Words matter, and the ones being used for this insurgence are flat-out wrong.
President-elect Joe Biden's Jan. 20 inauguration is fast approaching, and all parties are rushing to make the necessary arrangements — a phrase that carries somber new meaning in light of last week's attack on the Capitol Building. President Donald Trump announced his plans not to attend the inauguration on Twitter shortly before he was removed […]
Hundreds of National Guard troops sleep on the floor of the Capitol a week after Trump riots One week after a riotous mob of terrorists who support Donald Trump stormed our nation’s Capitol, images are surfacing of National Guard troops sleeping on the floors of the historic structure while guarding it and its grounds around []
Are Donald Trump and his children all preparing to call Florida their new home after his presidential term ends next week? Daughter Ivanka has already put down roots in the state's Indian Creek Country Club (also known as Billionaire's Bunker) by purchasing a $30 million lot, and now it seems as though Donald Trump Jr. […]
“These people are misguided, lost, and afraid."
Brian Kilmeade of Fox News suggested that if Democrats in the House of Representatives exercise the power granted to them by the United States Constitution, the president's supporters will respond with violence.
Another day, another case of social media misinformation.
A US Capitol Police officer on duty during last week’s acts of sedition by Trump supporters has died by suicide, his family has announced With the report of the FBI beginning to apprehend and arrest those participating in last week’s coup attempt at the US Capitol, and then the news the House submitted a new []
Thousands of pro-Trump supporters descended on the US Capitol on January 6. A week later, over 100 had been charged with crimes.
Nearly every female Republican in the country believes Trump should not be held responsible for the U.S. Capitol riots earlier this month Less than two weeks ago, pro-Trump rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol building in what was undoubtably one of the most shocking moments of his presidency, and possibly, the history of the country. Evacuations []
Bobby Bauer and a relative were identified among those who breached the Capitol after an unknown caller tipped off the FBI.
The agents resorted to porta-potties and even the Obamas' nearby bathroom.
Olympic swimmer Klete Keller, who was a relay teammate of Michael Phelps, was seen on video inside the US Capitol building during the insurrection.
Texas woman who flew a private jet to the Capitol riots just asked Trump for a pardon because she doesn’t think she should go to prison A Texas woman who took a private jet to the Capitol on January 6, 2020 and was one of the many insurrectionist who stormed the Capitol and actually entered the []
On Wednesday, Washington Rep. Pramila Jayapal and 231 of her fellow congresspeople voted to impeach President Donald Trump for inciting the insurrection at the Capitol on January 6. Jayapal was at the center of the Trump-caused firestorm in more ways than one: When armed, right-wing extremists stormed the Capitol, she and some of her colleagues were trapped in the gallery above the House chamber where they had been watching as the Electoral College votes were being counted; then they sheltered-in-place together in a secured room, where some of the Republican representatives refused to wear masks. At that time, Jayapal predicted that the event would be “a superspreader event on top of a domestic terrorist attack.” Her words ended up coming true and affecting her personally: Jayapal tested positive for COVID-19 on Tuesday, along with at least four other Democratic colleagues. Ahead, we caught up with her to talk about Donald Trump’s future, unending Republican cruelty, and how she’s faring after her diagnosis. First of all, how are you feeling after testing positive? “Thank you. I am feeling better today, so that’s giving me a lot of hope. My fever and chills are gone, and it’s mostly a stuffy head and nose, kind of like a regular cold. So this thing is not going to win over me. I’m going to be fighting just as hard, if not harder.” I bet you’re working through it all, which can’t make it a whole lot easier. “I think that is part of it. We don’t really get sleep — though last night I got a great night’s sleep, so I’m feeling very chipper today.” You voted to impeach Donald Trump on Wednesday, making this the second time that the House has voted to impeach him. Why is this vote particularly important now? And what implications do you believe it could have for his future? “Donald Trump incited the insurrectionists, and he spent the last two months essentially using every platform he had as president of the United States to say that this election was fraudulent when it was free and fair, and to aid, affect, fuel, and ultimately incite a tactical, armed crowd to conduct the most violent assault on the Capitol since 1812. The whole time it was happening, he was reportedly cheering them on from the White House, not calling for peace, not allowing the resources that we needed, whether it was National Guardsmen or other assistance. And even his message, released very late as if he was taken hostage to read the words from the teleprompter, did not blame any of these people and said they were loyal patriots. So we have to take this action because Donald Trump is a threat to our national security every day that he is in office.” What are your thoughts on what could happen in the Senate, particularly in light of the fact that Mitch McConnell seems to want to wait until after the inauguration to conduct a trial? “My hope is still that maybe there could be some pressure from Mitch McConnell to take this up immediately. It doesn’t look likely, but I will tell you that a few days ago it didn’t look likely that we would have the most bipartisan vote ever on impeaching a president. I think if Mitch McConnell refuses to take this up, then it will proceed under the Democratic majority. And I hope that Republicans in the Senate understand how critically important it is that, even though Donald Trump is the ex-president they vote to convict him. And if that happens with a two-thirds majority in the Senate, then they can vote to ensure that he never holds office again. I believe that there are enough Republicans in the Senate who are horrified by what happened. At least, I hope there are.” Like you said, this was the most bipartisan impeachment vote in history, but, as you know, it was only 10 Republicans who voted to impeach him. How does that make you feel about the future of their party and our country? “It’s a tough question because obviously I’m glad that there are 10 Republicans who had the courage to put country over party, and I am horrified that it was only 10 Republicans. It shows you how much lunacy there is in people’s heads. It really worries me that this is essentially a cult following. I think the Republican Party is cleaving before our very eyes, and there will be one faction that is frankly terrifying for the future of the country, but there will be another faction that hopefully will begin to rebuild the depth of the Republican Party so that it is a party that is about at least something, even if we disagree with them. You know, some policy ideas instead of just an individual who is unhinged.” What about the Democrats? Do you think this experience, as well as the new administration, might allow for a more unifying moment among the Democratic Party? “I do, and I’ve already seen it, just in the incredible unity around the impeachment vote. There was really very little question that that would happen and very little if any opposition to it even initially. And, I also think that it has fundamentally shifted the conversation on race and the response of law enforcement to white nationalists versus to Black Lives Matter folks. The Republican party can no longer claim to be a party of law enforcement when we saw people dragging out Capitol police officers and beating them. But also I think the racism within how white nationalists are perceived versus how people who are simply speaking up against the injustice in law enforcement with Black people being murdered every day, that was so clear. I just hope that it leads to far more unity on race in this country, and what we have to do to fix our institutionally racist structures.” You and two other colleagues tested positive for COVID on Tuesday after your Republican colleagues refused to wear masks and essentially made fun of you. What lingering feelings do you have about that experience, and what would you like to say to your colleagues, who put you in harm’s way? “They did. And I’ve been clear about my anger about that because here we had just experienced a terrorist attack by white nationalists, and we were forced into that room with over 100 people and they were still mocking the idea of science and public health. The number-one guidance to prevent the spread of the virus is wearing a mask and socially distancing. We obviously couldn’t social distance in that particular situation with so many people in that room, but they absolutely could have taken the very simple steps of wearing a mask, which is really about protection of other people, not a personal liberty. I think their intransigence around that and the refusal to set an example for the entire country is absolutely part and parcel of why there are 3,200 Americans who are dying every day from COVID. “So it’s an anger about the fact that they gave it to me, because I know I got it from that room. And, my husband has now contracted the virus as well because of his exposure to me. So it’s that frustration on a personal level, but it’s also this larger anger about how Republicans have treated the virus and allowed almost 400,000 people to die because they have taken it like a joke. “I think it’s stunning, too, that in spite of them losing a colleague [Luke Letlow, congressman-elect from Louisiana] who just got elected and couldn’t take a seat in Congress because he died from COVID, they still are refusing to acknowledge that this is real. I just don’t understand it. I also don’t understand how it’s only Democrats who have been reporting testing positive since the January 6th attack. I’ve got to believe that there are Republicans, and they’re just not telling us. Which means they could be not getting tested, and could be spreading it.” How are your colleagues doing who also tested positive? It sounds like it may be particularly tough for Bonnie Watson Coleman, who is 75 and a cancer survivor. “I was checking in on her today. And luckily she also seems to be doing relatively well, though I don’t want to speak for her. Brad Schneider, I actually talked to him last night and he does not have any symptoms. Ayanna Pressley and Adriano Espaillat both also tested positive. So that means four out of the five Democrats who have tested positive are people of color. And I do think that reflects the larger story of the virus in this country and how people of color are disproportionately affected.” Many of your colleagues such as Reps. Ayanna Pressley and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have also spoken out since the insurrection, saying they feared for their lives on that day. What was your particular experience like? “I was trapped in that gallery with about a dozen other members. For me, my biggest source of concern was that I could only walk with a cane because I couldn’t bend my knee; I had recently had knee surgery. So when they told us to duck under the banisters and go to the other side of the gallery, and then get on the floor, it was physically really challenging for me, on top of the fear of being trapped. “At one point, we were trying to get the attention of the Capitol Police on the main floor, because we weren’t sure that anyone was going to come and get us. It was a deeply traumatic experience for those of us who were in the gallery. We were there when the gunshots were fired into the chamber, we heard that. We were also so close to the doors because that gallery is not very big. And so when the rioters were pounding on those doors, it was like, it was literally right there. We didn’t know the Capitol Police didn’t have anything to barricade those doors with. So it was literally just locking the door and then standing there behind it to try to keep them out.” It’s been reported that there were police and even Republican lawmakers helping the rioters at the Capitol. What are your thoughts on some of your colleagues potentially being complicit in all of this? “I think that’s one of the most disturbing pieces of this, that we don’t know if we can trust our Republican colleagues. In fact, everything shows that a few of them were part of planning and inciting the insurrection and showing people around. There was the video of one of the main organizers talking about the three members of Congress that were helping to plan this. It also feels like people knew their way around. So the question is whether there were recon tours that were given ahead of time. I think we need to make sure that any member of Congress who was a part of planning and inciting these attacks is removed from Congress. And if they violate the rules that we have put in place around all of our safety, whether it’s walking through metal detectors or refusing to wear masks, then there have to be heavy fines levied on them, and they need to not be allowed onto the floor. You don’t follow our rules, you can’t vote. Period.” Like what you see? How about some more R29 goodness, right here?Congresspeople Are Testing Positive For COVID-19AOC Thought She Was Going To Die During The SiegeThe FBI Knew About The Capitol Riot Beforehand
Mayor Tyler Evans described being at the Capitol building as "the most exhilarating thing" and euphoric in a video that has now been deleted.
In messages leaked to The Daily Beast, one editor said she blamed Trump for the death of Ashli Babbitt, who died while participating in the riot.
Last week, the world watched in horror as a pro-Trump mob, urged by the President himself, attacked the U.S. Capitol in an effort to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. Thousands of angry people, rushed the Capitol building, overwhelming the law enforcement officers who were staged outside. They smashed windows and broke down doors; thousands of them flooded into the Capitol building itself. For several hours, they occupied congressional offices and triumphantly paraded through the House and Senate floors, wreaking havoc and calling for violence against and death for politicians and police officers, alike. By the end of the seditious melee, five people were dead. One of the people there was John Brockhoeft, who posted online about his presence at the Capitol. Brockhoeft isn’t just any Trump supporter. He’s also a convicted anti-abortion terrorist. His presence wasn’t a coincidence, but an example of the long-standing crossover between anti-abortion and white supremacist terrorist movements, and how America’s complacency around both has helped pave the way for this moment of terrifying insurrection. There were other anti-abortion activists who were involved in the attack, according to a NARAL report. One of them was Abby Johnson, a former Planned Parenthood clinic director turned anti-choice extremist, who was present during Trump’s speech inciting the riot. Another was Taylor Hansen, an anti-choice activist connected to a group called Baby Lives Matter, who posted violent videos to Twitter during the riots. As long as abortion has been legal in this country, it has been under siege. Since 1977, there have been 11,905 acts of violence against abortion providers, including 42 bombings, 189 arsons, and 11 assassinations. Clinics have experienced more than 700,000 incidents of disruption. These acts of violence and harassment grew steadily over decades, as anti-abortion extremists saw how little retribution they faced for escalated their tactics. In 1982, Joseph Scheidler, an anti-abortion activist who literally wrote the book on how to harass abortion patients and staff, hired a private detective to find a teenager’s address and then harangued her mother from an adjacent balcony to talk her out of an abortion. Scheidler inspired Randall Terry, another anti-abortion extremist, to found Operation Rescue — a radical, direct-action anti abortion group — in 1987. Terry once proclaimed, “If you think abortion is murder, then act like it’s murder.” He also led thousands of people in massive blockades at abortion clinics, chaining themselves to doors, laying down in front of traffic, gluing locks — anything to prevent the clinic from operating. Law enforcement’s presence was often lax or non-existent; in San Francisco, it took the police two hours just to show up after the blockade began. Operation Rescue was able to shut down clinics across the country and terrorize abortion patients, unchecked by the federal government, for nearly a decade. That sense of complacency among lawmakers and apathy on the part of some law enforcement officials helped fuel the dramatic rise and escalation in anti-abortion extremism. By 1993, just two decades after Roe v. Wade was decided, anti-abortion extremists had escalated from picketing to stalking to blockading to bombing to assassination. Brockhoeft came of age as an extremist in that environment. He bombed two abortion clinics in Cincinnati in 1985, and was convicted three years later of attempting to bomb an abortion clinic in Florida. He was out of prison by 1995 and further embraced the far-right. In April 2020, he was spotted outside the Ohio Statehouse, surrounded by armed, right-wing extremists, aggressively protesting the COVID-19 shutdown order. Much has been made of the racist double standard that law enforcement displayed in their response toward the Capitol rioters as compared to how they dealt with Black Lives Matter protesters. A video appeared to show Capitol police officers opening the protective gates around the building, allowing a swarm of pro-Trump rioters to march past. Once the mob had successfully broken in, a Capitol police officer, in full uniform and a neon vest, posed for a selfie with a rioter. The mob kept moving, marching toward their next site of desecration. It was a harrowing moment of familiarity between law enforcement and law breaker, one that is well known in abortion rights circles. In August 1979, a Fort Wayne, Indiana abortion clinic received a bomb threat. The city refused to dispatch either police or fire officials, forcing clinic staff to search for the bomb themselves. Nearly 40 years later, Becca Ballenger, a clinic escort in New York City, called in a complaint about protesters violating the 15-foot buffer zone at the clinic. When he arrived, she told Refinery29, she watched the responding officer approach the violator, shake his hand, and give him a hug. He then turned to the group of clinic escorts and said, “What are you doing to restrict their First Amendment rights today?” When law enforcement refuses to take anti-abortion harassment and violence seriously, even if it’s only in certain cities, it signals their tolerance of that behavior. But it’s not just law enforcement––our cultural complacency around anti-abortion terrorism has helped normalize what should be unthinkable. The image of sweet grandmothers quietly praying the rosary and polite teenagers, standing alone with a gentle sign (a la Juno) belie the very real aggression and violence that has always existed. Under the Trump administration, clinics have reported receiving an increasing number of harassment, threats, and violence. As a clinic escort myself, I’ve seen the rhetoric and behavior outside the clinic shift, with harsher, more openly racist rhetoric from increasingly angry men wearing a mix of “Abortion is Murder” T-shirts and “Make America Great Again” red hats. It’s no coincidence that at the same time, white nationalist groups have risen by 55% over the last few years, emboldened by a President who called them “very fine people” after rioting in Charlottesville. If you asked yourself, “How did this happen? Where did these people come from?” while watching the riot unfold, ask yourself another question: When was the last time you saw what was happening outside an abortion clinic? When was the last time you really paid attention? When was the last time you just ignored someone spouting well-known falsehoods about abortion, about Black Lives Matter, about the results of the 2020 election? We hear so much about “breaking out of our siloes,” but we don’t have to excuse right-wing extremism to see it happening. At the very least, we have to start acknowledging that it’s happening, that it’s been happening, and many of us just haven’t cared enough to speak up because it didn’t affect us. Until it did. Conspiracy theories and outlandish rhetoric aren’t without consequences, particularly when encouraged by those in power. In 2015, anti-abortion extremists launched a highly visible smear campaign against Planned Parenthood, featuring doctored videos that accused the organization of illegally selling fetal body parts. It was absurd and completely untrue, but that didn’t stop Congressional Republicans from embracing the conspiracy theory, decrying Planned Parenthood, and opening an investigation into the organization. Just a few months later, Robert Dear opened fire on a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs, killing three people, including a security guard. Dear confessed that he was “upset with them performing abortions and the selling of baby parts,” a direct reference to the cooked-up, anti-abortion smear campaign — a conspiracy theory that certainly has echoes in other far-right conspiracies like QAnon. President Trump has been booted off various social media platforms, but he doesn’t need a Twitter account to continue to fuel the the same kinds of wild conspiracy theories that led Robert Dear to murder three people. He doesn’t need a video on Facebook to incite his supporters to ever-more rabid and racist violence. The coup attempt at the Capitol wasn’t inevitable––it was entirely preventable. But not without a justice system that prioritizes the rights and lives of the marginalized. Not with police officers who pose for selfies and even join the insurrectionist riot. Not with city officials ignoring credible bomb threats. Not without each of us decrying right-wing fascism and violence, no matter who the target may be. Like what you see? How about some more R29 goodness, right here?The FBI Knew About The Capitol Riot BeforehandIvanka Trump Called Capitol Attackers "Patriots"Congresspeople Are Testing Positive For COVID-19
Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner are making Florida their new home base after they exit from Washington, D.C. life next week, but their new neighbors aren't exactly rolling out the welcome mat. Indian Creek Country Club, a swanky place for the elite to hang out, isn't interested in having Ivanka and Jared as members. Becoming […]
Tam Pham was an 18-year veteran of the Houston Police Department. He told the Houston Chronicle he was only there to take photos.
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