized much of the Republican Party. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) declared that he would object to swift consideration of Biden’s nominee to lead the Department of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, all but ensuring Biden won’t have some of his top national security officials confirmed on Inauguration Day, as Trump and his predecessors did.
Mayorkas came under scrutiny at his hearing from some Republicans over a 2015 inspector general report outlining allegations of politically motivated favoritism in the issuance of visas, which he rejected. But Hawley’s objection focused on what the Missouri Republican perceived as Mayorkas’ hostility to border-security measures that he and other immigration hard-liners support.
Still, the fact that it was a policy-driven focus was yet another sign that Republicans of all stripes may be looking to turn the page from the Trump presidency, which was marked by endless controversies, tweets and investigations that seriously hampered Trump’s presidency. Republicans may still try to block much of Biden’s legislative agenda, but they’re ultimately not going to fight him on every appointment.
Soon-to-be Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has called on the Senate to confirm Biden’s national security nominees on Inauguration Day. Such a move wouldn’t be unusual. Trump had his Pentagon and Homeland Security nominees confirmed on his first day as president in 2017. But Biden will need Republican cooperation to catch up to that pace — especially with an impeachment trial looming over the chamber.
“President Biden should have the same officials in place on his inauguration day at the very least,” Schumer said. “That is the expectation and tradition for any administration, especially now in the midst of a homeland security crisis.”
In a letter to the GOP conference obtained by POLITICO, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told members that the Senate could vote Wednesday afternoon on Cabinet nominees.
The looming impeachment trial for Trump on charges he incited the deadly siege at the Capitol could pose difficulties for Biden as he looks to enact his agenda. Some top Republicans are calling on Biden to ask Democratic leaders to call off the trial so that the chamber can focus on other business, though Schumer has already affirmed that the Senate will hold a trial.
“I would like [Biden] to get up and running, but he has to help,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said. “If we go into impeachment, he has nobody to blame but himself because we're going to be focused on impeaching the president, you can’t do both at once.”
While Speaker Nancy Pelosi continues to delay formal transmission of the impeachment article, thereby pushing back the start of the trial, several Republicans were joining Democrats’ calls for quick confirmations in the meantime.
Among the slate of nominees appearing before the Senate on Tuesday was Avril Haines, Biden’s nominee to be director of national intelligence. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), the incoming vice chair of the Intelligence Committee, said he wanted to “fill this critical national security position as early into the Biden administration as possible.”
Meanwhile, the Senate Finance Committee’s hearing for Janet Yellen’s Treasury Secretary nomination was a stark contrast to that of Trump Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. The former film producer and investment banker had faced deep skepticism from Democrats; no one took issue with the credentials of Yellen, a former Federal Reserve chief.
While Senate Republicans foreshadowed disagreements with Yellen, they kept their questions centered on policy, including the tax code and the size of the national debt. Yellen’s confirmation should ultimately go smoothly.
Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) also expressed concern with Biden’s coronavirus relief plan, a sign that GOP support for another stimulus package might be shaky.
“I look forward to working with you but I have to admit the contours of the stimulus bill as proposed by the Biden administration are going to make that difficult,” Toomey said at the hearing. “The only organizing principle that I can discern is that it seems to spend as much money as possible seemingly for the sake of spending it.”
Aside from Toomey and a handful of others, most in the GOP avoided acknowledging that Trump presided over a flood of red ink. With Biden in the White House, concerns over rising budget deficits are sure to return.
Antony Blinken, Biden’s nominee for secretary of State, as well as Pentagon nominee Lloyd Austin, also faced cordial receptions from Senate Republicans, but not without criticism.
Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) told Blinken that “it’d be a grave mistake to confirm a secretary of State who has a demonstrated track record of repeatedly making the wrong decisions when it comes to American foreign policy and national security.”
And Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), a potential 2024 White House contender, announced Tuesday he would oppose a waiver allowing Austin to become defense secretary, which is necessary because Austin has been out of the military for less than seven years. The hawkish GOP senator voted for the waiver to allow Jim Mattis to become Trump’s defense secretary.
While Biden can ultimately see his nominees confirmed with a simple majority, his broader agenda will need cooperation from a Senate that is now evenly split, allowing no room for Democratic dissent and requiring Republican input on most bills.
During his floor remarks Tuesday, McConnell warned that the 2020 election results suggested that neither party had an explicit mandate from voters.
“Americans elected a closely divided Senate, a closely divided House and a presidential candidate who said he’d represent everyone,” McConnell said. “We are to pursue bipartisan agreement everywhere we can and check and balance one another respectfully where we must.”
Zachary Warmbrodt and Natasha Bertrand contributed to this report.
McConnell keeps GOP guessing on Trump impeachment
Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is keeping colleagues guessing on his endgame for the upcoming impeachment trial, as Republicans weigh whether to convict President Trump over the deadly Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.The looming trial — the...
News Wrap: U.S. surpasses 400,000 deaths from COVID-19
In our news wrap Tuesday, the U.S. reached 400,000 deaths from COVID nearly equaling the number of Americans killed in World War II, President-elect Biden had an emotional departure from his home state of Delaware on the eve of inauguration, Biden will offer a sweeping immigration bill once in office, and the incoming Senate majority leader says President Trump's impeachment trial is a priority.