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Marjorie Taylor Greene may be politically safe, but her conservative Georgia constituen... - 0 views

  • Marjorie Taylor Greene has turned herself into one of the most visible Republicans in the country -- stoking an endless stream of controversies that has caused headaches for a defeated party trying to find its footing while she rakes in campaign cash without fear of consequences.
  • Greene's political security in the district -- where 75% of voters supported former President Donald Trump last November -- doesn't mean that all of her constituents are relishing her role as the GOP's flamethrower or that they approve of the recent anti-Semitic comments that she has used to rally her supporters.
  • Some questioned the motives behind Greene's attention-seeking maneuvers and said they were open to supporting a different Republican for her seat -- though no formidable challenger has emerged yet.
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  • She's already been stripped of her committee assignments by a vote in the House, rendering her an essentially ineffective legislator, but she's largely gone undisciplined by party leadership in Washington, DC, as congressional Republicans bow to Trump.
  • Unbowed by reprimands from her GOP colleagues, she made a fresh comparison between Democrats and Nazis, claimed that the cartels "love" President Joe Biden during a discourse on immigration, and then did a racist impression in what she described as her "really bad Mexican accent."
  • nside the Oakwood Cafe that morning, 78-year-old Phil Neff, who supported Trump, paid for his breakfast amid the morning bustle. Afterward, he told CNN he believes that Greene "has more interest in herself than serving the community," but added with a note of resignation: "That's what the people chose."
  • "I don't think anybody should be comparing anything for the Nazis and the Holocaust. It's different worlds," White said during an interview in Rome, Georgia, hours before Greene's rally. "She has been ineffective, and she'll continue to be ineffective as long as she is as controversial as she is. She doesn't garner support of other Republicans."
  • But Greene also has plenty of defenders within the Republican base -- despite her past embrace of QAnon and other conspiracy theories, racist and Islamophobic rhetoric, and past Facebook comments and videos unearthed by CNN's KFile in which she indicated support for executing prominent Democrats.
  • In the few short months she's been in Congress, Greene has created major headaches for her party, not just by lobbing her inflammatory criticisms at Democrats, but also by undermining Republican leaders in the GOP conference.
  • But just as Republican voters often excused Trump's outlandish statements as proof of his authenticity, some voters in this conservative Georgia district praise Greene for her candor.
  • "I don't necessarily agree with that statement," Deal said in an interview in Rome with CNN's Martin Savidge when asked about Greene's comparisons between mask requirements and the Holocaust. "But I do agree with her right to say it."
  • "It does feel like people are getting some of the rights taken away that they're used to," Shults said.Sandra Campbell, another Georgia voter, said she believes Greene and Trump are representative of the "real America."
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US Army will not investigate Flynn's comments about a coup after he appeared to endorse... - 0 views

  • The US Army said Wednesday that it will not investigate former Gen. Michael Flynn for statements he recently made in which he appeared to endorse a Myanmar-style coup occurring in the US.
  • "We are aware of the statements LTG (R) Flynn made May 30 and June 1. The Army is not investigating these statements further at this time," an Army spokesperson said in a statement.
  • Flynn is facing bipartisan criticism after appearing to endorse a Myanmar-style coup in the US during an event in Dallas on Sunday in which an audience member raised the idea.
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  • "Let me be VERY CLEAR - There is NO reason whatsoever for any coup in America, and I do not and have not at any time called for any action of that sort," the message said.
  • "I want to know why what happened in Minamar (sic)can't happen here?" the audience member, who identified himself as a Marine, asked Flynn.
  • "No reason, I mean, it should happen here. No reason. That's right," Flynn responded.
  • Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby told reporters on Tuesday that "the department is not going to have an official comment one way on this."
  • "Flynn's remarks border on sedition. There's certainly conduct unbecoming an officer. Those are both things that can be tried under the Uniform Code of Military Justice and I think that as a retiree of the military, it should certainly be a path that we consider to have consequences for these types of words," Luria, a retired Navy commander, told CNN's Anderson Cooper on "AC360."
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Opinion: Nothing will be allowed to stop Joe Biden's inauguration - CNN - 0 views

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  • Law enforcement authorities are bracing for violence and attempts at disrupting the inauguration of our nation's 46th president, Joe Biden, on January 20. Online threats, which have become de rigueur in the current age of division and stoked partisan outrage, abound.
  • To anyone in America just waking up from a four-year slumber, what an odd and incongruous presidential declaration. We fight like hell during the campaign.
  • Our society acknowledges that as bitterly as we fought the election contest, we remain the United States of America.
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  • The direct result of last Wednesday's Capitol riots, where some Trump supporters overwhelmed Capitol Police checkpoints and occupied and defiled our national seat of government, should distress us all.
  • But what was the Capitol attack and the dark forces it embodied but an emergency? Angry protesters carrying American flags and screeching "stop the steal" abounded. The silly coup attempt -- exemplified by the "QAnon Shaman," shirtless and replete in horned headgear, and the cad who attempted to make off with Nancy Pelosi's lectern -- should embarrass us all.
  • Nothing will impede the peaceful transition of American power that has been so central to our democracy since George Washington handed over the reins to John Adams in 1797 -- 223 years ago. Nothing.
  • Make no mistake about it -- this was an insurrection. I fully understand the precision of language required by our criminal justice system. Title 18 U.S. Code § 2383 defines it this way: "Whoever incites, sets on foot, or engages in any rebellion or insurrection against the authority of the United States or the laws thereof..." Storming the meeting place of our nation's legislature meets this definition.
  • The thing about mobs is that they are not precise, controllable instruments. Once you roil up an instigator or agitator or two, they act as the catalyst for mobilization -- what results then transforms into a singular, dangerous vessel -- and otherwise sober or reasonable folks get caught up in frenzy.
  • These weren't patriots. They were part of a seditious action that resulted in a police officer's death. They were part of the rabble that included a cop killer. The murdered officer, Brian Sicknick, was also an Air National Guard veteran.
  • The incitement and execution of mob violence on Congress is a horror unto itself but, sadly, disorderly crowds bent on destructive action have also become all too familiar over these paralyzingly long past eight months.
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Capitol rioters intended to 'capture and assassinate' elected, US prosecutors say - CNN... - 0 views

  • Federal prosecutors offered the most chilling description yet of rioters who seized the Capitol last week, writing in a new court filing that the intention was "to capture and assassinate elected officials."
  • The view was included in a memo seeking to keep Jacob Anthony Chansley, who rallied people inside the Capitol using a bullhorn, in detention.
  • "Strong evidence, including Chansley's own words and actions at the Capitol, supports that the intent of the Capitol rioters was to capture and assassinate elected officials in the United States government," government prosecutors wrote.
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  • In a separate case, prosecutors in Texas court alleged that a retired Air Force reservist who carried plastic zip tie-like restraints on the Senate floor may have intended to restrain lawmakers
  • "He loved Trump, every word. He listened to him. He felt like he was answering the call of our president," Chansley's attorney Al Watkins, appearing on CNN Thursday night, said. " My client wasn't violent. He didn't cross over any police lines. He didn't assault anyone." Watkins said Chansley also hopes for a presidential pardon.
  • In court, prosecutors "argued that Mr. Brock intended to use the zip-ties to restrain those he viewed as enemies -- presumably, federal lawmakers, who had moments before been evacuated from the chamber,"
  • said the Vice President was a "child-trafficking traitor" and went on a long diatribe about Pence, Biden and other politicians as traitors.
  • Prosecutors accuse Chansley of being a flight risk who can quickly raise money through non-traditional means as "one of the leaders and mascots of QAnon, a group commonly referred to as a cult (which preaches debunked and fictitious anti-government conspiracy theory)."
  • Prosecutors say Larry Rendell Brock, a 53-year-old retired Air Force Reserve officer who was arrested in Texas, was photographed roaming the Senate chamber clutching a white flex cuff, which is used by law enforcement to restrain or detain subjects.
  • Prosecutors describe those who took over the Capitol as "insurrectionists" and offer new details about Chansley's role in the violent siege last week, including that after standing at the dais where Vice President Mike Pence had stood that morning, Chansley wrote a note saying "it's only a matter of time, justice is coming.
  • Now-viral photos show the man prosecutors have identified as Brock sporting a military helmet, green tactical vest and black-and-camo jacket.
  • A magistrate judge on Thursday released Brock to home confinement with electronic monitoring and limits on interacting with others involved in the riot and barred him from possessing guns or accessing social media.
  • According to court filings, prosecutors allege that Brock posted on Facebook about buying body armor and a helmet for a "civil war" and believed the US election was being certified by a "hostile governing force."
  • He repeated President Donald Trump's baseless assertions of election fraud.
  • He said he had picked the restraints off the ground and intended to give them back to a police officer.
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Opinion | When Biden Becomes … Rooseveltian! - The New York Times - 0 views

  • Soon after Franklin Roosevelt was inaugurated in 1933, a visitor assessed the stakes of his New Deal proposal.
  • “Mr. President, if your program succeeds, you’ll be the greatest president in American history,” the visitor told him. “If it fails, you will be the worst one.”“If it fails,” Roosevelt responded, “I’ll be the last one.”
  • Countless numbers believe QAnon nonsense that leading politicians are Satan-worshiping child-traffickers or think coronavirus vaccination is a plot by Bill Gates to plant computer chips in people.
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  • This is not the Great Depression today, but we face the worst economic crisis since that time, plus about 4,000 Americans dying daily from the worst pandemic in a century, plus an insurrection incited by the lame-duck president, plus an undercurrent of national delusion that fuels division and violence
  • This is Big Policy. You might even call it Rooseveltian.
  • To me, the single most exciting element of the Biden proposal is one that has garnered little attention: a pathbreaking plan that would drastically cut child poverty.
  • Perhaps a third example is the New Deal itself. Results of Roosevelt’s boldness included Social Security, rural electrification, jobs programs, networks of hiking trails, the G.I. Bill of Rights and a 35-year burst of inclusive growth that arguably made the United States the richest country in the history of the world.
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Before the Capitol Riot, Calls for Cash and Talk of Revolution - The New York Times - 0 views

  • A network of far-right agitators across the country spent weeks organizing and raising money for a mass action to overturn President Trump’s election loss.
  • Keith Lee, an Air Force veteran and former police detective, spent the morning of Jan. 6 casing the entrances to the Capitol.
  • Much is still unknown about the planning and financing of the storming of the Capitol, aiming to challenge Mr. Trump’s electoral defeat. What is clear is that it was driven, in part, by a largely ad hoc network of low-budget agitators, including far-right militants, Christian conservatives and ardent adherents of the QAnon conspiracy theory. Mr. Lee is all three. And the sheer breadth of the movement he joined suggests it may be far more difficult to confront than a single organization.
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Opinion: Capitol riot a stunning reminder of America's policing crisis - CNN - 0 views

  • When DC Metropolitan Police officer Michael Fanone collapsed on the ground after he was repeatedly Tasered by Trump supporters who had stormed the US Capitol on January 6, his attackers started stripping him of his ammunition, police radio and badge.
  • "Kill him with his own gun." That was one of many, many incriminating comments the insurgent mob shouted for the world to hear that day. Another was: "We were invited here. We were invited by the President of the United States."
  • Jacob Chansley, the so-called "QAnon Shaman" who was arrested and charged in connection with the riot, later told the FBI, according to a complaint, that "he came as a part of a group effort, with other 'patriots' from Arizona, at the request of the President that all 'patriots' come to D.C. on January 6, 2021."
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  • Clearly, the rioters of January 6 believed they had been "invited" to the Capitol to stop Congress from the constitutionally mandated counting of electoral ballots in a desperate attempt to overturn the 2020 election.
  • two Capitol Police officers have been suspended and at least 10 others are under investigation for their behavior during the riot.
  • In 2017, Trump endorsed police brutality, telling officers on Long Island, "When you see these thugs being thrown into the back of a paddy wagon, you just seen them thrown in, rough. I said: 'Please don't be too nice.'
  • In a March 13, 2019 interview, Trump told Breitbart News, "I can tell you I have the support of the police, the support of the military, the support of the Bikers for Trump — I have the tough people..."
  • Throughout the last five years, President Donald Trump has embraced the police and repeatedly called himself the "president of law and order," even though he consistently defied this both through his words and actions.
  • Trump supporters said so themselves when they chanted "Traitors!" at the police. One woman in a Trump 2020 sweatshirt said, "You should be on our side."
  • Despite the "Blue Lives Matter" flags many carried, they turned on Fanone, attacked Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick, who died from his injuries, and injured more than 50 other officers.
  • Sworn police officers are beholden to no president or other official. They get their authority from the Constitution.
  • they need more than legal authority. They need legitimacy
  • Even though the government may give police officers the legal rights to carry out their duties to enforce the law, they lose their credibility when the community no longer see them as trustworthy.
  • Those police officers, police leaders and police unions who have reciprocated the corrupt embrace of a lawless president have betrayed not only the public trust but the trust of their brothers and sisters in uniform.
  • The killings of George Floyd and too many other unarmed, Black Americans, have already created a crisis in policing. This has been exacerbated by Trump, who has politicized his support for the police while chipping away at our institutions and undermining our faith in government as a whole.
  • For many people, police officers are the government. When you are in enough trouble to dial 911, it isn't the president, Congress or the Supreme Court that comes running. It is a cop.
  • Any attempts to fix this crisis will require reestablishing trust between the police and the community they serve.
  • We in law enforcement must work to repair our reputation, both in the eyes of the public and among ourselves
  • President Biden must have the courage to go beyond police reforms, and push for a reimagining of law enforcement. He must task government and the nation with answering this radical yet basic question: What do we want from our police?
  • President Barack Obama's Task Force on 21st Century Policing, on which I served, has given Biden much to build on. It painted a picture of policing, in which officers should be professional, accountable, transparent and self-monitoring in order to learn from any mistakes.
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How White Evangelical Christians Fused With Trump Extremism - The New York Times - 0 views

  • 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.
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  • “We are fighting good versus evil, dark versus light,” she said, declaring that she was rising up like Queen Esther, the biblical heroine who saved her people from death.
  • Like many Republicans in Congress, some evangelical leaders who have been most supportive of Mr. Trump distanced themselves and their faith from the rioters. Robert Jeffress, pastor of First Baptist Dallas, called the violence “anarchy.” The siege on the Capitol “has absolutely nothing to do with Christianity,” he said. “Our support of President Trump was based on his policies.”
  • The riot on Wednesday, carried out by a largely white crowd, also illustrated the racial divide in American Christianity.
  • Hours before the attack on the Capitol, the Rev. Raphael Warnock of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta had been elected to the U.S. Senate after many conservative white Christians tried to paint him as a dangerous radical, even as his campaign was rooted in the traditional moral vision of the Black church. And for years many Black Christians have warned white believers that Mr. Trump’s rhetoric on race was going to end badly.
  • In Kalamazoo, Mich., Laura Kloosterman, 34, attended mass on Wednesday and prayed that Congress would decline to certify Mr. Biden’s victory. She had read claims online about flawed voting machines undercounting votes for Mr. Trump — there is no evidence for these claims, which Mr. Trump and right-wing voices online have promoted.
  • These false beliefs have forged even stronger connections between white evangelicals and other conservative figures.
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How Republicans Are Warping Reality Around the Capitol Attack - The New York Times - 0 views

  • Immediately after the attack on the U.S. Capitol, all corners of the political spectrum repudiated the mob of President Trump’s supporters. Yet within days, prominent Republicans, party officials, conservative media voices and rank-and-file voters began making a rhetorical shift to try to downplay the group’s violent actions.
  • In one of the ultimate don’t-believe-your-eyes moments of the Trump era, these Republicans have retreated to the ranks of misinformation, claiming it was Black Lives Matter protesters and far-left groups like antifa who stormed the Capitol — in spite of the pro-Trump flags and QAnon symbology in the crowd
  • But any window of reflection now seems to be closing as Republicans try to pass blame and to compare last summer’s lawlessness, which was condemned by Democrats, to an attack on Congress, which was inspired by Mr. Trump.
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  • “The riot was preplanned,” said Mr. Giuliani, the former mayor of New York City. “This was an attempt to slander Trump.” He added, “The evidence is coming out.”
  • Republicans are now using the looting to try to explain away the Capitol attack. The result, for some Republican voters, ranges from doubt to conspiratorial thinking.
  • “I heard that on antifa websites, people were invited to go to the rally and dress up like Trump supporters, but I’m not sure what to believe anymore,” she said. “There were people there only to wreak havoc. All I know is that there was a whole gamut of people there, but the rioters were not us. Maybe they were antifa. Maybe they were B.L.M. Maybe they were extreme right militants.”
  • Democrats pointed to the differences in motivation between the Capitol mob and the mass protests of the Black Lives Matter movement, which was not seeking to overturn an election or being incited by the president. Republicans saw the Capitol attack as the work of outsiders or as justified by the summer’s isolated incidents of looting and property destruction.
  • A new Pew Research poll released Friday showed the president’s approval rating dropping sharply among Republicans since he inspired the mob violence, cratering to an all-time low of 60 percent, more than 14 percentage points lower than his previous nadir. Among Americans at large, Mr. Trump’s approval rating was 29 percent, a low since he took office in 2017, and he had a 68 percent disapproval rating — his highest recorded number.
  • “The world that said this was actually a landslide victory for Donald Trump, but it was all stolen away and changed and votes were flipped and Dominion Voting Systems,” Mr. Meijer said, describing what he called a “fever swamp” of conspiracy theories
  • Interviews with local and state Republican officials show the long-term effects that the amplification of misinformation has among the party. While few members of Congress have agreed with Mr. Trump’s assertion that his actions were “totally appropriate,” several party officials did. And while many Republicans condemned violence, attacks on law enforcement personnel and the killing of a Capitol Police officer, Brian Sicknick, they did not agree that those things were the work of pro-Trump mobs acting in the president’s name, as is the consensus among law enforcement officials.
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Ocasio-Cortez Says She 'Narrowly Escaped Death' At Capitol : House Impeachment Vote: Li... - 0 views

  • In an hour-long Instagram Live video Tuesday night, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., described her personal experience last week when a violent mob of pro-Trump extremists breached the Capitol and forced lawmakers into hiding
  • But I can tell you that I had a very close encounter where I thought I was going to die."
  • We were very lucky that things happened within certain minutes that allowed members to escape the House floor unharmed. But many of us narrowly escaped death."
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  • In her video on Tuesday, she said she felt unsafe in the secure room where she was held with other lawmakers while the Capitol was under lockdown.
  • "I myself did not even feel safe going to that extraction point, because there were QAnon and white supremacist sympathizers and frankly white supremacist members of Congress in that extraction point, who I know, and who I had felt would disclose my location and allow me to, who would create opportunities to allow me to be hurt, kidnapped, etc.
  • She also pointed to several Republican members' refusal to wear masks while under lockdown, which she says endangered the lives of her colleagues.
  • At least three Democratic members of Congress have tested positive for the coronavirus in the days following the insurrection.
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Opinion | The Capitol Was Just the Start - The New York Times - 0 views

  • They were doctors and lawyers, florists and real estate agents, business executives, police officers, military veterans, at least one elected official and an Olympic gold medalist. They’d all come to coup for America
  • The fantasists did not achieve their objective last week, and it may look as if the conspiracy is reeling. President Trump is gone from Twitter and soon from the White House. Rioters are being arrested and charged by the dozens. QAnon — the collective delusion alleging that America is run by a cadre of pedophiles whom Trump is fixing to take down — a major presence in the crowd, has been kicked off the respectable web, and hate-filled redoubts like Parler are on their heels.
  • Many were shocked that the police put up any resistance at all. “We backed you guys this summer!” a man can be heard shouting at the police, probably in reference to Black Lives Matter protests. “When the whole country hated you, we had your back!”
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  • “I made it like a foot inside and they pushed me out and they maced me!” she cries. When Walker asks her why she wanted to go in, she’s exasperated at his ignorance. “We’re storming the Capitol, it’s a revolution!”
  • But even after seeing his friend walked on by Trump’s supporters, Winchell could not see how Trump was to blame. He was shocked when the TV reporter asked him if the president “has blood on his hands.”
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U.S. Authorities Warn That the Capitol Breach Will Be a 'Significant Driver of Violence... - 0 views

  • The deadly breach at the Capitol last week will be a “significant driver of violence” for armed militia groups and racist extremists who are targeting the presidential inauguration next week, according to a joint intelligence bulletin issued by federal authorities.
  • The “boogaloo,” a movement that seeks to start a second civil war, and extremists aiming to trigger 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,”
  • The federal officials wrote that extremist groups have viewed the breach of the Capitol as a success and have been galvanized by the death of Ashli Babbitt, a QAnon follower who was shot by the police as she tried to enter the heavily protected Speaker’s Lobby, just outside the House chamber. The extremists could perceive that death as “an act of martyrdom,” according to the bulletin.
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  • The federal officials also wrote that “the shared false narrative of a ‘stolen’ election,” the false claim perpetuated by President Trump, “may lead some individuals to adopt the belief that there is no political solution to address their grievances and violent action is necessary.”
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Feds: Capitol mob aimed to 'assassinate' elected officials - 0 views

  • Prosecutors say that after Chansley climbed up to the dais where Vice President Mike Pence had been presiding moments earlier, Chansley wrote a threatening note to Pence that said: “It’s only a matter of time, justice is coming.”
  • “Strong evidence, including Chansley’s own words and actions at the Capitol, supports that the intent of the Capitol rioters was to capture and assassinate elected officials in the United States Government,” prosecutors wrote in their memo urging the judge to keep Chansley behind bars.
  • The FBI has been investigating whether any of the rioters had plots to kidnap members of Congress and hold them hostage, focusing particularly on the men seen carrying plastic zip tie handcuffs and pepper spray.
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  • Chansley, who calls himself the “QAnon Shaman” and has long been a fixture at Trump rallies, surrendered to the FBI field office in Phoenix on Saturday.
  • More than 80 people are facing charges stemming from the violence, including more than 40 people in federal court. The federal charges brought so far are primarily for crimes such as illegal entry but prosecutors have said they are weighing more serious charges against at least some of the rioters.
  • During a hearing in Texas on Thursday, a prosecutor urged a judge to keep Col. Larry Rendall Brock Jr. locked up, saying the man meant to “take hostages.”
  • “He means to kidnap, restrain, perhaps try, perhaps execute members of the U.S. government,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Jay Weimer, without providing specifics.
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U.S. Says Rioters At Capitol Aimed 'To Capture And Assassinate Elected Officials' : Ins... - 0 views

  • Members of the pro-Trump mob that staged an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol last week intended "to capture and assassinate elected officials,
  • It notes Chansley's status as a "shaman" within QAnon, which the prosecutors variously define as "a dangerous extremist group ... founded on an imaginary conspiracy theory," and a cult that "preaches debunked and fictitious anti-government conspiracy theories that a deep state is out to take down the current administration."
  • The note was left at the spot where, moments earlier, Pence had been poised to preside over a joint session to certify President-elect Joe Biden's victory over President Trump. Chansley told the FBI he believes Pence is a "child-trafficking traitor."
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  • The U.S. attorney's office in Arizona filed the memorandum Thursday as part of its argument against releasing Chansley while his case proceeds.
  • Chansley is charged with two felonies: obstructing the conduct of a law enforcement officer and obstructing an official proceeding. Prosecutors say that as he committed those actions, Chansley was also carrying a dangerous weapon – specifically, "a six-foot spear."
  • Prosecutors say Chansley should remain in custody for a variety of reasons, including his part in the riot and his avowed intent to return to Washington to protest Biden's upcoming inauguration.
  • The U.S. attorney's office also says that Chansley would not likely conform to court-imposed conditions on his release, noting that while in custody, he has refused to eat anything other than organic food. Prosecutors also note that Chansley has shown he can travel without being traced. And because he is widely associated with the horns-and-fur costume and face paint he wore at the Capitol, prosecutors say, Chansley "is virtually unidentifiable when not wearing it."
  • The memorandum, like other documents prosecutors have filed in Chansley's case, notes he refers to himself and other rioters as "patriots."
  • Chansley wore horns, face paint and fur as he stood on the Senate dais – where he left a threatening note for Vice President Pence, prosecutors say."It's only a matter of time, justice is coming,"
  • "Strong evidence, including Chansley's own words and actions at the Capitol, supports that the intent of the Capitol rioters was to capture and assassinate elected officials in the United States Government. "
  • Prosecutors also note that Chansley sought to mislead officials about his drug use. While he allegedly claimed to be a weekly user of marijuana, they note, he has described using peyote and mushrooms in his podcast (on which he uses the name "Jake Angeli"),
  • "Chansley has spoken openly about his belief that he is an alien, a higher being, and he is here on Earth to ascend to another reality."
  • Chansley and dozens of others who breached security at the Capitol have been arrested in the past week. In many cases, they have been identified by citizens and authorities from photos and videos taken inside lawmakers' offices and other areas in the congressional complex.
  • The attack on the Capitol has been linked to five deaths, including U.S. Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick and a woman whom police shot as she climbed up a barricaded door.
  • "Media and FBI reports have detailed carefully-planned insurrection attempts scheduled throughout the country in the coming weeks at every state capital, including the [Arizona] capitol."
  • Arguing that Chansley poses a flight risk, the court filing says he does not have a stable job that would require him to remain in Arizona.
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Capitol Riot Shakes Pro-Democracy Campaigners World-Wide - WSJ - 0 views

  • As a young student activist in 1980s Communist Poland, Tomasz Siemoniak —like many pro-democracy campaigners world-wide—looked up to America as a beacon of freedom.
  • China’s foreign ministry spokeswoman, Hua Chunying, has already drawn a parallel between the riot in Washington and Hong Kong’s protests in 2019, accusing the U.S. of double standards as she expressed her “hope that the people of America will enjoy peace, stability and safety soon.”
  • “These recent events have stunned everyone, and in particularly the Belarusians, who saw the U.S. as an example of a stable, orderly democracy where honest elections are followed by a lawful transfer of power,” said Franak Viacorka, a senior adviser to Mr. Lukashenko’s opponent in the disputed election, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya. “We hope it was an aberration rather than the trend.
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  • In other parts of Europe, populist movements that embraced Mr. Trump’s attempt to overturn the election also attract a significant proportion of voters, and hope to make gains amid an economic crisis and a pandemic.
  • The Falun Gong religious movement, persecuted in China, and its U.S.-based Epoch Times newspaper, became leading proponents of efforts to overturn the Nov. 3 election. Some opponents of the governments in Venezuela, Cuba and Iran have also joined this effort.
  • The fact that Vice President Mike Pence, U.S. federal and state courts and other American government institutions have resisted Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn his electoral defeat demonstrated the resilience of American democracy, said Mr. Siemoniak. “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. T
  • n Germany, far-right extremists and protesters against coronavirus restrictions—some of them bearing symbols of the QAnon conspiracy theory that lionizes Mr. Trump and alleges that hundreds of establishment politicians world-wide are involved in satanic child-sex rings—attempted to storm the country’s parliament last August, but were blocked by police.
  • “We have plenty of work cut out here. We have plenty of parties that challenge fact-based policies and use a rhetoric that is very problematic.”
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Opinion | The Biden Opportunity - The New York Times - 0 views

  • Amid all the exhausted relief and Twitter euphoria, it’s worth being honest: The inauguration of Joe Biden to the presidency was a dark scene overall, with strong decline-of-the-republic vibes. A windswept, wintry, barricaded Capitol; a denuded Mall; a military occupation. The establishment in masks, with a few celebrities mixed in; almost everybody looking aged, gray, laid waste by time. The ex-president absent, unmentioned, but a shadow over the proceedings all the same.
  • The test posed by QAnon and militia-style extremism, meanwhile, might be less a generational battle and more a matter of watching the enthusiasm for Jan. 6-style confrontations evaporate as the F.B.I. ramps up arrests.
  • Politically, if Biden gets an economic recovery and a retreating pandemic by fall 2021, then he has advantages no matter what happens to the right. If the story of the next two years is a Trump-fomented Republican civil war, that could solidify Biden’s center-left majority and push moderate Republican senators closer to their Democratic colleagues.
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  • But if those systemic problems made Trump president, the more visceral shock of the pandemic and the visceral incompetence (and worse) of his administration have created a space where a meaningful majority of Americans may be satisfied with recovery, normalcy, a phase of decadence that feels depressing but not dire.
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Pelosi Blasts GOP Leadership Over Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene's Remarks : NPR - 0 views

  • House Speaker Nancy Pelosi took aim Thursday at Republican leadership, saying the GOP had ignored a wave of threats and comments by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., a promoter of QAnon and other conspiracy theories, and placed her on the House Education Committee despite her questioning of school shootings.
  • Some House Democrats have called for Greene to face repercussions amid the new reports over Greene's comments, including purported threats on Facebook against Pelosi in which she suggested the speaker be "executed for treason."
  • garnered fresh attention this week when CNN reported on a video showing her in 2019 accosting a survivor of the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. Greene has said that shooting, which left 17 dead, as well as the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School, which left 26 dead, including 20 children, were both staged events.
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  • Pelosi cited Greene's remarks in her criticism of the GOP leadership, calling it "absolutely appalling."
  • the Republican leadership in the House of Representatives who is willing to overlook, ignore those statements, assigning her to the Education Committee when she has mocked the killing of little children at Sandy Hook Elementary School, when she has mocked of killing of teenagers in high school at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School
  • "These comments are deeply disturbing and Leader McCarthy plans to have a conversation with the congresswoman about them," the spokeswoman said.
  • Hours after Pelosi's comments, acting U.S. Capitol Police Chief Yogananda Pittman said that in the wake of the agency's security failures, they will ask for new measures, including a permanent fencing system and the availability of "ready, back-up forces in close proximity to the Capitol."
  • California Rep. Jimmy Gomez said Wednesday that he would introduce a resolution to expel Greene from Congress. Also Wednesday, Massachusetts Rep. Jake Auchincloss said that if Greene doesn't resign, she needs to be expelled.
  • "If you don't understand that calling for the murder of political rivals is a threat to democracy, you shouldn't be allowed to represent one," Auchincloss said in a tweet.
  • supplemental funding to raise security measures for lawmakers — to address new security concerns among members, especially "when the enemy is within the House of Representatives.
  • "It means that we have members of Congress who want to bring guns on the floor and have threatened violence against on other members of Congress."
  • "What could they be thinking?" Pelosi told reporters. "Or is 'thinking' too generous a word for what they may be doing?"
  • The union representing U.S. Capitol Police officers says the force's leadership failed to relay the known threat of violence adequately ahead of the Jan. 6 deadly riot, calling the acting chief's recent admission of prior knowledge of the threat to Congress "a disclosure that has angered and shocked the rank-and-file officers."
  • By January 4th, the Department knew that the January 6th event would not be like any of the previous protests held in 2020. We knew that militia groups and white supremacists organizations would be attending. We also knew that some of these participants were intending to bring firearms and other weapons to the event. We kne
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McConnell: Marjorie Taylor Greene's views are a 'cancer' for the GOP - CNNPolitics - 0 views

  • Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell on Monday issued a tacit rebuke of controversial Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, slamming the Georgia Republican's "loony lies and conspiracy theories" as a "cancer" for the party.
  • "Somebody who's suggested that perhaps no airplane hit the Pentagon on 9/11, that horrifying school shootings were pre-staged, and that the Clintons crashed JFK Jr.'s airplane is not living in reality. This has nothing to do with the challenges facing American families or the robust debates on substance that can strengthen our party."
  • While McConnell did not name Greene directly, his statement stands as a scathing rebuke of the freshman Republican House member.
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  • Greene quickly shot back on Twitter, asserting that "the real cancer for the Republican Party is weak Republicans who only know how to lose gracefully. This is why we are losing our country."
  • Greene has faced backlash since a CNN KFile report last week found that she had repeatedly indicated support for executing prominent Democratic politicians in 2018 and 2019 before being elected to Congress.
  • In a separate statement to CNN, he expressed support for Republican Rep. Liz Cheney's vote to impeach President Donald Trump as some Trump loyalists seek to remove her from leadership.
  • Greene now faces potentially serious consequences in light of her prior comments, with House Democrats moving expeditiously to remove her from her committee assignments.
  • CNN previously reported that McCarthy is slated to meet with Greene this week, as many House Republicans have been silent about her newly resurfaced incendiary comments.
  • McConnell's short but pointed rebuke Monday night came the same day the Kentucky Republican waded publicly into another controversy threatening party unity.
  • The freshman congresswoman has a track record of incendiary rhetoric, including past comments using Islamophobic and anti-Semitic tropes, as well as ties to the baseless and thoroughly debunked QAnon conspiracy theory.
  • Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell on Monday issued a tacit rebuke of controversial Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, slamming the Georgia Republican's "loony lies and conspiracy theories" as a "cancer" for the party.
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Engaging With Trump's Die-Hard Supporters Isn't Productive - The Atlantic - 0 views

  • ordinary people worn out by the dramas and lies of the past four years have a right to refuse to take Trump’s most enthusiastic supporters seriously. To reject further debate with people whose views are completely incoherent is not only understandable, but sensible.
  • I am not talking about all 74 million people who voted for Trump. Some voters may well have supported Trump in both 2016 and 2020 with a sense of hesitancy, perhaps focused on a single issue, such as abortion, or because they were making a raw and self-interested calculation about taxes.
  • Instead, I am talking about the people who are giving Trump their full-throated support to the very end, even as he mulls a military coup; the people who buy weird paintings of Trump crossing the Delaware, or who believe that Trump is an agent of Jesus Christ, or who think that Trump is fighting a blood-drinking ring of pedophiles. These supporters have gone far beyond political loyalty and have succumbed to a kind of mass delusion.
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  • I don’t want to treat our fellow citizens with open contempt, or to confront and berate them
  • Rather, I am arguing for silence. The Trump loyalists who still cling to conspiracy theories and who remain part of a cult of personality should be deprived of the attention they seek, shunned for their antidemocratic lunacy, and then outvoted at the ballot box.
  • Perhaps most important, much of our own sense of well-being will be lost if we continue to engage with people who believe that millions of votes were falsified from coast to coast, that the military should move into the swing states and hold new elections, or even that thousands of Chinese troops were bombed into submission on the border of Maine.
  • No content anchors it; no program or policy comes from it. No motivating ideology stands behind it, unless we think of general grievance and a hatred of cultural and intellectual elites as an “idea.
  • when views are incoherent and beliefs are rooted in fantasies, compromise is impossible. Further engagement is not only unwarranted, but it can also become counterproductive.
  • We already understand: Trump tapped into traditions of ethnic and regional grievances and social resentments that are present in every democracy and wedded them to bizarre theories and conspiracies.
  • If we’ve learned one thing about “Trumpism,” it is that there is no such thing as “Trumpism.”
  • Ordinary people should tune out the noise. No one needs to think one more minute about why a woman from New York would speed along in her car while ranting into her phone about stolen elections when she ought to have been watching the road.
  • And the media have a particular obligation to end their fascination with these Trump voters. We don’t need yet another pilgrimage to diners and gas stations to hear from people whose only sources of information are cable-news hosts plumping fantasies about Venezuelan voting machines.
  • the rest of us no longer need to participate in long chin-pulling exercises about “what they really want” or why they cannot grasp reality.
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Who Died in the Capitol Building Attack? - The New York Times - 0 views

  • These five people from disparate backgrounds and different corners of the country now share one fate: Their lives all ended last week as a mob incited by Mr. Trump stormed the Capitol.
  • After serving in the Air National Guard and dreaming of becoming a police officer, Brian D. Sicknick joined the Capitol Police force in 2008. He died the day after he was overpowered and beaten by rioters from the mob at the Capitol.
  • Ashli Babbitt, 35, an Air Force veteran from Southern California, was shot and killed by a Capitol Police officer as she clambered through a broken window leading to the Speaker’s Lobby inside the Capitol.
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  • Kevin D. Greeson, 55, of Athens, Ala., was standing in a throng of fellow Trump loyalists on the west side of the Capitol when he suffered a heart attack and fell to the sidewalk. He was talking on the phone with his wife at the time.
  • Rosanne Boyland, 34, of Kennesaw, Ga., posted fervently in support of President Trump on social media, followed the baseless conspiracy theories of QAnon and latched onto Mr. Trump’s false claims that he had won the election, family members told The Associated Press.
  • How she died remained unclear on Monday
  • Mr. Philips died of a stroke in Washington, those who accompanied him to the Capitol told the newspaper. The exact circumstances of his death were still unclear, and his family could not be reached for comment.
  • A police officer was beaten, a rioter was shot, and three others died during the rampage.
  • One had dreamed of becoming a police officer and was injured in a clash with rioters. One was an Air Force veteran and a fervent supporter of President Trump who was shot by the police. Three others were Trump loyalists — including one who sold kangaroos dressed like the president — who suffered what the authorities called “medical emergencies.”
  • Law enforcement officials said he had been “physically engaging with protesters” and was struck in the head with a fire extinguisher.
  • Her last moments, captured from multiple angles on video, show Ms. Babbitt, a Trump flag knotted around her neck, being hoisted to the window as others in the mob shout. Moments later, a shot rings out and Ms. Babbitt falls back, blood pouring from her mouth
  • Mr. Greeson had high blood pressure and she had not wanted him to travel to Washington. But she said Mr. Greeson believed the election had been stolen and saw the Jan. 6 rally as “a monumental event.”
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