What Happened This Week In Washington — And Georgia

Some context for what Duckworth went through today.

There are a lot of questions about what happens next, and some reporting suggests that Trump’s Cabinet is discussing invoking the 25th Amendment to remove him from office. Margaret Brennan of CBS News said earlier that nothing has been formally presented to Pence — meaning that it’s hard to know how concerted this effort is — but at least some members of the Cabinet are reportedly discussing the matter.

ABC News has also confirmed that this has happened, cautioning, though, that it is, “unclear how extensive these conversations have been or if Vice President Pence is supportive of such action.”

It does seem at the very least that many Cabinet secretaries are upset by what happened today and by Trump’s unwillingness to call in resources to stop the protesters.

A little bit of ambiguity there, but it sounds like Roger Marshall, Kansas’s newly elected senator, is sticking with his plan to object to the Electoral College results, citing the need for a commission to investigate further.

Meawhile, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram have all locked Trump’s accounts.

ABC News has similar reporting to what we saw from Haberman earlier.

From ABC:

“Multiple sources tell ABC News President Trump rebuffed efforts for quite some time to call in the National Guard this afternoon, it wasn’t until a few White House officials intervened for ‘the sake of the country.’ Sources tell ABC News the aides explained to Trump that if action was not taken, other protesters could mobilize across the country and the situation would only grow more dire. Sources tonight say the president is fuming mad inside the White House, unclear what his next move or action could be — he is described by one strong source as ‘stewing.'”

At this point, we’re not aware of any changes in Trump’s staffing, but notably, two of the first lady’s staffers have resigned over what happened today. The first was Stephanie Grisham, Melania Trump’s chief of staff, and the second is her social secretary, Rickie Niceta.

I mean … one thing to remember, Micah, is that senators like to hear themselves talk.

I’m not sure what Sasse is trying to do here. Which kinda makes me think he’s just speaking genuinely.

Right now we’re hearing from the Senate on the objection to Arizona’s electoral votes, but remember, this is a joint session of Congress, meaning the House will also take this issue up. They are expected to reconvene at 9 p.m., and, after the debate, they will vote. From there, the House will reconvene for the joint session to continue to count electoral ballots. It’s unclear at this point, given the number of GOP senators retracting their objections, whether other states’ votes will be called into question.

Loeffler becomes another flip; she now says she’ll no longer oppose certification because of the events of today.

I suppose, Micah, that I’m also interested in how much today will affect Trump’s approval rating. It’s not exactly the “shooting someone on 5th Avenue” scenario. But someone died, and that YouGov poll says most people blame Trump for how events unfolded today.

To follow up on that point: People have raised smart questions about how many Republicans actually believe that the 2020 presidential election was stolen, even as polls show most Republicans saying they hold that position. I think those questions largely stand, but the fact that so many Republicans (45 percent) say they approve of the storming of the Capitol suggests that lots and lots of Republicans really, really believe the election was stolen.

We got a poll! YouGov conducted a survey today of 1,448 registered voters, most of whom said they were aware of the events at the Capitol.

The findings are pretty amazing. Here’s one: 62 percent of registered voters see the storming of the Capitol as a threat to democracy. So, OK, that’s a majority. But nearly 1 in 3 respondents, including more than 2 in 3 Republicans, said that people threatening an actual democratic institution as it literally conducts democracy was not a threat to democracy.

Mike Lee of Utah, who was not expected to oppose certification, is being fairly professorial here (not meant in a negative sense) in explaining what Congress’s role should be in certifying election results, and he’s making an an import distinction between Congress’s largely ceremonial role in verifying Electoral College results and its more active role in judging elections that send people to Congress itself.

Another stating-the-obvious point: Today is going to build a tie in the public’s mind — and in the minds of members of Congress — between trying to delegitimize election results and outright physical violence. And that is likely to raise the stakes for such attempts at delegitimization in the future. That doesn’t mean they won’t happen again; they almost certainly will. But it does mean that it will be harder to get away with “Hey, we’re just asking questions here!” faux-innocent sorts of statements.

“The commission that we have asked for is not going to happen,” says Lankford of Oklahoma, so that’s another senator leaving the anti-certification camp. Cruz and his allies, including Lankford, were previously calling for a commission to look into the election results.

Blackburn, previously one of the senators who promised to object to the Electoral College results today, is withdrawing her objection. According to our colleagues at ABC, she plans to support certification.

While McConnell’s comments were fairly pointed in many respects, Schumer is directly tying Trump to the violence in a way that McConnell didn’t.

Well, some Republicans are not abandoning their objections:

Maggie Haberman at the NYT reports that she’s learned that “Trump initially rebuffed and resisted requests to mobilize the National Guard, according to a person with knowledge of the events.” She adds, “It required intervention from the White House counsel Pat Cipollone, among other officials.”

Yeah, statistically it seems nearly impossible that you’re going to get all of the House members to flip. But the Senate is at least an open question.

There are about 260 Republicans in Congress, so we shouldn’t necessarily make too much of a few members flipping to be against this anti-certification move. But I do suspect these comments from Daines and others are representative of a broader shift, particularly in the Senate.

McConnell, speaking on the Senate floor, refers to the violence today as an “insurrection.”

To convey a probably-too-obvious thought, it is striking the degree to which Trump seemed to be leading an insurrection today against Congress and Pence. And there may even be some rather literal respects in which Pence is acting as the president more than Trump is.

To that point, Sarah, and one other stray thought as McConnell begins to speak here: As we unpack the wreckage of today, the question of what’s left of the Republican Party post-Trump and what it stands for — particularly in terms of democratic values — is one of the most important. And I keep coming back to the fact that neither Loeffler nor Perdue has conceded in Georgia. Maybe Perdue’s lack of a concession is defensible, but Loeffler’s is not. But the lack of concessions has basically been taken with the batting of a single eye. That says something about the future.

We will see what happens, but CNN is reporting that Republicans in the Senate at least are likely to limit their objections to one state: Arizona. So this process might end somewhat quickly.

I was thinking about that piece earlier, too, Micah. And while I agree with both you and Nate that this feels like a turning point, it’s unclear to me whether all of the GOP senators will withdraw their objections. For instance, Johnson told reporters earlier that he felt he and the president bore no responsibility for what happened at the Capitol today, signaling to me that maybe that watershed moment isn’t coming.

It does feel like a pivot point, Micah, which doesn’t necessarily mean this will predict how the situation ends. I’d also note that the pivot comes at a time when Republicans just lost control of the U.S. Senate, a huge story unto itself and one that frankly makes Trump look like a loser. One thing about these proceedings being held tonight is that it will force a lot of Republicans to speak up in some form or another on the record; they can’t hide as much as they usually do behind mealy-mouthed statements.

It feels like we published this years ago, but it’s worth rereading this late 2019 article from FiveThirtyEight contributor Lee Drutman: “If Republicans Ever Turn On Trump, It’ll Happen All At Once.”

The idea was that elected Republicans were very unlikely to turn on the president, as they have so many incentives not to, but that if it did happen, it would happen in a rush (as opposed to gradually). It’s hard to say right now exactly how extensive the Trump-vs.-elite-GOP split is, but today we’ve seen a far more robust rebuke of the president from far more elected Republicans than I think we ever have before.

Does that mean Republicans will drop their objections to the Electoral College vote? Some Republicans already have. But we’ll see how many ultimately do.

Congress has decided to reconvene this evening to certify Biden’s Electoral College win, after mob violence disrupted the vote inside the Capitol for much of the day. We’re unsure how the GOP push to object to the results will unfold — there are reports of some Republicans dropping their objections — but McConnell is expected to address the nation at 8 p.m., which we will be covering.

Congress had to halt its counting of electoral votes on Wednesday after a mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol. It was a stunning, scary and tragic day. Meanwhile, according to reporting from our colleagues at ABC News, the FBI released a statement saying, “Two suspected explosive devices were rendered safe by the FBI and our law enforcement partners. The investigation is ongoing.”

Needless to say, the Trump era appears to be ending violently. And today’s events raise a lot of questions (and, of course, they’re still unfolding). One, as Perry just pointed out, is how the more Trump-aligned elected Republicans respond — do they shift tactics? Another: How did the mob get into the Capitol with such apparent easy? Also, when will Congress count the electoral votes? There are a thousand more.

We’re already at work on some of these questions — reporting, collecting data, etc. For the time being, though, we’re hitting the pause button on this live blog. We may unpause it depending on how events unfold (most likely Thursday morning, but we’ll have to see). In the meantime, though, if you have questions you’d like us to look into, send us a message here. And please, stay safe.

Three things happened today: (i) Republican members of Congress tried to block the formal approval of the Electoral College results from different states, (ii) President Trump encouraged protesters to come to Washington and go to the Capitol, and (iii) those protesters turned violent and forced the evacuations of lawmakers. Those three events are interconnected but also somewhat distinct from one another. All three actions show disregard for America’s electoral process since it is clear that Biden won the election. But the sequence of events raises the question of whether the dozens of Republicans who seemed like they were poised to spend hours questioning the election results in states like Arizona will shift their tactics and abandon this certification fight in light of the violent situation on Capitol Hill. In theory, even a GOP lawmaker who is sincerely frustrated with the election process could decide today’s events mean that the fight over the results has gotten out of hand.

Trump, unsurprisingly, has not shifted his stance at all, releasing a minute-long video in which he called for his supporters who have effectively invaded the Capitol to leave the building but repeatedly suggested that the election had been stolen from him. But lawmakers who had supported contesting the results are being more circumspect. They are sharply condemning the pro-Trump people who have taken over the Capitol in more direct terms than the president. But they are neither reemphasizing their concerns about the integrity of the election, as the president did, nor saying that they will stop objecting to the certification process.

“Thank you to the brave law enforcement officials who have put their lives on the line. The violence must end, those who attacked police and broke the law must be prosecuted, and Congress must get back to work and finish its job,” Sen. Josh Hawley said in a Twitter message at 4:26 p.m. Eastern time.

“Those storming the Capitol need to stop NOW. The Constitution protects peaceful protest, but violence—from Left or Right—is ALWAYS wrong. And those engaged in violence are hurting the cause they say they support,” Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas said in a Twitter message at 3:07 p.m.

“Stop the violence. Support Capitol Police,” said Jim Jordan of Ohio at 3:02 p.m.

“Peaceful demonstration is an American value – violent destruction is not. Attacking police and destroying the Capitol is never a pursuit of truth and freedom. Never,” said Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma just before 4 p.m.

I haven’t done a comprehensive search of all the lawmakers who had raised concerns about the certification process. So perhaps others are headed in a different direction. But this is one of the big questions after the last few hours: What happens next? It is unlikely that Trump will back off his push to contest the results. But what Republican lawmakers will do is obviously different.

Some who are normally allied with Trump but not pushing this anti-certification effort are aggressively breaking with the president.

“The vote today is not a protest; the vote today is literally to overturn the election! Voting to overturn state-certified elections would be the opposite of what states’ rights Republicans have always advocated for,” said Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky.

“Dear MAGA- I am one of you. Before I worked for @realDonaldTrump, I worked for @MarkMeadows & @Jim_Jordan & the @freedomcaucus. I marched in the 2010 Tea Party rallies. I campaigned w/ Trump & voted for him. But I need you to hear me: the Election was NOT stolen. We lost. There were cases of fraud that should be investigated. But the legitimate margins of victory for Biden are far too wide to change the outcome. You need to know that,” said Alyssa Farah, who served until last month as Trump’s communications director.

She added, “I’m proud of many policy accomplishments the Trump Admin had. But we must accept these results. It’s time to regroup, organize, & campaign for political leaders we believe in, and let our democracy work. It is NOT and NEVER will be a time for violence. If you believe in America first, you believe in our Constitution, the rule of law, & our first principles.”

While the police response in Washington, D.C., Wednesday may look like a disproportionate lack of force compared with the response to protests this summer, it is very much counter to the expectations of right-wing protesters who have come to perceive police as their allies. I just got off the phone with Ed Maguire, a professor of criminology at Arizona State University who studies interactions between protesters and police, and he told me that his interviews with protesters have shown a consistent pattern: Left-wing protesters believe that police are against them and will rough them up more than other kinds of protesters; right-wing protesters believe that police are on their side.

There’s not much empirical evidence to show whether those perceptions are true, but even unprovable beliefs can end up mattering a lot if they shape behavior. And these particular beliefs seem to do that, Maguire said. He pointed to the protest in Portland, Oregon, last summer, where right-wing protesters brought bear mace and other weapons to a protest and used them on both left-wing counterprotesters and members of the press. Even as that happened, he said, Portland police took a largely hands-off approach, something that ended up only increasing left-wing protesters’ sense of grievance against the police.

But today’s events are likely to change the game. When he interviewed right-wing protesters at Stop the Steal events in Arizona over the past few months, Maguire was surprised to find just how strong — and how religious — their belief in police support was. “They believed God was on their side and police were backing them,” he told me. “That leftists are Godless and they hate God and hate America. [But right-wing protesters] were God fearing moral people and police would always back them for that reason.”

Now, they have evidence that isn’t true. The use of police force against right-wing protesters — any force — upsets the apple cart of some very deeply held beliefs, Maguire said. And that’s likely to have consequences of some kind.

As Biden addresses the nation about the uprising at the Capitol, Edison has projected Democrat Jon Ossoff as the winner in Georgia, thus handing Democrats control of the Senate. What a surreal moment.

The fact that Trump supporters have stormed the Capital is shocking. But the idea of physically storming the halls of Congress and taking it over by force has cropped up in many far-right communities online for a long time. Q — the anonymous poster who inspired the QAnon movement — regularly makes mention of “taking back” control, and “taking back” the country. On Twitter, TikTok, Parler and TheDonald (a forum that took the place of the now banned, pro-Trump subreddit with the same name) leading up to today’s protest, threats of violence were sprinkled in with discussions of plans for the day. In many ways, this is the culmination of similar acts we’ve seen over the last few months, including the FBI-thwarted plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, and anti-lockdown protests that led to armed trespassers storming into statehouses in Idaho and Michigan. Online, comments alongside livestreams of the protests have been encouraging those who have raided the Capitol and even calling for violence. This is an act many online communities continue to glamorize and support.

Readers, with Trump supporters having stormed the Capitol, halting the certification of Electoral College votes, we’re going to significantly ramp down the pace of this live blog. Simply put, the nature of this story has changed, and other media outlets — our colleagues at ABC News, for example — are in a much better position to cover what’s happening (the who, what, where). There will be a lot to say about the why and the how of today’s historic events, and what this means for American democracy, but that’ll come later. We’ll still publish reporting and analysis here when we think we can add value, but the pace will be substantially slower than our typical live blogs. As always, thanks for sticking with us.

It is difficult for me, as a reporter who was on the street during the protests in Minneapolis last summer, to not be comparing and contrasting police response to each set of protests. I am obviously not seeing everything going on there, but I haven’t seen police shooting less-lethal munitions, like beanbags or rubber bullets, at any of these people on the Capitol steps. Which is hard to square, emotionally, with things I saw in Minneapolis, like my reporting partner being shot in the face by a police projectile or a protester I was interviewing in an otherwise empty lot being shot in the leg with similar rounds by officers pushing back a far smaller group of protesters who were making much less contact with the officers. I’m certainly not the only reporter thinking about that.

On the other hand, we reported here at FiveThirtyEight over the summer about how those kinds of responses — which escalate tensions between police and protesters — don’t actually reduce violence and, in fact, increase the likelihood that protests will become more violent. So is a less-aggressive police response here evidence-based?

I reached out to one of my sources from this summer, John Noakes, a professor at Arcadia University, to ask him about what he’s seeing. He had a couple of things to say — with the caveat, of course, that he isn’t on the ground at this event.

First, he was surprised that the preparations for this protest didn’t include setting up a stronger perimeter further away from the Capitol, similar to the kind used at political conventions to isolate protesters from the event. That, in itself, would have been a major deescalation tactic, and Noakes said he was shocked that it doesn’t seem to have been done, knowing this protest would be happening today. The second thing he wanted to point out: There is only so much you can do to deescalate with people who don’t want deescalation to happen. Particularly with people who aren’t regular protesters interested in symbolic action.

Apparently the invasion of capitol buildings is happening in at least one state (Kansas).

Some of the protesters inside the Capitol appear to be flying Confederate flags. That’s a pretty clear sign that at least some of the protesters are part of the white nationalist or white supremacist movement. There’s a lot we still don’t know about who the protesters are or what their affiliations might be, but as Maggie Koerth and I wrote a few months ago, Trump’s rhetoric and presidency have emboldened militia groups, some of which are part of the white power movement. Self-identified militia members have appeared at pro-Trump rallies and protests in the past few months, in addition to anti-lockdown protests earlier this year, and Trump has repeatedly, explicitly encouraged them to support him. Several experts told us at the time that they were worried that Trump’s encouragement of the groups could lead to more violence — particularly if they felt a need to turn against his opponents.

Photographs show U.S. Capitol Police detaining protesters outside the House chamber.

More photographs from inside the U.S. Capitol as protesters enter and interact with Capitol Police.

Congressman Peter Welch of Vermont says he was told to put on a gas mask because of tear gas in the rotunda.

Police have guns drawn, in case that’s not clear. We don’t know if the protesters/rioters are armed.

This is very scary.

A semi de-escalation from Trump on Twitter:

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1346904110969315332?s=20

Photographs are coming in from inside the US Capitol, showing a member of the U.S. Capitol Police in a gas mask as protesters gather near the Senate Chamber.

Per Zach Cohen at National Journal, this is the biggest breach of Capitol security since members of the Puerto Rican National Party fired shots in the House chamber in 1954.

Here’s a statement from the DC mayor, courtesy of colleagues at ABC News:

“Today, Mayor Muriel Bowser ordered a citywide curfew for the District of Columbia from 6:00 p.m. on Wednesday, January 6, until 6:00 a.m. on Thursday, January 7.

During the hours of the curfew, no person, other than persons designated by the Mayor, shall walk, bike, run, loiter, stand, or motor by car or other mode of transport upon any street, alley, park, or other public place within the District.

The curfew imposed by the Mayor’s Order shall not apply to essential workers, including working media with their outlet-issued credentials, when engaged in essential functions, including travel to and from their essential work.”