Norman Eisen/USA Today:

Impeachment: The Senate is on trial along with Trump. Will 33 senators do the wrong thing?

In Trump's 2019 impeachment trial, Romney was the only Republican who voted to convict. Already, six times that many have broken with the ex-president.

As a trial lawyer who served as co-counsel for the first impeachment of then-President Trump, I had been expecting surprises and there were many. The House managers enlivened what was supposed to be a constitutional debate Tuesday by previewing their main argument: that Trump knowingly incited the insurrectionists. It's amazing that Trump's lawyers were caught off guard by this. We did the same thing in the 2019 impeachment trial, using the opening debate over whether to call witnesses to preview the entire case. Nevertheless, Trump's counsel were thrown into confusion — they both showed it and one admitted that they'll "have to do better."  

Max Burns/NBC Think:

Trump impeachment trial video means GOP can't pretend the former president is innocent

Republicans are criticizing Democrats for playing politics with a trial they know will end in acquittal. But the proceedings' importance goes beyond the outcome.

nd, of course, even if the outcome is the acquittal of Trump, it’s important to show Americans — particularly Republican voters — what their GOP leaders are willing to turn a blind eye to. The evidence presented by the Democratic House impeachment managers damns congressional Republicans for making terms with the existential threat of right-wing extremism instead of leaving the party in protest. And regardless of how lawmakers vote, Wednesday’s honest accounting will play a critical role in helping our nation assess the sweeping damage Trumpism has inflicted on our institutions.

Sarah Longwell/Bulwark:

Hold Them All Accountable

The people who stormed the Capitol are facing the music. It’s up to us to make sure that the people who incited them do, too.

Finding 17 Republican senators to convict Trump is a Herculean task, not least because many of them joined him in feeding the lie that brought these people to the Capitol in the first place. In that regard, this trial is unique for having members of the jury who are not just not impartial, but are both witnesses and accomplices to the crime.

Remember: Prior to the attack, more than a quarter of Senate Republicans had publicly announced plans to object to certifying the election results. Many of them are now trying to retcon these objections as “just asking questions” and not an attempt to overturn the election itself. But their calls for investigations into voter fraud and irregularities—despite dozens of court losses and then-Attorney General Bill Barr’s assurances that there was no evidence of widespread voter fraud—were nothing less than hype-man interjections meant to bolster Trump’s claims that he “won in a landslide” and that the election was being stolen.

Tim Miller/Bulwark:

Not My Party: Guilty, Guilty

But this was different: Never before in this country has a sitting president tried to steal an election to stay in power. Yes, it didn’t work. Yes, the way he went about it was clownish and ridiculous. But Officer Brian Sicknick is dead because of Trump’s actions. Others are gravely injured. The vice president and Democratic members of Congress nearly suffered the same fate.

This all happened because Trump supporters took him seriously and literally.

At 6:01 PM, hours after the carnage, Trump tweeted this: “These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long. Go home with love & in peace.”

No! You made this happen, Donald. You did this! And it could have been worse.

Josh Marshall/TPM:

The Unbearable Weakness of Kevin McCarthy

To make sense of all this we need to go back a decade to 2011 when John Boehner became House Speaker. Boehner found the job notoriously difficult and eventually resigned in a mix of disgust and relief. But the reality of the situation is important to understand. The 2011-17 House majority was run not by its nominal leaders but by the Freedom Caucus, a sort of proto-Trumpite group, and to a lesser degree by the Republican Study Committee, a sort of earlier version of the Freedom Caucus which is now basically just the mainstream congressional GOP. It served that proto-Trumpite core of representatives purposes to have the nominal leadership in the hands of a ‘mainstream’ Republican like John Boehner – both for the sake of appearances and to be free of accountability.

Boehner had all the responsibility and none of the power and the Freedom Caucus folks had all the power and none of the responsibility – a very nice deal for the guys in the Freedom Caucus! This was made possible by the fact that the proto-Trump core of the House caucus had little in the way of a positive legislative agenda. They mostly wanted to stop things from happening – a revealing parallel with President Trump himself when he came to the White House. The relationship between three or four dozen proto-Trump representatives and Boehner parallels the larger reality we’ve discussed in other contexts: that the GOP is basically a rightist, revanchist party like France’s National Front or Germany’s Alternative for Germany masquerading as a center-right party of government like the Tories in the UK or the Christian Democrats in Germany. For that reason having a Boehner type with nominal authority was a good deal. And the Freedom Caucus had a veto over everything anyway. So no downside.

Eli Stokols/LA Times:

‘Not a pundit,’ Biden ignores impeachment trial to focus on his priorities

“Joe Biden is the president. He’s not a pundit,” Jen Psaki told the 14 reporters seated before her. “He’s not going to opine on the back-and-forth arguments in the Senate, nor is he watching them.”

Biden echoed that assertion moments later as he sat in the Oval Office to discuss his top priority, a $1.9-trillion coronavirus relief package, with a group of business leaders. A day later when Psaki appeared in the briefing room, reporters pressed her about Biden’s refusal to comment on the “historic” events occurring in the Senate. One, seemingly incredulous, asked just how the public “should interpret his silence?”

“The American public,” Psaki said, “should read it as his commitment on delivering on exactly what they elected him to do, which is not to be a commentator on the daily developments of an impeachment trial.”

Will Bunch/Philly.com:

ICE ‘Deep State’ is blocking Biden’s quest for justice for refugees 

So far, Biden is finding that abruptly reversing U.S. immigration policy is like turning around a battleship using the tiny, loose steering wheel of the USS Minnow. His highest-profile immigration move — an executive order pausing deportations for 100 days — has been blocked by a federal judge in Texas whom Trump had appointed just last year. In this vacuum of uncertainty, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE — still under an interim boss hastily installed in the last week of the Trump administration — and the Border Patrol, whose rank-and-file officers zealously supported POTUS 45, have seemingly sped up deportations and other enforcement actions.

Axios:

Republicans face party punishment back home for questioning Trump's role in Capitol attack

The big picture: State and county Republican apparatuses throughout the country are punishing those in their own party who want to hold the former president accountable, signaling that Trump's grasp on the GOP remains unfaded.

Sen. Bill Cassidy is the latest member to receive condemnation after the Louisiana senator sided with Democrats on a vote over the constitutionality to impeach a former president.

Chris Hayes/Atlantic:

The Republican Party Is Radicalizing Against Democracy

The GOP is moderating on policy questions, even as it grows more dangerous on core questions of democracy and the rule of law.

The republican party is radicalizing against democracy. This is the central political fact of our moment. Instead of organizing its coalition around shared policy goals, the GOP has chosen to emphasize hatred and fear of its political opponents, who—they warn—will destroy their supporters and the country. Those Manichaean stakes are used to justify every effort to retain power, and make keeping power the GOP’s highest purpose. We are living with a deadly example of just how far those efforts can go, and things are likely to get worse.

At the same time, the Republican Party is moderating on policy. On a host of issues, the left is winning. It’s not a rout—and ideological battles continue—but public opinion is trending left. Yesterday’s progressive heresy has become today’s unremarkable consensus. On top of that, Democrats have established a narrow but surprisingly durable electoral majority, holding control of the House, winning back the Senate, and taking the presidency by 7 million votes.

NY Times:

‘Its Own Domestic Army’: How the G.O.P. Allied Itself With Militants

As the Senate on Tuesday begins the impeachment trial of Mr. Trump on charges of inciting the Jan. 6 Capitol rioting, what happened in Michigan helps explain how, under his influence, party leaders aligned themselves with a culture of militancy to pursue political goals.

Michigan has a long tradition of tolerating self-described private militias, which are unusually common in the state. But it is also a critical electoral battleground that draws close attention from top party leaders, and the Republican alliance with paramilitary groups shows how difficult it may be for the national party to extricate itself from the shadow of the former president and his appeal to this aggressive segment of its base.

“We knew there would be violence,” said Representative Elissa Slotkin, a Michigan Democrat, about the Jan. 6 assault. Endorsing tactics like militiamen with assault rifles frightening state lawmakers “normalizes violence,” she told journalists last week, “and Michigan, unfortunately, has seen quite a bit of that.”

AP:

Analysis: A race war evident long before the Capitol siege

For a very long time, civil rights leaders, historians and experts on extremism say, many white Americans and elected leaders have failed to acknowledge that this war of white aggression was real, even as the bodies of innocent people piled up.

Racist notions about people of color, immigrants and politicians have been given mainstream media platforms, are represented in statues and symbols to slaveholders and segregationists, and helped demagogues win elections to high office.

The result? A critical mass of white people fears that multiculturalism, progressive politics and the equitable distribution of power spell their obsolescence, erasure and subjugation. And that fear, often exploited by those in power, has proven again and again to be among the most lethal threats to nonwhite Americans, according to racial justice advocates.

So how does the nation begin addressing the war of white aggression after countless missed opportunities?

Perry Bacon Jr/FiveThirtyEight:

In America’s ‘Uncivil War,’ Republicans Are The Aggressors

Biden didn’t explicitly say that the extremism, domestic terrorism and white supremacy is largely coming from one side of the uncivil war. But that’s the reality. In America’s uncivil war, both sides may hate the other, but one side — conservatives and Republicans — is more hostile and aggressive, increasingly willing to engage in anti-democratic and even violent attacks on their perceived enemies.

The Jan. 6 insurrection and the run-up to it is perhaps the clearest illustration that Republicans are being more hostile and anti-democratic than Democrats in this uncivil war. Biden pledged to concede defeat if he lost the presidential election fair and square, while Trump never made such a pledge; many elected officials in the GOP joined Trump’s efforts to overturn the election results; and finally, Trump supporters arrived at the Capitol to claim victory by force. But there are numerous other examples of conservatives and Republicans going overboard in their attempts to dominate liberals and Democrats:

Jill Lawrence/USA Today:

Trump legacy: Personal responsibility is for suckers and GOP means 'Grievances On Parade'

Trump's Senate impeachment trial and fake victims Josh Hawley and Marjorie Taylor Greene symbolize the Republican descent into whiny entitlement.

Not that there’s much suspense, given the GOP path since it embraced Trump and, in the memorable phrase from the late New York Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, defined deviancy down. Moynihan was talking about mental health, family structure and crime. Trump has spearheaded the downward redefinition of personal responsibility. The expectation is that bad behavior will carry no consequences, and if there are some, that’s liberals trying to cancel conservatives.

Daily News:

Trump’s trial matters more than you think

Thomas Paine, hero of the American Revolution, wrote that those “holding themselves accountable to nobody ought not to be trusted by anybody.” Trust in government depends on accountability, and so do liberty and democracy. Otherwise, elected officials, especially presidents, could upend our government and rights with impunity.

That is why the Senate trial of Donald Trump matters, both to determine his guilt for trying to stop the peaceful transfer of power and to maintain freedom.

Peter D Keisler and Richard D Bernstein/Atlantic:

Freedom of Speech Doesn’t Mean What Trump’s Lawyers Want It to Mean

The First Amendment does not limit the removal and disqualification powers conferred on Congress by the Constitution.

Front and center in former President Donald Trump’s defense this week will be the argument that convicting him and disqualifying him from holding future office would violate his First Amendment rights—that it would essentially amount to punishing him for speaking his mind. His new lawyer, David Schoen, has warned that convicting Trump “is putting at risk any passionate political speaker, which is against everything we believe in in this country.”

That is wrong. Even if the First Amendment protected Trump from criminal and tort liability for his January 6 exhortation to the crowd that later stormed the Capitol, it has no bearing on whether Congress can convict and disqualify a president for misconduct that consisted, in part, of odious speech that rapidly and foreseeably resulted in deadly violence.

Above are staunch conservatives.

Pippa Norris/WaPo:

Why Republicans haven’t abandoned Trumpism

Parties can and do change. But these four barriers stand between the Republican Party and moderation.

Most congressional Republicans continue to embrace Trumpism, despite some wavering after the deadly Capitol riot. The GOP has backtracked on impeachment, with most Senate Republicans voting against holding an impeachment trial. State parties have punished Republicans such as Rep. Liz Cheney (Wyo.), who spoke and voted in favor of impeachment, rather than members such as Sens. Ted Cruz (Tex.) and Josh Hawley (Mo.), who supported the falsehood that the presidential election had been stolen. House Republicans did not sanction Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.), despite her past endorsements of wild conspiracy theories.

But the notion that the GOP would suddenly abandon Trumpism once Donald Trump left the White House has the basic story upside down. Trump wasn’t the cause of authoritarian populism; his success was the consequence of deeper underlying forces.

Here is today’s musical interlude:

NY Times:

Lawsuits Take the Lead in Fight Against Disinformation

In just a few weeks, lawsuits and legal threats from a pair of obscure election technology companies have achieved what years of advertising boycotts, public pressure campaigns and liberal outrage could not: curbing the flow of misinformation in right-wing media.

Fox Business canceled its highest rated show, “Lou Dobbs Tonight,” on Friday after its host was sued as part of a $2.7 billion defamation lawsuit. On Tuesday, the pro-Trump cable channel Newsmax cut off a guest’s rant about rigged voting machines. Fox News, which seldom bows to critics, has run fact-checking segments to debunk its own anchors’ false claims about electoral fraud.

This is not the typical playbook for right-wing media, which prides itself on pugilism and delights in ignoring the liberals who have long complained about its content. But conservative outlets have rarely faced this level of direct assault on their economic lifeblood

This is especially sweet during impeachment week. But we are not done with accountability.

Here’s the reference in the picture caption.

Daily Mail:

Parler 'offered Donald Trump a 40 per cent stake in the company while he was president if he agreed to post content on the app four hours before uploading the same messages to Twitter and Facebook'

WaPo:

Biden says Trump should not receive intelligence briefings

Biden stopped short of announcing that he had officially decided to prevent his predecessor from receiving the briefings, which are traditionally given before former presidents travel abroad, particularly in an official capacity. But Biden has the unilateral authority to deny intelligence access to anyone he chooses, and his remarks amounted to a statement that Trump — who for four years controlled the entire U.S. security apparatus — was himself a security risk.

Denying the briefings to a former president would be an unprecedented action, and Biden’s remarks, made during an appearance on “CBS Evening News” with Norah O’Donnell, emphasized the president’s concern, and that of other officials, that Trump poses a risk to national security because of what he might disclose.

Zach Carter/HuffPost:

Biden Beats Back The Austerians At The Gates

The Age of Larry Summers is over.

Back in 2009, many if not most mainstream economists believed that excessive government budget deficits were a bigger threat to society than weak growth or prolonged unemployment. Going too big wouldn’t just risk “overheating” ― it raised the prospect of a second financial crisis that could bring down the dollar and even American political hegemony.

Today, by contrast, economists increasingly accept the idea that deficits are not inherently destabilizing, but a normal part of economic management. The price of going too big isn’t a crash, but a little unwanted inflation ― something that can be reined in through Federal Reserve policymaking or some tax increases from Congress. These may be unpleasant when they come, but it will be much worse for people to lose jobs, incomes and homes in the meantime. When the costs of going too small are shattered families and broken faith in a shared national project, the choice is not difficult.

As conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks put it on Friday, “When your great nation is facing decline because of rising inequality, insecurity, distrust and alienation, you don’t just sit there. You try something big.”

Poynter:

A reporter shares her minute-by-minute recollection of being trapped in the Senate on Jan. 6

CBS News’ Grace Segers was in the Senate press gallery when rioters overran the building and was shuffled around with senators as the chaos unfolded.

After about half an hour, the senators were suddenly evacuated. They streamed to the open doors on one side of the room like fish caught in a current. Sen. Cory Booker, who was on the tail end of this exodus, looked up at the reporters in the Senate gallery and asked how we were doing. He said it casually, with a smile on his face.

“We’re doing OK,” I said, my voice likely tinged with hysteria.

It seemed at first like the senators would be evacuated but the reporters would remain trapped in the chamber.

“What about us?” a Senate gallery staffer shouted down to the police officers, notifying them that the reporters and staffers needed to evacuate, too. Without that staffer’s quick thinking, we probably would have been trapped in the chamber when the rioters entered it just moments later.

Trigger warning on this one...

Hartford Courant:

Teen survivor of Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, speaking publicly for the first time, directs her outrage at deniers

The fact that eight years have passed without meaningful gun violence legislation, Ashley added, “is so unacceptable.”

“[President Biden] understands what losing a child is like, and he understands the amount of trauma and pain that comes behind losing a child,” Ashley said. “I think for him to be able to connect to that is so powerful because he can make a difference. And I think a big thing I would tell him is not give up on us, you know, not give up on the idea of, like, you can’t change because like, if he pushes hard enough and if we continue to fight long enough and hard enough, things will change.”

Daily Beast:

The QAnon Rep Isn’t Owning the Libs. She’s Leading the GOP’s Space-Laser Suicide March.

Marjorie Taylor Greene is Sarah Palin, but not occasionally charismatic. Steve Bannon, but not occasionally smart. Donald Trump, but not occasionally funny.

The vote was mostly along party lines, with just 11 of 208 Republicans joining every Democrat to relieve freshman Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of her committee assignments. One hundred and ninety seven Republicans went on the record supporting one of the most repulsive people to serve in congress in my lifetime (and that includes prolific child molester Dennis Hastert and prolific sexual abuse ignorer Jim Jordan).

It’s a shame, too, because while Greene’s theatrics may be raising her own profile by putting her sassy masks on the news a lot, they’re doing so at the expense of her own constituents. What do they get when their representative has no power? Nothing. Not even liberal tears. The libs have not been owned. The libs are in charge. Greene isn’t living rent-free in Democrats’ heads. Greene’s theatrics are paying their rent. And yet, Republicans stood behind Greene. This is the hill they’re going to be space-lasered to death on. This is their platform: We stand with the crazy assholes.

The Hill:

AOC is an asset for Democrats, Greene is an albatross for the GOP

On the other side of the aisle, Ocasio-Cortez’s positive contributions stand in stark contrast to Greene’s negative comments. The progressive Democrat has been working within the system to make major policy changes.

Ocasio-Cortez’s advocacy for stronger environmental protection and comprehensive health care has made enemies among Democratic congressional leaders, but AOC has made the Congress better and the Democratic Party stronger.

Every caucus needs a conscience and AOC along with other progressive Democrats fill that role admirably for the House Democratic majority.

President Biden has acted quickly and decisively with executive orders to protect the environment. It is hard to imagine that the candidate who ran as a moderate would have been so aggressive as president without the fervid and unrelenting advocacy of AOC and other progressives.  

Was it impeachment? Jonathan Chait/New York:

Would Trump Have Won if Not for Impeachment? A Pro-Trump Journalist Thinks So.

Was it the pandemic? The Trump campaign knows so. WaPo:

Poor handling of virus cost Trump his reelection, campaign autopsy finds

Politico:

Trump’s allies fear the impeachment trial could be a PR nightmare

The ex-president's boosters fear major reputational damage if next week’s hearings focus on the violence of Jan. 6 and not narrow questions about the Constitution.

Allies of former President Donald Trump are imploring his impeachment team to avoid one specific topic when they defend the ex-president at his Senate trial next week: the deadly riot that unfolded at the U.S. Capitol.

Despite Trump’s likely acquittal on charges that he incited an insurrection, some of his most ardent supporters fear the trial could further damage his reputation if his attorneys wade into the events of Jan. 6, when five people were killed — including a Capitol police officer — after pro-Trump demonstrators stormed the halls of Congress.

Charlie Sykes/Bulwark:

The GOP Rejects The Culture of Consequences

Indulge me for a moment with a bit of ancient history from the Before Time.

Actually, it’s just two years ago.

In January 2019, House Republicans stripped Representative Steve King (R-Bigot) of his committee assignments, tossing him off the Judiciary and Agriculture Committees.

King had a long history of racism, but had stayed in the GOP’s good graces for years, and had even become something of a kingmaker in Iowa politics…

I tell the story of King to highlight (1) the contrast with the case of Marjorie Taylor Greene, (2) the political malpractice of last night’s vote, and (3) how rapidly the GOP is devolving.

To be sure this has been a looooong time coming. The 2019 GOP had already spent years indulging Donald Trump’s penchant for racism and conspiracy theories, and rationalizing his birtherism, his lies, and his cruelty.

But they apparently still had some lingering, residual instinct for political hygiene. Two years later, the GOP’s immune system to crazy has been completely destroyed.

WaPo:

After Capitol riots, desperate families turn to groups that ‘deprogram’ extremists

Her brother couldn’t make it to the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, but she worried that he would join a new insurrection — that one day “he would be one of the people on TV.”

The woman in her 30s asked her family to make plans, she said, hoping to keep her brother busy. Then she contacted a nonprofit called Parents for Peace that seeks to pull people back from extremism, hoping to “save” him, after years of dismay at his hatred of Muslims and Mexicans and now alarm at his anger over the presidential election.

Dissecting her brother’s life and their relationship in weekly sessions, she started to wonder whether she was part of the problem.

The woman, who did not want her name or location made public so as not to upset her brother, is part of a surge of desperate families and friends calling organizations that aim to deradicalize and “deprogram” extremists across the ideological spectrum. Such organizations say demand for their free services has never been higher.

Emma Green/Atlantic:

The Knives Come Out for Josh Hawley

The elite conservative world saw the Missouri senator as America’s next great statesman. Instead, he’s revealed uncomfortable truths about the movement.

Hawley’s combination of conservative politics, news-anchor gravitas, apparent ambition, and Ivy League success made him a target of liberal hatred from the moment he arrived in the Senate. But lately, all that Hawley specialness has attracted a special kind of rage from his former allies in the conservative world, too. On January 6, a violent mob stormed the Capitol to stop the certification of Electoral College votes. Five people died, including a Capitol Police officer, Brian Sicknick. When news outlets around the world wrote the story of the riot, many illustrated it with a photo of Hawley, raising his fist to a crowd of then-peaceful protesters.

The Missouri senator became the avatar of the congressional insurrection, the one lawmakers started before the mob showed up. Conservatives and liberals alike blamed Hawley for encouraging the Capitol attackers by questioning the legitimacy of the election. Sure, seven other senators, including Alabama’s Tommy Tuberville and Kansas’s Roger Marshall, also challenged the results, as did 139 members of the House of Representatives. But Tuberville was schooled by Nick Saban, not John Roberts—the former Auburn coach wasn’t marked for political greatness. It didn’t even matter much that Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, who has a similarly elite résumé, stuck it out with Hawley and disputed Arizona’s Electoral College results. “Ted is now just that annoying fly in the room—okay, we’ll swat it eventually,” a Republican campaign operative told me. “Josh is seen as so much worse.”

How did Hawley become the most hated man in Washington? Sometimes, ideological allies turn on one another because they don’t want to admit their collective sins, and they need somebody to blame.

Greg Sargent/WaPo:

A big step forward on Biden’s agenda poses new challenges to Trump’s GOP

In the early morning hours on Friday, Senate Democrats passed a measure laying the groundwork to move President Biden’s big economic rescue package via the reconciliation process, by a simple majority. Republicans are already thundering with outrage.

The move does indeed pose a serious challenge to Republicans. But it’s one that runs deeper than merely moving toward passing this one package without them. It also suggests a reset in dealing with GOP bad-faith tactics across the board — and even the beginnings of a response to the Donald Trump era and the ideology loosely described as “Trumpism.”

First, the new move suggests a growing recognition that the conventional understanding of how “bipartisanship” works has things exactly backward — and that Republicans have manipulated the public debate on this topic for far too long.

A thread on evangelical home schooling:

Thread: I was a evangelical homeschooler who was raised to view the idea of democracy as fundamentally bad. Here are some clippings from the homeschooling material my parents used.. 

They very much pushed the idea of a shadowy "one world government", and said that democracy is doomed to fail, has always failed.

Jamelle Bouie/NY Times:

Marjorie Taylor Greene Knows Exactly What She’s Doing

The once-porous border between the right and the far right has dissolved.

What’s distinctive right now isn’t the fact that someone like Greene exists but that no one has emerged to play the role of Buckley. A longtime Republican leader like Mitch McConnell can try — he denounced Greene’s “loony lies and conspiracy theories” as a “cancer” on the party — but after he served four years as an ally to Donald Trump, his words aren’t worth much.

Those once-porous borders, in other words, now appear to be nonexistent, and there’s no one in the Republican Party or its intellectual orbit to police the extreme right. Representative Greene is the first QAnon member of Congress, but she won’t be the last and she may not even ultimately be the worst.

Nan Aron/USA Today:

Courts are key to all Biden and Democrats want to do. Don't lose focus on them.

We need judges who understand the challenges real people face. What's at stake is nothing less than legal and social progress for future generation

A nearly year-long pandemic has killed over 450,000 Americans and put millions out of work. Last month, the rising tide of white supremacy led to an attempt to take over the very center of our nation in a Capitol attack fomented by then-President Donald Trump himself. Without question, our new president has his hands full — not to mention his commitment to tackle the climate emergency, restore American leadership abroad, and ensure every American access to quality health care.  

But at the heart of addressing any of this — and securing lasting prosperity and justice for Americans for decades to come — are our courts. This is the opportunity for Senate Democrats to appoint forward-thinking, qualified judges who better reflect the people they serv

Just Security:

Movie at the Ellipse: A Study in Fascist Propaganda

Scholars on the Nazis and anti-Semitism have seen this before

On January 6, Trump supporters gathered at a rally at Washington DC’s Ellipse Park, regaled by various figures from Trump world, including Donald Trump Jr. and Rudy Giuliani. Directly following Giuliani’s speech, the organizers played a video. To a scholar of fascist propaganda, well-versed in the history of the National Socialist’s pioneering use of videos in political propaganda, it was clear, watching it, what dangers it portended. In it, we see themes and tactics that history warns pose a violent threat to liberal democracy. Given the aims of fascist propaganda – to incite and mobilize – the events that followed were predictable.

Before decoding what the video presents, it is important to take a step back and discuss the structure of fascist ideology and how it can mobilize its most strident supporters to take violent actions.

So Marjorie Taylor Greene is off the committees, and Democrats have firm grounds to link the GOP with the seditionists based on the way the Republicans voted. And the 1.9 trillion package budget resolution passes (51-50 with Harris casting the tie breaker) with room to focus and target. This WH and Congress will get stuff done.

Greg Sargent/WaPo:

An ugly truth links Marjorie Taylor Greene to Trump — one the GOP won’t confront

Republicans are facing two big decisions. They must determine whether they will strip Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) of committee assignments in response to her all-around crackpottery. They must also decide whether to convict former president Donald Trump for inciting violent insurrection.

These dilemmas are often interpreted as separate from one another. In this telling, the GOP’s House and Senate leaders — Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California and Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky — are mostly sticking with Trump, while moving away to varying degrees from Greene.

But these decisions also share a common thread. That common thread concerns political violence.

AJC:

Militia alliance in Georgia signals new phase for extremist paramilitaries

The leader of a private paramilitary group that provided security for Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene said he has formed alliances with other far-right groups to advocate for Georgia’s secession from the union, following the arrests of participants in the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

“The way patriots are now being hunted down and arrested by fellow men and women who have taken the same oath has disheartened any faith I had in the redemption or reformation of the USA as one entity,” Justin Thayer, head of the Georgia III% Martyrs, said in a text exchange with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution this week.

Charlie Warzel/NY Times:

I Talked to the Cassandra of the Internet Age

The internet rewired our brains. He predicted it would.

To describe its scarcity, [Michael Goldhaber] latched onto what was then an obscure term, coined by a psychologist, Herbert A. Simon: “the attention economy.”

These days, the term is a catch-all for the internet and the broader landscape of information and entertainment. Advertising is part of the attention economy. So are journalism and politics and the streaming business and all the social media platforms. But for Mr. Goldhaber, the term was a bit less theoretical: Every single action we take — calling our grandparents, cleaning up the kitchen or, today, scrolling through our phones — is a transaction. We are taking what precious little attention we have and diverting it toward something. This is a zero-sum proposition, he realized. When you pay attention to one thing, you ignore something else.

Ron Brownstein/Atlantic:

The Decision That Will Define Democrats for a Decade

Will they get rid of the filibuster if it means passing their voting-rights and election-reform agenda?

That decision carries enormous consequences for the future balance of power between the parties: The number of younger and diverse voters participating in future elections will likely be much greater if these laws pass than if they don’t, especially with state-level Republicans already pushing a new round of laws making it tougher to vote based on Donald Trump’s discredited claims of election fraud in 2020. Given those stakes, the Democrats’ voting-rights agenda is quickly becoming a focal point of the pressure from left-leaning activists to end the filibuster. “Our grass roots will not accept the notion that we had good intentions, but we just failed” to pass these laws, Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon, a Democrat who is the lead sponsor of the Senate companion to H.R. 1, told me.

Melinda Fakuade/Vox:

The best face mask is one that fits

Cloth masks are fine for many people — as long as they cover your nose and mouth.

Tons of celebrities have been seen out with their masks underneath their noses. Notably, members of Congress who promote masking up have been seen pulling up their sliding masks in public.

Cloth masks sometimes lend themselves to poor etiquette: Rep. David Cicilline (D-RI) slipped his down to sneeze into his hand on C-SPAN, which is, to put it plainly, horrifying. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is known to have masks that match her outfits but was once photographed in a conversation with George Floyd’s brother, mask hanging down below her mouth. And soon after his inauguration, President Joe Biden’s mask slipped down his face in the midst of signing an executive action related to Covid-19. It happens to the best of us. Walk around anywhere in pandemic America, and you’ll surely encounter people fiddling with their masks.

Note which issue is +56 in GA.

John Harwood/CNN:

Why Biden has a rare opportunity for early success

Over five decades in Washington, President Joe Biden has watched seven newly-elected presidents get started. Improbably, he has the chance for a stronger opening act than any of them.

Just 12 days into Biden's presidency, the emerging alignment of forces holds the promise of two giant early legislative breakthroughs. The potential for rapid payoffs in public health and economic recovery exceeds anything recent predecessors managed to find.

That's not because Biden swept into office on a landslide. Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama all won larger electoral majorities with wider popular vote margins.

It's not because of superior numerical muscle in Congress. Jimmy Carter and Donald Trump, as well as Clinton and Obama, enjoyed bigger partisan majorities in the House and Senate.

And it's not because Biden's grandfatherly persona bests Reagan's charisma, Clinton's persuasiveness or Obama's star quality. At 78, the oldest president in American history has made understated calm his early signature.

Instead, the size of Biden's opportunity reflects the unique circumstances of early 2021: a deadly pandemic that could subside with an effective vaccination push, a battered economy poised to rebound when it does, the unfinished business of a disgraced predecessor, and the determination of fellow Democrats to overcome obstruction by increasingly-radicalized Republican adversaries.

Jamelle Bouie/NY Times:

I’m Not Actually Interested in Mitch McConnell’s Hypocrisy

To make his case for the filibuster, he has essentially rewritten the history of the Senate.

“When it comes to lawmaking, the framers’ vision and our history are clear. The Senate exists to require deliberation and cooperation,” McConnell declared. “James Madison said the Senate’s job was to provide a ‘complicated check’ against ‘improper acts of legislation.’ We ensure that laws earn enough buy-in to receive the lasting consent of the governed. We stop bad ideas, improve good ideas and keep laws from swinging wildly with every election.”

He went on: “More than any other feature, it is the Senate’s 60-vote threshold to end debate on legislation that achieves this.”

It’s hard to take any of this seriously. None of McConnell’s stated concern for the “lasting consent of the governed” was on display when Senate Republicans, under his leadership, tried to repeal the Affordable Care Act by majority vote. Nor was there any interest in “deliberation and cooperation” when Republicans wanted a new round of corporate and upper-income tax cuts.

Sarah Posner/Reveal:

How the Christian right helped foment insurrection

Christian-right activists inside and outside of government promoted the election fraud lie and claimed God told them to “let the church roar.”

White evangelicals have been Trump’s most dedicated, unwavering base, standing by him through the cavalcade of abuses, failures and scandals that engulfed his campaigns and his presidency – from the “Access Hollywood” tape to his first impeachment to his efforts to overturn the election and incite the Capitol insurrection. This fervent relationship, which has survived the events of Jan. 6, is based on far more than a transactional handshake over judicial appointments and a crackdown on abortion and LGBTQ rights. Trump’s White evangelical base has come to believe that God anointed him and that Trump’s placement of Christian-right ideologues in critical positions at federal agencies and in federal courts was the fulfillment of a long-sought goal of restoring the United States as a Christian nation. Throughout Trump’s presidency, his political appointees implemented policies that stripped away reproductive and LGBTQ rights and tore down the separation of church and state in the name of protecting unfettered religious freedom for conservative Christians. After Joe Biden won the presidency, Trump administration loyalists launched their own Christian organization to “stop the steal,” in the ultimate act of loyalty to their divine leader.

First Read:

On Covid relief, Democrats will go alone if Republicans won't come along

The Biden White House and Democratic congressional leaders appear to have made their tactical decision on Covid-19 relief talks — use budget reconciliation that requires just 51 votes for passage.

The question is whether that legislative tactic will work, and whether President Biden will get backlash if he doesn’t get bipartisan support for his $1.9 trillion package…

Translation: They want Republican votes, but they aren’t going to be beholden to it.

But the reconciliation tactic doesn’t come without risks and drawbacks.

Emma Green/Atlantic:

Betraying Your Church—And Your Party

How Representative Adam Kinzinger, an evangelical Republican, decided to vote for impeachment—and start calling out his church

Kinzinger is not a pastor or a theologian. He knows his job as a representative is not to preach the gospel but to represent his constituents and vote on legislation. When he’s dead, however, it won’t matter how many elections he won, or how low America’s tax rates are. The Lord has been speaking to him about his role as a Christian in politics, he said, and how he can reach people who are thinking about their eternal life. He has concluded that his faith and his party have been poisoned by the same conspiracy theories and lies, culminating in the falsehood that the election was stolen. When you look at “the reputation of Christianity today versus five years ago, I feel very comfortable saying it’s a lot worse,” he said. “Boy, I think we have lost a lot of moral authority.”

But people like Kinzinger have not been the ones shaping the reputation of Christianity in America over the past four years. Trump’s supporters have. Even after everything that’s happened—Trump’s attempt to overturn the election, his cheerleading for the attack on the Capitol—some influential evangelical leaders are still defending the president: “Shame, shame,” Franklin Graham, the evangelist and son of the famous pastor Billy Graham, wrote about the 10 Republicans who voted for impeachment. “It makes you wonder what the 30 pieces of silver were that Speaker Pelosi promised for this betrayal.” In the metaphor, the Republican dissidents are cast as Judas, who is said to have betrayed Jesus in exchange for 30 coins. Trump plays the role of Christ.

Looking to political personalities rather than Jesus for salvation is the worst kind of mistake a Christian can make, Kinzinger said. “There are many people that have made America their god, that have made the economy their god, that have made Donald Trump their god, and that have made their political identity their god.” The problems that led to the January 6 insurrection are not just political. They’re cultural. Roughly half of Protestant pastors said they regularly hear people promote conspiracy theories in their churches, a recent survey by the Southern Baptist firm LifeWay Research found. “I believe there is a huge burden now on Christian leaders, especially those who entertained the conspiracies, to lead the flock back into the truth,” Kinzinger tweeted on January 12.

David Smith/Guardian:

The perfect target’: Russia cultivated Trump as asset for 40 years – ex-KGB spy

Donald Trump was cultivated as a Russian asset over 40 years and proved so willing to parrot anti-western propaganda that there were celebrations in Moscow, a former KGB spy has told the Guardian.

Yuri Shvets, posted to Washington by the Soviet Union in the 1980s, compares the former US president to “the Cambridge five”, the British spy ring that passed secrets to Moscow during the second world war and early cold war.

Now 67, Shvets is a key source for American Kompromat, a new book by journalist Craig Unger, whose previous works include House of Trump, House of Putin. The book also explores the former president’s relationship with the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.

“This is an example where people were recruited when they were just students and then they rose to important positions; something like that was happening with Trump,” Shvets said by phone on Monday from his home in Virginia.

In other news, Marjorie Taylor Greene is the face of the GOP. She's a nutter, elected by her constituents. Until or unless the Congress chooses Liz Cheney over Greene it is what it is, and perfectly appropriate to see them (Greene and the GOP) as one and the same.

 Madeleine Aggeler/New York:

The Vileness of Marjorie Taylor Greene

The video — along with new CNN reports about Greene’s troubling social-media activity prior to her election — has prompted many Democrats and a few Republicans to call for Greene’s resignation, though GOP leadership has yet to act in any meaningful way. Greene, for her part, did not apologize or walk back her claims, saying that at the time of the video she was “going from office to office in the Senate to oppose the radical gun control agenda that David Hogg was pushing.”

The video is just the latest example of the loathsome conduct of a woman now tasked with helping shape education and labor policy in the U.S. Below, examples of some of Greene’s most troubling behavior.

Chris Stirewalt/LA Times:

I called Arizona for Biden on Fox News. Here’s what I learned

In my career as a political analyst and, until my firing last week, an election forecaster on the decision desk at Fox News, I have always been with [Erastus] Brooks. I wanted to steam downriver as fast as I could to be first with the news to beat the competition and serve my audience.

Having worked in cable news for more than a decade after a wonderfully misspent youth in newspapers, I can tell you the result: a nation of news consumers both overfed and malnourished. Americans gorge themselves daily on empty informational calories, indulging their sugar fixes of self-affirming half-truths and even outright lies.

Can anyone really be surprised that the problem has gotten worse in the last few years?

Vox:

Fox News’s post-Trump slump, explained

For the first time in nearly 20 years, Fox News isn’t the top-rated cable news network.

As Baragona explained in an interview with Vox, it’s not a coincidence that Fox News’s ratings decline coincided with the disappearance of Trump’s Twitter account, which the former president used relentlessly to promote his favorite Fox opinion hosts and denigrate their competition. And now, without the backing of one of its most influential fans, the network has been left to chart its way through an uncertain future.

“We don’t know how much right-wing grievances will work, how much basically stoking outrage will work,” Baragona said. “It worked during the Obama years, and that’s the formula they’re trying to replicate right now. But we just got through with a Trump era, and now the guy who helped trumpet [and] amplify them on Twitter, he’s gone now. His Twitter account’s gone. And many of his fans are not coming back, so it just remains to be seen.”

CNN:

Tokyo Olympics: Can vaccines save the Games?

"I think a lot of people had this vested belief that once the vaccine started to roll out, that would really spell the end of Covid and what we would see is that transmission rates would start to plummet, things would get more controlled and we would have some ability to go back to a more normal lifestyle," Jason Kindrachuk, an infectious disease expert at the University of Manitoba in Canada, tells CNN Sport.

"The fact is that even with good vaccine rollouts in a number of regions of the world, we're having trouble getting a hold on transmission."

Greg Sargent/WaPo:

The GOP’s whining about Biden is absurd. Good thing Democrats are ignoring it.

Until we know that 10 GOP senators are willing to support something remotely close to what Biden and Democrats want, there simply isn’t anything to talk about. What’s the Republican plan? There isn’t one. With whom are Democrats supposed to negotiate? Over what, exactly?

Let’s go out on a limb and suggest that Republicans would like to keep it this way for as long as possible. They want the public debate to unfold in a place where they get to refrain from saying what they’re for — that is, refrain from saying what they’re prepared to concede to Democrats — while simultaneously attacking Democrats for not being willing to concede enough to them.

NY Times:

An impasse ends in the Senate as Democrats win a filibuster battle.

But as in past fights over the filibuster, the outcome is likely to be only a temporary solution. As they press forward on Mr. Biden’s agenda, Democrats will come under mounting pressure from activists to jettison the rule, which effectively requires 60 votes to advance any measure, should Republicans use it regularly to stall or stop the administration’s priorities.

Merrick Garland could not be reached for comment.

Asawin Suebsaeng/Daily Beast:

Trump Fumes in His First Weekend Out of Office as Fauci Clowns on Him

In recent days, former President Donald Trump has watched from afar as one of his most popular rivals for public attention has been unleashed by the Biden administration to, in part, disparage Trump’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. And the ex-president hasn’t even been able to tweet about it.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, once a prominent figure on Trump’s coronavirus task force who’s now a top COVID-19 adviser to President Joe Biden, began his multi-day blitz to different news outlets that included openly expressing his relief that the old crew was gone and that he could now serve in the Biden administration.

Drew Altman/Kaiser Family Foundation at Axios:

The U.S. needs to ramp up vaccinations to reach herd immunity

The U.S. would need to significantly ramp up coronavirus vaccinations if we’re going to reach herd immunity any time soon.

Why it matters: At minimum, herd immunity requires vaccinating 70% of the population. And reaching that benchmark is especially difficult — because children aren’t eligible for the vaccines yet, the U.S. would need to inoculate the vast majority of adults.

By the numbers: The U.S. would need to administer 2.4 million doses per day in order to vaccinate 70% of the population by July 4.

• To get there by Labor Day would require 1.9 million doses per day.
• To reach herd immunity by Jan. 1, 2022, we’d need 1.2 million doses per day.

Where it stands: The Centers for Disease Control reported 1.6 million vaccinations last Friday, and yesterday the Biden administration upped its goal — it's now aiming for 1.5 million shots per day, instead of 1 million.

Liz Szabo/CNN:

Anti-vaccine activists peddle theories that Covid-19 shots are deadly, undermining vaccination

Anti-vaccine groups have falsely claimed for decades that childhood vaccines cause autism, weaving fantastic conspiracy theories involving government, Big Business and the media.

Now, the same groups are blaming patients' coincidental medical problems on covid shots, even when it's clear that age or underlying health conditions are to blame, Hotez said. "They will sensationalize anything that happens after someone gets a vaccine and attribute it to the vaccine," [Dr Peter] Hotez said.

Alex Burns/NY Times:

How Democrats Planned for Doomsday

A huge coalition of activist groups had been working together since the spring to make sure that Joe Biden won and that the “election stayed won” amid Donald Trump’s subterfuge.

They convened to craft a plan for answering the onslaught on American democracy, and they soon reached a few key decisions. They would stay off the streets for the moment and hold back from mass demonstrations that could be exposed to an armed mob goaded on by President Donald J. Trump.

They would use careful language. In a presentation, Anat Shenker-Osorio, a liberal messaging guru, urged against calling the attack a “coup,” warning that the word could make Mr. Trump sound far stronger than he was — or even imply that a pro-Trump militia had seized power.

What is interesting about this moment is that we used to get mad at media (NY Times,especially, but all of it across the board) for refusing to call out Donald Trump, normalizing him, refusing to use the word “lies” etc.

But now, media and reporting are clear. It’s the conservative part of the public that won’t accept the truth. They’ll have to sooner or later (see COVID), but a lot of harm will occur along the way.

George Conway/WaPo:

Former president, private citizen and, perhaps, criminal defendant:

Donald Trump’s new reality

The question came out of the blue and has haunted me ever since. It was Jan. 17, 2017, three days before Donald Trump’s swearing-in, and my wife and I sat with him in the near-empty main cabin aboard the Trump Organization’s Boeing 757 en route to Washington for a pre-inaugural gala.

So, asked the president-elect: Should he retain or fire Preet Bharara, the U.S. attorney for the powerful Southern District of New York? I gave what I thought was an obvious, anodyne answer: All other things being equal, it’s better to have your own people in place. Within two months, Bharara was gone.

To the charge of naivete that night, I plead guilty: I didn’t consider then that Trump might have had his personal legal interests in mind. But it is impossible to escape the self-interested intent behind his question. From the earliest days of his administration, it became painfully apparent that in all matters — including affairs of state — Trump’s personal well-being took top priority. Four years and two impeachments later, he has managed to avoid the full consequences of his conduct.

But now that run of legal good fortune may end. Trump departed the White House a possible — many would say probable, provable — criminal, one who has left a sordid trail of potential and actual misconduct that remains to be fully investigated.

David Rothkopf/USA Today:

Let's get real. Joe Biden, Democrats and America need results much more than unity.

It's time to give Biden's 81 million voters a chance to be heard and Biden a chance to carry out the plans he ran on, even if he has to play hardball.

When Biden spoke of unity, however, he was clear. He explicitly did not mean he expected we would all agree on every initiative. Rather, his intent as laid out in the speech, was to remind Americans that we are all in this together. He has said his goal is to de-toxify American politics, to end the zero sum, us vs. them mentality that dominated during the Trump years. He wants to make sure people understood that under his administration, no state or city or individual will be penalized for their legitimate political beliefs.

Colin P Clarke/NY Times:

A New Era of Far-Right Violence

The imagery of the Capitol siege will have enduring resonance.

Large segments of the mob that stormed the Capitol were unaffiliated — individuals and small groups, family members, neighbors. These could well be the new foot soldiers of the far right. Some, and perhaps many, of these new recruits will have military experience or law enforcement training. What’s more, the infusion of younger members into the ranks of the far right is likely to breathe new life into the movement, ensuring its longevity.

David Masciotra/Salon:

Longtime GOP insider Mike Lofgren on his former party: "Going easy on these people will not work"

Lofgren spent 28 years on Capitol Hill. Now he says Republican zealots should be crushed, banished and ostracized

I recently discussed the insurrection at the Capitol, how best to combat right-wing extremism and the future of the Republican Party with Lofgren in a phone conversation, lightly edited here for length and clarity.

We'll start with the obvious. What was your gut reaction as you watched the act of domestic terrorism — the siege of the Capitol — live on television? Now that you've had time to process it, what is your interpretation of the event both in terms of what happened and how the United States should proceed?

I worked for three decades in Congress. Regardless of how peeved I might have been over some policy or another, I was proud of my public service. To see the place trashed like that, and I mean really desecrated — there were people shitting on the floor, and smearing it on the walls. The insane violence of a mob beating a cop with a fire extinguisher and shoving him down the marble stairs was horrifying. At the same time, once the mob was dispersed, they went throughout the D.C. metro area randomly beating up people whom they could victimize. Later that afternoon, my daughter, who does not live in D.C. but in Arlington, across the river, was out walking her dog, and saw these thugs spewing out of the Metro station like toxic waste. She had to do a 180. Arlington was placed under curfew that night. All these occurrences, including having to worry about my own family's safety, left some pretty vivid impressions, to say the least.  

Jane Meyer/New Yorker:

Why McConnell Dumped Trump

After the Capitol assault—and after losing his perch as Majority Leader—the senator finally denounced the outgoing President. Was it a moral reckoning or yet another act of political self-interest?

Several Republican advisers argued to me that McConnell had no reasonable choice. If he had confronted Trump before the Georgia runoff, they said, Trump would have launched a civil war within the Party, possibly even commanding his supporters not to vote. “It could have been worse,” the former Trump official said. “Trump could have attacked” the two Republican Senate candidates, Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, or the National Republican Senate Campaign Committee. As one of the advisers put it, “McConnell was trying to keep the wheels on the train for a few more hours.”

The price of Trump’s coöperation, however, grew ever higher. According to a well-informed Republican insider, Trump made unconscionable demands behind the scenes. He threatened to withhold his support for Loeffler and Perdue, and refused to campaign for them unless they joined his attacks on Georgia’s election officials and repeated his false claims of widespread election fraud. Days before the runoff, the insider said, the President forced Perdue to leave the campaign trail for a secret meeting at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s private club in Palm Beach, Florida. There, Trump coerced Perdue not just into taking his side on election fraud but also into supporting an increase in the size of pandemic-relief checks to two thousand dollars—a figure that McConnell and Senate Republicans opposed. If Perdue refused, Trump made clear, he might withdraw his support. At the time, a spokesman for Perdue’s campaign denied that Trump had pressured Perdue. But, soon after the Mar-a-Lago meeting, both Perdue and Loeffler began echoing Trump’s call for larger relief checks, placing themselves and McConnell in an embarrassing political bind. Trump, meanwhile, went on Twitter and attacked McConnell’s opposition to the bigger relief checks, calling it a “death wish.” The President’s behavior toward the candidates led the insider to a simple conclusion: “Trump is a thug.”

Here’s the problem for Republicans: office holders like Brad Raffensperger and Mitch McConnell would rather the white supremacy stay genteel and quiet to keep the majority.

QAnon and the Republican base, increasingly the same as in Marjorie Taylor Green and Lauren Boebert, want it said out loud. They’d rather be loud and in the minority than suffer the embarrassment of compromise (let alone admission of guilt, error, or defeat).

It’s going to be a rough few years. Republicans will simply refuse to acknowledge losses so long as there is no price to be paid for it.

KC Star:

‘Bamboozled.’ Hawley mentors stunned by conduct, but early warning signs were there

Since the Capitol rampage, Hawley’s mentors have disavowed him. Donors have demanded refunds. Colleagues have called for his resignation or expulsion. And those who helped guide his career are asking themselves if they missed something essential about their former mentee.

“I am more than a little bamboozled by it, certainly distressed by it,” said David Kennedy, the Stanford professor emeritus of history who served as Hawley’s academic adviser and wrote the foreword to his 2008 book on Teddy Roosevelt.

But the Lexington columns suggest that Hawley’s ideology took root long before he entered public life, and that his passage from Roosevelt scholar to Trump’s ideological heir was not entirely unforeseen.

NY Times:

Prosecute Trump? Biden Is Wary, but His Voters Are Eager

Urging unity, the president-elect has tried to focus on his policy plans. But many of those who elected him are still fixated on his predecessor: “He’s a crook and he needs to pay.”

Interviews with two dozen Biden voters across the country found near unanimity that it was important for the Senate, the Justice Department and state prosecutors to aggressively pursue Mr. Trump, his family members and top aides — holding them accountable well beyond the impeachment charge against the president for inciting the Capitol riot on Jan. 6. The consensus cut across differences of ideology, income, race and sex.

“He’s a crook and he needs to pay for the crimes he’s done,” said Teresa Steele, a Republican in Denton County, Texas, who voted for Mr. Biden.

The word ‘diner’ does not appear in the report. Keep working it, media.

What will actually happen with impeachment? I expect Republican senators to keep moving the goalposts until they are left with “We can’t vote to impeach a president of our own party, and that’s the bedrock principle we live by. It doesn’t matter what he did.”

Megan K Stack/New Yorker:

The Week the Trump Supporters Disappeared

In Washington, D.C., our leaders sealed themselves off from a rebel force that didn’t arrive.

As the new President took the oath of office on Wednesday, there were neither parties nor protests in the streets of Washington. Instead, there was mostly quiet, punctuated by the sirens of convoys careening around, the churn of helicopters overhead, and newscasters narrating the unseen news for viewers around the planet. Deep within the rings of checkpoints and soldiers, Joe Biden became President. People outside the security watched on their phones or not at all; most of them were reporters, soldiers, or police. There were rumors that a pro-Trump gathering would be held on the plaza at Union Station, but no such spectacle appeared: a few preachers droned about Hell and feminists while passersby heckled them and pigeons swooped low over their heads. At Judiciary Square, a lone middle-aged man made his way along the sidewalk, wearing a plain winter hat rolled low over his forehead and a disposable blue medical mask. He was an unremarkable figure except for the sign he carried: “THIS LOOKS LIKE PYONGYANG / THERE ARE ONLY POLICE AND MILITARY / NO CIVILIANS.”

The man didn’t want to speak, he explained to reporters. His signs contained everything he wished to express. He pulled a second placard from behind the first and propped it against a nearby tree: “BIG TECH CENSORSHIP KILLED DEMOCRACY.”