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a mob of largely white extremists stage an insurrection in Washington, D.C., set up a noose on a wooden beam outside the U.S. Capitol and walk a symbol of violence and slavery — the Confederate flag — through the building as they stormed and raided it.

There were white extremists who felt at ease giving their names to media outlets and taking selfies with a white police officer.

"Now the world gets to see the difference between these two situations, where one is us protesting to be seen, to be heard, to not be killed, right?" she said. "And then you have these other people who are just mad because they lost."

Jury acquits militia that occupied Oregon wildlife refuge — but the saga is far from over

In a stunning conclusion to a five-week trial, a jury acquitted seven defendants who faced a slew of conspiracy and weapons charges related to their armed takeover of a wildlife refuge earlier this year.

U.S. marshals tackled the attorney for the group’s leader and used a Taser on him.

When people look back on this surreal election year, I suspect they will see plague as the core actor. If you take a normal, functioning society and then force it to go underground for months, freezing it in place, forcing its members into long and unnatural mutual isolation, suspending the usual ways in which people make a living, ratcheting up financial insecurity … well, that’s a recipe for serious social upheaval.

it strikes me that this medical achievement doesn’t resolve the psychological trauma, the suspension of normality, the anxiety of an invisible enemy. It merely diverts it away from the illness itself toward broader social and political grievances. I don’t think you can fully explain the sudden increase in intensity of the social justice cult, for example, and its explosion in our streets and in our media in the last couple of months, without taking account of this. I don’t just mean the pent-up plague-driven frustration of young people, who, often forced to live at home with their parents, took the opportunity to finally get out, get together and do something, after the horrifying murder of George Floyd. I mean the more general frustration and despair of a generation with a gloomy and unknowable economic future—suddenly finding shape and voice in a simple, clarion call to reshape all of society. 

I wrote about the Flagellants in the essay—a new group of fanatical, radical penitents who challenged and mocked the church authorities during the Black Death, whipping themselves bloody in large crowds across Germany, calling everyone to account for their sins. It’s the same dynamic now: a movement to use a plague to cleanse ourselves of the past and indict the entire community for its iniquity

In a last-minute push, the Trump administration announced Thursday that it will auction off drilling rights in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in just over a month, setting up a final showdown with opponents before President-elect Joe Biden takes office.

After finishing its environmental review in August, the Trump administration then launched a "call for nominations" on Nov. 17. That's a 30-day window for oil companies to confidentiality tell the government which pieces of land they'd like included in a lease sale. But the BLM did not wait 30 days before going ahead and scheduling a sale date, which will take place just two weeks before President Trump leaves office.

Already, conservation and tribal groups, as well as a coalition of 15 states, have filed lawsuits challenging the Trump administration's environmental reviews. And drilling opponents blasted Thursday's announcement of the lease sale.

Across the street, Keandra McDole, sister of a wheelchair-bound Black man who was killed in 2015 by the Delaware police, chanted “Lauren Witzke’s got to go,”

Short answer: This is pretty tame compared to 1968. I’ll try to avoid the “back in my day, sonny” routine, but here are some things to consider.

1) We were at war.

Just about everybody was as crazy as a teapartier about the war, one way or the other.

He wishes ranchers would see the benefit of limited grazing, which will help the grasses recover and sustain their herd in the long run."I just don't see it ending that way here," he said. "The people who abuse the public lands the worst are the ones who will fight the hardest."

most of the ads unearthed thus far appear to have been devoted to reinforcing the American electorate’s own prejudices;

For example, YouTube videos recently uncovered by the Daily Beast feature two black men with African accents deriding Black Lives Matter and calling Clinton an “evildoer” while praising WikiLeaks. One meme posted on a Russian troll-operated Facebook account read—with a dropped article worthy of Boris Badenov—“Why do I have a gun? Because it’s easier for my family to get me out of jail than out of cemetery.”

Facebook has said the Russian-bought ads were probably viewed 10 million times; Columbia University professor Jonathan Albright has suggested that the ads actually were viewed hundreds of millions, and possibly billions, of times.

Jury selection is one of the most difficult -- and crucial -- steps in any criminal trial. A veteran defense lawyer once told me, "Jury selection isn't just the most important thing; it's everything. As soon as the jury is chosen, the case is decided."

In both cases, the very first question will be this: how on earth do the parties select a jury in a case that virtually everybody has already heard about, and on which many already have strongly-held opinions?

The Minnesota rules of criminal procedure provide detailed instructions on the jury selection process. The pool of potential jurors must consist of "persons randomly selected from a fair cross-section of qualified county residents."

“Antifa or BLM or other insurgents could be doing it disguised as Trump supporters,” Mr. Brown wrote, using shorthand for Black Lives Matter. “Come on, man, have you never heard of psyops?”

Only 13,000 people follow Mr. Brown on Twitter, but his tweet caught the attention of another conservative pundit: Todd Herman, who was guest-hosting Rush Limbaugh’s national radio program.

But even as Americans watched live images of rioters wearing MAGA hats and carrying Trump flags breach the Capitol — egged on only minutes earlier by a president who falsely denounced a rigged election and exhorted his followers to fight for justice — history was being rewritten in real time.

Did the summer’s protests reflect a racial reckoning or seasonal solidarity?

Millions of Americans — many of them white — poured into the streets to demand justice and assert that Black Lives Matter. It’s clear now that the summer protests, which took place during a pandemic during which congregation was discouraged, were for some participants less a sincere demand for justice than they were a social outlet.

About 49 percent of registered voters said they supported the movement, compared with around 38 percent in opposition — similar to BLM’s net approval before Floyd’s death. That drop in popularity has largely been driven by increased opposition among white Republicans (80 percent of whom oppose the movement, higher than before Floyd’s death) and white independents (who now support BLM at similar levels as before Floyd’s death).”

From the passage of the 13th Amendment to the present, racial progress in America has often been prematurely celebrated.

James' "More Than a Vote" campaign of voter education, information and protection is laudatory civic action. But just imagine the kind of investments someone with James's resources and dedication might be able to make in an America with full and fair voting rights access for all. That so many are still spending precious energies, resources and time on something as basic as voting rights underscores the vulnerability of Black citizenship in our own time.

The John R. Lewis Voting Rights Act is the best legislative antidote against this new campaign of legalized voter suppression. Passed in the House of Representatives in 2019, the legislation restores voter rights protections stripped by the Supreme Court and will ensure nationwide voting rights access.

“I’m actively serving this country, and this is how you’re going to treat me?” Lieutenant Nazario told the officers. Race is the only explanation for this loathsome assault.

Cops protect the state. They also are the state. We revere them for the first part. We fear them for the second. But even as we condemn another round of horrific and excessive state violence directed at Black Americans, there’s actually a ray of hope on the police reform blotter.

The blue wall may be starting to crack. It was broken in the Derek Chauvin trial.

The calls for racial parity in the wake of George Floyd’s murder demanded a response from institutions that market their enlightenment even as they persist in advancing the privileges of largely rich, white populations.

Nearly every private school in the country thus spent the summer scrambling to intensify curriculums and training around race and racial sensitivity, often with the help of diversity consultants whose approach can feel dependent on jargon and contrived simplicities.

In December, a group of Dalton parents and alumni wrote an anonymous letter to the school community titled “Loving Concern @ Dalton.” They worried about “an obsessive focus on race and identity,” filling their children’s days at school. With remote learning giving parents an opportunity to spy on what their children were getting taught all day, these parents did not like what they were hearing — “a pessimistic and age-inappropriate litany of grievances in EVERY class.”

when you look over the longer history of what’s been going on in Portland — there’s something else happening. It’s not just the protests. It is not just covid-19. There is something else going on in Portland.”

Henning and others say crime was rising in the city before the pandemic shut it down and before Floyd died in Minneapolis with a White police officer’s knee on his neck. From 2019 to 2020, the number of homicides nearly doubled, something Henning called “unheard of” in Portland. This followed years with some of the nation’s lowest crime rates for a city its size.

“So these perpetrators, my guess, were coming of age, were in elementary and middle school right around the Great Recession,” said Brian Renauer, director of the Criminal Justice Policy Research Institute at Portland State. “Now they’re in their early to mid-20s. So what we’re seeing is the outgrowth of a breakdown in the family, in the economy, in those neighborhoods they came out of, if this is very much a homegrown phenomenon.”

Wisconsin Republican Sen. Ron Johnson on Thursday invoked race in explaining his sense of safety during the January 6 Capitol riot, saying that he might have been concerned for his well-being had the protesters been affiliated with Black Lives Matter instead of being a largely White pro-Trump crowd

I knew those were people that love this country, that truly respect law enforcement, would never do anything to break the law, and so I wasn't concerned,

Now, had the tables been turned -- Joe, this could get me in trouble -- had the tables been turned, and President Trump won the election and those were tens of thousands of Black Lives Matter and Antifa protesters, I might have been a little concerned,"

In an interview on conservative talk radio, Sen. Ron Johnson, one of former President Donald Trump’s strongest supporters, said he didn’t feel threatened by rioters violently storming the Capitol. Instead, he said, he might have been scared if the participants were Black Lives Matter or Antifa supporters — a comment with strong racial overtones.

I knew those were people that love this country, that truly respect law enforcement, would never do anything to break the law, and so I wasn't concerned,”

"Now, had the tables been turned — Joe, this could get me in trouble — had the tables been turned, and President Trump won the election and those were tens of thousands of Black Lives Matter and Antifa protesters, I might have been a little concerned," Johnson said.

Sixty-one: That's the number of arrests Washington, DC, police made the day rioters laid siege to the Capitol in protest of President-elect Joe Biden's electoral victory.

More have been arrested since, and several jurisdictions are now involved in hunting down the supporters of President Donald Trump who invaded and ransacked the Capitol during a joint session of Congress to affirm Biden's win.

Yet during an episode described as insurrection and an attempted coup, police made only 61 "unrest-related" arrests that day -- and only about half of those were on Capitol grounds,

Immediately after the attack on the U.S. Capitol, all corners of the political spectrum repudiated the mob of President Trump’s supporters. Yet within days, prominent Republicans, party officials, conservative media voices and rank-and-file voters began making a rhetorical shift to try to downplay the group’s violent actions.

In one of the ultimate don’t-believe-your-eyes moments of the Trump era, these Republicans have retreated to the ranks of misinformation, claiming it was Black Lives Matter protesters and far-left groups like antifa who stormed the Capitol — in spite of the pro-Trump flags and QAnon symbology in the crowd

But any window of reflection now seems to be closing as Republicans try to pass blame and to compare last summer’s lawlessness, which was condemned by Democrats, to an attack on Congress, which was inspired by Mr. Trump.

In the two weeks since a raging mob stormed the Capitol, President Trump has shown no sign that he believes he shares responsibility for the worst incursion on the halls of Congress in more than two centuries. Shielding him further, his loyalists have started shifting blame for the attack to an array of distracting bogeymen: far-left anti-fascists, Black Lives Matter activists, even vague conspiracies of a setup involving Vice President Mike Pence.

“Does our president bear responsibility?” the lawyer, Al Watkins, told The New York Times. “Hell, yes, he does.”

the accounts they give about Mr. Trump could end up not only as fodder in criminal proceedings but also at an impeachment trial to bolster charges that the president incited the assault.