TOKYO – Japan’s leaders believed they had found a way to live with the coronavirus and keep the economy open, relying on widespread mask-wearing and sensible precautions without resorting to mandatory lockdowns.
On Thursday, with the limits of that approach becoming clear as the country’s outbreak spirals out of control, Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga reluctantly declared a state of emergency in the Tokyo area.
“This global infectious disease has exceeded our imagination and it’s becoming a severe fight,” Suga said at a news conference. To overcome the situation, he added, “we need to ask people to have a limited lifestyle.”
The measures include asking restaurants and bars to close early, requesting residents to refrain from non-urgent outings, and limiting attendance at sports and other events to 5,000 people, at least until Feb. 7.
But medical experts are already expressing concern that the measures will be too little, too late to quickly contain the virus – meaning they will have to remain in place for longer. Adding to the worry, the Olympics are scheduled to open in Tokyo in under 200 days.
Japan’s coronavirus caseload and deaths have been much lower than in the United States or Europe, but a surge in cases since November is threatening to overwhelm health services. The country had just over 6,000 new cases on Wednesday, a record, with the cumulative death toll surpassing 3,600.
The irony is that the Japanese public behaved responsibly early in the pandemic, with mask use widespread and social contact dramatically reduced without the threat of legal penalties. Japanese scientists were also ahead of the curve in identifying and warning against high-risk situations, stressing the need to avoid crowded and poorly ventilated spaces.
But the government has been reluctant to take measures that would harm the economy.
A nationwide state of emergency in April and May suppressed infections but didn’t eliminate them, and when the government pivoted to introduce a massive subsidy program to encourage domestic tourism and dining out, the virus roared back.
By November, it was apparent the travel subsidies were helping to spread the virus around the country, but officials resisted calls from medical experts and the general public to end the program – until an abrupt U-turn in late December.
The government’s efforts to avoid total lockdown may have lessened the short-term pain but prolonged the pain. Many here look at Japan’s neighbors, from Taiwan to South Korea, Vietnam and Thailand, and see governments that have shown more determination to bring the virus under control and have benefited economically and in lower death tolls.
Suga, who took office in September, has suffered a plunge in his popularity as he appeared to dither in the face of an unfolding crisis.
“The government’s responses have been slow and tepid,” the Asahi Shimbun said in an editorial this week. “There is no disputing the fact that the ‘wait and see and hope for the best’ approach adopted by both the central and local governments has helped to create the current dismal situation.”
At the same time, a sense of complacency set in that Japan could dodge the worst of the virus.
But wearing masks outdoors, while removing them in packed bars and restaurants, was never going to work. Suga now admits that dining out has become a major source of virus transmission.
“People behaved very well, and they did whatever they could during the first and second waves to cope with the situation,” said Kenji Shibuya, director of the Institute for Population Health at King’s College, London. “But now, because of this lack of strategy and leadership – and confusing messages – I think people are a bit confused.”
Under the new rules, restaurants in the Greater Tokyo area, the epicenter of the latest virus wave, have been asked to close at 8 p.m. and stop serving alcohol at 7 p.m. Businesses are again being asked to encourage working from home, with the government hoping to reduce the number of employees in offices by 70 percent.
Schools will remain open, albeit with tougher precautions to limit virus transmission.
To increase compliance, Suga says the government aims to revise legislation that will combine compensation for businesses that comply with virus guidelines with financial penalties for those that do not.
But it’s not clear if the measures will be enough to placate a pandemic-weary public.
“The worst thing is to pretend to be doing something by declaring a watered-down emergency,” Kentaro Iwata, an infectious-disease expert at Kobe University, tweeted this week.
Professional sports resumed in front of large crowds last year, albeit with venues at half capacity and spectators asked to wear masks and refrain from shouting and cheering. On Monday, more than 24,000 people attended the end-of-season game in Japan’s soccer league in the new National Stadium, the venue for the Opening Ceremony for the Summer Olympics in July.
WASHINGTON – After supporters of President Donald Trump descended on the U.S. Capitol building, hoping to stop the counting of electoral college votes, lawmakers and experts alike repeated a phrase to describe the violent mob: “domestic terrorists.”
“Those who performed these reprehensible acts cannot be called protesters; no, these were rioters and insurrectionists, goons and thugs, domestic terrorists,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said in a speech after lawmakers reconvened. “They do not represent America.”
“What happened today was domestic terrorism,” GOP spokesman Michael Ahrens tweeted. “Our soldiers have died carrying the American flag into battle for our freedom. To see that flag used in the name of unfounded conspiracy theories is a disgrace to the nation, and every decent American should be disgusted by it.”
Members of both political parties pointed to the destruction of government property, threats to law enforcement and two explosive devices found near the Capitol as acts of terrorism as far-right extremist groups rallied in the nation’s capital to contest the results of the presidential election. In the media, CNN executives told the organization’s journalists that they could refer to the siege as “domestic terrorism.”
National security experts agreed with that assessment, comparing the aggressive takeover of the federal landmark to the FBI’s definition of domestic terrorism: “Violent, criminal acts committed by individuals and/or groups to further ideological goals stemming from domestic influences, such as those of a political, religious, social, racial, or environmental nature.”
The FBI, which is investigating the violence, declined to comment when asked if the raid was considered domestic terrorism.
But the agency has acknowledged that homegrown violent extremism has become an increasingly prevalent threat, especially in the past four years.
“A majority of the domestic terrorism cases that we’ve investigated are motivated by some version of what you might call white supremacy, but it includes other things as well,” FBI Director Christopher Wray told Congress in 2019.
In April, the State Department designated the Russian Imperial Movement as “Specially Designated Global Terrorists,” the first time in history the government classified a white supremacist group as a terrorist threat.
Even members of groups that have publicly supported Trump, such as the Proud Boys and the “boogaloo” movement, have faced prosecution after last summer’s unrest.
But the violence Wednesday indicates how anti-government, white supremacy and other far-right groups are still able to subvert law enforcement, even as their plans were widely shared on social media. Despite the masses that breached the Capitol, only 52 arrests were made, according to D.C. police.
“The fact that the planning to assault the Capitol happened in public shows the bankruptcy of the intelligence apparatus that has been built since 9/11,” Michael German, a former FBI special agent and Brennan Center for Justice’s Liberty and National Security Program fellow, told The Post.
The United States has no domestic terrorism statute, and concerns that the government could infringe on citizens’ constitutional protections of speech and assembly have hampered the ability to respond to threats, experts say.
Recent intelligence assessments focusing on Black and environmental rights extremists have allowed some white supremacy and anti-government groups to act with impunity, German said.
“That has conditioned them to believe they are authorized to act this way,” he said. “So it’s not surprising at all that you would see people who aren’t covering their faces, aren’t trying to hide their identity, attacking police officers and invading and vandalizing the Capitol and disrupting our democracy in the process.”
After the largely White mob was allowed to leave the Capitol mostly unscathed, Black Lives Matter protesters compared the police treatment with their own confrontations with law enforcement.
The unrest could also encourage further violence, experts warned.
On their social media channels, white supremacists and neo-Nazi groups have celebrated the disruption of the election process, said Colin Clarke, a senior research fellow at the Soufan Center, a nonprofit think tank focused on global security issues. In one meme posted on Telegram, an app used by these fringe groups, the woman who died after she was shot in the Capitol building is lauded and compared to a photo of a Black person instigating violence.
“I truly think that the imagery that we’re seeing already today from the Capitol is going to serve as critical propaganda for militia groups, for neo-Nazis and for far-right extremist groups,” Clarke said. “I think what they gained today was so valuable for this movement.”
Clarke said the groups have grown online in recent years with the spread of conspiracy theories, and Trump’s recent baseless claims that the election was stolen has further enraged them.
After the election, Clarke warned in an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times that Trump’s rhetoric could encourage a “sizable minority” that the government is illegitimate – a catalyst for past uprisings internationally.
“I’ve seen this play out in other countries,” he told The Post. “I’m just shocked to see now playing out in my country.”
WASHINGTON – On the House floor early on Thursday, hours after a violent, pro-Trump mob burst into the Capitol, Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., expressed his anger at the perpetrators. But Gaetz wasn’t pointing the finger at fellow Trump supporters – instead, he suggested that members of antifa had secretly infiltrated the group to cause the chaos.
Citing a widely contested article published by the Washington Times, Gaetz admitted that he does not know “if the reports are true.” But, he said to audible boos, “some of the people who breached the Capitol today were not Trump supporters. They were masquerading as Trump supporters and in fact, were members of the violent terrorist group antifa.”
In fact, many of the Trump supporters who stormed into Capitol openly boasted about their participation, live-streaming as they forced their way past police and bashed the building’s doors and windows.
Yet Gaetz wasn’t alone. Across social media and conservative-leaning TV stations, some right-wing figures peddled the similar claim that the loose collective of far-left activists were responsible for the riots, as The Washington Post’s Jeremy Barr reported.
There is no verifiable evidence that these activists, who broadly identify as anti-fascist, formed part of the insurrectionist mob that abruptly halted Congress in the midst of certifying President-elect Joe Biden’s electoral victory. Earlier that morning, President Donald Trump incited his supporters during a speech outside the White House , telling them they should never accept defeat.
But Trump and his allies have long sought to blame antifa – an ideology, not an organized group, according to the FBI – for any violence tied to protests, though there’s been virtually no evidence to back up those claims.
As conspiracy theories quickly spread online about the Capitol breach as a “false flag operation,” conducted by left-wing activists to cast blame on Trump supporters, Rep. Paul A. Gosar, R-Ariz., took to Twitter to point fingers.
“This has all the hallmarks of antifa provocation,” he wrote, about three hours after the incident went down.
Plenty of other GOP lawmakers followed. Speaking to Fox Business’s Lou Dobbs on Wednesday night, Rep. Mo Brooks, R-Ala., said “there is some indication that fascist antifa elements were involved, that they embedded themselves in the Trump protests.”
Offering no evidence to back his claims, Brooks said the rioters “could be any other number of groups, anarchists or what have you, that could have taken advantage of this opportunity to vandalize the United States Capitol.”
Shannon Grove, the Republican leader in the California state Senate, tweeted and then deleted a post putting the blame on antifa. “Patriots don’t act like this!!” she wrote, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. “This was antifa.”
The Washington Times report cited by Gaetz and others claimed that a “retired military officer” had sent the newspaper a facial recognition analysis of rioters by a technology firm called XRVision. That company, whose website is nearly nonexistent, did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Post.
Those claims were echoed by an unsupported story by the conspiracy-hawking, right-wing site Gateway Pundit, claiming that “at least 1 bus load of antifa thugs infiltrated peaceful Trump demonstrators as part of a false Trump flag ops.”
On Trump-friendly networks, too, several hosts gave airtime to that unsubstantiated theory.
Fox News host Laura Ingraham said Wednesday that the rioters “were likely not all Trump supporters.” She alluded to unspecified “reports” of involvement by antifa and claimed that the insurrectionists’ wardrobe choices were suspicious.
On Newsmax, a cable channel that has won favor with the president for endorsing his baseless claims of a stolen election, Trump supporter and MyPillow founder Mike Lindell claimed “there were probably some undercover antifa people that dressed as Trump people.”
Amnesty International has condemned US President Donald Trump for instigating the violent storming of the Capitol building on Wednesday, calling it a “moment of reckoning for the United States”.
At least four people died as rioters invaded Congress in Washington, shortly after Trump held a rally nearby to protest results of the presidential election won by his Democrat rival Joe Biden.
In his speech, subsequent audio recording and tweets, Trump continued to reject the US election results and incite his supporters – leading thousands to storm and breach the US Capitol, said the rights watchdog.
“President Trump’s refusal to facilitate a peaceful transfer of power has put human rights, public safety and the rule of law at grave risk in the United States,” said Amnesty International USA’s executive director Bob Goodfellow.
“The president’s embrace of white supremacist groups and extremists has further fanned the flames of the chaos and violence we witnessed [on Wednesday],” said Goodfellow. He called on all US officials to respect and protect human rights, including the right to be free from violence, intimidation and racism.
“Across the world, we have witnessed the dire consequences of government officials who spread false information and incite racist or political violence to stay in power. The world is watching, and so are our more than 10 million supporters and members.”
Amnesty said Trump has repeatedly encouraged violence and disorder by his supporters. “These are not the actions of a leader, but an instigator. All public officials must condemn the president’s words,” said Goodfellow.
Trump promises ‘orderly transition’ to Biden administration, one day after inciting mob to storm Capitol
InternationalJan 07. 2021President Donald Trump leaves the White House on his way to a rally in Georgia on Monday, Jan. 4, 2021. MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo by Bill O’Leary
By The Washington Post · Antonia Noori Farzan
President Donald Trump early Thursday pledged “an orderly transition on January 20,” acknowledging for the first time that he will be leaving office in less than two weeks but stopping short of conceding to President-elect Joe Biden.
The pledge for an orderly passage of power came just one day after a pro-Trump mob, incited by the president, stormed the Capitol and disrupted the certification of Biden’s victory. With Trump still suspended from Twitter over his role in the unrest, he issued the statement through spokesman Dan Scavino minutes after Vice President Pence affirmed that Biden will be president.
“Even though I totally disagree with the outcome of the election, and the facts bear me out, nevertheless there will be an orderly transition on January 20,” said Trump, echoing his baseless claims that the results were not legitimate. “I have always said we would continue our fight to ensure that only legal votes were counted. While this represents the end of the greatest first term in presidential history, it’s only the beginning of our fight to Make America Great Again.”
Trump’s acknowledgment that his presidency will soon end followed a day like no other in modern history, which saw Trump supporters scaling walls and pushing their way past law enforcement officers to force their way into the U.S. Capitol.
The tallying of electoral college votes, ordinarily an uneventful affair, had to be put on hold while lawmakers fled to safely. By the time Trump told the mob to “go home now,” one woman had been fatally shot and multiple police officers had been injured. Three others in the mob died of unspecified medical emergencies.
The violent riot prompted some Republican senators who had planned to challenge the election results to change heart, and tallying the electoral college votes went relatively smoothly after a joint session of the House and Senate resumed late Wednesday. Though some GOP senators disputed election results from Pennsylvania and Arizona, both challenges failed and Vice President Mike Pence officially affirmed Biden’s win in the early hours of Thursday morning.
“The announcement of the state of the vote by the president of the Senate shall be deemed a sufficient declaration as persons elected president and vice president of the United States,” Pence said.
As critics pointed out, Trump’s statement following the electoral college vote notably failed to congratulate or even mention Biden.
Trump has repeatedly refused to concede the election over the past two months, at times suggesting that he might remain in the White House after Jan. 20. Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris will be inaugurated on Jan. 20 at noon.
Senior officials have discussed removing Trump under the 25th Amendment. Here’s how that could work.
InternationalJan 07. 2021Vice President Mike Pence. MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo by Melina Mara.
By The Washington Post · Tim Elfrink
Hours after a pro-Trump mob incited by the president stormed the Capitol, dozens of Democrats demanded that he be removed under the 25th Amendment – an unprecedented option being seriously discussed late Wednesday by senior administration officials alarmed at Trump’s conduct.
The amendment, which can remove a president “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office,” has only been used briefly for medical events, as when President Ronald Reagan underwent colon surgery.
But some politicians and experts argue that Trump has met those standards by encouraging violence through his incendiary rhetoric and by refusing to accept the reality of his defeat.
“President Trump revealed that he is not mentally sound and is unable to process and accept the results of the 2020 election,” Democratic members of the House Judiciary Committee wrote to Vice President Mike Pence on Wednesday. “President Trump’s willingness to invite violence and social unrest to overturn the election results by force clearly meet this standard.”
Although the amendment has never been used in these circumstances, some experts say it could provide a faster and more realistic path than impeachment to quickly remove Trump from power. That would all depend, though, on the backing of Pence and the Cabinet.
So how would it work?
The amendment, which was ratified in 1967 after concerns about the order of succession after John F. Kennedy’s assassination, would allow Pence and a majority of the Cabinet to declare that Trump is unfit for duty. They would then send a letter to Congress about their decision.
At that moment, said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the University of California at Berkeley’s School of Law, Pence would assume the powers of the presidency. If Trump were in a coma or otherwise incapacitated, Pence would keep that power indefinitely.
But the amendment also gives Trump the power to object by writing his own letter to Congress – an action that would immediately restore his powers. If that happened, though, Pence and the full Cabinet would have four days overrule him. (There’s no agreement on who would be in power for those four days, The Washington Post’s Philip Bump reported. The amendment is unclear and would likely have to be tested in court.)
If Pence and the Cabinet did overrule Trump, Congress would be called on to decide the dispute. Pence would remain in power in the meantime.
That’s where the timing gets interesting. The amendment orders Congress to convene within 48 hours to decide on whether to boot the president – but then it gives lawmakers 21 days to make a decision.
Affirming Pence’s move would require a two-thirds majority of both the House and Senate. That’s an unlikely result, considering a majority of House Republicans voted early on Thursday to back Trump’s electoral objections.
But if the House and Senate leadership simply stalled the vote, they could effectively run out the clock on Trump’s term, leaving Pence in charge until President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration on Jan. 20, Chemerinsky said.
“Pence would be the president for that time,” he said.
Impeachment, by contrast, would be extraordinarily difficult to push through the House and a Senate trial by Jan. 20, Chemerinsky said. (Unlike impeachment, the 25th Amendment can’t actually remove Trump from office – instead, it would delegate his powers to Pence.)
That’s not to say that Pence or the Cabinet would ever embrace removing Trump under the 25th Amendment. While senior aides did discuss the option on Wednesday, those talks were informal and no concrete plans were in the works, The Washington Post reported.
If the aim is to avoid further violence and turmoil, Pence and the Cabinet would have to weigh whether removing Trump early would actually accomplish that, Chemerinsky said.
“Do they perceive Trump as so dangerous in the next 13 days that he needs to be gone immediately?” Chemerinsky said. “Or do they think this would just divide the country even further and make him into a martyr?”
Congress affirms Biden’s presidential win following riot at U.S. Capitol
InternationalJan 07. 2021Damage inside the U.S. Capitol left by pro-Trump protesters on January 6, 2021 in Washington. MUST CREDIT: Photo for The Washington Post by Oliver Contreras
By The Washington Post · Rosalind S. Helderman, Karoun Demirjian, Seung Min Kim, Mike DeBonis
WASHINGTON – Members of Congress, shaken and angry following a violent assault on the U.S. Capitol by a mob of President Donald Trump’s supporters, put a final stamp on President-elect Joe Biden’s victory early Thursday morning and brought an end to a historically turbulent post-election period.
Republicans had at one point planned to object to the electoral college votes in a series of states won by Biden, but after the storming of the Capitol, several GOP senators changed course, disputing only Arizona and Pennsylvania. Both challenges failed.
Shortly after Congress affirmed Biden’s win, Trump pledged an “an orderly transition.” The statement, tweeted by White House social media director Dan Scavino as Trump remained locked out of his own Twitter account, stops short of conceding or congratulating Biden.
“Even though I totally disagree with the outcome of the election, and the facts bear me out, nevertheless there will be an orderly transition on January 20th,” Trump said, noting that Congress’s action “represents the end of the greatest first term in presidential history.”
In the final moments of the joint session, Senate Chaplain Barry Black said a prayer lamenting “the desecration of the United States Capitol building, the shedding of innocent blood, the loss of life and the quagmire of dysfunction that threaten our democracy,” and Vice President Mike Pence gaveled the meeting to a close, as the Democrats present gave only a half-hearted show of applause.
The lawmakers convened Wednesday evening, after hours of delay, in a show of defiance. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she had consulted with fellow congressional leaders, the Pentagon, the Justice Department and Pence before concluding that Congress should move ahead with the ceremony interrupted earlier in the day by rioters provoked to action by Trump at a morning rally.
“Today, a shameful assault was made on our democracy. It was anointed at the highest level of government. It cannot, however, deter us from our responsibility to validate the election of Joe Biden,” wrote Pelosi, D-Calif.
As lawmakers returned to work following the riot, the tone of the debate turned more somber and impassioned than before the interruption, with a number of Republicans who had planned to slow the proceedings with objections announcing they would stand aside.
“To those who wreaked havoc in our Capitol today, you did not win. Violence never wins. Freedom wins. This is still the people’s house,” Pence said as he formally reopened the Senate.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said the rioters had tried to disrupt democracy. “They failed,” he said.
Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, earned sustained applause from his colleagues for a thundering speech in which he said elected leaders should show respect for voters by telling them the truth, not fueling groundless doubts about the election.
“We gather due to a selfish man’s injured pride and the outrage of supporters who he has deliberately misinformed for the past two months and stirred to action this very morning,” Romney said. “What happened here today was an insurrection incited by the president of the United States.”
At one point early Thursday morning, the raw emotions nearly sparked a physical confrontation after Rep. Conor Lamb, R-La., accused Republicans of peddling falsehoods about election fraud.
“That that attack today, it didn’t materialize out of nowhere,” Lamb said. “It was inspired by lies – the same lies that you’re hearing in this room tonight.”
That sparked an exchange of words between Republicans and Democrats sitting behind Lamb that nearly led to blows before aides intervened.
Both chambers picked up Wednesday night where they had left off before the evacuation, considering a challenge to Biden’s 11 electoral votes in Arizona. The Senate rejected the challenge by 93 to 6 and the House by 303 to 121.
House members also objected when Pence read the tallies from Georgia, Michigan and Nevada, but those challenges died when no senators joined them.
After midnight, however, a challenge to Pennsylvania’s count, joined by Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., prompted the two chambers to consider that state’s electoral vote. The Senate did not even debate before voting 92 to 7 to reject the challenge, while the House debated the full two hours ahead of a 282 to 138 vote of rejection.
Lawmakers then moved to reconvene the joint session and complete the counting of the remaining states, setting up a final confirmation of Biden’s victory at 3:45 a.m. – nearly 21 hours after the proceedings began.
Earlier in the day, the ceremonial reading of the electoral votes had just begun when pro-Trump rioters rushed the building at around 2 p.m., forcing the evacuation of both chambers of Congress. For hours, rioters rampaged through the Capitol complex. One woman was fatally shot in the building.
Only after the D.C. National Guard had been activated and political leaders in both parties condemned the rioting and appealed for calm did authorities declare the Capitol was secure.
The day had always been expected to be a historic test of the democratic system, with dozens of Republicans attempting for the first time to use Congress’s previously ceremonial role to try to overturn the results of a popular vote. The process was already underway when Jon Ossoff was declared the winner of one of two Senate runoffs in Georgia, handing control of the upper chamber to the Democrats for the next two years.
Still, the outcome of the congressional proceedings had been clear from the start, particularly after Pence announced he would reject pleas from the president to use his role as the session’s presiding officer to hand a win to Trump.
McConnell, who also had said little publicly about the process before Wednesday, likewise delivered a stirring opening floor speech imploring his colleagues not to damage democracy by objecting to the votes.
“Voters, the courts, and the states have all spoken – they’ve all spoken. If we overrule them, it would damage our republic forever,” he said.
The tense day turned to chaos when pro-Trump rioters, stirred up at a rally where the president called for them to march on the Capitol, stormed the building and caused the proceedings to be halted for hours.
The violence shocked leaders in both parties. While lawmakers huddled in an undisclosed location during the siege, Republican leaders pressed their members to abandon their plans to challenge the electoral vote. Several senators said they would no longer object, notably Sen. Kelly Loeffler, R-Ga., who had embraced the challenge as part of the hard-fought Senate election she lost Tuesday. “The events that have transpired today have forced me to reconsider,” she said.
Democrats and some outside groups began calling Wednesday for Trump to be either quickly impeached by Congress or removed from office via the 25th Amendment to the Constitution, which guides the handling of an incapacitated president, in an effort to lessen his ability to incite more violence.
Several hours after his supporters had broken into the Capitol, Trump tweeted and released a video calling on them to respect law enforcement. But he also repeated lies about the election being stolen from him.
Late in the day, he tweeted that “these are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots.” The tweet was quickly removed by Twitter, which also for the first time announced that Trump’s account would be locked until he deleted the tweet and then for 12 hours. Facebook and Instagram quickly said they also would lock Trump out of their platforms for 24 hours.
The congressional process was supposed to be a mere procedural checkpoint on the way to Biden’s oath-taking later this month. Biden won the popular vote on Nov. 3 and, last month, the electoral college met in each state capital, as stipulated in the U.S. Constitution. Biden won 306 electoral votes to Trump’s 232.
All that was left before the inauguration later this month was for a joint session of Congress to gather Wednesday and read those votes aloud.
According to an 1887 law that governs the process, any member of the House of Representatives, joined by a senator, can object to an individual state’s electoral tally, prompting a two-hour debate, followed by a vote in each chamber. A majority of both the House and Senate would have had to back a challenge for any to prevail, and Trump’s supporters did not have the votes.
Dozens of Republicans in the House, joined by 13 GOP Senators, had said they intended to object to slates of electors from several swing states that had backed Biden. They cited as their reason baseless allegations of fraud fanned by Trump, and the resulting belief among many Republicans that the election was compromised.
For days leading up to Wednesday, Trump had also pressed Pence, whom the Constitution requires to preside over the ceremony, to refuse to recognize electoral college slates from swing states that backed Biden.
Shortly before he took the gavel, however, Pence released a three-page letter he had written to members of Congress, rejecting Trump’s pleas.
“It is my considered judgment that my oath to support and defend the Constitution constrains me from claiming unilateral authority to determine which electoral votes should be counted and which should not,” he wrote.
A senior administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations, said Pence’s decision caused Trump to rage all afternoon even as the crowds were breaking into the Capitol, telling aides that Pence had betrayed him. Pence said he would merely preside over the reading of tallies that had been forwarded by the states. And then he opened the session, beginning alphabetically with the reading of votes from Alabama and Alaska, both of which backed Trump.
When Biden’s votes from Arizona were read aloud, Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., joined Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, to object.
At that point, the House and Senate retreated to their respective chambers to debate the challenge, with Pence presiding over the Senate and Pelosi overseeing the House.
For nearly 30 minutes, the process ran largely as expected. McConnell pleaded for Republicans not to heed Trump’s call to object to the results.
“If this election were overturned by mere allegations from the losing side, our democracy would enter a death spiral,” he said, calling the vote the most important in his 36 years in the Senate.
Cruz insisted he was seeking only a 10-day audit of the results and not necessarily to overturn the election.
His remarks ignored that more than 90 state and federal judges, including jurists appointed by both Democrats and Republicans, have considered and rejected claims of fraud or other irregularities since the election.
But before debate in either chamber could get truly rolling, protesters – who had been attending a rally where Trump spoke and urged them to march on the Capitol – broke into the building and stormed the chambers, causing both the House and Senate to recess. As chaos erupted and Pence and Pelosi were hustled to secure locations, Republican Sens. Ben Sasse of Nebraska and Mike Rounds of South Dakota helped the parliamentarians grab the election certificates and take them to the secure location.
Constitutional experts said nothing in the law prevented Congress from picking up the ceremony where it left off. Even if for some reason it was unable to complete that process by Jan. 20, the Constitution is clear: The president’s term ends at noon that day.
“The idea that individuals were allowed to derail one of our most solemn sacred constitutional processes is horrifying. But this is only going to delay for a bit the completion of the process,” said Rick Pildes, a constitutional law professor at New York University School of Law.
If for some reason Congress were not able to confirm the electoral college vote between now and Inauguration Day, Pelosi would become acting president.
“What we absolutely know is that at noon on Jan. 20, the current term of both President Trump and Vice President Pence end,” said Edward Foley, a law professor at Ohio State University.
Trump supporters storm U.S. Capitol, with one woman killed, three more dead and tear gas fired
InternationalJan 07. 2021Supporters of President Donald Trump gather Wednesday near the White House with a spillover crowd extending to the Washington Monument. MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo by Matt McClain
By The Washington Post · Rebecca Tan, Peter Jamison, Meagan Flynn, John Woodrow Cox
WASHINGTON – As President Donald Trump told a sprawling crowd outside the White House that they should never accept defeat, hundreds of his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol in what amounted to an attempted coup that they hoped would overturn the election he lost. In the chaos, law enforcement officials said, a California woman was shot and killed by Capitol Police and three people died of medical emergencies.
The violent scene – much of it incited by the president’s incendiary language – was like no other in modern American history, bringing to a sudden halt the congressional certification of Joe Biden’s electoral victory.
With poles bearing blue Trump flags, a mob that would eventually grow into the thousands bashed through Capitol doors and windows, forcing their way past police officers unprepared for the onslaught. Lawmakers were evacuated shortly before an armed standoff at the House chamber’s entrance. The woman who was shot, 35-year-old Ashli Babbitt of San Diego, was rushed to an ambulance, police said, and later died. Canisters of tear gas were fired across the Rotunda’s white marble floor, and on the steps outside the building, rioters flew Confederate flags.
“USA! USA!” chanted the would-be saboteurs of a 244-year-old democracy.
The Senate stopped its proceedings, and the House doors were closed. In a notification, U.S. Capitol Police said no one would be allowed to come or go from the building as they struggled to regain control. “Stay away from exterior windows, doors. If outside, seek cover,” police warned.
All 1,100 members of the D.C. National Guard were activated, and Mayor Muriel Bowser, a Democrat, imposed a citywide curfew. From 6 p.m. Wednesday to 6 a.m. Thursday, Bowser said, no one other than essential personnel would be allowed outdoors in the city.
The mob had arrived hours earlier, charging past the metal barricades on the property’s outer edge. Hundreds, then thousands followed them. Some scaled the Capitol’s walls to reach entrances; others climbed over one another.
On the building’s east side, police initially pushed the pro-Trump demonstrators back but soon gave up and fell back to the foot of the main steps. Within a half-hour, fights broke out again, and police retreated to the top of the stairs as screaming Trump supporters surged closer. After the police perimeters were breached, the elated crowd began to sing the national anthem.
For an hour, they banged on the doors, chanting, “Let us in! Let us in!” Police inside fired pepper balls and smoke bombs into the crowd but failed to turn them away. After each volley, the rioters, who were mostly White men, would cluster around the doors again, yelling, arguing, pledging revolution.
Sometime after 2:10 p.m., a man used a clear plastic riot shield to break through the windows on a first floor to the south side of the building, then hopped in with a few others. Once inside, police suspect, rioters opened doors to let in more of their compatriots.
A Capitol Police officer shouted from a higher stairway at the intruders, yelling at them to stop, but when they didn’t, the officer fired at a man coming at him, two law enforcement officials said. Amid shouts and people rushing to get away from the sound of gunfire, protesters saw a woman in their group collapse. Police believe she was unarmed, a law enforcement official said, but the officer who shot her did not know that. Capitol Police had already been warned by D.C. police that many protesters were secretly carrying weapons.
“They shot a girl!” someone yelled as a group of Trump supporters ran out of the southeast entrance.
A team of paramedics with a gurney soon arrived and a Capitol Police officer stepped aside to let them pass. “White female, shot in the shoulder,” the officer said as they hurried past. They emerged minutes later.
On the gurney was a woman in jeans, gazing vacantly to one side, her torso and face covered in blood. As the gurney was loaded into the back of the ambulance, pro-Trump protesters swarmed around it, screaming, “Murderers!”
Capitol Police officers with long guns pushed the rioters back, and the ambulance drove off.
Babbitt was shot while trying to climb through a broken window in an area behind the House chamber. Her ex-husband confirmed her death Wednesday night.
Three other people died of medical emergencies, D.C. Police Chief Robert Contee said in a Wednesday-night news conference.
The people’s names, and the circumstances of their deaths, were not released during the news conference with Contee and Bowser.
Also at the news conference, Bowser declared a public emergency in the city until Jan. 21, to improve security “through the inauguration.” The declaration gives her more authority to draw on resources to maintain city security. Inauguration Day is scheduled for Jan. 20.
Bowser called the attack on the Capitol an “affront on our American democracy” and implored city residents to abide by the city’s curfew.
“I urge anyone who is not in place in your home or your hotel – and if you mean to cause trouble in the streets of D.C. you will be arrested,” she said.
Bowser blamed the president for the rioting.
“We saw an unprecedented attack on our American Democracy incited by the United States president,” Bowser said. “He must be held accountable. His constant and divisive rhetoric led to the abhorrent actions we saw today.”
Contee said 14 D.C. officers were injured. One was pulled into a crowd, assaulted and hospitalized. Another received “significant facial injuries” after being hit by a projectile. Others are not as serious.
Contee said police had made at least 52 arrests: four for carrying pistols without licenses, one arrest for possession of a prohibited weapon and 47 arrests for curfew violations and unlawful entry. Twenty-six of the 52 arrests were made on Capitol grounds, Contee said.
The chief also confirmed that police recovered two pipe bombs at the Democratic National Committee and Republican National Committee offices. A cooler that contained molotov cocktails was also found on Capitol grounds, the chief said. Bowser said officials will review video and issue alerts for people who breached the Capitol, adding that they “need to be held accountable for the carnage.”
Contee also said in the news conference that D.C. police had participated in “several planning meetings with Capitol Police” and other agencies to plan for protests on Wednesday. He said Capitol Police called for help at 1 p.m. because of “significant activity” outside the Capitol and that “we immediately deployed platoons to assist the Capitol Police.”
During the siege in the Capitol, where lawmakers had donned gas masks kept under their chairs, Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., could only think of his family as he and other lawmakers hid from the mob. Reeling from the loss of his 25-year-old son last week, Raskin had taken one of his daughters and his son-in-law to the Capitol to watch the debates unfold over certification of Biden’s election, he said, “because we wanted to be together.” Raskin was helping lead Democrats’ arguments against Republican objectors.
“I thought I could show them the peaceful transfer of power in the United States of America,” Raskin told C-SPAN earlier. “What was really going through my mind was their safety because they were not with me in the chamber, and I just wanted us all to get back together.”
Rep. Abigail Spanberger, D-Va., said members were told that chemical irritants had been released in Statuary Hall and, for a moment, braced for the possibility that they would be exposed to tear gas. Capitol Police barricaded the doors with tables and bookshelves.
Spanberger, a former CIA case officer, said that it was a crisis she would only expect to see unfold in fragile, faraway places.
“This is what we see in failing countries,” she said. “This is what leads to a death of democracy.”
The shooting and the breach triggered an instant call for help across Washington to other law enforcement agencies. At the U.S. Secret Service, headquarters sent out an emergency alert to all gun-carrying Secret Service personnel to report to headquarters in preparation to help secure the Capitol.
Meanwhile, dozens of other rioters streamed into the building, where they smashed windows and vandalized offices.
“MURDER THE MEDIA,” read a message written on one door.
“WE WILL NOT BACK DOWN,” read another left in the office of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., who also refused to back down, later directing her colleagues to return and finish validating Biden’s victory.
Rep. Karen Bass, a Democrat from California, shared a photo on Twitter of a long-haired man in a Trump hat carrying a rostrum adorned with the gold-colored seal of the speaker.
“Arrest this man,” she demanded.
At 3:30 p.m., more law enforcement in riot gear arrived at the Capitol.
“Traitors,” Trump supporters shouted. “What’s your oath?”
Biden condemned what he called an “unprecedented assault” on American democracy, “unlike anything we’ve seen in modern times.”
“This is not dissent. It’s disorder. It’s chaos,” he said. “It borders on sedition, and it must end now.”
For hours, Trump made little effort to quell the violence he had helped instigate, finally sharing a video at 4:17 p.m. in which he told people to “go home” – while continuing to promote the falsehood that he had won the election.
“We love you,” he told them. “You’re very special.”
The Capitol has been the target of violence before. In 1954, Puerto Rican nationalists opened fire from a House gallery, injuring five lawmakers on the floor below. In 1971, a bomb planted by a radical left-wing group exploded, though no one was harmed. In 1998, a gunman opened fire, killing two Capitol Police officers. But not since the British set fire to the Capitol in 1814 has a mob overrun the ultimate symbol of American freedom.
At about 8:30 p.m., just more than an hour after hundreds of law enforcement officers had at last finished clearing the mob and removing Trump flags left inside the building, heavily armed FBI agents and police officers in riot gear escorted lawmakers back to work.
D.C. police had arrested 13 people by early evening, they said, including three in possession of firearms. About 6 p.m., a man was stabbed at 12th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue NW, near Freedom Plaza, though it was unclear whether the attack was related to the demonstrations.
At the Capitol, those who had made it inside took on a celebrity status when they came back out. A woman who said she had footage on her phone of Capitol Police pointing guns at rioters was circled by dozens who wanted to see it. People traded what information they had about the woman who was shot inside. Some called her a “martyr.”
After she was taken away, the mood soured, though many remained joyous. “We’re making history,” one woman said as she strolled down Independence Avenue with friends.
Beneath streaming flags, including some that read “F— Biden” and that depicted Trump as the movie character Rambo, people loudly exhorted Jesus and chanted “USA!”
Many called friends and family and took videos.
“We weren’t violent before, but we are now,” a middle-aged White man said, talking into his cellphone. “There’s no going back.”
Congress closes in on affirming Biden win following riot at U.S. Capitol
InternationalJan 07. 2021Capitol police direct members and staffers out of the House as a mob of rioters storms the Capitol on Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2021. MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo by Bill O’Leary
By The Washington Post · Rosalind S. Helderman, Karoun Demirjian, Seung Min Kim, Josh Dawsey
WASHINGTON – Members of Congress, shaken and angry following a violent assault on the U.S. Capitol by a mob of President Donald Trump’s supporters, moved closer late Wednesday to putting a final stamp on President-elect Joe Biden’s victory and bringing an end to a historically turbulent post-election period.
In a show of defiance, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she had consulted with House leaders, the Pentagon, the Justice Department and Vice President Mike Pence before concluding that Congress should move ahead with the ceremony interrupted earlier in the day by rioters provoked to action by Trump at a morning rally.
“Today, a shameful assault was made on our democracy. It was anointed at the highest level of government. It cannot, however, deter us from our responsibility to validate the election of Joe Biden,” wrote Pelosi, D-Calif.
As lawmakers returned to work following the riot, the tone of the debate turned more somber and impassioned than before the interruption, with a number of Republicans who had planned to slow the proceedings with objections announcing they would stand aside.
“To those who wreaked havoc in our Capitol today, you did not win. Violence never wins. Freedom wins. This is still the people’s house,” Pence said as he formally reopened the Senate.
Sen. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said the rioters had tried to disrupt democracy. “They failed,” he said.
Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, earned sustained applause from his colleagues for a thundering speech in which he said elected leaders should show respect for voters by telling them the truth, not fueling groundless doubts about the election.
“We gather due to a selfish man’s injured pride and the outrage of supporters who he has deliberately misinformed for the past two months and stirred to action this very morning,” Romney said. “What happened here today was an insurrection incited by the president of the United States.”
Both chambers picked up where they had left off before the evacuation, considering a challenge to Biden’s 11 electoral votes in Arizona. The Senate rejected the challenge by 92 to 7 and the House by 303 to 121.
House members also objected when Pence read the tallies from Georgia, Michigan and Nevada, but those challenges died when no senators joined them.
After midnight, however, a challenge to Pennsylvania’s count, joined by Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., prompted the two chambers to begin a debate on that state’s electoral vote. The challenge, like Arizona’s, was expected to fail.
Lawmakers planned to work through the night for as long as it took to dispose of the dissents.
Earlier in the day, the ceremonial reading of the electoral votes had just begun when pro-Trump rioters rushed the building at around 2 p.m., forcing the evacuation of both chambers of Congress. For hours, rioters rampaged through the Capitol complex. One woman was fatally shot in the building.
Only after the District of Columbia National Guard had been activated and political leaders in both parties condemned the rioting and appealed for calm did authorities declare the Capitol was secure.
The day had always been expected to be a historic test of the democratic system, with dozens of Republicans attempting for the first time to use Congress’s previously ceremonial role to try to overturn the results of a popular vote. The process was already underway when Jon Ossoff was declared the winner of one of two Senate runoffs in Georgia, handing control of the upper chamber to the Democrats for the next two years.
Still, the outcome of the congressional proceedings had been clear from the start, particularly after Pence announced he would reject pleas from the president to use his role as the session’s presiding officer to hand a win to Trump.
McConnell, who also had said little publicly about the process before Wednesday, likewise delivered a stirring opening floor speech imploring his colleagues not to damage democracy by objecting to the votes.
“Voters, the courts, and the states have all spoken – they’ve all spoken. If we overrule them, it would damage our republic forever,” he said.
The tense day turned to chaos when pro-Trump rioters, stirred up at a rally where the president called for them to march on the Capitol, stormed the building and caused the proceedings to be halted for hours.
The violence shocked leaders in both parties. While lawmakers huddled in an undisclosed location during the siege, Republican leaders pressed their members to abandon their plans to challenge the electoral vote. Several senators said they would no longer object, notably Sen. Kelly Loeffler, R-Ga., who had embraced the challenge as part of the hard-fought Senate election she lost Tuesday. “The events that have transpired today have forced me to reconsider,” she said.
Democrats and some outside groups began calling Wednesday for Trump to be either quickly impeached by Congress or removed from office via the 25th Amendment to the Constitution, which guides the handling of an incapacitated president, in an effort to lessen his ability to incite more violence.
Several hours after his supporters had broken into the Capitol, Trump tweeted and released a video calling on them to respect law enforcement. But he also repeated lies about the election being stolen from him.
Late in the day, he tweeted that “these are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots.” The tweet was quickly removed by Twitter, which also for the first time announced that Trump’s account would be locked until he deleted the tweet and then for 12 hours. Facebook and Instagram quickly said they also would lock Trump out of their platforms for 24 hours.
The congressional process was supposed to be a mere procedural checkpoint on the way to Biden’s oath-taking later this month. Biden won the popular vote on Nov. 3 and, last month, the electoral college met in each state capital, as stipulated in the U.S. Constitution. Biden won 306 electoral votes to Trump’s 232.
All that was left before the inauguration later this month was for a joint session of Congress to gather Wednesday and read those votes aloud.
According to an 1887 law that governs the process, any member of the House of Representatives, joined by a senator, can object to an individual state’s electoral tally, prompting a two-hour debate, followed by a vote in each chamber. A majority of both the House and Senate would have had to back a challenge for any to prevail, and Trump’s supporters did not have the votes.
Dozens of Republicans in the House, joined by 13 GOP Senators, had said they intended to object to slates of electors from several swing states that had backed Biden. They cited as their reason baseless allegations of fraud fanned by Trump, and the resulting belief among many Republicans that the election was compromised.
For days leading up to Wednesday, Trump had also pressed Pence, whom the Constitution requires to preside over the ceremony, to refuse to recognize electoral college slates from swing states that backed Biden.
Shortly before he took the gavel, however, Pence released a three-page letter he had written to members of Congress, rejecting Trump’s pleas.
“It is my considered judgment that my oath to support and defend the Constitution constrains me from claiming unilateral authority to determine which electoral votes should be counted and which should not,” he wrote.
A senior administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations, said Pence’s decision caused Trump to rage all afternoon even as the crowds were breaking into the Capitol, telling aides that Pence had betrayed him. Pence said he would merely preside over the reading of tallies that had been forwarded by the states. And then he opened the session, beginning alphabetically with the reading of votes from Alabama and Alaska, both of which backed Trump.
When Biden’s votes from Arizona were read aloud, Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., joined Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, to object.
At that point, the House and Senate retreated to their respective chambers to debate the challenge, with Pence presiding over the Senate and Pelosi overseeing the House.
For nearly 30 minutes, the process ran largely as expected. McConnell pleaded for Republicans not to heed Trump’s call to object to the results.
“If this election were overturned by mere allegations from the losing side, our democracy would enter a death spiral,” he said, calling the vote the most important in his 36 years in the Senate.
Cruz insisted he was seeking only a 10-day audit of the results and not necessarily to overturn the election.
His remarks ignored that more than 90 state and federal judges, including jurists appointed by both Democrats and Republicans, have considered and rejected claims of fraud or other irregularities since the election.
But before debate in either chamber could get truly rolling, protesters – who had been attending a rally where Trump spoke and urged them to march on the Capitol – broke into the building and stormed the chambers, causing both the House and Senate to recess. As chaos erupted and Pence and Pelosi were hustled to secure locations, Republican Sens. Ben Sasse of Nebraska and Mike Rounds of South Dakota helped the parliamentarians grab the election certificates and take them to the secure location.
Constitutional experts said nothing in the law prevented Congress from picking up the ceremony where it left off. Even if for some reason it was unable to complete that process by Jan. 20, the Constitution is clear: The president’s term ends at noon that day.
“The idea that individuals were allowed to derail one of our most solemn sacred constitutional processes is horrifying. But this is only going to delay for a bit the completion of the process,” said Rick Pildes, a constitutional law professor at New York University School of Law.
If for some reason Congress were not able to confirm the electoral college vote between now and Inauguration Day, Pelosi would become acting president.
“What we absolutely know is that at noon on Jan. 20, the current term of both President Trump and Vice President Pence end,” said Edward Foley, a law professor at Ohio State University.
Trump loyalists continue to challenge Biden’s win, but some Republicans concede after Capitol riot
InternationalJan 07. 2021Supporters of President Donald Trump gather near the Washington Monument on Wednesday. MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo by Matt McClain
By The Washington Post · Karoun Demirjian, Seung Min Kim, Mike DeBonis · NATIONAL, POLITICS, CONGRESS, WHITEHOUSE
WASHINGTON – Several Senate Republicans who had vowed to protest President-elect Joe Biden’s electoral college win reversed their objections after a mob of President Donald Trump’s supporters violently stormed the Capitol – even as other rogue senators signaled that they would continue to contest the election results after Wednesday’s deadly siege.
Sens. Steve Daines, R-Mont., James Lankford, R-Okla., and Kelly Loeffler, R-Ga., who endorsed objections to the tallying of electors in key disputed states, said they would stand down and support the affirmation of the election results. Loeffler, who lost her bid to retain her appointed seat Tuesday night, said she could no longer “in good conscience” do so after the hours-long melee that sent senators rushing to safety.
“We now need the entire Congress to come together and vote to certify the election results. We must stand together as Americans,” Daines and Lankford said in a joint statement. “We must defend our Constitution and the rule of law.”
Sen. Mike Braun, R-Ind., explained that the siege “did change things drastically” and that he wanted to “get this ugly day behind us.” Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., a close ally of the president, also told reporters that “in light of events, there’s a bit of a different attitude” about continuing the objection to the election results. Both had supported efforts to dispute the results.
But the objectors may not launch additional challenges past the one pending against Arizona’s slate of electors, according to aides and lawmakers familiar with their plans. How the objections ultimately unfold may come down to Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., who was the first senator to announce that he would protest the electoral college vote last month, and who continued to raise concerns about the outcome in Pennsylvania.
While he did not explicitly say one way or the other whether he still planned to lodge an objection to Pennsylvania’s electors, in brief floor remarks Wednesday night, Hawley noted that he should speak about the election process in that state now, “in lieu of speaking about it later.”
“I actually think it’s very vital what we do, the opportunity to be heard, to register objections is very vital,” Hawley said, defending his stance.
Republican leaders and lawmakers spent Wednesday afternoon trying to press Trump loyalists such as Hawley to abandon their objections to Biden’s win, as they huddled in an undisclosed location, waiting for law enforcement officials to clear bands of pro-Trump rioters from the Capitol, according to people familiar with the effort.
After law enforcement officials cleared the Capitol, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., told reporters that objectors would “condense” their remaining objections into a single complaint, extending the debate by another 30 or 40 minutes before relenting.
“I don’t think there’s going to be another objection,” Paul said. “I think it’s over.”
If Paul’s predictions are correct, it would be a marked surrender from Trump’s allies, who had promised to carry out an all-night, state-by-state marathon of objections to certifying the electoral votes of several swing states that Trump lost in November.
But aides to Hawley and Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, who also spoke in defense of the objections Wednesday, would not answer queries about whether they planned to continue their objections.
When the House and Senate chambers went into lockdown, each was midway through debating Arizona’s election results, to which Cruz and Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., had objected. Lawmakers returned to the Capitol on Wednesday night.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., told members to return Wednesday night to resume proceedings as a projection of strength after rioters drove lawmakers to leave the Capitol, according to two senior Republicans familiar with the message the leader had been sending.
Houe Majority Whip James Clyburn, D-S.C., offered a similar sentiment to House members.
“I have faced violent hatred before. I was not deterred then, and I will not be deterred now,” he tweeted. “Tonight, Congress will continue the business of certifying the electoral college votes.”
The protest of the electoral college results, which began as an organized exercise in the Capitol Wednesday afternoon, quickly devolved into chaos as a pro-Trump mob stormed barricades, pushing past armed Capitol police and into the congressional office buildings and the Capitol itself, sending the House and the Senate into lockdown. Lawmakers were ushered away soon after, and protesters occupied the chambers.
As they were pushed out of the Capitol, several Republicans publicly called on Trump to intervene with his supporters and urge them to stand down.
“Call it off, Mr. President. We need you to call this off,” Rep. Mike Gallagher, R-Pa., said in a CNN interview, appealing to Trump to tweet to his supporters that “it’s over. Please go home.”
Even House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., who committed to support the electoral college protest earlier Wednesday, called on Trump to “calm” his supporters and bring their “un-American” protest to an end.
Earlier on Wednesday, McConnell accused Republicans backing the electoral college objections of hypocrisy, shaming them for questioning Biden’s win after spending four years accusing Democrats of never having accepted Trump’s presidency, and urging them not to “escalate what we repudiate.”
“We cannot simply declare ourselves a national board of elections on steroids . . . it would damage our republic forever,” McConnell said. “We cannot keep drifting apart into two separate tribes with a separate set of facts and separate reality, with nothing in common except our hostility toward each other.”
President Donald Trump leaves the White House on his way to a rally in Georgia on Monday, Jan. 4, 2021. MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo by Bill O’Leary
Vice President Mike Pence. MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo by Melina Mara.
Damage inside the U.S. Capitol left by pro-Trump protesters on January 6, 2021 in Washington. MUST CREDIT: Photo for The Washington Post by Oliver Contreras
Supporters of President Donald Trump gather Wednesday near the White House with a spillover crowd extending to the Washington Monument. MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo by Matt McClain
Capitol police direct members and staffers out of the House as a mob of rioters storms the Capitol on Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2021. MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo by Bill O’Leary
Supporters of President Donald Trump gather near the Washington Monument on Wednesday. MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo by Matt McClain
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