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Readers react to the Jan. 6 committee’s action and a guest essay by a Capitol Police officer. Also: Starbucks union fight; Hanukkah; marijuana policy.

Criminal referrals hold symbolic but no legal weight because Congress has no enforcement power and no formal say in what the Justice Department does.

On Monday, the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol released an executive summary of its final report into the effort to overturn the 2020 election. It’s more than 100 pages.

The department is under no obligation to adopt the House committee’s recommendations, and not much is publicly known about any specific charges that the special counsel might consider.

The riot was an attack not just on an essential American institution but also on the people who live and serve to protect it.

The charge of seditious conspiracy is the same as in a recent trial of members of the Oath Keepers militia, but the Proud Boys defendants are accused of a central role in the fighting at the Capitol.

The plot, which also included attacking an F.B.I. office in Tennessee, was foiled by a witness who aided the authorities and recorded the defendant and a co-conspirator, court papers say.

In current politics, it isn’t just anti-Trumpers who find themselves frustrated by voters’ refusal to look backward.

The committee announced a Dec. 19 meeting to discuss its final report and consider criminal and civil referrals against the former president and key players in his plot to overturn the 2020 election.

Prosecutors have combed through more than 100,000 documents from John Eastman, Jeffrey Clark and Ken Klukowski, who played roles in the effort to reverse the outcome of the 2020 election.