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(I’ll stipulate that calling oneself a socialist is a bridge too far. I’ll stipulate that outlawing all private insurance will undermine support among suburban women.)

However, we should keep some perspective as the Democrats go through a long and arduous process: What the Democratic candidate projects as her vision of America and how she connects with voters ultimately will be more critical in the general election than ideology

returning to the center is a tried-and-true tactic for the general election, and Democrats have plenty of time to refine and defend their positions — which they must do.

Democrats’ goal should be to re-create the Obama coalition with a significant change: It’s much more feasible to keep the college-educated, white women (who’d crawl over broken glass to get rid of Trump and who are more progressive than college-educated, white men) than it is to win back the white, working-class Fox viewer

The only thing new Trump brings to the American nationalism of recent decades is a restoration of its old ethnic-chauvinist tradition. Conservative intellectuals cannot rescue nationalism from Trump, any more than they could rescue Goldwater from Jim Crow, because Trump’s explicit appeals to racial and religious traditionalism, and his authoritarian approach to enforcing those hierarchies, are the things that have bound conservative voters so closely to him.

Last week, the president told four Democratic congresswomen—Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ayanna Pressley, Rashida Tlaib, and Ilhan Omar—to “go back” to their countries, even though all of them are American citizens. This is literally textbook racism. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission offers “Go back to where you came from” as its example of potentially unlawful harassment on the basis of national origin.

Trump’s demand is less a factual assertion than a moral one, an affirmation of the president’s belief that American citizenship is conditional for people of color, who should be grateful we are even allowed to be here

That Trump’s supporters believe Omar’s sins justify her banishment, and Trump’s similar transgressions justify his presence in the White House, helps illustrate exactly what is going on here.

Under Trumpism, no defense of the volk is a betrayal, even if it undermines the republic, and no attack on the volk’s hegemony can be legitimate, even if it is a defense of democracy.

Republicans turned to reporters to argue that his attacks are part of a clever political strategy, elevating four left-wing women of color into the faces of his opposition. I suspect these Republicans, and some political reporters, believe that this somehow exonerates Trump from the charge of bigotry, as though prejudice ceases to be prejudice if it becomes instrumental.

In fact, the admission that fomenting racism and division is central to Trump’s strategy is a stunning rebuke to those political reporters and pundits who, for four years, have insisted that the rise of Trump is about anything else.

It also speaks to the futility of trying to somehow rescue a Trumpian nationalism from Trump. Racism is at the core of Trumpism.

Trump is not a champion of the civic nationalism Hazony and others claim they want to see. He is a mortal threat to it.

I want to be very clear about what the country saw last night, as an American president incited a chant of “Send her back!” aimed at a Somali-born member of Congress: America has not been here before.

we have never seen an American president make a U.S. representative, a refugee, an American citizen, a woman of color, and a religious minority an object of hate for the political masses, in a deliberate attempt to turn the country against his fellow Americans who share any of those traits

Trump is assailing the moral foundations of the multiracial democracy Americans have struggled to bring into existence since 1965, and unless Trumpism is defeated, that fragile project will fail.

She has emerged as an Emmanuel Goldstein for the Trumpist right because as a black woman, a Muslim, an immigrant, and a progressive member of Congress, she represents in vivid terms a threat to the nation Trumpists fear they are losing.

his attacks on Omar were carefully scripted, written out by his staff and then read off a teleprompter. To defend the remarks as politically shrewd is to confess that the president is deliberately campaigning on the claim that only white people can truly, irrevocably be American.

In the face of a corrupt authoritarian president who believes that he and his allies are above the law, the American people are represented by two parties equally incapable of discharging their constitutional responsibilities.

The Republican Party is incapable of fulfilling its constitutional responsibilities because it has become a cult of personality whose members cannot deviate from their sycophantic devotion to the president, lest they be ejected from office by Trump’s fanatically loyal base

The Democratic Party cannot fulfill its constitutional responsibilities because its leadership lives in abject terror of being ejected from office by alienating the voters to whom Trump’s nationalism appeals.

The leadership of the Democratic Party has shown more appetite for confronting and rebuking legislators representing the vulnerable communities Trump has targeted most often than it has for making the president mildly uncomfortable.

She thought that both the most extreme authoritarians and the most extreme libertarians have powerful, largely innate and highly durable psychological predispositions that affect how they react to all that is unfamiliar and different

If contacted by white interviewers, the “authoritarians” were almost indistinguishable from the “libertarians” in their willingness to schedule a conversation. They proved dramatically more reluctant to participate when contacted by black interviewers.

The authoritarians were more hostile, suspicious, and anxious with black interviewers, whereas “especially given a black interviewer, libertarians were vastly more likely than authoritarians to display great warmth toward their visitors.”

With white interviewers, authoritarians were less likely than libertarians to introduce talk about “social exclusion, isolation, and disconnection,” but with a black interviewer they were far more likely, even as libertarians were indifferent to the interviewer’s race. “The language of authoritarians was especially inclusive when it was just ‘us’ talking among ourselves,” Stenner explained, “but they were clearly thinking exclusion when confronting one of ‘them.’”

Regardless of the interviewers, authoritarians tended to say fewer overall words and fewer different words than libertarians. And the evident differences were greatly magnified in the presence of black interviewers. The sophistication of discussions “tended to diverge by just over one grade level when both interviewers were white,” with authoritarians “talking at almost a fifth-grade level” and libertarians talking “around the sixth-grade level,”

when forced to engage in conversations with a black primary interviewer, the two characters were as distinct as third and ninth graders in the complexity of their discussions.” Why? The critical distinction between libertarians and authoritarians, Stemmer argues, is that “the former are excited and engaged and the latter frightened and unhinged by difference.”

“fears regarding immorality and crime, claims about the critical need to reestablish some normative order, and elaboration of plans for accomplishing this” occupied the bulk of “their psychic space,” consuming a vastly disproportionate share of their time and energy.

the left needs to know that it will better grasp reality and increase its odds of defeating Trumpism if it understands that anti-authoritarianism rather than antiracism is the most apt, effective framework for opposing what ails the right.

their intolerance of difference was much broader than racism, encompassing racial and ethnic out-groups, political dissidents, and people they consider moral deviants. Authoritarians display distinct traits across very different domains of tolerance.

“much of what we think of as racism, likewise political and moral intolerance, is more helpfully understood as ‘difference-ism,’” defined as “a fundamental and overwhelming desire to establish and defend some collective order of oneness and sameness.”

Stenner began her research with a questionnaire that probed the attitudes of her subjects toward child-rearing

many on the left and the right misunderstand racism in politics because neither quite understands the role of authoritarians.

the left makes several significant errors with regard to racism on the right

most important, leftists too often conceive of Trumpist politics as rooted primarily in racism, or even an ideological belief in white supremacy, rather than an authoritarian “different-ism” that manifests as racism at times but as distinct (if psychologically similar) intolerances at other times

“All the available evidence indicates that exposure to difference, talking about difference, and applauding difference… are the surest way to aggravate those who are innately intolerant, and to guarantee the expression of their predispositions in manifestly intolerant attitudes and behaviors,”

“parading, talking about, and applauding our sameness” seems wise when possible.

“the authoritarian dynamic” provides a better account than mere racism of political conflict “across the seemingly diverse domains of race and immigration, civil liberties, crime and punishment, and of when and why those battles will be the most heated

Trump sometimes seems like the paradigmatic example of the authoritarian personality type. But he may simply be a charismatic leader who understands – whether by some advisor’s dark calculation, or his own instincts – the vulnerability and malleability of his audience

showy celebration of an absolute insistence upon individual autonomy and unconstrained diversity pushes those by nature least equipped to live comfortably in a liberal democracy not to the limits of their tolerance, but to their intolerant extremes.”

I’d also advise the left to bear in mind that the right is a diverse coalition composed of authoritarians as well as many libertarians and people in between

when directed at non-authoritarian non-racists, false accusations could conceivably make them less inclined to probe, ponder, or perceive actual racism in others

The left should refine its best critiques on race and abandon its worst as lacking fairness and rigor.

And the non-authoritarian right needs to wake up to the authoritarians in their midst, taking responsibility for trying to deprive them of power rather than scapegoating or fixating on the least persuasive of the left’s critiques.

traditional school debate discourages the kind of listening and reasoning that is critical to a healthy democracy.

Rather than increasing their comfort with being wrong, they can deepen an attitude of certainty.

many schools around the country are gravitating to alternative forms of debate that set the goals of truth and understanding over the goal of persuasion. A good example is the Ethics Bowl.

In the Ethics Bowl, created at the intercollegiate level in 1993 and the high school level around 2012, a team is assigned a question — not a statement or conclusion, as in traditional debate — on a contentious topic, such as “When is the use of military drones morally permissible?” The team then presents and defends whatever conclusion its deliberation has led to. An opposing team and a panel of judges pose questions and raise potential problems, to which the first team responds.

the winner is the team that does the better job of articulating its reasoning, listening and responding to questions, and advancing the collective understanding of the issue at hand.

But disagreement is frequent in the Ethics Bowl, and the discussions are spirited

It is precisely when we disagree that it is most critical for our thinking to be clear and our dialogue to be charitable and scrupulous.

In encouraging students to practice this skill, the Ethics Bowl fosters what may be the most important intellectual virtue of all: openness to changing your mind.

For months, Trump himself referred to the illness as “the coronavirus.” In early March, though, several conservative media figures began using Wuhan virus or Chinese virus instead. On March 16, Trump himself began to refer to it as the “Chinese Virus,” prompting commentators to charge that he was racializing the epidemic

Even before Trump’s adoption of Chinese virus, Asian Americans had been facing a wave of discrimination, harassment, and violence in response to the epidemic. The president’s rhetoric did not start this backlash, but the decision to embrace the term Chinese virus reinforced the association between a worldwide pandemic and people of a particular national origin.

Legitimizing that link with all the authority of the office of the president of the United States is not just morally abhorrent, but dangerous.

The president’s now-constant use of Chinese virus is the latest example of a conservative phenomenon

Trump and his acolytes are never more comfortable than when they are defending expressions of bigotry as plain common sense, and accusing their liberal critics of being oversensitive snowflakes who care more about protecting “those people” than they do about you. They seek to reduce any political dispute to this simple equation whenever possible.

“I want them to talk about racism every day,” the former Trump adviser Steve Bannon told The American Prospect in 2017. “If the left is focused on race and identity, and we go with economic nationalism, we can crush the Democrats.”

n this instance, though, the gambit served two additional purposes: distracting the public from Trump’s catastrophic mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic, and disguising the fact that Trump’s failures stemmed from his selfishness and fondness for authoritarian leaders, which in turn made him an easy mark for the Chinese government’s disinformation

Trump understands that overt expressions of prejudice draw condemnation from liberals, which in turn rallies his own base around him. Calling the coronavirus the “Chinese virus” not only informs Trump’s base that foreigners are the culprits, it also offers his supporters the emotional satisfaction of venting fury at liberals for unfairly accusing conservatives of racism.

Since that report, Chinese officials have engaged in a propaganda offensive, expelling American journalists, minimizing their early missteps, and putting forth a conspiracy theory that the virus was engineered by the U.S. military. Compared with all this, the president’s defenders argue, Trump referring to the coronavirus as the “Chinese virus” seems trivial.

The point is to turn a pandemic that threatens both mass death and the collapse of the American economy into a culture-war argument in which the electorate can be polarized along partisan lines.

Lost in that comparison, however, is the fact that the most effective target of CCP disinformation has been Trump himself.

According to The Washington Post, at the same time that Trump was stating that Beijing had the disease under control, U.S. intelligence agencies were already warning him that “Chinese officials appeared to be minimizing the severity of the outbreak.”

Administration officials directly warned Trump of the danger posed by the virus, but “Trump’s insistence on the contrary seemed to rest in his relationship with China’s President Xi Jingping, whom Trump believed was providing him with reliable information about how the virus was spreading in China,” The Washington Post reported, “despite reports from intelligence agencies that Chinese officials were not being candid about the true scale of the crisis.”

The right’s rhetorical shift then, is not just another racism rope-a-dop

It is also an attempt to cover up the fact that the Chinese government’s propaganda campaign was effective in that it helped persuade the president of the United States not to take adequate precautionary measures to stem a tide of pestilence that U.S. government officials saw coming.

Now faced with the profound consequences of that decision, the right has settled on a strategy that does little to hold Beijing accountable for its mishandling of the coronavirus, but instead plays into Beijing’s attempt to cast any criticism of the Chinese government’s response as racism

The term makes no distinction between China’s authoritarian government and people who happen to be of Chinese origin, and undermines the unified front the Trump administration would want if it were actually concerned with countering Chinese-government propaganda.

Instead, the Trump administration has chosen a political tactic that strengthens the president’s political prospects by polarizing the electorate, and covers up his own role as Xi’s patsy, while making its own pushback against CCP propaganda less effective

This approach reflects the most glaring flaws of Trumpist governance, which have become only more acute during the coronavirus crisis: It exacerbates rather than solves the underlying problem, placing the president’s political objectives above all other concerns, even the ones both the president and his supporters claim to value.

“He is surely a rogue and a gangster fond of playing with fire, rather than a politician,” Mr. Kim said.

Mr. Kim’s foreign minister, Ri Yong-ho, who arrived in New York on Wednesday to attend the General Assembly, also called Mr. Trump “a dog barking.”

Asked by reporters in New York what Mr. Kim might have meant by the “highest level of hard-line countermeasure,” Mr. Ri said that only Mr. Kim would know, but that he thought the North might be considering the largest test of a hydrogen bomb ever in the Pacific Ocean, according to the South Korean news agency Yonhap.

“The United States has great strength and patience, but if it is forced to defend itself or its allies, we will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea,” he said.

In his United Nations speech on Tuesday, Mr. Trump called North Korea’s autocracy a “band of criminals” and Mr. Kim a “Rocket Man” on “a suicide mission.”

Mr. Trump on Friday responded with some name-calling of his own. On Twitter, the president called Mr. Kim “obviously a madman.”

Although Mr. Kim is often quoted by official North Korean news media, it is highly unusual for him to issue a statement in his name. In North Korea, the supreme leader’s statement carries a weight that surpasses any other formal document.

Mr. Kim, who has been accelerating his country’s development of nuclear weapons and long-range ballistic missiles in defiance of the United Nations, Washington and its allies, said Mr. Trump’s remarks had convinced him that “the path I chose is correct and that it is the one I have to follow to the last.”

“Now that Trump has denied the existence of and insulted me and my country in front of the eyes of the world and made the most ferocious declaration of a war in history that he would destroy” North Korea, Mr. Kim said, “we will consider with seriousness exercising of a corresponding, highest level of hard-line countermeasure in history.”

Raqqa, which has been held by IS since 2014, is an important hub for the jihadist group's operations and is reportedly defended by up to 4,000 fighters.

As well as holding part of Al-Sabahiya in the west, the alliance also controls Al-Meshleb in the east. But it has struggled to advance from the city's north, which is heavily defended.

"IS has reinforced the northern approach to Raqqa much more, thinking that's how the SDF would try to advance on the city," Mr Abdel Rahman said.

The cost has been a loss of integrity and, crucially, a loss of emphasis on ideas and, more important, ideals. There exists in some quarters an assumption that if you’re truly going to “fight,” then you have to be ready to get your hands dirty. You can’t be squeamish about details like truth or civility or decency. When searching for ideological gladiators, we emphasize their knifework, not their character or integrity.

Liberals use condescending mockery. Conservatives use righteous indignation. That’s not much of a difference.

What followed was a toxic culture of conservative celebrity, where the public elevated personalities more because of their pugnaciousness than anything else. Indeed, the fastest way to become the next conservative star is to “destroy” the Left, feeding the same kind of instinct that causes leftists to lap up content from John Oliver, Samantha Bee, and Stephen Colbert

Time and again prominent conservative personalities have failed to uphold basic standards of morality or even decency. Time and again the conservative public has rallied around them, seeking to protect their own against the wrath of a vengeful Left. Time and again the defense has proved unsustainable as the sheer weight of the facts buries the accused.

But this isn’t scalp-taking, it’s scalp-giving

here are those who say that the Left is “taking scalps,” and they have a list of Republican victims to prove their thesis. Roger Ailes is out at Fox News. Bill O’Reilly is out at Fox News. Michael Flynn is out at the White House.

Demagogues found popular support for their demand to keep Jewish refugees out of the country. Mr. Dinnerstein describes an anti-Semitic speaker warning of “200,000 Communist Jews at the Mexican border waiting to get into this country,” adding that “if they are admitted they will rape every woman and child that is left unprotected.

Today, these tropes feel familiar but in a new context. Mr. Trump started his political career by amplifying rumors that President Barack Obama was secretly Muslim. He resurrected the disgraced slogan “America First.” In October, he warned that Hillary Clinton was meeting “in secret with international banks to plot the destruction of U.S. sovereignty in order to enrich these global financial powers.” Mr. Trump called for refugees to be kept out of the country, smearing them as agents of a sinister foreign ideology. Breitbart, the website formerly run by Mr. Trump’s chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, has run a stream of alarmist articles about refugee rapists

In the Trump administration’s conspiratorial nationalism, avowed anti-Semites hear their overarching narratives reflected back to them, their prejudices tacitly approved.

During the presidential campaign, Michael T. Flynn, who would briefly serve as Mr. Trump’s national security adviser, retweeted someone attacking CNN with the words, “Not anymore, Jews, not anymore.” (Mr. Flynn later apologized.)

Under Mr. Bannon’s leadership, Breitbart defended online anti-Semitism as subversive good fun and published a column attacking the conservative writer Bill Kristol as a “renegade Jew.”

When the National Cathedral hosted a Muslim prayer service in a gesture of ecumenical good will, Mr. Gorka published a Breitbart column headlined: “Muslim Brotherhood Overruns National Cathedral in D.C.”

At an inauguration ball, Sebastian Gorka, a Breitbart editor who was soon to become a White House adviser, wore a medal associated with a Nazi-collaborationist Hungarian group, the Vitezi Rend. The Forward, a Jewish newspaper, reported that Mr. Gorka was a sworn member of the group. (Mr. Gorka claimed he wore the medal to honor his father, from whom he “inherited” Vitezi Rend membership.)

This is where we are now: A senior administration official dons fascist paraphernalia, defends himself by saying he did so out of filial loyalty, and suffers no political repercussions

Naturally, many Jews find this chilling, but we should not lose sight of the real import of Mr. Gorka’s appointment. He may flirt with anti-Semitic iconography for sentimental reasons, but he owes his career to his apocalyptic view of America’s war with radical Islam. The Islamic State, he claimed last year, “is already well entrenched on the shores of the United States.

In power, the new administration, too, seemed to be trolling the Jewish community. In January, the White House released a statement for Holocaust Remembrance Day that failed to mention Jews. A spokeswoman, Hope Hicks, told CNN the omission was intentional, because the administration “took into account all of those who suffered” — echoing the position of neo-Nazis and Holocaust deniers who seek to play down the genocide of Jews.

Last year, Michael Anton, now a White House national security staffer, wrote a pseudonymous essay arguing that “mass immigration has overwhelmed, eroded, and de-Americanized formerly American communities.” He was particularly contemptuous of Muslim immigration. Yes, he allowed, “not all Muslims are terrorists, blah, blah, blah, etc. Even so, what good has Muslim immigration done for the United States and the American people?”

To be an American Muslim or a brown-skinned immigrant and know that people like this are in power must be terrifying. Mr. Trump and his appointees have consistently denigrated and dehumanized these minorities in ways we’d never tolerate if they were talking about Jews.

The president and his cronies talk a lot about representing “the people,” but they don’t mean all Americans. “The only important thing is the unification of the people,” Mr. Trump said at Eugene, Ore., campaign rally last year, “because the other people don’t mean anything.”

Naturally, a government that decides certain groups of people “don’t mean anything” shakes many Jews to the core. But the horror of the president’s vision isn’t that “the other people” might include Jews. It includes people. Even in this brutally tribal moment, that should be enough.

“There’s a real battle for hearts and minds going on right now and Ben is one of the main warriors,” said David French, a columnist for National Review. Mr. French calls Mr. Shapiro a “principled gladiator.” His aggressive tone draws in audiences, he said, but he does not attack unfairly, stoke anger for the sake of it, or mischaracterize his opponents’ positions. He even hits his own side,

“He appeals to the better angels of his audience’s nature, while still being a pugilist, and that’s quite a skill,” Mr. French said.

He is less established than Sean Hannity or Rush Limbaugh, but his audience is younger. And instead of hunkering down in a studio, Mr. Shapiro travels the country, speaking at colleges (he’s been to 37 since early last year) and on panels.

“There is a hunger in conservative millennial land for a different kind of voice,” Mr. French said. “They want someone who will unapologetically stand up for conservative values, but who is also articulating a movement they can feel proud of.”

“I am trying to militantly defend conservative ideas,” he said. “I’m not going to be anti-left for the sake of it.”

Mr. Yiannopoulos, a protégé of Mr. Bannon, was good at shocking audiences, saying things like “feminism is cancer.” But critics say that he was empty of ideas, a kind of nihilistic rodeo clown who was not even conservative. Mr. Shapiro broke with Mr. Bannon last year, saying Breitbart had become a propaganda tool for Mr. Trump.

“Trump won the nomination because he was anti-left, not because of any political viewpoints,” Mr. Shapiro said in an interview. “He was slapping people on the left and people on the right went, ‘Yeah, those people need to be slapped!’”

But Mr. Shapiro does it too. He thinks it’s easy to provoke the left, which he says has become intellectually flabby after decades of cultural dominance. It’s not good at arguing and relies instead on taboos and punishing people who violate them. That is the essence of his stump speech.

“Way down at the bottom are white straight males. Those are people whose opinions do not matter at all. Because those are the people who are the beneficiaries of the system. They don’t get to talk about the system because they were the ones who built the system.”

Mr. Shapiro says he’s about more than tribal polemics. In an age of combative politics, you have to be a fighter to be in the game. And he says he’s willing to defend conservatism against those on the right as well as the left.

Mr. Shapiro, an Orthodox Jew, was one of the first to call out the alt-right movement, denouncing it as racist and anti-Semitic at a time when most people saw it as counterculture and cool. He paid a price. He received 38 percent of all anti-Semitic tweets in 2016, the largest single share, according to the Anti-Defamation League.

Critics say that is great red meat for his audience, but it’s nonsense. Even if straight white males are low on the left’s pecking order, they have most of the power in Washington, in statehouses, in every corporate boardroom. They run America.

But in performing this calculus, the leaders of the Justice Department should candidly consider the large costs of their silence. When they do not speak out against the president’s attacks on their institutions and the rule of law, they signal to their employees and the world that they are indefeasibly beholden to the president, or that they do not care. The failure to protect and defend the department engenders anger, suffering, and resentment by the men and women they are charged with leading. It also contributes to a sense of delegitimization within the department, and thus stokes the morale crisis. These are not consequences that any leader should ever tolerate.

“Elections always offer the possibility of a new democratic beginning, an opportunity to embark on a new phase,” he said. “I trust that from now, Catalonia will enter a phase based on dialogue and not confrontation, in cooperation and not imposition, in plurality and not unilateralism.”

The filing sheds more light on the actions on Jan. 6 of Stewart Rhodes, who founded the Oath Keepers in 2009. Rhodes is only identified as "Person One" in the document but has been identified as the group's founder in previous court papers.

Rhodes has not been charged in connection with the Capitol insurrection, but the latest court document and previous statements by prosecutors suggest investigators are closely scrutinizing his actions on and around Jan. 6.

In the latest filing, prosecutors allege that Rhodes called Florida Oath Keeper leader Kelly Meggs at 2:32 p.m. on Jan. 6, just as Meggs and several of his associates were getting into a "stack" formation to push up the steps of the Capitol.

It is not clear what the two men spoke about, but prosecutors note that around six minutes later, the militia members who had coalesced into a stack formation "forcibly" entered the Capitol "by pushing past just opened and severely damaged Capitol building doors."

The latest government filing was made to oppose the pretrial release of one of the 10 defendants in the case, Jessica Watkins, who the government says was the leader of an Ohio militia and member of the Oath Keepers.

Prosecutors allege that Watkins was in a chat group on the encrypted messaging app Signal called "DC OP: Jan 6 21" with Meggs, Rhodes and two other Oath Keepers who have been charged over the Capitol riot.

The government says the group used the chat to talk about what weapons to bring to Washington, D.C., about using handheld radios to communicate on Jan. 6 and about the existence of so-called quick reaction forces waiting outside Washington with weapons in case "of worst case scenarios."

In the Signal chat on the day of the riot, prosecutors say shortly after 1 p.m. Rhodes messaged the group: "All I see Trump doing is complaining. I see no intent by him to do anything. So the patriots are taking it into their own hands. They've had enough."

Prosecutors say around 2:15 p.m., one of the chat participants told the group that ground had been taken at the Capitol and "we need to regroup any members who are not on mission," an apparent reference to Oath Keepers who were providing "security" in Washington during the Trump rally.

Around 2:32 p.m., the government says, Rhodes "exchanged a 97 second call with 'stack' member and Florida Oath Keepers leader, Kelly Meggs, as Meggs, Watkins and the rest of the stack embedded themselves among insurgents trying to force open the east side Capitol building double doors that officers were desperately trying to keep shut."

The government argues that evidence supports the theory that the defendants stormed the Capitol "with the shared objective of using force to upend the transition of presidential power."

GOP leaders justify the voter suppression measures by arguing that they are needed to crack down on fraud and to restore the public's faith that US elections are fair. But multiple courts and Trump's own Justice Department found there was no widespread electoral fraud in 2020.

The Georgia bill is only one example of GOP efforts in multiple states -- including many crucial electoral battlegrounds -- to hold back a diverse demographic tide in cities that favor Democrats, which critics see as an attempt to cement minority rule in the United States.

Georgia Republicans also lost two US Senate seats that handed Democrats control of the 50-50 chamber on the basis of huge Black turnout in runoff elections in January.close dialogSign up for CNN's CNN's Chris Cillizza cuts through the political spin and tells you what you need to know. Sign Me UpNo ThanksBy subscribing, you agree to ourprivacy policy.Sign up for CNN's CNN's Chris Cillizza cuts through the political spin and tells you what you need to know. Please enter above Sign Me UpNo ThanksBy subscribing, you agree to ourprivacy policy.You're on the list for CNN'sCNN's Chris Cillizza cuts through the political spin and tells you what you need to know. close dialog/* effects for .bx-campaign-1245919 *//* custom css .bx-campaign-1245919 *//* custom css from creative 47804 */@-ms-keyframes bx-anim-1245919-spin { from {

"This should be marked as Exhibit A in making the case that discriminatory voter suppression is alive and well, and makes clear why we need federal voting rights legislation to stop these laws in their tracks," Hewitt said. "We stand ready to take action and protect the fundamental right to vote through the courts."

as a remnant of the Jim Crow era that institutionalized racism and hinted that he could ultimately back abolishing the Senate filibuster to get the Democrats' House-passed bill through the chamber. But Biden declined to reveal his strategy for getting the voting rights bill into law.

Georgia's action threw a political grenade into the debate over a Washington campaign by many Democrats to abolish Senate supermajority rules that Republicans could use to block their sweeping election bill, known as the For the People Act.

In a statement to CNN, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican who defied Trump's pleas in a telephone call to find votes to overturn Biden's victory, said he would still stand up for voter freedoms but did not criticize the law."In implementing this law, I will ensure that no eligible Georgia voter is hindered in exercising their right to vote, and I will continue to further secure our elections so that every Georgian can have confidence in the results of our elections," Raffensperger said

"As the FBI continue to round up seditionists who spilled blood to defend a lie about our elections, Republican state leaders willfully undermine democracy by giving themselves authority to overturn results they do not like," Abrams said in a statement. "Now, more than ever, Americans must demand federal action to protect voting rights as we continue to fight against these blatantly unconstitutional efforts that are nothing less than Jim Crow 2.0."

Black voters hampered by the restrictions of voting in urban areas have often found themselves lining up for hours to vote in inclement weather. The clear targeting of African American voters in Georgia and elsewhere recalls some of the ugliest racial episodes of America's past, and is fueling claims of open Republican racism.

Former President Donald Trump's campaign of lies about a stolen election just delivered a huge victory with a new Georgia law that could suppress the votes of many of the citizens who helped eject him from the White House.

Republican state lawmakers rushed through a broad law Thursday making it harder to vote that disproportionately targets Democratic and Black voters

The move confirms the Peach State as the epicenter of the fight for American democracy

The Georgia law raises the question of whether election safeguards that prevented Trump's energetic efforts to rig the 2020 White House race after the fact in the state will stand firm in future elections amid false claims of electoral fraud by a president.

"What I'm worried about is how un-American this whole initiative is. It's sick. It's sick," President Joe Biden

Republicans in multiple states pursue new laws to limit voting.

Georgia Republicans also lost two US Senate seats that handed Democrats control of the 50-50 chamber on the basis of huge Black turnout in runoff elections in January.close dialogSign up for CNN What Matters NewsletterEvery day we summarize What Matters and deliver it straight to your inbox.Sign me upNo thanksBy subscribing you agree to ourprivacy policy.By subscribing you agree to ourprivacy policy.Sign up for CNN What Matters NewsletterEvery day we summarize What Matters and deliver it straight to your inbox.Please enter aboveSign me upNo thanksBy subscribing you agree to ourprivacy policy.By subscribing you agree to ourprivacy policy.Sign up for CNN What Matters NewsletterEvery day we summarize What Matters and deliver it straight to your inbox.//assets.bounceexchang

After leaving office, Trump demanded that Republican state legislatures pass laws to ban mail-in voting and to prevent courts from weighing in on electoral disputes.

the former President has made the acceptance of his false conspiracy theories about voter fraud in 2020 a litmus test for Republican candidates

Iowa has already passed a measure to limit absentee balloting and voting hours. Texas is taking steps to cut voting hours and absentee balloting in big Democratic cities like Houston. New voting laws are being pushed by Republicans in another swing state Trump lost, Arizona.

GOP leaders justify the voter suppression measures by arguing that they are needed to crack down on fraud and to restore the public's faith that US elections are fair. But multiple courts and Trump's own Justice Department found there was no widespread electoral fraud in 2020.

voter mistrust was largely fueled by Trump's blatantly false claims

Georgia's action threw a political grenade into the debate over a Washington campaign by many Democrats to abolish Senate supermajority rules that Republicans could use to block their sweeping election bill, known as the For the People Act.

The drama in the Georgia Legislature unfolded as Biden condemned restrictive state legislation as a remnant of the Jim Crow era that institutionalized racism and hinted that he could ultimately back abolishing the Senate filibuster to get the Democrats' House-passed bill through the chamber.

The law allows any Georgian to make unlimited challenges to voter registrations, and, incredibly, makes it a misdemeanor crime for anyone to offer food and water to voters stuck in long lines to cast ballots.

The clear targeting of African American voters in Georgia and elsewhere recalls some of the ugliest racial episodes of America's past, and is fueling claims of open Republican racism.

The Georgia law was quickly signed by Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, who incurred the wrath of Trump last year for refusing to play along with his attempt to override Biden's victory by 12,000 votes in the state, which was confirmed by several audits.

"In implementing this law, I will ensure that no eligible Georgia voter is hindered in exercising their right to vote, and I will continue to further secure our elections so that every Georgian can have confidence in the results of our elections," Raffensperger said.

Kemp is up for reelection in 2022 and could face Democrat Stacey Abrams, a former state lawmaker and prominent voting rights advocate

"As the FBI continue to round up seditionists who spilled blood to defend a lie about our elections, Republican state leaders willfully undermine democracy by giving themselves authority to overturn results they do not like," Abrams said in a statement. "Now, more than ever, Americans must demand federal action to protect voting rights as we continue to fight against these blatantly unconstitutional efforts that are nothing less than Jim Crow 2.0."

the measure directly targeted voters of color who took part in record numbers in the 2020 election.

The For the People Act awaiting action in the Senate would create automatic voter registration nationwide and restore portions of the Voting Rights Act that were gutted by the Supreme Court. It would also strengthen mail-in voting and permit early voting across the country, while taking steps to cut wait times at the polls.

"They need somebody who's going to go as I will, as I'm committed to do, to defending President Trump's America First policies and also to protecting the people of Missouri from Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer's radical leftist agenda," said Greitens of Missouri voters.

He spoke at the January 6 "Stop the Steal" rally that led to the insurrection at the US Capitol. And even in the aftermath of that riot, Brooks insisted, without evidence that left wings groups like Antifa had been behind the riot.

Greitens, after all, resigned under pressure as governor following revelations of a 2015 affair with a woman who testified under oath to state lawmakers that she felt forced into sexual acts by him -- and that he had threatened to make public explicit photos of her unless she stayed silent about the affair. Greitens admitted the affair but denied the other allegations.

On Brooks' part, he has been perhaps the single most outspoken advocate of the Big Lie that the 2020 election was stolen.

Both Brooks and Greitens, by dint of their unstinting loyalty to Trump -- not to mention their high profiles in their states -- will likely start as the frontrunners for the respective Republican nominations in both states.

in order for Republicans to retake the Senate, they need to pick up at least one Democratic seat while not losing any one their own

But the efforts to slow action on the Senate floor to a crawl are expected to have little effect on the final legislation.

“The horrific events of January 6 were a direct and foreseeable consequence of the defendants’ unlawful actions,” asserts the civil suit, filed for Mr. Swalwell in Federal District Court in Washington. “As such, the defendants are responsible for the injury and destruction that followed.”

A House Democrat who unsuccessfully prosecuted Donald J. Trump at his impeachment trial last month sued him in federal court on Friday for acts of terrorism and incitement to riot

The suit brought by Representative Eric Swalwell, Democrat of California, accuses Mr. Trump and key allies of inciting the deadly attack and conspiring with rioters to try to prevent Congress from formalizing President Biden’s election victory.

If the sweeping pandemic relief package makes it to Mr. Biden’s desk, it will mark the first major legislative accomplishment of his administration.

Though not a criminal case, the suit charges Mr. Trump and his allies with several counts including conspiracy to violate civil rights, negligence, incitement to riot, disorderly conduct, terrorism and inflicting serious emotional distress

A majority of the Senate, including seven Republicans, voted to find Mr. Trump “guilty” based on the same factual record last month, but the vote fell short of the two-thirds needed to convict him.

In a statement, Jason Miller, an adviser to Mr. Trump, blasted Mr. Swalwell as a “a lowlife with no credibility” but did not comment on the merits of the case.

During the Senate trial, Mr. Trump’s defense lawyers flatly denied that he was responsible for the assault and made broad assertions that he was protected by the First Amendment when he urged supporters gathered on Jan. 6 to “fight like hell” to “stop the steal” he said was underway at the Capitol.

The remaining platforms for discussion in Turkey are rapidly shrinking. The government is cracking down on social media, and thousands could be arrested and charged with insulting the President or spreading terrorist propaganda. Human Rights Watch notes that hundreds are being investigated or detained by police for social media posts deemed to "create fear and panic" about Covid-19, some of which included criticism of the government's response to the pandemic.

Turkey is now expanding its powers to crush civil society under the guise of "combatting terrorism" with a new bill authorizing the government to block the donations and assets of non-government organizations like human rights groups and close them if members are charged with terrorism. The law was introduced after Turkey already shut down and seized the assets of at least 1,500 NGOs between 2016 and 2019.

The US cannot cooperate on security matters with a country that has justified human rights abuses under the banner of counterterrorism and lost all credibility on real terror threats -- thereby undermining the broader NATO alliance. Biden should also press for the release of political prisoners at the forefront of the struggle for freedom in Turkey.

As a bipartisan majority of the Senate put it in a recent letter to the President, Biden should urge the Turkish government to "end their crackdown on dissent... release political prisoners... and reverse their authoritarian course." Otherwise, Turkey will continue to exploit tragedies like the deaths of hostages to further entrench Erdogan's rule through the guise of "counterterrorism" to the detriment of its citizens.

Fauci last week called the states’ moves “inexplicable” and suggested that it could lead to another surge.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) defended his decision against bipartisan criticism last week, saying that lifting the mask mandate “isn’t going to make that big of a change in the state of Texas.”