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Congress back to confirmation after chaos

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 · NATIONAL, POLITICS, COURTSLAW, CONGRESS 

WASHINGTON – Congress returned to work late Wednesday to complete the process of tallying the electoral college votes and confirming President-elect Joe Biden’s win, hours after the ceremony was halted by an unprecedented breach of the Capitol by storming supporters of President Donald Trump.

In a show of defiance and resolve, 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 he reopened the Senate chamber, Pence decried “the dark day in the history of the United States Capitol.”

“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.

“They tried to disrupt our democracy. They failed,” Sen. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., added.

The ceremonial reading of the electoral votes had only just begun when pro-Trump rioters rushed the building, 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 on Tuesday, handing control of the upper chamber to the Democrats.

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 horror when pro-Trump rioters, stirred up at a rally where the president called for them to march on the Capitol, stormed the building, causing the proceedings to be halted for hours and the chambers to be evacuated. A woman died after being shot during the melee.

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. A least one Republican House member who had planned to object later said she had changed her mind and would vote to confirm Biden’s votes. 

“I encourage Donald Trump to condemn and put an end to this madness,” said Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash.

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 Trump’s account would be locked until he deleted the tweet and then for 12 hours. 

The congressional process was supposed to be a mere ceremonial 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, prompting a two hour debate, followed by a vote of 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, who the Constitution requires to preside over the ceremony, to refuse to recognize electoral college slates from swing states that backed Biden.

“All Mike Pence has to do is send them back to the States, AND WE WIN,” Trump tweeted overnight hours before the ceremony began. “Do it Mike, this is a time for extreme courage!”

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. Dozens of Republicans rose and gave the two a hearty round of applause.

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 – in the final days of leading the Senate chamber until Democrats take control as a result of their victories in the two Senate races in Georgia on Tuesday – gave an impassioned plea as to why Republicans should not heed Trump’s call to object to the results.

“I’ve served 36 years in the Senate – this will be the most important vote I’ve ever cast,” McConnell said, his voice breaking at times as he spoke.

“If this election were overturned by mere allegations from the losing side, our democracy would enter a death spiral,” he said.

Cruz insisted he was seeking only a 10-day audit of the results and not necessarily to overturn the election, urging that they agree to establish a “credible and fair tribunal” to consider the allegations of fraud that have been advanced. 

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.

In the House, several GOP speakers opened by objecting to voting procedures adopted by states in response to the coronavirus pandemic. House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) argued that “the constitutional process was not followed” in a number of states.

And he talked about how over a hundred House Republicans had joined a lawsuit filed by Texas last month, seeking to get the Supreme Court to throw out the results of four states. The court declined to hear the case. Scalise complained the court’s decision had been a “punt.”

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 they were unable to complete that process by Jan. 20, the Constitution is clear: The president’s term ends at noon on 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 Congress needs one day, two days or 10 days, they have that time, plenty have time, to complete the process.”

According to the Constitution, the president and vice president’s terms will end on Jan. 20. If for some reason Congress were not able to confirm the electoral college vote between now and then, 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.

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Lawmakers return to Capitol after mob riot that left woman dead

InternationalJan 07. 2021Supporters of President Trump stand outside the east side of the Capitol. MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo by Marissa J. Lang

By The Washington Post · Rebecca Tan, Peter Jamison, Rachel Chason, Marissa J. Lang, John Woodrow Cox ·NATIONAL, POLITICS, COURTSLAW, CONGRESS, WHITEHOUSE 

WASHINGTON – Lawmakers returned to the U.S. Capitol Wednesday night after hundreds of President Donald Trump’s supporters stormed the building in what amounted to an attempted coup that they hoped would overturn the election he lost, egged on by the president who egged them on and said they should never accept defeat, .

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—

Photo by: The Washington Post — The Washington Post

The day’s chaotic, violent scene – all of it incited by the president’s incendiary language – was like none other in modern American history, bringing to a sudden halt the congressional certification of Joe Biden’s free and fair electoral victory.

With poles bearing blue Trump flags, the mob bashed through Capitol doors and windows, forcing their way past police officers unprepared for the onslaught. Lawmakers were ushered away shortly before an armed standoff at the House doors. Canisters of tear gas were fired across the Rotunda’s white marble floor, and on the steps outside the building, rioters flew Confederate flags. At least one person, a woman, was shot and rushed to an ambulance outside the building. She later died. 

“USA! USA!” chanted the would-be saboteurs of a 244-year-old democracy. 

The Senate halted its proceedings, and the House doors were closed. In a notification, U.S. Capitol police said no entry or exit was permitted in the buildings as officers 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 governors of Maryland and Virginia also activated state troopers and members of their Guards to help respond to the situation.

What appeared to be two realistic-looking homemade bombs were found near the Republican National Committee headquarters and the Democratic National Committee headquarters in downtown Washington, officials said, adding to the danger and disorder.

The suspected bomb outside the RNC was found next to a trash container, and was a metal pipe with metal end caps, with wires running from inside the pipe to a plastic kitchen timer, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss ongoing investigations.

FBI explosives experts responded to both devices, and they were “rendered safe by the FBI and our law enforcement partners,” the bureau said in a statement. “The investigation is ongoing.”

In a statement, the RNC called the suspicious package outside their building an “explosive device that was successfully detonated.”

At 6 p.m., police were pushing the mob away from the Capitol and authorities said the interior of the Capitol had been secured, fully cleared of rioters.

Police announced to those still outside the Capitol shortly after 6 p.m., “A curfew is now in effect. All individuals must leave the U.S. Capitol grounds or be subject to arrest.” Hundreds of people slowly walked toward the mall as police in riot gear marched forward.

Scattered catcalls and curses met the police advance. “We’ll be back, traitors,” a man yelled. Chants of “U-S-A” continued to break out as the rioters dispersed.

Protesters were far outnumbered by law enforcement, whom one man on a loudspeaker blamed for starting “the United States civil war.” “This is China,” said one man leaving the grounds, echoing shouts of “Tiananmen Square” that came when police cleared the grounds.

Congress returned to work late Wednesday to complete the process of tallying the electoral college votes and confirming Biden’s win.

In a show of defiance and resolve, 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.

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 the entrances; others climbed over one another.

On the building’s east side, police initially pushed the pro-Trump demonstrators back, but were soon overpowered 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 steps 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.

Dozens soon broke their way inside, 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 House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office.

Just before 3 p.m., Trump supporters began running out of the southeastern entrance.

“They shot a girl!” someone yelled.

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 them back, and the ambulance drove off.

The woman’s name was not released. 

Dustin Sternbeck, spokesman for the District of Columbia police, said Wednesday evening that the woman had died. He provided no further information as to the circumstances of the shooting.

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, the president made little effort to quell the violence he had instigated, sharing a video at 4:17 p.m. in which he told people to “go home” – while continuing to promote the lie that he had won the election.

“We love you,” he told them. “You’re very special.”

D.C. police said they arrested 13 people from Tuesday afternoon through 6 p.m. on Wednesday, including three who authorities said had firearms.

People who made it inside the Capitol 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.”

Their compatriots online celebrated the chaos, cheering the violence across a wide array of social media sites and calling for bloodshed in the days ahead.

Trump, who has stoked fury over baseless allegations of a stolen election, called for calm on Twitter as the riots halted a process to tally the electoral college votes certifying Joe Biden as the next president of the United States. But Trump’s plea came in a video that was itself laced with disinformation, and he shared the message only after most of the mob had been pushed outside the building – leaving a trail of online and offline discord in his wake.

Twitter locked Trump out of his account for the first time late Wednesday, the most punitive step the company has taken against the president. The 12-hour timeout also included the removal of three tweets and a warning that Trump could be subject to a ban if he continues tweeting baseless conspiracies about the election and inciting violence.

Facebook took the rare step of removing Trump’s video after hours of internal debate about his actions. 

Rep. Tom Malinowski, D-N.J., said Congress would need to investigate how the Capitol was so vulnerable to a seemingly disorganized and lightly armed mob, especially given Trump’s incitement and abundant signs that the demonstration would be volatile if not violent.

“I was surprised to learn this morning that the National Guard was not preemptively deployed, given the threats that had been made and the president’s incitement,” Malinowski said. “I’m in no position to judge the response from my limited vantage point, but we’re going to have to do a very serious after-action look at what went wrong and how to make sure that this never happens again.”

Malinowski said there should have been no element of surprise.

Some House Democrats on Wednesday night called for impeaching Trump for a second time in response to the siege of the Capitol they accuse him of fomenting.

“I am drawing up Articles of Impeachment,” Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., wrote on Twitter. “We can’t allow him to remain in office, it’s a matter of preserving our Republic.”

Omar is one of the most liberal Democrats in Congress. But the sentiment was shared in other corners of the party as well – including by members of Pelosi’s leadership team.

“This is outrageous, and the president caused it,” Rep. David Cicilline, D-R.I., said on Twitter. “We should impeach him tomorrow.”

Trump is scheduled to be in office for two more weeks, and has already been impeached once, in December 2019, on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress related to his efforts to pressure the president of Ukraine to investigate the Biden family. But that waning tenure does not appear to have dissuaded Democrats from reserving impeachment as an option to be exercised in his final days in office.

Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., the head of the House Democratic Caucus, was asked Wednesday by ABC News whether impeachment was an option. “When I say all options are on the table,” he answered, “I mean all options are on the table.”

Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., on Wednesday afternoon said she would no longer object to Biden’s electoral college victory.

“What happened today and continues to unfold in the nation’s capital is disgraceful and un-American,” she said in a statement.

“We must have a peaceful transfer of power,” she said. “What we have seen today is unlawful and unacceptable. I have decided I will vote to uphold the Electoral College results.”

She also urged the president to “condemn and put an end to this madness.”

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Democratic lawmakers are calling for Trump’s impeachment. Members of ‘the Squad’ led the charge.

InternationalJan 07. 2021A mob riots at the Capitol on Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2021. MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo by Matt McClain Photo by: Matt McClain — The Washington Post

By The Washington Post · Anne Branigin · NATIONAL, POLITICS 

Within hours of having their workplace stormed by a mob of Trump supporters seeking to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, Democratic members of Congress began calling for the impeachment of President Donald Trump – and even the removal of conservative members of Congress who backed the president’s baseless claims of an unfair election. And it was women of color lawmakers – including members of “the Squad” – who were quickest to lead the charge.

The president’s repeated, false claims that the election was stolen drew thousands of his supporters to the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday to protest Congress’s certification of the 2020 presidential election results, which saw President-elect Joe Biden securing a definitive victory. Waving Trump, American and Confederate flags, hundreds of protesters battled past law enforcement to storm the Capitol building, disrupting Congress’s attempt to certify Biden’s victory and forcing lawmakers to evacuate their offices or shelter in place. After the building was cleared, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said lawmakers would resume counting electoral college votes Wednesday night.

The chaos that erupted at the Capitol drew condemnation from around the world, and from both Republicans and Democrats in Congress. In the case of some of Trump’s most outspoken critics in Washington, that took the form of calls for another impeachment – even if the possibility of Trump’s removal from office remains unlikely.

In a tweet posted Wednesday afternoon, Rep. Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., called on Trump to be impeached “as soon as Congress reconvenes,” calling his behavior in the lead-up to the violent attack on the Capitol “dangerous and unacceptable.”

Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., soon chimed in, saying she was drawing up articles of impeachment against the president. “We can’t allow him to remain in office, it’s a matter of preserving our Republic and we nee to fulfill our oath,” Omar wrote on Twitter.

Both Pressley and Omar have received racist, often violent, rhetoric and threats from Trump’s supporters since their election to the House in 2018. In 2019, Trump attacked the Squad on his Twitter account, saying Pressley and Omar, as well as Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., ought to “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.” Trump has continued to attack the lawmakers – all of whom are women of color – throughout his time in office. Omar says she has received a deluge of death threats from his followers.

Freshman Rep. Cori Bush, D-Mo., a newly minted member of the Squad and Congress’s first prominent Black Lives Matter organizer, also proposed a swift course of action Wednesday. As law enforcement confronted rioters on the Capitol, Bush announced that she was drafting a resolution calling for the expulsion of Republican members of Congress who supported Trump’s claims that the election had been stolen. This would be the first piece of legislation introduced by Bush, who has been one of Congress’s most visible incoming members.

“The Republican members of Congress who have incited this domestic terror attack through their attempts to overturn the election must face consequences. They have broken their sacred Oath of Office,” she wrote. “I will be introducing a resolution calling for their expulsion.”

Neither Omar’s articles of impeachment nor Bush’s calls to expel GOP lawmakers are likely to pass in the two weeks before Biden is expected to be sworn in, even as their tweets amassed hundreds of thousands of likes within hours of being posted. But the calls to expel not only Trump, but GOP lawmakers, are indicative of the long-broiling political divisions that were once again set aflame on Wednesday.

Soon after Bush and Omar’s announcements, more elected officials amplified calls to remove Trump from office ahead of the Jan. 20 inauguration. Among them were Vermont Gov. Phil Scott, D, who tweeted that Trump should “resign or be removed from office by his Cabinet, or by Congress.” Rep. Carolyn Bourdeaux, D-Ga., and Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman, D-N.J., also said they wanted to see Trump impeached for inciting Wednesday’s violence.

The calls come amid the backdrop of House Democrats’ first attempt to impeach Trump: In December 2019, they accused him of obstructing Congress’s investigations into his affairs, as well as abusing his power to influence the results of the 2020 election. The hyperpartisan process ended with a Republican-controlled Senate acquitting Trump on both impeachment charges the following January.

Following her initial announcement that she was drafting new articles of impeachment, Omar attempted to reassure Americans disturbed by the chaos that had unfolded in Washington.

“Rest assured, this day will not end without us finishing the work Congress is supposed to carry out,” Omar tweeted. “Democracy will prevail.”

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Here’s what I saw during Capitol evacuation

InternationalJan 07. 2021Security officers point weapons at a House chamber door 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 · Paul Kane · NATIONAL, POLITICS, COURTSLAW, CONGRESS, NATIONAL-SECURITY 

WASHINGTON – The officer stood smack in the middle of the floor of the United States Senate. Across his chest, an orange POLICE sash. Hanging from his right shoulder, a semiautomatic weapon. 

He said barely a word, just stared straight ahead at the backdoor entrance to the Senate Chamber. 

It was 2:15 p.m. Wednesday, and the U.S. Capitol was under assault, the most brazen attack on Congress since terrorists hijacked an airplane and attempted to slam it into the building more than 19 years ago. On Wednesday, a pro-Trump mob crashed into the building in a historic first that sent Washington into lockdown and prompted the type of evacuation that congressional security officials have been planning since 9/11 but had never had to execute. 

Moments before, I had been sitting in the Senate press gallery high above the chamber, watching Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and other senators debate Republicans’ unfounded objections to counting the electoral college votes that would seal President-elect Joe Biden’s convincing victory over President Donald Trump. 

Suddenly, Vice President Mike Pence, who had been presiding over the chamber from the Senate dais, got a signal that it was time to move. 

A growing mob outside had breached the barricades and entered the Capitol. Pence was quickly ushered away by Secret Service agents. 

I bolted out of the press gallery hoping to find out what was happening. I bounded down the stairs to the second floor, where senators enter and exit the chamber. Then I heard it: Police clashing with rioters yet another floor below. I could hear a loud thwacking sound – possibly a billy club being wielded against the invaders. 

I retreated back up to the third-floor press gallery in time to see Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., finish defending her state’s electoral count for Biden. Then Capitol police and staffers ordered everyone into the Senate Chamber. 

For our own safety. 

I was ordered into a gallery that is reserved for family and close friends of senators – Rep. Greg Pence, R-Ind., the vice president’s brother, had just been watching the proceedings there. But I climbed over several rails and chairs to get back to the usual press location, directly above where the vice president had been sitting as the presiding officer.

Soon, the Senate was sealed off and the session was adjourned. Capitol police raced around the two-story Senate chamber locking every set of doors. 

Then Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., looked at her phone and announced: “Shots fired.”

A veteran Capitol police officer tried to calm the senators, telling them that the report may not be accurate. But at 2:30 p.m., police ordered everyone out.

In the most dramatic moments of the siege, with armed officers in every corner of the Senate, police began barking out instructions. They marched us all – a phalanx of senators, staff and press – through office buildings in search of the safest grounds to shelter on the Capitol complex. 

We didn’t know it at the time, but a similar scene was playing out on the other side of the Capitol, where the House Chamber was evacuated and lawmakers ran for cover in a secure location on their side of the building. 

We were not allowed to take the stairs, because the mob was on the floors below. So into the elevators and down to the basement we went, racing toward the Capitol Visitors Center. The CVC is a vast underground bunker of a structure that finally got built after 9/11. It cost roughly $700 million and has secure rooms and blast-resistant doors.

An officer, holding back two doors, ordered us to head toward the Russell Senate Office Building because the pro-Trump mob had also breached the CVC.

Some senators ran; some walked. Security guards held Schumer by the shoulders to whisk him along. 

In a sign of quick staff thinking, aides to the Senate parliamentarian rounded up several people to grab the boxes containing the electoral college certificates submitted by the states – documents needed to certify Biden’s victory.

By 2:45 p.m. most senators and a collection of aides and media had gathered in the secure room. An officer informed us that we were safe and said it would take a while to secure the complex. In the meantime, police said they were trying to find buses to get us to safer ground. 

Without their cellphones, some senators were at a loss for how to notify spouses and other loved ones.

Back in the Capitol, police began a room-by-room search to find senators, staffers and reporters who had been left behind. One senior GOP aide, who has an office not far from the Senate floor, said he took a steel rod and barricaded his door when the pro-Trump mob approached. For what seemed like 20 minutes, he said, rioters banged on his door, trying to break in. 

Others huddled in silence in small rooms with doors locked and cellphones turned off while the rioters walked past. 

Inside the Senate’s secure location, one senior officer ordered a set of underlings to go secure Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., who lost both legs while serving in the Iraq War. She was hiding in her office three floors above, fearful of letting anyone in. The senior officer gave specific instructions of what to yell: “Senator Duckworth, Senator Klobuchar said come to the door.”

A few minutes later, she appeared in the secure spot. 

Somehow, Capitol food service operations still appeared to be up and running through the melee. At 4 p.m. and 5 p.m., hundreds of box lunches and bottles of water were rolled into the holding spot. 

Senators, staffers, media and police wielding automatic weapons grabbed lunches of chicken and beef. 

Reporters were herded out of the main secure room and into an outside lobby. Senators stayed behind and began discussing what had gone wrong with the basic fabric of American democracy. Eventually, televisions were wheeled into the senators-only room so lawmakers could watch the chaos unfold for themselves. 

Pressure mounted on the few Republicans who had been objecting to counting Biden’s electoral college votes, giving life to the mob’s delusions of four more years for Trump. Just before 5 p.m., Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, led a contingent of GOP objectors into a separate room to discuss whether to go forward with their challenge in light of the mob violence their protest had helped to inspire. 

After 6 p.m., more and more senators began talking about returning to the Senate floor in a show of Democratic force – an idea that echoed a decision by many members to return to the Capitol’s eastern steps the night of the 2001 terrorist attacks. On that night, in a show bipartisan support, Republicans and Democrats stood together and sang “God Bless America.”

At the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, Trump blamed the lawmakers for the chaos. “These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously and viciously stripped away,” he tweeted.

A few minutes later, Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., walked past reporters. He was asked what he thought about Trump’s statement. Tuberville walked away, saying nothing.

Just before 6:45 p.m. – four hours after senators fled the Capitol – loud applause echoed from their secure room. 

They had decided to reconvene the Senate and the House, take back Congress from Trump’s angry mob and seal Biden’s victory.

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On a long and violent day, Trump issues a call to arms

InternationalJan 07. 2021Tear gas is fired at supporters of President Trump who stormed the U.S. Capitol building on Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2021. MUST CREDIT: Photo by Evelyn Hockstein for The Washington Post

By The Washington Post · Anne Gearan, Josh Dawsey · NATIONAL, POLITICS, COURTSLAW, NATIONAL-SECURITY, WHITEHOUSE 

WASHINGTON – Before the rally of thousands of President Donald Trump’s supporters on Wednesday, some aides to the president worried that if Trump spoke at the event not far from the Capitol, it could stoke the crowd and create a volatile scene, a senior administration official said. But Trump, the official said, was determined to do it. 

“We will never give up. We will never concede. It doesn’t happen. You don’t concede when there’s theft involved,” Trump told the crowd to whoops and loud cheers, falsely claiming that President-elect Joe Biden’s victory was based on fraudulent vote counts. “We won this election, and we won it by a landslide. This was not a close election.”

He said Republicans had to keep fighting and urged a crowd of aggrieved supporters to mount an insurrection against constitutional order on Wednesday, encouraging what quickly became a mob assault on the U.S. Capitol carried out in his name. The fabrications were familiar, but this time Trump’s angry rant amounted to a call to arms. 

In a long and violent day that the president urged his followers to remember “forever,” he was vintage Trump. He exhorted his followers, he spoke falsehoods, he took to Twitter, he attacked the media, and he confronted the Constitution of the United States. It was as if four years of the Trump presidency were squeezed into one day. In the twilight of his presidency, Trump was where he always yearns to be – in the middle of the vortex, at the center of attention in a broken nation. 

Later Wednesday, Trump appeared to sympathize with the mob and to explain away the violence as the natural consequence of his election loss to Biden. He also edged close to celebrating the day’s events.

“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,” he tweeted. “Go home with love & in peace. Remember this day forever!”

Twitter said later Wednesday it had locked Trump’s account for violating its rules. 

The sight of rioters, some armed, trying to overturn an election marked an unprecedented but not entirely unexpected reaping of what Trump has sown. 

“He incited violence. He abdicated his responsibility to lead, and he failed to quell violence at the Capitol. It’s straightforward,” said Tom Bossert, who was Trump’s first homeland security adviser. 

Julian Zelizer, a presidential historian at Princeton University, said the day’s events were a “very predictable” result of Trump’s rhetoric but without presidential precedent. 

“There is no parallel. This is a president who has incited a mob insurrection against Congress as it’s trying to finish its constitutional duties,” Zelizer said. 

Most of the rioters shown on television smashing their way into the Capitol were wearing Trump regalia. Many shouted his name or proclaimed the lies he has told them about unsubstantiated election fraud, saying it robbed him of a victory in the Nov. 3 election. One carried a placard reading “F— BIDEN.”

Even many Trump supporters were aghast.

Former Trump communications director Alyssa Farah, who left the White House last month, tweeted directly to her old boss.

“Condemn this now, @realDonaldTrump – you are the only one they will listen to. For our country!” she wrote.

Former White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney also publicly called for the president to do more. 

Republican lawmakers bombarded White House staffers on Wednesday afternoon with pleas to get Trump to speak out more forcefully against the group, according to two White House officials.

White House officials and allies had struggled to persuade Trump to condemn the mob, said several people familiar with the discussions. Like others interviewed for this report, they spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the events.

As he watched television, Trump spent much of the afternoon fuming about Vice President Mike Pence instead of worrying about the violence in the Capitol, even lambasting Pence while he was in a secure location, trying to remain safe from the mob. Pence said earlier in the day that he would not intervene to change the outcome of the election. 

It took several hours and entreaties by phone and Twitter from Republican allies, former White House employees and other Trump allies before Trump released a video message directly addressing the violence.

In it, Trump sympathized with his violent followers and perpetuated the false claims about a stolen election that had incited the mob in the first place. He did not blame his supporters or disavow them.

“I know your pain. I know you’re hurt. We had an election that was stolen from us. It was a landslide election and everyone knows it, especially the other side, but you have to go home now,” Trump said gently. 

“We have to have peace. We have to have law and order. We have to respect our great people in law and order. We don’t want anybody hurt.”

By that time a woman had been fatally shot and several officers injured.

Earlier, Trump had urged the rogue militia to “remain peaceful” as television scenes played out of officers being overrun.

Trump has always been reluctant to condemn violence, racism or falsehoods perpetrated by his political followers or members of like-minded organizations. From the deadly protest in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017 to the plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, and the recent rise of the Proud Boys group, Trump has repeatedly equivocated or declined to condemn violence and antidemocratic actions on the political far right.

A senior White House aide said Trump wanted his team to swarm the Capitol and protest loudly all day. “There was no plan for them to go inside,” this official said. “If you’d had told me this morning that the Capitol was going to be attacked like that, I would have laughed at you.” 

As for the rally itself, Trump was unhappy with the staging, which had the crowd spread out over two large expanses of lawn and held back from a raised stage area.

Trump told aides he was pleased so many had come to Washington but was angry that the crowd was not closer to him, a senior administration official said. During his address, Trump griped that the news media got the best seats in the house. 

On Monday and Tuesday, the president spent extensive time discussing with aides the “Save America” rally on the Ellipse, even discussing what songs should be played and how fiery his remarks should be.

In recent days, Trump has plotted with others how to get revenge against anyone who did not go along with him, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. 

“Policy doesn’t animate him. Revenge animates him,” said an adviser who had recently spoken with the president.

Trump has been fixated on overturning the election for weeks, making hundreds of calls to allies, lawyers, state legislators, governors and other officials and regularly huddling with outside lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, chief of staff Mark Meadows and others.

Some aides have tried to persuade Trump that he should lay off Pence, who is loyal, but Trump doubled down. He lashed Pence by name a half-dozen times during Wednesday’s address to the crowd, all but calling him a coward.

Trump, who was 30 minutes late, told the crowd he had just spoken to Pence ahead of his ceremonial role presiding over the congressional action.

“I hope Mike is going to do the right thing. I hope so. I hope so, because if Mike Pence does the right thing, we win the election,” Trump said. “All Vice President Pence has to do is recertify, and we become president and you are the happiest people.”

The Trump supporters who became insurgents had come to Washington at his urging, to demonstrate against congressional certification of Biden’s victory on Wednesday. 

Trump said he would walk with the crowd to the Capitol, although in the end he did not. Many in the large and boisterous crowd set off for the Capitol before he had finished speaking.

He spent much of the more than one-hour speech angrily denouncing fellow Republicans he said had failed him by not objecting to the pro forma congressional action. Trump vowed to “primary the hell out of” members of Congress who would not support his efforts to overturn the election results, whom he called “weak Republicans” and “pathetic.”

Patty Binkley, 66, was among those who left early and headed for the Capitol.

“We’ve heard all that stuff before,” Binkley, who arrived by car from Tennessee, said as she was pushed in a wheelchair while Trump continued to speak. “We thought he was going to come out and say something new.”

Not long after Trump spoke, the very lawmakers Trump had implied were traitors were fleeing the floors of the House and Senate and Pence was whisked to a protected area.

Pence then expressed outrage. 

“The violence and destruction taking place at the US Capitol Must Stop and it Must Stop Now. Anyone involved must respect Law Enforcement officers and immediately leave the building,” Pence tweeted shortly after 3:30 p.m.

“Peaceful protest is the right of every American but this attack on our Capitol will not be tolerated and those involved will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”

White House aides said they received no guidance about the day, other than an email that the White House Mess, a Navy-run cafeteria, would be closing because of a citywide curfew.

The West Wing has largely been empty in recent days, with only Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and a couple of others as constants, while others have tried to stay away. Most aides are working from home.

A number of advisers and aides, including many who have been loyal to Trump for years, are increasingly despondent and embarrassed by his conduct. Many officials are no longer coming to work, two administration officials said.

“He can’t admit that he lost. He would literally do anything in the world,” one official said. 

A second administration official said: “Guy can’t just help himself and go away.”

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Warnock, Ossoff win Georgia runoff elections, giving Senate control to Democrats

InternationalJan 07. 2021Democratic Senate hopeful Raphael Warnock speaks to canvassers in Marietta, Ga., on Tuesday. MUST CREDIT: photo for The Washington Post by Kevin D. Liles.

By The Washington Post · Michael Scherer · NATIONAL, POLITICS, CONGRESS 

Democrats won unified control of the federal government Wednesday, after two U.S. Senate runoffs in Georgia were called in their favor just as a mob of rioters allied with President Trump invaded the Capitol building, destroying property, injuring police officers and disrupting the election certification process for President-elect Joe Biden.

Democratic Senate candidate Jon Ossoff in Atlanta on Tuesday. MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo by Joshua L

With almost all of the votes counted, Democrat Raphael Warnock was leading Sen. Kelly Loeffler, a Republican appointed to the seat, by 1.6 percentage points, or over 70,000 votes. In the second contest, Democrat Jon Ossoff led by just under one percentage point, or nearly 33,000 votes, over David Perdue, a Republican whose Senate term expired on Sunday.

Both Warnock’s and Ossoff’s leads Wednesday were larger than the 0.5 percentage point threshold in Georgia that allows a candidate to request a recount. Their leads were expected to grow, given the location of the outstanding ballots, according to Edison Research, which projected the victories.

The victories give Democrats a 50-50 split of the chamber, with the tie vote to be cast by Vice President-elect Kamala D. Harris.

For Biden and his fellow Democrats, the results were a stunning and unexpected boon – the party’s House majority shrank precipitously as a result of November’s voting, and the president-elect has faced an onslaught of attempts to overturn the results by Trump and his supporters. Had Republicans maintained control, his priorities could have been quashed by the Senate.

“Georgia voters delivered a resounding message yesterday: they want action on the crises we face and they want it right now,” Biden said in a tweet congratulating Ossoff and Warnock on their victories. 

But the party’s celebration was cut short by the surreal spectacle of a violent assault on the legislative seats of power. Paired with the latest Republican failure at the ballot box, it highlighted Trump’s chaotic approach to governing that Republican strategists blamed for their losses in the Georgia senate contests. 

The party had never made a secret of its three-part plan to win the two Georgia Senate runoffs. Republicans wanted to scare suburban voters about the “radical socialist” designs of the Democratic candidates, argue the merits of maintaining divided government under Biden, and use Trump to turn out non-college-educated White voters en masse. 

But Trump’s obsession with his own political future, which was on full display Wednesday as he implored his supporters to head to the Capitol to protest Biden’s certification, undermined each part of the plan in the final weeks of the campaign, according to Republican strategists involved in the race. 

Not once did the president write a tweet in his own voice attacking the two Democrats in the race, Warnock and Ossoff. Trump traveled only twice to the state during the runoff campaign, for speeches that largely focused on his own grievances against state Republican leaders.

He sought to convince voters in the state that he had won the November election, when he had not, undermining the argument that the Senate needed Republican control to serve as a check on Biden, which internal GOP polling showed was the most potent way to win swing voters. 

“Trump made us look crazier than Democrats are,” said one strategist involved in the races, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid backlash from Trump loyalists. “We did not make any new improvements in the suburbs. At some point you just get tapped out on the Trump base.” 

Those failures, combined with a massive Democratic effort in the state to turn out Black and Hispanic voters, produced two historic upsets that will reshape the country. Warnock, who leads the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s former church in Atlanta, will be the first Black Democrat elected to the Senate from a former Confederate state. Ossoff, a 33-year-old Jewish filmmaker who previously interned for Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., the late civil rights icon, will be the youngest incoming senator in decades. 

The results capped a rapid fall from power of the political movement that Trump founded, taking over the Republican Party and then winning the White House in 2016. Since then, Republicans have lost control of the House and the Senate, and Trump lost his own reelection bid, as deep divisions have formed among lawmakers in his party. 

Just before the Ossoff race was called, Vice President Mike Pence announced he would defy Trump’s demands that he single-handedly move in Congress to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., also delivered an impassioned rejection of Trump on the floor of the U.S. Senate, all but calling the president’s efforts an assault on the country he had sworn to serve.

“If this election were overturned by mere allegations from the losing side, our democracy would enter a death spiral,” McConnell said, in a historic condemnation of Trump’s intent. “We would never see the whole nation accept an election again.”

McConnell will now serve as minority leader as Biden takes office on Jan. 20, giving Biden greater leeway to confirm Cabinet nominees and judicial picks, and pass legislation on taxes, spending and immigration that Democrats have promised to champion.

The results also raised new questions about the fate of the Republican Party after Trump’s exit. The party has increasingly leaned more and more on structural advantages in gerrymandered districts and advantages in the U.S. Senate map and electoral college, as they redoubled their appeal to the interests of a core group of evangelical Christians and non-college-educated Whites. 

The strategy has allowed several narrow wins in recent decades, but it has also exposed the party’s growing weaknesses in states like Arizona and Georgia, both won by Biden. 

“If Republicans continue to manage their party by simply talking to the base and not trying to expand the circle, they are going to have problems in 2022,” said J.B. Poersch, the president of the Senate Majority PAC, which spent about $100 million for Democrats in the Senate runoffs. “The thing about the last two weeks is Republicans were knee deep in the process. It was all about navel-gazing and taking the temperature of Trump’s emotional state.” 

Ossoff underscored the point in a statement Wednesday when he declared victory.

“This campaign has been about health and jobs and justice for the people of the state, for all the people of the state,” Ossoff said. “Whether you were for me or against me, I’ll be for you in the U.S. Senate. I will serve all the people of the state.”

For the moment, Trump continues to hold enormous sway over the Republican Party. Multiple Republican strategists who played prominent roles in the recent election declined to speak on the record about their misgivings about Trump’s behavior because they did not want to attract criticism from his supporters. 

“He was focused on conspiracies and not on an opportunity to actually win,” said a second frustrated Republican involved in the Georgia contests, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for those reasons. “He could have won the race and headlines would have been that Trump is back and he is coming for Biden in four years.” 

Instead, the election result in Georgia may point to the growing political sway of Biden, who has recently embraced the promise of passing a $1,400 increase in pandemic-related stimulus payments for most Americans. Trump had highlighted the issue by demanding the same increase in payments, opposed by McConnell and Senate Republicans, even as he campaigned for the party’s candidates.

Democratic internal polling in Georgia found support for McConnell among Republicans and independents fell in late December as Democrats pushed for the higher payments. Both Perdue and Loeffler supported the increase but could not promise a path to delivering it. 

“You have both Democrats in this race zeroing in on getting money back in people’s pockets, getting covid under control, and zeroing in on the idea that we can actually get things done in Washington,” said a senior Biden adviser, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. “That was a dominant message for Biden, and this showed that he’s got coattails and he’s got political muscle. The message of this campaign – the general and the special elections – laid down a road map for Democrats going forward.”

Since 1992, Georgia has held eight statewide runoff elections between Democrats and Republicans, with Republicans winning seven of them. In each, turnout decreased significantly from the general election, and in all but one, Republicans expanded their vote margin. But Tuesday’s races did not follow that pattern. 

The Democratic margins among voters under the age of 30 grew sharply from November, according to exit polls, as did the Democratic margins for Hispanic and Black voters, especially Black male voters. Democrats broadly credited a program helmed by Stacey Abrams, a former gubernatorial candidate in the state, for driving the increased political involvement. 

“I can’t help but stand in awe of African American turnout in rural areas,” Poersch said. 

Strategists for both parties said Republicans were also likely hurt by Trump not being on the ballot himself, which bodes poorly for Republicans in the 2022 midterm elections. 

“This guy is a cult leader. And there’s a certain percentage who are only going to come out for the cult leader,” said John Anzalone, an Alabama-based Democratic pollster who worked for Biden.

Like others in the party, he hopes that the outcome both in November and in the Georgia midterms could point to a more lasting realignment for the country. 

“We’re seeing that if Republicans are seen as obstructionists during a pandemic, Republicans could potentially be punished,” Anzalone said. “If Democrats are getting small businesses and families things that they need and Republicans are obstructionists, I think that Democrats could buck the historical trend.” 

That concern is widely shared among Republicans, who remain hopeful that they can regain control of the House and Senate in 2022. But there were other signs Wednesday that Republicans may be looking for an alternate path forward to the polarization and recrimination that has marked Trump’s approach. 

“We cannot keep drifting apart into two separate tribes with a separate set of facts and separate realities, with nothing in common except our hostility toward each other and mistrust for the few national institutions that we all still share,” McConnell said, shortly before the Senate chamber was invade by a mob of Trump supporters organized around the false notion that Trump won the election. 

Speaking from Wilmington, Del., Biden delivered a similar message. 

“Today’s a reminder, a painful one, that democracy is fragile and to preserve it requires people of goodwill, leaders with the courage to stand up, who are devoted not to the pursuit of power and personal interest at any cost, but to the common good,” he said. 

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Democrats, Republicans blame Trump for inciting ‘coup’ as mob storms Capitol

InternationalJan 07. 2021Congressional staff members are ushered out of the Capitol Congressional staff members are evacuated Wednesday after rioters breached the U.S. Capitol, interrupting a joint congressional session to count the electoral college vote in Washington. MUST CREDIT: Photo for The Washington Post by Amanda Voisard

By The Washington Post · Colby Itkowitz, Paulina Firozi

WASHINGTON – Congressional Democrats and some Republicans on Wednesday accused President Donald Trump of inciting a coup after an angry mob of his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol, interrupted the proceedings and triggered an evacuation of lawmakers.

Throngs of pro-Trump rioters busted through security barricades, breaking windows, climbing on rafters, ripping down American flags and roaming the Senate chamber. Lawmakers were told to grab gas masks as police deployed tear gas inside the Rotunda, the ornate area under the dome that connects the House and the Senate.

Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., called it a “coup attempt.” He later commented directly to Trump: “You are not protecting the country. Where is the DC guard? You are done and your legacy will be a disaster.”

Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., assailed Trump.

“Today, the United States Capitol – the world’s greatest symbol of self-government – was ransacked while the leader of the free world cowered behind his keyboard – tweeting against his Vice President for fulfilling the duties of his oath to the Constitution,” the senator said in a statement. “Lies have consequences. This violence was the inevitable and ugly outcome of the President’s addiction to constantly stoking division.”

Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., blamed Trump’s rhetoric, saying, “our president should have given a much more clear tone. Leaders create calmness and direction; they don’t inspire people to get angry and do the things that they’re doing.”

He called on the president to “stand up and be a better leader on this, because he has not been in my view . . .. He needs to respect the peaceful transition of power.”

Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, as he was led away to safety, told a New York Times reporter, “This is what the president has caused today, this insurrection.”

Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, implored Trump to “tell your supporters to stop the violence. Stop the assault. Now.”

Former congressman Will Hurd, R-Tex., who retired last year over his frustrations with Trump’s takeover of the party, called it “domestic terrorism.”

“This should be treated as a coup led by a president that will not be peacefully removed from power,” Hurd tweeted.

Democrats, some tweeting from hiding places within the Capitol, reacted passionately to the chaos around them.

“On August 24, 1814, the British stormed our Capitol and set fire to it,” tweeted Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J. “Now the Capitol has again been breached and sieged. Donald Trump incited this. He is responsible for this. And he is silent as this tragic moment continues.”

Trump eventually released a one-minute taped statement telling his supporters to “go home now.” Still, he continued his baseless claim that the presidential election was “fraudulent.”

“I know your pain, I know your hurt. We had an election that was stolen from us. It was a landslide election and everyone knows it – especially the other side,” he said, reiterating the same false allegations that have incensed his supporters. “But you have to go home now. We have to have peace. We have to have law and order, we have to respect our great people in law and order. We don’t want anybody hurt.”

Still, many saw Trump’s statement as falling short of his responsibility as president to quell the unrest.

Rep. Gerald E. Connolly, D-Va., accused Trump of urging “the Proud Boys to show up today in a barely veiled invite to disrupt the count. You’d be blind to not see this coming. And now it’s time to end it.”

“This is thuggery at its best,” tweeted Rep. Adriano Espaillat, D-N.Y. “And the flames are being stoked by the person currently in our #WhiteHouse. Donald Trump is responsible for this. #TrumpThugs.”

In a statement, Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., said the “violence must end.”

“[T]hose who attacked police and broke the law must be prosecuted, and Congress must get back to work and finish its job,” he added.

Meanwhile, Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-Tex., said Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Tex., and Hawley – who was the first senator to announce that he would object to certifying Biden’s electoral college victory – should “immediately resign.”

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Trump will auction drilling rights to Arctic National Wildlife Refuge

InternationalJan 07. 2021The coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, with the Brooks Range as a backdrop. MUST CREDIT: U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service photo

By The Washington Post · Juliet Eilperin, Steven Mufson

WASHINGTON – Trump administration officials will auction off oil and gas leases in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge on Wednesday, capping Republicans’ decades-long quest to drill in one of the nation’s most vast unspoiled wild places. The move marks one of the most significant environmental rollbacks the president has accomplished in his term.

But with low oil prices and an increasing number of banks saying they would not finance Arctic energy projects, major oil companies did not try to buy the leases. That left the state agency, Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority, as the main bidder. The agency put up all but two of the winning bids, which went to two small energy firms.

The sale of 11 tracts on 600,000 acres netted about $14 million, a tiny fraction of what Republicans initially predicted it would yield. Two of the bids were competitive.

Interior Deputy Secretary Kate MacGregor, who stood before a camera and read the bids out loud as she pulled them out of manila folders, announced at the start of the sale, “Today is truly historic.” Noting that many people had spent years working to open the refuge up to drilling, she said, “Thank you for your grit and for your determination.”

While a 2017 law compels the government to auction another several hundred thousand acres by the end of 2024, the incoming administration may be able to overturn that requirement if Democrats win control of the Senate in the wake of Tuesday’s runoff elections in Georgia.

A coalition of environmental and conservation groups tried to block the sale on the grounds that the administration had cut corners in crafting the leasing program, but U.S. District Judge Sharon Gleason denied their request for a preliminary injunction Tuesday evening.

Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, ANWR, Alaska

The Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management will offer drilling rights to most of the refuge’s nearly 1.6 million-acre coastal plain, which attracts hundreds of thousands of migrating caribou and waterfowl each year and provides critical habitat for the Southern Beaufort Sea’s remaining polar bears. As sea ice on the Arctic Ocean abutting the refuge shrinks, the bears – threatened with extinction due to climate change – have been forced to spend more time on land. Federal scientists estimate that a third of the bears’ maternal dens lie within the area the administration has opened up for energy development.

The refuge has become a rallying point for Republicans and environmentalists alike, who have fought for 40 years over whether to tap into the fossil fuels lying beneath it. The government estimates there could be 7.7 billion barrels of recoverable oil on the coastal plain, though seismic surveys have not been conducted since the 1980s. The BLM is in the process of letting the Kaktovik Iñupiat Corporation conduct seismic tests there this winter.

The sale marks the culmination of President Donald Trump’s push to expand oil and gas drilling across the country, including in some of its most ecologically-sensitive areas. On Monday the BLM opened up an additional 7 million acres for leasing on the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, home to a critical calving area for tens of thousands of caribou and migratory feeding ground for hundreds of thousands of birds.

Trump officials predict that extracting oil from the relatively-pristine refuge, which supports 270 species, will require as many as four airstrips and major well pads, 175 miles of roads, vertical supports for pipelines, a seawater treatment plant and a barge landing and storage site. Drilling operations could last for nearly half-a-century.

A number of Alaska Native officials – including those in Kaktovik, which lies within the refuge’s boundaries and has surface land rights next to the coastal plain – back energy development on the refuge. The Arctic Slope Regional Corporation, which holds 92,000 acres of subsurface mineral rights, has also backed drilling there.

In a federal court hearing on Monday, where several environmental groups unsuccessfully sought a preliminary injunction to halt the lease sale, Tyson Kade – a lawyer for the North Slope Borough and Kaktovik – argued that such a move would cost Alaska Natives living in the region jobs and revenue. “The Court should consider the interests of the people who actually live on the North Slope and the coastal plain,” he said.

But the Gwich’in people, who have relied for centuries on the Porcupine caribou herd that migrates each year through the refuge, have joined with conservationists in opposing any drilling there.

Last month the BLM withdrew nearly 475,000 acres from the auction, citing public concerns about drilling’s impact on the caribou herd.

Gleason ruled Tuesday the auction could go forward because the Gwich’in and other plaintiffs – including the National Audubon Society and Natural Resources Defense Council “have not established that they are likely to suffer imminent irreparable harm” since drilling is not expected to commence immediately.

“We will fight to protect the lands that nourish the Porcupine caribou herd and our people, no matter how long it takes or where it takes us,” said Bernadette Demientieff, executive director of the Gwich’in Steering Committee, in a statement. “This administration steamrolled through a disrespectful, harmful, illegal leasing plan, and we plan to stop it. While that didn’t happen today, that day will come.”

Opponents have also launched a public campaign to deter major financial institutions and energy firms from investing in such a project. America’s six largest banks and Canada’s five biggest banks have all pledged not to back energy exploration on the refuge.

When asked whether Royal Dutch Shell planned to bid, the company’s chief executive Ben van Beurden said “Oh, no, no, no.” Shell bought leases in the Chukchi Sea off the northwest coast of Alaska in 2008 and spent more than $7 billion only to drill a dry hole in 2015.

“We believe that the oil and gas upstream part is a foundational piece of business for us, but we’re going to be very selective on where we want to create value,” van Beurden said. “And I can tell you at the North Slope or offshore Alaska, it’s not going to be part of that.”

One major bank said it had asked clients with assets in the region whether they planned to bid and they said absolutely not, according to the bank’s spokesman, who asked for anonymity to protect business relationships.

Anxiety about the possibility that no one would bid on the leases in the refuge prompted former governors Bill Walker and Frank Murkowski to write op-eds urging the state to place bids on the leases so that the state could sell or give the leases to oil companies to keep development moving. On Dec. 23, despite calls to spend the money elsewhere, the AIDA board voted to spend up to $20 million, enough to buy 800,000 acres at the $25 rock bottom minimum price.

While Congress projected in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act 2017 that the lease program would raise $1.8 billion in revenue for the federal government, officials now say it will raise half that, and it could be even less. Justice Department lawyer Paul Turcke estimated Monday the sale would generate “many millions of dollars” split evenly between Alaska and the federal government.

There has been little competition for leases on the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, where companies have operated for years. More than 90% of the leases sold since 2012 received just a single bid. In eight of the past nine years, there was not a single competitive bid on the reserve.

President-elect Joe Biden has indicated he opposes any development on the refuge: On Tuesday a senior transition official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he has yet to take office said of the auction “It is just a sham, and a poke in the eye.”

It remains unclear how much Biden can restrict drilling given the legal mandate to hold another auction by the end of 2024,though Democrats may be able to overturn this provision if they win both of Georgia’s Senate seats.

Drew Caputo, Earthjustice’s vice president of litigation for lands, wildlife and oceans, noted that the Bureau of Land Management is supposed to hold quarterly auctions on its lands but can defer them repeatedly.

“The 2017 tax law is way more prescriptive than BLM rules that cover oil and gas lease sales,” Caputo said, adding Biden will have “a binding obligation” to conduct a lease sale on the refuge by the end of his first term “unless the law is changed before then. That mandate is not an excuse for other legal violations, like inadequate environmental analysis.”

There are four separate lawsuits challenging the administration’s environmental analysis of the proposed drilling program.

Frank Macchiarola, senior vice president of policy, economics and regulatory affairs for the American Petroleum Institute, said in an email that the environmental review at issue “confirmed the potential to develop the area safely, and any company that chooses to invest will be held to the world’s highest environmental standards.”

“Our members are laser-focused on continuing safe and environmentally sound energy production, and we will work with the Biden administration to support policies that balance U.S. energy leadership,” Macchiarola said.

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NYSE will remove share listings of Chinese telecom companies as Trump moves to ban Chinese apps Alipay and WeChat Pay

InternationalJan 07. 2021

By The Washington Post · Jeanne Whalen

The New York Stock Exchange said it will proceed with a White House order to cease trading of three Chinese telecoms, the latest in a string of recent blows for Chinese companies dealt by the U.S. government.

It follows President Donald Trump’s late Tuesday move to ban more Chinese mobile apps in the United States, including Alipay and WeChat Pay.

The NYSE said Wednesday it will delist the shares of China Telecom, China Mobile and China Unicom on Jan. 11, to comply with a Nov. 12 executive order banning U.S. investment in companies that the Trump administration says support China’s military.

The companies couldn’t immediately be reached for comment. The NYSE has flip-flopped on whether to remove the shares from trading. On Dec. 31 it said it would delist the companies, but then on Monday said it was reversing course after consulting with the Treasury Department.

China hawks in Congress, including Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., slammed the stock exchange for retaining the share listings. In its latest announcement, the NYSE said it would move forward with the delisting after receiving new guidance from Treasury.

The Treasury Department didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The news came hours after Trump issued a separate executive order to ban transactions in the United States with eight Chinese mobile apps. The list includes Alipay and WeChat pay, which are mobile payment apps accepted by some U.S. retailers, largely to cater to Chinese tourists and visitors. Their corporate owners, Ant Group and Tencent, respectively, did not offer any immediate comment on the order.

The order will take effect in 45 days, after the start of the Biden administration, leaving its fate unclear.

The order follows a similar ban Trump began pursuing in August, when he prohibited transactions with the short-form video app TikTok and the social networking app WeChat, calling them national security threats. Federal courts so far have blocked those bans from taking effect as they hear lawsuits from the apps’ supporters.

The new order refers to the eight additional apps as security threats, saying that they “automatically capture vast swaths of information from millions of users in the United States, including sensitive personally identifiable information and private information, which would allow [China] and [the Chinese Communist Party] access to Americans’ personal and proprietary information.”

The order does not detail the types of transactions that will be banned. Instead, it instructs the Commerce Department to define in coming weeks the specific transactions.

Legal experts have previously said that the transaction bans could include barring downloads of the apps from the Apple and Google app stores or forbidding all financial transactions.

The other apps included in the order are CamScanner, an app that turns a mobile phone into a document scanner, and QQ Wallet, SHAREit, Tencent QQ, VMate and WPS Office.

CamScanner had 4.4 million downloads in the Apple and Google app stores last year in the United States, according to analytics provider Sensor Tower. Alipay had 207,000 downloads.

The targeting of Alipay marks another headache for Ant Group’s controlling shareholder, Jack Ma, the Chinese tech entrepreneur who has recently clashed with Chinese authorities.

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U.S. private jobs post first decline since april, ADP data show

InternationalJan 07. 2021Commuters wearing protective masks walk through Penn Station in New York on Aug. 3, 2020. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Michael Nagle.

By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Katia Dmitrieva

The number of employees at U.S. businesses unexpectedly declined in December for the first time since April, underscoring the immediate economic impact of mounting coronavirus cases across the country.

Company payrolls decreased by 123,000 during the month, concentrated in leisure and hospitality and retail, according to ADP Research Institute data released Wednesday. The prior month was revised down slightly to a 304,000 gain.

The median projection in a Bloomberg survey of economists called for an increase of 75,000 in December. Private payrolls remain almost 10 million short of pre-pandemic levels.

The data indicate the ongoing labor market fallout from the virus, which is only expected to worsen this winter as cases of Covid-19 increase. Infections in the U.S. South have already skyrocketed beyond other regional records and several states have extended virus-related restrictions, including California and Hawaii.

“The underlying story here is the impact on the services sector from the patchwork of anti-Covid measures imposed across the country in the fourth quarter, alongside people choosing to reduce their social interactions in the face of soaring infections,” Ian Shepherdson, chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics Ltd, said in a note.

S&P 500 futures remained lower after the figures as traders assessed the Georgia runoff for two Senate seats. The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note held above 1% and the dollar fell.

The figures also precede the monthly jobs report on Friday, which is projected to show weaker payroll growth. Economists forecast that the government’s measure of private employment increased by just 50,000, with some projecting an outright decline for the month.

The ADP data show that service employment fell 105,000, led by a 58,000 decrease in leisure and hospitality payrolls and a 50,000 drop within trade, transportation and utilities. Payrolls at goods producers decreased 18,000 as factory jobs declined.

The overall drop was also concentrated in businesses employing more than 1,000 workers. Small firms shed 13,000 employees during the month.

ADP’s payroll data represent firms employing nearly 26 million workers in the U.S.