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Dr. John Gartner on Trump and terrorism: “If he can’t be president, he will make his force felt”

On Wednesday, hundreds or perhaps thousands of Donald Trump’s terrorists assaulted and overran the U.S. Capitol building. The FBI reports that at least two improvised explosive devices were found in the area.

Trump’s mob committed these treasonous and seditious acts of terrorism while the Electoral College votes that would formally make Joe Biden the next president of the United States were being counted.

Some of the pro-Trump political thugs were armed. Others displayed white supremacist regalia and symbols, including the Confederate flag and Nazi slogans. At least one member of Trump’s terrorist mob was photographed with plastic zip ties, and may have intended to abduct or “arrest” members of Congress. Trump’s mob also placed nooses on mannequins and constructed a mock gallows near the Capitol entrance.

Trump’s mob of terrorists also looted and defiled the Capitol building, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office and the Senate chambers. Paintings, signs and other memorabilia were vandalized or stolen.

Based on what have seen in Michigan and elsewhere over the last few months — a cabal of Trump’s followers plotted to kidnap and likely execute Gretchen Whitmer, that state’s Democratic governor — it is entirely likely that some of Trump’s terrorists had similar intentions toward targeted members of Congress. Some members of the mob reportedly roamed the Capitol hallways hoping to find Vice President Mike Pence, now seen as a traitor to TrumpWorld even after years of servile loyalty.

The assault on the Capitol building was echoed by Trump’s thugs in state capitals and elsewhere across the United States on Wednesday. Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (another Republican branded as a traitor by Trump and his followers) was forced to flee the state capitol building. Trumpists also breached the gates surrounding the governor’s mansion in Olympia, Washington, and briefly occupied the grounds.  

Make no mistake: Trump’s terrorists launched their assault on the Capitol with the encouragement and permission of Trump and other leading Republicans, many of whom — even after Wednesday’s outrageous spectacle — continued to do Trump’s bidding by trying to nullify the 2020 presidential election. Trump’s spokespeople and other agents of chaos, sedition and treason, along with the right-wing news media more generally, have also both explicitly and implicitly encouraged such terrorism.

The assault began after a political “rally” near the White House earlier in the day, when Trump, his eldest son Donald Trump Jr., presidential attorney Rudy Giuliani and others tacitly encouraged political violence and a “trial by combat” to nullify Joe Biden’s victory and the will of the American people. Five people died as a result of the ensuing assault on the Capitol. 

Despite numbering 2,300 officers and having a budget of almost half a billion dollars, the Capitol Police did little to stop Trump’s invading horde. Video footage also appears to show law enforcement allowing the pro-Trump mob entry into the Capitol building. Some officers even posed for selfies with Trump’s terrorists.

Compared to the overwhelming force that was directed at the George Floyd protests and Trump’s attempt to use the military against Americans exercising their constitutional right to protest, the response by law enforcement to Wednesday’s insurrection was almost nonexistent. Once law enforcement forces regained control of the interior of the Capitol, Trump’s invading terrorists — the vast majority of them white — were allowed to leave and go home without being arrested. In all, the aftermath of the assault on the Capitol was treated like the management of a rowdy crowd at a sporting event or concert, rather than a horde of political terrorists who had committed many serious crimes. It is a small miracle that the assault by Trump’s forces and the ineffectual response by law enforcement did not result in the murders of members of Congress or their support staff. 

It hardly needs to be said that if Trump’s right-wing terrorist mob had been Black or brown, Muslims or antifascists, the Capitol Police and other law enforcement would have used overwhelming and lethal force against them. As on many other occasions, Trumpism and white privilege functioned together on Wednesday as a type of protective shield against personal accountability and responsibility for breaking the law.

Instead of trying to defuse the assault by his terrorist mob, Trump released a video telling the rioters, “We love you. You’re very special.“

Since Wednesday night, we have heard reports of ongoing discussions among Trump’s Cabinet of invoking the 25th Amendment and then removing him from office. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer have threatened to impeach him a second time — although not enough time remains in his term to carry out that threat. At this writing, Donald Trump remains president of the United States.

While many observers in the news media and elsewhere are treating Wednesday’s coup attempt as something unimaginable or shocking, it was highly predictable and not at all surprising. Trump and his allies, as well as many in the Republican Party and the right wing more generally, have publicly announced their intent to overthrow America’s multiracial democracy.

Political scientist Paul Musgrave offered this observation at Foreign Policy:

It’s undeniable at this point. The United States is witnessing a coup attempt — a forceful effort to seize power against the legal framework. The president has caused the interruption of the process that would certify his removal from office. The mechanics of constitutional government have been suspended. Americans are in danger of losing constitutional government to a degree unmatched even during the Civil War, a period when secession itself did not postpone either the holding of elections or the transition of power between presidents.

The moment we face as Americans, in other words, compares more closely to the August 1991 coup that attempted to remove President Mikhail Gorbachev from the head of the Soviet Union or the 1993 armed standoff between Russian President Boris Yeltsin and the Russian legislature.

Yet right up until this moment a chorus of voices was telling us not to worry.

Trump’s ongoing coup and other destruction has also been predicted by the country’s leading mental health experts. His public behavior is that of a person who is mentally pathological and likely a sociopath or psychopath. Moreover, Trump leads a political cult whose members are willing to kill and die at his command.

Ultimately, because a powerful leader like Trump gives permission and encouragement for antisocial and other anti-human behavior among the masses, he is the literal and symbolic head of a very sick society, a “pathocracy.”

Dr. John Gartner is one voice who has been sounding the alarm about Trump’s mental health and the danger he poises to the United States and the world. Gartner is a psychologist, psychoanalyst and former professor at the Johns Hopkins University Medical School and also the founder of Duty to Warn. He was a contributor to the 2017 bestseller “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President” and is featured in the new documentary “Unfit: The Psychology of Donald Trump.”

In this conversation (which took place several days before Wednesday’s events), Gartner was almost eerily prescient, warning that Trump is a type of terrorist who will continue to attack American democracy and the American people in search of vengeance for his defeat in the 2020 Election. Gartner explains that because Donald Trump is a sadist, it remains difficult for the news media and the public to comprehend his behavior and the danger it represents.

At the end of this conversation, Gartner offered a prophetic warning: Trump will encourage massive right-wing violence in the streets of America and there will be bombings and bloodshed caused by his terrorist movement. 

This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

How does it feel to be right? You predicted that Donald Trump would be a public menace and existential threat to the country five or so years ago. You have also predicted that he would try to destroy the United States and otherwise sow havoc if he lost the 2020 election.

I felt like some version of Paul Revere, warning that Donald Trump’s malignant narcissism is coming. But even for Paul Revere, people would get tired of his warnings. But it seems that we mental health professionals did indeed need to continually remind the public how dangerous Donald Trump truly is.

When I was making predictions that, like Hitler, Trump would engage in a scorched-earth strategy there were people who thought I was being extreme. But at this point it is just a fact. It is happening right now. There is no controversy about it. What we once predicted seemed extreme to many people at the time, but now I hope everybody understands that Trump is a saboteur and that he is trying to destroy our way of life and our democracy.

We could make a list of all of the destructive things that Trump is doing. He is sabotaging the Federal Reserve’s ability to respond to financial emergencies. He is also basically fomenting protests in the street. He is fanning the flames of right-wing terrorism and trying to incite people to basically create a civil-war mentality, where people feel like they can engage in acts of sedition and take up arms against the United States government. We see this with the Republican congressmen who feel like they can openly attack democracy. Donald Trump is really trying to destroy the United States at every level.

You warned that Donald Trump would be the greatest bio-terrorist in history because of his negligence and sabotage with regard to the coronavirus pandemic. Trump has continued to show his indifference to mass death and suffering in this country. He plays golf while people die. Where is the shock and disgust from the American people? Why was Trump not removed from office for aiding and abetting a type of genocide by way of the pandemic?

I believe in Occam’s razor. The simplest explanation is almost always the correct one. The only way to explain how at every stage Trump minimized the dangers of the pandemic, did not take the steps he knew would be helpful to stop it and moreover even did things that encouraged people to spread the virus, is that at some level he was supporting and rooting for the virus.

Donald Trump is actually working as an agent of COVID. He is an agent of chaos. The irony is that he could have ridden the coronavirus to victory. All Trump had to do in order to win re-election was to make a half-hearted attempt to appear that he was making some sort of serious effort to stop the spread of the virus.

But what we must understand about a malignant narcissist is that such personalities would rather tell a lie even when the truth would be sufficient. Such people would rather grift and lie and steal when it would be easier to do an honest day’s work. Yes, that is irrationally self-destructive behavior, but malignant narcissists are ultimately always self-destructive. Such people take everyone down with them, which is what Donald Trump is doing. People thought they could ride on Trump’s coattails to power and victory and riches. But in the end, it is a deal with the devil.

There is still so much denial about the perilous moment the American people and the world are facing during these last weeks of Trump’s presidency. There is this attitude where people default to the belief that Joe Biden will become president and somehow everything will somehow be fine. How do you explain such fanciful thinking?

We do have to worry about the Trumpist cult, which is obviously not going away. In fact, we are going to have a huge spike in right-wing terrorism in this country. There are going to be more incidents such as the Nashville bombing because Trump’s cult members are being incited to violence.

Trump’s obvious mental pathologies are still largely verboten among the mainstream news media in America. How does that help to normalize the evil of Trump and his movement?

There is a wave of panic, where people start screaming that Trump is actually dangerous and crazy. And then the news media and the public accommodate to that level of dangerousness and craziness from Trump. It is understood and framed as some type of political move or stunt from Trump. The behavior is normalized as people accommodate it. Then there is a new escalation in Trump’s behavior and the cycle continues with a new wave of surprise and shock.

All the death from Trump’s pandemic has also been normalized as well. The country largely appears numb to mass death at this point.

After Trump’s inauguration, I warned that he was a malignant narcissist who would be responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths. I also warned that Trump would have some form of concentration camps. He did that as well. The American people have gotten used to that fact. Now you turn on the television and there is a death counter in the corner of the screen for the pandemic. We have become desensitized to all the deaths. It really is amazing to think that the United States is having a 9/11 death count every day.

Trump is attracted to violence. He enjoys it. For example, he delights in pardoning war criminals. He and Bill Barr accelerated the executions of death row prisoners — which itself was unprecedented for a lame duck president. He has publicly encouraged violence by his followers against their perceived enemies. Why is Donald Trump so obsessed with violence and death?

If a child tortures animals, then we know that he or she is likely going to be a psychopath for life. He or she is a helpless, broken, damaged and dangerous human being. They are so alien to most people, which is why we underestimate their capacity for harm. We expect them to behave more normally than they do. This is why so many people keep getting fooled by such personalities because those who would never do such things cannot imagine the pleasure that Trump would take in chaos, pain and death. Now Donald Trump is punishing and destroying everyone because he has been fired by the American people. It is the abusive-spouse syndrome. The Republicans are firing Trump because they are not fighting hard enough for his coup. Trump is at least, for him, having the pleasure of burning them and everything else down.

Most people cannot imagine being attracted to and delighting in human suffering. What is going on cognitively with a mind such as Donald Trump’s?

For such personalities, the behavior is rooted in dominance, which is a basic primitive drive. If you are torturing a person then you are dominant over them.

Remember, Donald Trump is someone who has been accused of serial rape. What is a rapist? A rapist isn’t just someone who likes sex. A rapist is someone who enjoys dominating and harming, terrifying and injuring and destroying another person. That’s rape. It is like a hobby for him. There are dozens of women who have accused Donald Trump of sexual assault. In the same way we cannot understand rape or torturing animals, most of us cannot understand why a president would want to burn down the country on their way out the door.

Again, this is where malignant narcissism plays a role. It’s the psychopathy and it’s the sadism and it’s the paranoia and it’s the narcissism, all coming together.

Sadism is an important component, because sadism means a person gets off on, enjoys and takes perverse glee and pleasure in causing pain. It is not just that Donald Trump is acting out and being destructive, but that he is actually getting a charge out of it. That is very difficult for someone who is not sick and evil in that way to understand.

Several days ago, Trump released a delusional video in which he claimed that countries around the world are grateful for him saving them from the pandemic. Leaders abroad were calling him to offer thanks. What is happening in his mind when he engages in these fantasies? Is he that mentally ill? Does he actually believe any of what he says?

I have been asked that question often during these last four years. I have to admit it is actually a little bit of a mystery to me. I believe that there are times when Trump is delusional. I think there are other times when he is just gaslighting and lying. And then I think there are other times where he is not even sure. Perhaps he convinces himself. For Trump there is a fluidity between delusion and deception at any one given point in time.

There was a recent op-ed in a prominent newspaper suggesting that Trump will just wilt away and disappear once Biden is president. What is your response to such a claim?

That is wishful thinking. We all have the same wish about Trump. But he has a fanatical following, and he is exploiting them and he’s not going to stop doing so. The American people and the world are going to be dealing with Trump, unfortunately, long after Jan. 20.

White House insiders have reported that Trump is raging because he was defeated by Biden. He is lashing out at aides and other people in his inner circle. How do you make sense of Trump and his impulses for revenge?

It is bottomless. The analogy would be the abusive partner who in the end kills his spouse or other partner. Trump is that sick and he is that angry. That is one of his traits. Donald Trump never gives up on revenge. He lives for revenge. That is a function of his paranoia: He always feels persecuted and therefore entitled to revenge.

Where does he direct those energies?

Trump seems to be going more and more towards the most extreme right wing. Now Fox News is not right-wing enough for him. He is now focused on Newsmax and OAN. He is going to gravitate towards his hardcore right-wing supporters because there he can manipulate the message more easily. But I’m sure Fox will also continue to oblige.

Trump’s going to foment violence. There will be a wave of right-wing terrorism. Trump is whipping up a paramilitary movement. And again, we are going to be desensitized to that as well, to some extent.

I believe Trump will be a type of shadow president and attempt to rule over the country from afar, via his cultists and perhaps even his own TV network. What do you think Trump does on Inauguration Day and beyond?

Donald Trump will try to spoil Joe Biden’s inauguration one way or another, as you said. Perhaps there will be counter-programming, which may take the form of Trump claiming that he is the “real president.” Trump may have a type of protest inauguration where he announces a presidential run in 2024. Trump is going to do everything he can to be disruptive.

Why are Trump’s supporters and other cult members so devoted to him? What about him inspires their willingness to commit acts of violence on his behalf?

These demagogues basically tap into the very primitive prehuman programming in the limbic part of the brain. This is the feeling of “us versus them,” the in-group and out-group competition. What these demagogues do is that they take an integrated society and fracture it. We saw this in Yugoslavia, Rwanda and Nazi Germany. These types of leaders make the ethnic majority feel as if they are somehow under threat or being persecuted by an ethnic minority. Therefore, radical steps need to taken to protect themselves from imagined annihilation.

You are going to revere the leader who you think is standing between you and the annihilation of your group. Clearly, Trump’s movement is a white power movement. These are people who feel like their grasp on power is slipping away because of the browning of America and because the country is getting younger. The demagogues tap into that anxiety and make it real. Trump does this. As we see in history, a society goes from whatever the bias was against Jews in Germany to death camps.

What do you want the American people to prepare for in these final weeks?

I believe that there will be violence in the streets. There will be violence in the streets of Washington. Trump is encouraging it. Donald Trump and the Republican Party are radicalizing right-wing white terrorists. There will be bombs, there will be guns, there will be deaths.

Donald Trump is a terrorist. If he can’t be president, then he will make his force felt through terrorism.

Trump’s coup demands prosecution, immediate removal

Here is the message Republicans must take from the violent mob Donald Trump sent to attack our Capitol Wednesday in his failed coup attempt:

Break completely from this crazy, seditious, wannabe dictator now. Hold him to account, preferably by prompt removal from office via the 25th Amendment or a rapid impeachment and conviction. He must be arrested and criminally prosecuted for trying to overthrow our government. More than a few traitors have been executed for such a crime.

What are the consequences of Republican leaders failing to denounce Trump totally and back up denunciations with action?

Trump and his dangerous and armed mob will become millstones around your necks. And your failings will brand you as traitors unfit to hold public office.

For the Josh Hawleys, Ted Cruzes and other seditious Republican senators and representatives any further defense of Trump should end your political careers and your acceptance in civilized society.

Expel seditious legislators

Both the House and Senate, which with the Georgia runoff election results are under Democratic Party control, should exercise their authority to expel these and other seditious lawmakers if they say another word defending Trump or challenging the certification of Joe Biden as the next president.

That’s not overreach; it’s a Constitutional duty.

The mob Trump coerced to lay siege to our Capitol broke into the building, occupied and looted the Senate chamber, engaged in hand-to-hand combat with uniformed Capitol Police, broke into the floors of Congress and rifled through lawmakers’ desks. These all are criminal acts for which Trump is responsible.

A woman intruder, identified as Air Force veteran Ashli Babbitt of San Diego, was fatally shot by a Capitol police officer. Three others died of medical reactions.

Thank goodness someone had the presence of mind to gather up the state certifications of the November election results, denying Trump another opportunity to attack the Biden inauguration.

Trump still seeks overthrow

If you doubt Trump still wants to overthrow our government, just watch his one-minute video from the White House Rose Garden made as the siege was under way. Trump asserted yet again the Big Lie that “everyone knows” the election was stolen because he won in a landslide.

While Trump did, in passing, tell the mob to go home, it was only a sort of suggestion. His core message to his riot squad was that “so bad and so evil” people stole the election. His real message to the rioters: Never give up trying to end our democracy and keep me in power.

Click to view the full video, which was taken down by Twitter.

That the crowd did not disperse proves his words hollow. Instead, live television carried voices of rioters vowing violence, promising to press on. As the sun set and darkness enveloped the Capitol grounds, where were federal law enforcement other than the Capitol Police?

Trump put at risk the life of his own vice president, Mike Pence, on whom he painted a target during his incitement of the rioters. He endangered the next two people in line for the presidency, Nancy Pelosi, House speaker, and Chuck Grassley, Senate president pro tem.

Representative Linda Sanchez, a California Democrat, told MSNBC she instructed her family on where to find her will in case the riots claimed her life.

Warning proved right

About five years ago, I warned repeatedly that if Trump became president our democracy could end. I also said if Trump lost election, his presidency would end badly. While I couldn’t predict precisely what would happen, I was certain that Trump would not leave office peacefully.

Now we have seen what I anticipated: mayhem provoked by Trump, his namesake oldest son and Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani. This cannot stand.

Give the siege today, there can be no doubt that Trump remains a wannabe usurper, plain and simple. In rallying the mob to march on the Capitol, he:

  1. Committed sedition, a federal crime in conspiracy with the rioters and Don Jr.
  2. Advocated the overthrow of our government, another felony
  3. Incited insurrection

Add in the provocative words of Giuliani, who told the mob there would be “trial by combat.”

Their own words establish a criminal conspiracy, a crime punishable by imprisonment for five years or more.

The videos from the Capitol also showed a banner hanging over the platform being built for the inauguration of Joe Biden in two weeks. Here is what the insurrectionists declared: “We the people will bring DC to its knees. We have the power.”

Stopping further coup attempts

They do not have that power, but we also cannot just wave this off. Authorities must exercise their power to indict, try and upon conviction imprison all of the hundreds of criminals who assaulted our democrac. The insurrectionists forced lawmakers into hiding and necessitated armed officers to hold off rioters at the House chamber door with drawn handguns aimed at a rioters visible through a broken window.

From Day One, Trump has violated his oath of office but never so dangerously as in his inciting violence, a local crime for which the local District of Columbia authorities should have him arrested the moment his presidency ends if not before.

Hours after the siege began, the Capitol was still not under the control of our government as rioters, some of them looters, roamed the building.

Trump has over the decades said multiple times that looters should be shot on sight. So why did Trump not call for that in his Rose Garden video tweet? Of course, it’s because Trump is at one with the rioters and looters. They are Trump’s mob.

Trump has not sent federal law enforcement to corral, arrest and identify the rioters. Instead, the governors of Maryland and Virginia sent state police riot squads to defend the Capitol.

Contrast that with Trump’s abusive assignment of the military to attack peaceful demonstrators so he could stage a June 1 photo op with a Bible at the church closest to the White House. Trump’s failure to send authorities to quell the rioters is solid evidence of his complicity and support.

What to do

It would be more than reasonable for Vice President Mike Pence and the cabinet to remove Trump immediately under the 25th Amendment. They must do this. However, while Trump promised “the best people” would populate his administration he intend installed such low-grade weaklings and incompetents that, sadly, this is likely a vain hope.

While time is short, it’s more than reasonable for the House to impeach Trump a second time. There is no bar to impeaching Trump after he is out of office, but the way to defend our democracy is for the House to rapidly pass articles of impeachment and the Senate to take the issue up the same day and vote to convict and remove him.

And if neither of those occurs, then as soon as Trump is out of office, and his presumed immunity from federal prosecution ends, he must be indicted on District of Columbia level charges. He already is under investigation by federal prosecutors in Manhattan, a state grand jury in Manhattan, New York State attorney general and the district attorney in Fulton County (Atlanta) Georgia. These cases should proceed with all due speed.

This psychopath has finally crossed the red line: He must be stopped now

The disturbing events and images from Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2021, will live forever in infamy. It was on that day that insurrectionists attacked the sacred halls of the U.S. Capitol after being provoked, encouraged and fueled by President Donald Trump. It was Trump’s last-ditch effort to overturn our democratic election because he is afraid of facing the criminal charges that may well await him. In his twisted and contorted mind, Trump must have believed that this mob attack on the Capitol would somehow allow him to hang onto power. This was the conniving and manipulative plan of a psychopath. In this attack we see Trump’s conspiracy theories, dishonesty, victimhood, paranoia, desperation and cruelty. He is a sick man whose megalomania and violence have finally crossed the red line.

Donald Trump has proven that he must be stopped now. A psychopath lacks the ability for self-control, self-examination and self-correction. At the core is a total lack of conscience and shame. Trump is a criminal who will stop at nothing to achieve his personal wishes. Clearly, he was an accomplice to the violent acts of insurrection yesterday. 

Trump has been allowed to be incompetent, cruel and corrupt for four years by his Cabinet, close associates, congressional Republicans, compliant right-wing media and millions of supporters. They have been complicit in enabling him. Mental health experts have tried to explain that psychopaths do not change their psyche and behavior unless they suffer consequences and face firm limits. Trump has suffered no real consequences and he has had few or no limits. He has been allowed to run wild. He has been allowed to kill people. He has been allowed to attack our democratic way of life.

Finally, limits were placed on him by the judicial system and by some state election officials who showed they possessed honor and spine. The judicial system provided the guardrails to contain this pathological president — if they had not, he would have disassembled our democracy by now. He would have stolen the election and assumed nearly absolute authority, with no semblance of oversight or accountability. His greed would be uncontrollable, and his cruelty toward the American people would cause even more deaths.

There is a natural tendency for the American people to admire and even adore our presidents. It is almost inconceivable that we would have elected a psychiatrically disordered monster to the highest office in the land. But that is exactly what we did. 

Trump is a menace. It is an undeniable and unquestioned fact that his mental disorder is of such severe malignancy that it renders him dangerous and unfit. The red line has been crossed.

What other evidence do you need?  What else must happen to convince his sycophants and followers that he is a con man and a madman all together in one?

This is not about policy or political ideology. This is about refusing to tolerate a psychopathic leader whose latest action is so anti-democratic and anti-American that he must be stopped in his tracks. He is clearly capable of causing more destruction and heartache in his final 13 days in office. Psychopaths do not cease on their own.

Trump must be stopped today. A small group of congressional Republican and Democratic leaders must tell him to cease all tweets, speeches, videos and actions during his last days. He must be totally absent from the people. He must be on house confinement. His days as an active president are over. And he must be told that the 25th Amendment will be invoked if he does not comply with this set of instructions. Impeachment is on the table as well.

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer and Rep. Adam Kinzinger, an Illinois Republican, have both called for Trump to be removed via the 25th Amendment. Others will follow suit as the damn of denial breaks.

Donald Trump’s mental desperation has reached its explosion point. Thirteen days is a long time for an aggrieved and violent madman to be allowed to hold any kind of power, let alone the awesome power of the American presidency. 

Trump’s pathology is serious business. It is intractable and incurable. He is not going to suddenly find shame and self-control and empathy. He is not going to apologize for his actions and ask for forgiveness. That would require an inner soul and heart.

We must stop this president today. He has earned our disdain and our ire by his actions. He is the aggressor — we are his victims. We must stop serving in that role. 

The red line has been crossed. Swift and decisive action is needed.  No rationalizations and no excuses are acceptable. 

If 356,000 preventable deaths from the coronavirus pandemic are not enough, perhaps the events and images from Wednesday at the heart of American democracy will convince you that Donald Trump is a malicious criminal who does not give a damn about anyone or anything, except his own ego and his bank account. 

We must make clear that our nation deserves better than this, and that we can’t wait.

A Black activist speaks out on Trump’s white riot

Dorian Warren, president of the Washington D.C.-based Community Change nonprofit, was preparing for a call with his staff of organizers to celebrate the Senate wins in Georgia yesterday when a mob incited by President Donald Trump stormed the halls of Congress.

“We were collectively watching in real time armed white supremacists with Confederate flags take over the Capitol building,” Warren says. Needless to say, the meeting took on a different tenor, as participants on the call tried to make sense of the unfolding events.

Capital & Main reached Warren hours later at his home, a 10-minute walk from the Capitol building. Sirens could be heard in the background, as well as the sound of his 3-month-old baby crying. He was still trying to process what he had seen and heard throughout the day, but he also was holding onto the boost he felt from the victory in Georgia, which he said was the result of years of work.

“Let me just say, we did end that [staff] call with a little celebration because we were determined not to let white vigilantes steal our joy in our democracy,” he said.

Warren is a scholar and activist whose Community Change supports grassroots organizations around the country, including the New Georgia Project, a group founded by Stacey Abrams. He sits on Capital & Main’s advisory board.

* * *

Capital & Main: What was running through your mind as you not only watched these images on television but heard these sounds from your home?

Dorian Warren: As a Black person in this country, I can’t say I was surprised or shocked because we’ve seen the version of this story too many times before. I’m at a loss for words about today but was putting myself in my ancestors’ shoes. I can trace my own ancestry in this country to the generation that first experienced freedom under Reconstruction. So I often think of them because they not only went from slavery to freedom, they also experienced the rise of Jim Crow. That’s where my head went, just in terms of who I am and my own family history.

Who is responsible for this?

The armed white nationalists who showed up ready to commit acts of violence and to threaten explicitly duly elected leaders and then attempt a coup — yes, they are directly responsible. But clearly we can count all the folks, whether it’s [Sen.] Ted Cruz or President Trump or [Vice President] Pence who was complicit before he decided to find a conscience a few minutes ago, or the entire Republican Party or the conservative movement over the last 40 years that has deliberately used race and racism to divide us to hold on to power.

So there’s proximate causes and then there’s the long, deep seated root of that in the core of our founding as a country about who lives, who is a citizen and who is not, who is deserving of life and freedom and who is not, and whom this democracy is for and whom it is not for.

We’ve had a year of protest in the wake of police killings of unarmed Black men and women. Can you talk about how this display is different from those protests?

The Capitol police here in D.C. are not known for their restraint. In 2013 a Black woman named Miriam Carey made a U-turn near the White House and the police fired at her 26 times, killing her. Her baby daughter was in the backseat and thankfully survived. But that’s emblematic, right? So that’s the Capitol police who basically treated these white vigilantes and militants with kid gloves today. I saw some images earlier of police [at the Capitol] taking selfies with the protesters, which is utterly enraging.

[But] nationwide, police have shown force, aggression, anger against protesters for racial justice, right under the banner of Black Lives Matter. [This summer], we saw the smoke of tear gas and rounds of rubber bullets, bleeding by nonviolent protesters, heads smashed by police with batons. We saw all that. It’s the overwhelming disregard police have for the lives of Black people, and then you compare that to the leniency that they have shown to white nationalists, white nationalists who are attempting a coup of our democracy.

What do you think this attempted coup will mean for the future of the Republican party?

This is a critical juncture or choice point for the Republican Party because it is no longer a willing participant in a democratic system of party competition… So either they will die like the Whigs did in the 1850s, which led to the founding of the Republican Party, or they will chart a different path forward…We’re seeing this play out literally in real time with what’s happening on the floor right now.

[Sen.] Kelly Loeffler just rescinded her objection [to the electoral count] a few minutes ago. So it took basically them having to duck and cover under a threat of violence to basically accept the legitimacy of our democratic process, which is just absurd….

The Democrats are on the verge of controlling the executive and legislative branches of government, even if the majorities in Congress will be narrow. What issues do you think they should tackle first?

We have to change the rules of the game to make it a much fairer and more democratic country.

And I mean something more than H.R. 1, by the way. [Proposals passed by the House in 2019 intended to shore up the electoral system and strengthen voting rights.]

[We need] transformative reform: eliminating the electoral college. I’m all for what some people would call universal voting. I’m all for mandatory voting….

The other big thing is a just recovery package from this pandemic and the crisis of our public health and economic systems…And then of course transformative racial justice policies. When I think of racial justice, I also include immigrant justice — a total transformation of our immigration system, a moratorium on deportations and detentions.

But democracy reform and all that transformation doesn’t get us there by itself. There has to be a power building lens underneath it…What Social Security did was to build in a permanent political constituency that has been willing, over several decades, to fight for that policy…How do we build in levers into policies that build the power of ordinary and marginalized people and their organizations to be able to not just defend new policies, but to expand and to press further?

What are you feeling hopeful about right now?

A week ago we were planning for what we were going to do with a divided Congress, and with [Sen. Mitch ] McConnell still in charge and minority rule. And today it’s a very different world. So I don’t know, if you had asked me the question this morning, I would have probably said something like, yeah, if you imagine the start of Reconstruction and the start of a New Deal coming together, this is that moment. And I still believe that. I have to believe that because if I didn’t believe it, I wouldn’t work for it.

Copyright 2021 Capital & Main

“Trump has not acted alone”: House Dems demand criminal probe into president — and his GOP enablers

Declaring that newly leaked audio of President Donald Trump’s call with Georgia’s secretary of state “makes Nixon’s ‘smoking gun’ tape sound tame,” Democratic Congressman Don Beyer on Monday demanded a criminal investigation into the outgoing incumbent and any officials who have assisted his desperate last-ditch effort to overturn the results of the November election.

“The recording released yesterday establishes beyond a doubt that Donald Trump used the power of his office to threaten election officials, and to coerce them into committing criminal acts to overturn the election results,” Beyer of Virginia wrote in a series of tweets, referring to an hour-long call in which the president pressed Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” enough votes to overturn President-elect Biden’s victory.

Throughout the conversation, Trump reiterated a litany of familiar and false claims about “voter fraud” and claimed that Raffensperger’s refusal to act on the baseless allegations is “criminal.”

“So look. All I want to do is this,” Trump said. “I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have because we won the state.”

Beyer noted that Trump’s call with Raffensperger was not the first time the president has pressured an elected official to use their power to subvert the will of the public and undo his decisive loss. Last month, as Common Dreams reported, Trump called Pennsylvania’s Republican House Speaker twice demanding that he take action to overturn Biden’s victory in the key battleground state.

“Trump has held numerous meetings and calls with election officials and lawmakers in other states where he has attempted to negate election results,” Beyer noted Monday. “Those conversations should be examined by investigators to determine whether Trump engaged in additional criminal acts.”

Beyer goes on to specifically single out White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows—who took part in Trump’s Saturday call with Raffensperger—and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) as officials “who may have been party to criminal acts intended to change election results.” In a post-election interview in November, Raffensperger identifiedGraham as one of a number of Republicans who pressured him to find ways to overturn Trump’s defeat in the days after the November contest.

“Trump must be held accountable for his illegal acts and his attacks on the Constitution,” Beyer concluded. “Nothing less than a criminal investigation will serve.”

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Beyer joins a growing chorus of Democratic lawmakers demanding that Trump be held to account for attempting to invalidate the results of the 2020 presidential election, an effort that came days before Congress is set to meet Wednesday to officially cetify Biden’s Electoral College victory. More than 150 Republican lawmakers—a dozen senators and 140 House members—are expected to object to the certification.

On Monday, Reps. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) and Kathleen Rice (D-N.Y.) sent a letter urging FBI Director Christopher Wray to “open an immediate criminal investigation into the president,” noting that “the evidence of election fraud by Mr. Trump is now in broad daylight.”

“As members of Congress and former prosecutors, we believe Donald Trump engaged in solicitation of, or conspiracy to commit, a number of election crimes,” the lawmakers wrote. “Given the more than ample factual predicate, we are making a criminal referral to you to open an investigation into Mr. Trump.”

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), the number two Democrat in the Senate, is also calling for a “criminal investigation” into what he called Trump’s “disgraceful effort to intimidate an elected official into deliberately changing and misrepresenting the legally confirmed vote totals in his state.”

“Those who encourage and support his conduct, including my Senate colleagues, are putting the orderly and peaceful transition of power in our nation at risk,” Durbin said in a statement late Sunday.

Legal experts argued that Trump’s remarks in his call with Raffensperger could amount to violations of both state and federal law. David Worley, an Atlanta lawyer and the lone Democrat on Georgia’s state election board, told the Washington Post that “it’s a crime to solicit election fraud, and asking the secretary to change the votes is a textbook definition of election fraud.”

In a column for The Nation on Monday, Jeet Heer argued that while Trump’s last-ditch push to overturn the November election has “no real chance of success,” the lame-duck president’s authoritarian and likely unlawful behavior warrants a forceful response.

“Trump is diminishing in political power with every passing day and there is no need to make unrealistic claims about his ability to overturn the election,” wrote Heer. “Still, attempted crimes by a president require retribution. Even if he’s only an irritant, Trump deserves to be swatted down.”

Dear Betsy DeVos, quitting Trump’s Cabinet is not courageous — it’s cowardly

Progressive lawmakers and advocacy groups on Thursday urged members of President Donald Trump’s Cabinet considering resignation following Wednesday’s insurrectionist attack on the U.S. Capitol to remain in the administration and invoke the 25th Amendment to remove the president from office. 

“A number of administration officials are resigning to protest Trump’s horrific acts of sedition yesterday,” noted Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Twitter. “Not good enough! The vice president and Cabinet members must invoke the 25th Amendment NOW and remove Trump from office before he incites more violence and chaos.”

Sanders’ remarks came hours after Elaine Chao, Trump’s transportation secretary, cited Wednesday’s “traumatic and entirely avoidable” attack as she tendered her resignation, explaining the incident “has deeply troubled me in a way that I simply cannot set aside.” 

Chao, who is also the wife of soon-to-be Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), was the highest-ranking Trump administration official to resign in the wake of what many observers called a domestic terror attack. But she wasn’t the only one.

NPR reports Stephanie Grisham, chief of staff to first lady Melania Trump; Sarah Matthews, a deputy press secretary; Mick Mulvaney, the special envoy to Northern Ireland; and Matt Pottinger, the deputy national security adviser, are among those who are quitting over Wednesday’s insurrection. 

While such resignations may be dressed in a veneer of principle, many progressives say that if they want to make good, Trump officials should remain in his Cabinet and use the 25th Amendment—which allows for the dismissal of a president who is incapacitated, or unable or unwilling to perform their duties—to remove him from office. A group of nearly 100 Democratic lawmakers on Wednesday sent a letter to Vice President Mike Pence to “emphatically urge” him to invoke the constitutional remedy.

“At this late a stage, resignations help little beyond serving as late attempts at self-preservation,” argued Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.). “If Sec. Chao objects to yesterday’s events this deeply, she should be working the Cabinet to invoke the 25th amendment—not abdicating the seat that allows her to do so.” 

The advocacy group Public Citizen was even more blunt, calling Chao’s resignation “the definition of cowardice.” 

“Chao could have stayed and pushed for the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from office,” the group tweeted. “Instead, she enabled Trump for four years and jumped ship when her husband’s workplace was ransacked. Pathetic.”

To those members of Trump’s Cabinet who haven’t left but are thinking about doing so, Robert Weissman and Lisa Gilbert, respectively Public Citizen president and vice president, sounded a gentler tone:

I am sure you all are profoundly and appropriately disturbed by what occurred yesterday at the Capitol… Many of you may now be considering resigning… While principled resignations would have been appropriate at any other moment in the administration’s tenure, that is no longer this case.

Invoking the 25th Amendment in this way is without precedent and should only be done in the most extreme circumstances. But we are now living in those most extreme circumstances. Your country is relying on you to honor your duty to the Constitution and protect us all.

Pence, however, is reportedly unwilling to use his power to invoke the 25th Amendment, according to sources who spoke with Business Insider on Thursday. New York Times correspondent Maggie Haberman confirmed the report. 

Another option for holding Trump accountable for the riot he incited—impeachment—appears off the table for now. Despite Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) introducting articles of impeachment against Trump on Thursday for his “attempted coup against our country,” Democratic leaders in the House of Representatives—which just 24 hours earlier had been under occupation by a Trumpist mob—saw fit to adjourn until the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden on January 20. 

AOC pulls out the receipts on Ted Cruz’s coup attempt after he calls her a “liar”

On Thursday, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) took issue with the statement issued by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) condemning the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol — noting that his statement takes no responsibility for his “craven, self-serving actions” and accusing him of fundraising off the riot.

Cruz was quick to deny any such thing, calling her a “liar.”

However, Ocasio-Cortez immediately confronted him with a screenshot of a text message sent out by Cruz’s office boasting he was “leading the fight to reject electors” — over two hours after the Capitol was breached.

Cruz, for his part, maintains that this text message was scheduled ahead of time and he ordered his fundraising team to suspend operations later that day — however, at no point did he apologize for his office putting out a message that, even unintentionally, could embolden the perpetrators of an insurrection.

Lawmakers call to investigate cops who let “ragamuffin, half-armed protesters” invade Capitol

As a mob of Trump supporters wrangled with federal police at the steps of the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, one of them shattered a first-floor window with a plastic riot shield and hopped inside — the first breach of the building since the War of 1812.

Despite weeks of overt threats on social media, and the increasingly violent rhetoric accompanying President Trump’s months-long crusade to overturn the election results, authorities failed to stop the mob unleashed on Congress by the outgoing commander in chief, a security collapse that stunned law enforcement officials across the country and reignited outrage about the double standard of brutal crackdowns this summer.

“I truly had to suspend my disbelief because I didn’t think you could breach the Capitol,” Terry Gainer, former chief of the U.S. Capitol Police, the federal force specially designated to protect Congress, told NPR. “I have great confidence in the men and women who protect Congress, but there will need to be a full accounting. We’re going to have to have a deep dive into what went wrong.”

“It looked like the Keystone Cops out there,” one law enforcement official told Reuters on condition of anonymity. “It should have never happened. We all knew in advance that these people were coming, and the first order of policing is presence.”

The first moments of the collapse were captured on video, when a charge of what appeared to be largely unarmed Trump supporters, some throwing unprovoked punches, almost immediately broke through the thin ranks of the Capitol Police at perimeter barricades, eventually amassing outside the building in a throng of thousands. Rioters first entered through the window breach and then the doors, and as they advanced on security personnel inside, one woman was shot and killed.

Once in the building, the self-styled revolutionaries, whose futile quest to overturn Trump’s election loss was in part fueled by Republican members of Congress, eventually took the Senate floor, where one of them mounted the dais and declared Trump the winner of the 2020 election. Some attackers carried Confederate battle flags, and some removed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s podium and stormed her office, and somehow located and ransacked the office of the Senate parliamentarian, an obscure space tucked deep inside the building where Electoral College ballots are typically stored — though the ballots had been removed for ratification earlier that day.

Activists and prominent politicians were quick to point to a double standard: Police who were quick to crack down on Black Lives Matter demonstrations last summer were highly deferential to the overwhelmingly white crowd of Trump supporters — a deference that at times flirted with complicity.

One senior Senate aide, asked how the invaders would have known how to locate the parliamentarian’s office, told Salon it was a “fascinating question.”

“Honestly, I don’t know,” the aide said. “They somehow got into every nook and cranny.”

Democratic leaders have called for investigations and accountability. Pelosi announced in the afternoon that House Sergeant-at-Arms Paul Irving would resign, and after criticism from both Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, Capitol Police chief Steven Sund announced his resignation on Thursday evening.

“A mob should never have been allowed to puncture the security of the U.S. Capitol,” Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., told Salon. “Many officers performed admirably under terrible circumstances yesterday, but it’s clear preparation for such a foreseeable situation fell woefully short. Senator Schumer’s decision to bring on new leadership to oversee Capitol security is absolutely right.”

Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., who sits on the appropriations subcommittee charged with funding the federal force, called on Thursday for Sund’s firing, along with a broader reckoning of the entire security apparatus around Congress, including military support.

“The primary liability lies with the perpetrators, Donald Trump and his enablers in Congress,” Murphy said. But we do need to ask questions about how that breach occurred, what changes we need to make to ensure it doesn’t happen again, and why it took so long for the U.S. military to come to the aid” of Capitol security forces. It took less than an hour, Murphy observed, for “ragamuffin, half-armed protesters to enter the building and pose a grave threat to democracy.

“Again, if you can’t deploy thousands of troops to the U.S. Capitol when the vice president is there, the speaker of the House and the president of the Senate,” he said, “I’m not sure what the purpose of the investment we make every year in the Department of Defense is.”

Pentagon officials indicated to the Washington Post that the muted military response was in part the result of lessons learned from Black Lives Matter demonstrations last year, when, in an inverse of Wednesday’s riots, troops and federal police violently cleared peaceful protesters from D.C. streets in a show of force that drew a firestorm of criticism.

At the time, Trump deployed federal personnel to drive protesters out of a square near the White House, scattering them with riot shields and tear gas so he could have his picture taken holding a Bible in front of a vandalized church. That behavior was turned upside down on Wednesday, when Trump spurred supporters to “fight” government officials who maintained that Joe Biden won the election, then retired to the White House as federal forces collapsed in the face of the assault.

MSNBC host Joe Scarborough, a former GOP congressman from Florida, expressed deep outrage at the double standard, saying that if the rioters had been Black “they’d have been shot in the face,” and if they had been Muslims they would have been “sniped from the rooftops.”

“Yesterday we see them patting terrorists on the back? Opening the door for terrorists who inscribed on the door, ‘Murder the media’?” Scarborough asked, referencing a viral video of failed insurrectionists filing out of the building while a security officer held open one side of the Capitol’s double doors, with “Murder the media” written on the other.

“How many members of these Capitol Hill cops are members of Donald Trump’s cult?” he demanded. “You opened the doors for them and let them breach the people’s house. What is wrong with you?”

Murphy told reporters he was certain that “there wouldn’t have been 14 arrests” if the rioters had been Black.

“There’s no doubt in my mind that protesters would have been treated differently,” he said. “Those folks walking into the Capitol yesterday, they felt like they were acting without repercussions. Some were taking selfies with police officers.” He came just shy of suggesting willful complicity, saying officials needed a “dive deep into the tick-tock of what happened,” and “why perhaps there weren’t more confrontations.”

According to Politico, one current Metro D.C. police officer alleged in a public Facebook post that “off-duty police officers and members of the military, who were among the rioters, flashed their badges and ID cards as they attempted to overrun the building.” The officer’s post continued: “If these people can storm the Capitol building with no regard to punishment, you have to wonder how much they abuse their powers when they put on their uniforms.” 

Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, told reporters on Thursday he had spoken to “senior officials at the FBI” before the pro-Trump riot began, “and had been reassured that the situation was under control.” Warner then noted, “They were flat wrong. Yesterday was an embarrassment to their response.”

Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf, whose forces targeted protesters in the June BLM demonstrations and later seized protesters off the street in Portland, Oregon, with unmarked vans, called on Trump to denounce the riots, saying the violence was “tragic and sickening.”

“These violent actions are unconscionable, and I implore the President and all elected officials to strongly condemn the violence that took place yesterday,” Wolf said in a statement provided to Salon, adding: “Every American is guaranteed the right to peacefully protest, but once those protests become violent, we should enforce our laws and bring those responsible to justice — regardless of political motivations. After a challenging and saddening 2020, it’s time for every American to respect each other and the rule of law in 2021.”

Trump announced on Thursday that he would not move to make Wolf’s acting position permanent.

The Black Lives Matter Global Network described the riots as a “coup,” and Bernice King, daughter of Martin Luther King Jr., said that if this uprising had involved BLM protesters, “tanks would have been in the city.”

“The response tells the story of our nation’s racist history and present,” she tweeted. “How can we stop it from being the future?”

Amid protests against the GOP’s attempted repeal of the Affordable Care Act in July, 2017, Capitol Police arrested the Rev. Raphael Warnock, the Atlanta pastor who on Tuesday — the night before the Capitol attack — defeated Georgia’s Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler in one of two runoffs that handed the Senate to Democrats. He was handcuffed after he entered the rotunda to pray.

The Capitol Police did not respond to multiple requests for comment. Republican lawmakers did not respond to requests for comment.

On Parler, the MAGA social media platform, Trump supporters are ready for insurrection

On Thursday morning, the phrase “#Twexit” — a portmanteau of “Twitter” and “exit” — trended on Parler, the so-called “free speech” social media platform that has become an online hub for Trump supporters and conservatives to meet online.

The site, which visually resembles Twitter or Facebook, became a haven for many pro-Trump types after many of them were banned or blocked from other major social media sites. Whereas posts on Twitter are called tweets, on Parler they are known as “parleys.” 

The trending hashtag was the unintended consequence of Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube’s Wednesday crackdown on Trump himself, who was banned or restricted from posting on most major platforms after some of his supporters broke into the U.S. Capitol and ransacked it, an invasion that resulted in four deaths. In an attempt to calm his supporters who falsely believe the 2020 presidential election was “rigged,” Trump posted a video spewing misinformation about the election, and called the people participating in Wednesday’s riot “very special.”

Grievance politics are key to the ideology of Trump and his supporters — specifically, the notion that they are uniquely sidelined in media, culture and politics and thus must forcefully redress the situation. The “#Twexit” hashtag, which has also trended in the past on Parler, is an ongoing movement that plays into this perception of grievance: Trump supporters believe they are being uniquely targeted and censored by “liberal” social media platforms, when in fact they are violating other social media platforms’ rules by spreading misinformation and inciting violence like we saw on Wednesday.

Predictably, Parler was abuzz after yesterday’s events, with numerous posts bashing social media CEOs like Twitter’s Jack Dorsey and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg for punishing Trump, in their minds. This morning I spent several hours on Parler wading through Trump supporters’ reactions to the riot in the Capitol. The white nationalist group Proud Boys wrote a parley that read: “Mark and Jack get to pick your president now,” referencing Zuckerberg’s announcement to extend a block on Trump’s account for another two weeks. The post had two thousand comments, including some from users advocating for a “new country,” inciting and suggesting violence. Some falsely claimed that the United States is now at “war.” “Prepare, lock, load and get ready to defend yourself patriots,” one user commented. “He should be arrested and hung for treason,” another user commented, referring to Zuckerberg.

This all happened in just one post on the Proud Boys’ Parler account supporting and furthering false narratives about Wednesday’s attack on the Capitol. As the Proud Boys framed the event, people weren’t “destroying the capital,” they were “liberating it.”

Mark and Jack get to pick your president now. Enjoy america.

— Proud Boys TheProudBoys Thursday, January 7, 2021

For the unfamiliar, Parler’s platform combines many of the prominent features of both Facebook and Twitter. Users have a newsfeed and can follow influencers, but they can also post themselves. The general Parler timeline contains much of the brand of far-right misinformation that would be slapped with a warning label on either Twitter or Facebook, or be taken down.

Parler was founded in 2018 by two computer programmers named John Matze and Jared Thomson, and is financially backed by Rebekah Mercer, whose father is Robert Mercer, a major funder of Breitbart.

Donald Trump doesn’t have an official account on Parler — yet. But many people on the platform were calling for him to start one today. Curiously, many Trump supporters on Parler appeared to be waiting for instructions from Trump, in order to understand “what’s next.” 

Trump’s daughter Tiffany Trump took a screenshot of Trump’s latest statement given via Dan Scavino on Twitter, and shared it on Parler. Many Parler users commented, asking Tiffany to get her dad on Parler. “WHERE IS YOUR DAD? WHY IS HE NOT ON HERE? HIS PEOPLE NEED TO HEAR FROM HIM!” one user begged. Others told Tiffany they were “praying” for Trump.

The Team Trump account, which is the official account for Trump’s re-election campaign, hasn’t posted since Trump’s video on Wednesday that got removed from mainstream social media accounts. However, many users posted comments to it throughout the day on Thursday expressing their support for Trump. “We love you Trump. Don’t concede, fight for us. We want the insurrection act!” one user commented. “Do it and expose the corruption. We will join your army.”

This is just a glimpse into high-profile Parler accounts. In the weeds, discussions turn much darker. Many users have referred to Vice President Mike Pence as a “traitor” and expressed interest in Trump “punishing” him “immediately,” according to one thread in a group called “Biden Is Not My President.”

Some users suggested that members of the media should be “tied” up, and suggested finding their addresses. Many praised Ashli Babbitt, the woman who was shot and killed during the Capitol invasion yesterday, a “freedom fighter.” Then, there is the QAnon conspiracy group trying to spread a rumor that Babbitt is not in fact dead.

In scouring Parler, I saw plenty of terrifying, but unsurprising posts. In that sense it was a bit like yesterday’s riot — scary, but entirely predictable. Many Parler posts clearly call for violence, though the tone of the rhetoric is aligned with what tech journalists have seen and reported on Parler and similar platforms for months.

On Wednesday night, journalist Kara Swisher interviewed cofounder John Matze, who said content on Parler that could incite violence is put forth to a “community jury.”  “Well, for violence, and advocation of violence, or violence specifically, it needs to be a clear and imminent threat,” Matze said.

Parler’s content also highlights how, despite any kind of attempts at moderation on behalf of Facebook and Twitter, Trump supporters will always find a place to organize and spread misinformation or disinformation.

“If there’s anything we’ve learned in the past four years, it’s that the President is who he is and efforts in constraining his behavior and rhetoric are often unsuccessful,” said Dustin Carnahan, assistant professor of communication with a focus on political communication, in an emailed statement. “As such, I think we will continue to see more of the same – doubling down on the idea that yesterday’s insurrection was a response to a ‘stolen’ election and blaming outside agitators instead of supporters for the more egregious behavior (e.g. Antifa).” 

“This is already happening,” Carnahan said. “So long as there is a group of media personalities and political leaders who are willing to echo these falsehoods, this will likely be effective among Trump’s base.”

How Joanna Gaines and Ina Garten deliver a one-two punch of comfort (food) TV we need

“So, what are we stress eating today?”  Varieties of that question circulated on Twitter this week, as they have for the past five years during our collective anxiety spikes. Countless millions ate to cope Tuesday night as the nation watched Georgia’s run-off election results come in on Twitter, and again on Wednesday as domestic terrorists stormed the Capitol to disrupt Congress confirming Joe Biden’s election victory (again).

Jokingly or deadly serious, we listed or confessed our makeshift menus: starches processed every which way. Cheese, any kind, double points for the kind in a can. Chocolate, bacon, butter, frozen you-name-it. We’re sliding all that and more into our bellies in a quixotic effort to plug whatever holes dread has torn there, the type you can’t see but definitely sense.

Eating, we can do. We are doing it – a lot of it, and with numb enthusiasm.

Stress cooking is another matter. There are those who react to historic malevolence by channeling our unease into assembling ingredients and whipping egg whites into meringue, but they are few. For the majority of us there are cans, jars, takeout and our couches – and better still, there’s the vision of cooking, glorious cooking, brought to us by TV.

Discovery’s new streaming service Discovery+ also debuted this week, and as I observed on Tuesday, why it didn’t blare the fact that it has many seasons of Ina Garten’s cooking show classic “Barefoot Contessa” available to stream is beyond me. Even apart from what this week had in store for America, Discovery’s executives are fully aware of Garten’s recently minted status as one of America’s greatest pandemic pleasures.

Its promotion of Joanna Gaines’ new cooking series “Magnolia Table” is more understandable given that show’s true purpose. Gaines’ in-the-kitchen debut doubles as an introduction to the Magnolia Network, her and husband Chip Gaines’ lifestyle channel now previewing on Discovery+.

America knows and loves Joanna and Chip Gaines as domesticity engineers, first introduced by way of their hit HGTV show “Fixer Upper.” Through that series the couple tapped into the near-universal pull of the simplicity of home and family, or even better, the attainability of the former through pluck and renovation.

In “Magnolia Table” Joanna Gaines’ aim is more modest, in that she wants us to feel better about middle-of-the-road adequacy, emphasizing ease above all. Garten wants her audience to aspire to saute chicken breasts in cognac. Gaines knows that any parent who is able to pull off a dinner that’s a step above frozen fish sticks deserves applause, and her concepts can help them with that.

Likewise, she doesn’t want her recipes to be so complex as to leave the comfort eater too dispirited to ever want to put down that party-sized bag of chips.

“There’s a fine balance between perfection and crap, and I’m trying to find the middle place,” Gaines says as she cuts out the filo dough layers to make a baklava. “We don’t want things to be so perfect that you don’t have fun.”  

Garten, like Dionne Warwick, became one of America’s favorite aunts in 2020 owing to her Hall-of-Fame April Fool’s Day Instagram post where she jokingly (or possibly not!) mixes a pitcher full of Cosmos and pours it into a gigantic martini glass.  “It’s always cocktail hour in a crisis!” she quipped in the comments, tacitly acknowledging the unease produced by the lockdowns called for in cities across the United States.

Long before the Gaines family stole the nation’s hearts, Garten’s lifestyle brand was its own queendom. If people didn’t adore her in the heyday of “Barefoot Contessa” on Food Network, many more do now.  April was six months out from the release of her 12th cookbook, “Modern Comfort Food.” That lake-sized cosmopolitan went viral with a purpose, kicking off one heck of a promotional spree.

Garten and Gaines are both reassuring and kindly, and a main reason people love them so much is that you want to hang out with them.  In the same way that Garten’s followers fantasize about visiting with the TV chef in her spacious East Hampton, NY, kitchen as she preps a gazpacho with serene confidence, Gaines wears the demeanor of that nice friend you’d want to sit with you on the worst day of your life.

You just know she’ll offer you a homemade biscuit and your own personal-sized goat to cuddle after fending off a rambunctious Chip with a quiet but fierce “not now” glare. And you know he’d comply.

She will never wield a similar level of culinary influence as Garten or Martha Stewart or Rachael Ray, and it’s not as if she’s aspiring to do so or even needs to try. To reiterate, she has her own network, and in her hourlong special “The Making of Magnolia Table with Joanna Gaines” she says in so many words that the main reason she has a cooking show is that she wanted one.

She also explains that her love affair with home cooking is rooted in her affection for her mother’s recipes, which were easy to make and used ingredients typical of households with tight budgets, including hot dogs, a regular feature of childhood dinners.

The “Magnolia Table” host says her mother would chop up a bunch of franks, coat them in Korean spices, toss in some green onions and serve them with kimchee and rice. Gaines still serves this dish to her kids because they love it, and because to her food is about the story and the tradition, not the elaborate ingredients.

“I really want to be as serious as I can be and do an entire episode on hot dogs and rice, just for the write-up,” she said with a laugh. “I can’t wait for people to be like, ‘This clown has her own cooking show!'”

None of this should invalidate the value of Gaines’ program. On the contrary, experiencing this battering week solidifies my realization that “Magnolia Table” serves a similar purpose to Garten’s shows, which is to console us, educate us and maybe, after a few doses, coax us out of our defeated repose to make a nourishing meal. Same pharmacy, different anti-depression drugs.

Nearly a year into this pandemic, and before the recent coup attempt was imaginable for most people (but not all), we were already extremely exhausted and feeling financially insecure. Parents are worn out. Everybody’s frazzled. Hot dogs and rice doesn’t sound so bad right now, does it?

In case it does, we have Gaines’ straightforward baklava prep, her casually constructed tiramisu, her no-nonsense version of fatayar, a Lebanese meat pie: canned biscuit dough rolled thin and filled with shredded cheese and potatoes and ground meat. She describes it as a cheeseburger in a pastry. Now that’s good stress eating.

She also adheres to the unspoken requirements of food porn by setting the show in, what else, a renovated mill and featuring droolworthy appliances set against exposed stone walls. Naturally every shot stars items from the Gaines’ branded home collections, so even if you don’t want to cook their recipes, you can buy the trappings of the Magnolia lifestyle.

Simultaneously whether she means to or not, Gaines is dismantling our curious obsession with food porn while also taking full advantage of it. Every episode features her stumbling over the pronunciation of ingredients – mascarpone and Worcestershire trips her up – and joking about mild bloopers with the crew off-camera, generally ignoring both the fourth wall and any expectations of flawlessness.

If she weren’t extremely warm, genuine and, more than this, conscious about coming across as genuine no amount of gorgeous shots of copper cookware against white marble countertops would make this work. But that is the crazy magic of Gaines. She’s so casually chic and gosh darned nice that the mediocrity of “Magnolia Table” is beside the point. Every episode conveys the message to relax, toss something together that tastes good and everything will be OK.

I say all of this to praise the deliberate construction of “Magnolia Table” and the way it simultaneously honors, complements and rebels against its predecessors, including Garten’s.

But Garten’s shows still serve a sedative purpose, aside from teaching us how to cook well and removing any intimidation from preparing haute cuisine or even basic dishes like roasted chicken. They are the antithesis of boring, and they will also calm you the hell down. Double win.

Subtle displays of her wealth, on view in the form of her enviably grand and expansive kitchen and her manicured backyard, are part of the reverie, as are the mouth-watering camera shots of fresh ingredients and beautiful meal presentations. My Tuesday night stress-watch sent me to a classic episode where she tranquilly mixes up a chocolate cheesecake, the lens tightly capturing every silky moment as she blended cream cheese into chocolate and baked up the graham cracker crust.

Would I have loved to eat everything she made? You bet. Watching it was just as soothing and seductive, helping to dissolve the band of stress squeezing my brain.

Besides, I didn’t have most of Garten’s ingredients on hand or the desire to engage in anything requiring that much effort.  The components for Gaines’ fatayar were in my fridge, but I ended up passing on that too. Instead I make a pizza from scratch – dough, sauce, and whatever toppings we had in the fridge. The activity busied my hands without taxing my limited energy, and the result was satisfying and didn’t slide off my plate while I ate it in bed.

In the final judgment, this is the higher service shows such as these render in times of need: providing comfort and inspiration in a gentler way than baking competitions could ever do. Those subliminally add unnecessary layers of expectation to the notion of homemaking, implying a high standard that feels impossible to maintain if not obtain without adequate resources, or the expectation of flawlessness enacted with ease.

Much as I adore “The Great British Bake-Off” I can no longer throw together a basic cookie dough without picturing Paul Hollywood’s steely blues boring into my soul and judging me . . . whereas Garten invites us to be a guest in her process, advising us but also assuring us that it’s OK to relax, that store-bought is fine

What Gaines offers is just as necessary, especially right now, which is that the effort counts as much as the execution, if not more. That nobody’s perfect, not even her. That in these harried times, good enough is fine . . . and that putting even minimal effort into what you’re stress eating may be its own comfort.

The first three episodes of “Magnolia Table with Joanna Gaines,” along with multiple seasons of “Barefoot Contessa” and “Barefoot Contessa: Back to Basics” are streaming on Discovery +.

Ted Cruz tried to defend Trump’s coup. He then praised the white supremacist Compromise of 1877

One of the most prominent Republican supporters of Donald Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election and undemocratically install himself into power, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, defended the president’s coup effort by praising a notorious event in American history that helped cement white supremacy after the Civil War.

In a speech delivered during the debate over certifying electoral votes — and shortly before a far-right mob stormed the Capitol to disrupt those proceedings — Cruz urged the Senate to “look to history” by acting as Congress did when there was a dispute between Republican candidate Rutherford Hayes and Democratic candidate Samuel Tilden in the 1876 election. Cruz argued that, when there were accusations of cheating in that contest, “this Congress appointed an electoral commission to examine claims of voter fraud” including five members of the Supreme Court, five members of the Senate and five members of the House of Representatives. He claimed that they “examined the evidence and rendered a judgment, and what I would urge of this body is that we do the same,” calling for a “10-day emergency audit” to investigate the 2020 election results.

Cruz’s speech curiously left out a very important fact: the Compromise of 1877. 

Because the 1876 electoral commission had more Republicans than Democrats, and ultimately voted along party lines as expected, Hayes’ supporters could only get Democrats on board by striking an informal deal known as the Compromise of 1877. The terms of that agreement were that Democrats would allow Hayes to become president, and not start another civil war (the previous one had ended 12 years earlier), if Republicans agreed to pull the last remaining federal troops out of the South. As a result, the period known as Reconstruction — one in which efforts were made to bring about racial equality in the former Confederate states — officially came to a close, condemning generations of African Americans to white supremacist governments in the South.

This is not an obscure event in American history that Cruz could credibly claim to be ignorant about. It is widely regarded as the official moment when the Republican Party abandoned its historic commitment to civil rights and betrayed the African American community, allowing racist political structures to prevail unchallenged in the United States in the process.

Cruz’s comparison was erroneous for another important reason. During the 1876 election, there was dishonesty on both sides. On the one hand, freed slaves (who were overwhelmingly Republican) were denied the right to vote by the Ku Klux Klan and other racist mobs; at the same time, there was corruption in Republican-dominated election boards in Florida, Louisiana and South Carolina, where Democratic votes were often thrown out on flimsy pretexts. By contrast, Trump has repeatedly said that he only accepts election results when he wins, even accusing Cruz himself of cheating in the 2016 Iowa caucuses. Trump later said that the only way 2016 Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton could defeat him is if she cheated, falsely claimed that he actually won the 2016 popular vote and repeatedly said during the 2020 campaign that he would only accept the results if Democratic nominee Joe Biden lost.

Trump has lost every case that he has brought to court in which he has alleged voter fraud. He has lost roughly 60 cases overall, many of which were presided over by Republican judges (some of whom he appointed). Trump’s own attorney general, William Barr, investigated his claims and concluded there was no evidence Biden stole the election, prompting Trump to fire him. The Supreme Court unanimously ruled that Trump’s claims had no merit, including three judges appointed by Trump himself. Republican officials in states like Arizona, Michigan, Georgia and Pennsylvania have resisted pressure from Trump to claim that he won those states due to the lack of evidence.

Although 11 sitting presidents (including Trump) have sought another term and lost, Trump alone among them has rejected his defeat and attempted to stay in power through a coup. Even in the 1860 election — where Abraham Lincoln’s victory resulted in the Civil War — the South did not claim that Lincoln had stolen the election or try to keep the pro-South incumbent, President James Buchanan, in power illegitimately.

Why vaccines are being wasted in the United States

The world’s hope for a return to normalcy hinges on the coronavirus vaccines, and specifically the proposition that the vast majority of the population receives one so that we attain herd immunity and thus eradicate the coronavirus.

One would think, then, that every single dose of the vaccine would be coveted and carefully distributed, as supplies will be limited for many months. Yet there have been a number of reports about vaccine rollout being slower than expected, or vaccines being thrown out entirely. A nursing home in southern Ohio wound up wasting roughly 35 doses of the coronavirus vaccine after they overestimated the number that they would need, leaving pharmacists rushing trying to get shots into as many people as possible. In Portland, Ore., two hospital systems wound up wasting 42 doses of its coronavirus vaccine for reasons related to ill planning. A Massachusetts health center admitted that it had to dispose of some of its doses after some of the health care workers who were supposed to receive them were no-shows.

There have also been a number of near-misses. One alarming incident occurred on Monday, when a freezer at a northern California hospital containing more than 800 doses of the Moderna vaccine broke down. Because the vaccine only has a room temperature shelf life of 12 hours, the workers at the hospital made sure that the roughly 830 vaccines were given to people within a two-hour period so that none of them would go to waste.

Meanwhile, existing doses are not being distributed well. Initial reporting from Maryland indicates that less than one-fourth of the 273,875 vaccines there have been used, while from Virginia less than one-fifth of that state’s 451,075 doses have been used. There have been stories from Washington, D.C. to Nashville, Tennessee about people not showing up to be vaccinated and individuals who would otherwise be considered ineligible receiving vaccines so that they do not go to waste.

In order to vaccinate 230 million Americans (70 percent of the population) within six months, and thus reach herd immunity, hospitals and drug stores would need to vaccinate 8.8 million people per week, or over one million per day. Yet in the month that the vaccine has existed, only 5.91 million shots have been given. If that pace continues, it will take over three years to vaccinate enough Americans. 

Public health experts said that layers of bureaucracy and a lack of planning have contributed to the slowdown.

“There is total chaos, as always, when suddenly rolling about complex local responses,” Dr. Alfred Sommer, dean emeritus and professor of epidemiology at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, told Salon by email. “No doubt we could and should have planned for this, and done ‘dummy drills’ etc. long ago; but we did nothing because of totally incompetent federal and secondarily local response planning.”

Sommer’s view was echoed by Dr. Russell Medford, Chairman of the Center for Global Health Innovation and Global Health Crisis Coordination Center.

“The distribution has not been efficient,” Medford told Salon. While the ability to develop mRNA vaccines for treating COVID-19 in less than a year was a “great success story” and “something to celebrate,” he pointed out that “the vaccine itself does not protect us against disease. It’s vaccinations that protects us. And this is a logistics issue, a distribution issue.”

The problems, Medford observed, range from the fact that the COVID-19 vaccines require specialized equipment and very cold storage conditions, and the need for new equipment and properly trained technical support staff. This makes it more difficult to effectively distribute vaccines, particularly when there are equity issues involving who qualifies to get them.

“We’re dealing right now with the challenge of of vaccinating 1 million or 2 million people a day in the United States with a distribution system that doesn’t have a central plan or priority, or the resources associated with it on a national level to be effective,” Medford observed, pointing out that individual states have adopted different approaches to the CDC guidelines. “We have a patchwork of policies, a patchwork of resources and capabilities.”

Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, told Salon that “all of this is part of our learning curve. This is a complex vaccine, [but] the shot itself is not a big deal. You draw it up, defrost it, either dilute it or just draw it up and then you inject it. It isn’t that isn’t complicated.”

He added, “What is complicated is the fact that it, at least the Pfizer one, requires really ultra cold storage throughout pretty much the process, and then has a short refrigerated life. And then the Moderna has requires very cold storage, has a longer refrigerated life, and is little easier to deliver.” 

Benjamin said the challenge was in the “packaging.” The Pfizer vaccine, he noted, comes in boxes of a thousand vials, each of which contains five doses. “The average practitioner has about 2,500 patients in their practice — just round that nice round number.”

Why Nic Cage was the perfect f**king host for a show about cursing etymology

Honestly, there are times where it feels like it’s only possible to fully encapsulate the hellscape that was 2020 by using some, well — inelegant language. Same goes for when an alt-right mob breached the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday. For that reason, it makes complete sense that Netflix’s new, unscripted comedy series, “The History of Swear Words,” was a pandemic-born project. It was conceived, sold, produced and edited all before the new year, and it’s a fitting way to usher in 2021. 

“I would say, there’s probably no surprise that all of this came together in the most chaotic year that we’ve ever had,” Brien Meagher, the co-founder of B17 Entertainment who serves as executive producer on the show, told Salon. 

Bellamie Blackstone, executive producer and showrunner agreed. 

“I have to say, making it in that chaotic year was cathartic for me,” she said. “My husband was always laughing at me because I’m like, ‘f**k, d**k, p**sy.’ It was easy to lose the intention of the word because they were just episodes at that point, but when you take a step back, you realize these words have power.” 

And, according to Blackstone, one of the most fascinating aspects of creating the series was dissecting the evolution of that power, and how it’s changed as culture has developed. For viewers, those will likely be the most interesting parts of “The History of Swear Words,” too, especially considering the resonance of those words in our most stressful times. 

Hosted by Nicolas Cage, each 20-minute episode delves into the history and cultural impact of six different expletives:”F**k,” “S**t,” “B*tch,” “D**k,” “P**sy,” and “Damn.” The guiding questions that run through each episode really are “How did that four-letter (or five-letter) word become ‘bad,’ and what do people actually mean when they use them today?”

Cage essentially plays an exaggerated version of himself, with a dapper suit and “Masterpiece”-style background and, according to Blackstone, he was at the top of the list for potential hosts. “He brought so much to the table in terms of how he approached it as a character,” she said. “He’s a student of language and of his art.” 

And as a character, he plays up that “just short of completely unhinged” vibe he’s spent years perfecting. Just after the camera focuses on Cage, he launches into several iconic lines, “F**k it, we’ll do it live,” and “I’ve had it with these motherf**kin’ snakes on this motherf**kin’ plane,” delivered with such gusto that it seems like he’s savoring the phrases. 

This shouldn’t be a surprise. Early in the “F**k” episode, it’s revealed that the F-word, and its seemingly endless variations, make up 70% of the actor’s onscreen curse word usage. “F**k” is a multipurpose swear: It can have sexual connotations, or denote really bungling something up, or as a kind of point of emphasis. Cage demonstrates himself, again and again, as a master of its usage. 

Adding some color to the series is a sort of who’s who of celebrity profanity: comedians like Sarah Silverman, Nikki Glaser, Nick Offerman and Zainab Johnson, and actors like Isiah Whitlock Jr., (whose distinctly drawn-out utterance of the word “s**t” in “The Wire” and Spike Lee films is now iconic). 

Their contributions are fine, if underwhelming. As the series establishes, certain “sentence enhancers” can lose their flavor once they’re overused, so after a while, watching celebrities shout swear words and then titter and giggle as if they’ve done something shocking loses its punch (Johnson is the exception — she’s a consistent delight). 

Where the series distinguishes itself, however, is in its succinct linguistic exploration of the words. Kory Stamper, a lexicographer and Merriam-Webster dictionary consultant, needs her own show stat, with frequent guest appearances from Melissa Mohr, the author of “Holy Sh*t: A Brief History of Swearing,” and Benjamin Bergen, author of “What The F.” Together, these three experts give viewers a smart overview of swearing, from past to present. 

Take “damn,” for instance. Of the words explored in the series, it’s probably considered the mildest in a modern context (you can say “damn” on public radio, for instance, and Salon doesn’t censor it), but it used to be just as shocking as “f**k” or “c**t.” 

“But the more we dove into the word, the more we were blown away by how generally offensive and egregious it was back in the day and how much material there was on that one word alone,” Meagher said. “I think once we saw ‘Damn’ come together as an episode, we felt very confident about all the other episodes.” 

Each word has its own trajectory, though there’s a thematic interest in the points of intersection between profanity, racism, homophobia and sexism — and what it means when that language is reclaimed by members of marginalized communities. As such, once you’ve binged the series, which can be done in just over two hours, you’ll have a lot of insightful tidbits for your next Zoom cocktail party, like, “Despite urban legend, ‘f**k’ doesn’t stand for ‘fornication under consent of the king,'” or “Jonah Hill holds the record for the most swear words uttered on-screen,” or “Here’s why parental ‘parental advisory’ stickers actually may be racist . . .” 

But I think the main, underlying appeal of the series — especially right now — is pretty succinctly encapsulated by Cage, who says, “There’s something innately human about swearing,” especially when feeling overwhelmed or frustrated. 

“When you start to break down why we swear, and what motivates that, it is based in emotion,” Blackstone said. “It’s based in the fact that these words are so expressive, and express an emotion in the way that nothing else can. You can use them in a moment when nothing else will suffice.” 

And, as “The History of Swear Words” outlines early in the season, swearing can actually make you feel better when you’re under physical or mental stress. This is demonstrated when the participating celebs are separated into two groups — one that can swear, one that can’t — and asked to plunge their hands into freezing water. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the group that can swear, led by Nikki Glaser, far outlasts their silent compatriots.

It’s intensely relatable, especially this week (or this past year — or, honestly, these past four years). And if you, like me, have a few select expletives that are getting more of a workout right now, “The History of Swear Words” gets behind why they feel so good and offers a couple of much-needed laughs along the way.

“History of Swear Words” is currently streaming on Netflix.

In “Pieces of a Woman,” Vanessa Kirby survives the worst in a heartbreaking, measured performance

Six minutes into the affecting melodrama, “Pieces of a Woman,” director Kornél Mundruczó (“White God“) plunges viewer into a bravura set piece — a 24-minute, single-take sequence, shot with a handheld camera. Martha (Vanessa Kirby of “The Crown“) is experiencing contractions and then her water breaks. Her partner, Sean (Shia LaBeouf), is attentive to her needs and tries to comfort her as Eva (Molly Parker, “Deadwood“), a substitute midwife arrives. The baby experiences distress during labor, and although she is born and held by her mother for a moment, the infant soon turns blue and dies, leaving everyone bereft.

Mundruczó, working from a script by Kata Wéber, makes this devastating sequence as unnerving for viewers as it is for Martha and Sean. Kirby, who won the Best Actress prize at the Venice Film Festival last year, conveys Martha’s pain and discomfort palpably. She feels nausea and burps periodically. She is scared, and her expressions, body language, speech, and cries communicate her anxiety. But it is her grief and sorrow that lasts. “Pieces of a Woman” spends its next 90 minutes showing episodes — the film is divided into chapters that occur weeks apart — that depict Martha’s mental and emotional aftermath following this heartbreaking loss.

The film is a difficult sit, but Martha’s experiences are revealing. She is triggered seeing baby clothes or young children. She starts to lactate. Her conversations with Sean are awkward, full of uneasy and uncomfortable silences. She is upset by an error on her child’s headstone and bothered by an encounter with a compassionate friend of her mother’s approaching her in a supermarket. It is hard not to sympathize with Martha during these scenes, and Mundruczó’s restraint here, along with Kirby’s internal performance, prevents things from getting too mawkish or sentimental.

Martha actually exhibits a kind of grace and even clarity in these moments. She may not want pity, or even revenge; she is just processing what she feels. When Martha makes a decision about donating her baby to medical research, it goes against her domineering mother Elizabeth’s (Ellen Burstyn, “Requiem for a Dream“) wishes, causing friction. Likewise, it is Elizabeth, not Martha, who hires Martha’s cousin, Suzanne (Sarah Snook), a lawyer, to sue Eva, who has administered other homebirths that have ended tragically. 

As “Pieces of a Woman” depicts episodes from Martha’s life, Mundruczó strives for a cumulative emotional impact. Unfortunately, her epiphany, which arrives during a big speech in a courtroom near the film’s end, feels manipulative. The film works best as a portrait of a woman processing loss. The efforts to address issues of closure and justice feel misguided — because that is not what Martha wants. 

There are other challenging moments. The worst is when Sean forces Martha to have sex with him in part to perhaps recapture the intimacy they once shared. His efforts, however, come across as selfish, not well-meaning. Their rough sex certainly magnifies her fragile condition and perhaps explains why he has an affair. His falling off the wagon, after years of sobriety, however realistic, also feels simplistic.

Shia LaBeouf plays Sean as the self-described “boor” his character is. Sean’s self-destructive behavior is an honest response to absorbing the impact of his shared loss. But his storming out after an inconclusive autopsy report is about as soulful as Sean gets. A speech LaBeouf gives about resonance — he is explaining why an old bridge collapsed — falls flat. 

In contrast, Elizabeth gives an impassioned speech about shame and hope stemming from her experiences as a child during the Holocaust. Even if this Oscar-baiting moment feels reductive, it gets at the heart of the film — are we strong enough to survive the worst? But it does not help Martha to be told she needs to persevere (or get therapy); the interesting thing is how she finds her will to survive. Martha’s coping strategy is to germinate seeds, an apt metaphor given that she described her child as smelling like an apple. 

The film is obvious with its symbols, from dead plants in the couple’s apartment illustrating grief, to a framed print of the ultrasound that Sean gives Martha just before she delivers (a painful reminder of what might have been), to a closing scene that feels both overly precious and completely unnecessary. 

Mundruczó creates a mesmerizing early sequence, but the rest of his film never quite matches that intensity. Perhaps it does not have to, because the power of “Pieces of a Woman” lies in Kirby’s performance. The actress is equally commanding reacting silently to children playing on a public bus, or during her emotional testimony in the freighted courtroom scenes. Kirby never comes off as mannered, nor do her outbursts feel overdone. She mostly exudes a thoughtfulness, which is particularly apparent when she is looking at old photos of her and Sean, or an image of her baby daughter months after her passing.   

“Pieces of a Woman” is demanding film, told in fragments. It contains some worthwhile moments for those who can sift through the shards.

“Pieces of a Woman” is currently streaming on Netflix.

Texas politicians united in pleading for calm as Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol

Texas politicians in both parties pleaded for peace Wednesday afternoon after supporters backing President Donald Trump stormed the U.S. Capitol, disrupting the Electoral College certification of his reelection defeat.

“I like many people voted for President Trump in the 2020 election and hoped for a different result,” tweeted U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Austin. “But violence and destruction is not the way to express your grievances. This is disgraceful and has to end.”

U.S. Rep. Dan Crenshaw, R-Houston, was more succinct in a tweet, saying, “Stop this bullshit right now.”

The fracas began shortly after some GOP lawmakers, led by Texas U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, launched a dispute to the certification of Arizona’s electoral votes. Over the ensuing hour, scenes emerged of Trump supporters storming barricades, breaching the Capitol and even reaching at least one of chambers.

By early afternoon, proceedings in the Capitol ground to a halt as security rushed Vice President Mike Pence out of the U.S. Senate chamber and the building was placed on lockdown. The mayor of Washington, D.C., Muriel Bowser, ordered a curfew starting at 5 p.m.

Reports from the scene show Trump supporters swarming the hallways of the Capitol carrying pro-Trump paraphernalia —just steps from where lawmakers were meeting. Lawmakers and reporters described hundreds of pro-Trump supporters barreling past fence barricades and clashing with officers. Some demonstrators also mobbed the second floor lobby just outside the Senate chamber while law enforcement officers attempted to guard the chamber doors.

“I’m currently sheltering in place. The Capitol building has been breached and both chambers are locked down,” wrote U.S. Rep. Veronica Escobar, D-El Paso. “This is the chaos and lawlessness @realDonaldTrump has created.”

Several others Democrat lawmakers — Reps. Colin Allred of Dallas, Sylvia Garcia of Houston and Vicente Gonzalez of McAllen — tweeted that they were safe.

Amid the chaos and confusion, several Republicans encouraged Trump to rally his supporters to tamp down on the violence.

“Mr. President, get to a microphone immediately and establish calm and order. Now. And work with Capitol Police to secure the Capitol. It’s the last thing you’ll do that matters as President,” tweeted U.S. Rep. Chip Roy of Austin. In a subsequent interview with The Texas Tribune, Roy, who noted he and his staff were safe, called on the White House to “take action immediately” and for the president to “speak and tell people to retreat from the Capitol.”

“Those storming the Capitol need to stop NOW,” Cruz wrote on Twitter, adding that violence is “ALWAYS wrong” and that “those engaged in violence are hurting the cause they say they support.”

Among those in Washington Wednesday was Attorney General Ken Paxton, who spoke at a pro-Trump rally outside the White House before Congress began the Electoral College certification process. Last month Paxton led an unsuccessful lawsuit challenging the presidential election results in four battleground states.

On Wednesday afternoon, Paxton called for calm from both his official and personal Twitter accounts.

“I am sorely disappointed today in the certification of the election, but I don’t believe violence is the answer,” Paxton said.

The Republican Party of Texas also condemned the violence. Its chairman, Allen West, was a vocal supporter of Paxton’s lawsuit and suggested secession by “law-abiding states” after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the suit. West has also appeared at “Stop the Steal” events following Trump’s reelection defeat.

Perhaps the strongest condemnation among Texas Republicans in the House came from former Rep. Will Hurd of Helotes. He wrote in a tweet: “This is an attack on our democracy and domestic terrorism to try to stop certifying elections. This should be treated as a coup led by a president that will not be peacefully removed from power.”

There were also denunciations from Texas Republicans who had resisted objecting to the Electoral College certification, including Roy.

“To those storming the Capitol — I am on the House floor and I will not be deterred from upholding my oath, under God, to the Constitution by mob demand,” he wrote. The Austin-area Republican made his disdain for Wednesday’s events clear, telling the Tribune he didn’t think Congress “should be going down this road” of objecting to the certification and calling for criminal action against members of the mob who breached the Capitol.

“People need to go jail,” Roy said. “They need to go to jail for a very long time.”

As of 2:45 p.m. Wednesday, there was a notable silence from U.S. Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Tyler, a staunch pro-Trump Republican who was the subject of a censure resolution from Democratic U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, of Florida, after Gohmert warned of post-election violence following a string of court losses by Trump and his supporters.

Texas Democrats, meanwhile, were explicit in linking the harrowing scene to Trump’s refusal to accept the election outcome and belligerent rhetoric.

“This is what Trump wanted,” tweeted U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Austin. “Trump’s sedition: determined to keep us from doing our constitutional duty.”

In an interview with C-SPAN, U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Laredo, said the pro-Trump rally that took place earlier Wednesday likely “sent a strong message to a lot of the folks here.” Cuellar then reprimanded Trump for being “quick to call the National Guard … and other folks to certain places when the left was protesting,” but not responding as fast to condemn his own supporters.

Trump previously called on his supporters to rally in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday. At a protest earlier in the day, Trump acknowledged that rallygoers were going to march toward the Capitol to encourage lawmakers not to certify the vote.

“I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically, make your voices heard today,” he said.

Trump later encouraged his supporters to remain peaceful.

“No violence!” he tweeted Wednesday afternoon. “Remember, WE are the Party of Law & Order – respect the Law and our great men and women in Blue. Thank you!”

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

It took thugs roaming the halls of Congress for media to speak the truth

Reporters who for months used sanitized language to normalize Donald Trump’s attempt to overthrow the duly elected government of the United States finally overcame their scruples Wednesday, enthusiastically hurling hyperbolic epithets at the ragtag mob of yahoos who breached security at the U.S. Capitol and stomped around screaming and taking selfies for a few hours.

The drama of what happened Wednesday was undeniable. It was terrifying. It was an outrage of epic proportions, a shameful moment for the country, and a scandal of law-enforcement failure and complicity. And Trump obviously sent the mob on its way.

But I find it pathetic that it wasn’t until they had the visuals they needed that the elite journalists of the Washington press corps could bring themselves to call what Trump has been doing since before the election by its proper name: An attempted coup.

It wasn’t until they could point to a guy in face paint wearing an idiotic bison-shaman costume and a bunch of spittle-flecked bros waving flags that they could bring themselves to say something they were unable to say about people who actually hold power.

Perhaps the greatest irony here is that, compared to numerous actions Trump and his enablers have taken that were actually intended to keep him in office against the will of the people, the storming of the Capitol did not rise to that level.

You could certainly call it a violent insurrection or a domestic terrorist attack. But there was no genuine attempt to take control. Few if any were armed. They certainly weren’t organized. They came, they were (surprisingly) let in, they smashed, they vandalized, they terrorized, they had their white nationalist temper tantrum. But they didn’t actually try to seize power. They wandered around and after a while let themselves get politely shooed out.

You certainly can’t say the media underreacted to this story. “TRUMP INCITES MOB” screamed the morning New York Times. “Trump’s rage ignites mob assault on democracy,” said the Associated Press headline.

Washington Post reporters, who up until Tuesday had only used the word “coup” in a story about what critics were saying, led the Thursday morning paper by calling the mob’s storming of the Capitol “an attempted coup that they hoped would overturn the election [Trump] lost.”

But it’s Trump and his enablers who have been actively trying to overturn the election. The real coup attempt on Wednesday was by a handful of senators and a few dozen members of Congress, who tried to destroy the democratic process. The mob was just being a mob.

None of this should be seen as excusing the mob’s criminal conduct. And even though it’s rather late in the day, I welcome the change in tone to more non-euphemistic political coverage.

But its sudden emergence under these circumstances makes me worry that it will not stick.

New Yorker staff writer Adam Davidson posted a wonderful Twitter thread to that effect Thursday morning:

And as NPR public editor Kelly McBride noted, Wednesday’s spectacle shouldn’t eclipse its context:

David Halperin, writing for the anti-corruption Republic Report, captured that context particularly well:

For six years, Donald Trump has fed his supporters a fatty diet of grievances, lies, and exhortations to violence. It was only a matter of time before that incitement produced a major upheaval, and it happened today — a violent and deadly, if aimless, assault on the U.S. Capitol by Trump-supporting thugs, after Trump, standing on the Ellipse, had called on them to “walk down to the Capitol” and “fight much harder,” and told them “you’ll never take back our country with weakness,” and just as members of Congress were beginning to hear baseless challenges by some GOP members to the collective, decisive judgment of the states that Joe Biden defeated Trump in the presidential election.

I also liked the way Eli Stokols and Janet Hook framed the event in the Los Angeles Times, “as a breathtaking demonstration of what Trump has wrought — a mob as heedless of law and norms as he has been, willing to literally trash the fundamental institutions of American democracy.”

The violent storming of the Capitol will forever be etched in our memory, and for good reason. But it needs to be remembered as merely one manifestation of a dangerous movement to shatter our democracy, not as its culmination or its end.

Bipartisan calls for Mike Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment for Trump’s removal grow louder

A growing number of Democrats — and at least one House Republican — are calling for Trump’s removal from office following his supporters’ chaotic breach of the U.S. Capital as the Electoral College attempted to certify the election of Joe Biden as president. 

Nearly two dozen Democratic lawmakers have called for Trump’s immediate removal from office in the aftermath of the violent mob of Trump supporters who stormed the White House on Wednesday, breaking police lines and trashing the U.S. Capitol. The lawmakers have blamed Trump for inciting the chaos, which ultimately brought about four deaths and several injuries, and forced Congress to delay the electoral certification process.

“I am drawing up Articles of Impeachment,” Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-MN, announced on Twitter. “Donald J. Trump should be impeached by the House of Representatives & removed from office by the United States Senate. We can’t allow him to remain in office, it’s a matter of preserving our Republic and we need to fulfill our oath.”

“Dear Mike_Pence,” echoed Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif., on Twitter, “You need to start the 25th Amendment. DonaldTrump is detached from reality.

Rep. Jennifer Wexton, D-VA, chimed in, “The President has been encouraging these domestic terrorists since before the election.” She continued, “He could have stopped them at any moment, but instead he whipped them into a frenzy and sicced them on the Capitol […] The Cabinet must remove him today or the House must impeach.”

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-NY, was one of the first Democrats in the Senate to call for removal. In a press conference Thursday, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., also announced that she will “join the Senate Democratic leader in calling on the vice president to remove this president by immediately invoking the 25th amendment.” She added, “If the vice president and cabinet do not act, the Congress may be prepared to move forward with impeachment.”

Pelosi also announced that the Sergeant at Arms Paul D. Irving has resigned in light of the events at the Capitol, adding that she will be “calling for the resignation of the Capitol Police Chief…Mr. [Steven] Sund.” According to Pelosi, Mr. Sund hasn’t even called to check on members of Congress since the violent rampage against them. 

President-elect Biden directly blamed the mayhem carried out by “domestic terrorists” on Trump. He said on Thursday, “In the past four years, we’ve had a president who’s made his contempt for our democracy, our constitution, the rule of law clear in everything he has done,” The President-elect added, “He unleashed an all-out assault on our institutions of our democracy from the outset. And yesterday was the culmination of that unrelenting attack.”

Behind Schumer, Pelosi, and Biden are a whole chorus of Democratic lawmakers –– including Rep. Ayanna Pressley, D-MA, Rep. Mondaire Jones, D-NY, Sen. Ed Markey, D-MA, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-NY, and Rep. Seth Moulton, D-MA –– insisting upon Trump’s ousting.

Rep. Cori Bush, D-MO, in addition to calling for Trump’s impeachment, announced that she will be introducing a resolution to expel “members of Congress who have incited this domestic terror attack through their attempts to overturn the election.”

Whispers of impeachment, according to Politico, had already been circulating around the White House following Trump’s leaked phone call with Georgia’s Secretary of State, in which the President asked the Republican Brad Raffensberger to “find” more votes in his favor. But the siege on the Capitol, which has no doubt left members of Congress fearful for their own lives, may be the tipping point for a second impeachment of Trump.

While GOP lawmakers have stayed mostly silent on the subject  –– that is, aside from Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-IL, Vermont’s Governor Phil Scott, and GOP governor of Maryland Larry Hogan, who have made explicit calls for removal –– a groundswell of Republican outrage has nevertheless appeared in response to Trump’s enabling role in the attempted coup.

Senator Mitt Romney, R-UT, the lone Republican lawmaker who pushed for Trump’s first impeachment, said in remarks he would have made before the insurrection, “We gather due to a selfish man’s injured pride, and the outrage of supporters who he has deliberately misinformed for the past two months and stirred to action this very morning.” He added, “What happened here today was an insurrection incited by the president of the United States.”

Rep. Jason Crow, D-Colo., a former Army Ranger, was also quick to condemn Trump: “I never, in a million years would have thought that I would be in a situation like this as a member of Congress on the House floor in the United States Capitol in 2021.”

But on the question of impeachment, Crow hesitated, “I don’t know,” but “we have to do something, we can’t let what happened today go without some consequence and some action.”

An all-in-one guide to the ultimate pound cake

Every month, in Off-Script With Sohla, pro chef and flavor whisperer Sohla El-Waylly will introduce you to a must-know cooking technique — and then teach you how to detour it toward new adventures.

* * *

Growing up, my mother always had a loaf of Sara Lee pound cake in the freezer. I don’t remember it ever getting thawed. We’d carve off thin pieces and eat them quickly while still frozen, dense, and chewy. I loved the sticky crust and how cleanly the tight, tender crumb sliced.

This recipe bakes up just as delicate, has a thick brown crust, and is enriched with sour cream and an extra yolk. All the butter ensures that it will stay moist on your counter for days — but I still prefer it frozen, so the crust is jammy and soft, sticking to my fingers while I devour a sliver.

Because baking is a science, you must adhere to the core recipe. If you swap Greek yogurt in place of the sour cream, your pound cake will bake up dry. If you use brown sugar in place of white, the increased acidity will affect the rise. If you replace the butter (which naturally contains a bit of water) with something like olive or coconut oil (which are pure fats), your batter will look broken and bake up greasy.

But don’t fret! I’m going to show you when to follow the course and where it’s safe to meander, so you’ve got the confidence to take pound cake off-script.

When this pound cake batter is mixed correctly, it’s stable enough to handle a few extra folds, so you can stir in blueberries, chopped nuts, cocoa powder, matcha, and more. You can change the flavor by stirring citrus zest or almond extract into the sour cream, topping the cake with a crumb, or adding a swirl of jam. Make it your own.

Behold: the greatest afternoon pick-me-up of all time. For good measure

Fluffy ingredients, like flour and other starches, can compact in a measuring cup, so one person’s cup of flour can weigh more or less than someone else’s. That’s why it’s best to use a scale. But you can still have excellent baking success without one; just take extra care when measuring.

When measuring flour by volume, I first whisk it up (in the container or bag) before spooning it into my cup until heaped. Then I’ll level it off with an offset spatula or butter knife. With thick ingredients like sour cream, be sure to give the full cup a few taps on the counter to ensure it’s lightly packed.

Take off the chill

Using room-temperature butter, eggs, and sour cream is crucial in achieving fluffy, tender greatness. Room-temperature butter is flexible, allowing it to expand with air as you cream it with the sugar. With a stand mixer, you might be tempted to slam some cold butter around with a paddle and, while it will get creamy, it will never gain the same volume as softened butter. This volume is game-changing because, even though there is baking powder in this cake, most of the lift comes from the air whipped into the butter.

Cake batter is an emulsion, a blend of two things that don’t want to mingle. Butter is mostly fat, while eggs and sour cream are mostly water, so they need a little coaxing to get along. Room-temperature ingredients encourage everyone to play nice. If your batter looks curdled after adding your eggs, somebody was too cold. Let the mixture sit on the counter for a bit, then try and mix again.

My preferred way to temper the eggs, butter, and sour cream is to set them out the night before. If you’re not comfortable leaving dairy out for that long (or live somewhere very cold), the microwave is your best friend. Zap your butter and sour cream in five-second increments, flipping the stick of butter and stirring the sour cream after every blast, so it heats evenly. To gently warm cold eggs, I’ll put them in a big bowl of warm tap water for about 15 minutes.

Pick and prep your pan

Not all loaf pans are created equal — a metal loaf pan conducts heat faster than a glass one, resulting in a higher rise and more golden crust. That first hit of heat is a pivotal pound cake moment: The air trapped in the batter needs to expand and lift the cake before it sets; the baking powder reacts to the heat and produces essential bubblage. Avoid glass pans — they only lead to a dense, greasy cake.

Once you’ve got your metal loaf pan, skip the parchment and instead smear on a thick layer of softened butter. This will ensure a clean release from the pan and encourage browning for a toasty crust.

Scrape, scrape, scrape

Room-temperature butter will look creamy after a few minutes of paddling, but keep mixing. With more time, the butter and sugar will become feathery and light. This is where the pound cake gets its fluff, so don’t rush it. The mixture should be lightened in color and look almost like buttercream frosting.

While mixing, you must stop the mixer, scrape the paddle, and scrape the bowl. Repeatedly! At least once while creaming the butter, after each egg, and at the end to bring it all together. Even if you have a paddle with a bowl scraper attached, you still have to stop and scrape the paddle itself. This is the only way to make sure every spec of the batter is fluffy-city! All you need is one bit of dense, uncreamed batter to create holes and tunnels in your cakes (aka a butter bomb). I know this seems like a fussy step, but it’s the difference between a good cake and a great one.

Fill the pan and bake

This batter is super thick, which is excellent for mix-ins, but needs some assistance to snuggly fill every corner of the pan. When I tested this recipe, some loaves had big holes where the batter didn’t settle. To avoid this, after adding the batter, give the pan a few firm taps against the counter, then swirl into it with a butter knife or offset spatula. This will knock out any air pockets and make sure the batter evenly sinks into the pan. A final score down the middle with a wet butter knife makes sure the cake splits right down the center as it rises and bakes.

Because the batter is dense, the pound cake takes a long time to bake. With the addition of streusel or mix-ins, it takes even longer. Don’t worry if the crust looks very dark. It’s better to overbake rather than underbake this moist cake. If my crust ever starts approaching burnt, I set a wire rack just above the cake and place a sheet pan on it to create a heat shield. This allows the cake to continue baking without getting too dark.

Ready to remix

Yes, I’ve given you lots of strict rules to follow. But if you’ve gotten this far, you will have a creamy, thick, and stable batter that is ready to party! Here’s how to go off-script:

KEEP IT SIMPLE WITH MIX-INS

  • Chopped dates and chocolate
  • Toasted almonds and cherries
  • Blueberries and pecans

GET FLASHY BY LINING THE PAN

  • Spiced sugar (cinnamon, apple pie spice, or cardamon)
  • Cookie crumbs (Oreos, graham crackers, or Biscoff cookies)
  • Finely chopped nuts (peanuts or black sesame seeds)

BUMP UP THE SOUR CREAM

  • Citrus zest (lemon, orange, grapefruit, lime)
  • Any extract (vanilla, almond, or rum)
  • Instant espresso powder

CREATE A SWIRL

  • Your favorite jam (strawberry, blackberry, or marmalade)
  • Lemon curd
  • Cocoa powder–ify half the batter

ADD A STREUSEL

  • Black cocoa
  • Oat and pecan
  • Cinnamon crumble

Highly recommended pound cakes

Recipe: Go-To Vanilla Pound Cake

Recipe: Black and White Pound Cake

Videos show prominent Trump supporters in Capitol riot — but his Fox News fans blame “antifa”

Some of President Trump’s supporters have tried to blame Wednesday’s mob assault on the U.S. Capitol on left-wing “antifa” protesters — even though numerous prominent Trump fans posed for photos during the riot and bragged about their involvement after publicly planning the assault for weeks.

Many of these claims are based on a Washington Times report that cited facial recognition company XRVision, claiming it had “matched” two purported antifa members to “men inside the Senate.” The company issued a statement calling the report a lie and clarifying that it had actually matched the photos to two members of a neo-Nazi organization and a QAnon supporter. The statement confirmed what was already obvious from countless photos, videos and live-streams posted by the rioters themselves while waving Trump flags and wearing MAGA gear.

By the time the statement was issued, the false antifa claim had already made its way across social media to Fox News and even the floor of the House of Representatives.

Admitting that he did not know “if the reports are true,” Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., declared that “some of the people who breached the Capitol today were not Trump supporters. They were masquerading as Trump supporters and in fact, were members of the violent terrorist group antifa.”

Other lawmakers pushed the claim as well. Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., who led the challenge to his state’s electoral votes during the joint session of Congress that was targeted by the attackers, claimed on Twitter without evidence that “this has all the hallmarks of Antifa provocation.” Rep. Mo Brooks, R-Ala., told Fox Business host Lou Dobbs that “there is some indication that fascist antifa elements were involved, that they embedded themselves in the Trump protests.”

Some Fox News hosts have themselves insisted that Trump supporters could not possibly be behind the riot — which immediately followed Trump’s speech urging supporters to go to the Capitol while falsely claiming the election had been rigged against him. Donald Trump Jr. told supporters at the preceding rally to “stand up and fight.” Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani proposed settling the election by “trial by combat.”

“I’d like to know who the agitators were,” Fox News host Sean Hannity said Wednesday, claiming that “those who truly support President Trump … do not support those that commit acts of violence.”

“They were likely not all Trump supporters,” host Laura Ingraham said in the following hour, alluding to the debunked report. “I have never seen Trump rally attendees wearing helmets, black helmets, brown helmets, black backpacks — the uniforms you saw in some of these crowd shots.”

“We may never know the truth here,” fellow Fox host Tucker Carlson claimed earlier in the evening. “I keep seeing all kinds of accounts of who they were and what their motives might have been.”

Former Republican vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin told Fox News host Martha MacCallum that “a lot of it is the antifa folks,” citing “pictures” that someone sent her.

Similar claims were pushed on heavily pro-Trump Newsmax and Sinclair stations and were shared on Twitter by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, pro-Trump attorney Lin Wood and longtime Trump supporter Pastor Mark Burns, whose tweet was “liked” by Eric Trump.

Though some Trump supporters based their frivolous claims on photos that spread across social media, the Washington Times story appears to be at the center of many of these allegations. The conservative newspaper claimed that XRVision “used its software to do facial recognition of protesters and matched two Philadelphia Antifa members to two men inside the Senate.” The report claimed that one of the men “has a tattoo that indicates he is a Stalinist sympathizer” and the other “is someone who shows up at climate and Black Lives Matter protests in the West.”

The company strongly denied the report and demanded a retraction and apology.

“XRVision views the Washington Times publication as outright false, misleading, and defamatory,” the company said in a statement. “Our attorney has contacted the Washington Times and has instructed them to ‘Cease and Desist’ from any claims regarding the sourcing of XRVision analytics, retract their current claims, and publish an apology.”

“We concluded that two of the individuals (Jason Tankersley and Matthew Heimbach) were affiliated with the Maryland Skinheads and the National Socialist Movements,” the statement said. “These two are known Nazi organizations; they are not Antifa. The third individual identified (Jake Angeli) is an actor with some QAnon promotion history. Again, no Antifa identification was made for him either.”

Fact-checkers at The New York Times, Politifact and Snopes all confirmed that there was “no evidence of anyone but a mob of Trump supporters” involved in the melee. Many of them had openly plotted for weeks on social media, posed for photos during the siege and posted messages on conservative social media sites Gab and Parler as they tried to “hunt down” Vice President Mike Pence at the Capitol.

Angeli, better known in MAGA world as “Q Shaman,” is a prominent figure in QAnon circles. He was seen in countless photos and videos wearing a horned and furry bison costume that he has worn to many other pro-Trump events. At one point, he was seen standing on the dais in the Senate chamber.

People in QAnon garb were also seen chasing and confronting Capitol Police officers.

Heimbach is a prominent white nationalist who helped promote the deadly Charlottesville protest in 2017 and was jailed for shoving a protester at a Trump rally.

Other rioters included Tim Gionet, better known online as Baked Alaska, a far-right live streamer who frequently interviews white nationalists.

Another person identified in the riot is Derrick Evans, who live-streamed himself inside the Capitol. Evans is a newly-elected member of the West Virginia state legislature.

The man seen in viral photos ransacking House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office and stealing her mail identified himself as Richard “Bigo” Barnett, and bragged to reporters about the incident.

The FBI issued a statement on Wednesday asking the public for help identifying other rioters.

“The FBI is seeking information that will assist in identifying individuals who are actively instigating violence in Washington, DC,” the bureau said on its website. “The FBI is accepting tips and digital media depicting rioting and violence in the U.S. Capitol Building and surrounding area in Washington, DC, on January 6, 2021.”

People can submit photos or images to fbi.gov/USCapitol and report any relevant information to 1-800-CALL-FBI or tips.fbi.gov.

McConnell defeated: The real consequence of this week

The upcoming runoff elections in Georgia are about more than replacing two corrupt Republican senators with Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff. They are about flipping the Senate.

They are referenda on the disastrous tenure of Mitch McConnell and the damage the Republican Party has inflicted on America.

I don’t want to mince words. Mitch McConnell is the most duplicitous, morally bankrupt politician in America. (Well, maybe Trump beats him, but not for long.) He has wielded the GOP to inflict massive damage on our democracy.

In 2016, 293 days before the presidential election, he stole a Supreme Court seat by refusing to even give President Obama’s pick a hearing, claiming it was too close to the election to fill the seat. 

But when Ruth Bader Ginsburg tragically passed away in September, 2020, he engineered the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett, just 8 days before the 2020 presidential election and after 60 million Americans had already cast their ballots.

That’s not all. After blocking many of Obama’s nominees to the lower federal courts, he rammed through nearly 230 of Trump’s judicial picks, reshaping the federal courts for decades to come.

In 2017, McConnell rushed through the Senate, without a single hearing, a $2 trillion tax cut for big corporations and the super-rich. Despite his lofty promises, that tax cut increased the government debt by almost the same amount, generated no new investment, and failed to raise wages. Nothing trickled down.

Meanwhile, McConnell has blocked nearly 400 House bills addressing major issues like a minimum wage increase, voting rights, and gun reform.

After the pandemic hit, McConnell refused to extend extra unemployment benefits beyond the end of July while insisting on giving corporations immunity from Covid lawsuits if their workers got sick. And he refused financial aid to cash-strapped state and local governments facing massive budget shortfalls — dismissing it as a “blue state bailout.”

Senate Majority Leader, McConnell also helped subvert our democracy by refusing to acknowledge Joe Biden’s win for more than a month.

Mitch McConnell cares about only one thing: Power. He has single-handedly turned the Senate into a failed institution that has abandoned the American people for partisan gain. 

And that’s what the Senate will continue to be — unless Georgia elects Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff. If McConnell remains in control of the Senate, it will be impossible to enact the bold changes this nation requires.

Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue are terrible politicians, but these historic elections are about more than defeating them. They’re about defeating Mitch McConnell and rebuking everything the GOP stands for. 

On January 5th, Georgians can make it happen.

Don’t let smarmy calls for “civility” fool you — most Republicans still side with insurrectionists

Calling for “peace” was the word of the day on Capitol Hill Wednesday, after an insurrectionist mob overran the U.S. Capitol, in what was ultimately a failed attempt to prevent Congress from affirming Joe Biden’s victory in November’s presidential election. Some politicians — mostly Democrats, but a few clearly rattled Republicans — meant these words of peace. But some, most obviously Donald Trump himself, did not.

In his repeated messages to supporters Wednesday and into Thursday, Trump made sure to sandwich every mealy-mouthed wish for peace in between carbo-loaded language inciting more violence by continuing to insist that he won “a sacred landslide election victory” and that it’s being “unceremoniously & viciously stripped away.”

Even after Twitter blocked his account for inciting violence, Trump kept talking out of both sides of his mouth. He released a statement with the words “orderly transition” in it — to please mainstream media headline writers — the bulk of it, however, continued with the violence-fomenting lies. “I totally disagree with the outcome of the election, and the facts bear me out,” he insisted. Needless to say, the actual facts are that Biden won and there is no evidence whatsoever of widespread voter fraud. 

Trump doesn’t want peace.

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As Kaitlan Collins of CNN reported late Wednesday, White House aides described Trump as “borderline enthusiastic” when the mob overran the Capitol Building. His belated calls for peace should be understood by his opponents as it is understood by his supporters: empty ass-covering.

His real message, which is not subtle, is that he loves the violence.

But how many other Republicans, especially Republicans with power, agree with Trump? How many can we safely assume are full of it when they speak of peace? Well, just look at how many still support his coup. 

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Right now, those numbers are hard to gauge in the general public, though YouGov did a useful snap poll showing the majority of Republican voters — 68% — refused to describe an overt attempt to steal an election through violence as a threat to democracy. Forty-five percent of those Republicans went so far as to openly cheer the insurrection, but that 68% number is likely closer to the real support levels. It shows who is happy to go along with it, even if they make frowny faces and pretend that they don’t like the more violent aspects of trying to overthrow a democratically elected government. 

The other numbers that are relevant here are 121 and 138. Those are the House Republicans that voted to throw out the election results of Arizona and Pennsylvania, respectively. That means that 57% of House Republicans voted to void Arizona’s election and a whopping 65% of House Republicans voted to void Pennsylvania’s, which would disenfranchise millions of American voters.

The justification for this was false claims of voter fraud, and the justification for writing off the insurrectionists was even more conspiracy theories, as spouted by Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida.

The real reason is, of course, that an increasing number of Republicans believe that elections cannot be legitimate if Democrats win them. 

This is one of those classic situations where watching what people do matters a whole lot more than what they say, an aphorism that’s particularly important when dealing with fascists, autocrats and others flavors of authoritarian, who have always been fond of playing peekaboo when it comes to their real beliefs. (Literally, philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre wrote about this in the 1940s, when the authoritarian flavor of the day was actual Nazis.) There was lots of talk about desiring peace and civility on Capitol Hill yesterday, but when it came down to brass tacks, the majority of Republicans in the House sided with violent insurrectionists on the subject of whether or not a legitimate election should be overthrown and an illegal president installed into office. 

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In his remarks yesterday, Biden said, “The scenes of chaos at the Capitol do not reflect a true America, do not represent who we are. What we’re seeing is a small number of extremists dedicated to lawlessness.”

The first part of that statement is true, at least when it comes to America circa 2021. The majority of Americans are repulsed by the insurrection. The second part of that statement, however, is false. That was no small fringe of Americans, but people who represent the mainstream view of the Republican Party, most of whom support Trump’s illegal efforts to hang onto power. That most don’t have the physical courage to storm the capital — a group that includes Trump himself, who hid in the White House after falsely promising his supporters he would join them — doesn’t change that fact. What matters is that they share the goals of the violent mob. 

Granted, the GOP should be, based on sheer numbers, a minority party. Instead, it is wildly overrepresented in government, due to an outdated Constitution that gives more power to voters in sparsely populated areas than in dense urban areas. There should be no doubt that this disproportionate hold on power is one major reason Republicans are becoming increasingly radical. If they had to win over majorities of Americans, instead of just pandering to a right-wing minority that is concentrated in rural and suburban areas, Republicans would likely be more moderate. 

But it’s also true that 74 million Americans voted for Trump’s reelection — while not the majority, is nearly 47% of the voters. That’s a shockingly high number of people who backed a man who repeatedly signaled, before the election, that a violent coup was on the table should he lose. 

No doubt some of those voters convinced themselves Trump was blowing hot air, and are not happy about how things are going right now. And that was almost certainly the case with some Republican members of Congress, who had been planning to vote in favor of throwing out the electoral college results but changed their mind after they were chased out of the congressional chambers by a violent mob of red hat idiots. In the Senate, most of the “sedition caucus” — 13 or so Republican Senators who were going to vote in favor of objections to counting ballots from some states Biden won — changed their minds, and voted down the objections. 

But not all. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas put out a statement denouncing the insurrectionists, calling the riot “an act of terrorism.” But then he went ahead and sided with the people he deemed terrorists, taking to the Senate floor in the hours after the assault to object to counting the votes from Arizona. 

Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, on Wednesday afternoon, issued a similar smarmy statement declaring, “Violence is not how you achieve change.” He then exposed his true allegiance to the insurrectionists by giving them exactly what they want: A motion to throw out the votes of the entire state of Pennsylvania. 

Empty condemnations of violence are meaningless. What Hawley, Cruz, and the majority of House Republicans are standing for is a belief that elections should be voided if they don’t like the results, and that it’s okay to lie and cheat in order to steal elections. That kind of belief system inevitably leads to political violence, because it shares the same logic as political violence, which is that if you don’t get what you want by playing fairly, you need to break the rules. 

In many ways, Wednesday was a good day — two Democrats won Georgia’s Senate run-off races, and, despite the chaos, Biden’s victory was affirmed. But we cannot give in to pressure to shrug off Wednesday’s events as some meaningless one-off event, not when the majority of Republicans support the aims of the insurrectionists.

Two things can be true at once. It can both be true that the wheels of democracy worked this week. It is also true our democracy is in serious danger, as long as the majority of Republicans keep down this path of authoritarianism. If we let Wednesday’s victory lull us into a belief that everything is fine and the system is working, the next time Republicans try to overturn an election, they’ll be able to pull it off. 

Trump agrees to leave after riot, but more than 140 Republicans vote to stop Biden victory

President Trump finally acknowledged early on Thursday morning that he would soon leave office after Congress convened late into the night to certify President-elect Joe Biden’s victory following a mob assault on the U.S. Capitol by Trump’s supporters that featured widespread looting and vandalism and left four people dead.

Congress rejected multiple Republican objections to the Electoral College results in a late-night joint session held after Trump supporters, personally urged by the president to march on the Capitol during a late-morning rally, attacked and overran police, broke into the Capitol, smashed windows and destroyed property, and forced a lockdown and an evacuation of both the House and Senate chambers. Vice President Mike Pence announced Biden as the winner of the presidential election just after 3:40 a.m. on Thursday.

Trump, who is temporarily locked out of his social media accounts for his role in stoking Wednesday’s riot with fraudulent claims of election rigging, issued a statement minutes later through White House aide Dan Scavino’s Twitter account.

“Even though I totally disagree with the outcome of the election, and the facts bear me out, nevertheless there will be an orderly transition on January 20th,” he said. “I have always said we would continue our fight to ensure that only legal votes were counted. While this represents the end of the greatest first term in presidential history, it’s only the beginning of our fight to Make America Great Again!”

Many lawmakers at the joint session directly blamed Trump for stoking Wednesday’s violence, with more than three dozen Democrats calling for his impeachment while others called on Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove the president from office. Some of the Republican senators who planned to object to the Electoral College results changed their minds after Wednesday’s mayhem but more than 140 Republicans, including seven senators, went ahead with their objections.

Republicans initially planned to challenge the results in at least five states but ultimately raised objections to electors from Arizona and Pennsylvania, which were overwhelmingly defeated. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, joined 121 House Republicans to lead the Arizona challenge. Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., spoke during the debate on Arizona and later signed on to an objection to Pennsylvania’s results but declined to speak. The Senate soundly rejected the Pennsylvania challenge without debate while 138 House Republicans voted to disenfranchise millions of the state’s voters. House Republicans also tried to object to the results in Georgia, Michigan and Nevada but no senator backed their challenge.

Hawley, the first senator to announce he would object to the results, “had blood on his hands,” the Kansas City Star editorial board wrote in a blistering op-ed on Wednesday, arguing that no one except Trump himself was “more responsible” for the Capitol riot.

Though the group of die-hard Trump loyalists in Congress went ahead with their scheme to throw out millions of legal votes, the vast majority of speakers from both parties trashed the plot and the riot that it sparked.

“We gather due to a selfish man’s injured pride and the outrage of supporters who he has deliberately misinformed for the past two months and stirred to action this very morning,” said Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, in a speech that seemed aimed at the history books. “What happened here today was an insurrection incited by the president of the United States.”

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. — who will lose that post after Biden takes office and two new Democratic senators from Georgia are sworn in — warned of lasting damage caused by members of his own party.

“Voters, the courts, and the states have all spoken — they’ve all spoken,” he said. “If we overrule them, it would damage our republic forever.”

“Enough is enough!” declared Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who until now has been a loyal Trump ally, adding that Biden was “lawfully” elected.

“When it’s over, it is over. It is over,” he said. “As a conservative, this is the most offensive concept in the world that one person could disenfranchise 155 million people,” he added.

Outgoing Sen. Kelly Loeffler, R-Ga., fresh off her defeat to the Rev. Raphael Warnock in Tuesday’s runoff election, dropped her plan to challenge the results in her home state after the riot.

“The events that have transpired today have forced me to reconsider,” she said.

On the House side, Rep. Conor Lamb, D-Pa., nearly sparked an inter-party brawl after he directly blamed Republicans for Wednesday’s riot.

“That attack today, it didn’t materialize out of nowhere,” he said. “It was inspired by lies — the same lies that you’re hearing in this room tonight.” Those remarks prompted a heated exchange between Republicans and Democrats sitting behind Lamb, prompting aides to intervene.

Other lawmakers, like freshman Rep. Cori Bush, D-Mo., a progressive who ousted a longtime Democratic incumbent in a primary election, called for Republicans who backed the electoral challenge to be expelled from Congress.

But Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., was unrelenting, parroting the far-right talking point that antifa members were to blame for Wednesday’s violence even though countless videos and photos show Trump supporters, including well-known QAnon figures and even a West Virginia state legislator, storming the Capitol and invading the Senate chamber and lawmakers’ offices.

Admitting that he didn’t know “if the reports are true,” Gaetz declared on the House floor that “some of the people who breached the Capitol today were not Trump supporters. They were masquerading as Trump supporters and in fact, were members of the violent terrorist group antifa.”

Gaetz’s false claim was echoed across conservative media and by other right-wing lawmakers like Rep. Mo Brooks, R-Ala., a leader of the pro-Trump objection caucus. Even during a night full of falsehoods about the election, the egregious antifa falsehood drew boos from the House chamber, given the ample evidence that pro-Trump attackers posed for photos, live-streamed their riot and bragged about it afterward.

Police said four people died during the riot, including a woman who was reportedly shot by officers when she tried to breach the House chamber. The woman was identified by her family as Ashli Babbitt, a 14-year Air Force veteran and avowed QAnon conspiracist, according to the San Diego news outlet KUSI and Fox 5 DC. The other three died from “separate medical emergencies,” police said. At least 14 officers were injured and 56 people were arrested on Wednesday, including 26 on the Capitol grounds. Police also found two pipe bombs at the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee and the Republican National Committee.

The mob assault on the Capitol was the culmination of Trump’s baseless election fraud claims, which began well before any votes had been cast or counted. Trump and his supporters urged attendees at Wednesday morning’s rally on the National Mall to go to the Capitol, and Rudy Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer, even proposed settling the election dispute in a “trial by combat.” Trump later resisted activating the D.C. National Guard after Capitol Police were overrun, prompting Pence to step in and mobilize the troops no questionable authority, according to CNN.

“To those who wreaked havoc in our Capitol today, you did not win,” Pence said when he reconvened the joint session Wednesday night. “Violence never wins. Freedom wins. And this is still the people’s house.”

The comments were a stark departure from Trump’s statement earlier in the day, urging the rioters to leave but adding that he “loved” them and that they were “very special.” Trump’s role in fomenting the violence has sparked an exodus of White House employees and other Trump employees, including former White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney (who until Thursday was a special envoy to Northern Ireland) and deputy national security adviser Matt Pottinger. Stephanie Grisham, chief of staff to Melania Trump and the former White House press secretary, has also resigned along with deputy White House press secretary Sarah Matthews. National security adviser Robert O’Brien and Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, who is married to McConnell, are also considering stepping down, according to NBC News.

Many observers have questioned why law enforcement was so unprepared for a violent insurrection after Trump supporters publicly announced their plans to storm the Capitol weeks ahead of time. Intelligence agencies circulated “scores of social media posts” calling for violence against lawmakers, according to ABC News.

“I have always felt safe at the Capitol,” Rep. Karen Bass, D-Calif., told the outlet. “It would have never dawned on me that this is the place where I needed to be afraid.”

Rep. Tim Ryan, D-Ohio, told Politico there would be a “number of people” fired in response to the “insurrection and the attempted coup, but also the lack of professional planning and dealing with what we knew was going to occur.”

“If Black people were storming the Capitol, they would have been treated so much differently than they were today,” Ryan said. “I don’t think there’s any question that communities of color would have been handled much, much differently.”

Three hearty winter braises to tackle in 30ish minutes

(It’s the end of the long workday (or the start of an extra-long week) and we’re hungry. Like, “can’t-think-straight” hungry. Luckily, Food52 contributor EmilyC wants to do all the thinking for us. In Dinner’s Ready, her monthly column on weeknight wonders, she shares three simple, flavor-packed recipes that are connected by a single idea or ingredient. Stick with Emily, and you’ll have a good dinner on the table in no time. Today, three hearty, wintry braises that don’t need to simmer all day on the stove.

* * *

Braising may bring to mind tough cuts of meat like short ribs, lamb shanks, and pork shoulder that slowly simmer away for hours until meltingly tender. It’s a mostly hands-off cooking technique perfect for a Sunday afternoon of puttering around the house doing chores, or cozying-up with a blanket and a movie.

But braising on a Tuesday night when you need dinner fast? Yes, that’s possible, too — even without a pressure cooker! In fact, quick braises that come together in 30 minutes can be every bit as delicious and nourishing as their slow-cooked counterparts.

“Braising refers to tucking a few ingredients into a heavy pot with a bit of liquid, covering the pot tightly, and letting everything simmer peacefully until tender and intensely flavorful,” writes Molly Stevens in “All About Braising,” one of my all-time-favorite, most dog-eared cookbooks. Stevens points out that the basic technique is the same for long versus short braises; the only difference is time.

Which is to say: All you need for a speedy weeknight braise are quick-cooking ingredients, a flavorful braising liquid, and a pot, Dutch oven, or deep skillet with a lid. (No lid? Use a baking sheet!)

Vegetables, fruits, and naturally tender proteins, such as sausage, seafood, and chicken, are all fair game. Sturdy, winter vegetables — cauliflower, cabbages, root vegetables, winter squash, hardy greens — work particularly well because they won’t turn to mush as they’re softening. I like to cut them into small chunks or thin slices so they cook quickly and evenly. This style of cooking also provides an opportunity to build flavor in the pot from the bottom-up — for example, by searing the star ingredient until it’s deeply caramelized or sautéing aromatics and spices in olive oil until they’re fragrant.

These seemingly endless possibilities led me to develop three quick, comforting braises for any night of the week. Make them as written, or feel free to off-road based on what you have on hand. No matter which direction you take, it’s difficult to go wrong with these nourishing meals that’ll boost your spirits (and warm you from the inside out) on a cold day.

Coconut and Chile Braised Winter Squash

This boldly flavored, vegetable-packed braise (which happens to be vegan) is exactly the type of dinner I want to turn to after the holidays and into the new year. Winter squash is the star ingredient (either butternut or delicata work well), and the braising liquid is coconut milk and chile sauce perfumed with coriander and rosemary. It’s a dish that’s far more than the sum of its parts: the starches of the squash beautifully meld with and thicken the coconut milk, and the savory-tangy-spicy-sweet flavors come through in every bite. Serve with couscous or grains to sop up all the ultra-creamy sauce.

Recipe: Coconut & Chile Braised Winter Squash

Puttanesca-Style Cauliflower With Linguine

This play on the classic Italian sauce puttanesca has the brash, briny elements we know and love (anchovies, capers, olives!) but invites fun-loving cauliflower to the party. The florets become meltingly tender, almost silky, from a quick braise in olive oil and some of the starchy pasta water, and the resulting sauce perfectly cloaks linguine (or any type of pasta). I’ll never turn down any version of puttanesca, but I’ll admit that I’m quite partial to this rich, reimagined rendition.

Recipe: Puttanesca-Style Cauliflower With Linguine

Braised Red Cabbage With Kielbasa, Apple and Mustard Cream

This hearty, cozy one-skillet dinner is inspired by a braised red cabbage side dish from Molly Steven’s “All About Braising“ that I’ve been making for years. Charring thin slices of the red cabbage builds big flavor — and ensures a speedy braise! — and a mix of stock, apple cider vinegar, and maple syrup serves as a tangy sweet-sour braising liquid. Don’t sleep on the mustard cream, which you brush over the kielbasa, cabbage, and apples near the end; it adds an extra layer of texture, flavor, and richness (a trick that happily extends to other vegetable braises, as well).

Recipe: Braised Red Cabbage With Kielbasa, Apple & Mustard Cream

Trump blocked on Facebook “indefinitely,” suspended by Twitter as tech platforms finally take action

Three of the world’s most powerful social media companies — Facebook, Twitter and YouTube — acted against President Donald Trump for posting content that either expressed sympathy for the rioters who swarmed the Capitol on Wednesday in an apparent attempt to violently overturn the 2020 election or for spreading disinformation about the election’s legitimacy.

In a series of tweets posted Wednesday, Twitter explained that “as a result of the unprecedented and ongoing violent situation in Washington, D.C., we have required the removal of three @realDonaldTrump Tweets that were posted earlier today for repeated and severe violations of our Civic Integrity policy.” These tweets included Trump’s video response to his supporters rioting in the Capitol and one in which he defended the insurrectionists by writing that “these are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots” and urged the rioters to “remember this day forever!”

The company added that Trump’s account would be locked for 12 hours and will remain locked if that and the other incendiary tweets are not removed. If Trump violates any Twitter Rules in the future, including their Civic Integrity or Violent Threats policies, the company said that it will permanently suspend Trump’s account. As of Thursday morning, the suspension window has passed and the tweets are no longer visible on Trump’s timeline, but so far, the president has not tweeted today.

Traditionally Twitter does not apply its anti-violence policy to world leaders, arguing that it is in the public interest to see what important political figures have to say. On Wednesday, however, Twitter added that “our public interest policy — which has guided our enforcement action in this area for years — ends where we believe the risk of harm is higher and/or more severe.”

Facebook took a similar action against Trump on Wednesday after finding that he violated the company’s policies with two of his posts, including the video response to his supporter’s actions at the Capitol, in which he repeated his baseless claim that the 2020 election was stolen from him and told the mob, “We love you. You’re very special.”

Facebook Vice President for Integrity Guy Rosen tweeted that the video was taken down because “this is an emergency situation and we are taking appropriate emergency measures, including removing President Trump’s video. We removed it because on balance we believe it contributes to rather than diminishes the risk of ongoing violence.”

Facebook and Instagram, a photo-sharing site owned by the company, both subsequently decided to prohibit Trump’s accounts from publishing for 24 hours. On Thursday, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that, because “the shocking events of the last 24 hours clearly demonstrate that President Donald Trump intends to use his remaining time in office to undermine the peaceful and lawful transition of power to his elected successor, Joe Biden,” his company is “extending the block we have placed on his Facebook and Instagram accounts indefinitely and for at least the next two weeks until the peaceful transition of power is complete.”

Facebook has faced harsh criticism in the past for allegedly giving preferential treatment to right-wing news sources and throttling progressive ones, as well as for a supposed Instagram “bug” that hid hashtags which criticized Trump while not doing the same thing for Joe Biden. These policies have caused Facebook employees to push back against Zuckerberg’s policies, including staging a virtual walkout in June to protest the company allowing Trump’s violent and sophistic posts to remain on their site. This internal dissension continues; according to BuzzFeed News, Facebook froze conversation on at least three threads in their internal message board among employees who talked about banning Trump entirely from their platform. The company did not provide an explanation for why it did this.

Alex Stamos, Facebook’s former chief security officer and currently a professor at Stanford University, told BuzzFeed News that “you don’t want incredibly powerful private actors choosing which democratic actors get speech, and the basis of that concern is the protection of that democracy. But the votes are counted, the president lost, and he’s now rejecting the democratic will. There are no legitimate arguments for keeping him up.”

Twitter and Facebook are not alone in acting against Trump. YouTube took down the video — the same video that factored into the Twitter and Facebook suspensions, in which Trump addressed the coup attempt in Washington — because the president lied by claiming that he had won the 2020 election; although the company will allow the video to be cited by sources that place it in a factually accurate context, as of December 2020 it has banned any video that repeats Trump’s false claims about widespread voter fraud costing him that election. The company confirmed to Fast Company that this is why it took down that video. Snapchat has also taken the step of locking Trump’s account there, which the president regularly uses to post social media content.

Trump has clashed with social media platforms in the past. After Twitter added a fact-check label to two of his tweets attempting to lay the foundations for him to claim the election was stolen by falsely stating that mail-in ballots are likely to be fraudulent, Trump said he would respond to social media platforms he perceived as hostile by moving to “strong regulate” or “close them down” and subsequently signed an executive order that instructed the Federal Communications Commission to draft a new regulation that could exempt those companies from certain liability protections.

“The threat by Donald Trump to shut down social media platforms that he finds objectionable is a dangerous overreaction by a thin-skinned president. Any such move would be blatantly unconstitutional under the First Amendment,” Harvard Law professor Laurence Tribe told Salon by email at the time. “That doesn’t make the threat harmless, however, because the president has many ways in which he can hurt individual companies, and his threat to do so as a way of silencing dissent is likely to chill freedom of expression and will undermine constitutional democracy in the long run.”