As Congress prepared to vote on impeachment for a second time, David Bynum reached out to his former boss — Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the Republican leader in the House.

“They said, ‘We’re getting way more calls from people who are upset that he’s not doing more to support Donald Trump,’” Mr. Bynum said.

Mr. McCarthy has been pilloried nationally and throughout California for being loyal to Mr. Trump to the bitter end — voting to overturn the election results hours after a mob of the president’s supporters stormed the Capitol and urging censure of the president instead of impeachment.

The new Covid-19 vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna seem to be remarkably good at preventing serious illness. But it’s unclear how well they will curb the spread of the coronavirus.

That leaves open the possibility that some vaccinated people get infected without developing symptoms, and could then silently transmit the virus — especially if they come in close contact with others or stop wearing masks.

If vaccinated people are silent spreaders of the virus, they may keep it circulating in their communities, putting unvaccinated people at risk.

Before self-proclaimed members of the far-right group the Proud Boys marched toward the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, they stopped to kneel in the street and prayed in the name of Jesus.

The presence of Christian rituals, symbols and language was unmistakable on Wednesday in Washington. There was a mock campaign banner, “Jesus 2020,” in blue and red; an “Armor of God” patch on a man’s fatigues; a white cross declaring “Trump won” in all capitals. All of this was interspersed with allusions to QAnon conspiracy theories, Confederate flags and anti-Semitic T-shirts.

that the most extreme corners of support for Mr. Trump have become inextricable from some parts of white evangelical power in America. Rather than completely separate strands of support, these groups have become increasingly blended together.

Stocks rallied to record highs as a mob descended on the US Capitol. But now that President Donald Trump has become the first American president in history to be impeached twice, investors are taking a moment to recalibrate.

One fear is that the looming impeachment trial in the Senate will derail President-elect Joe Biden's economic agenda.

Stocks have been in a holding pattern for the past few trading sessions

Twelve people died and more than 80 were sickened during the Flint water crisis, and now authorities are holding Michigan officials responsible.

In a news conference Thursday, prosecutors announced charges against nine officials for their roles in the crisis, including former Gov. Rick Snyder, who faces two counts of willful neglect of duty. Snyder has pleaded not guilty to the charges. The eight others include members of Snyder's staff, officials from the city of Flint and state public health officials. They face a variety of charges ranging from willful neglect of duty to involuntary manslaughter."The Flint water crisis is not some relic of the past," Michigan Solicitor General Fadwa Hammoud, one of the prosecutors leading the investigation, said.

Flint has been exposed to extremely high levels of lead since 2014 when city and state officials switched the city's water supply from the Detroit Water System to the contaminated Flint River in an effort to cut costs.

The Trump administration is inflicting even more damage on Chinese businesses — including smartphone maker Xiaomi — with just days to go before President-elect Joe Biden takes office.

The US Defense Department on Thursday added nine Chinese firms, including Xiaomi, to a list of companies the agency claims are owned or controlled by China's military. Businesses on the list are subject to harsh restrictions, including a ban on American investment.

The Defense Department said in a statement that it is "determined to highlight and counter" the relationship between China's military and firms that "appear to be civilian entities" but which support the military with advanced technology and expertise.Read MoreBeijing on Friday blasted the new restrictions as an abuse of power by the United States.

For the first time in more than 100 years, Lee-Jackson Day will not officially be celebrated in Virginia.The holiday, which was observed on the Friday before Martin Luther King, Jr. Day in January, celebrated Gens. Robert E. Lee and Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson as "defenders of causes." The event typically involved Civil War-themed parades, wreath layings and reenactments hosted by Confederate memorial groups.Last February, state lawmakers in Virginia passed a bill that would swap the holiday honoring the Confederate generals for Election Day.

Confederate symbols have become increasingly unpopular for their association with pro-slavery activists and racism.

"Virginia has a story to tell that extends far beyond glorifying the Confederacy and its participants,"

A day after the House impeached President Trump for inciting a violent insurrection at the Capitol, Democrats and Republicans in the Senate were developing plans on Thursday to try the departing president at the same time as they begin considering the agenda of the incoming one

“The evidence is Trump’s own words, recorded on video,” Mr. Blumenthal said. “It’s a question of whether Republicans want to step up and face history.”

Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California has discretion over when to transmit the article of impeachment, formally initiating the Senate proceeding. Some Democrats said she might wait until Monday, Jan. 25, or longer to allow more time for the Senate to put in place Mr. Biden’s national security team to respond to continued threats of violence from pro-Trump extremists.

During the four years that Caligula occupied the Roman throne, his favorite hideaway was an imperial pleasure garden called Horti Lamiani, the Mar-a-Lago of its day. The vast residential compound spread out on the Esquiline Hill, one of the seven hills on which the city was originally built, in the area around the current Piazza Vittorio Emanuele II.

There, just on the edge of the city, villas, shrines and banquet halls were set in carefully constructed “natural” landscapes. An early version of a wildlife park, the Horti Lamiani featured orchards, fountains, terraces, a bath house adorned with precious colored marble from all over the Mediterranean, and exotic animals, some of which were used, as in the Colosseum, for private circus games.

Historians have long believed that the remains of the lavish houses and parkland would never be recovered. But this spring, Italy’s Ministry of Cultural Heritage, Cultural Activities and Tourism will open the Nymphaeum Museum of Piazza Vittorio, a subterranean gallery that will showcase a section of the imperial garden that was unearthed during an excavation from 2006 to 2015. The dig, carried out beneath the rubble of a condemned 19th-century apartment complex, yielded gems, coins, ceramics, jewelry, pottery, cameo glass, a theater mask, seeds of plants such as citron, apricot and acacia that had been imported from Asia, and bones of peacocks, deer, lions, bears and ostriches.

Donald J. Trump on Wednesday became the first American president to be impeached twice, as 10 members of his party joined with Democrats in the House to charge him with “incitement of insurrection” for his role in egging on a violent mob that stormed the Capitol last week.

lawmakers voted 232 to 197 to approve a single impeachment article. It accused Mr. Trump of “inciting violence against the government of the United States” in his quest to overturn the election results, and called for him to be removed and disqualified from ever holding public office again.

In a measured statement after the vote, Mr. Biden called for the nation to come together after an “unprecedented assault on our democracy.” He was staring down the likelihood that the trial would complicate his first days in office, and said he hoped Senate leadership would “find a way to deal with their constitutional responsibilities on impeachment while also working on the other urgent business of this nation.” That work included cabinet nominations and confronting the coronavirus crisis

America’s greenhouse gas emissions from energy and industry plummeted more than 10 percent in 2020, reaching their lowest levels in at least three decades as the coronavirus pandemic slammed the brakes on the nation’s economy, according to an estimate published Tuesday by the Rhodium Group.

In the years ahead, United States emissions are widely expected to bounce back once the pandemic recedes and the economy rumbles back to life — unless policymakers take stronger action to clean up the country’s power plants, factories, cars and trucks.

Before the pandemic hit, America’s emissions had been slowly but steadily declining since 2005, in large part because utilities that generate electricity have been shifting away from coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel, in favor of cheaper and cleaner natural gas, wind and solar power.

A sign that reads, “Off with their heads — stop the steal” and a small handwritten poster with the words “Trump won, swamp stole” are among dozens of objects and ephemera from pro-Trump rallies and the Capitol takeover Wednesday that are heading to the National Museum of American History, collected by curators from the division of political and military history.

it has begun archiving protest signs, posters and banners from protests on the National Mall and from the violent mob that stormed through the Capitol on Wednesday.

“As an institution, we are committed to understanding how Americans make change,” the museum’s director, Anthea M. Hartig, said in a statement, explaining that “this election season has offered remarkable instances of the pain and possibility involved in that process of reckoning with the past and shaping the future.”

The House impeached President Trump for inciting a violent insurrection against the United States government, a week after a mob of his supporters stormed the Capitol

The vote was 232-197, with 10 Republicans joining Democratic colleagues to impeach — the most ever from a president’s own party.

It was really clear that there was a big divide among Republicans. A number of them got up and vigorously defended the president and savaged Democrats for doing this, but most did not actually try to excuse his behavior — they just argued that impeachment wasn’t the answer.

During Mr. Trump’s time in office, it has become clear that the United States economy can surpass what technocrats once thought were its limits: Specifically, the jobless rate can fall lower and government budget deficits can run higher than was once widely believed without setting off an inflationary spiral.

Before the pandemic took hold, the jobless rate was below 4 percent, inflation was low, and wages were rising at a steady clip, especially for low and middle earners. The inflation-adjusted income of the median American household rose 9 percent from 2016 to 2019.

The higher interest rates from unfunded tax cuts that had been forecast did not materialize; the C.B.O. in spring 2018 had expected the 10-year Treasury bond yield to average 3.5 percent in 2019. In fact, it averaged a mere 2.1 percent, making federal borrowing more manageable.

The House moved on two fronts on Sunday to try to force President Trump from office, escalating pressure on the vice president to strip him of power and committing to quickly begin impeachment proceedings against him for inciting a mob that violently attacked the seat of American government.

She called on Mr. Pence to respond “within 24 hours” and indicated she expected a Tuesday vote on the resolution.

“In protecting our Constitution and our democracy, we will act with urgency, because this president represents an imminent threat to both,” she wrote. “As the days go by, the horror of the ongoing assault on our democracy perpetrated by this president is intensified and so is the immediate need for action.”

The P.G.A. of America announced on Sunday night that its board of directors had voted to terminate an agreement to play the P.G.A. Championship at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, N.J., in 2022.

The hotel giant Marriott International said it was taking similar action.

Four of the country’s largest banks, JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and Morgan Stanley, said they would temporarily stop sending donations from their political action committees.

If Congress declines to impeach and convict the president for his actions on Wednesday, its failure to act will weaken the basic structure of the Constitution.

The key issue is this: One of the three branches of the federal government has just incited an armed attack against another branch. Beyond the threat to a peaceful transition, the incident was a fundamental violation of the separation of powers.

The president aimed to reverse the decision that Congress was making on a question that the Constitution expressly reserved for the legislature. The specifically anti-congressional animus is most obvious in the fact that the only other elected member of the executive branch, the vice president, was specifically targeted in his role as president of the Senate.

Mr. Trump was enraged that Mr. Pence was refusing to try to overturn the election. In a series of meetings, the president had pressed relentlessly, alternately cajoling and browbeating him.

It was an extraordinary rupture of a partnership that had survived too many challenges to count.

The loyal lieutenant who had almost never diverged from the president, who had finessed every other possible fracture, finally came to a decision point he could not avoid. He would uphold the election despite the president and despite the mob. And he would pay the price with the political base he once hoped to harness for his own run for the White House

Federal and local authorities across the country pressed their hunt this weekend for the members of the angry mob that stormed the Capitol building last Wednesday, as Washington’s mayor issued an urgent appeal to start preparing immediately for more potential violence before, during and after the inauguration of President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.

The Capitol complex, typically a hive of activity, remained cut off from its surroundings Sunday night by troop deployments and an imposing scrim of seven-foot-tall, unscalable fencing

As of Sunday, nearly 400 people had joined a private group online dedicated to what is being billed as the “Million Militia March,” an event scheduled to take place in Washington on Jan. 20. On Parler, a social media site popular on the far right that is in danger of being taken offline because of rampant talk of violence, commenters were debating what tools they should bring to the march, mentioning everything from baseball bats to body armor to assault rifles.

“These actions at the US Capitol by protestors are truly despicable and unacceptable,” tweeted Marsha Blackburn, a Republican senator from Tennessee. “I condemn them in the strongest possible terms. We are a nation of laws.”