#Storming of the US Capitol (Jan

[ivygorgon]

An open letter to the U.S. House of Representatives

🏠 Expel members of Congress that participated in the Jan 6 attack on the Capitol.

1,476 so far! Help us get to 2,000 signers!

Expel any members of Congress—including Reps. Greene, Gosar, Biggs, Brooks, Boebert, Cawthorn, and Gohmert—who are found to have aided and abetted the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6. It was a violent assault that cost lives, and members of Congress who coordinated illegal or violent activity with organizers cannot serve in the U.S. Congress and should be brought to justice.

▶ Created on October 25, 2021 by Suzanne

📱 Text SIGN PSDAJA to 50409

📜 Tell the US Congress to Impose Section 3 of 14th Amendment Against Trump

🖊️ Text SIGN PEREHG

[ivygorgon]

🏠 Tell the US House to Expel Members of Congress That Participated in The Jan 6 attack on The Capitol

🖊️ Text SIGN PSDAJA to 50409

📜 Tell the US Congress to Impose Section 3 of 14th Amendment Against Trump

🖊️ Text SIGN PEREHG to 50409

Happy Traitor Day to those who celebrate.

[youthchronical]

A Pentagon Nomination Fight Reveals the New Rules of Trump’s Washington

There’s little in Elbridge A. Colby’s past to suggest that President Trump’s most loyal and fierce allies would embrace him. Mr. Colby, 45, has deep roots in the foreign policy establishment that Mr. Trump is trying to destroy. He is the grandson of the former C.I.A. director William Colby; a product of Groton, Harvard and Yale Law School; someone who has spent much of his career working across…

[bishopsbelova]

Two days in. TWO DAYS

Nazi salutes

Started mass deportations (and ICE raids in major cities)

Has sent the national guard to the Mexico border

Wants to rename the fucking Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America

Is targeting the cartels (cause that's gonna end well)

Shut down the CBP One app - which the Biden-Harris administration started to start process for immigrants to enter legally

Wants to get rid of "birthright citizenship" which GOES AGANIST the 14the amendment of the constitution. 18 states have pushed back against him.

Withdrew us from the Paris Climate Agreement.

Withdrew us from the World Health Organization

The government is only recognizing two sexes

Revoked the Equal Employment Opportunity order of 1965

He required a full-time return to in-office work for federal employees and ordered a hiring freeze on government positions.

The hiring freeze does not apply to the military or "immigration enforcement, national security, or public safety."

Pardoned the domestic terrorists who stormed the capitol on Jan 6.

Trump also rescinded a 2022 Biden order to lower the cost of prescription drugs.

And there's probably so much more that I'm leaving out or not seeing; because I can't fucking keep up.

He also owns the house and the senate….

[ivygorgon]

📜 Tell the US Congress to Impose Section 3 of 14th Amendment Against Trump

🖊️ Text SIGN PEREHG to 50409

🏠 Tell the US House to Expel Members of Congress That Participated in The Jan 6 attack on The Capitol

🖊️ Text SIGN PSDAJA to 50409

[deadpresidents]

"The Vice Presidency comes with plenty of indignities, but probably none greater than the one that Kamala Harris endured on Monday when she presided over the certification of her own defeat.

Standing in the rostrum of the House of Representatives, a gavel in her hand and a look of imperturbable stoicism on her face, Ms. Harris officiated as the two houses of Congress met in joint session to formally count the Electoral College votes for President.

"The votes for President of the United States are as follows," she declared after each state's totals were read. "Donald J. Trump of the state of Florida has received 312 votes." At that point, Republican lawmakers rose to their feet to applaud. Ms Harris gave a small, polite smile as she let them have their moment.

Then she continued. "Kamala D. Harris of the state of California has received 226 votes," she intoned. Now it was the Democrats' turn to stand and applaud. Ms. Harris glanced over to that side of the chamber with a little smile of thanks, then gently gaveled the body to order. After reading the votes certifying JD Vance as Vice President, she formally ordered the results entered in the record.

And with that, Kamala Harris the Vice President officially put an end to Kamala Harris the candidate's quest for the Presidency -- at least for this election. At that point, members of both parties rose to applaud, seemingly out of respect for the no-doubt-painful task she had just taken on without complaint or objection.

There was also certainly a little bit of relief that everyone had gotten through the moment peacefully, unlike the maelstrom visited upon the Capitol on this day four years earlier when Mr. Trump refused to accept defeat and inspired a mob that stormed the building to try to stop the count certifying it.

Ms. Harris made no comments while wielding the gavel beyond her scripted duties...Unlike Mr. Trump, Ms. Harris has made no effort to cast doubt upon the election but has instead accepted defeat graciously. Neither she nor President Biden has sought to pressure the Justice Department, members of Congress, governors, state legislators, or election officials to reverse the vote she lost, as Mr. Trump did four years ago.

She has not filed dozens of lawsuits that would be tossed out by judges as frivolous or unfounded. She has not repeated false fraud allegations or wild conspiracy theories that her own advisers told her were untrue.

Nor did she use her role as presiding officer to reject votes for Mr. Trump and Mr. Vance the way Mr. Trump tried to get Vice President Mike Pence to do to Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris in 2021. Mr. Pence refused, saying he did not have such power, and Congress subsequently passed a law reaffirming that interpretation.

The contrast between Jan. 6, 2021, and Jan. 6, 2025, could hardly be starker. "

-- Peter Baker, on Vice President Kamala Harris presiding over the certification of her own defeat in the 2024 Presidential election before a joint session of Congress, during the peaceful, traditional formal ceremony denied to her and President Joe Biden exactly four years earlier, New York Times, January 6, 2025.

[ralfmaximus]

Nearly three years ago, a young professional in the nation's capital was sitting in her apartment after the Jan. 6 attack and saw that the FBI was looking for help identifying the rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol. So she opened up the Bumble dating app, changed her political beliefs to conservative and got to swiping.

Her strategy, she said, was saying "Wow, crazy, tell me more” to guys on repeat until they gave her enough for her to send their information to the FBI.

This goddamned hero turned in about a dozen names to the FBI, and one of them was just convicted.

[onlytiktoks]

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/politics/2025/02/04/musk-trump-purge-of-usaid-cuts-off-workers-in-ukraine/

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Dean Obeidallah at The Dean's Report:

We’ve never seen a presidential administration weaponize government to the extent of Donald Trump--both by rewarding his supporters and punishing his “enemies.” And what we saw Monday sums it up perfectly. Trump had his DOJ arrest a Democratic member of Congress on BS charges of assaulting an ICE officer while he rewarded the family of MAGA terrorist Ashli Babbitt--who was killed while storming the Capitol on Jan. 6--with $5 million of your tax dollars. This should make your blood boil—because it makes mine! The arrest of New Jersey Democratic Rep. LaMonica McIver is as House Democratic leaders led by Hakeem Jeffries wrote in a statement, “extreme, morally bankrupt and lacks any basis in law or fact.” The charge arises from the May 9th visit by herself and two other New Jersey members of Congress to an ICE facility in Newark. A scuffle broke out when the ICE agents suddenly arrested Newark Mayor Ras Baraka for allegedly trespassing. Videos show McIver being pushed by ICE agents and saying on video about one agent, “He just assaulted me.” There is also video of incidental contact between McIver and an armed ICE agent in tactical gear.

After the incident, Trump officials went on TV claiming that McIver “body slammed” an ICE agent and the video would back that up. It did not—that was a lie. Yet Trump’s US Attorney for New Jersey Alina Habba gleefully claimed on Monday McIver had “assaulted, impeded, and interfered with law enforcement” and charged her with a federal crime. This is not the first fabricated charge by the Trump regime versus a Democrat. On Monday, Habba dropped the trespassing charge against Mayor Baraka, claiming it was “for the sake of moving forward.” In reality, as the evidence showed, Baraka was arrested on public property outside the ICE facility. You can’t trespass on public property—especially when you’re the Mayor of the city! The arrest of McIver follows an alarming pattern from convicted felon Trump over his first four months of utilizing the power of the federal government to target his critics and perceived enemies. We’ve seen Trump’s rogue regime arrest a judge in Wisconsin and the Mayor of Newark, begin a criminal investigation into NY Attorney General Tish James plus threaten to prosecute the Mayor of Chicago and the governor of New Jersey. Trump and his minions have also opened formal investigations into media outlets critical of him, the Democratic fundraising platform Act Blue, law firms, universities, people who used to work in the Trump regime but refused to lie that the 2020 election was stolen and more. As Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-NJ)--who was with Rep. McIver at the ICE facility --told me last week, she expected Trump to charge her or McIver. Not because either did anything wrong but because as she noted the Trump regime is “out of control” with their “weaponization of law enforcement.” She rightly warned, “no one is safe form this administration.” 

Something’s not adding up here: The Trump DOJ goons ordered the bogus arrest of Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-NJ) while giving a $5M reward to the family of the late domestic terrorist Ashli Babbitt.

See Also:

Public Notice: DOJ politicization escalates with bogus arrest of congresswoman

[beardedmrbean]

Two Jews, employees of the Israeli Embassy in Washington, DC, were murdered in a terrorist attack Wednesday night outside the Capital Jewish Museum.

They were young, a couple. The man had bought a ring and was going to propose next week.

In the coming days, we’ll learn much about the shooter and the path that led him to walk up to two strangers enjoying a night out on the town and assassinate them in cold blood.

But the details hardly matter: The killer already told us everything we need to know.

As he was being detained, he shouted the words that have become the soundtrack to so much American suffering: “Free Palestine.”

The murders were a reminder, as if we needed another, that “Free Palestine” is not about the war in Gaza, not about Israel’s response to Hamas’ atrocities on Oct. 7, not about the well-being of Palestinians or any other living beings.

“Free Palestine” is the rallying cry of a terrorist operation that is funded by foreign governments and designed to sow chaos, fear, and violence in America’s streets.

This violence always begins with Jews, but it never ends there. Free Palestine’s real target is America.

Shortly after the grim news broke, President Trump spoke to Israeli Ambassador Yechiel Leiter and promised him to do whatever it takes to fight this deadly hatred.

But serious and committed as the president may be, the fight ahead of us will require greater resources than even the American government has at its disposal.

Because the fight we face isn’t merely against a gaggle of violent radicals; it’s also the fight against all those who worked assiduously to get us to this murderous moment.

It’s a fight against the international organizations peddling modern-day blood libels, as the UN’s humanitarian chief, Tom Fletcher, did when he went on the BBC earlier this week and argued that unless the world stops Israel’s murderous spree, 14,000 Palestinian babies will die in Gaza in the next two days.

That this, if true, would be the equivalent of 27% of the death toll for the entire war, all babies, and all perishing in 48 hours, didn’t seem to trouble reporters and editors in major news outlets, who amplified Fletcher’s outlandish claim uncritically.

Our fight is against them, too: Long after it was obvious that the assassination was a terrorist attack targeting Jews, American media outlets, with very few exceptions, still spoke vaguely of a “shooting” claiming the lives of two unspecified victims.

On college campuses, our fight’s been going on for nearly two years now. We fight it even as university presidents and professors rush to defend thugs who assault Jewish students, disrupt classes, and disseminate terrorist propaganda.

The list of terror’s witless enablers is long. But there are still many more of us, normal Americans who refuse to accept a reality in which Jews are targeted and attacked by a death cult and in which Washington or New York or Chicago becomes just another Beirut, a bloody battlefield thick with jaunty jihadis.

How might we win this fight, the fight for American and Western civilization?

The answer is as simple as it is urgent.

We win by giving the Free Palestine brigades no quarter.

By rejecting candidates for office who support their cause and make excuses for their brutalities.

By demanding that institutions that foster them be denied any form of public funding and support.

By deporting every foreign national clucking about globalizing the intifada.

By demanding that our law enforcement authorities treat these keffiyeh-clad thugs as domestic terrorists deserve to be treated.

When a gaggle of rioters stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, 6,000 agents were assigned to work the case.

The murder in DC this week is every bit as fundamental, foundational an assault on American democracy, and deserves equal or greater resources.

This shouldn’t be a hard concept for us to grasp. In 1871, facing another murderous, Jew-hating militia, the Ku Klux Klan, Congress passed the Enforcement Act that gave the government wide power to do everything necessary, from deploying federal troops to suspending habeas corpus, to defeat these homegrown terrorists.

It did so because Americans could unite behind the elementary idea that the Klan was pure evil and profoundly un-American. The same is true of Free Palestine.

As we mourn the victims, it’s safe to assume that many on the woke left and the woke right alike will unleash a torrent of bad-faith arguments, from laying the blame on Israel to lashing out at Trump.

The rest of us know better: Pro-Palestine is anti-America, and Free Palestine means death. We must fight it with everything we’ve got. 

[lostinhistory]

The Proud Boys no longer have control over their own name.

Under a ruling by a Washington judge on Monday, the infamous far-right group was stripped of control over the trademark “Proud Boys” and was barred from selling any merchandise with either its name or its symbols without the consent of a Black church in Washington that its members vandalized. In June 2023, the church won a $2.8 million default judgment against the Proud Boys after the organization’s former leader, Enrique Tarrio, and several of his subordinates attacked it in a night of violence after a pro-Trump rally in December 2020.

The ruling by the judge, Tanya M. Jones Bosier of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia, effectively means that Proud Boys chapters across the country can no longer legally use their own name or the group’s traditional symbols without the permission of the church that was attacked, the Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church.

The ruling also clears the way for the church to try to seize any money that the Proud Boys might make by selling merchandise like hats or T-shirts emblazoned with their name or with any of their familiar logos, including a black and yellow laurel wreath.

In a lengthy statement, Mr. Tarrio said the church should have its nonprofit status revoked and Judge Bosier should be impeached. “Their actions are a betrayal of justice,” he wrote, adding, “I hold in contempt any motions, judgments and orders issued against me.”

The initial judgment against the Proud Boys determined that Mr. Tarrio and other members of the group had climbed over a fence surrounding the church, which is just blocks from the White House, and burned a Black Lives Matter banner it was flying. The episode took place after a violent clash between supporters and critics of President Trump.

The church called the Proud Boys’ actions “acts of terror” in its lawsuit and said they had been meant “to intimidate the church and silence its support for racial justice.” A judge agreed, calling the Proud Boys’ conduct “hateful and overtly racist.”

When the Proud Boys failed to turn over any money, lawyers for the church sought to satisfy the judgment by seizing control of the trademarked name and by enjoining the group from “selling, transferring, disposing of or licensing” any merchandise using the words “Proud Boys” or any of the organization’s symbols.

The ruling was handed down as the Proud Boys were riding high after Mr. Trump, in one of his first official acts in his return to the White House, included Mr. Tarrio and several of his lieutenants in his sweeping act of clemency to all of the nearly 1,600 people prosecuted in connection with the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Mr. Tarrio, who was serving a 22-year prison term on charges of seditious conspiracy, received a full and unconditional pardon from Mr. Trump. His four co-defendants had their own prison terms commuted to time served.

The banner-burning episode had a dramatic effect on the events of Jan. 6. It led to Mr. Tarrio’s arrest on vandalism charges as he returned to Washington on Jan. 4, 2021. As part of the case brought against him, he was kicked out of the city and was in Baltimore when his subordinates took part in the storming of the Capitol.

On the night the banner was burned, another Proud Boys leader, Jeremy Bertino, was stabbed on the street during a clash with leftist counterprotesters.

One lingering effect of that episode was that it turned the Proud Boys against the police after years of having troublingly close relationships with officers across the country. Another was that Mr. Bertino eventually became a government witness and testified against his compatriots at the trial of Mr. Tarrio and his co-defendants.

[youthchronical]

Judge Pushes Back on Justice Dept.’s Broad View of Jan. 6 Pardons

In the past few weeks, the Justice Department under President Trump has taken an expansive view of the pardons he issued to all of the nearly 1,600 people charged in connection with the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021. Department officials, after initially concluding that the pardons covered only crimes that were committed at the Capitol on the day of the attack, have now decided that Mr. Trump’s…

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

By Liel Leibovitz

“Free Palestine” is the rallying cry of a terrorist operation that is funded by foreign governments and designed to sow chaos, fear, and violence in America’s streets.

This violence always begins with Jews, but it never ends there. Free Palestine’s real target is America.

Shortly after the grim news broke, President Trump spoke to Israeli Ambassador Yechiel Leiter and promised him to do whatever it takes to fight this deadly hatred.

But serious and committed as the president may be, the fight ahead of us will require greater resources than even the American government has at its disposal.

Because the fight we face isn’t merely against a gaggle of violent radicals; it’s also the fight against all those who worked assiduously to get us to this murderous moment.

It’s a fight against the international organizations peddling modern-day blood libels, as the UN’s humanitarian chief, Tom Fletcher, did when he went on the BBC earlier this week and argued that unless the world stops Israel’s murderous spree, 14,000 Palestinian babies will die in Gaza in the next two days.

That this, if true, would be the equivalent of 27% of the death toll for the entire war, all babies, and all perishing in 48 hours, didn’t seem to trouble reporters and editors in major news outlets, who amplified Fletcher’s outlandish claim uncritically.

Our fight is against them, too: Long after it was obvious that the assassination was a terrorist attack targeting Jews, American media outlets, with very few exceptions, still spoke vaguely of a “shooting” claiming the lives of two unspecified victims.

On college campuses, our fight’s been going on for nearly two years now. We fight it even as university presidents and professors rush to defend thugs who assault Jewish students, disrupt classes, and disseminate terrorist propaganda.

The list of terror’s witless enablers is long. But there are still many more of us, normal Americans who refuse to accept a reality in which Jews are targeted and attacked by a death cult and in which Washington or New York or Chicago becomes just another Beirut, a bloody battlefield thick with jaunty jihadis.

How might we win this fight, the fight for American and Western civilization?

The answer is as simple as it is urgent.

We win by giving the Free Palestine brigades no quarter.

By rejecting candidates for office who support their cause and make excuses for their brutalities.

By demanding that institutions that foster them be denied any form of public funding and support.

By deporting every foreign national clucking about globalizing the intifada.

By demanding that our law enforcement authorities treat these keffiyeh-clad thugs as domestic terrorists deserve to be treated.

When a gaggle of rioters stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, 6,000 agents were assigned to work the case.

The murder in DC this week is every bit as fundamental, foundational an assault on American democracy, and deserves equal or greater resources.

[detroitpedxing]

(Archived News, Sept. 17. 2024) Second Apparent Assassination Attempt on Trump Prompts Alarm Abroad

There is widespread concern that the November election will not end well and that American democracy has frayed to the breaking point.

In the nine years since Donald J. Trump entered American politics, the global perception of the United States has been shaken by the image of a fractured, unpredictable nation. First one, then a second apparent attempt on the former president’s life have accentuated international concerns, raising fears of violent turmoil spiraling toward civil war.

Keir Starmer, the British prime minister, has said he is “very worried” and “deeply troubled” by what the F.B.I. said was an attempt to kill Mr. Trump at his Florida golf course, fewer than 50 days before the presidential election and two months after a bullet bloodied the ear of Mr. Trump during a campaign rally in Pennsylvania.

“Violence has no part to play at all in any political process,” Mr. Starmer said.

Yet, violence has played a core part in this stormy, lurching American political campaign, and not only in the two apparent assassination attempts. There is now widespread concern across the globe that the November election will not end well and that American democracy, once a beacon to the world, has frayed to the breaking point.

In Mexico, where elections this year were the most violent in the country’s recent history, with 41 candidates and aspirants for public office assassinated, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said in a post on X, formerly Twitter: “Even though what happened is still unclear, we regret the violence against former President Donald Trump. The path is democracy and peace.”

At a time of wars in Europe and the Middle East and widespread global insecurity as China and Russia assert the superiority of their autocratic models, American precariousness weighs heavily.

Corentin Sellin, a French history professor, said the “brutalization of American politics” had left France “wondering whether the presidential campaign will finish peacefully.”

France was stunned, he said, by the Jan. 6, 2021, storming of the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters, and “there is this notion that the story that started with that insurrection has not yet ended,” and that the Nov. 5 election will determine how it does.

The threat of violence — at times, even the need for it — has been a core part of Mr. Trump’s message.

He has already cast doubt on the credibility of the coming November election results. He has persistently laced his language with calls to “fight” and used incendiary terms to insult immigrants. Just before the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol, he urged followers to “fight like hell” or they would not “have a country any more.” In general, he has shown an ironclad incapacity to accept many truths, including the result of the 2020 election.

Democrats have responded by depicting Mr. Trump as a direct menace to American democracy, a “weird” would-be autocrat of fascist tendencies and a “threat to our freedoms,” in the words of Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee. The left-leaning New Republic magazine portrayed Mr. Trump as Hitler on a recent cover, expressing the view that a second Trump term is likely to lead to some form of American tyranny.

Some Europeans see things in a very different light.

“They tried to do everything,” said Andrea Di Giuseppe, a lawmaker with Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s right-wing Brothers of Italy party. “They tried to bring Trump down with trials, they tried to bring him down with insinuations, they tried to bring him down by scaring people that ‘if Trump arrives democracy ends.’ Then, since all these attempts did not work, they tried to kill him.”

The authorities have identified a suspect in the Florida episode, Ryan W. Routh, a 58-year-old building contractor with a criminal history and a passionate embrace of the Ukrainian cause. He was charged in federal court with two firearms counts. More charges may follow.

Responding to the apparent assassination attempt, Carsten Luther, an online editor for international affairs, gave voice to deep concerns about the survival of American democracy in the respected German weekly Die Zeit. “The warnings of a civil war can be heard and no longer sound completely unrealistic,” he wrote. “It seems almost banal, as if it was bound to happen at some point.”

Of course, other Western societies, including France and Germany, are also viscerally divided and have seen the rise of xenophobic, far-right parties with many of the same messages as Mr. Trump. In May, an assassination attempt on Prime Minister Robert Fico of Slovakia left him critically injured.

But a far more restrictive European gun culture has curbed the extent of political violence while leaving Europeans alarmed and incredulous at the ease with which Americans are able to obtain weapons.

Félix Maradiaga, a former Nicaraguan presidential candidate and political prisoner who is now a fellow at the University of Virginia, said that polarization, intolerance and the widespread availability of high-caliber weapons in the United States had led to a “perfect storm.”

“The world is watching, and the stakes could not be higher,” he added. “Russia and China are undoubtedly taking satisfaction in this deterioration of democracy.”

Lebohang Pheko, a senior research fellow at South Africa’s Trade Collective, an economics research institute, said that she perceived “a militarization of everyday life in the United States, and this essentially seems to be spilling into these elections.”

Mr. Trump has often appeared to seek this very militarization of which he has narrowly escaped being a victim. The multimillionaire son of a real-estate developer from Queens, he has positioned himself as the defender of the gun-toting, God-fearing American frontier against what he portrays as the Democrats’ politically correct socialist takeover.

Alluding to his Democratic opponents, he has blamed “the things that they say about me” for the first assassination attempt and the second episode, not the easy access to guns that he defends.

The question now is how violent will this political confrontation in America prove. For many around the world, it seems to contain the seeds of rampant conflict.

“There is a sort of reciprocal delegitimization, where the political opponent is no longer a normal political competitor, but also an existential enemy,” said Mario Del Pero, a professor of United States and International History at Sciences Po University in Paris. He called this process “a degradation of political and public discourse.”

In the United States, this has been a degradation compounded by guns, as much of the world sees it.

“Style over substance. Image over issues. Lies over facts. Distractions over policy. Repeated violence,” said Tomasz Płudowski, the deputy dean of the School of Social Science, AEH, in Warsaw. “That seems to be the contemporary American reality.”

The core confrontation in Western societies is no longer over internal issues. It is global vs. national, the connected living in the “somewhere” of the knowledge economy vs. the forgotten living “nowhere” in industrial wastelands and rural areas.

There lies the frustration, even fury, on which a Trump or a Marine Le Pen, leader of the far-right French National Rally, or Ms. Meloni in Italy have been able to build.

The perceived vulnerability of American democracy has already provoked many reactions around the world, from Russian gloating and interference to European anxiety about its security. Few countries in the developing world want American lessons in how to run their societies these days.

Yet, a fascination with the United States endures, and the checks and balances of its institutions have proved resilient, including through the first Trump term.

Mr. Trump often cites the template of Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary: neutralizing an independent judiciary, subjugating much of the media, demonizing migrants and creating loyal new elites through crony capitalism. But it would not be easy to impose in America.

Still, the world is anxious. The 48 days to the election feel like a long time.

“In the end, the only real final word is for the American people,” said Mr. Di Giuseppe, the Italian lawmaker. “And if you want to defeat a person whom you think is not fit to govern the United States of America, you have to defeat him in a democratic system with elections, not with justice or Kalashnikovs.”

[democracyunderground]

On Jan. 6, 2021, then-President Donald Trump held a rally on the Ellipse, with the White House in the background, telling his supporters to “fight like hell” before a mob of them violently stormed the Capitol where Congress was certifying that he had lost the election.

Tonight, a week before Election Day, Vice President Harris will use the same backdrop to lay out the closing argument of her campaign: that it’s time to turn the page on the divisive and chaotic Trump era.

More than 20,000 people are expected for the event, which is aimed at reaching what campaign operatives call "low propensity" voters who aren't usually all that interested in politics — to try to convince them to cast a ballot.

”This speech is really designed to reach those undecided voters, those folks that are making the decision to break through in a moment when it's sometimes hard to break through, and really to talk about what's at stake in this election,” campaign chair Jen O'Malley Dillon told reporters.

”It's really a reminder of the gravity of the job: how much a president can do for good — and for bad — to shape the country and impact people's lives,” she said.

Rally after rally, Harris has talked about Jan. 6

Harris started off her campaign as a joyful warrior. But as the race wore on and polls showed it tightening, Harris has increasingly leaned on the dangers of electing Trump — a candidate she argues is “unhinged and unstable.”

Harris elevated dire warnings about Trump as she campaigned with former GOP Rep. Liz Cheney, trying to peel off moderate Republicans and independents appalled by what had happened on Jan. 6.

“He refused to accept the will of the people and the results of an election that was free and fair,” Harris has said.

Last week, she agreed that Trump is a “fascist” after the New York Times released interviews with retired Marine Gen. John Kelly making that same charge.

Kelly had been White House chief of staff to Trump and said his former boss, in private, even praised Hitler and his generals. The Trump campaign dismissed Kelly’s stories as fabrications.

For Harris, this was another opportunity to drive home her warning. “This is a window into who Donald Trump really is from the people who know him best,” Harris said.

Echoes of Clinton’s campaign

Hillary Clinton also issued dire warnings in the closing days of her 2016 campaign, reminding voters that in a debate, Trump had refused to say he would accept the results of the election.

“Make no mistake: by doing that, he is threatening our democracy,” Clinton said.

Trump won the 2016 election and gladly accepted the results.

At the time, Clinton’s warnings were seen by many as over the top: a last-minute effort to try to move voters. People were skeptical, said Brian Fallon, who worked on the Clinton campaign and is a senior adviser to Harris now.

“There was a phenomenon of taking Trump seriously but not literally,” Fallon said echoing a line that became a mantra after Trump’s 2016 win.

But now, Fallon argues it’s different — because Trump refused to accept his loss in 2020, and still hasn’t. He has described Jan. 6 as “a day of love” and has pledged to pardon at least some of those who were prosecuted for their actions that day.

“We’re not asking anybody to suspend disbelief in order to entertain these warnings,” said Fallon. “This is something that is the American people’s actual experience over the past several years.”

The argument is persuasive for some groups of voters

The Harris campaign has its attention trained on swing-state suburbs where tens of thousands of Republicans voted for Nikki Haley rather than Trump in the Republican primary — in some cases, even after she had dropped out of the race.

In polls and focus groups, voters say they are worried about violence around this year’s election.

“This isn’t hypothetical anymore,” said Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster. “It’s real lived experience.”

Warnings about Trump are persuasive to women swing voters, and are mobilizing for women and Democratic men, Lake said. These are voters like Susan Shurina, who spoke to NPR’s Asma Khalid after voting early in Alpharetta, Ga.

“I supported the Democratic Party this time although I’m a registered Republican,” Shurina said last week. “I’m just fearful of the rhetoric I hear from Trump. He seems to be very violent in wanting to control, and vengeful.”

But Marc Lotter, who served in the Trump administration and now works at a pro-Trump think-tank, argued Harris’ warnings will ring hollow with a lot of voters, who already lived through one Trump term.

“Well, he didn’t lock her up,” Lotter said of Trump’s threat to Hillary Clinton.

Lotter said he sees Harris’ warnings as a desperation move — a scare tactic — because Harris hasn’t been able to convince undecided voters she would be better for them than Trump.

“I don’t see how that’s going to be the winning factor at the end,” Lotter said.

Harris will present a contrast

Some Democrats have worried Harris’ warnings are not enough to get across the finish line in a very tight race where voters rank economic concerns as their top priority.

Joseph Geevarghese, executive director of Our Revolution, a group that grew out of Sen. Bernie Sanders’ 2016 campaign, said he is worried some on the left will stay home rather than vote, or will consider third parties.

Harris is set to argue that Trump, if elected, will continue to focus on himself and his growing list of personal enemies, citing his own increasingly inflammatory closing arguments.

“He calls these Americans the enemy within and says that he would use the American military to go after American citizens,” said Harris.

She will contrast that with what she has been calling her “to-do list” of policies to try to bring down prices and make life easier for Americans.

“She's obviously going to touch on lowering costs on things like groceries, housing, health care,” Harris' campaign chair O'Malley Dillon said. “You're going to hear her really speak to middle class families, and what they're worried about and what she's going to do about it.”

NPR's Asma Khalid contributed to this story.

[deadpresidents]

"When inmates are released from federal prison, the Justice Department places a call to their victims, notifying them that the defendant who attacked them is now free. On Tuesday, the phones of U.S. Capitol Police and D.C. police officers were buzzing nonstop.

For Aquilino A. Gonell, a former Capitol Police sergeant, the automated calls began on Monday evening and continued into Tuesday morning after President Trump issued a sweeping legal reprieve to all of the nearly 1,600 defendants, including those convicted of violent crimes, in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.

Between 7:03 a.m. and 9:37 a.m., Mr. Gonell received nine calls from the Justice Department about the release of inmates.

Mr. Gonell, who was assaulted during the attack and retired because of the injuries he suffered, was as outraged and distraught as he was shortly after the violence.

"It's a miscarriage of justice, a betrayal, a mockery, and a desecration of the men and women that risked their lives defending our democracy," he said of the nearly 1,600 pardons and 14 commutations.

More than 150 police officers from the two agencies were injured during the assault on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob four years ago. Some were hit in the head with baseball bats, flagpoles and pipes. One lost consciousness after rioters used a metal barrier to push her down as they marched to the building.

Now many of those officers described themselves as struggling and depressed in response to Mr. Trump freeing their attackers."

-- Here's a gift article to bypass the paywall and read Luke Broadwater's New York Times article, "Police Express Outrage Over Trump's Jan. 6 Pardons".