The Atlantic
The slovenliness of Trump’s legal team threatened to deprive senators of their face-saving excuse.
February 10, 2021
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“The mob was fed lies. They were provoked by the president and other powerful people, and they tried to use fear and violence to stop a specific proceeding of the first branch of the federal government which they did not like.”
That’s what Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell had to say on January 21. McConnell did not rise to the leadership of the Senate Republicans by speaking idly. If he feels that Donald Trump incited a riot with the specific purpose of thwarting the 2020 election, so do many other Republican senators as well.
February 3, 2021 Share
The Senate confirmed Alejandro Mayorkas on Tuesday as President Joe Biden’s Homeland Security secretary, the first Latino to fill a post that will have a central role in the government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, a sweeping Russia-linked cyber hack and domestic extremism.
Mayorkas was confirmed by a 56-43 vote, the narrowest margin yet for a Biden Cabinet nominee. The first immigrant to serve in the job, he is expected to lead a broad policy overhaul of an agency that was accused of being deeply politicized as it carried out President Donald Trump’s initiatives on immigration and law enforcement.
Wednesday was Holocaust Remembrance Day, which is more important than ever.
Fewer people who can actually remember the Holocaust are still with us. Denialism and disinformation about the Holocaust presaged the false information now spread online. The rise of a virulent White nationalism plagues democracies like the United States and was on display at the US Capitol during an insurrection that’s been compared to the burning of the Reichstag in 1933.
Witness to the Holocaust. Irene Butter is a survivor who watched the rise of the Nazis as a girl in Germany. She writes a warning for Americans that their democracy is at stake and sees “echoes of the Nazis and their regime” in the insurrection at the US Capitol, which featured rioters in Holocaust-denying T-shirts and other anti-Semitic symbols.
Jan. 6 was a very dark day for America.
Incited by President Donald Trump, a crowd of his supporters, aiming to stop Congress from carrying out its constitutional duty to count Electoral College votes, overran barricades, broke windows and vandalized one of the most sacred symbols of our democracy. In the melee, one Capitol Police officer was murdered and others were brutally assaulted, including the literal use of a “thin blue line” flag to beat a police officer over the head.
It was a day that will go down with Pearl Harbor Day and Sept. 11 as one of the worst days in our country’s history.