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“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.

A group of President Trump’s most strident allies in the House is calling on Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the No. 3 Republican, to resign from her leadership post after she voted to impeach Mr. Trump, dramatizing the bitter rifts within the party and setting up a messy internal feud that could define its future.

Ms. Cheney was one of 10 Republicans to break with the party on Wednesday and vote to charge the president with “incitement of insurrection” for his role in urging on a mob that stormed the Capitol.

Ms. Cheney has brushed aside calls to step down, saying that she was “not going anywhere” and calling her break with Mr. Trump “a vote of conscience.” Several Republicans, including some members of the Freedom Caucus, have begun to circle the wagons around her.

Shortly after rampaging Trump supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, a fan of the president posted a message on the pro-Donald Trump website TheDonald.win. Inspired by the mob’s attempt to stop lawmakers from confirming President-elect Joe Biden’s electoral win, user CONN_WYNN said in an all-caps message, replete with an expletive, that it was “TIME TO LEAVE THE KEYBOARD” and “FIGHT FOR MY...COUNTRY.”

Before the Capitol attack, such a post may not have elicited a follow-up visit. But in the aftermath of the riot, which left five people dead, federal law enforcement agencies have intensified their scrutiny of extremist chatter online, activity that officials warn could be early warning signals of planned attacks around Biden’s inauguration in Washington on Jan. 20.“You don’t want to be the ones to have FBI agents knocking on your door at 6 a.m.,” Director Christopher Wray said on Thursday during a televised briefing with Vice President Mike Pence. “Anybody who plots or attempts violence in the coming week should count on a visit.”

Extremists seeking a politically motivated civil war and those seeking a race war “may exploit the aftermath of the Capitol breach by conducting attacks to destabilize and force a climactic conflict in the United States,” officials wrote in a joint bulletin issued on Wednesday by the National Counterterrorism Center and the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security and seen by Reuters

The Pentagon has authorized up to 25,000 National Guard members for President-elect Joe Biden's inauguration, the National Guard Bureau said in a press release Friday, marking an increase from the 21,000 troops authorized a day earlier.

"Every state, territory and the District of Columbia will have National Guard men and women supporting the inauguration," the statement said.

The agency has been instructed to begin its preparations for the inauguration ahead of schedule.

The iconography of the American far right was on display on Jan 6. during the violence at the Capitol. The dizzying array of symbols, slogans and images was, to many Americans, a striking aspect of the unrest, revealing an alternate political universe where violent extremists, outright racists and conspiracy theorists march side by side with evangelical Christians, suburban Trump supporters and young men who revel in making memes to “own the libs.”

Uniting them is a loyalty to Mr. Trump and a firm belief in his false and discredited insistence that the election was stolen.

Out in force were right-wing militias like the Oath Keepers and the Three Percenters, whose symbol, the Roman numeral III, could be seen on patches and flags. Both groups are anti-government, pro-guns and, nowadays, devoted to Mr. Trump.

“I find it shameful that surrounding these tragic events there has been salacious gossip, unwarranted personal attacks, and false misleading accusations on me ― from people who are looking to be relevant and have an agenda. This time is solely about healing our country and its citizens. It should not be used for personal gain.”

“It was an assault on human life and our great democracy,” Wolkoff wrote of the riot. “Unfortunately, our president and first lady have little, if any, regard for either.”

The first lady did not address her husband’s role in inciting the mob that attacked the Capitol. She tried to play peacemaker in her statement, however.“Our Nation must heal in a civil manner,” she said. “Make no mistake about it, I absolutely condemn the violence that has occurred on our Nation’s Capitol. Violence is never acceptable.”

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.

In the Fox News universe, Mr. Biden is now a socialist prepared to upend the American way of life. And many hosts have drawn a direct equivalence between the storming of the Capitol by an anti-democratic mob and the Black Lives Matters protests over the summer in support of racial justice.

In interviews with well-educated, often middle-class and seemingly moderate young men, I documented what was then the new and growing appeal in the West of Islamist violence built on false history and a deep, debilitating sense of victimhood.

domestic radicalism has deep parallels to jihadist terrorism: Both movements are driven by alienation from the political system and a resulting breakdown in social norms.

For some groups and individuals, this breakdown leads to violence they see as justified to achieve political ends.

Although Republicans have since rallied behind the former president, that day, the chasm between GOP leaders and Trump could not have been wider. From their lockdown off campus, in a series of previously unreported meetings, McConnell and other GOP leaders would turn to their Democratic counterparts for assistance in browbeating the Pentagon to move the National Guard to send armed troops to the Hill. Together, the bipartisan leaders of Congress, agreed in their conviction that Trump was stonewalling if not outright maneuvering against them, joined forces to do what the president would not: Save the Capitol.

Shortly after 2:30 p.m., Trump begrudgingly issued a tweet calling on his supporters to “please support our Capitol Police and Law Enforcement.” As far as Trump was concerned, the riot was Congress’s problem, he told his aides. It was their job to defend the Capitol, he said, not his. Perversely, the riot had actually buoyed Trump’s hopes that he might be able to strong-arm his way to overturning the election. When the chaos started to unfold, he began calling his GOP allies in Congress—not to check on their well-being, but to make sure they didn’t lose their nerve about objecting to the election results.

he recent shootings in Boulder and Atlanta have put the issue of gun violence at the center of America's national discussion, and both tragedies demand greater attention be paid to how racism and gun violence, especially mass shootings, intersect.

At a policy level, Congress and the President should pass common-sense gun control laws, complete with stringent background checks, and an assault weapon ban that would reduce the likelihood of mass shootings and gun violence.

Right-wing narratives suggesting that Americans' second amendment birthright -- along with White patriarchal power structures -- are under assault spread not only among hate groups online but in Congress. "Every time that there's an incident like this," observed Wyoming Republican Sen. Cynthia Lummis, "the people who don't want to protect the Second Amendment use it as an excuse to further erode Second Amendment rights."

Bipartisan legislation to establish an independent commission to investigate the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol has failed in the Senate, as Republicans staged their first filibuster since President Biden took office to block the plan.

"I do not believe the additional, extraneous commission that Democratic leaders want would uncover crucial new facts or promote healing," the Kentucky Republican said. "Frankly, I do not believe it is even designed to."

The proposed commission was modeled on the one established to investigate the 9/11 terror attacks, with 10 commissioners — five Democrats and five Republicans — who would have subpoena powers

The vote came exactly one week after the Capitol was breached by an angry mob of Trump loyalists.

In 2019, not a single Republican voted in favor of impeachment. House Republican leaders said they would not formally lobby members of the party against voting to impeach the president this time. Here are the Republicans who voted to impeach on Wednesday.

Not holding the president accountable for his actions would be “a direct threat to the future of our democracy,” he said.

former acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf said the president deserves some of the blame for the words he used last Wednesday before his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol, but took no stand on removing him from office.

"The president's words matter and they do," Wolf told ABC News Wednesday. "He certainly has some level of responsibility for at least the words that he said."

Wolf, who is leaving the department this week, said when he first saw the images on TV of rioters at the Capitol, he though they were "sickening and disturbing" and that it reminded him "in a little different manner" of what occurred in Portland, Oregon, over the summer.

Two weeks after Representative Kevin McCarthy, the top House Republican, enraged Donald J. Trump by saying that he considered the former president responsible for the violent mob attack at the Capitol, the two men met on Thursday for what aides described as a “good and cordial” meeting, and sought to present a united front.

McCarthy, in a speech on the House floor, said that the former president “bears responsibility” for the events of Jan. 6, when a throng of his supporters stormed the Capitol after a rally in which Mr. Trump urged them to “fight like hell” against his election defeat.

Aides to both men have been trying to broker a thaw between the two ever since, even as Mr. Trump has targeted other Republicans who criticized him more harshly for his role in the Capitol breach and voted in favor of impeaching him.

The situational information report produced by the Minneapolis field office of the FBI is based on information provided by what it describes as “collaborative sources,” and was issued the week before a mob of Trump supporters violently stormed the U.S. Capitol. It addresses concerns about rallies that the Boogaloos, a right-wing movement, plan to hold in cities across the country on Jan. 17.

“some followers indicated willingness to commit violence in support of their ideology, created contingency plans in the event violence occured at the events, and identified law enforcement security measures and possible countermeasures.”

Those rallies are part of what members of the violent far-right and libertarian boogaloo movement are hoping will be a nationwide “armed march” on Capitol Hill and all 50 state capitols next Sunday. Though it’s not totally clear how many people are expected to participate in the boogaloo-backed protests, the Jan. 17 events appear to be the next major organizing effort by extremist groups following last week’s riots at the U.S. Capitol, which left 5 people dead, including a U.S. capitol police officer. 

As soon as #StopTheSteal went offline in a serious, dangerous way, everyone who had been posting about it had to choose a side, or a reality. Broadly, the Republican establishment and its voters have had to grapple with whether they want to continue claiming the party’s radical flank. Wednesday “was probably the most visceral experience of watching a political party fracture,” says Joan Donovan, the research director at the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy. “It seems to me that we’re in the midst of watching MAGA become its own movement.”

Samantha Marika, a right-wing social-media personality with 293,000 Twitter followers, appeared enthralled by the insurrection and frustrated by the claims that it was staged by antifa. “Those people aren’t Antifa,” she tweeted. “They are patriots.” On her Instagram Story, she reposted a tweet from the pro-Trump blogger David Leatherwood: “I don’t know how some of you have spent the last 2 months riling up the base about a stolen election and telling everybody we must fight- And then when we finally do you cower away and blame Antifa. Beta cucks.”

Gray, the rapper and Trump fan, for his part spent much of Wednesday and yesterday reminding his 205,000 followers of the truth in exceptionally clear terms: “No it wasn’t Antifa that stormed the Capitol building. That was us,” he wrote in one tweet. “MAGA was in DC fighting for our country and freedoms,” he wrote in another. “Twitter ‘maga’ people were giving the credit to Antifa.” That tweet ended with an emoji shedding a tear.

John Eastman is sure having trouble keeping his story straight. A week ago, the ex-Trump legal adviser, whose legal memo laid out a path for Mike Pence to thwart the 2020 Electoral College certification, went to great lengths to downplay and minimize his memo.

In new video released Wednesday, Eastman took on a more conspiratorial cast, wildly claiming that the Jan. 6 insurrection was a “setup.”

“The Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys had not just wallflowers sitting on the side of the organization, but people instigating within the association, FBI plants,” Eastman told the activists. “It was a setup. And unfortunately our guys walked into the trap.”

The threats ramped up after then-President Donald Trump verbally attacked her and her late husband John at a campaign rally in December 2019, the Michigan Democrat said. 

"He made very public comments about John looking up from hell. And I was just stunned by it," Dingell said. It's not only verbal abuse.  "I had men in front of my house with assault weapons after [Fox News host] Tucker Carlson had done a rant on me," she said. In November, her Dearborn office was vandalized.

"Hey, Cynthia dumb a**," said a voicemail left for Senator Cynthia Lummis, a Wyoming Republican, after she voted against impeaching Trump. "You f***ing committed treason. You f***ing committed sedition. And I will f***ing kill you. I will. I will f***ing kill you." 

At once, the rioters demonstrated how much the threat of white extremism has metastasized under Trump, while the restrained police response vivified a racial double standard in policing. The attack could strengthen the case for systemic police reform, both through congressional action and a revival of Justice Department oversight of local police practices that the Trump administration essentially shelved.

In online videos, the 41-year-old Texan pointed out the flimsiness of the fencing. He cheered the arrival, long before President Trump’s rally at the other end of the mall, of far-right militiamen encircling the building. Then, armed with a bullhorn, Mr. Lee called out for the mob to rush in, until his voice echoed from the dome of the Rotunda.

By far the most visible financial backer of Women for America First’s efforts was Mike Lindell, a founder of the MyPillow bedding company, identified on a now-defunct website as one of the “generous sponsors” of a bus tour promoting Mr. Trump's attempt to overturn the election. In addition, he was an important supporter of Right Side Broadcasting, an obscure pro-Trump television network that provided blanket coverage of Trump rallies after the vote, and a podcast run by the former Trump adviser Stephen K. Bannon that also sponsored the bus tour.

Wild Protest linked to three hotels with discounted rates and another site for coordinating travel plans. It also raised donations from thousands of individuals, according to archived versions of a web portal used to collect them. The website has since been taken down, and it is not clear what the money was used for.