What Didn’t Happen on January 6, 2025
“Believe what you see with your eyes; trust what you hear with your ears; know what you feel with your flesh. The rest is dream and delusion.” ― Brian Staveley, The Emperor's Blades
Yesterday, a joint session of the United States Congress met to certify the results of the 2024 general election. Washington DC was quieter than usual, as a snowstorm enveloped the region.
There was no property damage on Capitol Hill. No police officers were injured. Nobody smeared feces on the walls of the building.
Former Vice President Mike Pence, the target of death threats when he presided over the certification of the 2020 election, praised the “return of order and civility” to the process. In a post on social media, he called Vice President Kamala Harris “particularly admirable” for presiding over the certification of an election she lost.
Prominently paranoid Congress member Nancy Mace took to social media to proclaim “We will not let them steal the election from President Donald J Trump.” Nobody heard the sound of one hand clapping.
Five law enforcement officers lost their lives because of the 2021 riot. Approximately 140 officers were injured. Now, they don’t matter.
The leadership of the Republican House took comfort in their refusal to install a plaque honoring Capitol Police officers for their brave actions on January 6th, 2021, as required by a federal law signed in March 2023. They’d countenanced their subservience to the election-denier-in-chief who surely would find a way to bury this shame in history books.
The closest thing to violence (or bravery, depending) occurred when the husband of GOP Senator Deb Fischer refused to shake Vice President Kamala Harris’ hand following a swearing in ceremony.
Stay tuned for the Faux News version of how this never happened, or if it did, there was a good reason, or how this rudeness was actually a plot by deep state operatives.
Meanwhile, the Vice President performed her constitutionally mandated job. Via the Washington Post:
After finalizing the certification of Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential win — and her loss — Vice President Kamala Harris told reporters that, by performing her constitutionally mandated duty to oversee the certification process as president of the Senate, she “did what I have done my entire career, which is take seriously the oath.”
Unlike Trump and many Republicans in 2020, Harris and Democrats accepted the results of the 2024 election. On Monday, nobody contested Trump’s victory and the certification unfolded quickly and peacefully.
Harris, who has not given an interview since the election, told reporters gathered in the Capitol that Monday’s process “was about what should be the norm and what the American people should be able to take for granted, which is that one of the most important pillars of our democracy is that there will be a peaceful transfer of power.”
On January 13, 2021, then-President Donald Trump told the nation:
Whether you are on the right, or on the left, a Democrat, or a Republican, there is never a justification for violence. No excuses. No exceptions. America is a nation of laws. Those who engaged in the attacks last week, will be brought to justice.
Four years later, the question facing the nation is about how far the President will go in pardoning those charged with crimes following the Capitol riot.
Here’s Roger Parloff at Lawfare:
Looking ahead—to the extent there is an ahead—where do things stand? About 1,100 of the 1,583 arrested (69 percent) have already been both convicted and sentenced. More than 700 of those people—or 44 percent of all arrested—have essentially completed their tours of the criminal justice system, having served any term of incarceration imposed, although they might still be on probation.
Another 170 individuals are now awaiting sentencing, after having been found guilty—either by plea or after trial. In addition, more than 300 have been charged, but have yet to be found guilty or not guilty. Of those last 300 individuals, about 180—or 60 percent—are charged with either assaulting or impeding police officers.
Defendant Pope, the individual who is currently scheduled for trial in June on his felony charge of impeding officers at the Senate Carriage Doors, plus six misdemeanors, is feeling quite smug about where things stand. In a jaunty, gloating pro se reply brief filed last week, asking for permission to attend the inauguration…
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One of the worst things about Republican politicians has been their participation in rewriting the history of what happened four years ago.
Here’s Georgia Congress critter Mike Collins post commemorating the day:
On #ThisDayInHistory in 2021, thousands of peaceful grandmothers gathered in Washington, D.C., to take a self-guided, albeit unauthorized, tour of the U.S. Capitol building.
Earlier that day, President Trump held a rally, where supporters walked to the Capitol to peacefully protest the certification of the 2020 election. During this time, some individuals entered the Capitol, took photos, and explored the building before leaving.
Since then, hundreds of peaceful protestors have been hunted down, arrested, held in solitary confinement, and treated unjustly. Countless hours and taxpayer dollars have been spent pursuing innocent grandmothers and raiding President Trump’s home, while terrorists and millions of illegal immigrants continue to cross our nation’s borders, causing havoc in our communities.
Thankfully, President Trump has announced that, on day one of his presidency, he will grant pardons to nonviolent defendants.
Yo, Representative Collins: Care to point out the grandmothers in the picture below?
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A Secret Weapon in the Fight Against Trump: Better Public Transit by Lisa Featherstone at The New Republic
Congestion pricing, done right, will win over many who are now complaining, experience from other cities shows. And as for the other conservative narrative around public transit: Riding the subway is much safer than driving. In fact, measured by deaths per miles traveled, the New York City subway is 10 times safer than driving. And while even a handful of homicides is more than the public should have to deal with, that’s hardly a subway-specific problem. Likewise, while it may be uncomfortable, unpleasant, and sometimes terrifying to share a subway car with people who are mentally ill and don’t have anywhere else to go, that’s a reason to improve housing and social services, not a problem inherent to public transit. Conservatives don’t have any answers to these problems. They are just trying to use these sad and alarming stories to undermine a popular public good, hoping that we will give up on the ideal of clean, safe, and inviting public transit for all.
If the left leans into making public transportation great, this right-wing strategy, as savvy as it is, won’t work. Public transit, in fact, offers a general model for political resistance in the second Trump era: Pay attention to the public goods the American right wants to attack and take away—and, instead, make those services better, safer, and less vulnerable to far-right narrative and smear. Conservatives know that public transit is popular—that’s why they’re excited at the opportunity to discredit it. We can learn from this and put public transit and urban civilization at the center of our politics, cleaning up the environment by taking cars off the road, and bringing ease, comfort, and twenty-first-century efficiency to working people everywhere. The right can’t compete with that.
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US newspapers are deleting old crime stories, offering subjects a ‘clean slate’ by Sam Levin at The Guardian
“In the old days, you put a story in the newspaper and it quickly, if not immediately, receded into memory,” said Chris Quinn, editor of Cleveland.com and the Plain Dealer newspaper. “But because of our [search engine] power, anything we write now about somebody is always front and center.”
Quinn pioneered a “right-to-be-forgotten” experiment in 2018, motivated by the many inquiries he would receive from subjects describing the harms of past crime coverage and pleading for deletion. “People would say: ‘Your story is wrecking my life. I made a mistake, but … I’ve changed my life.’”
It was long considered taboo in media to retract or alter old stories, particularly when there are no concerns about accuracy. But Quinn said he felt an ethical obligation to rethink those norms. “I couldn’t take it any more … I just got tired of telling people no and standing on tradition instead of being thoughtful.”
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Former SDPD Detective Sues City, Alleges Retaliation After Reporting Domestic Violence City News Service at Times of San Diego
Allyson Ford, who spent 17 years with SDPD, alleges in her San Diego Superior Court complaint that after coming forward regarding domestic abuse she suffered, members of the police department protected her then-husband and “ultimately made the terms and conditions of her work environment so unbearably hostile that she was forced to resign.”
The lawsuit alleges that outside of the “years of abuse, threats, (and) infidelity” from her ex-husband, Ford also faced harassment from male officers and witnessed similar treatment of other female officers.
The complaint states SDPD has “a cardinal rule, that applies to women only: endorse our hostile, boys’ club work environment, or face swift retaliation.”
