Tuesday, the day after January 6, 2025. Annette’s News Roundup.
Joe is always busy.
Joe Biden: What Americans should remember about Jan. 6.
On this Jan. 6, order will be called. Clerks, staff and members of Congress will gather to certify the results of a free and fair presidential election and ensure a peaceful transfer of power. Capitol Police will stand guard over the citadel of our democracy. The vice president of the United States, faithful to her duty under our Constitution, will preside over the certification of her opponent’s victory in the November election.
It is a ceremony that for more than two centuries has made America a beacon to the world, a ceremony that ratifies the will of the voters. For much of our history, this proceeding was treated as pro forma, a routine act. But after what we all witnessed on Jan. 6, 2021, we know we can never again take it for granted. Violent insurrectionists attacked the Capitol, threatened the lives of elected officials and assaulted brave law enforcement officers.
We should be proud that our democracy withstood this assault. And we should be glad we will not see such a shameful attack again this year. But we should not forget. We must remember the wisdom of the adage that any nation that forgets its past is doomed to repeat it. We cannot accept a repeat of what occurred four years ago. An unrelenting effort has been underway to rewrite — even erase — the history of that day. To tell us we didn’t see what we all saw with our own eyes. To dismiss concerns about it as some kind of partisan obsession. To explain it away as a protest that just got out of hand.
This is not what happened.
In time, there will be Americans who didn’t witness the Jan. 6 riot firsthand but will learn about it from footage and testimony of that day, from what is written in history books and from the truth we pass on to our children. We cannot allow the truth to be lost.
Thousands of rioters crossed the National Mall and climbed the Capitol walls, smashing windows and kicking down doors. Just blocks away, a bomb was found near the location of the incoming vice president, threatening her life. Law enforcement officials were beaten, dragged, knocked unconscious and stomped upon. Some police officers ultimately died as a result.
As president-elect that day, I spoke to the country and called for peace, and for the certification to resume. Four years later, leaving office, I am determined to do everything I can to respect the peaceful transfer of power and restore the traditions we have long respected in America. The election will be certified peacefully. I have invited the incoming president to the White House on the morning of Jan. 20, and I will be present for his inauguration that afternoon.
But on this day, we cannot forget. This is what we owe those who founded this nation, those who have fought for it and died for it. And we should commit to remembering Jan. 6, 2021, every year. To remember it as a day when our democracy was put to the test and prevailed. To remember that democracy — even in America — is never guaranteed. We should never forget it is our democracy that makes everything possible — our freedoms, our rights, our liberties, our dreams. And that it falls to every generation of Americans to defend and protect it. (Opinion piece in The Washington Post).
January 6th as it is supposed to be, even when it breaks our hearts.
I cry for our damaged Democracy and for our beloved Vice President.
Four Years After Capitol Riot, Congress Certifies Trump’s Victory Peacefully.
Vice President Kamala D. Harris presided over the certification of her own loss without disputing it, and Democrats made no move to challenge the results.
A joint session of Congress on Monday certified President-elect Donald J. Trump’s victory in the 2024 election, peacefully performing a basic ritual of democracy that was brutally disrupted four years ago by a violent pro-Trump mob inflamed by his lie about a stolen election.
There was no hint of a similar scene this time, although security had been stepped up at the Capitol. Unlike Mr. Trump back then, Vice President Kamala Harris did not dispute her loss in November, and unlike Republicans in the aftermath of the 2020 balloting, Democrats made no objections during the counting of the Electoral College votes.
Instead, Ms. Harris stoically presided over the certification of her own loss without interruption. The presentation of the results unfolded quickly without drama, as House and Senate lawmakers who had been designated in advance read out the number of electoral votes from each state in alphabetical order, and who won them.
One by one, the lawmakers, Republicans and Democrats, rose to declare each state’s electoral votes “regular in form and authentic,” and nobody rose to challenge any. The only sign of partisanship in the House chamber was in the applause: Only Republicans applauded after the counting of each state that Mr. Trump won, and rose at the end for a standing ovation when it was announced that he had secured a majority, while only Democrats clapped for the states that Ms. Harris won and rose to applaud when her total electoral votes were announced.
Inside a Capitol blanketed in snow from a major winter storm overnight, the House chamber was fairly empty as Ms. Harris led members of the Senate across the Capitol on Monday afternoon to preside over the joint session. Earlier in the day, she had posted a video online in which she described her ceremonial role as “a sacred obligation — one I will uphold guided by love of country, loyalty to our Constitution and my unwavering faith in the American people.”
She told reporters as she made her way through the Rotunda that the important takeaway from the proceedings should be that “Democracy must be upheld by the people.” Her aides said presiding over a peaceful transition of power was one of her most important final acts in office.
On the dais in front of the House chamber, Ms. Harris made polite small talk with Speaker Mike Johnson, who four years ago played a leading role in trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
As lawmakers read their scripted presentation of electoral votes, they addressed Ms. Harris each time as “Madam President,” referring to her status as president of the Senate even as they were making it official that she would not hold that title for the next four years.
Amid the calm scene, however, there were reminders of the violence that had played out. The Capitol was on heavy lockdown, with tall black metal fencing around the building, and increased federal, state and local security resources on hand. For the first time, the day had been designated by the Homeland Security Department as a “national special security event.”
Lawmakers and law enforcement officials were determined to be prepared after the violence on Jan. 6, 2021, when protesters egged on by Mr. Trump’s false claim that he had won the election stormed the Capitol, wreaking havoc in a riot tied to the deaths of seven people, including three police officers.
President Biden has focused on ensuring a smooth and orderly transition of power, but Sunday night, he warned Americans not to forget the violent attack at the Capitol. Writing in The Washington Post, Mr. Biden accused Mr. Trump and his supporters of trying “to rewrite — even erase — the history of that day.”
Four years after Mr. Trump urged his supporters to “fight like hell” and march to the Capitol during a rally at the Ellipse, some Trump loyalists in Congress have worked to distance themselves from criticism of the rioters. Many Republicans have tried to whitewash the events of that day. And the president-elect has said he will pardon people convicted on charges stemming from their actions on Jan. 6, 2021.
Even as their party has for years called Mr. Trump a threat to the country’s foundational principles, Democrats refrained from challenging his victory.
“Our loyalties lie with the Constitution and the rule of law,” Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and minority leader, said Monday.
And he warned Mr. Trump against pardoning the criminals who assaulted police officers that day, which he said “would be a dangerous endorsement of political violence. It is wrong, it is reckless, and would be an insult to the memory of those who died in connection to that day.” (New York Times).
For Harris, an Awkward Election Task: Certifying the Vote She Lost.
The vice presidency comes with plenty of indignities, but probably none greater than the one that Kamala Harris endured on Monday when she presided over the certification of her own defeat.
Standing in the rostrum of the House of Representatives, a gavel in her hand and a look of imperturbable stoicism on her face, Ms. Harris officiated as the two houses of Congress met in joint session to formally count the Electoral College votes for president.
“The votes for president of the United States are as follows,” she declared after each state’s totals were read. “Donald J. Trump of the state of Florida has received 312 votes.” At that point, Republican lawmakers rose to their feet to applaud. Ms. Harris gave a small, polite smile as she let them have their moment.
Then she continued. “Kamala D. Harris of the state of California has received 226 votes,” she intoned. Now it was the Democrats’ turn to stand and applaud. Ms. Harris glanced over to that side of the chamber with a little smile of thanks, then gently gaveled the body to order. After reading the votes certifying JD Vance as vice president, she formally ordered the results entered in the record.
And with that, Kamala Harris the vice president officially put an end to Kamala Harris the candidate’s quest for the presidency — at least for this election. At that point, members of both parties rose to applaud, seemingly out of respect for the no-doubt-painful task she had just taken on without complaint or objection.
There was also certainly a little bit of relief that everyone had gotten through the moment peacefully, unlike the maelstrom visited upon the Capitol on this day four years earlier when Mr. Trump refused to accept defeat and inspired a mob that stormed the building to try to stop the count certifying it.
Ms. Harris made no comments while wielding the gavel beyond her scripted duties, but she released a video earlier in the day declaring that she would fulfill her obligation as outlined in the Constitution and reaffirming the importance of the peaceful transfer of power. After the certification ceremony, she spoke briefly before news cameras in a House office building.
“It was obviously a very important day, and it was about what should be the norm and what the American people should be able to take for granted, which is that one of the most important pillars of our democracy is that there will be a peaceful transfer of power,” she said. “And today, I did what I have done my entire career, which is take seriously the oath that I have taken many times to support and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
She spoke for barely a minute and did not take questions before leaving. Her face was impassive and her tone sober. She did not address how she felt about being the formal instrument of Mr. Trump’s return to power, nor did she even mention him by name. Instead, she stuck to encomiums to the institutions of the Republic that he challenged four years ago.
“I do believe very strongly that America’s democracy is only as strong as our willingness to fight for it — every single person, their willingness to fight for and respect the importance of our democracy,” Ms. Harris said. “Otherwise, it is very fragile and it will not be able to withstand moments of crisis. And today, America’s democracy stood.”
Unlike Mr. Trump, Ms. Harris has made no effort to cast doubt on the election but has instead accepted defeat graciously. Neither she nor President Biden has sought to pressure the Justice Department, members of Congress, governors, state legislators or election officials to reverse the vote she lost, as Mr. Trump did four years ago.
She has not filed dozens of lawsuits that would be tossed out by judges as frivolous or unfounded. She has not repeated false fraud allegations or wild conspiracy theories that her own advisers told her were untrue.
Nor did she use her role as presiding officer to reject votes for Mr. Trump and Mr. Vance the way Mr. Trump tried to get Vice President Mike Pence to do to Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris in 2021. Mr. Pence refused, saying he did not have such power, and Congress subsequently passed a law reaffirming that interpretation.
The contrast between Jan. 6, 2021, and Jan. 6, 2025, could hardly be starker. Four years ago, the mob ransacking the Capitol chanted, “Hang Mike Pence,” while the Secret Service rushed the outgoing vice president to safety. Ms. Harris, then a senator on the verge of becoming vice president, was at Democratic National Committee headquarters at the time and also had to be evacuated, when a pipe bomb was found near a park bench outside.
Ms. Harris has largely remained out of public view since the election amid speculation about what her future may hold. Some allies want her to run for president again in 2028, while others believe she should instead run for governor of California next year. She has not given any public indication about her thoughts beyond saying she intends to remain active.
Ms. Harris is not the first vice president to lose a presidential election and preside over its certification. In modern times, two sitting vice presidents who lost achingly close races for president — Richard M. Nixon in 1960 and Al Gore in 2000 — had to stand in the rostrum where she stood and count the votes against them.
Another vice president who lost a presidential bid, Hubert Humphrey in 1968, skipped the ceremony to attend the funeral of the first U.N. secretary general, leaving the task of counting the votes to Senator Richard Russell, Democrat of Georgia and the president pro tempore of the Senate. Other vice presidents had to preside over vote counts certifying their defeat for re-election, including Walter F. Mondale in 1981, Dan Quayle in 1993 and, of course, Mr. Pence in 2021.
Both Mr. Nixon and Mr. Gore had plenty of motive to object to the outcomes that they certified. Mr. Nixon lost to John F. Kennedy by about 118,000 votes out of nearly 69 million cast. Advisers urged him to challenge the results but he refused, maintaining that it would tear the country apart.
Forty years later, Mr. Gore actually won the popular tally by more than 500,000 votes out of 105 million cast, only to fall short in the Electoral College. After the Supreme Court ended five weeks of recounts in Florida, Mr. Gore accepted the decision of the justices and congratulated George W. Bush.
Both vice presidents performed the duty of certifying their defeats with determined humor and grace, generating standing ovations from members of both parties.
Noting that it was the first time in a century that a presidential candidate had finalized the results of an election he lost, Mr. Nixon called the situation a “striking and eloquent example of the stability of our constitutional system” and institutions of self-government. “In our campaigns,” he said, “no matter how hard-fought they may be, no matter how close the election may turn out to be, those who lose accept the verdict and support those who win.”
When his turn came, Mr. Gore even repeatedly ruled out of order efforts by a handful of House Democrats to object to the Florida vote. “May God bless our new president and our new vice president,” Mr. Gore said after declaring Mr. Bush the winner, “and may God bless the United States of America.” (Peter Baker, Chief White House Correspondent, New York Times).
Who owns January 6?
The Dutch historian Pieter Geyl said, “History is an argument without end.” Not always. Many big historical questions are firmly settled. No one seriously suggests that the Watergate break-in was justified, and even Marjorie Taylor Greene retracted her claim that Sept. 11 was an inside job.
At first, the same consensus seemed to apply to Jan. 6, 2021. “Like all Americans, I am outraged by the violence, lawlessness and mayhem,” Donald Trump said the day after the riot he inspired. Mr. Trump appears to have crossed out these lines in his statement addressed to the rioters: “You do not represent me. You do not represent our movement.” Even then, he couldn’t bring himself to say that. But he did say that they did not represent the country, and the guilt of those who ransacked the Capitol hardly seemed ripe for revision.
Of course, it didn’t take long for Mr. Trump to move from condemning the rioters to celebrating them. And with his victory in November, the narrative of the most serious threat to the American Republic since the Civil War is suddenly up for grabs.
For Mr. Trump, the new struggle over Jan. 6 is a chance to rewrite not just the most irresponsible moment of his irresponsible life but American history itself.
For his critics, Jan. 6 has become an excruciating anniversary — a reminder of how much constitutional muscle we lost that day and how much more could wither in the next four years. Back then, many of us comforted ourselves that for all the trauma, at least Mr. Trump was gone for good. Now he’s back, his election to be certified a second time on the same date in the same chamber desecrated by his insurrectionists.
With Jack Smith’s criminal prosecution dead and the investigative committees of Congress in friendly hands, Mr. Trump has an opening to erase the black mark of Jan. 6 on the MAGA movement. He has already begun to gaslight Americans over whom to blame. Believers in the rule of law and the sovereignty of fact will have to paint over the whitewash with truth. It won’t be easy.
Until 2021, Jan. 6 was not a significant day on the American calendar. From 1892 to 1996, the winner of the popular vote also won the Electoral College, which meant that the vice president opening the certificates of the electoral votes was a vestigial ritual that rarely made the front page.
It did on Jan. 6, 1961, when Vice President Richard Nixon, who lost by a hair, announced John F. Kennedy’s election from the rostrum. Forty years later, Vice President Al Gore, who beat George W. Bush in the 2000 popular vote, announced Mr. Bush’s Electoral College victory, after Mr. Bush won Florida by 537 votes. And on Monday, Vice President Kamala Harris will put on the same wan smile employed by Mr. Nixon and Mr. Gore and announce that Mr. Trump won the election.
Mr. Nixon called the Jan. 6 declaration of an opponent’s victory “a striking and eloquent example of the stability of our constitutional system.”
Now Jan. 6 is more like a striking and alarming example of the fragility of our constitutional system.
The 2022 Electoral Count Reform Act has made it harder for the vice president and state legislatures to overturn elections. But the frightening lesson of Jan. 6 remains: If the president is determined to sabotage our system, he (or she) can get away with it. And if the voters don’t care — as most did not in 2024 — the saboteur in chief can be returned to high office.
Jan. 6 is at the center of what historians will probably view as a tragic set of missed opportunities. The House Jan. 6 committee did a terrific job of illuminating what happened and how Mr. Trump could be called to account. But Merrick Garland’s Justice Department dawdled too long in 2021 and 2022, and the derelict Supreme Court ran out the clock.
Mr. Trump now claims that “nothing” wrong was done that day, except by Democrats like Nancy Pelosi. “Nothing” is a good word to associate with him about Jan. 6. That’s what he did for 187 minutes while the Constitution he took an oath to defend came under attack. He was too busy watching TV.
Mr. Trump’s choice for F.B.I. director, Kash Patel, has raised money for families of the Jan. 6 prisoners and peddled outlandish conspiracy theories claiming that undercover F.B.I. agents instigated the riot to discredit the MAGA movement. Mr. Patel, under questioning from Democrats at his confirmation hearings, will have to decide whether Jan. 6 was a wonderful “free speech movement,” as he called it, or an F.B.I.-inspired riot. He can’t have it both ways. If the latter, will he support pardoning the dastardly F.B.I. agents he has promised to fire?
The rioters Mr. Trump has pledged to pardon could include those convicted of attacking 140 police officers, many of whom were seriously injured. This leaves MAGA supporters who claim to support vigorous law enforcement twisting themselves into a pretzel of hypocrisy. They back the blue — unless it’s a coup.
Fortunately, polls show that roughly 60 percent of Americans oppose Mr. Trump’s plan to pardon the insurrectionists. Even many Trump voters didn’t like what happened that day. But the new president’s relentless salesmanship of his exculpatory narrative could fuzz up the issue. The bully pulpit is a good place to bully critics and flush the memory of a Confederate flag near the Rotunda and a noose for Mike Pence on the lawn.
And he will have plenty of help. It’s easy to forget how much support Mr. Trump still had on the night of Jan. 6 from members who just a few hours earlier were cowering in fear. Even then, he got 147 Republicans in the House and Senate to agree to challenge the results of a fair election.
To cover his tracks, Mr. Trump always goes on offense. First comes what-about-ism (“What about antifa in Portland and Minneapolis in 2020?”), followed by projection. So now he wants to see Liz Cheney prosecuted for “witness tampering” because she spoke with Cassidy Hutchinson in advance of Ms. Hutchinson’s explosive 2022 testimony before the Jan. 6 committee. His attack dogs on Capitol Hill know perfectly well that it’s routine for members of Congress to speak privately with friendly committee witnesses. They do it themselves.
Both sides in the struggle over Jan. 6 are trying to create what the critic Van Wyck Brooks called a “usable past.”
Sometimes these master historical narratives are used for good. The founders invoked the 1786-87 Shays’s Rebellion — a revolt by debt-ridden farmers in western Massachusetts — as an argument to scrap the Articles of Confederation and write stronger central authority into the new U.S. Constitution, including the power to “suppress domestic insurrections.”
And sometimes the past is merely a prologue to propaganda. Horst Wessel, a young Nazi believed to have been killed by Communists, was turned into a martyr and celebrated in an infamous Nazi song. Don’t be surprised if the J6 Choir — made up of MAGA prisoners whose recording was played at Trump rallies — moves beyond its remix of “The Star-Spangled Banner” to “The Ashli Babbitt Song,” named for the woman shot and killed while violently breaking into the Capitol.
“Democracy is a process, and we will survive this sucker punch,” Representative Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland, said last week. But it’s also a muscle that must be exercised. Future perceptions of Jan. 6 will depend not just on the facts but also on who wins the next election. Democracy will determine how the threat to democracy is argued about, without end. (Jonathan Alter, Guest Opinion Column, New York Times).
Write a letter to the Justice Department.
Write to Merrick Garland and ask him to release the Jack Smith report. You can do it here. 👇
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