Sandara Park: On Politics: Can the U.S. Avoid More Political Violence?

January 12, 2021

By Giovanni Russonello

Last week’s violence at the Capitol may not be the extent of extremists’ plans: The F.B.I. is warning of possible armed protests in all 50 states. It’s Tuesday, and this is your politics tip sheet.

Where things stand

Democrats in Congress are pushing ahead with their attempt to impeach President Trump for a second time, and his approval rating has fallen to a historic low after last week’s deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol, according to a new poll. But that doesn’t mean Trump’s most loyal supporters are willing to back down.
Right-wing organizers have been using social media apps and other messaging platforms to plan armed demonstrations at state capitols in the days leading up to Joe Biden’s inauguration as president on Jan. 20. Such protests could occur in all 50 states in the days ahead, the F.B.I. warned in a bulletin yesterday.
Some states are taking special precautions. In Michigan, a government commission voted yesterday to ban the open carry of firearms inside the Capitol, heeding a Democratic demand. (Gun owners with permits will still be able to carry concealed weapons inside.) In Wisconsin, the windows of the State Capitol have been boarded up.
The Transportation Security Administration said yesterday that it was stepping up security at the three major airports in the Washington area, adding police and canine patrols as well as tech capacity.
And in downtown Washington, many blocks near the White House and the Capitol will be closed as a precaution starting Wednesday, seven days ahead of the inauguration.
Meanwhile, federal law enforcement agents are making arrests around the country in connection with the siege on the Capitol. Dozens of people have been charged with federal and local-level offenses, including unlawful entry, curfew violations and firearms-related offenses; investigators are pursuing more than 150 suspects for prosecution.
One suspect who has been apprehended is Lonnie Coffman, an Alabama man whose truck was found near the Capitol with 11 homemade bombs, an assault rifle and a handgun inside, the authorities said.
Another man who was arrested, Derrick Evans, had just been elected to the West Virginia House of Delegates. Evans resigned and accepted responsibility for his actions, which allegedly included livestreaming his own entry into the Capitol building.
The authorities are seeking many more suspects in connection with the rampage, including one man believed to have placed pipe bombs outside the Republican and Democratic headquarters near the Capitol.
Beyond the five deaths of various causes during the chaos and the dozens of injuries, lawmakers are now worried that the siege may have been a coronavirus superspreader event. Lawmakers were forced to huddle together on the floor in their chambers, or in tightly secured rooms, as the mob of unmasked attackers broke into the building.
Many congressional Republicans were not wearing masks throughout the episode.
Chad Wolf, one of the president’s protégés, resigned yesterday as acting secretary of homeland security, joining a flood of top administration officials heading for the exits early.

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Far from taking a bold political stand after the attack last week by domestic extremists, Wolf didn’t mention the assault on the Capitol in the resignation letter he sent to staff members. Instead, he pointed to recent court rulings that had cast doubt on his authority to run the agency by saying he might not have been appointed lawfully by the president.
But it was difficult not to see his resignation as related to those of Betsy DeVos, the education secretary, and Elaine Chao, the transportation secretary, who resigned after the Capitol riot — effectively sidestepping calls from Trump’s critics to help remove him by using the 25th Amendment.
Wolf had been expected to help coordinate the security at Biden’s inauguration. That responsibility will now fall to Peter Gaynor, the administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, who replaces Wolf as the acting secretary of the Homeland Security Department.
House Democrats yesterday introduced an article of impeachment against Trump that would bar him from public office in the future. They vowed to approve the measure if Vice President Mike Pence did not invoke the 25th Amendment to strip Trump of power ahead of Biden’s inauguration.
“The president’s threat to America is urgent, and so too will be our action,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi said.
It’s unlikely that Congress would manage to impeach and remove Trump from office before Jan. 20, but Biden said he was working with Senate Democrats to prepare for an impeachment trial during the early days of his presidency.
Speaking to reporters yesterday after receiving his second and final dose of the coronavirus vaccine, Biden said he was also in conversations with the Senate parliamentarian about how Democrats might “bifurcate” the chamber’s schedule, so it can hear impeachment proceedings while also working to pass Biden’s agenda.
Biden re-emphasized that his top priority would be to pass a stimulus package and revive the economy.
A majority of voters nationwide hold Trump responsible for the violence at the Capitol last week, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released yesterday. The survey found that just 33 percent of voters approved of his job performance, tied with his lowest approval on record.
Roughly a third of voters continued to express faith in the president and said they believed his unfounded claims of widespread voter fraud. But among the rest of the electorate, there was broad agreement that the president deserved to be removed from power.
Fifty-six percent of voters said he bore responsibility for last week’s violence. Separately, 53 percent said he should resign as president, and 52 percent said he should be removed.

Photo of the day

Amr Alfiky/The New York Times

Biden receiving his second vaccine shot yesterday in Newark, Del.

Will Congress pass ethics changes swiftly after Trump leaves office?

The violent end to Trump’s presidency only puts an exclamation point on the run-on sentence of ethically questionable behavior displayed throughout his four-year term.

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And as he leaves office, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are already at work on ethics changes that aim to prevent some of his most egregious behavior from becoming normalized.

Our reporter Elizabeth Williamson wrote an article detailing the status of such an overhaul and how likely it is to be enacted early in Biden’s term. Elizabeth agreed to answer a few questions about the topic for us.

How much of this is about putting into writing things — like presidents releasing their tax returns — that had been considered standard political practice, but that were never enshrined in official policy before Trump began violating them?

The Trump administration’s scandals revealed two things. First, how many norms of presidential behavior were not enshrined in law, but rather a matter of tradition, enforced by political shaming. For instance, the idea that presidents disclose their tax returns, or that they not funnel taxpayer money into their family businesses.

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Second, the departing president exposed the need to update the last major ethics reform bill to have made it through Congress: the now-creaky Ethics in Government Act of 1978, passed after Watergate. Those reforms came in response to President Richard Nixon’s use of the Justice Department to pursue his political enemies. Trump’s yen for doing the same suggests a tuneup is in order.

A willingness to fire inspectors general was one of Trump’s most obvious ways of flouting ethics concerns. How would the current proposals step up protections for inspectors general in executive agencies?

Actually, the I.G. protection component of the reform package has received early action in the House, according to Aaron Scherb of Common Cause, one of the watchdog groups pushing for these changes.

On Jan. 5, the eve of the Capitol riot, the bipartisan Inspector General Protection Act — introduced by Representatives Ted Lieu, Democrat of California, and Jody Hice, Republican of Georgia — passed the House by voice vote.

The act would help protect inspectors general from retaliation, for example by requiring the executive branch to notify Congress before placing an I.G. on administrative leave. And it would help ensure that vacant I.G. slots are filled promptly by requiring the executive to provide Congress an explanation for failing to nominate an I.G. after an extended vacancy.

Biden is about to be a Democratic president with a Democratic Congress. Is there any real concern about whether officials in the party may be unenthusiastic about passing strict regulations, when Democrats now call the shots?

Historically, presidents are reluctant to give up any expansion of power enjoyed by their predecessor administrations. But given the titanic ethical blast holes that some of these proposals aim to plug, like prohibiting presidential self-pardons or preventing a sitting cabinet secretary from using an official trip to make a political campaign speech, Democrats expect any quibbles by the incoming White House to be relatively minor.

Republican support for the changes is less clear. Though some may jump at the chance to rein in a Democratic president, the worry is that they’ll be afraid to support reforms that could be interpreted by Trump or his supporters as criticism of him.

Correction: Yesterday’s newsletter referred incorrectly to YouTube and Snapchat. They are not among Facebook’s platforms.

How White Evangelical Christians Fused With Trump Extremism

A potent mix of grievance and religious fervor has turbocharged the support among Trump loyalists, many of whom describe themselves as participants in a kind of holy war.

By Elizabeth Dias and Ruth Graham