Why did Army repeatedly deny that Michael Flynn’s brother was involved in Capitol riot response?

The U.S. Army repeatedly and falsely denied that the brother of Michael Flynn — the former Trump national security adviser, who has become a prominent conspiracy theorist — was involved in its response to the deadly Capitol riot. At least until Lt. Gen. Charles Flynn, the Army’s deputy chief of staff for operations, plans and training, admitted to The Washington Post that he was present during a meeting about whether to deploy the National Guard to quell the mob.

It’s unclear why the Army denied that Charles Flynn, attended the meeting, in which one official (it’s not clear who) described the Capitol rioters as “peaceful” and several officials resisted deploying additional troops. The Army’s delay in sending National Guard troops to assist Capitol Police and Washington, D.C. officers who were overrun by the pro-Trump mob has come under increasing scrutiny from lawmakers. National Guard backup did not arrive at the Capitol until nearly four hours after the then-president’s supporters had breached the complex, after most of the violence was already over.

Army officials repeatedly told the Post that Flynn was not involved in their response.

“HE WAS NOT IN ANY OF THE MEETINGS!” one unnamed Army official told the outlet in an email on Jan. 12.

An Army spokesperson ultimately acknowledged that Flynn participated in the meeting when confronted with “accounts of multiple officials on the call.”

Charles Flynn, who has served in the Army since 1985, told the Post that he was present during a “tense” call on Jan. 6 during which Capitol Police and D.C. officials “pleaded with the Pentagon to dispatch the National Guard urgently, but top Army officials expressed concern about having the Guard at the Capitol.”

Flynn said he left the room before the meeting ended, believing that then-Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy, who was not present at the meeting, would soon deploy additional troops.

“I entered the room after the call began and departed prior to the call ending as I believed a decision was imminent from the Secretary and I needed to be in my office to assist in executing the decision,” he said in a statement.

The report noted that “it makes sense” that Flynn would be involved in the Pentagon response given his position with the Army, which controls the D.C. National Guard, though he is not in the chain of command. There’s also no evidence that Flynn “shares his brother’s extreme views” or was in any way “influenced by his brother.”

Dan Lamothe, one of the reporters who broke the story, said that Army officials denied it because they were “aware of how it might look to some Americans.”

The riot came one day after Michael Flynn, himself a retired three-star general and former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, revved up a crowd of Trump’s supporters at a Washington rally with false claims of election-rigging.

“This country is awake tomorrow,” he said on the eve of the siege. “The members of Congress, the members of the House of Representatives, the members of the United States Senate, those of you who are feeling weak tonight … we the people are going to be here, and we want you to know that we will not stand for a lie.”

Michael Flynn has increasingly pushed QAnon conspiracy theories and was banned by Twitter in the wake of the riot, as part of the platform’s crackdown on misinformation and incitement of violence. Flynn, along with his attorney Sidney Powell, met with Trump at the White House during his push to baselessly overturn the results of the election and publicly called for Trump to invoke martial law to “rerun” the election.

McCarthy, who stepped down when President Joe Biden took office, told the Post that he was not in the meeting with Charles Flynn but defended the lieutenant general.

“Charlie Flynn is an officer of an incredibly high integrity,” he said. “Multiple combat tours. He has buried a lot of people. This guy has given a lot to this country. It is incredibly awkward for this officer every day for what is going on with him and his brother, but he puts his head down in, and he is locked in to serve the Constitution.”

The report noted that Army officials continued to deny Flynn’s involvement “before and after” the reporters interviewed McCarthy.

Officials in D.C. called the Army to plead for assistance dealing with the riot. Though the D.C. National Guard had deployed more than 300 troops in advance of the riot, they were limited to traffic control and other unarmed efforts intended to free up police. The teleconference became tense as D.C. Police Chief Robert Contee grew “incredulous at the Army’s reluctance to engage,” according to the report. Five officials on the call confirmed to the Post that the Army resisted sending in the National Guard because they were “concerned about the visuals” of troops at the Capitol.

Contee and then-Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund were “flabbergasted” by the Army’s response, according to the report.

Sund, who has since resigned amid scrutiny of the Capitol Police response, previously said that then-House Sergeant-at-Arms Paul Irving and then-Senate Sergeant-at-Arms Michael Stenger resisted asking the National Guard to assist their response in advance of the pro-Trump march that quickly overwhelmed officers, also citing concerns about optics. Irving and Stenger were also both forced to resign shortly after the riot.

On the call, one Army official insisted that the protesters were “peaceful” even after authorities declared a riot, according to the Post. Contee replied that “they’re not peaceful anymore.”

Army officials did not say how long Charles Flynn was in the room during the call or whether he was the one who made the remark about “peaceful” protesters.

McCarthy has insisted that it was difficult to “understand” what was happening at the Capitol at the time after the Army failed to plan for the event, largely because top congressional security officials failed to request assistance.

“We were trying to get a handle on this,” he said in an earlier interview with the Post. “And when we got moving, we moved as fast as we could from a cold start, not configured to take a reaction.”

But the denials of Charles Flynn’s involvement has raised further questions about the Army’s handling of the crisis.

“Really troubling that the Pentagon would repeatedly lie about this,” said Tommy Vietor, who served as the spokesman for the National Security Council under Barack Obama.

In an interview with CNN, McCarthy blamed the Pentagon’s “overly bureaucratic” system for the delay in its response.

“There’s too many people that are involved with the decision, and ultimately no one, one single person responsible,” he said. “It makes it very difficult and slow in the response.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has since asked retired Lt. Gen. Russel Honoré, who led the military relief response during Hurricane Katrina, to conduct “an immediate review of the Capitol’s security infrastructure, interagency processes and procedures, and command and control.”

The inspectors general of the Departments of Justice, Defense, Homeland Security, and the Interior have launched their own reviews into the agency responses.

About 25,000 National Guard troops were on hand to protect Biden’s inauguration on Wednesday and new barriers were erected around the Capitol, which Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser said could be the “new normal” in the nation’s capital.

“We saw white extremists storm the Capitol Building who were trained and organized and seemingly with the intent to capture the vice president of the United States and perhaps harm other lawmakers,” she said last week. “So we all have to think about a new posture.”

Black Americans are getting vaccinated at lower rates than white Americans

Black Americans are receiving covid vaccinations at dramatically lower rates than white Americans in the first weeks of the chaotic rollout, according to a new KHN analysis.

About 3% of Americans have received at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccine so far. But in 16 states that have released data by race, white residents are being vaccinated at significantly higher rates than Black residents, according to the analysis — in many cases two to three times higher.

In the most dramatic case, 1.2% of white Pennsylvanians had been vaccinated as of Jan. 14, compared with 0.3% of Black Pennsylvanians.

The vast majority of the initial round of vaccines has gone to health care workers and staffers on the front lines of the pandemic — a workforce that’s typically racially diverse made up of physicians, hospital cafeteria workers, nurses and janitorial staffers.

If the rollout were reaching people of all races equally, the shares of people vaccinated whose race is known should loosely align with the demographics of health care workers. But in every state, Black Americans were significantly underrepresented among people vaccinated so far.

Access issues and mistrust rooted in structural racism appear to be the major factors leaving Black health care workers behind in the quest to vaccinate the nation. The unbalanced uptake among what might seem like a relatively easy-to-vaccinate workforce doesn’t bode well for the rest of the country’s dispersed population.

Black, Hispanic and Native Americans are dying from covid at nearly three times the rate of white Americans, according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention analysis. And non-Hispanic Black and Asian health care workers are more likely to contract covid and to die from it than white workers. (Hispanics can represent any race or combination of races.)

“My concern now is if we don’t vaccinate the population that’s highest-risk, we’re going to see even more disproportional deaths in Black and brown communities,” said Dr. Fola May, a UCLA physician and health equity researcher. “It breaks my heart.”

Dr. Taison Bell, a University of Virginia Health System physician who serves on its vaccination distribution committee, stressed that the hesitancy among some Blacks about getting vaccinated is not monolithic. Nurses he spoke with were concerned it could damage their fertility, while a Black co-worker asked him about the safety of the Moderna vaccine since it was the company’s first such product on the market. Some floated conspiracy theories, while other Black co-workers just wanted to talk to someone they trust like Bell, who is also Black.

Dose 2 is in! Just some mild arm soreness that will probably be worse tomorrow. I’ll check in tomorrow to give an update.
h/t: @gradydoctor for the T-shirt idea#RightToBareArms 💪🏾 💉 #ShotOfHope #BlackMenInMedicine pic.twitter.com/56jAu0V5zy

— Dr. Taison Bell (@TaisonBell) January 5, 2021

But access issues persist, even in hospital systems. Bell was horrified to discover that members of environmental services — the janitorial staff — did not have access to hospital email. The vaccine registration information sent out to the hospital staff was not reaching them.

“That’s what structural racism looks like,” said Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association. “Those groups were seen and not heard — nobody thought about it.”

UVA Health spokesperson Eric Swenson said some of the janitorial crew were among the first to get vaccines and officials took additional steps to reach those not typically on email. He said more than 50% of the environmental services team has been vaccinated so far.

A Failure of Federal Response

As the public health commissioner of Columbus, Ohio, and a Black physician, Dr. Mysheika Roberts has a test for any new doctor she sees for care: She makes a point of not telling them she’s a physician. Then she sees if she’s talked down to or treated with dignity.

That’s the level of mistrust she says public health officials must overcome to vaccinate Black Americans — one that’s rooted in generations of mistreatment and the legacy of the infamous Tuskegee syphilis study and Henrietta Lacks‘ experience.

A high-profile Black religious group, the Nation of Islam, for example, is urging its members via its website not to get vaccinated because of what Minister Louis Farrakhan calls the “treacherous history of experimentation.” The group, classified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, is well known for spreading conspiracy theories.

Public health messaging has been slow to stop the spread of misinformation about the vaccine on social media. The choice of name for the vaccine development, “Operation Warp Speed,” didn’t help; it left many feeling this was all done too fast.

Benjamin noted that while the nonprofit Ad Council has raised over $37 million for a marketing blitz to encourage Americans to get vaccinated, a government ad campaign from the Health and Human Services Department never materialized after being decried as too political during an election year.

“We were late to start the planning process,” Benjamin said. “We should have started this in April and May.”

And experts are clear: It shouldn’t merely be ads of famous athletes or celebrities getting the shots.

“We have to dig deep, go the old-fashioned way with flyers, with neighbors talking to neighbors, with pastors talking to their church members,” Roberts said.

Speed vs. Equity

Mississippi state Health Officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs said that the shift announced Tuesday by the Trump administration to reward states that distribute vaccines quickly with more shots makes the rollout a “Darwinian process.”

Dobbs worries Black populations who may need more time for outreach will be left behind. Only 18% of those vaccinated in Mississippi so far are Black, in a state that’s 38% Black.

It might be faster to administer 100 vaccinations in a drive-thru location than in a rural clinic, but that doesn’t ensure equitable access, Dobbs said.

“Those with time, computer systems and transportation are going to get vaccines more than other folks — that’s just the reality of it,” Dobbs said.

In Washington, D.C, a digital divide is already evident, said Dr. Jessica Boyd, the chief medical officer of Unity Health Care, which runs several community health centers. After the city opened vaccine appointments to those 65 and older, slots were gone in a day. And Boyd’s staffers couldn’t get eligible patients into the system that fast. Most of those patients don’t have easy access to the internet or need technical assistance.

“If we’re going to solve the issues of inequity, we need to think differently,” Boyd said.

Dr. Marcus Plescia, chief medical officer at the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials, said the limited supply of vaccine must also be considered.

“We are missing the boat on equity,” he said. “If we don’t step back and address that, it’s going to get worse.”

While Plescia is heartened by President-elect Joe Biden’s vow to administer 100 million doses in 100 days, he worries the Biden administration could fall into the same trap.

And the lack of public data makes it difficult to spot such racial inequities in real time. Fifteen states provided race data publicly, Missouri did so upon request, and eight other states declined or did not respond. Several do not report vaccination numbers separately for Native Americans and other groups, and some are missing race data for many of those vaccinated. The CDC plans to add race and ethnicity data to its public dashboard, but CDC spokesperson Kristen Nordlund said it could not give a timeline for when.

Historical Hesitation

One-third of Black adults in the U.S. said they don’t plan to get vaccinated, citing the newness of the vaccine and fears about safety as the top deterrents, according to a December poll from KFF. (KHN is an editorially independent program of KFF.) Half of them said they were concerned about getting covid from the vaccine itself, which is not possible.

Experts say this kind of misinformation is a growing problem. Inaccurate conspiracy theories that the vaccines contain government tracking chips have gained ground on social media.

Just over half of Black Americans who plan to get the vaccine said they’d wait to see how well it’s working in others before getting it themselves, compared with 36% of white Americans. That hesitation can even be found in the health care workforce.

“We shouldn’t make the assumption that just because someone works in health care that they somehow will have better information or better understanding,” Bell said.

In Colorado, Black workers at Centura Health were 44% less likely to get the vaccine than their white counterparts. Latino workers were 22% less likely. The hospital system of more than 21,000 workers is developing messaging campaigns to reduce the gap.

“To reach the people we really want to reach, we have to do things in a different way, we can’t just offer the vaccine,” said Dr. Ozzie Grenardo, a senior vice president and chief diversity and inclusion officer at Centura. “We have to go deeper and provide more depth to the resources and who is delivering the message.”

That takes time and personal connections. It takes people of all ethnicities within those communities, like Willy Nuyens.

Nuyens, who identifies as Hispanic, has worked for Kaiser Permanente Los Angeles Medical Center for 33 years. Working on the environmental services staff, he’s now cleaning covid patients’ rooms. (KHN is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.)

In Los Angeles County, 92% of health care workers and first responders who have died of covid were nonwhite. Nuyens has seen too many of his co-workers lose family to the disease. He jumped at the chance to get the vaccine but was surprised to hear only 20% of his 315-person department was doing the same.

So he went to work persuading his co-workers, reassuring them that the vaccine would protect them and their families, not kill them.

“I take two employees, encourage them and ask them to encourage another two each,” he said.

So far, uptake in his department has more than doubled to 45%. He hopes it will be over 70% soon.

10 reasons for hope after Inauguration Day

When Joe Biden launched his presidential campaign, few Americans – even his most ardent supporters – saw him as an agent of dramatic change. But the convergence of the COVID pandemic, the resulting economic crisis and the rise of a far right challenge to democratic rule, along with the radical policies embraced by Donald Trump, have presented Biden with an historic opportunity. With Democrats controlling both houses of Congress, and the power of executive action at his disposal, Biden can move the nation in a direction that hardly resembles its course over the past four years.

Here are 10 ways Biden will likely put a punctuation mark on the end of the Trump era.

* * *

Fighting COVID

Biden will put his stamp immediately on the effort to rein in COVID-19, marshalling the power of the federal government, which has largely laid dormant because of Trump’s refusal to take the lead in everything from testing to distribution of PPE. The difference will play out both in terms of resources allocated for the mammoth enterprise of vaccinating Americans as well as national management of a public health disaster without precedent since the 1918 flu.

Protecting Immigrants and Refugees

Biden has already signaled his intention to pursue the most sweeping immigration reform since the 1980s by creating a path to citizenship for 11 million undocumented immigrants. That will require congressional approval, but executive orders reversing Trump’s relentless assault on immigrant and refugee rights do not, and Biden will move swiftly to cancel many of his predecessor’s actions.

Taking on Climate Change

The new president has made clear that he will be Trump’s polar opposite on climate and environmental policy, starting with pulling the plug on the Keystone XL Pipeline project. Under Biden the U.S. will rejoin the crucial Paris climate treaty, and through a combination of executive orders and regulatory decisions his administration is expected to put the country back on track to drastically reduce its carbon footprint.

Tackling Racism

Biden’s struggling primary campaign was saved by Black leaders and voters, and he served as vice president for the first Black president and chose Kamala Harris as the first Black vice president. He will use the considerable power of the presidential bully pulpit to honor these relationships, making racial equality and a reckoning with the nation’s ongoing struggle with systemic discrimination a central part of his rhetorical duties as chief executive. The contrast with Trump’s divisive rhetoric and constant dog whistling will be stark.

Strengthening Labor Rights

With his choice of Marty Walsh as labor secretary, Biden has made clear that he’s serious about his promise to empower unions. More than any president in decades, Biden prizes his relationships with organized labor, which will lead to a host of policy and regulatory changes that should favor workers who saw little benefit under Trump.

Expanding Health Care

As a key player in the passage and implementation of the Affordable Care Act, Biden is deeply invested in resuscitating Obamacare following Trump’s crusade against it. While congressional approval will be needed to add a public option, Biden can use executive orders and regulatory powers to strengthen critical elements of the ACA that languished under Trump.

Defending Public Education

Perhaps no Trump cabinet member embodied the undermining of government more than Betsy DeVos, the now-departed education secretary. Whereas DeVos was an evangelist for privatization, charter schools, vouchers and virtually every other aspect of the right-wing education agenda, Biden – whose wife is both a teacher and a member of an education union – has vowed to support the basic pillars of public education, which include the full funding of public schools, a commitment to racial equity and support for teachers.

Weeding Out White Nationalism

In the aftermath of the Capitol riot, addressing the growth of violent white nationalism has become a top-tier national security priority. In his inaugural remarks, Biden denounced “the rise of political extremism, white supremacy, domestic terrorism, that we must confront and we will defeat.” Expect a surge of resources for the monitoring and prosecution of extremists in the early months of his administration.

Restoring the Social Safety Net

The threat of devastating cuts to programs for seniors, kids and other vulnerable groups was a hallmark of the Trump administration. Biden will likely move quickly to protect funding for these traditionally sacrosanct Democratic priorities, and with only a simple majority vote in the Senate required for budgetary items, he should be able to deliver tangible results.

Respecting Science

Within the Trump era’s broadside against facts and truth, the subversion of science stands out as particularly damaging. The shameful manipulation of the CDC during the pandemic offers a cautionary tale on how the common good can be easily sacrificed to political expediency. Biden will reverse course quickly on this front, appointing respected experts across a wide range of federal agencies.

Is impeaching Trump now just “pointless revenge”? Not if it sends a message to future presidents

A House majority, including 10 Republicans, voted on Jan. 13 to impeach President Trump for “incitement of insurrection.” The vote will initiate a trial in the Senate – but that trial will likely not be finished before Trump’s term of office comes to an end on Jan. 20.

There is an open constitutional question about whether a president can be impeached after he has left office. A more basic question asks about the point of impeaching Trump. Conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt, writing in The Washington Post, described the entire exercise as “pointless revenge.”

“It isn’t principled, it isn’t concerned with justice and it isn’t concerned with the future,” he stated.

As a scholar who writes about the moral justifications of social and legal institutions, I argue that there may be good moral reason for this impeachment – even if it cannot be completed before Trump leaves office.

Impeachment is not a criminal procedure; it is generally described as “quasi-criminal” in American law.

The philosophical justifications given for the institution of criminal law, however, might help us understand the purposes this impeachment might serve.

Impeachment and criminal law

Criminal law can serve a variety of functions. It incapacitates the criminal, through incarceration; it serves a retributive function, by forcing the criminal to experience punishment proportionate to the crime; and it expresses a particular view about the limits of moral diversity, by setting a limit to what sorts of action a society will accept.

Incapacitation is likely a bad justification for the impeachment of an outgoing or former president. Incapacitation is intended to stop a criminal from repeating his or her offense. The offense grounding the president’s impeachment, though, was an act of speech, one the article of impeachment describes as “incitement of insurrection.” A president who is impeached and removed from office is precluded from holding federal office in the future; that, however, does nothing to remove the power of Trump to speak.

Retribution is similarly unpromising as justification for impeachment. The “punishments” here – including the loss of Secret Service protection, office space and public funding – hardly seem adequate, if they are conceived of as punishments for one who has incited an insurrection.

Punishment as moral condemnation

The final function of criminal law, though – one emphasized by philosopher Joel Feinberg – is likely better able to justify an attempt to impeach an outgoing president. Criminal law, for Feinberg, is intended to mark out the limits of moral disagreement, through a symbolic statement condemning certain sorts of acts as immoral.

Citizens in a democratic society do not need to agree about political morality. They can recognize their political opponents as entitled to their views – however mistaken each side takes those alternative views to be. Conservatives and liberals have often regarded each other as wrong, but nonetheless members in good standing in their political communities.

There are, however, some points at which a society makes a shared statement that a given sort of practice or act is not politically respectable – and the criminal law is one means by which that statement is made. As Feinberg notes, imprisonment is not simply an unwelcome punishment – it is a symbolic statement that the criminal has done something of which he or she ought to be ashamed.

The criminal – or the impeached – might not actually feel ashamed. The function of the criminal law, however, is to say that he or she ought to feel ashamed, and that those who do that sort of act are outside the realm of normal moral disagreement.

Politics after violence

We might see this sort of function by examining how legal institutions have responded to much more serious forms of political wrongdoing. The Nuremberg Tribunals, most famously, put the Nazi hierarchy on trial, for aggressive war and for crimes against humanity.

The punishments meted out – ranging from 10 years in prison to a relatively quick death by hanging – would seem grossly inadequate, if they were intended to match the moral gravity of genocide and forced labor.

The best justification of Nuremberg, though, looked not to the Nazis themselves, but to those who might have followed in their footsteps. The trial was intended to identify the line past which political societies could not stray without being regarded as shameful – with an eye not simply on the present, but in the future.

President Trump’s wrongdoing is nowhere near as grotesque as that of the Nazis, and no purposes are served by pretending otherwise. The best moral purpose for his impeachment, though, might have some moral similarities to the functions of Nuremberg.

The impeachment of President Trump is an indication that there is a need to mark out, through a definitive statement, what no president ought to do. It will also set the moral limits of the presidency – and, thereby, send a message to future presidents who might be tempted to follow in President Trump’s footsteps.

Michael Blake, Professor of Philosophy, Public Policy and Governance, University of Washington

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.

Celebrations as “worst and most dangerous president in American history” departs White House

Donald Trump is still technically president, but Americans on social media and in the streets breathed sighs of relief and celebrated Wednesday morning after the outgoing incumbent departed the White House for Florida ahead of the noon swearing-in of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.

“Thank you to those who fought so hard and resisted. He’s gone,” immigrant rights activist Erika Andiola said, a message echoed by thousands of others after Trump left Washington, D.C. following a brief speech to a small crowd of his supporters.

In response to video footage of Trump leaving the White House in Marine One, Sina Toossi of the National Iranian American Council tweeted, “This is the single greatest thing Trump has ever done for America.”

He's gone!!!

— David Pakman (@dpakman) January 20, 2021

Goodbye and good riddance Donald Trump. See you at your trial.

— Ed Markey (@EdMarkey) January 20, 2021

pic.twitter.com/UILrEVrMBZ https://t.co/gKRr36M9po

— People for Bernie (@People4Bernie) January 20, 2021

YEAHHHHH! No more seeing that SOB in the White House. What a glorious day!!!!!!!!!

— Medea Benjamin (@medeabenjamin) January 20, 2021

While Trump will officially be out of power in a matter of hours, the widespread damage he inflicted during his four years in office and the systemic crises that preceded him remain, and the coronavirus pandemic that his administration mishandled so disastrously continues to take thousands of lives in the U.S. each day.

Applauding the departure of the “worst and most dangerous president in American history,” Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., on Tuesday stressed that the work of building a just and equitable nation is just beginning.

“For four years Trump has tried to divide our people up,” said Sanders. “Our job, now, is to bring people together around an agenda that works for all, not just the few.”

In an interview Wednesday morning, Rep. Jamaal Bowman, D-N.Y., said that “we can celebrate for a moment and take a deep breath, but we gotta get right back to it.”

“Let’s celebrate,” Bowman said, “but then let’s push policies like $2,000 per month for those who are struggling, implementing a Green New Deal and dealing with environmental justice, implementing universal healthcare, having housing as a human right, humane criminal justice and immigration reform. There’s so much work to do.”

Norm Ornstein on the Capitol carnage, the Biden presidency and Trump’s impeachment

At 12 noon Eastern time on Wednesday, Joe Biden officially — and finally — became president of the United States.

Even the best and most normal of times, to be president of the United States is to have immense power and almost overwhelming responsibilities. These are not normal times.

There were no large crowds to celebrate Biden’s inauguration and witness his tense, urgent inaugural address. The traditional pomp and circumstance of the occasion was greatly subdued, replaced by an air of solemn purpose and an almost overwhelming feeling of relief that our four-year nightmare had perhaps reached its end.

Two weeks ago, the United States — which believes itself to be the world’s “greatest democracy” — survived an incoherent but terrifying coup attempt by Donald Trump’s followers. That horrible moment marked a crescendo for the Age of Trump and its authoritarian, neofascist war on the country’s democratic institutions, norms, values and culture.

Biden took the oath of office with tens of thousands of National Guard members and other security and law enforcement forces standing guard to prevent further attacks. It was surreal: The forces of American empire, many of their vehicles still painted tan from service in the Middle East, were deployed to defend the homeland from attacks by the country’s own citizens. The architecture of Washington, D.C., is largely styled after that of ancient Rome, yet in the aftermath of the Trumpist coup attempt, the capital now looks more like Baghdad during the U.S. occupation.

The United States remains in the grip of a lethal pandemic that public health experts predict may kill at least 500,000 people. For the vast majority of citizens, the country’s economy continues to teeter on the edge of collapse. The U.S. is no longer viewed as the “indispensable nation,” leader of the free world.

President Biden has spoken eloquently of “unity,” recognizing that is an elusive if noble goal. He wants the American people to believe that they are again “one people from many” and that Trump’s reign is not a permanent scar on the country.

There will be many challenges to that agenda, including the likelihood that Donald Trump is not prepared to fade away and is incapable of making a graceful exit from American public life. He has no such dignity. By all indications Trump hopes to be seen as a shadow president, leading a permanent insurrection against the new president and the Democratic Party.

Trump’s insurrection will almost certainly provoke violence by those who speak and act in his name. Those fires will not be smothered in the days or months or even years to come. Trump’s coup attempt was not a blazing inferno, but it ignited smoldering embers that will be difficult or impossible to quench.

Trump and his followers are motivated by revenge and a belief that they are the “real Americans” and “true patriots.” They believe, or at least claim to believe, that Biden and the Democrats “stole” the 2020 presidential election.

Healing cannot come without accountability. Ultimately, to move forward as a nation America must confront the crimes and other great offenses committed under the Trump administration.

What did the Jan. 6 mob attack on the Capitol reveal about the fragility of our country’s leadership and norms? Is a return to or reinvention of “normal politics” even possible after the Trump’s presidency? Is the Republican Party still capable of some redemption, or of behaving responsibly and in service to democracy and the common good? How should Biden and the Democrats approach the impending prospect of Trump’s second impeachment trial proceed?

In an effort to answer these questions I recently spoke with Norman J. Ornstein. He is an emeritus scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and co-author of the bestselling books “One Nation After Trump: A Guide for the Perplexed, the Disillusioned, the Desperate, and the Not-Yet Deported” and “It’s Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided with the New Politics of Extremism.”

Ornstein has been a guest on numerous cable and broadcast news outlets, including CBS News, CNN, MSNBC, NPR and “PBS NewsHour.” His essays and other writing have appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Foreign Affairs and other leading publications, and he is a columnist and contributing editor for The Atlantic.

This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

What were you thinking as you watched Donald Trump’s mob overrun the U.S. Capitol?

I was literally sick to my stomach. One, I’ve spent my entire career around Congress. It’s a tough love, but I’ve had a love affair with Congress since I was a kid. There were decades when I would drive down to the Capitol and Pennsylvania Avenue and see that dome. To see the Capitol come under attack was wrenching.

I also thought about the attacks on 9/11. The terrorists were targeting the Capitol building. The plane heading for the Capitol building would have been loaded with fuel. If the terrorists hit the Capitol building, there would have been molten cast iron and chunks of concrete and all kinds of other debris raining down. If 225 or 250 members of the House are dead or missing somewhere in the rubble, we do not have a quorum. There is no Congress. Because it takes months to hold special elections, the United States could be without a Congress for three months or longer. The country would effectively be under martial law.

What are the rules for this? How do we get out of it? I quickly realized that we do not have those rules. I then wrote a column on such a scenario and then ultimately created a continuity-of-government commission. We spent years working up recommendations for what to do in the event of a catastrophe — most of which went nowhere. We never thought you could have a threat from Americans storming the Capitol to decapitate the government and potentially blow up the Capitol with explosives. That would be worse than the threat from a foreign source.

Some people in Trump’s mob had guns. Bombs were planted nearby. Some of them had zip-tie handcuffs, likely to take hostages. If the floor of the House and Senate had not been cleared in time by the Capitol Police, there could have been a bloodbath. From what is now known, it seems possible there was a plan to cause so much mayhem that Donald Trump could then declare martial law and remain as president. What is your read of the events?

My guess is that there were different groups of people among the mob. There was one group of people whose goal — and I hope we will eventually find out what direct role Trump and his cronies played in all this — was to seize the certificates of the electors and make it impossible for Congress to certify the election of Joe Biden.

A second goal held by many other members of the mob — and Donald Trump may well have been a part of this planning as well — was to decapitate Congress and have Trump be able to declare martial law. It is quite possible there were at least some of those people involved who wanted to get rid of just enough House members and senators to make sure there was a Republican majority when the Electoral College votes were counted. And of course, we now know that there were people in Trump’s mob who wanted to grab Vice President Mike Pence and hang him.

We also know somebody gave information to some of these thugs about the offices, including the unmarked offices of members of the leadership.

There is at least circumstantial evidence that some members of Congress were involved in the planning of this coup attack. This includes some of the Republicans in the House. We know that [Alabama congressman] Mo Brooks appeared to incite them. I am also sure that some of the people who went into the Capitol building had been brainwashed by the QAnon conspiracy theory. They didn’t really have a plan other than in their own distorted minds being “patriots.” But there were plenty of other members of the mob who had planned in advance and had zip ties and weapons, and who were there to kill.

We also know that at least some in the Capitol Police, if they didn’t actively conspire with Trump’s mob, were at least more than willing to help them. There were also significant numbers of people in the mob who were flashing their badges as off-duty cops and off-duty military. There is also the larger problem of how white supremacists have infiltrated many police departments.

The fact that the Secret Service has decided that they’re a little uneasy about Biden’s security signals something pretty unsettling. Trump deserved to be impeached. He incited insurrection. What Trump did does not meet the formal definition of treason, which is aiding and abetting a foreign enemy with whom you are at war. But by any reasonable person’s standard, what he did was treasonous and reckless.

Trump has been impeached and there is the possibility of a trial at a later date. This means there is more leverage in terms of getting information about what really happened on that Wednesday, and what his role fully was.

How do we respond to those in the news media and elsewhere who keep saying Trump’s coup plot and assault on the U.S. Capitol was “unimaginable”? Even before he became president in 2016, Donald Trump repeatedly said he would not respect any election outcome where he lost. Trump and his allies were publicly planning the coup for months. Why the denial of obvious facts?

Many people in the United States are not just living in a world of alternate facts. They are in an alternate universe. It is fairly easy to inculcate people with a worldview and a set of lies that overwhelm them and then begin to define who they are. There is QAnon. There are a large number of Republicans in Congress who did nothing to put any checks or limits on Donald Trump. Some Republicans are true believers in Trumpism. Others are just afraid of him and his followers.

For some time now I have been trying to draw a distinction between a political party and a cult. The Republican Party is now a cult. It was becoming a cult before Donald Trump. But now the Republicans have become a more pernicious cult because of him.

There is another element to the denial, and to Trump’s power. That’s the press corps, and not just the crazy right-wing press such as the Rush Limbaughs or the Laura Ingrahams and Sean Hannitys and Lou Dobbses, but also mainstream shows such as “Meet the Press” and the CNN panels that have given us such right-wing figures as Corey Lewandowski, Kayleigh McEnany, Rick Santorum, Jeffrey Lord and all these others. We have a press corps that desperately tried to normalize Donald Trump, no matter how abnormal he behaved. They did this out of a fear of offending the right wing and being accused of having a “liberal bias.” They were also motivated in their behavior by a belief that they had to report both sides of the story.

This meant the press corps did not make value judgments. Instead of calling out Trump’s lies and those of other right-wingers they instead chose to ask, “Well, why is he telling a lie?” If the press does that, if it does not hold the powerful accountable, then bad behavior is normalized by a country’s leaders. The country is not going to understand the nature of the threat and peril. That threat can then culminate in the violent overthrow of a government.

The extremism of the Republican Party and the conservative moment are not something new. Trumpism is not an aberration or outlier: it is a function of path-dependency on the American right. How would you tell that story?

One could go back as far as Father Coughlin [a Catholic priest and far-right radio demagogue] in the 1930s. The strain was already there. It obviously has worsened. One part of this journey was how the Republican Party decided to co-opt all the racists who had been Southern Democrats. The advent of social media made a large difference too. Building a political community is now much easier with cable news, the internet, talk radio and other forms of media.

Newt Gingrich also plays a role here in how he found a way to exploit the weaknesses of the American news media, where he would deliberately trigger political tribalism and then take advantage of it. The overall goal of Gingrich was to attack so-called “political elites” through right-wing “populism.”

These factors created an opportunity for Donald Trump, who was a human accelerant for a political and society-wide fire that was smoldering for years and decades.

How does America now return to what political scientists and others refer to as “normal politics”?

Normal politics is not dead, but it is on life support at this point. I am very pessimistic about the near term in this country. Trump’s coup attempt and mob action was not a wake-up call to most Republicans in Congress. One hundred and forty-five members of the House still voted to object to certifying Biden’s clear victory in the Electoral College. That does not bode well for normal politics. The next generation of Republican leaders are even more delusional than some of the members of Congress who are there right now.

What I would say is this: The usual pattern that Republicans follow in a midterm when there’s a Democratic president is to act in unison as a parliamentary-style minority party, vote against everything, block whatever they can and delegitimize whatever they can’t, work to delegitimize the president and to get his party demoralized. The result is that lots of good things that could potentially help the country do not happen.

The Republicans then blame the Democrats. In 2022, if the Republicans win back the House and win the Senate and do even better in state legislative chambers, then nothing is going to change. The only thing that will matter as we head to 2024 is who can most effectively run as, “I’m a better, smarter version of Donald Trump.”

If the Republicans lose in 2022, then perhaps there could be the beginnings of what is still a very conservative group, a block of Mitt Romney-type Republicans, who actually believe in institutions, the rule of law and to some degree in science and the importance of respecting your political adversaries. Those are the values that make for a normal political party. The Republican Party would not change overnight in that scenario. But if that type of split were to take place, then the 2024 presidential contest and other elections will be a different one for the Republicans.

In a desperate effort to return to some type of normalcy, the mainstream American news media is already promoting the narrative that there are all these “honorable” and “reasonable” Republicans out there, such as Romney. By implication, the Trumpists are an outlier. As an empirical matter that is not true. What of all these so-called “reasonable” Republicans who aided and abetted and supported everything that Donald Trump did in terms of policy?

It’s another effort to normalize abnormal behavior, which is a good part of the problem, to be sure. On the other hand, at this point I want to give a tiny bit of slack to those Republicans in the U.S. Senate who might conceivably become independents right now and even caucus with the Democrats. You are correct in that every one of these Republicans, including those who publicly have criticized Trump more than once, voted for virtually all of his nominees.

There are Trump nominees who lied, who were corrupt and incompetent. There were judges who had no talent or ability or experience who were picked for these positions and confirmed for lifetime appointments. Ridiculous nominees, so far outside the mainstream that it was absurd to even put them before Congress — and those “respectable” and “moderate” Republicans all voted for them.

We do not want to let such Republicans off the hook. But we must also leave open the possibility that there are some Republicans within the party, who can, if and when the appropriate moment comes, begin to move it back toward some legitimacy. If not, the United States is in a deep crisis, because our country’s style of democracy cannot operate without at least two somewhat responsible political parties.

The Democrats impeached Donald Trump for the crime of encouraging insurrection. What should be the strategy going forward in terms of the U.S. Senate trial and conviction?

The impeachment should not be going to trial right now. With Trump’s impeachment, there is somewhat more leverage to warn anybody involved with the coup attempt that if they destroy or sidetrack evidence relevant to the trial of a president it is a felony, and the harshest penalties will be applied. Delaying the trial also means there will more time to gather evidence. I also want to use the trial as leverage to deny Donald Trump the perks of the ex-presidency such as travel, a pension, security and other benefits. Ultimately, I am very comfortable with an approach that says impeach now, try later.

What advice would you give President Biden about investigations? He has previously signaled that he does not want to investigate the Trump regime. But following a coup attempt it seems that the administration must now do so.

My suggestion is not to have a big commission. I want Attorney General Merrick Garland to designate pristine career prosecutors, people who have never contributed to any campaigns. Perhaps even those prosecutors who have been working diligently in the Southern District of New York and in the public integrity section. Task them with looking into all of the allegations or proof of wrongdoing by anybody associated with the Trump administration, and let the chips fall where they may. This must be done with a promise that neither the attorney General nor the president or any other political figure will interfere with their activities or their judgments.

Newly-elected GOP members deny giving “reconnaissance” tours before Capitol attack. So who did?

Three newly-elected Republican House members have denied giving “reconnaissance” tours to rally participants on Jan. 5, the day before the terrorist insurrection against the Capitol.

The lawmakers — Reps. Lauren Boebert of Colorado, Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina and Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia — all told Salon that they had not escorted anyone that day outside of the course of normal legislative business. All three have come under fire for their public embrace of the Jan. 6 rally and its cause — baselessly and aggressively challenging President Joe Biden’s election victory over outgoing President Donald Trump.

Boebert has faced the most scrutiny, after tweeting “1776” on the morning of the attack and offering vocal support from the House floor for her “constituents” gathered at the rally. She was also photographed at the rally itself, posing for pictures while Kylie Kremer of Trump booster group Women for America First addressed the crowd. During the siege, the Colorado fringe conservative, who has expressed admiration for the QAnon conspiracy theory, tweeted that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had been relocated. It was later revealed that insurrectionists planned to kidnap and assassinate elected officials, and several appeared equipped to do so.

Asked whether she had given any tours on Jan. 5, Boebert told Salon, “I did not. No.”

Speculation about the newly-elected far-right Republican members escalated after Rep. Mikie Sherrill, D-N.J., made the explosive claim that she had seen a fellow member giving what she described as a “reconnaissance” tour the day before the deadly attack. Thirty of her Democratic colleagues later signed on to a letter notifying the acting House sergeant at arms that some of them had noticed “unusually large groups of people throughout the Capitol” on Jan. 5, which they say could only happen with the help of a member of Congress or staff. Some of the people in those groups, the letter says, appeared to be connected to the following day’s Stop the Steal rally, and the writers add that attackers seemed to have “an unusually detailed knowledge” of the building’s complicated layout. The group has requested visitor logs and security camera footage from Jan. 5, and, pointedly, want to know whether law enforcement has also tried to access visitor information.

On Friday, Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, D-N.Y., perhaps inadvertently accelerated suspicions of Boebert when he told MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace on Wednesday that he’d spoken with a colleague who described a member “showing people around” ahead of the attack, then quickly added that he had concerns about his “new colleagues.”

Wallace asked Maloney if he could confirm there were tours the day before the attack, and while Maloney said he could, he admitted he had no firsthand knowledge, but had spoken to another member “who saw it personally, and he described it with some alarm.”

Maloney continued, “Some of our new colleagues, the same ones, of course, who believe in conspiracy theories and who want to carry guns into the House chamber, who today — today — have been yelling at Capitol Police, shoving them, [the people] who a week ago were risking their lives to save ours. This conduct is beyond the pale, and it extends to some of this interaction with the very people who attacked the Capitol.” He added that “it’s a sad reality that we find ourselves at a place where the enemy is within, and we cannot trust our own colleagues.”

Maloney, who had not signed Sherrill’s letter, did not name Boebert or any other member, but his remarks, in their full context, fueled rumors that she was one of the “new colleagues” he was referring to. Along with her professed admiration for the QAnon conspiracy theory, Boebert has declared she will carry a gun on the House floor and has fiercely resisted the Capitol’s new metal detector policies.

Maloney has not named the lawmaker in question, but said “that’s going to be a real story,” adding that this activity went beyond traditional congressional oversight into “criminal behavior under federal sedition laws.”

Boebert’s communications director, Ben Goldey, stepped down in the wake of Jan. 6, reportedly writing his resignation letter just hours after the attack. He told Salon that he has been inundated with messages from people suspicious of his former boss, whom he had only served for a few days.

“Internet warriors have been sending me messages, acting as if I know something and telling me I need to go to the FBI — which of course I would do if there was something to say,” Goldey told Salon.

Boebert responded angrily on Friday at what she called Maloney’s “false and baseless conspiracy claims,” which she said had implicated her personally and led to death threats and harassment. Maloney replied that he had never said her name in public, and pointed to the interview transcript as proof.

Two other newly-elected members, Cawthorn and Greene, fit parts of Maloney’s description of the lawmakers that caused him concern: Both advocate for carrying guns in the Capitol building (something a senior aide told Salon is more common than has been reported), and both have, to varying degrees, embraced conspiracy theories surrounding the 2020 election. Greene has publicly endorsed the ridiculous QAnon theories, which center on claims that Democratic leaders rape and cannibalize children.

Spokespeople for both Cawthorn and Greene denied allegations that they showed visitors around on Jan. 5. A spokesperson for Greene told Salon that she had worked in the Capitol building all day, and that any video from that day would show her accompanied only by staff in the halls.

Unlike Boebert and Greene, Cawthorn gave a speech at the Stop the Steal rally ahead of the ratification of Biden’s victory, saying, “This crowd has some fight in it” and adding that “the Democrats, with all the fraud they have done in this election, the Republicans hiding and not fighting, they are trying to silence your voice. Make no mistake about it, they do not want you to be heard.” Weeks earlier, the freshman member from former Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows’ onetime North Carolina district, told an audience it should “lightly threaten” lawmakers to support “election integrity,” remarks that have led to calls for his resignation. Cawthorn also carries a firearm in the Capitol. A Cawthorn spokesperson, however, flatly denied any involvement in the alleged tours in a conversation with Salon.

Cawthorn himself has denied blame for the violence, telling Charlotte’s Spectrum News1 on Monday that he was in fact “trying to stop it.”

“I wouldn’t say we were complicit in anyone storming the Capitol. Actually, I think we were, in many ways, trying to stop it. You know, I went and spoke at the rally outside of the White House. And I literally said, I’m about to go to the Capitol to fight this fight for all of you, you have a voice in me, I’m here to fight on your behalf,” Cawthorn told the outlet.

It seems likely that Maloney did not mean to imply that one of those three lawmakers had given the tour in question. Multiple current and former congressional staff tell Salon that it’s unlikely any of the three could have developed a deep understanding of the labyrinthine Capitol corridors in their first few days in office, knowledge that lawmakers and staff typically accumulate over years.

Asked Sunday about the feud with Boebert, Maloney told MSNBC’s Jonathan Capehart that she had “jumped to a conclusion and didn’t bother to look at what I said.”

“She apologized, by the way, a short while later because we produced the transcript which demonstrated her comments, her tweet, her letter were farcically stupid and wrong,” he continued. “So the problem is when you get this kind of incompetence mixed together with arrogance, when people believe that they’re right when they are demonstrably wrong.”

But on Monday, Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., reignited the suspicions, telling CNN’s Jim Scuitto that he and Rep. John Yarmuth, D-Ky., had seen Boebert with a group in the Capitol tunnels in the days leading up to the attack — although he could not specify the precise date, nor say whether those people were part of the siege.

“Congressman Yarmuth refreshed my recollection yesterday,” Cohen said. “We saw Boebert taking a group of people for a tour sometime after the 3rd and before the 6th. … Now, whether these people were people that were involved in the insurrection or not, I do not know.”

In response, Boebert sent Cohen a letter calling his comments “false” and “slanderous.” While she acknowledged that she had shown family members around on Jan. 2 and 3 — the day she was sworn into office — she said the tours had stopped there.

“I haven’t given a tour of the U.S. Capitol in the 117th Congress to anyone but family,” she tweeted.

In a text message with Salon, Cohen said that he had not seen Boebert showing anyone around on Jan. 5, the day of the alleged “reconnaissance” tours. It is unclear why he did not rule out that day in his CNN interview on Monday.

None of this rules out the central allegation that the Jan. 6 insurrectionists had inside knowledge of the Capitol and possibly assistance. The public record suggests that is at least plausible. For instance, a number of Republican elected officials had heavily promoted the rally, most specifically Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona, who coordinated for weeks with key organizers. One of them cited Gosar and Rep. Mo Brooks of Alabama by name as helping foment a “maximum pressure” campaign on Congress.

Rep. Tim Ryan, D-Ohio, chair of the House subcommittee that oversees funding for the Capitol Police, said on Jan. 12 that “a couple” of his colleagues seemed to fit Sherrill’s description, and that this information had been passed to authorities as soon as the night of the attack.

“You look back on certain things and you look at it differently,” Ryan said.

President Joe Biden offers us reasons for hope, at last — but hope can be hazardous

At inauguration time, journalist I.F. Stone wrote, incoming presidents “make us the dupes of our hopes.” That insight is worth pondering as Joe Biden’s presidency gets underway. After four years of the real-life Trump nightmare, hope is overdue — but it’s hazardous.

Stone astutely warned against taking heart from the lofty words that President Richard Nixon had just deployed in his inaugural address on Jan. 20, 1969. With the Vietnam War raging, Stone pointed out: “It’s easier to make war when you talk peace.”

That’s true of military war. And class war.

In 2021, class war is the elephant — and the donkey — in the national living room. Rhetoric aside, present-day Republican politicians are shameless warriors for wealthy privilege and undemocratic power that afflicts the non-rich. Democratic Party leaders aren’t nearly as bad, but that’s an extremely low bar; relatively few are truly champions of the working class, while most routinely run interference for corporate America, Wall Street and the military-industrial complex.

Rarely illuminated with clarity by corporate media, class war rages 24/7/365 in the real world. Every day and night, countless people are suffering and dying. Needlessly. From lack of social equity. From the absence of economic justice. From the greed and elite prerogatives cemented into the structures of politics and a wide range of institutions. From oligarchy that has gotten so extreme that three people in the United States (Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett) now possess more wealth than the entire bottom half of the population.

Yes, there are some encouraging signs about where the Biden presidency is headed. The intertwined economic crisis and horrific pandemic — combined with growing grassroots progressive pressure on the Democratic Party — have already caused Biden to move leftward on a range of crucial matters. The climate emergency and festering racial injustice also require responses. We have seen important steps through presidential executive orders on Biden’s first day, and expect more before the end of this month.

At the same time, if past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior, we should not expect Joe Biden to be a deserter from the class war that he has helped to wage, from the top down, throughout his political career — including via NAFTA, welfare “reform,” the bankruptcy bill and financial-sector deregulation.

How far Biden can be pushed in better directions will depend on how well progressives and others who want humanistic change can organize. In effect, most of mass media will encourage us merely to hope — plaintively and passively — holding onto the sort of optimism that has long been silly putty in the hands of presidents and their strategists.

Hope is a human need, and recent Democratic presidents have been whizzes at catering to it. Bill Clinton marketed himself as “the man from Hope” (the name of his first hometown). Barack Obama authored the bestseller “The Audacity of Hope” that appeared two years before he won the White House. But projecting our hopes onto carefully scripted Rorschach oratory, on Inauguration Day or any day, is usually a surrender to images over realities.

The standard Democratic Party storyline is now telling us that greatness will be in reach for the Biden administration if only Republican obstacles can be overcome. Yet what has led to so much upheaval in recent years is mostly grounded in class war. And the positive aspects of Biden’s initiatives should not delude progressives into assuming that Biden is some kind of a class-war ally. For the most part, he has been the opposite.

“Progressives are not going to get anything from the new administration unless they are willing to publicly pressure the new administration,” David Sirota and Andrew Perez wrote days ago. “That means progressive lawmakers are going to have to be willing to fight and it means progressive advocacy groups in Washington are going to have to be willing to prioritize results rather than White House access.”

The kind of access that progressives need most of all is access to our own capacities to realistically organize and gain power. It’s a constant need — hidden in plain sight, all too often camouflaged by easier hopes.

More than inspiring hope — or of fatalism — the inauguration of President Biden should lead to skeptical realism and determination. The eloquence of Biden’s well-crafted inaugural address will become a historic footnote. His clarion call to “end this uncivil war” will fade, drowned out by the continual roar of class warfare.

The best way not to become disillusioned is to not have illusions in the first place. And the best way to win economic and social justice is to keep organizing and keep pushing. What can happen during the Biden presidency is up for grabs.

Joe Biden’s inaugural address gives hope to the millions who stutter

President Joe Biden called for American unity after four years of political divisiveness and the “raging fire” it provoked. He promised to be a president for all Americans. “I will fight as hard for those who did not support me as for those who did,” he said.

It was a message of hope and optimism. And while his intent was clearly to speak to all of America, his speech spoke in a different way to a particular community. The new president stutters, and his speech, made with the whole world watching, was a powerful example to those millions of Americans who, like me, stutter.

When I was 11 years old, my speech-language pathologist told me: “Look, John Stossel (the television personality) stutters, and he speaks beautifully. You will be able to do that, too.”

My therapist was trying to motivate me, but the message was that my goal should be to speak perfectly.

For me, that was not the case. By age 14, I already knew my stuttering was not going anywhere. Although I’m a fairly strong communicator, I continue to experience stuttering – a neurological condition that impacts the fluent, forward flowing production of speech.

Like me, roughly 1% of the world’s population stutters. That translates to more than 70 million people worldwide and over 3 million people in the United States, including Biden.

Biden’s experience with stuttering is a compelling one. What inspires me is the way he talks about his experience as a person who stutters. For people who stutter, the presidential campaign, Biden’s election and his inauguration mark an important change in how we discuss stuttering.

A need for understanding

People who stutter often suffer discrimination at work, as students and in social relationships.

Several studies show that the general population knows very little about stuttering. Many Americans also believe that people who stutter are less intelligent, less competent and more anxious.

Although I was surrounded by good friends, it felt very lonely to be a child who stutters. I was bullied and teased by my peers. People imitated how I spoke, interrupted when I was talking and even laughed when I stuttered.

Unfortunately, most role models were not helpful. Mel Tillis, the American country singer who used his stuttering as part of his stage persona, and Porky Pig, a cartoon character who stuttered, were the targets of jokes.

My goal became clear around my fifth birthday: I must find a way not to stutter.

Today, many children who stutter receive this message, although there is no “cure” for stuttering. Therapy and group support can help. But for many, stuttering requires attention for their entire lives.

Biden stands up to bullies

Biden has spoken about his struggles with stuttering during speeches for the National Stuttering Association and the American Institute for Stuttering.

But he had spoken sparingly about his stuttering in the mainstream media until his campaign for president began in 2019. Throughout the campaign season, President Donald Trump and his surrogates began seizing on hesitations and other characteristics of Biden’s speech.

During the campaign trail, Trump called Biden “Sleepy Joe” and said he was out of touch. He said Biden suffers from dementia. These insults were due partially to Biden’s age but also to the differences in his speech.

Biden responded to former White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders, who mocked his stuttering during a 2019 Democratic presidential debate.

“I’ve worked my whole life to overcome a stutter. And it’s my great honor to mentor kids who have experienced the same. It’s called empathy. Look it up,” Biden said via Twitter.

During a CNN town hall in February 2020, he said he continues to stutter when he is tired.

This was good for me to hear, and I believe good for other people who stutter. Talking about stuttering, instead of trying to hide it, is an important part of coping.

Biden also chose Brayden Harrington to speak at the virtual Democratic National Convention. Harrington, a teenager who stutters, shared how Biden had helped him in 2019 by telling him it was OK to stutter.

He also shared how the former vice president continued to stay in touch. “Joe Biden cares,” Harrington said during his speech.

To me, it felt as if stuttering was finally being discussed in public and in a positive manner.

The first president who stutters

Certainly, Biden’s election as president matters for many reasons.

I suspect there have been more news articles and opinion pieces about stuttering published in major newspapers in the past 18 months than in the prior 18 years.

This is important because it raises awareness of stuttering and helps those in the stuttering community feel connected with others who also stutter, thus helping all of us understand their struggles.

Biden is an important role model because he has begun to talk openly about stuttering and because he has demonstrated that one can still stutter while communicating well and achieving astonishing goals.

Rodney Gabel, Professor and Founding Director, Binghamton University, State University of New York

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The price of a drug should be based on its therapeutic benefits — not just what the market will bear

The U.S. pharmaceutical industry has innovated in response to the pandemic, providing not only vaccines but also therapies to treat people with COVID-19. But an outdated law designed to spur development of lifesaving drugs risks making new treatments – for COVID-19 as well as other diseases – unaffordable for many Americans.

Many pharmaceutical companies rely on the Orphan Drug Act, which President Ronald Reagan signed into law in 1983, to bring cutting-edge treatments to market quickly. The act gives pharmaceutical companies tax credits, market exclusivity and other incentives to develop drugs for “orphan” diseases, which are defined as illnesses that afflict fewer than 200,000 people in the U.S. Such diseases include amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and Tourette syndrome, but also ones like malaria that are rare in the U.S. but are major killers globally.

But, as scholars and access-to-medicines advocates have argued, the Orphan Drug Act has flaws that risk keeping prices high.

I’m a bioethicist who has studied global health and access to essential medical innovations. I believe there’s an alternative to that modifies the rewards the Orphan Drug Act offers based on the value of a drug – its impact on global health.

The Orphan Drug Act

Before policymakers passed the law, pharmaceutical companies focused their efforts on developing treatments for mainstream diseases that afflicted millions of people. It was their way to maximize profit.

But the Orphan Drug Act, in addition to creating tax incentives and credits, enables companies to get a priority review voucher that effectively extends the length of their patent on a drug of their choice. That’s because when the FDA reviews a drug quickly, the medicine can be sold under patent for longer. Companies can sell this voucher for millions of dollars to other pharmaceutical companies.

The Orphan Drug Act was brilliant, until pharmaceutical companies began to find loopholes. Companies could obtain orphan drug status for an ever-growing collection of diseases that officially qualify as rare but were actually just subpopulations of very common diseases. For example, Humira, made by AbbVie, is the best-selling drug in the world for rheumatoid arthritis and other inflammatory diseases, and yet it received orphan drug status for juvenile rheumatoid arthritis.

COVID-19 and Remdesivir

As hundreds of Americans are still dying from COVID-19 every day, new treatments are essential, and it’s imperative that they’re affordable.

When the COVID-19 pandemic first came to the U.S., and fewer than 200,000 people here were sick, Gilead applied for orphan drug status for the antiviral drug Remdesivir – one of the only existing treatments for SARS-CoV-2.

There was big public outcry that Gilead was abusing the system to get taxpayer benefits and more market exclusivity even though Remdesivir was developed with public funding. Gilead was repurposing Remdesivir for COVID-19, and it was clearly going to be sold to a mass market. After significant public backlash, Gilead retracted its orphan drug application.

Companies are still trying to repurpose orphan drugs for the COVID-19 mass market while keeping the high price tag. This is the case with Pembrolizumab, an orphan drug for melanoma and gastric cancer that is currently being tested as a potential medication for COVID-19. It costs US$5,834 per 4 milliliters, a price the majority of Americans simply cannot afford. Companies are testing many other orphan drugs for COVID-19 as well. In 2018, the average cost of an orphan drug was $150,854 per patient per year.

Companies also claim credits for drugs that are neither novel nor important. Companies often repurpose old drugs to treat orphan conditions that may have been used to treat patients “off label” – or without official FDA approval – for a long time. Sometimes companies find orphan diseases that can be treated with their blockbuster drugs. Or they slice major diseases, like breast cancer, into smaller and smaller parts to get an orphan drug designation. For example, almost any cancer can be subdivided based on genetic differences until the population of those suffering from it falls below the 200,000 orphan drug threshold. Herceptin is used to treat breast cancer, but AstraZeneca and Daiichi Sankyo received orphan drug designation for testing the drug for gastric cancer, despite the fact that it is a blockbuster drug.

How to fix the orphan drug problem

Some regulators and researchers propose limiting the length of market exclusivity for orphan drugs if a disease no longer qualifies as orphan, or after six years. Others suggest only granting orphan drug status for new compounds or those that will not otherwise be economically viable.

The government can still reward companies for their efforts with tax and research incentives and give them priority review vouchers for new innovations. But I propose that these rewards should be based on their innovations’ health impact, and companies should agree to open access licenses that allow generic companies to produce these drugs as well. The more lives companies’ innovations save, and the greater the improvement in quality of life, the greater the reward.

Researchers can extend existing analysis of medicines’ global health impact for this purpose by considering the need for, access to, and effectiveness of new innovations. So, for example, if two new drugs were invented for an orphan disease, but one saved 10 times as many lives, the first drug would get 10 times the rewards – in terms of tax benefits, length of exclusivity, and other benefits.

I also think that orphan drugs’ production should be made open access to bring costs down to the marginal cost of production. Doing so is better than rewarding companies based on patients’ willingness to pay. Right now, companies make the most money by selling drugs to rich patients for chronic conditions like allergies that they can treat but do not cure.

My proposal is to uncouple profits from sales volume and reward companies based on the health impact of the new therapy, if they agree to allow any company to manufacture the resulting products.

Tax breaks and the length of the FDA review process specified in the voucher might be based on how many lives new innovations save and how much disability they alleviate. There are already some prize funds that reward companies for doing research on diseases that do not affect many people in the U.S. but are big global killers. Similarly, so-called advance market commitments often reward companies for creating new medicines that have a large impact. And economic evaluation based on health impact can help us set appropriate thresholds for rewards.

Right now, companies focus on providing new treatments for chronic diseases of rich patients rather than on having the greatest health impact. That’s how they make the most money. Changing this system would shift the the whole pharmaceutical industry’s priorities.

Nicole Hassoun, Professor of Philosophy, Binghamton University, State University of New York

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.

The pandemic will end someday. The trauma will linger

Ever since Pfizer and Moderna announced the development of successful COVID-19 vaccines, the end of the pandemic has been in sight. It has been a heinous ordeal — at the time of this writing, more than 2 million people have died worldwide of the disease, including more than 400,000 in the United States — and slow vaccine distribution means uncertainty still lies ahead.

Yet even if all goes well and we do manage to contain the pandemic in the near future, there will be lasting psychological consequences for the humans who suffered through it.

Intriguingly, not all of them will be negative, as Dr. Ellen Langer, a professor of psychology at Harvard University, told Salon.

“The pandemic has made everybody concerned about their health. And I think that once the pandemic passes, that concern will continue, which is a good thing rather than a bad thing,” Langer explained. She cited as an example how people might be more conscientious when they display flu-like symptoms.

“If one has the flu and the flu is not going to go away, even after COVID goes away, there will be a more positive response to it by people,” Langer speculated. “So when you have symptoms, you’re likely to address them sooner than you might have prior to the concern about the pandemic.”

But the pandemic will also shape our collective psychology for decades to come, as it has profoundly affected people from all ages and all walks of life.

“This will take generations to get past,” Dr. David Reiss, psychiatrist in private practice and expert in mental fitness evaluations, told Salon. “And that’s because at every stage of development, things have been disrupted, whether you’re talking about like my two-year-old grandchild who somehow has to understand seeing family members in masks, to four and five-year-old kids who are just starting to socialize, to adolescents who can’t socialize and all through different stages of life.” Reiss said as an adult in his sixties he felt deeply affected.

“It’s really disrupted the passage to different life milestones and developmental periods, and that disruption is more subtle, but may have a longer lasting effect,” Reiss explained.

Indeed, for millions of Americans who have struggled through social isolation and lockdowns, the effect has been traumatizing.

“We always look at trauma in phases, if we’re looking at it intelligently anyway, because there is the moment of trauma, then there’s the immediate aftermath of trauma,” Dr. Lise Van Susteren, general and forensic psychiatrist in Washington, DC, told Salon. “And then there’s the long-term impacts of trauma. And we are a traumatized world right now. Certainly we understand that we’re a traumatized nation. We’ve gone through a lot and still it’s not over.”

Those with pre-existing mental health conditions may be more likely to suffer from pandemic-related trauma, Van Susteren said. People who were left feeling unusually vulnerable are also likely to suffer from trauma issues.

“If you felt you were in charge of your life — and this is typical across trauma generally — the degree to which you feel helpless is going to either exacerbate or fortify you in facing trauma down the road,” Van Susteren told Salon regarding the issue of vulnerability. “So if you could protect yourself and your family, you’re not going to be as traumatized as those people who could not.” To cope with this and other similar traumas, Van Susteren argued people should examine “the degree to which you were able to solve the problems that were thrown at you, and you can look to your review of what happened and tell yourself that under the circumstances you did the best job that you could, that you did the best you could, and that’s where you build. That’s the essence of resilience. It is ‘I did the best I could under the circumstances.'”

Reiss told Salon that people should also look out for signs that they are experiencing trauma.

“I think it will definitely be sort of a classical PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder] reaction among many people, and that may range from mild and subtle to overt symptoms,” Reiss explained. PTSD is a mental disorder that develops after an individual has been exposed to a traumatic event, with symptoms including insomnia, ruminative thoughts, persistent anxiety, depression and flashbacks.

Reiss speculated that there are not as likely to be many flashbacks “other than for people who are frontline workers who or who lost someone specifically,” but that there will likely be occasions of “re-experiencing of the sense of fear, the sense of loss and just the sense of distance and loneliness” that will persist even after the pandemic has ended. He argued that we should look for people who feel lonely, whose interpersonal relationships have been disrupted or who display signs of clinical depression, “which is a sense of hopelessness or helplessness.”

Dr. Bandy Lee, a psychiatrist who has taught at Yale and authored the new book “Profile of a Nation: Trump’s Mind, America’s Soul,” told Salon that President Donald Trump and far right-wingers who fed misinformation to the public also hurt our collective mental health.

“The mental health ramifications are going to be huge and exacerbated because of our failure to address this historic public health crisis appropriately,” Lee told Salon. “We have handled it perhaps in the worst way possible from a mental health perspective. By supporting denial and suppressing the voices of mental health experts, which the federally-funded American Psychiatric Association achieved unilaterally, we created conditions for exploiting and using psychological vulnerabilities as a political tool. Essentially, this helped divide people into those who believe the pandemic is real and those who believe it is a political ploy to discredit the president.”

As a result of this happening, Lee concluded that “we now have a large segment of the population that has been encouraged and trained to avoid reality.” People who have become emotionally invested in misinformation and other types of falsehoods, even those that work against their own self-preservation, are going to struggle to come to terms with the fact that they were wrong, a process that will take a lot more time than would have been the case if they had not been lied to. Lee told Salon that she believes “this will eventually be worse than the mental health difficulties from the pandemic itself.”

Lee emphasized that humans are resilient. “if they have the notion in their mind that they’re in it together with other people, if they have the psychological and social support.” Because Trump’s errors compounded the magnitude of the pandemic in America and spread misinformation, however, Lee says that there could be a major psychological consequence.

“To learn that a calamity was not necessary, on the other hand, that they were deliberately lied to, will be a much more difficult to overcome, as experiences are far more traumatic when they are human-caused rather than naturally-occurring,” Lee explained.

If nothing else, the coronavirus pandemic is likely to have a far-reaching effect on human history, much as the bubonic plague did in the mid-14th century. Although the so-called Black Death caused anywhere from 75 million to 200 million human deaths, it also wound up forcing lords to improve wages and working conditions for serfs on their lands, forced improvements in medicine, helped fuel the Renaissance and (on a less salutary level) led to an increase in persecution against marginalized minority groups like Jews. Some of these changes were due to economic and political factors, but others were rooted in psychology.

Even when the pandemic ends, the psychological fallout will almost certainly change the course of history.

Two GOP congressmen sought pardons for their connection to Capitol attack: report

Arizona Republican Reps. Paul Gosar and Andy Biggs reportedly asked former President Donald Trump for pardons relating to their involvement in the events leading up to the Jan. 6 terrorist attack on the Capitol. He turned them down.

On Tuesday, CNN reported that the two Arizonans were among a number of GOP lawmakers who sought clemency in Trump’s final days in connection to the rally in front of the White House that flowed into the deadly riot. The former president, who still faces an impeachment trial in the Senate for his own role in the insurrection, reportedly declined to grant the requests after a lengthy meeting with legal advisers over the weekend.

The concerns went beyond the elected officials who had promoted or attended the rally — including Gosar, Biggs and Rep. Mo Brooks of Alabama — and extended to conservatives who had helped organize and raise money for the event, CNN reported, including Trump’s oldest adult son Donald Trump Jr. and his significant other Kimberly Guilfoyle, both of whom addressed the crowd.

Trump issued 143 pardons in a late-night blitz on Tuesday, but the Arizona congressmen were not among them, and neither were any of the outgoing president’s family members. Ultimately, Trump did not pardon anyone associated with the rally or siege, likely because the Constitution limits the pardon power in cases related to impeachment. (After the attack, Trump had told the violent mob in a video statement, “We love you. You’re very special.”)

Itinerant right-wing blogger Ali Alexander, one of the key organizers and a driving force behind the nationwide “Stop the Steal” protests that led up to the rally, claimed in a number of since-deleted videos that he had collaborated ahead of the event with Gosar, Biggs and Brooks in an effort to put “max pressure on Congress.” When the rioters breached the Capitol, lawmakers were debating the legitimacy of electoral votes from Gosar and Biggs’ home state of Arizona, a challenge endorsed by both congressmen, forcing members and staff. Investigators have concluded that some of the attackers, inspired by unfounded accusations that Gosar, Biggs and Brooks had all parroted, had invaded the building with the intention of kidnapping and executing elected leaders, including former Vice President Mike Pence. Six people ultimately died as a result of the siege, including two Capitol Police officers.

In an interview with MSNBC’s Joy Reid that aired on Tuesday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said that Trump, as a lead instigator of the failed coup attempt, was an accessory to murder.

“Presidents’ words are important. They weigh a ton. And they used his words to come here,” Pelosi said, referencing Trump’s fierce speech just ahead of the riot, in which he implored the crowd several times to “fight.”

The California Democrat added that if Trump and members of Congress were shown to have collaborated with attackers, they could potentially qualify as accessories to the crimes committed during the siege.

“The crime, in some cases, was murder,” she said. “And this president is an accessory to that crime because he instigated that insurrection that caused those deaths and this destruction.”

While some law enforcement officials, such as D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine, have said they plan to look into Trump’s role in the attack as a criminal matter, none have indicated that he may face charges of accessory to murder.

Last week, 10 House Republicans joined Democrats to impeach Trump for a second time on a single charge of “incitement to insurrection,” but the chamber has yet to send the article to the Senate for trial. Pelosi has not said when she will send the article to the Senate, now under Democratic control, but told Reid in the interview that it would be “soon.”

Republicans have not spoken of Trump’s actions in criminal terms, but a number of them have blamed him for the violence, including now-Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who said earlier this week that Trump had “provoked” the insurrection.

“The mob was fed lies,” McConnell said from the Senate floor on Tuesday. “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. But we pressed on.”

Last week, Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, D-N.Y., told MSNBC’s Nicole Wallace that a lawmaker alleged to have shown members of the mob around the Capitol the day before the riot had engaged in “criminal behavior under federal sedition laws.” While Maloney did not name the lawmaker, he said, “That’s going to be a real story.”

Is it safe to go to the dentist?

If the coronavirus is spread through breathing without a mask in close proximity to others, then one might think that sitting with one’s mouth agape for hours while a hygienist fiddles right next to you seems like a risky proposition. Indeed, unlike other health care visits, dentistry requires the removal of one’s mask for long periods. That has many Americans delaying or avoiding dental care, out of fear of transmission.

But don’t delay your dentist visit just yet. Dentists and health care experts say that despite what it might appear, a dentists’ office visit is actually a paragon of pandemic safety.

“It’s very safe to go to the dentist, and it’s been really safe since dental offices reopened back in May,” said Dr. Kami Hoss, D.D.S., who sits on the Board at the UCLA School of Dentistry and is the CEO of The Super Dentists in California. “Dentists are infection control experts.”

Dr. Hoss said that dentists have been hyper-aware of disease transmission and how to avoid it for decades. “This goes back to the 1980s, when I was going to dental school when we had to deal with the HIV AIDS crisis,” Hoss said. “Since then we have implemented many processes, technologies, and protocols to make sure that we keep our patients, employees and doctors safe.”

Despite being considered a “high-risk” profession, in part due to the close proximity between dentists and patients, a report published by The Journal of the American Dental Association (ADA) found that less than one percent of 2,200 dentists surveyed last June had COVID-19. Professionals in the industry believe the low rate is a result of the industry adding an extra layer of protection to their already-stringent sanitation standards.

Dr. Matt Messina, an ADA spokesperson, told Salon over the phone — in-between patients — that it’s “absolutely” safe to go to the dentist right now. He remarked that there’s been no dentist to patient transmission that the ADA is aware of, and that the fact that less than 1 percent of dentists surveyed in June contracted COVID-19 means the industry has “a pretty amazing record.”

“And that’s dentists that have come down with COVID, and that includes from any source,” Dr Messina said of the statistic.

But of course, like mostly everything else, going to the dentist right now looks a bit different than it did pre-pandemic. You don’t get the coffee or tea in the waiting room, or likely any leisure time to read magazines before getting your teeth cleaned, like you did before. Some offices have omitted the waiting room entirely, opting instead to have patients wait in their car for a call when they’re ready to be seen. And prior to your appointment, you can expect to be virtually screened for possibly being exposed to COVID-19 and any potential symptoms— like Dr. Hoss does in California.

“We’ve implemented a thorough phone screening going through all the questions — if you have a fever, if you’ve been around COVID, we start from there,” Dr. Hoss said. “We only allow healthy people inside; that screening includes patients, but it also includes our staff and our doctors, every single morning before they’re allowed to be entering the offices.”

In addition to pre-appointment screening, dentists will look a little more protected too.

“Most patients will see, maybe the addition of face fields, more of a barrier gown type of arrangement, we look a hair more surgical than we have in the past,” Dr. Messina said. “Dental offices have used gowns, goggles, face shields, masks, even from before so luckily the average patient won’t notice a big difference.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has listed exhaustive measures for the dental industry to follow. The federal agency also advises that dentals offices prioritize dental services and overall care based on the personal protective equipment available and how many COVID-19 cases are in one’s local community. The risk of COVID-19 transmission is often weighed against the risk of not taking care of your oral health, which both dentists emphasized to Salon is very important.

“It is absolutely necessary to take care of your oral health, especially during a health pandemic,” Dr. Hoss said. “Why? Because general health starts in your mouth, oral health impacts every part of our health, including the health of pregnancy — it’s connected to many many systemic diseases, including lung health.” Indeed, the coronavirus can become deadly when it infects enough cells in the lungs.

But what about the metal tools that go in your mouth during a cleaning— the ones that are usually in someone’s mouth before yours? Dr. Hoss said a lot more “disposable items” are being used, but those “metal pieces” are being sterilized just like before. And that’s because the coronavirus is actually quite easy to kill (hence, the large public-health emphasis on washing hands and countertops).

“This particular virus is actually very sensitive to soap, even,” Dr. Hoss said. “For our sterilization process, there does not need to be dramatic changes to it. So yes we do use a lot more disposable items as much as possible, but anything that we can’t and we have to use it between patients, it’s fully sterilized and fully cleaned and it’s completely safe to be used between patients.”

Meet Amanda Gorman, the powerful poet laureate who voiced our hope for a unified, better America

When poet Amanda Gorman took center stage during President Joe Biden’s inauguration to deliver her poem “The Hill We Climb,” it became immediately clear why she was chosen to precede him on the podium.

Only four presidents —John F. Kennedy, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and now, Biden — have had poets read at their inaugurations and Gorman captivated viewers across America as she spoke of a shaded past and a lighter future, not shying away from four years of grief and trauma, but nevertheless determined to offer an outlook for America’s redemption.

Her presence as a young Black woman artist on stage felt deeply historic, especially as deep political divisiveness and racist rhetoric from government leaders and law enforcement has continued to come into clearer view over the last four years. And everything about her reading — from the development of her work, to her chosen outfit, to the poem itself — is imbued with symbolism.

Here’s everything you need to know about Gorman and her performance:

Who is Amanda Gorman?

Gorman is a 22-year-old poet from Los Angeles and is the youngest poet to ever perform on Inauguration Day. According to the New York Times, Gorman developed a love of poetry at a young age.

As Gorman told NPR’s Steve Inskeep, she, like President Joe Biden, had a speech impediment as a child. She said that was one of the reasons that she was drawn to poetry. “Having an arena in which I could express my thoughts freely was just so liberating that I fell head over heels, you know, when I was barely a toddler,” she said.

Gorman was encouraged to really pursue her craft by her middle school teacher mother, Joan Wicks, and became the first person to hold the position of National Youth Poet Laureate at 16. Later, she attended Harvard to study sociology.

How was Gorman chosen to perform at the inauguration?

According to Harper’s Bazaar, several weeks before the inauguration, Dr. Jill Biden stumbled upon a video of Gorman reading her original poem “In This Place: An American Lyric” at the Library of Congress in 2017. A Zoom call was set up between Biden and Gorman, during which Gorman was invited to compose and read an original poem.

“They did not want to put up guardrails for me at all,” Gorman told the New York Times. “The theme for the inauguration in its entirety is ‘America United,’ so when I heard that was their vision, that made it very easy for me to say, great, that’s also what I wanted to write about in my poem, about America united, about a new chapter in our country.”

What was Gorman’s writing process like?

Gorman described to several publications how she initially struggled with the enormity of the project ahead of her. She told the Los Angeles Times that she listened to music that helped put her “in a historic and epic mind-set,” including soundtracks from “The Crown,” “Lincoln,” “Darkest Hour” and “Hamilton.”

What enabled her to fully complete the poem, however, was observing the insurrection attempt at the Capitol on Jan. 6.

“I wasn’t trying to write something in which those events were painted as an irregularity or different from an America that I know,” Gorman said. “America is messy. It’s still in its early development of all that we can become. And I have to recognize that in the poem

With this in mind, she wrote the lines: “We’ve seen a force that would shatter our nation rather than share it / Would destroy our country if it meant delaying democracy / And this effort very nearly succeeded / But while democracy can be periodically delayed / It can never be permanently defeated.”

What poem did Gorman read and what did it mean?

Gorman recited her original poem “The Hill We Climb,” a poignant, self-aware piece that speaks boldly to the deep divides in this country, led by people who would rather topple democracy than accept defeat. And yet, she acknowledges how powerful it is that we are in “a country and a time where a skinny black girl descended from slaves and raised by a single mother can dream of becoming president, only to find herself reciting for one.”

While “The Hill We Climb” describes the brokenness and hopelessness many in this country may feel following Trump’s incitement of violence, the poem encourages listeners with the knowledge that they can “step out of the shade.” Gorman told NPR that she dug into the works of orators like Martin Luther King, Jr., Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill, who all were tasked with calling for hope and unity in times of division.

One particular line that seemed to stand out to viewers was, “Scripture tells us to envision that everyone shall sit under their own vine and fig tree and no one shall make them afraid. If we’re to live up to her own time, then victory won’t lie in the blade, but in all the bridges we’ve made.”

“Under their own vine and fig tree” is a phrase found in multiple places throughout the Hebrew Scriptures and is used to describe the simple life of a farmer who was independent of military oppression. It was later used by George Washington nearly 50 times in various correspondence, as a reference to the American Revolution. Then, in a 1787 issue of the New York Journal it was used by a writer to describe America as a place for oppressed immigrants to find independence.

You may also recognize the line from the “Hamilton” song “One Last Time,” where it’s contextualized as, “Everyone shall sit under their own vine and fig tree/And no one shall make them afraid/They’ll be safe in the nation we’ve made.”

Gorman’s inclusion of that phrase speaks to America’s founding as a place that had the potential to be free of oppression, and the ongoing dream that it could be true for all Americans, regardless of race or cultural background.

How did people respond to “The Hill We Climb”?

Gorman’s recitation was met with rhapsodic praise from celebrities, artists, and political organizations alike, who took to Twitter to express their own thoughts on her sober, yet hopeful outlook.

“I have never been prouder to see another young woman rise! Brava Brava, @TheAmandaGorman!” said celebrity entrepreneur Oprah Winfrey, “Maya Angelou is cheering — and so am I.”

Gorman also got nods from people in the news media, with CBS National Correspondent David Begnaud saying, “Watch Amanda Gorman. It’s a treat.” Seth Abramason, a popular columnist from Newsweek, also boosted Gorman’s poem on Twitter, urging others to do so.

Pulitzer-Prize-winning poet Jericho Brown posted on Twitter, “Oh this is just lovely. Flow like water,” later quoting one of Gorman’s most poignant lines on Twitter: “If only we’re brave enough to see it, if only we’re brave enough to be it.” American legal scholar Lawrence Tribe also applauded the youth poet: “Amanda Gorman’s inspiring inaugural poem perfectly captured the challenge of the moment — and our hopes for the future.

Meanwhile, many Democratic politicians joined the chorus. Senator Cory Booker, expressed on Twitter, “Thank you, Amanda Gorman, for sharing such powerful and inspiring words today.” Congresswoman Stacey Abrams said, “Amanda Gorman’s message serves as an inspiration to us all.” Former First Lady Michelle Obama also added, “With her strong and poignant words, @TheAmandaGorman reminds us of the power we each hold in upholding our democracy. Keep shining, Amanda! I can’t wait to see what you do next.”

Even Republican political action committee The Lincoln Project chimed in, “Amanda Gorman’s poem on unity is one for the history books.”

Dazzling as it was, however, reception to Gorman’s poem was not without criticism. Editor-in-chief of The Dispatch Jonah Goldberg went against the grain, and admitted, “Not loving this poem.”

What’s the story behind Gorman’s outfit?

Gorman accessorized with subtle symbolism in mind. She wore a ring bearing the emblem of a caged bird, a tribute to poet Maya Angelou, the author of “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” who performed at the 1993 presidential inauguration of Bill Clinton.

That ring was a gift from Oprah Winfrey. As Gayle King reported on CBS News on Wednesday morning, Oprah had actually gifted Angelou with the coat she wore that day and wanted to continue the tradition, but Gorman had already purchased the yellow coat seen on Biden’s Inauguration Day, so Oprah gave her the earrings she is wearing, as well as the ring, as a nod to Angelou.

“Have a good life”: Trump leaves office — finally — amid reports he plans to start own party

Donald Trump departed the White House for the last time on Wednesday morning in classic Trump fashion, but not before news leaked that the now-former president might be planning to seek revenge against the Republicans he feels betrayed him in his attempt to overturn the 2020 election on fraudulent claims of vote-rigging.

Trump skipped town for his Mar-a-Lago golf resort in Florida, his new official place of residence, before President Joe Biden’s inauguration. Trump is the first president to skip his successor’s inauguration in 150 years, though the White House said he left a letter for Biden on the Oval Office Resolute Desk. Trump and first lady Melania Trump took off on Marine One from the White House around 8 a.m. and briefly spoke to a small crowd at Joint Base Andrews.

“We will be back in some form,” he said before walking off stage to “YMCA.” “Have a good life. We will see you soon.”

"We will be back in some form," President Trump says at the end of his farewell address.

"I want to thank all the great people of Washington, D.C., all of the people that we worked with to put this miracle together. So, have a good life, we will see you soon. Thank you." pic.twitter.com/jaaI9EeBG0

— CBS News (@CBSNews) January 20, 2021

Former Vice President Mike Pence did not attend the sendoff, instead appearing at Biden’s inauguration. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., were also notably absent from Trump’s farewell address.

Trump finished his presidency as it began, filled with false claims and exaggerations about his accomplishments. He falsely claimed that he passed the “largest tax cut” in history, bragged about presiding over the “greatest economy” even though it has been decimated by the coronavirus pandemic that he refused to try to contain, falsely claimed that he appointed a “record-setting” number of judges despite appointing fewer than his predecessors, and falsely taking credit for a Veterans Choice health program that was signed by former President Barack Obama. He did not mention that he is the only president to be impeached twice, not to mention within a single term, and did not discuss his role in the deadly Jan. 6 Capitol riot that he is charged with inciting.

He left office as the most unpopular president, at least by some measures, in the history of polling.

“We were not a regular administration,” he said, entirely accurately, before wishing “the new administration great luck and great success” without ever mentioning Biden’s name, even though it was included in his prepared remarks.

He briefly thanked Pence, with whom he feuded in his final days over his refusal to help overturn the election, and “certain elements of Congress.”

The first lady briefly spoke as well, calling the last four years an “honor” and offering her “thoughts and prayers.” Melania Trump also distributed dozens of handwritten thank-you notes to her staff, though CNN reported that she had outsourced the actual writing to her aides.

Trump in his final hours issued more than 140 pardons and commutations, including to former top adviser Steve Bannon, who was charged with defrauding donors to a pro-Trump private border wall project, and multiple corrupt former lawmakers and allies. He also rescinded his own executive order barring former aides from lobbying, which he claimed at the time he i issued it would “drain the swamp.”

But Trump was ultimately dissuaded from pardoning himself by outgoing White House counsel Pat Cipollone and others, according to CNN. Attorneys warned Trump that the pardon could be an unnecessary admission of guilt and might have required him to list specific crimes, warning that a preemptive blanket pardon could be unconstitutional. He also did not pardon any family members or attorney Rudy Giuliani. Trump was also warned that certain pardons could antagonize Republicans who will preside over his upcoming Senate trial.

Trump is still stewing about Republicans who turned on him following the riot, particularly McConnell, who blamed him for provoking the mob before it overran Capitol police and stormed the halls of Congress. Trump has discussed forming a new political party called the “Patriot Party” in an effort to “exert continued influence,” sources familiar with the matter told The Wall Street Journal. The report noted that it is unclear how serious Trump’s discussions are, noting that launching a new party “would require a significant amount of time and resources” for a president who spent much of his four years in the White House playing golf, binge-watching cable news and tweeting incessantly until he was banned by Twitter, Facebook and other social networks following the riot.

Trump departed after speaking to a mostly maskless crowd, leaving behind a pandemic that he repeatedly downplayed for nearly a year as it killed more than 400,000 people. And despite repeatedly seeking credit for the quick rollout of coronavirus vaccines, he had no plan to distribute the vaccines when they arrived.

He also leaves behind a legacy of cruelty and incompetence, from his Muslim ban to the child separation policy, from his assault on law enforcement to his legal immigration crackdown, from his attempt to turn the census into a weapon against undocumented immigrants to undermining of the U.S. Postal Service, the Environmental Protection Agency and intelligence agencies. He encouraged police brutality amid protests of racial injustice, constantly feuded with people of color and women, and stoked dangerous conspiracy theories that have resulted in numerous deaths and ongoing threats.

Along with the Senate trial, Trump also faces a potential Justice Department investigation into his conduct in office as well as a New York state investigation into his businesses and another probe by the Manhattan district attorney into his finances.

Trump’s final days in office were spent fighting a futile legal and PR battle in an attempt to overturn the election results in multiple states he lost, ultimately culminating in the Capitol siege. Silenced by social networks, many Republican lawmakers condemned his actions as they try to move on from an era marred by unending scandal, even though they enabled his worst impulses for years. As Trump flew off on his jet, some 25,000 National Guard troops stayed behind in Washington to protect the inauguration against another potential attack by the president’s supporters.

As Biden finally assumed the presidency, he also planned a slew of first-day executive orders to roll back many of Trump’s policies and halt construction of the border wall.

Trump’s actions in office drew many allegations of “fascism” and “authoritarianism” that were in most cases only contained by the ineptitude of the president and his advisers.

“The true damage of the Trump era can’t yet be fully assessed; the patient is still recovering in the trauma bay,” wrote The Atlantic’s Adam Serwer. “What we do know is that an aspiring authoritarian, even an incompetent one, can do tremendous damage to the body politic. If there is to be a recovery, it will be long and arduous, and require sustained intensive care. Even old wounds can ultimately prove fatal.”

Biden begins term with a bold immigration bill and big plans to dismantle Trump’s legacy

Immediately after taking office on Wednesday, newly-elected President Joe Biden plans to sign off on 17 executive actions on issues like COVID-19, immigration, education, racial justice, climate change, and more. With the single stroke of a pen, Biden will immediately discontinue the construction of Trump’s border wall, revoke Trump’s so-called Muslim ban and rejoin the Paris climate accord, setting a starkly different tone from the Trump administration’s support of racism, corporatism, and xenophobia. The Biden White House also plans to send a comprehensive immigration reform bill with a pathway to citizenship to Congress to mark its top legislative agenda.

“He wants to roll up his sleeves and get to work as quickly as possible,” Biden’s incoming press secretary Jen Psaki said, who added that the new President is looking to “[move] the country forward.”

On COVID-19, Biden plans to institute a “100 Days Masking Challenge,” calling for a nationwide mask mandate on federal land and in federal buildings for the next 100 days. “America’s withdrawal from the international arena has impeded progress on the global response and left us more vulnerable to future pandemics,” said Jeff Zients, the new White House coordinator on the country’s pandemic response. Biden will put a pause on America’s departure from the World Health Organization, with Dr. Anthony Fauci –– once estranged by Trump in service of a botched re-election campaign –– now set to be America’s leading delegate.

Biden will also roll back some of Trump’s most consequential environmental handouts to big business. In addition to rejoining the Paris climate accord, Biden plans to revoke the permit for the Keystone XL pipeline, which environmentalists have decried for years, and halt oil and gas leasing in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. This comes just after Trump issued a spate of last-minute drilling leases in 400,000 acres of the ANWR.

With America’s spiraling student loan debt, topping over $1.7 trillion, Biden is expected to pause debt payments until September. Earlier this month, Biden announced a plan urging Congress to cancel $10,000 of debt per student immediately after he takes office. “We are at a critical and precarious moment for our economy as the virus trajectory…is intersecting with an economy falling backwards,” said incoming director of the National Economic Council Brian Deese, “Too many Americans are just barely keeping their heads above water.

With respect to immigration, in addition to halting Trump’s border and rescind the “muslim ban,” Biden will call on Congress to grant permanent status, as well as a path to citizenship, for Dreamers –– nearly million undocumted immigrants vulnerable to deportation under Trump. Biden also plans to reverse Trump’s changes to interior immigration enforcement, making the agency less strict and “[setting] civil immigration enforcement policies that best protect the American people and are in line with our values and priorities.”

Additionally, President Biden plans to tackle racial justice in a social climate supercharged with racism. With a newly-appointed Director of the Domestic Policy Council Susan Rice, Biden expects to sign an executive order “embedding equity across federal policymaking and rooting out systemic racism and other barriers to opportunity from federal programs and institutions.” In addition to requiring that each federal agency take a baseline policy review of systemic inequity, Biden will rescind Trump’s “1776 Commission,” which aimed to curb the “liberalism” of America’s educational curriculum, as well as use the Office of Management and Budget to analyze where money should be spent to empower communities of color across the country.

You think 2020 was the year of sourdough? Look back to the Gold Rush

When the discovery of gold near Coloma, Calif., in 1848 ignited a massive influx of prospectors to the area from other regions of the United States, as well as Europe, Asia, and Australia, many arrived with little more than the clothes on their backs. Among the few prized possessions brought along for the journey were jars of sourdough starter — the mixture of fermented flour and water used to make bread without commercial yeast — that held the promise of a full belly. To thousands of hopeful (and hungry) miners who risked it all in pursuit of striking it rich, those jars of cultivated wild yeast represented a semblance of stability and a taste of home, even amid backbreaking work and an uncertain future. Legend has it that the miners even hugged their starters at night to keep the cultures warm and help them survive.

Sourdough starter served as a lifeline to which the miners literally clung. Due to the sudden population explosion, farms couldn’t keep up with the surge in demand, rendering affordable food an elusive commodity in many parts of the state. Moreover, the discovery of gold excited locals, too: As California’s farm workers left their agricultural jobs to pan for gold, farms that had once supported the state’s economy sat abandoned. Local food merchants, smelling opportunity as droves of miners rushed the goldfields, inflated prices on everything from fruit to flour: A single egg could command as much as $3 (more than $80 per egg in today’s dollars). Suffice it to say, many merchants struck more riches than gold miners; after traveling thousands of arduous miles to stake their claim to wealth, most hopefuls in the mining camps ultimately made little money. Faced with limited funds and resources, the miners could extend a small amount of purchased flour by mixing it with sourdough starter — a more affordable solution than buying a fresh loaf of bread.

“Sourdough starter was a way to turn something that was essentially shelf-stable into something that was a bit more delicious, but also more nutritious,” Josey Baker, founder of Josey Baker Breadin San Francisco, told me over the phone.

Perhaps because the move to California introduced new bacterial inhabitants into their starters, many miners found that their bread took on a sharper sourness than they were used to — a tang that has since become one of the defining traits of San Francisco’s renowned sourdough bread. As the city’s bread fame grew, a rumor circulated that the strain of bacteria (found in the starters’ wild yeasts) responsible for San Francisco sourdough’s distinctly tart flavor simply could not be produced anywhere else. Though this has been disproved — the bacteria has since been found in sourdough loaves all over the world — Lactobacillus sanfranciscensis remains named after the City by the Bay, a nod to the era that cemented sourdough as part of San Francisco’s identity. The popular Bay Area chain Boudin Bakery actually got its start during the Gold Rush, later trademarking its signature loaf as “the Original San Francisco Sourdough.” All these years later, Boudin still makes its sourdough from a gold miner’s starter—though it was nearly destroyed in 1906, when a major earthquake forced an emergency evacuation: “Louise [Boudin, the bakery’s matriarch] grabbed a bucket of the original starter before running to safety,” writes Erica J. Peters in “San Francisco: A Food Biography.” “She instinctively protected the ‘mother dough,’ which linked Boudin’s bread back to its beginnings.”

Following the Gold Rush, other Bay Area bakeries, like Parisian and Larraburu Brothers, became renowned for their bread, serving sourdough to the city for decades before eventually closing their doors. Today, San Francisco sourdough lovers still have plenty to choose from, with Tartine, Semifreddi’s, Acme Bread Company, and more working to maintain the city’s bread reputation. (Even the mascot of San Francisco’s 49ers football team — the beloved Sourdough Sam — pays homage to the city’s favorite bread.)

* * *

Nearly two centuries later, 2020 proved another period during which many pantry staples again became more expensive or difficult to obtain, though this time fueled by panic rather than the hardships of building a new life. When the pandemic became tangible to most Americans last March, grocery store shelves (particularly those holding flour and yeast) sat empty for several weeks in the wake of hoarders buying more shelf-stable goods than they needed. This snag in the supply chain meant businesses had to introduce purchase limits on certain items, and many shoppers left their local supermarkets without the goods they were searching for. During this period, sourdough starter once again emerged in mainstream popularity as an anchor in the turbulence, a way to create a staple food when the store-bought version wasn’t guaranteed. Flour was conserved, stretched, and embellished into something comforting — even when the outside world felt anything but.

Perhaps humans have an inherent desire to spend more time in the kitchen when day-to-day comforts become uncertain. Indeed, the emergence of sourdough bread as a staple during the Gold Rush, paired with the thousands of loaves of sourdough baked during the pandemic, imply that times of unease force us to reclaim the sense of assurance that comes from making key foods entirely from scratch.

That intrinsic need extends beyond baking; the same impulse has encouraged many during the pandemic to experiment with windowsill gardening, practice at-home fermentation techniques, and embrace zero-waste cooking practices. Even home-cooking novices attempted to plant their own cucumbers and zucchini, then experimented with pickling and canning their pandemic harvest. After all, the process of self-reliantly putting food on the family table while minimizing dependence on outside sources can be deeply grounding, whether the motivation is attributed to practical need or temporary distraction.

Baker feels that such projects are more profound than a means to break up the day. “A lot of people were looking for that type of emotional experience of something comforting, something familiar, something that would allow them to feel connected to their ancestors and people from the past,” he noted.

For many during the time of stay-at-home orders and quarantines, the act of nurturing a sourdough starter was a positive and rewarding activity that instilled a sense of routine, resourcefulness, and achievement (not to mention tasty sustenance). And for those who invested the time and effort to properly understand and care for their yeasts, the starters were a gift that kept on giving. “The loaf of bread is just one stop along the journey,” added Baker, who uses starter in non-bread foods like pizza dough and pancakes, to name only two. “It’s just so rich in opportunities.”

Of course, there’s a chance that pandemic-induced interest in baking, fermenting, and other economical kitchen hobbies may fade when the world returns to normal. However, tastes and behaviors, once forged, often do become ritual. After all, in San Francisco, the heart of sourdough continues to beat as strongly as ever, deeply embedded into the very fabric of the city. Perhaps, being born out of necessity is exactly why the city’s bread has so firmly stood the test of time.

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Steve Bannon scores last-minute Trump pardon — but could still face state criminal charges

President Donald Trump pardoned Steve Bannon, his former top strategist and “campaign CEO,” in a late-night pardon dump that rewarded many of the president’s longtime loyalists hours before he left office.

Trump granted clemency to 143 people in the early hours of Wednesday morning, including Bannon, longtime Republican fundraiser Elliott Broidy and multiple lawmakers convicted of corruption. He also issued a full pardon to Republican operative Paul Erickson, who was convicted of fraud charges after coming under investigation due to his relationship with Maria Butina, the Russian spy who pleaded guilty to infiltrating conservative groups like the NRA.

The list of people who did not receive a pardon, however, is equally notable. White House lawyers dissuaded the now-formr president from pardoning himself or his family members because “doing so would amount to an unnecessary admission of guilt,” according to The Washington Post. He also did not pardon personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, who has not been charged but faces a federal investigation in New York, or any of the people involved in the deadly Jan. 6 Capitol riot despite extensive lobbying. Attorneys warned Trump that some of the pardons he was considering could violate the Constitution — which limits pardon powers related to impeachment charges — and might antagonize Republican senators ahead of his impeachment trial.

Trump also did not grant clemency to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange or NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. Trump likewise largely rejected the Justice Department process designed to vet recipients, instead relying on recommendations from his allies, according to a White House statement. About 14,000 people have pending pardon applications.

Bannon, who served as Trump’s top campaign strategist and later as a top adviser in the White House, was arrested last year by U.S. Postal Police on a 150-foot yacht belonging to fugitive Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui and charged alongside three others with defrauding donors of a private border wall project out of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Prosecutors alleged that Bannon used nearly $1 million of the $25 million the group raised on personal expenses. He was still awaiting trial when he received a full pardon.

Trump was torn on whether to pardon Bannon, according to the Post, and advisers tried to dissuade him from issuing it. Bannon was largely the architect of Trump’s 2016 election win and the travel ban on Muslim countries but fell out of favor with the president after he spoke somewhat too openly about Trump, his son-in-law Jared Kushner and other administration officials in Michael Wolff’s book “Fire and Fury.” Bannon and Trump rekindled their relationship when the former Breitbart editor helped push the president’s false allegations of election-rigging following President Joe Biden’s victory in November.

Former federal prosecutor Elie Honig, criminal defense attorney Ken White and other legal experts predicted that Bannon could still face charges on the state and local level since presidential pardons only apply to federal charges.

“What Bannon did likely violated state financial crime laws so he may still face criminal charges in multiple states as well as civil lawsuits for his fraud,” said former Justice Department lawyer Michael Zeldin. “Stay tuned, he’s not out of the woods yet,”

Bannon, whose exploits were bankrolled for years by the Mercer family, was also on the board of the defunct controversial data analytics firm Cambridge Analytica. Robert Mercer and his daughter Rebekah also financially backed Cambridge Analytica, Trump’s 2016 campaign, Breitbart and, more recently, the controversial far-right social media platform Parler, which was reportedly used by some to coordinate the Capitol riot.

Bannon, who prides himself as something of a political genius, tried to lead a failed campaign to grow a far-right populist movement in Europe after he was ousted from the White House and backed failed Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore, whom he continued to support after Moore was accused by multiple women of preying on them as teenage girls in the 1970s. More recently, Bannon was banned from Twitter for calling for Dr. Anthony Fauci, the top infectious disease expert in the country, and FBI Director Christopher Wray to be beheaded. YouTube banned his “War Room” podcast channel in the wake of the deadly Jan. 6 riot after Bannon repeatedly pushed false claims about the election.

Trump’s pardon of Bannon comes after he already granted pardons to former campaign chief Paul Manafort, former national security adviser Michael Flynn, longtime adviser Roger Stone, campaign aide George Papadopoulos and other figures involved in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. The only two TrumpWorld figures embroiled in Mueller’s probe Trump did not pardon were his longtime attorney Michael Cohen and former deputy campaign manager Rick Gates, both of whom extensively cooperated with prosecutors.

Trump also pardoned Broidy, who pleaded guilty last year to acting as an unregistered foreign agent, after he helped raise millions for the president’s 2016 campaign and served as the Republican National Committee’s national deputy finance chairman. Broidy lobbied the Trump administration to extradite Guo Wengui, the Bannon-linked Chinese fugitive, among other efforts on behalf of Malaysian and Chinese interests.

“Even Nixon didn’t pardon his cronies on the way out,” Noah Bookbinder, who heads the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said in a statement. “Amazingly, in his final 24 hours in office, Donald Trump found one more way to fail to live up to the ethical standard of Richard Nixon.”

Trump’s pardon of Erickson also raised eyebrows. Erickson came under scrutiny over his relationship with Butina, whom he helped infiltrate Republican circles and discussed setting up back channels between conservative groups and Russia. Erickson was sentenced to seven years in prison on unrelated charges of defrauding investors for years.

“Mr. Erickson’s conviction was based off the Russian collusion hoax,” the White House said in its statement.

The president granted clemency to multiple former lawmakers convicted of corruption, including former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, who was serving a 28-year sentence after he was convicted on dozens of corruption charges. Trump commuted Kilpatrick’s sentence at the urging of longtime supporters Diamond & Silk, among others, according to the White House.

Trump also pardoned former Rep. Randall “Duke” Cunningham, R-Calif., who served eight years for accepting millions in bribes from defense contractors, former Rep. Rick Renzi, R-Ariz., who served three years in prison on more than a dozen corruption and bribery counts, and former North Carolina Republican Party chairman Robin Hayes, who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI after he was accused of a bribery scheme.

Those pardons were urged by Trump allies like former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, fellow convicted former Republican House leader Tom DeLay, Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., and Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C.

He also commuted the sentence of Salomon Megen, a Florida doctor who was convicted of defrauding millions from Medicare and bribing Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., at the behest of the senator.

He likewise commuted the sentence of Sholam Weiss, who was sentenced to 835 years in prison for numerous fraud charges related to a life insurance scheme.

“The corruption pardons are actually worse because Trump also gave them to people who aren’t his friends,” wrote Business Insider’s Josh Barro. “They only make sense as a general statement that corruption is good.”

Though Trump pardoned numerous nonviolent drug offenders, he has largely shunned the traditional Justice Department process, eschewing clemency for those without political connections. Trump had granted just 95 acts of clemency before Wednesday, mostly to political allies. Former President Barack Obama granted a record 1,715 commutations during his two terms, mostly to nonviolent drug offenders.

“They all had something Trump wanted or benefited him in some kind of way,” Nichole Forde, who is serving a 27-year sentence for nonviolent drug crimes and hand-wrote her clemency petition nearly five years ago, told the Post. “I am not part of the Trump elite.”

Trump’s other pardons included the rapper Lil Wayne, who pleaded guilty to weapons charges in December, rapper Kodak Black, who was sentenced to four years in prison on gun charges, and Casey Urlacher, the brother of former NFL linebacker Brian Urlacher, who pleaded guilty to charges related to an offshore gambling ring. He also pardoned Ken Kurson, who was the editor in chief of the New York Observer when it was owned by Kushner. Kurson was charged with cyberstalking his ex-wife and was awaiting trial.

Trump’s last-minute pardon spree reminded many of the GOP furor over former President Bill Clinton’s 140 pardons on his final day in 2001, which sparked a Republican congressional investigation and even a criminal probe that ultimately came up empty.

“Donald Trump conducted his presidency for his profit, making virtually every policy decision on a transactional basis — not what the Constitution required, not what benefited our country and our people, but only what increased his power, wealth and status,” Larry Kupers, who quit as Trump’s pardon attorney over his use of clemency powers, told the Post.

Trump had previously pardoned controversial former Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio, Kushner’s father Charles Kushner, multiple former Blackwater contractors convicted of killing civilians in Iraq, and numerous other corrupt former members of Congress.

Trump’s latest string of pardons “reads less like a list of pardons than a desperate, last-minute argument that political corruption should not be a crime,” the watchdog group American Oversight said in a statement.

“Founders expected that Presidential pardons would be about mercy, apology, correcting miscarriages of justice, not about a President helping himself and his pals escape consequences of bad behavior,” wrote presidential historian Michael Beschloss, adding that there needs to be an investigation into whether any of the pardons were “granted in exchange for money or to silence people who could conceivably send Trump to prison.”

Trump is gone. Now we face the real question: Does Biden have what it takes to save us?

Even before he was sworn in at noon on Wednesday, Joe Biden stepped into the role of president, filling the vacuum left by Donald Trump, who was too occupied staging his failed coup to bother with many of the basic duties of the job. On the eve of his inauguration, Biden and Kamala Harris held a ceremony at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool to honor the 400,000 who have died so far from the coronavirus pandemic, in which Biden cautioned that while it’s “hard,” that to “heal we must remember.”

It’s the basic sort of presidential leadership that Trump, ever the malignant narcissist, avoided even as the death tally climbed, certain as he often seemed that people were dying just to make him look bad. It was the culmination of Biden’s transitional period, where he repeatedly rose to the occasion as Trump failed, showing leadership on important issues.

It was Biden, not Trump, who made an emergency speech denouncing the Capitol riot. (Trump, of course, was busy supporting the insurrection, and largely focused on praising the insurrectionists by saying, “We love you.”) It was Biden who took the lead on public communications regarding the latest spike in the pandemic, while Trump’s administration not only failed to deliver on promises on vaccines but was caught lying about the state of the nation’s vaccine reserve.

Now, in a true pinch-yourself-this-is-real moment, Trump is finally gone and Biden has been sworn in, vowing, “We’ll press forward with speed and urgency for we have much to do in this winter of peril and significant possibilities. Much to repair, much to restore, much to heal, much to build, and much to gain.”

And the real question for so many who have spent years resisting the tumorous Trump presidency is finally here: Now what?

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Despite fears that Biden’s speech would paper over recent events, he leaned into the realities of the moment by denouncing the “uncivil war” and the violence that “sought to shake the Capitol’s very foundation.”

“Yet hear me clearly, disagreement must not lead to disunion,” he continued, adding, “To overcome these challenges, to restore the soul and secure the future of America, requires so much more than words and requires the most elusive of all things in a democracy: unity.”

The task of getting rid of Trump was so all-consuming that it often distracted from the real mess he left the country in, which is much worse in many ways than what even the worst doom-sayers predicted when Trump won in 2016. There’s a pandemic raging across the land, infecting hundreds of thousands every week and killing thousands every day. The economic outlook is dire, especially without a much more robust relief package than the one that was belatedly passed by the Republican-controlled Senate in December. Despite initial hopes that the crisis would be ended soon by a vaccine, the slow rollout has made it clear that things are going to stay terrible for a long time still. We’d be lucky if this situation was over by next fall.

And that’s just the immediate and most pressing problems. The damage left in Trump’s wake is so immense that it’s hard to wrap one’s mind around it at times. Trump broke up families and wreaked havoc in the lives of countless people with his anti-LGBTQ and anti-immigration policies. He rolled back environmental regulations, even as the problems of climate change started to manifest in real-time. He broke the U.S.’s standing on the world stage, and it remains unclear that even someone as widely respected as Biden will be able to claw that back.

Then there’s the issue of the body politic. The insurrection is just the most dramatic symptom of a larger problem of Republican voters, bitter about their declining numbers, increasingly rejecting democracy and casting for a way to entrench minority rule. Trump didn’t cause that problem, but he dramatically accelerated it. Biden comes into office with a large plurality of voters refusing to accept that he is even the legitimate president. Huge numbers of Americans are swimming in increasingly bizarre and racist conspiracy theories to justify this attitude.

Biden won the primary by presenting himself as a “safe” option, the non-Trump centrist white guy who primary voters believed would be less threatening to fairweather voters than someone with a more ambitious platform, such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts or Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont. Biden secured his primary victory right as the seriousness of the pandemic was dawning when voters were hyper-focused on nominating the guy who seemed hardest for Trump to beat. Biden’s centrism was a selling point of this loss-aversion style of campaigning.

In the months since, however, the reality has set in that the nation is going to need more — a lot more — than a replacement-level Democrat whose main selling point is that he’s not Trump. Our problems are enormous and the person needed to fix them needs to have the guts and ambition to take dramatic action to solve them. Biden himself seems to get this.

“I think it’s probably the biggest challenge in modern history, quite frankly. I think it may not dwarf but eclipse what FDR faced,” Biden told Chris Cuomo of CNN last April.

Trump’s legacy is a grotesque mix of the economic ruin of Herbert Hoover, the racist legacy of Andrew Johnson, and the corrupt legacy of Richard Nixon. His successor needs to be more than a Jimmy Carter figure, someone who is nice enough but too modest and conservative in his goals. Biden needs to be a figure more like, well, FDR — someone with the imagination and courage to tackle what needs to be a massive overhaul of our political system.

No one a year ago would have flagged Biden as the next FDR. And there’s still good reason to be concerned that his instincts — he loves to talk about bipartisanship, for instance — are too moderate and compromising, and will lead to Senate Republicans derailing his efforts with phony “talks” where they pretend they’re willing to negotiate in order to run out the clock. But there are also promising signs that Biden understands that seriousness of the moment and, as David Roberts at Vox advised in December, is willing to focus on “doing as much good on as many fronts as fast as possible” instead of getting bogged down with the GOP’s derailing tactics.

Biden just announced the first in what will hopefully be an all-out blitz of activity from the new administration: Seventeen executive actions aimed at undoing much of the damage Trump has done, as well as starting the immense projects of fighting the pandemic and tackling racial justice issues raised over the last year of protests. The previous four presidents limited themselves to one or none. Biden’s team also promises to roll out a series of more over the next ten days, while also introducing major legislation — including a $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package — to help turn the nation around.

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The question is whether he can keep it up, or whether he’ll be vulnerable, as he has been in the past, to the usual strategies Republicans use to slow things down.

Certainly, the inauguration itself is a solemn reminder of the enormity of this moment. It’s unlikely that Biden, who has had presidential ambitions since at least the 1980s, imagined his inauguration would be this way. He’ll attend no inaugural ball, there’ll be no massive crowd of well-wishers, just a relatively small and subdued group of masked people sitting six feet apart from each other and surrounded by thousands of National Guard to protect the proceedings from more violent insurrectionists. The Biden inaugural committee has made a dramatic gesture towards the sadness that hangs over the event with not just Tuesday night’s memorial but also the sea of flags replacing the usual warm human bodies that would fill the National Mall for this occasion.

This muted celebration and the focus on getting to work is what is needed for our time.

The inauguration of Barack Obama was a joyous occasion, feeling as it did like turning a new page in American history. Twelve years later, we are all bruised and battered and a little wiser, realizing that it will take more than a dashing president and a sense of optimism to fix what’s wrong with this country. Today may be a new beginning but of a journey that will be arduous and uncertain, requiring grim determination if there is to be any hope of a better day.

Lindsey Graham excoriated for equating Trump accountability with divisive “vengeance”

Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham was roundly denounced Sunday after sending a letter to Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer that characterized President Donald Trump’s pending trial as “vengeance” and “political retaliation” that he argued would further divide the nation.

While the U.S. House impeached Trump for his role in inciting a violent mob of his supporters to storm the nation’s capitol building on Jan. 6 — an insurrectionist effort unparalleled in U.S. history that left at least five people dead — Graham argues in his letter that Schumer, if he proceeds with a trial in the Senate, would be guilty of “one more unconstitutional action in this disgraceful saga” that he said would only “incite further division.”

However, critics of Graham immediately pounced on the South Carolina Republican for his faulty logic and the disgraceful nature of the letter.

“Lindsey Graham should take the first step towards healing and resign,” quipped People for Bernie in response.

“This is basically extortionate: Sorry, no unity until the demands for accountability are dropped,” wrote Washington Post political correspondent Greg Sargent. “The answer to this is ‘No. You are the ones who have committed the offense. You don’t get to set one-sided conditions for unity after what you did.'”

Hey Senator, any word on how many of your colleagues acknowledge that Joe Biden won a fair election? Why don't you get back to us on that before you make ridiculous calls for unity. https://t.co/KdyHBXvmh1

— Dean Baker (@DeanBaker13) January 17, 2021

Rep. Don Beyer, D-Va., unleashed on Graham in a series of tweets, citing the Republican’s own behavior that fostered Trump’s lies about the outcome of the 2020 election and his long history of two-faced accommodation to Trump’s anti-democratic authoritarianism.

“Graham,” said Beyer, “pressured election officials in Georgia to throw out lawful ballots and overturn the result.” He then added:

If you went from calling Trump a con man who couldn’t be trusted with the nuclear arsenal and an “out-and-out racist” to his biggest yes man who regularly debased himself in Trump’s defense maybe you shouldn’t call anyone else an “incredibly weak figure” https://t.co/0C8WNxc965

— Rep. Don Beyer (@RepDonBeyer) January 17, 2021

Journalist Rachel Bitecofer noted that what Graham is essentially, if not illogically, arguing in his letter to Schumer is “that those responsible for the attack on the Capitol will be held responsible if the Senate lets the main person responsible evade responsibility.” But, she adds, “he fails to consider his own culpability at all — which is significant since he lied about fraud.”

Likewise, Rep. Bill Pascrell, D-N.J., said that it’s nearly impossible to take the words of Graham seriously given the role that he, along with so many of his Republican colleagues in Congress, have said and done to the nation in recent months — including those who voted against the certification of President-elect Joe Biden’s win.

“For months, GOP leaders spread lies about the election,” Pascrell tweeted Sunday in response to Graham’s letter. “Acting on those lies, fascists ransacked the Capitol and *hours later* 138-of-202 (68%) House republicans voted to make trump a dictator.”

For posterity here are the 138 House republicans who voted to install trump as a dictator hours after murderous terrorists tried to do the same. How do you lecture about “unity” and “healing” after seeking to end American democracy? pic.twitter.com/vDllvNXliM

— Bill Pascrell, Jr. 🇺🇸🇺🇦 (@BillPascrell) January 17, 2021

“Nothing Republican leaders say about unity,” he added, “is worth a nickel.”

Cleaning up Trump’s American carnage: Biden turns from resistance to rebuilding

One of the great ironies of life is that as you get older time seems to pass much more quickly. But I have found that the last four years have been an exception. I can hardly remember a time before Donald Trump dominated our political culture. But it’s over now. Today Trump flies off to Mar-a-Lago to plot his next comeback and Joe Biden moves into the White House to plot a comeback for America.

Four years ago today, Donald Trump proclaimed, “American Carnage stops right here and stops right now.” He should have said, “American carnage starts right here, right now.” There isn’t room here to list it all. And Lord knows, we don’t want to relive it anyway. But it’s important to remember that Trump’s crimes in office go beyond “norm busting” and being a pathological liar. He was corrupt on an unprecedented level and he abused the power of the presidency repeatedly putting his own needs ahead of the national interest time and again. He showed reckless disregard for the greatest public health crisis in over a century and the ensuing economic crisis. And he promulgated an egregious disinformation campaign to overturn the results of the 2020 election, incited his supporters to sack the US Capitol and then stood by and did nothing as they stormed the halls of Congress chanting “hang Mike Pence!”

As historian Tim Naftali writes in The Atlantic, compared to the worst presidents in American history, from James Buchanan to Warren Harding to Herbert Hoover or Richard Nixon, Trump is at the bottom on every measurable scale. Others have done bad things — many of which Trump did as well — but none of them attempted a coup to stay in power.

But he didn’t do it alone. He was aided and abetted by the Republican collaborators who backed him every step of the way, some even helping to incite those same insurrectionists. They excused his ignorant, crude behavior and his abuse of power and closed their eyes to the blatant corruption that had him pocketing vast sums from taxpayers and those seeking favors. They protected him from legitimate oversight and allowed him to repeatedly put himself before the country. They were in it with him all the way and Trump’s ecstatic voters rewarded them for it. That he has turned on so many in his last days is further proof that no good deed goes unpunished.

CNN’s Ron Brownstein writes that Trump is leaving America at its most divided since the Civil War. It’s not that it wasn’t polarized before he took office, but Trump accelerated it and took it into new territory:

Trump relentlessly stoked the nation’s divisions and simultaneously provided oxygen for the growth of White nationalist extremism through his open embrace of racist language and conspiracy theories. In the process, Trump has not only shattered the barriers between the Republican Party and far-right extremists but also enormously intensified a trend that predated him: a growing willingness inside the GOP’s mainstream to employ anti-small-d-democratic means to maintain power in a country demographically evolving away from the party.

That anti-democratic means to maintain power has been with us through all the years of Jim Crow voter suppression and beyond, of course, but Trump gave it new life with the introduction of the violent anti-government faction, bizarre conspiracy theories and a sophisticated propaganda operation that came together to define the mainstream right during the Trump era. It tore the country apart and we are still in shock. It’s going to take a while to come out of it.

On the eve of his inauguration, Joe Biden, his vice president, Kamala Harris, and their spouses oversaw an elegant, spiritual memorial at the National Mall to commemorate the 400,000 people who have died in the pandemic in this country. It was a moving ceremony and our first national observance, a fitting beginning to Biden’s stated goal to restore the soul of America. He is obviously quite serious about trying to bring people together and it’s what any decent president has to at least try to do.

But what happened over the past four years wasn’t an anomaly and a quick fix isn’t going to work. It’s been slowly dawning on Americans just how badly we’ve failed to live up to our ideals for a very long time and this great clash between those who refuse to admit it and those who want to face it and fix it was inevitable. What’s needed now is not just a restoration of norms and regular order. And neither can we simply hold Trump and the Republicans who acted as his accomplices accountable, although all of that is vital. We’ve come to an inflection point in our history in which we must admit our nation’s failures and challenge ourselves to be better. Can Joe Biden do that?

This piece by Finan O’Toole in The Guardian makes the case that Biden’s life experience with pain and suffering makes him uniquely qualified to pick up the pieces and begin the process of rebuilding from a different place than where we started. It’s an interesting view of Biden’s “dark Irishness” that I haven’t seen before. He begins with a story that Biden likes to tell about a house in Nantucket which he and his family used to take pictures in front of every summer. One year it was gone, having been washed away by the tide. This story apparently serves as a sort of life metaphor for Biden and O’Toole sees it as a metaphor for America that he might relate to: a house slowly crumbling and “no longer able to hold its ground.” He points out that just as you cannot rebuild a house on “land that has been washed away” you also have to rebuild the country somewhere else, “away from the hollow promises of the American dream and towards a new awakening of real equality.” He writes:

[H]is familiarity with the dark can be Biden’s great strength. In his own life, he has been there and come back. He knows that it cannot be denied, but that it can be transcended. He can invite America to encounter its own darknesses – the legacy of slavery, the persistence of official and unofficial white supremacist violence, the failure to provide the access to education and healthcare necessary for the equal dignity of citizens – while reassuring its people that after such acknowledgement can come real change for the better.

That is an optimistic scenario. And it doesn’t account for the challenges of a right-wing faction determined to wage war on its fellow citizens. Still, Biden seems to be planning to go big and so far, hasn’t seemed to be afraid to challenge the previous orthodoxy. We’ll see how that goes. But who knows? Maybe out of Biden’s transcendence of suffering and the ashes of Trump’s American Carnage will rise a better country with a soul that all Americans can claim as their own.

Trump spends final moments in the White House raging at Republican leaders on Capitol Hill: report

With no one else to blame for his own election defeat, President Trump has zeroed in on one of his earliest Congressional backers, House Minority Leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-CA.

According to the New York Times‘ Maggie Haberman, Trump is spending his final moments in the White House fuming because he is still convinced that he won the election. In keeping with his aversion to personal responsibility, Trump has now put a target on his once stalwart ally, who has, as of late, not shown the unconditional support he demands.

McCarthy –– who supported the President’s crusade to overturn the election and voted against the electoral certification of President-elect Joe Biden –– surprised his colleagues on the House floor last week when he cast slight aspersion on Trump following the riot on Capitol Hill. “The president bears responsibility for Wednesday’s attack on Congress by mob rioters,” McCarthy said, treading a fine line, “He should have immediately denounced the mob when he saw what was unfolding.”

After condemning the riot despite propagating the very lies which incited it, McCarthy stopped short of calling for Trump’s impeachment, instead suggesting that censure or a bi-partisan investigation would be better suited for the circumstances. Although McCarthy said just about the bare minimum to oppose Trump, the President is reportedly furious with him for not staying true to the Big Lie. The President’s sudden disownment of one of his most loyal boosters comes just after Trump’s bizarre disavowal of Vice President Mike Pence, whom Trump asked to do the impossible by invalidating the Electoral College votes.

After supporting Trump’s baseless election fraud crusade, but condemning the Capitol riot while defending Trump against a second impeachment, McCarthy has now alienated himself on Capitol Hill, with Democrats and Republicans alike demanding that he step down.

The Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump Republican political action committee, denounced McCarthy as a “pathetic enabler,” telling the Congressman, “pack up [his] desk.” A blistering op-ed in the Sacramento Bee, a paper-based in McCarthy’s home state of California called him a “soulless anti-democracy conspirator.” Even McCarthy’s very own mentor retired California Congressman Bill Thomas tarred his former protégé as a “hypocrite” for supporting the “the phony lies the President perpetuated.”

McCarthy has also faced significant backlash from his own hometown constituency in Bakersfield, California, where Republicans feel he did not go far enough to defend the commander-in-chief. Speaking for many conservatives in Bakersfield, activist Kenneth L. Mettler told the Times, “I’ll just boil it down: He’s a RINO traitor […] President Trump did nothing wrong. President Trump communicated his case. He did not incite anybody. I do honestly think there were agitators, infiltrators.”

Like many Republican members of Congress who supported Trump, McCarthy faces the choice between doubling down to maintain Trump’s voting block and cutting his losses to curry favor with a new administration. As Trump’s term comes to an end, it is becoming abundantly clear that many will not be permitted to walk the line.

“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,” said Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., speaking on the Senate floor Tuesday of the Jan. 6 incident. McConnell’s statement as Trump leaves office signals support for the impeachment of a former president.

No one should be afraid of Donald Trump: He is the biggest loser in U.S. political history

For four years we have heard that Republicans are afraid to stand up to Donald Trump because he will insult them and humiliate them into submission. They could not handle his childish taunts. They shrank from his barbs and slights, delivered largely on Twitter, the social media platform that has now evicted him permanently. Trump took advantage of their cowardice. He was like the big bully on the playground at school who intimidated smaller and weaker kids, then boasted about his easy conquests.

But no one should be afraid of Donald Trump now. After all, he is the biggest loser in U.S. political history. Indeed, he has relinquished the right to be feared.

Trump’s record distinguishes him as the worst president ever. He has lost the popular vote in two national elections. He has been impeached twice, with conviction still possible in the second case. He has been an accomplice to the mass murder of over 400,000 Americans and counting due to the coronavirus. He has caused a massive economic crash. He has incited an insurrection against the government of the United States. He played a corrupt game of footsie with the president of Ukraine, and has been oddly but consistently subservient to the president of Russia. He has grifted the American people out of millions of dollars. He has pardoned associates and acquaintances who could implicate him in crimes. He has been incompetent, indifferent, lazy and vindictive. To top it all off, he has rushed to execute 13 people before his term is up — the most by any president in 120 years.

Trump intimidates via bullying, name-calling, threats and loud exclamations of bravado. His sense of grandiosity and superiority is enhanced when he is successful at embarrassing and humiliating others. To be sure, intimidation is his modus operandi. He rose to the top of the national political ladder through his use of intimidation. It is his only “skill.”

But he is a total coward. He hides behind his lawyers and lets them do his “dirty work.” He cannot fire people in person. He sent a bodyguard to deliver his letter of dismissal to former FBI Director James Comey’s empty office. His specialty is to incite others to action and then deny any responsibility for their behavior. Ask Michael Cohen. Ask Rudy Giuliani. Ask the thousands of attackers at the Capitol. Trump did not have the guts to march with them to the Capitol — but he had no trouble sending them off into battle for his sole benefit.

Trump’s political life has been based on lies and propaganda. His most egregious lie is that the election was rigged and stolen from him. It has been dubbed the “Big Lie.” The truth is that the election was the most open and transparent in history. Joe Biden won fair and square. Trump lost by 7 million votes. He has lost more than 60 lawsuits in contesting the results. His lie about the election led to his seditious rhetoric and to his incitement of the insurrectionists.

Let us be clear: Trump actively tried to undermine and overthrow our democracy. He was fomenting a coup. He has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that he does not love our democracy and does not love our country. He is addicted to power, adulation, grift and corruption — and would rather overturn democracy than give up his addictions.

Trump must be finished as a political figure. It may take some time, but his political clout will wane gradually but assuredly into oblivion. He will try to hold onto his supporters by promulgating his conspiracy theories and his victimhood, but both will be disproven as we return to a world of observable facts and truth.

His gravitas is evaporating. He has become a pathetic and tragic joke. All the major leaders in the world are ecstatic at his upcoming exit from the scene — except perhaps Vladimir Putin, who has enjoyed having Trump in his back pocket.

Trump is already kryptonite. Social media platforms have banned him. Banks will not lend him money. Lawyers are hesitant to defend him against impeachment. Corporations have paused their financial contributions. Even the PGA has yanked its 2022 championship from his New Jersey golf course. His standing will continue to drop as he is further ostracized and purged from American public life.

Trump must be punished for all his federal and state crimes. His supporters need to understand the depth of his criminality. He is a bad actor who will soon face the consequences of his malfeasance. Nothing can erase power and adulation faster than prison. But not even prison can reverse the abuse and trauma inflicted by Trump upon the American people.

His reign of corruption and incitement of insurrection was fueled by his belief that he would not be punished for it, that he could break laws with impunity. This is exactly why his prosecution is required. He must face swift and firm consequences so that others will understand the reality — that Trump’s corruption is a part of his DNA. He has been compromised all his adult life. Until now, his corruption was confined to the state of New York and the Trump Organization. In 2016, thanks to his flukish election victory, he started sharing his criminality with the entire country.

Trump has been living in his alternate universe of lies, conspiracy theories and magical thinking for so long that he is unable to face reality. But his alternate universe is crumbling. And Americans are becoming acquainted once again with facts, science and truth. In 2016, Trump told the Republican National Convention and a national television audience, “Only I can fix it.” But he could not fix our country because he exacerbated and capitalized on our grievances for his own personal and political gain. That is the playbook of an authoritarian.

There is encouraging news, however. In recent polling, nine out of 10 Americans frown upon the insurrection on Jan. 6. Seven out of 10 Americans say Trump bears some responsibility for the violence. Fifty-six percent are in favor of Trump being banned from future elected office. His approval rating now stands at 29%.

Right-wing extremism was present long before Trump. Cultural and economic resentments have been brewing for years. Trump has seized upon these resentments and made them more mainstream through his radicalization of his supporters. Hopefully, right-wing extremism will recede as Trump’s voice is silenced. Citizens who engage in political violence must be rooted out. Trump’s unforgiving act of insurrection has shown his true stripes as an authoritarian who does not give a damn about anyone other than himself. Authoritarianism is antithetical to our representative democracy — and must be stamped out at every opportunity. And Trump has given us opportunities.

No one should be afraid of Donald Trump now. He is defeated, disgraced and repudiated. This is the trifecta of the biggest loser in U.S. political history.

This is our chance to show we have finally conquered our fear of that bully on the playground at school.

Cruz and Hawley became DC pariahs — but their “cynical ploy” for 2024 may have worked anyway

Sens. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., and Ted Cruz, R-Texas, have faced widespread condemnation for their roles in pushing the false election-rigging narrative that fueled the Capitol riot. But some political insiders think their stunt could still aid their 2024 Republican primary hopes, despite the violence it wrought.

Hawley and Cruz, without any evidence of widespread fraud, led the objections to the Electoral College results during a joint session of Congress that was ultimately delayed several hours when a mob of President Donald Trump’s supporters overran Capitol Police and stormed the halls of Congress. The senators’ electoral challenge was slammed by many as a “cynical ploy” intended to gin up 2024 primary support among Trump’s base, but it seemed to have struck a chord among the Trump diehards hunting for lawmakers throughout the building. “I think Cruz would want us to do this,” one rioter said in a video that showed the mob rummaging through drawers in the Senate chamber. “So I think we’re good.”

The blowback for the two senators was swift. Hawley, in particular, lost his book deal, a major donor, his Republican mentor and financial backing from a growing number of corporate PACs after he pumped his fist to the pro-Trump rioters before they stormed the Capitol. Two of the biggest Missouri newspapers called for his resignation. One of Cruz’s top aides resigned in response to the riot. Dozens of Democrats have called for both to resign and have suggested censuring them. House Homeland Security Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., even called for Cruz and Hawley to be put on the FBI’s no-fly list.

But while mainstream figures have been quick to condemn the two lawmakers, “they’re probably not the ones that Hawley is appealing to,” argued Adam Jentleson, who served as chief of staff to former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. “After the violence, 138 Republicans took stock and decided it was still in their interests to stick with Hawley. He wants to be a hero to the right. Seems to be working.”

Jentleson noted that Republican voters have been loyal to Trump since 2016, and there’s not much reason to think they will now reject loyalists like Hawley.

“Hawley is likely to emerge with the political upper hand… and it’s important to be clear-eyed about that,” he said. “Elite opinion may pile on him for a while. But by this time next year his GOP colleagues will be begging him to do fundraising events for them.”

What do the polls say now?

Early polling suggests that becoming mainstream pariahs has not hurt Hawley’s nor Cruz’s brands among the party’s base. An Economist/YouGov poll found that although their general favorability is underwater, Republican voters back Cruz 61-20 and Hawley by a 2-to-1 margin, though the latter is still largely unknown to the majority of voters. An Axios/Ipsos poll similarly found that most voters disapprove of the senators’ “recent behavior,” but 61% of Republicans said they approve of Cruz’s actions, and 46% of Republicans approve of Hawley’s.

Trump voters have largely stayed supportive. More than 90% of his supporters back his attempt to challenge results of the election he lost and want him to run again in 2024, according to the Axios/Ipsos survey. And while less than half of “traditional” GOP voters said they felt the same in that survey, a new CNN poll found that 75% of Republicans believe Biden did not legitimately win the election. On the other hand, Rep. Peter Meijer, R-Mich., one of the 10 Republicans who voted to impeach Trump last week, predicted that he “may very well have” ended his political career just days after taking office.

“I don’t trust any polling right now,” Alex Conant, a veteran Republican strategist who served as the communications director for Sen. Marco Rubio’s, R-Fla., 2016 presidential campaign, said in an interview with Salon. He added that it was “too soon to say” how the fallout from the riot would affect the 2024 primary picture but acknowledged that the senators’ attempts to cast themselves as victims of the left in response to the backlash could be effective, as it has been for Trump.

And, like Trump, both senators have been unrepentant about their own actions since the Capitol siege, despite condemning the violence. Cruz has denied any involvement in fueling the riot while blaming Trump’s “rhetoric.” Hawley said he “will never apologize for giving voice to the millions of Missourians and Americans who have concerns about the integrity of our elections.”

“Some wondered why I stuck with my objection following the violence at the Capitol,” he wrote in a subsequent op-ed. “The reason is simple: I will not bow to a lawless mob, or allow criminals to drown out the legitimate concerns of my constituents.”

But how significant is their support?

Conant, who also worked in the George W. Bush administration and as the top spokesman for the Republican National Committee, said that backing Trump’s electoral challenge was a “dumb idea” that “clearly turned off a lot of voters and other key people inside the party are really upset with them.”

“I don’t think that they’re any more popular now with Trump’s base,” he said. “Let’s be honest, Trump’s base is… small relative to the nation as a whole and… they’re loyal to Trump and I don’t think that support is going to be transferrable to Hawley or Cruz or anyone else because of a vote they took.”

Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, a Democrat who ran for president in 2004, agreed that Trump’s relatively small base was likely to warm up to Cruz and Hawley in response to their backing but predicted it would doom the Republican Party.

“Yeah, Josh and Cruz might make it easier for themselves to win the Republican primary, but I think the Republican party is going to suffer enormously if it’s still going on in 2024,” Dean said in an interview, adding, “that’s assuming we can hold the line against violence.”

Dean predicted that “there’s going to be more violence” but believes that the serious and public consequences facing the perpetrators may make “all these conspirators — not the crazy people who stormed Washington — but the 70 million people who are delusional about the election” rethink their politics. This is “not a revolutionary moment,” he said, “it’s a movement that’s been hijacked by people who are basically authoritarians and fascists.”

“Basically, we are where we are because there are a whole class of people who basically surrendered their agency in some desperation to Donald Trump,” he said. “It’s exactly the same phenomenon as Hitler or Mussolini or people like that. And they exist in this conspiracy theorist world as a defense… So a lot of those people are going to change that unconscious defense when it doesn’t work for them anymore… When the situation becomes intolerable as a result of believing in the conspiracy theory, a lot of people who are not crazy but may be embracing the conspiracy theory, they’re going to stop it because it doesn’t suit them anymore.

“I can’t imagine we’re going to be at the same place in 2024, because I don’t think the country will survive another three years of this,” he added.

How radicalized is the Republican party now?

While Trump’s influence is likely to wane, especially if he remains banned from mainstream social networks, the hold that his supporters have on the party may not. Some Republicans reportedly worried that they could face violence from their own supporters if they “voted the wrong way” on the Electoral College challenge and Trump’s impeachment, noted Kurt Braddock, an extremism expert at American University.

Braddock said he was not surprised how many people in the party “have been radicalized by the far-right” and predicted those emboldened by Trump’s presidency are not likely to quickly go back “underground.”

“Truth be told, those individuals have always been there,” he said. “Trump gave them a symbol to kind of rally around and to make them think that their beliefs were normalized and they were justified in the sorts of things they were doing.”

“It’s very difficult to see which direction” the party will go in the coming years, he added. “If you asked me six months ago if I thought QAnon adherents would be elected to Congress I would have said no. But, I mean, here we are.”

Braddock, who has called for Hawley and Cruz to be investigated for their roles in the riot, said the two should face sanctions for fueling the narrative that led to the attack, but agreed that very little of the blowback has come from the right. He said he hopes that the ongoing condemnation could sway some Republicans.

“I think that the Republicans aren’t pushing back on Hawley too much, but the pushback on Hawley by the general population… will be seen by some Republicans and that kind of phenomenon when they see the larger population rejecting it so soundly, I don’t know if it will have a huge effect but I’d like to think it will have some effect,” he said.

Jentleson said there was little intra-party blowback toward Hawley and Cruz because of “what the modern GOP has become.”

“It is a party that will ultimately reward the kind of reprehensible behavior Hawley has displayed,” he wrote on Twitter.

Where does this leave Mike Pence?

While Hawley and Cruz tried to appeal to Trump’s supporters by backing his false election-rigging claims, Vice President Mike Pence, who stood loyally at Trump’s side for four years, has been repeatedly criticized by the president for failing to circumvent the Constitution to overturn the election on January 6, framing it as a betrayal. Though Pence has drawn praise for standing up to Trump’s tantrums, it’s unclear if the party’s base will look favorably on the president’s longtime stoic sidekick.

“It’s very hard to predict what voters are going to want years from now,” said Conant. “In the long run, I don’t think there’s any question that what he did last week will look very good. History will remember his actions well, and he will end up defining his time as vice president. Clearly, I think there’s some backlash in the moment from some of Trump’s most hardcore supporters, but how relevant that is from three years from now, I don’t know.”

Braddock said the turn against Pence was one of the most “amazing, incredible, difficult to believe” things about the whole ordeal.

“In the span of 12 hours, Mike Pence [went from] the hero of the Trump Republicans to ‘hang Mike Pence’ at the Capitol building,” he said, referring to the chants of some Trump supporters as they stormed through the halls of Congress.

“As long as the party is beholden to Trumpism… I don’t think there is a place for Mike Pence, because if the party goes in the direction of the people outside the Capitol on January 6, I don’t see people who were calling for his hanging to vote for him anytime soon,” he said.

Mainstream Republicans like Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell appear eager to “cast off the shadow of Trump,” he added. “If they’re able to do that, there might be a place for people like Mike Pence. If they can’t, it’s difficult seeing Trumpism or Trump Republicans ever really going for someone like him again.”

Will the backlash last?

Dean said the “more significant” aspect of the fallout is the corporate backlash against the lawmakers who backed Trump’s election objections.

“The business community has tremendous leverage here,” he said. “It was the business community who stepped up in the Civil Rights movement and even to a lesser extent in the climate change movement when government wasn’t acting. And so if business makes good on their threats not to fund Republicans who are denying the election, that’s pretty significant.”

Dean said that members like Hawley and Cruz should be “expelled from the Senate” for their role in the riot in order for the country to try to move past the Trump era but doesn’t think Congress should pursue large numbers of expulsions like the ones called for by freshman Rep. Cori Bush, D-Mo.

“Because the truth is if you do that, most of them will get reelected in their special elections. So I think expulsion from Congress should be used very judiciously,” he said. “What we really need is a truth and reconciliation commission. But in order to do that, the Republicans have to be willing to admit guilt and they’re not there yet. And our job is to make their lives so unpleasant politically that they’ll get there.”