Trump and Justice Dept. Lawyer Said to Have Plotted to Oust Acting Attorney General

 HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

In the last, desperate days of his attempt to keep his grip on the presidency, Trump plotted with a lawyer in the Department of Justice, Jeffrey Clark [above], to oust the acting attorney general. The plan was to replace Jeffrey A. Rosen, [below] who replaced Attorney General William Barr when he left on December 23, with Clark himself. Clark would then press Trump’s attacks on the election results.

A story by Katie Benner in the New York Times explains that as soon as Rosen replaced Barr, Trump began to pressure Rosen to challenge the election results, appoint special counsels to investigate disproven voter fraud, and look into irregularities in the Dominion voting machines (Dominion is now suing pro-Trump lawyer Sidney Powell for defamation). Rosen refused. He told Trump the Justice Department had found no evidence of anything that would have changed the election results.

Trump complained about Rosen and moved to replace him with Clark, who promised to stop Congress from counting the certified Electoral College votes on January 6. This struggle came to a crisis on Sunday, January 3, 2021, when the news broke that Trump had called Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to pressure him to “find” the votes Trump needed to win the state. That evening, the senior officials at the Department of Justice agreed to resign as a group if Trump put Clark in as the new acting attorney general.

The vow that the leaders of the Department of Justice would quit if Trump tried to demote Rosen and put Clark in his place made Trump back off from his plan to pervert the Department of Justice. 

In addition to this bombshell story, there is more news about the Capitol attack. Court documents filed on Tuesday reveal that some of the rioters had made plans ahead of time to attack the Capitol, and had planned to “arrest” lawmakers on charges of “treason” and “election fraud.” [cf FiveStarFinal]

An investigation by NPR reveals that nearly 1 in 5 of the rioters charged so far have a history of serving in the military (only about 7% of Americans in general are military veterans). Prosecutors have indicated they are planning to bring charges of seditious conspiracy against some of the suspects, charges that, if proven, bring up to 20-year jail terms.

President Biden has asked new Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines to assess the dangers of domestic violent extremism. Press Secretary Jen Psaki today said of the effort: "We are committed to developing policies and strategies based on facts, on objective and rigorous analysis and on our respect for constitutionally protected free speech and political activities."

Congress today set the calendar for the impeachment trial of the former president for incitement of insurrection. The House will formally deliver the article of impeachment to the Senate on Monday evening. The senators will be sworn in as jurors on Tuesday, and then the Senate will turn to confirming Biden’s nominees and considering the coronavirus stimulus package Biden wants while Trump’s lawyers and the House impeachment managers prepare their briefs and arguments. The trial will begin February 9, and is expected to be shorter than Trump’s first impeachment trial, since the charges are simpler and the evidence clearer.

At stake in this impeachment trial is more than the fate of Donald Trump, who is, after all, no longer president. At stake is, in part, the fate of the Republican Party. A number of Republicans who themselves egged on the rioters by claiming to distrust the election results are trying to discredit the trial and say it is pointless.

This wing of the party is led by former chair of the Judiciary Committee Lindsey Graham, who is especially eager to have the issue go away since one of its charges reflects on him. The article of impeachment notes that Trump had tried “to subvert and obstruct the certification of the results of the 2020 Presidential election” with, among other things, “a phone call on January 2, 2021, during which President Trump urged the secretary of state of Georgia, Brad Raffensperger, to ‘find’ enough votes to overturn the Georgia Presidential election results and threatened Secretary Raffensperger if he failed to do so.”

We know about that phone call because Raffensperger recorded it, and Raffensperger said he did so because Lindsey Graham had made a similar call. Raffensperger said he wanted some insurance in case Trump misrepresented his call as Graham had.

As pro-Trump Republicans are defending the former president and downplaying the attempted coup, along with their own role in the discrediting of Biden’s victory, other party members would very much like to see the party purged of the Trump element. With his speech condemning Trump for feeding lies to the rioters and provoking them, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) seems to be trying to lead his party away from the Trump personality cult.

Meanwhile, the Senate still has not begun to organize since McConnell is insisting on a promise from Democrats that they will not end the filibuster. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) says that proposal is unacceptable.

Press Secretary Psaki reiterated today that Biden’s position on the filibuster hasn’t changed; he does not want to end it. But she tied that declaration to his desire to get a coronavirus relief package through Congress on a bipartisan basis. There is a carrot and a stick in that statement: the carrot is that Biden is offering to share the credit for such a package with Republicans; the stick is that if they block such a measure entirely, Biden will likely back whatever Schumer does to get a bill through.

There are two places where lawmakers have agreed lately, though. Last night, the leadership of the Capitol Police abruptly moved National Guard soldiers to a garage for their break time. These troops are deployed to protect Washington, D.C., against domestic insurrectionists and have worked grueling hours. When news of the soldiers lying down in parking spaces reached lawmakers of both parties, they rushed to get the service members back indoors.

In another bipartisan move, lawmakers of both parties have introduced measures in both houses of Congress to award Officer Eugene Goodman a Congressional Gold Medal. Goodman is the Capitol Police officer who led rioters away from the Senate chamber on January 6 and thus bought enough time for the senators there to escape to safety. The Congressional Gold Medal is one of the two highest civilian awards in the United States. In our history, only 163 of them have been cast.

The Senate bill reads: “By putting his own life on the line and successfully, singlehandedly leading insurrectionists away from the floor of the Senate Chamber, Officer Eugene Goodman performed his duty to protect the Congress with distinction, and by his actions Officer Goodman left an indelible mark on American history.”

Self-styled militia members planned on storming the U.S. Capitol days in advance of Jan. 6 attack, court documents say.

WASHINGTON POST

Self-styled militia members from Virginia, Ohio and other states made plans to storm the U.S. Capitol days in advance of the Jan. 6 attack, and then communicated in real time as they breached the building on opposite sides and talked about hunting for lawmakers, according to court documents filed Tuesday.

U.S. authorities charged an apparent leader of the Oath Keepers extremist group, Thomas Edward Caldwell, 66, of Berryville, Va., in the attack, alleging that the Navy veteran helped organize a ring of dozens who coordinated their movements as they “stormed the castle” to disrupt the confirmation of President-elect Joe Biden’s electoral college victory.

Members of the Oath Keepers, an extremist group, were among supporters of President Trump at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. (Jim Bourg/Reuters)

“We have about 30-40 of us. We are sticking together and sticking to the plan,” co-defendant Jessica Watkins, 38, an Army veteran, said while the breach was underway, according to court documents.

“You are executing citizen’s arrest. Arrest this assembly, we have probable cause for acts of treason, election fraud,” a man replied, according to audio recordings of communications between Watkins and others during the incursion.

“We are in the main dome right now. We are rocking it. They are throwing grenades, they are fricking shooting people with paint balls. But we are in here,” a woman believed to be Watkins said, according to court documents.

A man then responds, “Get it, Jess,” adding, “This is . . . everything we f---ing trained for!”

FBI charging papers against Caldwell, Watkins and a third person, former U.S. Marine Donovan Crowl, 50, allege that Caldwell and others coordinated in advance to disrupt Congress, scouted for lodging and recruited Oath Keepers members from North Carolina and like-minded groups from the Shenandoah Valley. The group claims thousands of members who assert the right to defy government orders they deem improper. The plotters both anticipated violence and continued to act in concert after the break-in, investigators alleged in court documents. 

Attempts to reach attorneys for Caldwell, Watkins and Crowl have been unsuccessful. No one immediately responded to messages left at numbers connected to Caldwell.

Jessica Watkins, a self-described militia member, faces federal charges in connection to the assault on the U.S. Capitol earlier this month. (Montgomery County Jail/AP)

Former U.S. Marine Donovan Crowl, 50, is among three people charged with five federal counts of conspiracy against the United States. (Montgomery County Jail/AP)

Watkins, of Woodstock, Ohio, told the Ohio Capital Journal last week that she formed a group known as the Ohio State Regular Militia in 2019 and that it had patrolled 12 protests to “protect people” on both sides. She said she had served a tour in Afghanistan while in the Army. She also said she was a member of the Oath Keepers.

The arrests this weekend of several people with alleged ties to far-right extremist groups, including the Oath Keepers, the Proud Boys and the Three Percenters, suggest that the riot was not an entirely impulsive outburst of violence but an event instigated or exploited by organized groups. 

In charging papers, the FBI said that during the Capitol riot, Caldwell received Facebook messages from unspecified senders updating him of the location of lawmakers. When he posted a one-word message, “Inside,” he received exhortations and directions describing tunnels, doors and hallways, the FBI said.

An FBI agent in court records said Caldwell helped organize a group of eight to 10 individuals led by Watkins. Members of the group are seen on video wearing helmets and military-style gear, and moving purposefully toward the top of the Capitol steps and leading the move against police lines, court records said.

A search of Watkins’s home in Ohio found numerous firearms, cellphones, pepper spray, a radio, a bag with a helmet and respirators, paintball guns, pool cues cut down to baton size, and zip/cable ties, as well a camouflage hat and jackets, the FBI said.

Why doesTrump seems so desperate to stay in a job he clearly has no interest in doing.

 

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

Today, reporters caught sight of Michael J. Lindell, the CEO of MyPillow, [above] going into the White House. Lindell has been strong advocate of the idea that the 2020 election,  was fraudulent. Washington Post photographer Jabin Botsford snapped an image of the papers Lindell was carrying with him, and the words on it seem to offer a plan for Trump to invoke martial law through the Insurrection Act. Lindell later told reporters his meeting with Trump had been brief and unproductive, but the very fact he got a hearing testifies to Trump’s desperation.

That desperation suggests that Trump knows he is facing something bad the minute he is out of the presidency. It is reasonable to assume that trouble will come from the fact his immunity from prosecution under the 1973 Department of Justice memo saying that a sitting president cannot be prosecuted will end at noon on January 20, 2021. It also seems likely that the American people are going to learn that some of the actions of the Trump administration cannot bear scrutiny.

News broke today that prosecutors in Georgia appear to be considering a criminal investigation against Trump for his efforts to bully election officials in the state into changing the results of the election. Michael J. Moore, the former United States attorney for the Middle District of Georgia, told New York Times reporters Richard Fausset and Danny Hakim: “If you took the fact out that he is the president of the United States and look at the conduct of the call, it tracks the communication you might see in any drug case or organized crime case. It’s full of threatening undertone and strong-arm tactics.”

We also learned today that New York prosecutors met yesterday with Trump’s former fixer Michael Cohen to ask about Trump’s finances, especially his relationship with Deutsche Bank, which continued to lend to him even after other sources of financing dried up.

And yet another story emerged today that reflects badly on the administration. Its vaccination rollout is far behind where officials had promised it would be by now, and three days ago, on January 12, Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar announced the government would no longer hold back second doses of the vaccine, expecting that pharmaceutical companies could keep pace and produce enough vaccines for the second dose as it was needed. The popular understanding was that they had held back half the available doses for that second necessary shot.

But today we learned that when Azar made that announcement, there was no reserve; the available vaccines had already been distributed. State health officials are outraged that vaccines they had counted on are not available, another sign of just how chaotic the vaccine rollout has been.

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Signs that there might be damaging information about the January 6 attack on the Capitol showed today. Stories of the fighting inside the building continued to emerge today, and the stories reveal armed insurgents who attacked with the belief that they were doing Trump’s bidding. Officers were badly outnumbered, and beaten with their own batons, American flags, and the “thin blue line” flag that those who fly it have insisted represents support for the police. Officer Christina Laury told NBC’s Jackie Bensen, ““I remember people swinging metal poles at us,” she said. “They were pushing and shoving. They were spraying us with bear mace and pepper spray.”

The assistant director of the FBI Washington Field Office, Steven M. D’Antuono, today told reporters that the department, working together with the Washington, D.C., U.S. Attorney’s Office, has identified more than 270 suspects involved in criminal activity around the Capitol on January 6, and law enforcement officers have more than 100 of them in custody. He noted that the FBI had received more than 140,000 photos and videos from the public, and warned perpetrators: “To those of you who took part in the violence, here’s something you should know: Every FBI field office in the country is looking for you.” He told reporters that the investigation was still in its earliest stages.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced today that she has asked retired Lieutenant Russel Honore to lead a review of the security arrangements for last week, and warned that if lawmakers are found to have aided the insurgents, they will face consequences in Congress and also in court. While several agencies are investigating what led to last week’s crisis and why the Capitol Police were left unsupported for hours, Pelosi’s public statement was the first to acknowledge the swirling rumors that the insurgents might have had inside help.  

Cascading political fallout WASHINGTON POST DAILY 202 A few Democrats think some of their GOP colleagues had advance knowledge of the plot. Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-N.J.) alleged that some GOP members of Congress led people through the Capitol on Jan. 5 as part of a “reconnaissance” mission ahead of the attack. She did not name names. "I'm going to see they are held accountable, and if necessary, ensure that they don't serve in Congress," she said, speaking sedately but severely, according to NorthJersey.com. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) said she feared that GOP lawmakers who knew where she was would tip off rioters to her location. “I can tell you that I had a very close encounter where I thought I was going to die,” she said last night in an Instagram Live video, noting that she couldn’t get into specifics for security reasons. “I did not know if I was going to make it to the end of that day alive.” (Antonia Farzan) Right-wing activist Ali Alexander, a “Stop the Steal” organizer banned by Twitter, said three GOP lawmakers helped him plan his D.C. rally: Reps. Andy Biggs (Ariz.), Mo Brooks (Ala.) and Paul Gosar (Ariz.). “We four schemed up of putting maximum pressure on Congress while they were voting,” Alexander said in a since-deleted video on Periscope. A Biggs spokesman  said the congressman had never been in contact with Alexander or other protesters and denied he helped organize a Jan. 6 rally. “Neither Brooks nor Gosar responded to requests for comment from The Washington Post. But in a lengthy, defiant statement on Wednesday, the Alabama lawmaker insisted he also bore no responsibility for the riot,” Teo Armus reports. Gaslighting alert: A departing Trump administration political appointee at the nation’s leading foreign aid agency told staff what happened at the Capitol was the work of “a few violent people,” adding falsely “several million” others there were protesting peacefully for electoral reform, according to audio recordings obtained by Yeganeh Torbati.  The Secret Service takes command today of all security preparations for the inauguration. The agency will be backed by as many as 15,000 National Guard troops, thousands of police and tactical officers, and layers of eight-foot steel fencing. “The high-alert security posture is starting six days earlier than planned,” Carol Leonnig, Karoun Demirjian, Justin Jouvenal and Nick Miroff report. "‘Everyone can just rest assured they are throwing the kitchen sink at this event,’ said one Secret Service official involved in protective planning … The accelerated timetable has also allowed authorities to fortify the city and deploy officers in anticipation of potential violence on Sunday, when pro-Trump groups are calling for armed marches in Washington and the 50 state capitals. Veteran Secret Service and Homeland Security officials … described a level of concern unlike anything in their careers.  "Threats they fear include a plot by armed groups to encircle the White House or the U.S. Capitol and the inauguration event, as well as the possibility that gunmen could stage coordinated attacks against less-fortified targets in the city. … On Tuesday, police in the Chicago suburbs arrested 45-year-old Louis Capriotti, charging him with making threats to lawmakers last year in which authorities say he promised to kill any Democrat who attempted to enter the White House on Inauguration Day. … While the Department of Homeland Security, which includes the Secret Service, is lacking key leadership following the resignation of acting secretary Chad Wolf on Monday, officials say they can rely on the experience of some the major players involved in inauguration security planning. … The Secret Service has sent out a call to all of its field offices around the country to send agents to Washington for the week. …  "Inside the Secret Service, senior supervisors have long been worried about the ability of an armed or organized group to pierce the White House fortress. An unwelcome reminder of that risk came on May 29. Protective detail agents rushed Trump to the White House’s underground bunker that night, as crowds of demonstrators protesting the killing of George Floyd converged on the White House’s north side and many pushed over temporary barricades meant to keep them farther away from the fence. … Researchers are finding that right-wing extremists of all stripes have migrated to the encrypted messaging app Telegram, especially since social media site Parler was forced off the Internet when its cloud provider, Amazon, dropped it Monday. They’re sharing diagrams on how to mount an ambush, talking about mobilizing on the days leading up to Inauguration Day and are posting messages exhorting people to ‘descend on DC’ and ‘stick to your guns…'” YouTube suspended Trump from uploading new videos to his official accounts for at least a week, joining Twitter and Facebook in shutting the president out of his account “in light of concerns about the ongoing potential for violence.” It will also disable comments on his channel indefinitely. (Rachel Lerman) “Intelligence suggesting the potential for armed riots or attacks on state governments across the country came into focus as the Defense Department scrambled to ensure an adequate plan for providing National Guard aid for the Jan. 20 inauguration,” Missy Ryan, Dan Lamothe and Paul Sonne report. “Neighboring states may need to reserve National Guard members to protect their own facilities and personnel." The Joint Chiefs of Staff, the group of the most senior uniformed leaders at the Pentagon, issued a highly unusual force-wide statement condemning the riot at the Capitol as a “direct assault” on the constitutional process and affirming Biden will become the 46th commander in chief. “The Joint Chiefs said that they witnessed actions inside the Capitol that were inconsistent with the rule of law and that the rights to freedom of speech and assembly ‘do not give anyone the right to resort to violence, sedition and insurrection,'” Sonne reports. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo abruptly canceled his final trip abroad as the nation’s top diplomat while some of his aides were already on the ground in Belgium for his first stop. Pompeo also reportedly planned to visit Luxembourg on Thursday, but the meeting fell through after the country’s foreign minister called Trump a “political pyromaniac” and a “criminal” for inciting the rioters. (John Hudson) The FBI warned of a “war” at the Capitol in advance of the mayhem. “A day before rioters stormed Congress, an FBI office in Virginia issued an explicit warning that extremists were preparing to travel to Washington to commit violence and ‘war,’ according to an internal document reviewed by The Post that contradicts a senior official’s declaration the bureau had no intelligence indicating anyone at last week’s demonstrations in support of Trump planned to do harm,” Devlin Barrett and Matt Zapotosky report. “A situational information report approved for release the day before the U.S. Capitol riot painted a dire portrait of dangerous plans, including individuals sharing a map of the complex’s tunnels, and possible rally points for would-be conspirators to meet in Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and South Carolina and head in groups to Washington. … Yet even with that information in hand, the report’s unidentified author expressed concern that the FBI might be encroaching on free-speech rights.  "The warning is the starkest evidence yet of the sizable intelligence failure … The head of the FBI’s Washington Field Office, Steven D’Antuono, told reporters on Friday that the agency did not have intelligence suggesting the pro-Trump rally would be anything more than a lawful demonstration. … Steven Sund, who resigned as Capitol Police chief, said in an interview Tuesday that he never received nor was made aware of the FBI’s field bulletin.”  The Justice Department creates a sedition and conspiracy task force to bring rioters to justice. “The investigation, one of the largest ever undertaken by the department, includes counterterrorism and counterintelligence facets and has led to charges against more than 70 people and identified 170 suspects to date, acting U.S. attorney Michael R. Sherwin of D.C. said. Those arrest figures are expected to increase into the hundreds, if not ‘exponentially,’” Spencer Hsu, Keith Alexander and Shayna Jacobs report. “But Sherwin and [D’Antuono] said any impression that prosecutors have mostly charged misdemeanor Capitol trespassing and D.C. curfew offenses is misleading. They said the cases are only the beginning and that U.S. authorities are investigating everything including the plundering of congressional offices and digital devices, assaults on law enforcement officers, and theft of national security and defense information, in addition to felony murder and excessive use of force. ‘The gamut of cases is mind-blowing,’ Sherwin said. … Capitol and D.C. police were in openhanded combat with rioters, tear gas was used against police, and destructive devices and semiautomatic weapons have been recovered, he said. … A new grand jury was empaneled Friday and met Monday to hear new Capitol breach cases. Prosecutors also condemned violence against the news media, saying they would investigate and hold accountable those who assault, threaten or damage the property of journalists.  “Hours before officials spoke, the first public federal indictment in the Capitol breach was filed against an Alabama man who allegedly brought 11 molotov cocktails and five loaded weapons to the U.S. Capitol. In an indictment dated Monday, Lonnie L. Coffman, 70, who was previously charged with two counts in a U.S. Capitol Police complaint, was charged with 16 counts of D.C. firearms violations and one federal firearms count. He also possessed a crossbow, several machetes, a stun gun and smoke devices, prosecutors said. … Exhibits filed by prosecutors seeking to detain Coffman show he allegedly possessed handwritten notes, including one quoting Abraham Lincoln who once wrote in opposition to slavery, ‘We The People Are The Rightful Masters Of Both The Congress And The Courts, Not To Overthrow The Constitution But To Overthrow The Men Who Pervert The Constitution.’ … Other charges made public included ones against Aaron Mostofsky, 34, the son of a Brooklyn judge who was photographed inside the Capitol wearing what appear to be fur pelts, a Capitol Police bulletproof vest and a riot shield." Swimmer Klete Keller, a five-time Olympic medalist and former teammate of Michael Phelps, was among the throng of rioters who stormed the Capitol. His Team USA jacket gave him away. (Rick Maese) Several users of the far-right social network Parler appear to have penetrated deep inside the Capitol and into areas normally restricted to the public, according to GPS metadata linked to 618 videos posted to the platform on the day of the riot. (Gizmodo) Retired Navy SEAL Adam Newbold is facing questions from the FBI after boasting in a Facebook video about “breaching the Capitol.” (ABC News) William Watson, a 23-year-old Alabama resident who stormed the Capitol, was taken into federal custody for violating his bond on a previous charge by traveling to Washington. (ABC6) Andrew Williams, a firefighter-paramedic in Florida, was arrested for unlawful entry of a restricted building and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds after a photo surfaced of him wearing a Trump 2020 hat and pointing at a placard for Pelosi while inside the Capitol. (CNN) Local authorities say D.C. Officer Daniel Hodges, who was crushed in a door while responding to the riot, will live. (Fox 5) Many of the rioters identified so far had no party affiliation and voted sporadically, if at all, especially before 2016. (Bloomberg Businessweek) The Trump Organization faces mounting consequences. “In the past week, it has lost a bank, an e-commerce platform and the privilege of hosting a world-famous golf tournament, and its hopes of hosting another have been dashed,” Dawsey, David Fahrenthold and Jonathan O’Connell report. “In the future, the Trump Organization also could lose its D.C. hotel and even its children’s carousel in Central Park … Trump lost a much bigger broker relationship Tuesday night when real estate giant Cushman & Wakefield told The Post it would no longer work with him. The company has handled an array of business for Trump for many years, including office leasing at Trump Tower and 40 Wall Street, and retail leasing in Chicago. It means that Trump’s company will quickly have to find someone else to handle lease negotiations at some of his most prominent properties. … One senior administration official said Trump was particularly infuriated about the PGA of America’s decision to move the 2022 PGA Championship away from Trump’s Bedminster, N.J., golf course. Trump wanted to know what legal rights his company had to stop the organization from moving it. The official … said Trump had been a bit ‘shellshocked’ at the corporate backlash." Americans of all stripes fear the worst is yet to come. “Clinton Lynn, a retired fire captain, firmly believes the widespread conspiracy theory that the election was stolen from Trump, and he says that those who share his views are finding an ever-narrowing path to express their outrage, losing at the ballot box, the jury box and now the soapbox. If you take away those things, he says, what is left? ‘I’m so mad, I see red about the [expletive] steal,’ said Lynn, 64 … ‘I believe with all my heart that the Democratic Party stole the election,’ [he added]. ‘Liberals, you’re driving us to civil war,’” Annie Gowen, Jenna Johnson and Holly Bailey report. “Americans across the political spectrum are also bracing for more and grappling with the realization that Jan. 20 … may be not the end of the Trump era but the beginning of a new dark chapter in American history. … [Lynn] said he was seeing calls for violent retribution continue to spread on conservative websites such as Newsmax and on social media apps such as Gab and Parler. …  "In the Philadelphia suburbs, Nora Schreiber McDonough, who is in her 60s, was so upset after watching the violence at the Capitol she took Thursday off from her job as an administrative assistant at a Catholic church. … McDonough was long a Republican but couldn’t bring herself to vote for Donald Trump in 2016. ... In 2020, she campaigned for Biden … McDonough worries that the coming days will bring more violence, especially on Jan. 17 and 20. She worries that someone will try to assassinate Biden or [Kamala] Harris.”   The coronavirus St. Mary Medical Center has resorted to using tents in their parking lot to handle an overflow of covid patients at its 200-bed hospital in Apple Valley, Calif. (Mike Blake/Reuters) The Biden team sees risks in Trump’s decision to widen the vaccine pool. As the United States broke a new record for daily deaths from covid, tallying at least 4,250 fatalities, advisers to the president-elect balked at a decision by the lame-duck administration to dramatically increase the number of people eligible for the vaccine. “Officials instructed states to begin vaccinating tens of millions of people with a high-risk medical condition putting them at increased risk of dying from the coronavirus, along with all adults 65 and older. Including both those groups immediately adds another 100 million people [potentially] seeking shots, bringing the total to about 184 million and intensifying demand on already stressed sign-up systems," Lena Sun and Isaac Stanley-Becker report. "The Trump administration also said Tuesday it would begin releasing all available vaccine supply, rather than holding back second doses, as the incoming administration said last week it intended to do.”  Biden’s team also briefed Congress on his emerging covid relief plan. “The proposal, which Biden intends to unveil on Thursday, is expected to include $2,000 stimulus payments, an extension of enhanced unemployment insurance, money for vaccine distribution and delivery, funding for cities, states, schools, child care and more,” Erica Werner and Jeff Stein report. “Transition officials indicated in meetings with Democratic staffers that Biden will try to get bipartisan support for the measure, instead of using a special budgetary tool [called reconciliation] that could allow him to push legislation through Congress with only Democratic votes … That’s led to speculation that the price tag of the package could be below $2 trillion — although Biden said last week that it could cost in the multiple trillions of dollars. … Biden’s unveiling of the package is likely to kick off a furious round of lobbying and horse-trading as numerous lawmakers push for their priorities in the legislation.” With her members still fuming that Republicans refused to wear masks while they were sheltering in place, Pelosi announced that anyone not wearing a mask on the House floor will be fined $500 for their first offense and $2,500 for their second. Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.) wrote a letter, which 66 of her colleagues signed, imploring McCarthy to require his Republican members to wear masks. Rep. Brad Schneider (D-Ill.) tested positive on Tuesday after being stuck in the safe room for hours. Colby Itkowitz reports that he has been super careful: “His wife has a health condition that makes her high risk if she contracted the coronavirus. He drives the nearly 12 hours from his home in eastern Illinois to Washington rather than fly.”  The U.S. will require a negative coronavirus test for international travelers arriving in the country.  “The order, set to go into effect Jan. 26, would greatly expand a requirement put into place last month that mandated testing for American citizens and others flying to the U.S. from the United Kingdom. Officials say they hope expanding the mandatory testing could help to thwart the virus and a faster-spreading variant that surfaced there and is now circulating in the United States,” Lori Aratani reports. “More than 100 countries require visitors to show proof of a negative coronavirus test. CDC officials said about 100,000 travelers come to the U.S. daily. … Both PRC and antigen tests will be acceptable."  Children apologize to their dying elders for giving them the virus. “As hospitals across California braced this week for a surge in COVID-19 patients who got infected over Christmas, officials relayed painful stories of dying victims’ last moments with their families,” the Los Angeles Times reports. “‘One of the more heartbreaking conversations that our healthcare workers share is about these last words when children apologize to their parents and grandparents for bringing COVID into their homes for getting them sick. And these apologies are just some of the last words that loved ones will ever hear as they die alone,’ Los Angeles County Supervisor Hilda Solis said."  Half a million leisure and hospitality workers lost their jobs in December. (Abha Bhattarai and Laura Reiley) A veteran Fairfax County Sheriff’s Office deputy died of covid amid an outbreak at the county jail that has sickened more than 30 guards and inmates in recent days. (Jouvenal)  Tens of thousands of Americans with intellectual and developmental disabilities — who are two to three times more likely to die of covid-19 — are waiting for an answer on when they will get their vaccines. (Jessica Contrera)  Chicago opened public classrooms this week for the first time since the spring, but 18 percent of teachers and staffers who were required to return did not do so. The system notified 145 employees that they were considered absent without leave, and their pay would be docked beginning Tuesday. Some teachers who spent Monday teaching virtually instead of returning for in-person instruction were locked out of their Google Classroom accounts. (Dawn Reiss)  Sinovac’s CoronaVac, one of China’s leading vaccine candidates, turned out to be 50 percent effective in late-stage trials in Brazil, significantly lower than earlier results showed. The efficacy rate still meets the 50 percent threshold the WHO considers good enough for widespread use. (WSJ)

White Riot

How racism, grievance, resentment and the fear of diminished status came together to fuel violence and mayhem on Jan. 6.


NY TIMES
By Thomas B. Edsall

The crowd looks on as President Trump speaks on the ellipse in front of the White House on Jan. 6.Credit...Pete Marovich for The New York Times


There is no question that out-and-out racism and a longing to return to the days of white supremacy were high on the list of motivations of the pro-Trump mob that ransacked the Capitol on Jan. 6.

That should not end the discussion about why it happened, though. There are other questions we need to ask that do not (and could never) justify the violence and mayhem but seek instead to help us gain further insight into the lethal force that attacked Congress a week ago and is poised to strike again.

It may sound trivial at first, in light of what happened, but how important is the frustration among what pollsters call non-college white men at not being able to compete with those higher up on the socioeconomic ladder because of educational disadvantage? How critical is declining value in marriage — or mating — markets? Does any of that really matter?

How toxic is the combination of pessimism and anger that stems from a deterioration in standing and authority? What might engender existential despair, this sense of irretrievable loss? How hard is it for any group, whether it is racial, political or ethnic, to come to terms with losing power and status? What encourages desperate behavior and a willingness to believe a pack of lies?

I posed these questions to a wide range of experts. This column explores their replies.

Bart Bonikowski, a professor of sociology at N.Y.U., was forthright:

Ethnonationalist Trump supporters want to return to a past when white men saw themselves as the core of America and minorities and women “knew their place.” Because doing so requires the upending of the social order, many are prepared to pursue extreme measures, including racial violence and insurrection. What makes their actions all the more dangerous is a self-righteous belief — reinforced by the president, the Republican Party, and right-wing conspiracy peddlers — that they are on the correct side of history as the true defenders of democracy, even as their actions undermine its core institutions and threaten its stability.

There is evidence that many non-college white Americans who have been undergoing what psychiatrists call “involuntary subordination” or “involuntary defeat” both resent and mourn their loss of centrality and what they perceive as their growing invisibility.

Andrew Cherlin, a sociologist at Johns Hopkins University, wrote by email:

They fear a loss of attention. A loss of validation. These are people who have always had racial privilege but have never had much else. Many feel passed over, ignored. Trump listened to them and spoke their language when few other politicians did. He felt their pain and was diabolical enough to encourage their tendency to racialize that pain. They fear becoming faceless again if a Democrat, or even a conventional Republican, were to take office.

Cherlin pointed to the assertion of a 67-year-old retired landscaper from North Carolina who joined the Trump loyalists on Jan. 6 on the steps of the Capitol: “We are here. See us! Notice us! Pay attention!”

White supremacy and frank racism are prime motivators, and they combined with other elements to fuel the insurrection: a groundswell of anger directed specifically at elites and an addictive lust for revenge against those they see as the agents of their disempowerment.

It is this admixture of factors that makes the insurgency that wrested control of the House and Senate so dangerous — and is likely to spark new forms of violence in the future. Each of the forces at work has helped drive millions of white voters to the right: working in tandem, they collectively provide the tinder for the destructive behavior we saw last week in the chambers of the United States Congress.

“It is very, very difficult for individuals and groups to come to terms with losing status and power,” Cameron Anderson, a professor at Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, wrote by email. While most acute among those possessing high status and power, Anderson said,

People in general are sensitive to status threats and to any potential losses of social standing, and they respond to those threats with stress, anxiety, anger, and sometimes even violence.

Dacher Keltner, a professor of psychology at Berkeley, agrees in large part with Anderson, describing the fury and disappointment contributing to the takeover of Congress as concentrated among whites who see their position in the social order on a downward path. In an email, Keltner wrote:

The population of U.S. Citizens who’ve lost the most power in the past 40 years, who aren’t competing well to get into college or get high paying jobs, whose marital prospects have dimmed, and who are outraged, are those I believe were most likely to be in on the attack.

When pressed to give up power, he added, “these types of individuals will resort to violence, and to refashioning history to suggest they did not lose.”

In a September 2020 paper, “Theories of power: Perceived strategies for gaining and maintaining power,” Keltner and Leanne ten Brinke, a professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia, argue that “lower class individuals experience greater vigilance to threat, relative to high status individuals, leading them to perceive greater hostility in their environment.”

This increased vigilance, Brinke and Keltner continue, creates

a bias such that relatively low socio-economic status individuals perceive the powerful as dominant and threatening — endorsing a coercive theory of power. Indeed, there is evidence that individuals of lower social class are more cynical than those occupying higher classes, and that this cynicism is directed toward out-group members — that is, those that occupy higher classes.

In other words, resentment toward successful white elites is in play here, as evidenced by the attack on Congress, an overwhelmingly white seat of power.

Before Trump, many of those who became his supporters suffered from what Carol Graham, a senior fellow at Brookings, describes as pervasive “unhappiness, stress and lack of hope” without a narrative to legitimate their condition:

When the jobs went away, families fell apart. There was no narrative other than the classic American dream that everyone who works hard can get ahead, and the implicit correlate was that those who fall behind and are on welfare are losers, lazy, and often minorities.

In a December 2020 Brookings Paper, Graham and Sergio Pinto, a doctoral student at the University of Maryland, wrote that

Despair — and the associated mortality trends — is concentrated among the less-than-college educated and is much higher among whites than minorities. The trends are also geographically dispersed, with populations in racially and economically diverse urban and coastal places more optimistic and with lower premature mortality.

What, however, could prompt a mob — including not only members of the Proud Boys and the Boogaloo Bois but also many seemingly ordinary Americans drawn to Trump — to break into the Capitol?

One possible answer: a mutated form of moral certitude based on the belief that one’s decline in social and economic status is the result of unfair, if not corrupt, decisions by others, especially by so-called elites.

In “The Social and Political Implications of Moral Conviction,” Linda J. Skitka and G. Scott Morgan, psychology professors at University of Illinois-Chicago and Drew University, wrote that “although moral conviction motivates any number of normatively positive behaviors (e.g., voting, political engagement), moral conviction appears to also have a potential dark side.”

Skitka and Morgan argued that:

The terrorist attacks on 9/11, the Weatherman bombings in protest of the Vietnam War, ethnic cleansing in Bosnia, or the assassination of abortion providers, may be motivated by different ideological beliefs but nonetheless share a common theme: The people who did these things appear to be motivated by strong moral conviction. Although some argue that engaging in behaviors like these requires moral disengagement, we find instead that they require maximum moral engagement and justification.

Alan Page Fiske, a professor of anthropology at U.C.L.A., and Tage Shakti Rai, a research associate at the MIT Sloan School of Management, make a parallel argument in their book “Virtuous Violence,” in which they write that violence is:

considered to be the essence of evil. It is the prototype of immorality. But an examination of violent acts and practices across cultures and throughout history shows just the opposite. When people hurt or kill someone, they usually do it because they feel they ought to: they feel that it is morally right or even obligatory to be violent.

“Most violence,” Fiske and Rai contend, “is morally motivated.”

A key factor working in concert to aggravate the anomie and disgruntlement in many members of Trump’s white working-class base is their inability to obtain a college education, a limitation that blocks access to higher paying jobs and lowers their supposed “value” in marriage markets.

In their paper “Trends in Educational Assortative Marriage From 1940 to 2003,” Christine R. Schwartz and Robert D. Mare, professors of sociology at the University of Wisconsin and the University of California-Los Angeles, wrote that the “most striking” data in their research, “is the decline in odds that those with very low levels of education marry up.”

In the bottom ranks of educational achievement, they continued, trends in inequality are

consistent with the decline in the odds of marriage between high school dropouts and those with more education since the 1970s, a period over which the real wages of men in this education group declined.

Christopher Federico, a professor of political science and psychology at the University of Minnesota, described the key roles of education and employment opportunity in the right-wing mobilization of less-educated white men:

A major development since the end of the “Great Compression” of the 30 years or so after World War II, when there was less inequality and relatively greater job security, at least for white male workers, is that the differential rate of return on education and training is now much higher.

In this new world, Federico argues, “promises of broad-based economic security” were replaced by a job market where

you can have dignity, but it must be earned through market or entrepreneurial success (as the Reagan/Thatcher center-right would have it) or the meritocratic attainment of professional status (as the center-left would have it). But obviously, these are not avenues available to all, simply because society has only so many positions for captains of industry and educated professionals.

The result, Federico notes, is that “group consciousness is likely to emerge on the basis of education and training” and when “those with less education see themselves as being culturally very different from an educated stratum of the population that is more socially liberal and cosmopolitan, then the sense of group conflict is deepened.”

None of these forces diminishes the key role of racial animosity and racism. Instead, they intensify racial resentment.

Jennifer Richeson, a professor of psychology at Yale, wrote by email that there is

very consistent and compelling evidence to suggest the some of what we have witnessed this past week is a reflection of the angst, anger, and refusal to accept an “America”’ in which White (Christian) Americans are losing dominance, be it political, material, and/or cultural. And, I use the term dominance here, because it is not simply a loss of status. It is a loss of power. A more racially, ethnically, religiously diverse US that is also a democracy requires White Americans to acquiesce to the interests and concerns of racial/ethnic and religious minorities.

Trump, Richeson continued,

leaned into the underlying White nationalist sentiments that had been on the fringe in his campaign for the presidency and made his campaign about re-centering Whiteness as what it actually means to be American and, by implication, delegitimizing claims for greater racial equity, be it in policing or any other important domain of American life.

Michael Kraus, a professor at the Yale School of Management, argued in an email that

Racism is the key construct here in understanding why this sort of violence is possible. The other explanations would be the pathways through which racism creates these conditions. An individual experiences their standing in society as relative and comparative, so sometimes the gains of other groups feel like losses to Whites. Whites in the last 60 years have seen minoritized folks gain more political power, economic and educational opportunity. Even though these gains are grossly exaggerated, Whites experience them as a loss in group status.

Emily G. Jacobs, a professor of psychological and brain sciences at the University of California-Santa Barbara, argued that all the rights revolutions — civil rights, women’s rights, gay rights — have been key to the emergence of the contemporary right wing:

As the voices of women, people of color, and other traditionally marginalized communities grow louder the frame of reference from which we tell the story of American is expanding. The white male story is not irrelevant but it’s insufficient, and when you have a group of people that are accustomed to the spotlight see the camera lens pan away, it’s a threat to their sense of self. It’s not surprising that QAnon support started to soar in the weeks after B.L.M. QAnon offers a way for white evangelicals to place blame on (fictional) bad people instead of a broken system. It’s an organization that validates the source of Q-Anoners insecurity — irrelevance — and in its place offers a steady source of self-righteousness and acceptance.

Jane Yunhee Junn, a professor of political science at the University of Southern California, was outspoken in her view:

People of color in political office, women controlling their fertility, L.G.B.T.Q. people getting married, using their bathrooms, and having children go against the state of nature defined by white heteropatriarchy. This is a domain in which men and white men in particular stand at the apex of power, holding their “rightful position” over women, nonwhites, perhaps non-Christians (in the U.S.), and of course, in their view, sexual deviants such as gay people.

Herbert P. Kitschelt, a professor of political science at Duke, wrote in an email that “compared to other advanced countries caught up in the transition to knowledge society, the United States appears to be in a much more vulnerable position to a strong right-wing populist challenge.”

Kitschelt’s listing of some of the reasons for American vulnerability to right-wing forces illuminates current events.

First, Kitschelt noted,

The difference between economic winners and losers, captured by income inequality, poverty, and illiteracy rates within the dominant white ethnicity, is much greater than in most other Western countries, and there is no dense welfare state safety net to buffer the fall of people into unemployment and poverty.

Another key factor, Kitschelt pointed out, is that

The decline of male status in the family is more sharply articulated than in Europe, hastened in the U.S. by economic inequality (men fall further under changing economic circumstances) and religiosity (leading to pockets of greater male resistance to the redefinition of gender roles).

Unlike most European countries, Kitschelt wrote,

The United States had a civil war over slavery in the 19th century and a continuous history of structural racism and white oligarchical rule until the 1960s, and in many aspects until the present. Europe lacks this legacy.

On top of that, in the United States.

Many lines of conflict mutually reinforce each other rather than crosscut: Less educated whites tend to be more Evangelical and more racist, and they live in geographical spaces with less economic momentum.

Coming days will determine how far this goes, but for the moment the nation faces, for all intents and purposes, the makings of a civil insurgency. What makes this insurgency unusual in American history is that it is based on Trump’s false claim that he, not Joe Biden, won the presidency, that the election was stolen by malefactors in both parties, and that majorities in both branches of Congress no longer represent the true will of the people.

At the same time, hostility to Trump on the left can make it easy to overlook the shortcomings, such as they are, of the center-left political coalition in this country — and I think it is important that liberals, among whom I count myself, keep this in mind.

Bernard Grofman, a political scientist at the University of California, Irvine, put it this way in an email:

We would not have Trump as president if the Democrats had remained the party of the working class. The decline of labor unions proceeded at the same rate when Democrats were president as when Republicans were president; the same is, I believe, true of loss of manufacturing jobs as plants moved overseas.

President Obama, Grofman wrote,

responded to the housing crisis with bailouts of the lenders and interlinked financial institutions, not of the folks losing their homes. And the stagnation of wages and income for the middle and bottom of the income distribution continued under Obama. And the various Covid aid packages, while they include payments to the unemployed, are also helping big businesses more than the small businesses that have been and will be permanently going out of business due to the lockdowns (and they include various forms of pork.

The result, according to Grofman, was that “white less well-educated voters didn’t desert the Democratic Party, the Democratic Party deserted them.”

At the same time, though, and here I will quote Grofman at length:

More religious and less well-educated whites see Donald Trump as one of their own despite his being so obviously a child of privilege. He defends America as a Christian nation. He defends English as our national language. He is unashamed in stating that the loyalty of any government should be to its own citizens — both in terms of how we should deal with noncitizens here and how our foreign policy should be based on the doctrine of “America First.”

He speaks in a language that ordinary people can understand. He makes fun of the elites who look down on his supporters as a “basket of deplorables” and who think it is a good idea to defund the police who protect them and to prioritize snail darters over jobs. He appoints judges and justices who are true conservatives. He believes more in gun rights than in gay rights. He rejects political correctness and the language-police and woke ideology as un-American. And he promises to reclaim the jobs that previous presidents (of both parties) allowed to be shipped abroad. In sum, he offers a relatively coherent set of beliefs and policies that are attractive to many voters and which he has been better at seeing implemented than any previous Republican president. What Trump supporters who rioted in D.C. share are the beliefs that Trump is their hero, regardless of his flaws, and that defeating Democrats is a holy war to be waged by any means necessary.

In the end, Grofman said,

Trying to explain the violence on the Hill by only talking about what the demonstrators believe is to miss the point. They are guilty, but they wouldn’t be there were it not for the Republican politicians and the Republican attorneys general, and most of all the president, who cynically exaggerate and lie and create fake conspiracy theories and demonize the opposition. It is the enablers of the mob who truly deserve the blame and the shame.