Then-candidate Joe Biden at the Democratic National Convention on August 20, 2020. | Win McNamee/Getty Images
The proposal isn’t just about boosting the economy — it’s about helping people.
There’s been a lot written over the past few weeks about whether President Biden’s $1.9 trillion economic “rescue” package is too small or too big. But an equally important question — and one that underpins the size debate — is what the package should do: Should it be targeted as efficiently as possible to stimulate an economic recovery, or provide quick relief to as many people as possible?
Economists on the stimulus side argue the package should focus on filling the giant hole Covid-19 has left in the US economy. Under this view, a boost in federal spending should maximally and efficiently make up for decreases in other spending as jobs, incomes, and tax revenues fall.
Those on the relief side say the package should be seen more as a relief bill — what economist Noah Smith described as “retroactive social insurance.” Consider the difference between how the government typically responds to a recession versus a hurricane: While the goal with a recession is typically to target spending as efficiently as possible to maximize the recovery, the goal with a hurricane is to make people whole again — even if the spending involved isn’t maximizing, say, economic multipliers. Smith and others argue the package should be more like a hurricane response.
Both sides have good arguments. Covid-19 has obviously battered the economy, with 10 million fewer jobs compared to the year before, shrinking GDP last year, and downward trends in various other metrics. But there’s a good chance much of this will bounce back once the pandemic ends — so what’s needed isn’t so much getting the economy back to “normal” (only the end of Covid-19 can fully do that), but broad economic relief to Americans who are suffering now.
Biden’s response to all of this: Why not both? As he put it last week, “It’s not just the macroeconomic impact on the economy and our ability to compete internationally; it’s people’s lives. Real, live people are hurting, and we can fix it.”
Understanding Biden’s overall proposal in this light makes sense of what can seem like a grab bag of progressive priorities. Some ideas might seem inefficient or excessive for stimulus but make a lot of sense for relief, and vice versa.
For example: Some economists have argued the $1,400 checks should be cut off for Americans with incomes above $75,000 because they’re less likely to spend the money — so they’re less likely to truly stimulate the economy. Some other economists, like Claudia Sahm, disagree, pointing to empirical evidence that the money likely will be spent within months.
But even if the checks-are-inefficient-stimulus crowd is right, the $1,400 checks still can provide another value: peace of mind. The higher-income beneficiaries (who still aren’t exactly rich) may not spend the money as quickly or efficiently as their lower-income counterparts, but the checks still offer support and a safeguard after a year of uncertainty.
Similarly, the bill’s full cost of $1.9 trillion might seem too large for an output gap — the difference between the economy’s current state and potential — estimated at $600 billion or less. Setting aside very reasonable questions about how the output gap is calculated (it seems BS-y to me, as a non-expert), the overspending could be justified if it’s partly for relief, not just stimulus meant to fill the exact hole of the output gap.
On the flip side, the $350 billion in aid to state and local governments may not offer immediate, direct relief to Americans. But it could help stimulate the economy by letting states and localities avoid cuts and even increase their own spending.
Providing both federal stimulus and relief during a recession isn’t new. Past stimulus bills have done both to some degree. But the unique contours of the coronavirus recession have made the need for both even clearer.
Sign up for the Weeds newsletter. Every Friday, you’ll get an explainer of a big policy story from the week, a look at important research that recently came out, and answers to reader questions — to guide you through the first 100 days of President Joe Biden’s administration.
A MAGA hat was set on fire prior to clashes between Black Lives Matter protesters and a group of Proud Boys following the “Million MAGA March” in Washington, DC. | Probal Rashid/LightRocket via Getty Images
And three weeks ago, they were watching those supporters storm the US Capitol in an attempt to overturn the results of a democratic election and keep Trump in power.
Now, Trump has finally left office, despite his constant threats that he wouldn’t. But the impact on the American psyche of four years of racist rhetoric, incitements of violence, and out-and-out chaos remains.
Lev Radin/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images
Trump supporters broke windows and breached the Capitol building in an attempt to stop Congress from certifying the results of the 2020 election.
For many, the past year has been especially difficult, bringing with it a pandemic; the police killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and other Black Americans; and the Trump administration’s violent response to the racial justice protests that ensued. “It created an environment where you are constantly in a state of fight or flight,” Lauren Carson, founder and executive director of the mental health nonprofit Black Girls Smile, told Vox.
Among the Black girls and women it serves, as well as among its own staff, the group saw a lot of stress, anxiety, and feelings of being overwhelmed, Carson said. “You are working on 2 percent every day, day in, day out — or negative percent.”
Some of those feelings have also been reflected in nationwide surveys, with a significant increase in stress about the country’s future and political climate after the 2016 election. And in 2020, 68 percent of Americans said the election was a significant source of stress in their lives, up from 52 percent in 2016.
Like the impact of Trump’s policies, that stress doesn’t go away overnight, especially when the conditions that led to his election — systemic racism, anti-immigrant paranoia, and the rampant spread of misinformation — are still very much a reality.
But Carson and others are working to help people care for themselves and address the trauma of the past four years, even as some of their biggest stressors — if not Trump’s presidency itself — continue. These days, “a lot is coming to light that I think is forcing us as a society to work on making some real changes,” she said. There’s “a lot of real pain and real hurt there, but hopefully it creates an opportunity for healing.”
Trump’s presidency was traumatic for a lot of Americans
The problems Trump brought to light — racism, xenophobia, and transphobia, to name just a few — certainly didn’t start with him. But from the moment he announced his campaign in a speech maligning Mexican people as rapists, he made such attitudes more explicit than ever before within the bounds of traditional party politics.
His rhetoric helped embolden a wave of hate crimes across the country targeting Muslim Americans, immigrants, and a number of other groups he had demonized. Meanwhile, his constant all-caps tweeting, his preference for staff who enabled rather than checked his worst impulses, and his return to campaign-style rallies shortly after his election all led to a relentless news environment that subjected Americans to the president’s disjointed and frequently abusive thoughts multiple times per day. In the first three years of his presidency, Trump tweeted more than 11,000 times — 5,889 of those tweets, according to the New York Times, “attacked someone or something.”
While Trump was able to energize a core of supporters with his mix of bravado, defiance, and racism, for many others, his presidency was, quite simply, scary. In the American Psychological Association’s 2016 “Stress in America” survey, 63 percent of Americans said the future of the country was a “significant source of stress,” and 56 percent said they were stressed out by the current political climate. In the 2018 version of the survey, those numbers went up to 69 percent and 62 percent, respectively.
Clinical psychologist Jennifer Panning even coined the term “Trump anxiety disorder” to describe the stress many people were feeling in the weeks and months following the 2016 election. “People tended to experience things like ruminations, like worries of what’s going to be next” as they awaited each new tweet or action by the president, Panning told Vox.
Bryan R. Smith/AFP via Getty Images
A protest against President Trump’s planned ban on Muslim travel in New York City on January 25, 2017.
Trump also subjected people in America and around the world to language and tactics used by abusers, Farrah Khan, a gender justice advocate and manager of the Office of Sexual Violence Support and Education at Ryerson University in Canada, told Vox. That includes gaslighting (like when he claimed that the official Covid-19 death tolls were fraudulent, or that the virus would “go away on its own”), lashing out in anger (his perennial rage-tweets about “PRESIDENTIAL HARASSMENT”), and seeking revenge on people for perceived wrongs (his attacks on Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer after she criticized his administration’s Covid-19 response). In a relationship with an abuser, “you’re constantly hypervigilant to what he’s going to do next,” Khan said. Under Trump’s presidency, that hypervigilance extended to the millions of Americans affected by him and his policies.
Of course, those effects were not evenly distributed. While all of America had to put up with Trump’s tweets, many immigrants, LGBTQ people, and Black, Indigenous, and other people of color experienced real threats to their families, their well-being, and their lives. Thousands of children were separated from their parents at the US-Mexico border, with attorneys still unable to locate the families of more than 600 children. Trans people faced an onslaught of regulations stripping away their protections from discrimination in health care, housing, education, and more. In at least 41 criminal cases — including an assault on a Latinx man in Florida and threats against a Syrian-born man in Washington state — Trump’s name was invoked in connection with violence or threats, according to an ABC News analysis. The network found no criminal cases with such direct connections to presidents Barack Obama or George W. Bush.
And over the past year, with the country facing a pandemic (that Trump called by a racist name) and a long-overdue reckoning with racism and police violence (to which the Trump administration responded by tear-gassing protesters), the administration’s impact on Americans’ mental health and physical well-being has only grown more acute. That’s especially true for Black Americans, who have had to contend with the deaths of Floyd and others, and what ongoing police violence — as well as the pandemic and economic crisis — means for them and their families, Carson said. “During this time we were definitely seeing just a lot of overwhelm, a lot of stress, a lot of anxiety,” Carson said.
“Trump subjected people in America and around the world to language and tactics used by abusers”
Those feelings came to a head, for some, with the Capitol riot on January 6. That day, Trump urged his supporters to “walk down to the Capitol” and “show strength” against “bad people.” He then praised rioters as they occupied the Capitol, some holding Confederate flags and other racist symbols, calling them “very special.” The riot and the way it was covered just added to the trauma Black Americans were feeling, according to Carson. “Even the way that we’ve seen ‘protests’ versus ‘insurrection,’” she said. “Those depictions really weigh on the mental health and well-being especially of Black women and girls, because it’s a clear sign that we don’t matter.”
President Joe Biden has begun reversing some of the administration’s policies targeting marginalized groups, like the travel ban and the ban on trans people serving in the military. But just as undoing the impact of Trump’s presidency will take longer than a few weeks, healing from the trauma of the past four years will take time.
For some, it hasn’t even sunk in that Trump isn’t president. “People still talk about, ‘I can’t believe we actually did it, we actually got him out,’” Panning said. And for many people, especially in communities Trump targeted, his presidency “had a direct impact on the ways we felt safe,” Khan said. Rebuilding a feeling of safety will take time, and right now, “people are not okay.”
Rest, treatment, and action can help people recover from trauma
For some, the first step toward rebuilding that feeling will be simply acknowledging that the past four years — and especially the last year — have been traumatic. “We need to expect that there’s going to be a lot of emotional upheaval,” Panning said, and those emotions will “take some time to work through.” People are experiencing trauma symptoms from muscle tension to panic attacks to intrusive thoughts to simply deep sadness, Khan said.
For Black girls and women in particular, depression and anxiety have been “running rampant during this time,” Carson said. They’ve been experiencing fear not just for their own health and safety, but also for “our brothers, our fathers, our children.” Amid that, “it is very difficult to see the sunshine, it’s very difficult to see joy, it’s very difficult to be happy,” Carson said.
To combat that, Carson and others are stressing the importance of self-care, which can take many forms. Black Girls Smile, for example, offers online storytelling, journaling, and crafting workshops aimed at helping Black girls and young women “recharge, refresh, and renew,” Carson said. The group has also begun offering therapy scholarships to help Black girls and women afford professional mental health care. Groups like the Audre Lorde Project, Trans Lifeline, the Okra Project, and the Anti-Violence Project also offer support and resources specifically for trans and queer people and communities.
Anyone concerned about their mental health can also take an online assessment like those at Mental Health America to see if they have symptoms of depression, anxiety, or another condition that might benefit from treatment, Carson said. People should also keep in mind that for communities of color, “a lot of symptoms look a lot different in our communities compared to the white cis male community,” she added. For example, Black women can experience social anxiety as a result of experiences in predominantly white schools or workplaces, as well as PTSD and other effects of the trauma of racism. “We have to take a real hard look at the things we may be experiencing,” Carson said.
As individuals take steps toward healing, it’s also a time when we can look at bigger changes to the country’s mental health system. That includes providing child care, flexible hours, and other supports to make therapy more accessible to all Americans, Carson said. It also includes a greater focus on community mental health: “Too often we focus on just an individual, and in many instances, their whole family is impacted, or the whole community.”
Olivier Douliery/AFP via Getty Images
Supporters of President-elect Joe Biden celebrate at Black Lives Matter Plaza across from the White House in Washington, DC, on November 7, 2020.
And part of recovery, as a society, is addressing the forces that led to Trump’s election in the first place. “The issues that were uncovered during Trump’s presidency have not magically gone away now that Biden is president,” Panning said. “What Trump did do is energize a lot of people politically to pay attention and to understand how our government works and who it tends to benefit.”
Today, “there’s a lot of anger and frustration and resentment that is still lingering,” she added. And one healthy way to deal with it is to “channel that into action.”
Activism can be one way to heal,Khan said. For example, artists around the country have created street art to memorialize George Floyd and protest against police violence and racism, and activists Kenda Zellner-Smith and Leesa Kelly have collected some of the art from around Minneapolis and St. Paul to preserve and hopefully display it. “There has to be a space for Black people, by Black people, where this art can be available for healing and reflection, a reminder of what happened in a way to continue the movement,” Kelly told ABC.
But in addition to action, Khan cautioned, people need to make time for rest. “As activists, sometimes we’re taught to kind of just push through,” she said. “What I’m asking people is to slow down and take care of ourselves and our communities.”
A man in a face mask walks past closed shops in downtown Los Angeles on April 22, 2020. | Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images
The week before Biden took office, 1.4 million Americans filed for unemployment.
On Thursday, the United States Labor Department released its latest weekly jobless claims numbers, which showed that 900,000 people filed new unemployment claims the week ending January 16 — President Trump’s final full week in office. Additionally, 423,000 people filed new claims for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA), expanded unemployment insurance for freelancers, gig workers, contractors, and the self-employed.
It’s a stark indication of the economic hill the new administration has to climb when it comes to getting desperately needed help to millions of workers. Overall, 16 million people were on unemployment as of January 2 — a tough start for the year and a big hole to dig out of.
Prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, the record for weekly jobless claims was 695,000, set in 1982. Since the outbreak hit the US, however, claims have consistently remained above that, topping 6 million in the spring. While during much of last year, the situation was modestly improving, it’s begun to worsen again, with new claims rising in recent weeks.
The December unemployment report also reflects that trend: The US actually lost140,000 jobs in the last month of the year for the first time in months. Given the current jobs deficit, the country needs to be adding jobs to speed up the recovery, not losing them. People with low-income jobs in areas such as leisure and hospitality, and women — particularly women of color — were hard hit.
“One thing that we’re seeing is that people are losing their jobs anew,” said Andrew Stettner, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation think tank.
As the pandemic has worsened in many parts of the country, so have economic conditions — you can’t fix the economy without dealing with the virus first. Stettner elaborated: “It’s definitely linked to the pandemic surge and economic restrictions in big places like California that are facing some new rounds of layoffs and furloughs on top of the usual seasonal activity.”
Biden’s team is aware of the urgency of the moment. National Economic Council Director Brian Deese said in a statement regarding the claims number on Wednesday that it is “another stark reminder” that more help for the economy is needed. “We must act now to get this virus under control, stabilize the economy, and reduce the long-term scarring that will only worsen if bold action isn’t taken,” he said.
What’s actually going on with jobless claims is a little tricky to parse
The jobless claims data this year has been a little, well, funky.
Congress waited until the very last minute to pass a second stimulus package in 2020, and Trump dragged his feet on signing the $908 billion bill. The legislation entailed more relief for unemployed workers, including tacking on an additional $300 in weekly federal payments through mid-March and extending PUA and the Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation (PEUC) program, which provides additional weeks of regular state unemployment insurance. The latter two programs were part of the CARES Act passed in March and were set to expire in December. Because legislation to extend them came so late in the game, they sort of expired anyway.
“Congress just waited too long, so no matter what they did that week of Christmas, there was still going to be a short period of delay for people on those federal extension programs,” said Elizabeth Pancotti, a policy adviser at the advocacy group Employ America.
That this happened isn’t a surprise — experts and advocates warned for months last year that too much procrastination on extending unemployment insurance programs had the potential to push millions of workers off a financial cliff. Some states have been able to get their ducks in a row to ensure continuity, but many have not. Systems were preprogrammed to shut down in December, and they did.
“There are probably millions of families waiting on two, three, four weeks of unemployment checks that aren’t getting them,” Pancotti said.
To put this a little more concretely, the latest jobless numbers show a drop in people on PEUC — the extended benefits after the regular ones expire. That could very well be tied to that cliff at the end of the year where the program itself lapsed.
“What we have seen is that most states were not paying out PEUC benefits in early January,” Stettner said. “Most of them were waiting on the guidance [from the federal government] and new programming, and that’s why the number really went down. Some states were probably not taking claims at all or particular individuals may have been blocked. Even though you saw today’s report that 3 million people filed PEUC claims, I can guarantee you 3 million people didn’t actually get paid.”
Millions of unemployed workers are now Biden’s problem to address
The Biden administration has signaled it plans to hit the ground running, including on the economy and delivering help to American workers. The country still has 10 million fewer jobs than it did pre-pandemic, and millions more have dropped out of the workforce altogether.
Stettner said that one starting point for the administration is to try to get the programs to work better. A federal government that is firing on all cylinders can get regulations out faster and offer clearer guidance to states on how to handle the unemployed.
Biden has already put forth a framework for Congress to pass follow-up stimulus legislation that includes support for people out of work. Last week, Biden unveiled a $1.9 trillion proposal for a follow-up Covid-19 relief bill. It includes $400 a week in expanded federal unemployment insurance and extends emergency unemployment programs, including PEUC and PUA, through September 2021. Legislation will ultimately have to be drafted and written by Congress, and this is basically Biden’s opening bid.
As a starting point, the timing of Biden’s proposal is good in that it is early: Current benefits and programs are set to expire in mid-March, so there’s time for this proposal to work its way through Capitol Hill or, at the very least, for Democrats to realize Republicans won’t play ball and pivot to a different plan. The Biden administration has signaled it wants to try to pass this package through regular order, which would require 60 votes. Many Republicans are already signaling they aren’t on board with this plan, meaning Democrats could turn to budget reconciliation, which would require only a simple majority.
Another positive sign: The framework Biden put forth nods to automatic stabilizers, which would tie social safety net mechanisms (i.e., unemployment) to certain economic conditions. If such mechanisms were put in place, that would mean expanded benefits and emergency programs would be tied to the economic situation actually being better — the unemployment rate at a certain level, and the public health emergency actually over — than a random end date picked by lawmakers. The extra $600 in unemployment benefits from the CARES Act ended on July 31 for no real reason except Congress was overly optimistic about when the pandemic would subside and chose that date.
“They probably have one shot to get this right and they should really move in that direction [of automatic stabilizers] and try to lock in assistance throughout the duration of the crisis,” Stettner said. “They should have the courage … not to put an arbitrary date on this.”
Biden’s initial stimulus proposal, the American Rescue Plan, is part of what his team says will be a two-part effort on the economy. This is the “rescue” portion, and then there will be a “recovery” one to come later. But it’s not guaranteed Democrats will get a chance to do a bunch of big packages — in 2009, in the midst of the Great Recession, they only got one shot and went too small.
“When Democrats passed the recovery act in 2009, it was smaller than was necessary, and a lot of members thought there was going to be another bite at the apple. There wasn’t,” one Democratic aide recently told me. “Members who were around in that time period are very much cognizant of that lesson.”
Pancotti stressed that there are unemployment-related items not in Biden’s framework that should be — for example, funding for states to improve their unemployment insurance structures. Each state determines its own administration, and lots of systems are outdated and insufficient. Congress has provided some federal funding to help states process claims during the pandemic, and it can provide more.
“The Biden administration doesn’t call for that in the framework, but as Congress works on turning that framework into legislative text with a lot more specifics … I think that conversation will reemerge of what investments do we need to make in our systems for the things we care about to actually work,” Pancotti said. “These systems need short-term investments to make these programs work and long-term investments in reform.”
A Trump supporter holds a sign opposing President-elect Joe Biden in Olympia, Washington. | Ted S. Warren/AP
Some might even describe them as “low energy.”
In the days following the violent Trump-inspired insurrection at the US Capitol on January 6, the FBI warned all 50 states that similar “armed protests” were being planned by right-wing extremists around their capitol buildings. But on Inauguration Day, at least, those protests turned out to be complete duds.
Not only have there been no incidents of violence at state capitols on Wednesday as of 4 pm ET, but at many of them, the number of MAGA protesters could be counted on one hand.
At the New York Capitol in Albany, Spectrum News reporter Morgan Mckay documented the presence of a single pro-Trump demonstrator.
“He says he expected a few thousand ppl here and is disappointed,” Mckay tweeted. (Thanks to Elie Mystal of the Nation for his helpful Twitter thread putting the tweets that follow in one place.)
Mark Leggiero is the one lone Trump supporter out in front of the NYS Capitol. He says he expected a few thousand ppl here and is disappointed. He said he drove 45 minutes for a peaceful protest pic.twitter.com/hDtCLYFpLq
A similar scene unfolded at the California Capitol in Sacramento, where one man in a Trump cap protested as President Joe Biden was sworn in, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. (Later in the day, more sizable protests took place around the California Capitol, but they were left-wing protests calling for the abolition of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and for immigration reform.)
At the State Capitol in Sacramento, a lone Trump supporter wearing a red MAGA hat protested as President Biden took the oath of office Wednesday.
There were three times as many pro-Trump protesters at the capitol in New Hampshire — but that still only amounted to three of them. And one-third of the group took off early, telling reporters “he was leaving to go skiing,” according to Dan Tuohy of New Hampshire Public Radio.
A dozen or so armed protesters did show up at the Arizona Capitol in Phoenix, but Ryan Mac of BuzzFeed reported that it remained peaceful.
The Trump supporters are now having a picnic. One guy is milling about reading 1984. Some have put up Confederate flags here in Arizona, the 48th state admitted to the Union. pic.twitter.com/8HODm1rzLy
And a pro-Trump demonstration some 700 miles north of there at the Nevada Capitol in Carson City was similarly underwhelming, according to Colton Lochhead of the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
The scene just outside Nevada’s capitol complex in Carson City ~ half hour until the Biden’s inauguration kicks off. So far, just two older guys – Brandon and Matt – with signsflags who are frustrated that more people have not showed up. pic.twitter.com/rq2P0opYcs
The demonstrations in Jefferson City are modest, at best. A handful of Trump supporters, two guys with upside down flags on the Capitol steps, a few people with a non-partisan group calling for healing. pic.twitter.com/SydjDcDi48
Only a few people outside the Texas Capitol Building in Austin. Thomas Jones (Hawaiian shirt) said he and friends drove from Crockett to protest the Inauguration. He expected more people to be here, but was banned from Facebook so didn’t know if anything was planned. pic.twitter.com/HuLbUbNnT3
There’s only been one protester outside Capitol in Frankfort today. His sign alludes to how well Hitler and Stalin got along. pic.twitter.com/9HOCIkIx5H
Trump fans were also scarce in downtown Washington, DC, which is heavily militarized following the insurrection. In fact, Tess Owen of Vice reported that Nickelback fans were better represented on streets around the US Capitol than Trump supporters.
Of course, that Biden’s inauguration went off without a hitch in DC and at state capitols across the country doesn’t mean the threat posed by armed right-wing extremists has passed. But it does highlight how Trump’s months-long campaign to overthrow the election results descended from tragedy to farce in the weeks following the January 6 riot. It also hints at one way the bans from Twitter, Facebook, and other social media platforms of Trump and right-wing conspiracists and instigators in the wake of the Capitol insurrection, which was largely organized online, are working.
For his part, Trump not only didn’t attend Biden’s inauguration, but he managed to leave DC without ever properly acknowledging the legitimacy of his loss or officially conceding. He took off for Florida on Wednesday morning following a final speech as president at Joint Base Andrews in which he told a modest crowd of his supporters “we will be back in some form … have a good life.”
Coming as it did exactly two weeks after he delivered a fiery speech that culminated in five people dying during a riot at the US Capitol in a failed bid to overthrow the election outcome, Trump’s resigned tone was notable. And, at least for one day, his followers took the hint.
Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Army Gen. Mark Milley, meets with Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz at the Pentagon on September 22, 2020. | Olivier Douliery/AFP via Getty Images
This is a remarkable statement by the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
In a statement sent out to the entire US military, all eight members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff condemned the Capitol insurrection — incited by the current commander in chief — and warned service members not to do anything to impede President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration.
Top military officials prefer to stay out of anything tinged with politics. For one to say something after last week’s event would be noteworthy and rare enough. For all eight Joint Chiefs to speak out together — in a “message to the Joint Force,” no less — shows just how perilous they deem this moment to be.
“The violent riot in Washington, D.C. on January 6, 2021 was a direct assault on the U.S. Congress the Capitol building, and our Constitutional process,” the letter signed by all the Joint Chiefs reads. “We witnessed actions inside the Capitol building that were inconsistent with the rule of law. The rights of freedom of speech and assembly do not give anyone the right to resort to violence, sedition and insurrection.”
While that may be a general statement about the insurrection meant more for the public, the next section was clearly meant for the troops they help lead.
“As Service Members, we must embody the values and ideals of the Nation. We support and defend the Constitution,” they wrote. “Any act to disrupt the Constitutional process is not only against our traditions, values, and oath; it is against the law.”
“President-elect Joe Biden,” they concluded, “will be inaugurated and will become our 46th Commander in Chief.”
“The violent riot in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 6, 2021 was a direct assault on the U.S. Congress, the Capitol building, and our Constitutional process.” — Message to the Joint Force from Joint Chiefs Chair Gen. Mark Milley and the rest of the Joint Chiefs. pic.twitter.com/coIh9yqEpI
There are likely two main reasons why Joint Chiefs Chair Army Gen. Mark Milley and the seven others felt the need to pen the letter.
First, veterans and possibly even some active-duty troops were allegedly involved in the attack on the Capitol last week. That means the military community certainly contains people who wrongly believe the presidential election was stolen, subscribe to the QAnon conspiracy theory, or have far-right tendencies.
Regardless of their passions or views, military leaders aim to keep the armed services as apolitical as possible. Otherwise, some might associate the military with one party or another, and that isn’t healthy for a democracy.
Second, the Joint Chiefs tend to speak out when something really egregious has happened, and there’s no question the Capitol insurrection fits the bill. “[T]hey have developed a finely tuned ‘political’ (small p) radar on when to weigh in,” CNN Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr tweeted on Tuesday.
For example, after President Donald Trump said some attendees at the 2017 far-right rally in Charlottesville were “very fine people,” all the Joint Chiefs spoke out against racism and bigotry. “The Army doesn’t tolerate racism, extremism, or hatred in our ranks. It’s against our Values and everything we’ve stood for since 1775,” Milley, who was chief of staff of the Army then, said at the time.
Based on this letter, it looks as though America’s top military officials won’t tolerate another thing: the attempted overthrow of American democracy by force.
Facebook promised to pull political funding from officeholders for the first quarter of the year. | Getty Images
A pause on corporate PAC giving would just be the beginning of real change.
A diverse set of companies said they would not donate any more money from their corporate political action committees (PACs) to GOP officeholders involved in obstructing the certification of the Electoral College vote. Some Silicon Valley giants like Facebook, Google, and Microsoft foreswore all political donations altogether.
It could presage real change. But on its face, it’s not all that it seems.
While donations from PACs sound like a big deal, they reflect an increasingly small proportion of the total money in American elections. That’s especially true in the opening months of an election cycle’s off-year, and some corporations — like the three tech companies — on Monday made clear that their penalization was temporary.
To be sure, the decision has symbolic significance: Corporations from Wall Street to Silicon Valley have long sought to position themselves as honest with brokers with both parties, willing to work with Democrats and Republicans on issues important to their industries. They employ members of both parties in their Washington lobbying offices, and their donations from their corporate PACs were a prong in that strategy and largely bipartisan as well. Many (though not all) of the companies making the announcements on Monday specifically said they would withhold donations from the Republican officeholders specifically.
So the decision to at least temporarily reassess that bipartisan ethos is indeed significant. The head of Instagram, Adam Mosseri, gave voice to that reconsideration in a tweet on Monday when he said that Facebook does “try and be apolitical, but that’s increasingly difficult.”
But beyond the symbolism, the impact of these corporations’ decisions could prove relatively minor.
Take Facebook, which on Monday said that it would be “pausing all of our PAC contributions for at least the current quarter, while we review our policies.” But in the first quarter of 2017 — the most recent quarter after presidential election — Facebook donated just $64,000 to politicians.
Moves like that matter more because donations from business interests largely flow outside of corporate PACs in America’s campaign-finance system. Corporations and linked individuals these days can finance outside groups that spend on behalf of candidates but are not a candidate-run committee, such as “super PACs” or political nonprofit groups. No company in recent days has said that their decisions will apply to these types of donations, nor could that always be verified given that nonprofits don’t have to disclose the origins of their donations in the first place.
Corporate PACs contributed just 5 percent of the money raised in the 2020 election, down from 9 percent in 2016, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. That’s partially because PAC contributions are capped at $5,000-a-donation, a limit that hasn’t been increased since 1974, while super PACs and other outside groups can take in donations of unlimited amounts. Another factor is that savvy politicians on both sides have cultivated small-dollar donor bases that are making up larger and larger percentages of the total money in elections.
Direct corporate donations can add up to real money in some individual down-ballot races, such as for a moderate, backbench House Republican who doesn’t face a competitive race and so takes it easy on fundraising. About 20 percent of the money raised by House Republicans’ campaign committees came from PACs, the Center for Responsive Politics says. But even for them, PACs are playing a smaller and smaller role: That figure was over 40 percent in the 2016 cycle.
Donations from corporate PACs attract a lot of attention — including from a company’s civic-minded employees — because they are public and because the link to the company is so direct, unlike, say, one from an executive in their personal capacity. So in some ways, the donation suspensions after the Capitol riots are a perfect way for a company to loudly register its formal disapproval without inflicting too much pain and rupturing a relationship that it may need when the next tax or trade issue comes up in Washington.
Democratic candidates have increasingly come to a similar conclusion, especially in competitive primaries: Many politicians have promised not to accept corporate PAC money to their committees, equipping them with a powerful line to attack an opponent for a lack of purity that is arguably more important than the few $5,000 checks they otherwise could accept.
So what would really matter? What would probably prove more significant for American elections would be if these donation bans become more permanent, or if corporations dissolve their PACs entirely; if companies’ billionaire executives and board members pledge to follow their corporate policies in their own disclosed and undisclosed personal giving; or if they fundamentally reshaped their lobbying strategies to not engage with GOP legislators or the entire Republican Party in Washington.
Last week could serve as a broader reset in how big business approaches Washington. But the pause in corporate PAC giving would just be the beginning.
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO), right, speaks with Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), left, and Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), as a joint session of the House and Senate convened to count electoral votes on January 6. | Andrew Harnik/AP
The House certified the election results from Arizona and Pennsylvania, despite objections from over 100 Republicans.
The majority of House Republicans still chose to reject electoral votes from Arizona and Pennsylvania, hours after a pro-Trump mob fueled by conspiracy theories stormed the Capitol Wednesday, leaving one woman dead and a nation rattled.
These votes had no material effect on the transition of power. After the Capitol had been cleared, Congress met in a joint session to fulfill its legal obligation to count the Electoral College’s votes, but given that Democrats hold a majority in the House and most Senate Republicans were unwilling to object, there was no path forward, and the votes failed. A majority of both chambers have to reject a state’s votes for an objection to stick.
However, after a day of violent insurrection, it has become too clear just how dangerous it can be to feed into anti-democratic delusions.
The objecting members point to baseless allegations of voting irregularities as well as claims that large proportions of their constituents believe the election was stolen as the basis for their stance. However, these Republicans have ignored their own role in fomenting conspiracy theories around the election. Their concerns also fail to account for the overwhelming evidence that there was no widespreadvoter fraud.
President Donald Trump and prominent Republicans’ focus on the normally mundane counting of the votes turned January 6 into perhaps the last showdown for Trump’s supporters who believed the election had been stolen. Marching from a rally where they were egged on by the president himself, rioters flooded into the Capitol and managed to stall the proceedings.
The day’s events seemed to have a clear effect on Senate Republicans: In the end, about half of the senators planning to object changed their minds. Only six — 12 percent of the Senate Republican caucus — voted to object. However, 121 House Republicans, or 57 percent of the House Republican caucus, chose to vote in favor of the baseless belief that Arizona’s Electoral College votes were somehow compromised. And 138 House Republicans voted in favor of challenging Pennsylvania’s results.
Tempers flared during the debate over Pennsylvania in the midst of a fiery speech by Rep. Conor Lamb (D-PA) where he called out some of his Republican colleagues for lying about the fairness of the election. “We know that that attack today, it didn’t materialize out of nowhere, it was inspired by lies — the same lies that you’re hearing in this room tonight. And the members who are repeating those lies should be ashamed of themselves, their constituents should be ashamed of them,” he said.
“Get outta here!”
A confrontation breaks out after GOP Rep. Morgan Griffith asks to strike out comments from Rep. Conor Lamb saying Republicans lied about the election.
Rep. Morgan Griffith (R-VA) asked for Lamb’s remarks about lies to be stricken from the record, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) declined. “You say that about me every single day,” she said.
Disorder briefly broke out, with members talking and shouting and standing. Eventually, order was regained. “The truth hurts,” Lamb said.
Earlier Wednesday, thousands of participants of a “Save America” rally marched from the park near the White House to the Capitol steps and stormed the building. Animated by the false belief that the election had been stolen from President Donald Trump and encouraged by the man himself — as well as a host of Republicans, including Sens. Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz, who were leading the effort to oppose the Electoral College count meant to have gone on today — protesters entered the building.
They broke windows, attacked police officers, and ultimately stalled the business of the day: acknowledging the reality of President-elect Joe Biden’s victory.
Conspiracies about the whole exhibition being afalse-flag operation — an act committed with the intent to disguise the perpetrator and cast blame on someone else — run by antifa spread quickly on Twitter and Reddit. But Gosar was the first federally elected official to amplify the baseless conspiracy, and it took only three hoursfor him to get there.
That evening, his colleague Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL) told Lou Dobbs that while there could have been “some” Trump supporters, it also “could be any other number of groups, anarchists or what have you.”
A lot is still unknown about the insurrection. But at present, there is no evidence that there are members of antifa who were a part of this crowd. However, there is ample evidence that prominent Trump supporters and members of QAnon were present during the illegal takeover of the building.
Rick Saccone, a Republican former member of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives who was defeated by Democratic Rep. Conor Lamb in 2018, posted a photo of himself on Facebook with the caption, “We are storming the capitol. Our vanguard has broken thru the barricades. We will save this nation. Are u with me?” Additionally, the Arizona Republic reported that Jake Angeli, a prominent local supporter of the QAnon conspiracy theory who has been “a fixture at Arizona right-wing political rallies,” was pictured prominently among the violent protesters.
Moreover, as BuzzFeed News reported, Trump supporters had been “openly planning for weeks on both mainstream social media and the pro-Trump internet” to riot in DC. One message, which BuzzFeed reports was upvoted more than 500 times, simply read “Storm the Capitol.”
This attempt to scapegoat antifa is, on one hand, absurd. The entire sordid affair was livestreamed, photographed, and televised; the protesters themselves tweeted and about it. On the other hand, it’s a page right out of the Trump playbook.
Trump and antifa, a hate story
As Vox’s Zach Beauchamp has reported, antifa is a “loose ideological label for a subset of left-wing radicals who believe in using street-level force to prevent the rise of what they see as fascist movements.” Trump has elevated them as a foil to right-wing violent actors like the Proud Boys, repeatedly claiming that there are bad actors on “both sides” of conflicts or using them to deflect blame when criticism falls on the most extreme members of his base.
Just yesterday, Trump tweeted that “Antifa is a Terrorist Organization, stay out of Washington. Law enforcement is watching you closely,” even as reports indicated that the pro-Trump protesters could become violent.
When pro-Trump drivers attempted to run a Biden campaign bus off the road on November 1, Trump tweeted “in my opinion these patriots did nothing wrong” and instructed the FBI and the Justice Department to investigate antifa instead.
In my opinion, these patriots did nothing wrong. Instead, the FBI & Justice should be investigating the terrorists, anarchists, and agitators of ANTIFA, who run around burning down our Democrat run cities and hurting our people! https://t.co/of6Lna3HMU
During the first presidential debate against Biden, Fox News moderator Chris Wallace asked Trump to condemn white supremacists. Instead of doing so, he told white supremacists to “stand back and stand by,” and then quickly pivoted to saying, “But I would say almost everything I see is from the left wing, not from the right wing.”
It’s impossible to disprove a false-flag operation, and it’s the simplest way to give your supporters an excuse to continue supporting you. If the violent acts are committed by impostors, then you don’t have to feel bad about supporting your team. In fact, it could even be used to justify radical actions by your own team if they’re responding to radical behavior by the opposing side.
Trump has perfected this over and over again — and it’s likely this conspiracy theory will gain traction among some segments of his base. But it could be a harder sell when prominent Republicans and right-wingers are on camera committing legally dubious acts in broad daylight — just minutes after Trump was onstage telling the soon-to-turn-violent crowd that the election had been stolen from them.
Trump supporters gather outside the US Capitol building following a Trump rally on January 6. | Spencer Platt/Getty Images
Across the country, protesters have rallied outside, as well as inside, state capitol buildings over Trump’s false claims of voter fraud.
Just hours after Trump encouraged the crowd at a rally to “take our country back” and his lawyer Rudy Guiliani suggested “trial by combat,” hundreds of people clad in Trump gear, some carrying Confederate flags, climbed the steps of the building, breached barricades, broke windows, and entered the halls of the Capitol — an insurrection that threatened the lives of lawmakers inside.
Two hours later, Trump posted a video to Twitter stating that while the election was stolen, “you have to go home now. We have to have peace. We have to have law and order. We have to respect our people in law and order.”
But it was too late. Moments before Trump’s statement, one person was shot and later died, according to DC Emergency Medical Services, with at least five others being transported to the hospital. And uprisings had already spread to other parts of the country.
Capitols across the country also saw rallies and violence
In conjunction with the Senate certification vote,protests were planned in cities across the country on Wednesday, in which organizers planned to “stop the steal” and contest the fact that Joe Biden won the presidential election. Though many protests remained peaceful, some turned odd, and others violent.
Arizona
Pro-Trump rioters in Arizona gathered by the hundreds to demonstrate anger and deny the election results. They could be seen in videos banging on the locked doors of the state capitol building in Phoenix. The group struck on the window until the glass fractured.
Pro-Trump crowds outside the Arizona State Capitol cheer at the news that rioters have stormed the U.S. Capitol.pic.twitter.com/WAN7MKfrMR
Another group brought a guillotine to the gathering, which they explained in a letter obtained by the Arizona Republic. The letter contained misinformation about the election outcome and voter fraud and expressed their feelings toward a potential war:
“You may ask why we are here, why do we have a guillotine with us? The answer is simple,” the document read. “For six weeks Americans have written emails, gathered peacefully, made phone calls and begged their elected officials to listen to their concerns. We have been ignored, ridiculed, scorned, dismissed, lied to, laughed at and essentially told, No Ones Cares.”
“Let it be known, if the Constitution, our way of life, and the Freedoms that we hold so dear are threatened by internal or external enemies, we will rise to the challenge and defend this great nation by all means necessary. While we pray for Peace, but we do not fear war.”
Demonstrators moved into the Kansas Statehouse on Wednesday afternoon after hundreds of people demonstrated outside the building earlier in the day. According to local news outlets WBIW and KSNT, protesters had permits and followed protocols as they contested the count of electoral votes in Washington, DC.
Texas
At the Texas Capitol, hundreds of pro-Trump demonstrators gathered as the insurrection broke out in Washington. Officials were quick to shut down the building and surrounding complex to “maintain public order and address public threats,” according to the state’s department of public safety.
Trump supporters gather outside the Texas Capitol building grounds, which closed this afternoon after news broke that a mob stormed the U.S. Capitol as the senate met to certify Joe Biden as president. pic.twitter.com/xCSThCICix
In Florida, about 150 Trump supporters, including dozens of Proud Boys, rallied outside the state’s capitol in support of the “Stop the Steal” movement. One publication described the gathering as tame, with protesters praying together as early as 8 am. By afternoon, the large crowd broke off into smaller groups.
Oregon
In Oregon — where unrest continued for months in 2020 after the police killing of George Floyd, and federal agents abducted protesters in unmarked vehicles and counterprotesters escalated tensions — officials made the decision to close the capitol building to public and staff all day Wednesday. In the afternoon, hundreds of protesters marched around the capitol in Salem to contest the election and dispute the state’s coronavirus regulations. The crowd even burned an effigy of Gov. Kate Brown, according to Oregon Live. Just two weeks ago, about 50 people, including Patriot Prayer members, reportedly pepper-sprayed a line of officers and broke into Oregon’s capitol in protest over coronavirus restrictions.
Georgia
Just a day after Georgia held its runoff elections — with Democrats winning control of the Senate — senior staffers, including Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, were escorted out of the state capitol building as a group of demonstrators rallied outside. Tensions rose after the insurrection in DC unfolded.
Chester Doles (center), founder of American Patriots USA and former KKK leader, roams the #Georgia State Capitol building looking for the office of @GaSecofState Brad Raffensperger in #Atlanta, Wed., Jan. 6, 2021. Raffensperger was escorted out before the two could meet. #gapolpic.twitter.com/aHfpjYCh3m
In Sacramento, Trump supporters, including right-wing militia group the Three Percenters and the far-right street-fighting group the Proud Boys, confronted counterprotesters. Groups rallied around the state capitol giving speeches that denied the results of the presidential election and cursed Gov. Gavin Newsom’s coronavirus rules. The Sacramento police announced on Twitter that they arrested individuals carrying pepper spray.
Covering the MAGA rally at the California Capitol.
Outside the New York Capitol in Albany, where Gov. Cuomo was delivering an address about his coronavirus plan, two people were taken to the hospital and one person was taken into custody in connection with a stabbing. Law enforcement told reporters that the violence stemmed from a protest that was underway just outside the state capitol.
Washington
At least three rallies were planned in Olympia, Washington, where rallygoers protested the election results. At the capitol building, Patriot Prayer members made speeches about the need to “speak truth” and carried flags that read “Trump is our President.” When one participant announced that the US Capitol had been breached, people cheered and he claimed “It’s war now!” according to the Olympian.
Colorado
Denver officials closed offices early as a precaution, and state police suited up in riot gear.
I’m at the protest at the Colorado capitol. State patrol in riot gear stationed about half a block away. Several hundred people here. Very, very few are masked. pic.twitter.com/rmweD8rEyU
In other parts of the country, capitol grounds were quiet. In Pennsylvania, rallies to stop the certification of the 2020 election largely took place on Monday.
After Trump told the DC mob in his video address to go home, he did what he often does and fanned the flames of his supporters: “We love you. You’re very special,” he said.
A Trump supporter waves a Trump for president flag in the US Capitol on January 6, 2020. | Win McNamee/Getty Images
Trump told thousands of protesters to head to the Capitol Wednesday afternoon.
A
Debate over the congressional certification of the 2020 election results was stopped abruptly on Wednesday when senators were told, “Protesters are in the building.” Vice President Mike Pence, who was presiding over the session, was swiftly escorted from the Senate chamber — and less than an hour later, the Huffington Post’s Matt Fuller reported shots were fired in the House chamber.
The protesters, supporters of President Donald Trump, clashed with US Capitol Police officers on the grounds of the Capitol building Wednesday afternoon, as lawmakers worked within to certify President-elect Joe Biden’s Electoral College win.
Thousands of Trump supporters gathered in Washington, DC, for what Trump dubbed a “Save America Rally,” a two-day protest meant to demonstrate support for the disproven conspiracy theory that widespread fraud marred the 2020 presidential election — and that Trump, rather than Biden, is the rightful winner of that contest.
Trump himself addressed a crowd of several thousand rally attendees near the White House on Wednesday, and encouraged them to take their protest to the Capitol following his remarks.
However, several hundred of the supporters did not wait that long and began to march to the Capitol area before the conclusion of the president’s speech.
The Washington Post’s Rebecca Tan reported that the Trump supporters were met with barricades, which they destroyed. They proceeded to fight with police, according to the Huffington Post’s Philip Lewis, who shared video of police working to reestablish control as Trump supporters shouted at them, with several appearing to tell various officers they were “fucking traitor[s].”
Hundreds of Trump supporters have stormed the barricades at the back of the Capitol and are marching toward the building. pic.twitter.com/68nB7QyiP9
As lawmakers and others were moved to safety, protesters continued to fight police, according to the Huffington Post’s Igor Bobic, who reported that as altercations subsided, there was a “confederate flag flying outside the Senate chamber.”
Police officers are holding them steps away from the Senate chamber, which is locked. Senators are inside. I see a few confederate flags. pic.twitter.com/YI7X7KmuUG
Lawmakers responded to the protest — and to the battles with police — with disbelief; Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI) tweeted, “I’m sheltering in place in my office. The building next door has been evacuated. I can’t believe I have to write this.”
Until it stopped progress, the chaos outside the chamber was reflected in intense debate within; as Trump supporters fought with law enforcement, GOP lawmakers issued their first of several planned challenges to the election results, claiming there were irregularities with Arizona’s vote count.
As Vox’s Andrew Prokop has explained, for any objection to be considered, it must be raised by both a member of the House of Representatives and by a senator; this condition was met as soon as the issue of Arizona’s results was brought to the floor, and the consideration of the challenge was met by loud applause from Republican lawmakers.
It’s expected to be the first of at least three challenges — all of which are expected to fail, as a majority of the House and Senate must vote in support of any challenge for it to succeed. Democrats hold the majority in the House, and several Republicans, including Sens. Mitt Romney and Lisa Murkowski, have said they will not vote for any objection.
As Vox’s Li Zhou has reported, the debate over whether to object to the certification of the Electoral College vote, one of the final steps constitutionally required to close a presidential election, has divided the Republican Party. On one side are moderates like Romney and Murkowski, as well as most of the caucus’s Senate leadership; on the other are more radical members, many of whom, as Zhou has explained, have an electoral incentive to be seen as aligned with Trump.
This schism was on display at the protests, with Sen. Todd Young (R-IN) — who did not sign on to the plan to object to the results — being interrogated by Trump supporters who felt he was failing in his duty.
RT @rebtanhs: Republican senators are being swarmed by Trump protesters on the Hill. Here’s an exasperated @SenToddYoung saying he won’t vote against certifying the election.
The rancor displayed by the Trump supporters at Wednesday’s rally would appear to be, in some ways, a reflection of concern felt by a broad section of the Republican base. A Morning Consult poll taken in December 2020 found 68 percent of Republicans do not believe November’s election was free and fair; nearly 40 percent of Republicans said the president should not concede, regardless of the actual results of the election.
In a statement released Saturday, a group of 11 GOP senators — led by Texas’s Ted Cruz — used polling such as this as justification for their decision to object to certifying Biden’s win, writing, “Reuters/Ipsos polling, tragically, shows that 39% of Americans believe ‘the election was rigged.’ That belief is held by Republicans (67%), Democrats (17%), and Independents (31%).”
But as Cameron Peters noted for Vox, while the polling done by Morning Consult, Ipsos, and others is accurate, the distrust Republicans have for the November election stems largely from Republican leaders. The rally is proof that there is real anger about the election’s results, and some observers have ascribed Republicans’ double loss in Georgia’s Senate races Tuesday to distrust in the process.
But that anger and distrust has been stoked by Trump, who has repeatedly cast the election as fraudulent and those who ran it as corrupt. A number of Republican senators have taken up this messaging, as have personalities in conservative and far-right media outlets.
Any violence that might arise, and any distancing from the democratic process, isn’t organic — it was engineered by the president and by his party.
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