By ZEKE MILLER, MARY CLARE JALONICK and CALVIN WOODWARD (Associated Press)
WASHINGTON (AP) — Such are the fractures within the nation, between the political events and contained in the Republican Party itself, that one time-honored specialty of Washington — memorializing and coming collectively over nationwide trauma — isn’t what it was.
Friday morning’s second of silence on the Capitol to ponder the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on it drew largely Democrats, with transient remarks from Democratic leaders new and incoming — Reps. Nancy Pelosi and Hakeem Jeffries — and none from the GOP.
The occasion was targeted on the Capitol Police officers who protected the constructing that day, and households of regulation enforcement officers who died after the riot. Jeffries stated 140 officers had been critically injured that day and “many more will forever be scarred by the bloodthirsty violence of the insurrectionist mob. We stand here today with our democracy intact because of those officers.”
At the White House, few Republicans had been anticipated for a ceremony at which President Joe Biden will award Presidential Citizens Medals to a dozen state and native officers, election employees and cops for his or her “exemplary deeds of service for their country or their fellow citizens” in upholding the outcomes of the 2020 election and combating again the Capitol mob.
It’s all a far cry from Sept. 11, 2001, when lawmakers who had frantically evacuated the Capitol through the terrorist assault gathered there later within the day in a second of silence and broke out in “God Bless America,” Republicans and Democrats shoulder to shoulder.
“They stood shaken and tearful on the steps of the Capitol, their love of nation and all that it symbolizes plain for the world to see,” an Australian newspaper reported in a passage mirrored now within the House’s official historical past.
Today, the world sees a special image, one among turmoil in American democracy coming from throughout the establishment that insurrectionists overran two years in the past.
The nation’s legislative department is once more at a standstill — not from violence this time however due to a tortuous wrestle amongst Republicans over who ought to lead them, and the House itself, as speaker.
To ensure, a decision to the rapid disaster could also be close to because the GOP management continues negotiations to appease its hard-right flank. Rep. Kevin McCarthy flipped greater than a dozen colleagues to help him for House speaker Friday, lastly exhibiting progress on the fourth day and twelfth poll of the standoff.
Biden, in his afternoon remarks, will inform tales of heroism, whether or not within the face of a violent Capitol mob or a vehement horde of Donald Trump-inspired agitators who threatened election employees or in any other case sought to overturn the outcomes. He will enchantment for unity.
But the Democratic president can’t ignore the warning indicators that it might occur once more.
In the midterms, candidates who denied the result of 2020’s free and truthful election had been defeated for a lot of pivotal statewide positions overseeing elections in battleground states, as had been a variety of election deniers looking for seats in Congress.
Yet most of the lawmakers who introduced baseless claims of election fraud or excused the violence on Jan. 6 proceed to serve and are newly empowered.
Trump’s 2024 candidacy has been gradual off the beginning blocks, however his battle chest is full and a few would-be rivals for the Republican presidential nomination have channeled his false claims concerning the 2020 race.
As properly, a number of lawmakers who echoed his lies a few stolen election on the time are central within the effort to derail McCarthy’s ascension to speaker — unswayed by Trump’s appeals from afar to help him and finish the battle.
The protracted wrestle leaves the House leaderless, unable to cross payments and powerless to do way more than maintain vote after vote for speaker till a majority is reached. Everything from nationwide safety briefings to serving to their constituents navigate the federal paperwork is on pause as a result of the members-elect can’t but take their oath of workplace.
Some Democrats see a throughline from Jan. 6.
The chaos of the speaker’s election “is about destruction of an institution in a different way,” stated Democratic Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington, one of many lawmakers who fled the rioters two years in the past.
Then, the insurrectionists trapped some lawmakers within the House chamber however by no means breached it. They held up nationwide enterprise for hours that day.
Now some have felt trapped in the identical chamber by the repeated, fruitless votes for speaker and House enterprise is held up for this week and maybe longer.
“The stream of continuity here is extremism, elements of Trumpism, norms don’t matter,” says Democratic Rep. Mike Quigley of Illinois. “It’s not about governing, it’s about pontificating and advocating an extremist point of view.”
Democratic Rep. Annie Kuster of New Hampshire stated, “It is a very small minority who want to throw this institution into chaos.”
At least 9 individuals who had been on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, died throughout or after the rioting, together with a girl who was shot and killed by police as she tried to interrupt into the House chamber and three different Trump supporters who authorities stated suffered medical emergencies.
Two officers, Howard Liebengood of the Capitol Police and Jeffrey Smith of the Metropolitan Police, had been on the Capitol that Jan. 6 and died by suicide within the days following the assault. Biden is honoring each Friday with posthumous medals.
A 3rd officer, Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, collapsed and died after partaking with the protesters. A health worker later decided he died of pure causes.
The Metropolitan Police introduced months later that two extra of their officers who had responded to the rebellion, Kyle DeFreytag and Gunther Hashida, had additionally died by suicide.
The lawmakers held a 140-second second of silence in honor of these officers as a few of their households stated their names and a bell was rung of their honor.
“I wish we didn’t have to be here,” stated Ken Sicknick, brother of Brian Sicknick, after the ceremony.
After the unsatisfying midterm election for Trump allies, the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 assault wrapped up its work with a advice to the Justice Department to prosecute the previous president. A particular counsel and in the end Attorney General Merrick Garland will now determine whether or not to indict him.
While the congressional investigations have ended, the legal instances are nonetheless very a lot persevering with, each for the 950 arrested and charged within the violent assault and for Trump and his associates who stay underneath investigation. The second seditious conspiracy trial begins this week, for members of the far-right Proud Boys.
In a measured however important step, Congress in December amended the Electoral Count Act to restrict the function of the vp in counting electoral votes, to make it more durable for particular person lawmakers to mount objections to correctly licensed election outcomes and to remove “fake electors” like these deployed by Trump allies in a bid to overturn his defeat to Biden.
After all that, Biden, who made it a tentpole of his agenda to show to the world that democracies can ship for his or her residents, had dared hope that this was “the first time we’re really getting through the whole issue relating to Jan. 6. Things are settling out.”
But then got here the battle for speaker, uncommon within the annals of Congress.
“And now, for the first time in 100 years, we can’t move?” Biden stated earlier this week. “It’s not a good look. It’s not a good thing.”
“Look,” he went on, “how do you think it looks to the rest of the world?”
Will Rogers’ sturdy joke — “I am not a member of any organized political party. I am a Democrat” — now appears dated and misplaced. Democrats voted unanimously for his or her new House chief, Jeffries of New York, in a seamless transition from Pelosi.
Two years after Jan. 6 and Trump’s subsequent departure, Republicans, the get together for which standing in line the longest normally meant victory, at the moment are the get together of factions and dysfunction.
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Associated Press author Colleen Long contributed to this report.
Source: www.bostonherald.com”