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He has reportedly admitted torching a banner taken from a black church during a rally in December in the city.

On Wednesday, members of Congress are due to certify Democratic President-elect Joe Biden's election victory before he takes office on 20 January.

the Proud Boys will "turn out in record numbers on Jan 6th", referring to his members as "the most notorious group of extraordinary gentlemen".

President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. denounced the storming of the Capitol on Wednesday as the violent expression of President Trump’s refusal to accept his defeat, calling it “an assault on the citadel of liberty” and saying the president had stoked the mob with his brazen and false claims that the 2020 election had been stolen.

“a dark moment” in the nation’s history,

“It’s disorder. It’s chaos. It borders on sedition and it must end now.”

Trump fomented a deadly insurrection against the U.S. Congress to prevent a duly-elected president from taking office. Treason is not a word to be used lightly, but that is its textbook definition.

“We will not take it anymore, and that’s what this is all about,” he told a sea of MAGA fans and Proud Boys on the Ellipse outside the White House at noon. From behind bulletproof glass, he told them: “If you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.”

Earlier, Trump ally Rudy Giuliani had proposed, to the same crowd, a “trial by combat” to resolve Trump’s election complaints. And Donald Trump Jr. delivered a political threat to lawmakers who don’t vote to reject the election results: “We’re coming for you.”

This willful act of forgetting — compounded by the myth of American innocence — has shown itself to be dangerous on a variety of counts. For starters, it allowed many Americans to view the president’s insistence that he had won an election in which he was actually trounced, and his simultaneous embrace of right-wing extremism, as political theater that will pass uneventfully from the stage when Joe Biden is inaugurated.

The resulting invasion of the government — which has thus far reportedly taken at least five lives — should make clear to everyone that the potential for political violence is a proverbial river of gasoline, waiting for a demagogue like Mr. Trump to drop the lighted match.

Mr. Cruz’s analogy was dishonest on its face, given that there is no valid dispute about electoral votes today. But by bringing up 1876, the senator unwittingly pointed to the ancestry of the voter suppression practices in which his party is heavily invested. The 1876 election, as the historians Rachel Shelden and Erik B. Alexander noted this week in The Washington Post, was riddled with bloodshed and intimidation. White terror organizations targeted African-Americans throughout the South in the run-up to Election Day. In the Black stronghold of Hamburg, S.C., the authors write, “hundreds of gun-toting whites from South Carolina and nearby Georgia descended on the town, executing members of the militia and ransacking Black homes and shops.”

Twitter said on Friday that it had permanently suspended President Trump from its service “due to the risk of further incitement for violence,” effectively cutting him off from his favorite method of communicating with the public and capping a series of actions by mainstream sites to limit his online reach.

“After close review of recent Tweets from the @realDonaldTrump account and the context around them — specifically how they are being received and interpreted on and off Twitter — we have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement of violence.”

It concluded that Mr. Trump’s tweets since Wednesday’s attack were “likely to inspire others to replicate the violent acts that took place on Jan. 6, 2021, and that there are multiple indicators that they are being received and understood as encouragement to do so.”

The F.B.I. arrested two men on Sunday who were photographed in the Senate chamber clad in military-style clothing and holding zip ties

Larry Rendell Brock, was arrested in Texas on the same charges after he was allegedly identified as one of the people who broke into the Capitol. The department said in its statement that images of a person who appeared to be him showed Mr. Brock clad in “a green helmet, green tactical vest with patches, black and camo jacket, and beige pants holding a white flex cuff, which is used by law enforcement to restrain and/or detain subjects.”

Eric Gavelek Munchel, 30, was taken into custody in Nashville on one count of unlawfully entering a restricted building and one count of violent entry and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds, the department said. One of the officials involved in the case said authorities also recovered several weapons at the time of his arrest.

President Trump on Sunday issued a proclamation ordering that the American flag at the White House and at all federal buildings and grounds be lowered in honor of two U.S. Capitol police officers who died after the violent riot by the president’s supporters at the Capitol on Wednesday.

The move came after the flags at the Capitol complex had been lowered in honor of Officer Brian Sicknick, who died from injuries he sustained engaging with the mob of Trump supporters who broke in and overtook the building. Another officer, Howard Liebengood, died by suicide over the weekend.

“I hereby order that the flag of the United States shall be flown at half-staff at the White House and upon all public buildings and grounds, at all military posts and naval stations, and on all naval vessels of the Federal Government in the District of Columbia and throughout the United States and its Territories and possessions until sunset, January 13, 2021,

With just nine days left before President Trump's term comes to an end, the House of Representatives is forging ahead with plans to try to remove the president from office following his role in his supporters' violent attack on the U.S. Capitol last week.

In a letter to her Democratic caucus Sunday evening, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said the House would attempt to pass a resolution on Monday calling on Vice President Pence to mobilize the Cabinet and invoke the 25th Amendment, thereby relieving Trump of his duties.

it is expected that a Republican lawmaker will object. Should there be an objection, Pelosi told her members the House will seek to debate and vote on the resolution on Tuesday.

Despite ample warnings about pro-Trump demonstrations in Washington, U.S. Capitol Police did not bolster staffing on Wednesday and made no preparations for the possibility that the planned protests could escalate into massive violent riots, according to several people briefed on law enforcement’s response.

They were left naked,” Rep. Maxine Waters, D-California. said of the police in an interview with AP. She had raised security concerns in a Dec. 28 meeting of House Democrats and grilled Steven Sund, the Capitol Police chief, during an hourlong private call on New Year’s Eve. “It turns out it was the worst kind of non-security anybody could ever imagine.”

The crowd that arrived in Washington on Wednesday was no surprise. Trump had been urging his supporters to come to the capital and some hotels had been booked to 100% capacity - setting off alarm bells because tourism in Washington has cratered amid the pandemic. Justice officials, FBI and other agencies began to monitor flights and social media for weeks and were expecting massive crowds.

After the Capitol was stormed by a mob fired up by President Trump, Facebook suspended his account, arguing that it was used “to incite violent insurrection against a democratically elected government.” Twitter, citing “the risk of further incitement of violence,” has done the same, blocking Mr. Trump from using its platform to communicate to his more than 80 million followers.

And such power can certainly be exercised in good ways. Maybe Facebook and Twitter should be more active in suspending accounts of elected officials, candidates and others, if they think those people — on the left, right or anywhere else on the political spectrum — are fomenting riots, emboldening looters or supporting violence or vandalism.

In general, it’s good for private businesses to be able to decide how to use their property. And trying to create laws constraining those decisions may well do more harm than good — always a danger with even the best-intentioned of new laws. Yet both liberals and conservatives should appreciate the perils of power, especially the power of enormous companies that have few competitors and huge influence over political life.

It is a firmly established fact that a mere 250,000 native Americans were still alive in the territory of the United States at the end of the 19th century

Still in scholarly contention, however, is the number of Indians alive at the time of first contact with Europeans.

To sum up, European settlers came to the New World for a variety of reasons, but the thought of infecting the Indians with deadly pathogens was not one of them. As for the charge that the U.S. government should itself be held responsible for the demographic disaster that overtook the American-Indian population, it is unsupported by evidence or legitimate argument.

Members of Congress, shaken and angry following a violent assault on the U.S. Capitol by a mob of President Trump’s supporters, put a final stamp on President-elect Joe Biden’s victory early Thursday morning

Republicans had at one point planned to object to the electoral college votes in a series of states won by Biden, but after the storming of the Capitol, several GOP senators changed course, disputing only Arizona and Pennsylvania. Both challenges failed.

Shortly after Congress affirmed Biden’s win, Trump pledged an “an orderly transition.”

That still leaves Wednesday’s disgrace and what to do about the 13 days left in Donald Trump’s presidential term. Democratic leaders Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi are demanding that Mr. Trump be removed from office immediately—either by the Cabinet under the 25th Amendment or new articles of impeachment. There’s partisan animus at work here, but Mr. Trump’s actions on Wednesday do raise constitutional questions that aren’t casually dismissed.

When some in the crowd turned violent and occupied the Capitol, the President caviled and declined for far too long to call them off. When he did speak, he hedged his plea with election complaint.

In our view it crosses a constitutional line that Mr. Trump hasn’t previously crossed. It is impeachable.

By Thursday, amid a flurry of White House resignations and a rising chorus of Republicans declaring that it was time for Mr. Trump to go, there were cracks in the firmament. “To put up a Trump flag and take down the American flag is not patriotic — it was one of the worst things I’ve ever seen,” Brian Kilmeade said on “Fox & Friends.” The false rumors about antifa involvement were dialed back, and hosts criticized the Washington violence.

Still, no Fox News prime-time star has yet blamed Mr. Trump for his role in inciting the riot at the Capitol. And rather than reckon with years of backing Mr. Trump and giving comfort to his supporters, the network’s commentators have simply swiveled, finding new ways to take on old targets.

if Mr. Murdoch ever feels the need to distance himself more formally from Mr. Trump, he has other platforms on which to do so. In November, another Murdoch organ, The New York Post, proclaimed Mr. Biden’s victory in a cheery front page. After this week’s Capitol riots, the Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal made a case for Mr. Trump to resign.

On the app, which had become a top download on Apple’s App Store, discussions over politics had ramped up. But so had conspiracy theories that falsely said the election had been stolen from Mr. Trump, with users urging aggressive demonstrations last week when Congress met to certify the election of President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.

“Republicans have no way to communicate”

Parler has now become a test case in a renewed national debate over free speech on the internet and whether tech giants such as Facebook, Google, Apple and Amazon have too much power. That debate has intensified since Mr. Trump was barred from posting on Twitter and Facebook last week after a violent mob, urged on by the president and his social media posts, stormed the Capitol.

Washington, D.C., officials say four people have died, including one in a shooting inside the U.S. Capitol, and more than a dozen police officers were injured after a mob of supporters of President Trump stormed the nation's legislative building, temporarily shutting down a vote to certify his successor's win.

At least four people were arrested for carrying a pistol without a license and having a large capacity ammunition feeding device, including one instance of possessing a firearm on Capitol grounds.

As Congress began debate over the certification of Electoral College ballots that would finalize President-elect Joe Biden's victory, a large mob decked in red "Make America Great Again" hats and carrying "Trump 2020" and Tea Party flags burst through barricades, overcame Capitol Police and entered the legislative chambers.

Law enforcement officials also backed off a suggestion that Mr. Trump could face criminal charges for inciting the riot after a top prosecutor had said a day earlier that investigators were examining anyone involved, “not only” the rioters.“Don’t expect any charges of that nature,” Ken Kohl, a top prosecutor in the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington, told reporters in a telephone briefing on Friday.

Law enforcement officials also sought to explain the security failure, saying that they had no indication that the day would turn violent

pledged to fight for their cause.

The museum, a branch of the Smithsonian Institution, announced Friday that 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.”

“help future generations remember and contextualize Jan. 6 and its aftermath.”

Donald Trump has done everything but concede to the democratic will of the American people. He unleashed an avalanche of lies and baseless claims of fraud — conspiracy theories that filled his supporters with a delusional belief that the election had been stolen from him. He filed a bevy of absurd lawsuits. He attempted to cajole and intimidate officials at all levels of government into subverting the election and keeping him in office. And then, running out of recourse, legitimate and illegitimate, he incited an insurrection against the government and the Constitution that he swore to uphold.

marks one of the lowest points in our country’s 245-year experiment in democracy.

From Andrew Jackson to Richard Nixon, we have seen presidents abuse their power, but we had never witnessed an American president incite a violent mob on the citadel of our democracy in a desperate attempt to cling to power.