On Wednesday, I listened as sirens blared outside my Washington apartment, within walking distance of the Capitol. Along with the rest of America, I watched the most astounding images on television and social media of violent instigators.
But just as disturbing were the images of the U.S. Capitol Police treating white militants with kid gloves, even as these agitators — dare I say, domestic terrorists — broke into the building, smashed windows and physically assaulted the police.
I could ask you to imagine how these agitators might be treated if they were Black. But we don’t have to imagine what we already know.
The Capitol Police are not exactly known for their restraint. In 2013, a Black woman named Miriam Carey made a U-turn near the White House and the police fired at her 26 times, killing her. Her baby daughter was in the backseat and survived.
We know the history of this country, from slavery to Reconstruction to Jim Crow, when the law, legal institutions and state-sanctioned violence conspired to control and dominate Black people. In contrast, white people did not have to be dominated in the same way; the same institutions appeased white people when they got angry.
Black protesters must be controlled. White supremacists must be appeased.
Perhaps even more disconcerting than the response we saw Wednesday is the knowledge that the anti-democracy vigilantes made no secret of their intentions. And did anyone doubt that President Donald Trump would encourage the hordes? He who told the Proud Boys to “stand by?” Yet, the Capitol Police didn’t staff up on Wednesday, didn’t hold a perimeter, and, once overwhelmed, had to plead to other law enforcement agencies around the region for assistance.
And why? As a Black man from a Black community who has seen all that American racism has to offer, I can say it’s most likely because the police just don’t inherently see white people as violent. They don’t see what I saw yesterday: a planned attack on the democratic foundation of our country and our people, encouraged by a president who refuses to accept that millions of people — many of them Black, Latino, Asian, Native and immigrant — voted for a progressive future for our families.
On Wednesday, we saw an insurrection unfold on national television spearheaded by angry white militants. It was eerily reminiscent of the violence that has accompanied every progressive advancement in this country, from Reconstruction to the civil rights movement to the election of President Barack Obama, to the election of his vice president.
Wednesday was supposed to be a day of celebration, a day to rejoice over the win of the Rev. Raphael Warnock, the heir to the work of Martin Luther King Jr. and Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga.
Warnock’s Senate victory was the result of years of investment in the changing electorate in Georgia, with Black-led organizations like the New Georgia Project Action Fund leading the way.
People of color organizing and pushing their friends and family to go out and vote flipped the Senate. Black women, especially, helped to make Warnock the first Black senator to represent Georgia, as well as the first Black senator elected in the South as a Democrat. Democrat Jon Ossoff will be the first Jewish Senator to represent a Southern state since the 1880s.
But instead of celebrating our increasingly multiracial democracy or marking this as a moment when we bend the arc of history a little more toward justice, our story was again occluded by the backlash and violence that progress engenders.
We must push through. This presidential election was held during a pandemic — some people literally risked their lives to vote. We the people have spoken; this is our country. And in our country, we have a peaceful transfer of power. And anyone who stands in the way of that should resign or be removed.
Despite the chaos, Congress confirmed the Electoral College victory of President-elect Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. It is a monumental step that allows us to continue to acknowledge, not just our racist past, but a racist legacy that reverberates so strongly that white people can attack the building that embodies our democracy and face little, if any, force.
Derrick Evans, who was sworn into West Virginia’s House of delegates last month, wore a black helmet as he forced his way into the building among a crush of rioters, live streaming the whole episode on the internet.
Referring to himself in third person, he then shouts: “Derrick Evans is in the Capitol!”
Other footage shows him warning people not to vandalize anything, as he wandered around the Capitol Rotunda, where historical paintings depict the republic’s founding.
But despite what it looks like, Mr Evans has released a statement saying that he was not a part of the mob, and was in fact “simply there as an independent member of the media to film history.”
Who he was working for is not clear, and why he deleted the footage if it was filmed in good journalistic faith is also not known.
In a statement on Facebook on Wednesday evening, Mr. Evans said that he has “traveled across the country to film many different events,” and that earlier he had “had the opportunity to film at another event in DC.”
“I want to assure you all that I did not have any negative interactions with law enforcement nor did I participate in any destruction that may have occurred,” he wrote. “I was simply there as an independent member of the media to film history.”
West Virginia locals have not bought his excuse and around 10,000 people have signed an online petition calling for him to be removed from office.
The speaker of the West Virginia House of Delegates, Roger Hanshaw, said he could be facing something more serious.
In a statement on Wednesday night Mr Hanshaw said that he had “not spoken to Delegate Evans about today’s events,” though he said he saw what was posted on social media.
He added that “storming government buildings and participating in a violent intentional disruption of one of our nation’s most fundamental political institutions is a crime that should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”
What China is saying about the pro-Trump insurrection at the US Capitol
REUTERS/LEAH MILLIS.
Beijing usually leaps at the opportunity to highlight when liberal democracies stumble, and use those moments to bolster its claims that its authoritarian model is superior. The pro-Trump mob storming of the US Capitol on Jan. 6 provided the perfect opportunity.
Much of the media coverage focused on connecting the reaction to the mob with the US’s support of the Hong Kong protests, and the apparent hypocrisy of the US political establishment and media in supporting protests in another country but not their own (that comparison is disingenuous given Hong Kong’s protests were a fight for free and fair democratic procedures, while the Trump protests were a denial of them.)
The Global Times, a hawkish Chinese state-owned tabloid, was among the first to draw parallels between the insurrection at the Capitol and Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protests. In a tweet today (Jan. 7), the newspaper cited White House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s description of the Hong Kong demonstrations in June 2019 as “a beautiful sight to behold,” and asked whether she felt the same of the pro-Trump mob.
The outlet also offered a side-by-side comparison of scenes from the Hong Kong protests, such as when activists stormed the city’s legislature in July 2019, with the flag-waving, pro-Trump mob inside the Capitol.
The insurrection was featured on the front page of the Global Times’ Chinese website, accompanied with headlines such as (link in Chinese) “An iconic humiliation! The madness of the Capitol [incident] has dragged the US’s standing [as a democracy] into its Waterloo!”
Hua Chunying, a Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman, said today (link in Chinese) that China hopes the US will return soon to peace and stability. She also commented US media coverage and political responses to the pro-Trump demonstrations versus the Hong Kong protests, equating the two. “What words did they use on Hong Kong, and what words did they use [on storming of the Capitol]?…such a difference and the reasons behind it is worth us reflecting on seriously,” said Hua.
Xiakedao, a social media account run by the overseas edition of the People’s Daily, the Party’s largest mouthpiece, also zeroed in on Pelosi’s “beautiful sight” remark. The term has become a buzzword among Chinese internet users, who used it to mock the US democratic system, which they say only supports social unrest in other places, but not in its own country.
“The US Congress at the moment…what did Pelosi say before?” Xiakedao posted today, alongside nine pictures showing the pro-Trump mob breaching the building, as well as lawmakers hiding under their seats.
China’s Communist Youth League, a Party-affiliated political organization for Chinese youngsters, posted photos of the mob holding up pro-Trump banners in front of the Capitol, and captioned it with “a world-famous painting.”
As of noon on Thursday, the hashtag #Trump supporters stormed into the Capitol Hill had generated nearly 500 million views on Weibo. Many users said the riots marked the beginning of a deeper divide in the US, with some even asking if it might culminate in a second Civil War.
It is a familiar tactic for Beijing to utilize flashpoints in democracies to justify its own approach to governance. The country’s blanket censorship of foreign websites means most of the country relies on domestic, often state-owned, media for information, allowing the authorities to promote a narrative that a one-party state can provide far more stability than the chaos of a democracy.
Six Republican lawmakers among rioters as police release photos of wanted
Gustaf Kilander January 7, 2021
DC police release photos of alleged members of Trump mob (DC Police).
At least six Republican state legislators took part in events surrounding the storming of the US Capitol. West Virginia Delegate Derrick Evans posted a video of himself entering the building but later deleted it, The New York Times reported.
Tennessee state lawmaker Terri Lynn Weaver told the Tennessean that she was “in the thick of it” during the rally before the storming of the Capitol. She said there was “Just a whole heck of a lot of patriots here”. She later tweeted a picture of the mob at the base of the Capitol, saying: “Epic and historic day gathering with fellow Patriots from all over the nation DC.”
Virginia state Senator Amanda Chase denied that any violence had taken place, despite the overwhelming evidence, and later accused the police of murder after the shooting of a California woman inside the Capitol. “A veteran who was brutally murdered by Capitol Police today,” Chase wrote on Facebook.
“These were not rioters and looters; these were Patriots who love their country and do not want to see our great republic turn into a socialist country. I was there with the people; I know. Don’t believe the fake media narrative,” she wrote.
Pennsylvania State Senator Doug Mastriano made sure that a busload of people could be in DC. He said in a video that he didn’t participate in the clashes with police, The Hill reported.
Michigan State Representative Matt Maddock was also at the scene, according to The Hill.
This comes as the FBI and DC Police released images of people wanted on federal charges for violently storming the US Capitol. They are trying to track down 36 people after 68 were already arrested after violent clashes with police as the Trump -supporting mob broke into the Capitol, forcing members of Congress to evacuate and seek shelter in undisclosed locations. Four rioters died and 56 officers were injured in the ensuing chaos. One officer remains in hospital after being beaten and tased by the mob.
Charges include inciting a riot and weapons violations. Rioters scaled the Capitol building, defaced statues, committed countless acts of vandalism and fought with police.
The suspects include Holocaust deniers, White supremacists, and conspiracy theorists.
Several of them have already been identified online, such as 32-year-old Jake Angeli, sometimes called the “QAnon Shaman” according to the Arizona Republic. Shirtless and wearing horns and a fur, the Trump-supporting QAnon conspiracy theorist was seen in numerous images from the Capitol on Wednesday.
An unnamed man was fired from his job at a Maryland marketing firm after wearing his company badge while storming the Capitol.
But many have yet to be identified. Former Deputy Director of the FBI Danny Coulson told Fox News that: “It didn’t just happen,” asserting that inciters of the riot were to blame. “There were people there that came to do it and generated it and caused this horrible mayhem,” he said.
Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen said in a statement: “The Department of Justice is committed to ensuring that those responsible for this attack on our Government and the rule of law face the full consequences of their actions under the law.”
“Some participants in yesterday’s violence will be charged today, and we will continue to methodically assess evidence, charge crimes and make arrests in the coming days and weeks to ensure that those responsible are held accountable under the law.”
“We still have a significant amount of work ahead of us to identify and hold each and every one of the violent mob accountable for their violent actions,” Metropolitan Police Department chief Robert Contee said.
WASHINGTON — A violent, armed mob of Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol building Wednesday, entering the House and Senate chambers and forcing legislators and staff to take shelter. The astonishing turn of events came an hour after President Trump exhorted a Washington rally to protest the congressional certification of the Electoral College vote, a process that would seal President-elect Joe Biden’s victory.
The unprecedented violent protest brought a halt to the debate on the futile attempt by some Republican lawmakers to decertify the results from a number of states.
After a “Stop the Steal” rally that police say was attended by 25,000 to 35,000 people, thousands of angry Trump supporters surrounded the Capitol building, bounded up the steps and set up barricades using a ladder. Standing on top of an entrance, one man looked down and said, “This is epic. We’re taking the Capitol back.”
Protesters overpowered Capitol Police, smashed windows and forced open doors, then streamed into the building where both chambers of Congress were debating whether to certify the Electoral College votes in Arizona.
The surprise intrusion caught lawmakers off guard, sending many scurrying for safety.
“The president invited us here, and we’re not leaving,” another protester shouted.
Multiple shots were fired, and CNN reported that a female protester identified as Ashli Babbit was killed after being shot in the chest. Capitol Police also reported that three other people had died of medical complications stemming from the clashes and that several officers had been injured. Washington Police Chief Peter Newsham said protesters deployed “chemical irritants on police” as they stormed the Capitol, the Associated Press reported.
Protesters supporting Trump break into the U.S. Capitol. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)
Vice President Mike Pence, who was presiding over the proceedings in the Senate, was taken to a secure location by the Secret Service out of fear for his safety.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris were also placed in secure locations. With the Capitol complex in lockdown, Trump issued a belated plea for calm.
Notably, Trump did not instruct his supporters to disperse, and his tweet was met with angry responses from Democrats and some Republicans who said the president’s words had led to the day’s developments.
Minutes later, Pelosi and Sen. Chuck Schumer issued a joint statement.
“We are calling on President Trump to demand that all protesters leave the U.S. Capitol and Capitol grounds immediately,” the statement read.
With Trump steering clear of television cameras since attending his rally earlier in the day, Biden delivered a stern message.
Trump supporters take over the steps of the Capitol on Wednesday. (Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call via Getty Images)
“I call on this mob to pull back and allow democracy to go forward,” Biden said, adding, “I call on President Trump to go on national television now to fulfill his oath and defend the Constitution and demand an end to this siege.”
By the time the president strengthened his calls for cooperation with the police, his protesters, many of whom were armed and had not passed through a metal detector, had already broken through a police barricade and entered the Capitol’s Statuary Hall. An improvised explosive device was found on the Capitol grounds, NBC News reported, and at least two IEDs were discovered on the 300 and 400 blocks of Canal Street, according to a law enforcement document obtained by Yahoo News.
An improvised explosive device recovered in Washington on Wednesday.
Approximately 1,100 members of the National Guard were activated to help put down what Democrats said was a coup attempt. In a statement to the press, Acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller said he had spoken with Pence, Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Schumer about the plan.
“We have fully activated the D.C. National Guard to assist federal and local law enforcement as they work to peacefully address the situation. We are prepared to provide additional support as necessary and appropriate as requested by local authorities,” Miller said in his statement.
The Department of Homeland Security set up a virtual situation room to facilitate interagency communication and coordination, a DHS spokesperson told Yahoo News.
Yet with the former heads of the Justice and Defense departments fired or having resigned after clashes with Trump, the statements from their replacements came hours after the mob had descended.
“The violence at our Nation’s Capitol Building is an intolerable attack on a fundamental institution of our democracy. From the outset, the Department of Justice has been working in close coordination with the Capitol Police and federal partners from the Interior Department, the Department of Homeland Security, and the National Guard, as well as the Metropolitan Police and other local authorities,” Acting Attorney General Jeffrey A. Rosen said in a statement. “Earlier this afternoon, the Department of Justice sent hundreds of federal law enforcement officers and agents from the FBI, ATF, and the U.S. Marshals Service to assist the Capitol Police in addressing this unacceptable situation, and we intend to enforce the laws of our land.”
A member of a pro-Trump mob bashes an entrance of the Capitol in an attempt to gain access. (Jon Cherry/Getty Images)
With the siege continuing, Trump finally relented, issuing a video from the White House that, while it urged his supporters to leave the Capitol, also seemed to justify their behavior.
“I know your pain, I know your hurt,” Trump told his supporters. “We had an election that was stolen from us. It was a landslide election and everyone knows it, especially the other side.”
Trump’s remarks were littered with false and unsubstantiated claims of election fraud, and social media companies quickly flagged the video on their platforms as containing disputed information. In fact, it was those same claims that inspired a mob of his supporters to travel to Washington to protest in the first place.
“This was a fraudulent election, but we can’t play into the hands of these people,” Trump added.
Ultimately, Twitter and Facebook concluded that they had reached an inflection point, deciding for the first time to remove messages, including the video, from Trump’s accounts. Facebook added an additional punishment, banning Trump from posting for 24 hours, a move that was quickly followed by Instagram.
Snapchat blocked Trump from making new posts and Twitter also locked Trump’s account for 12 hours.
At least one prominent Democratic Senator said Twitter’s penalty was not stern enough.
Pence, who had been criticized by Trump and his followers for not attempting to overturn the results of the Electoral College vote – something the vice president does not have the power to do – issued his own statement as the violence continued.
“The violence and destruction taking place at the US Capitol Must Stop and it Must Stop Now. Anyone involved must respect Law Enforcement officers and immediately leave the building,” Pence tweeted. “Peaceful protest is the right of every American but this attack on our Capitol will not be tolerated and those involved will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”
Trump had urged his followers to travel to Washington to attend the rally, and he addressed them at the Washington Ellipse shortly before Congress began the electoral vote count.
A protester inside the Senate chamber after the Capitol was breached. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)
“We’re going to walk down, and I’ll be there with you,” Trump said, adding, “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women, and we’re probably not going to be cheering so much some of them.”
Instead, Trump returned to the White House while many in the crowd did just as he asked and began laying siege to the Capitol. Several buildings were evacuated as protesters clashed with police.
As the chaos unfolded, instead of issuing a call for calm and urging his supporters to cooperate with Capitol Police, Trump lashed out at Pence in a tweet deleted by Twitter. Minutes later, the president issued a second tweet urging the same supporters he’d whipped up into a frenzy over bogus claims of election fraud to “Stay peaceful!”
As members of Congress took shelter in the basement of the Capitol, Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser announced a 6 p.m. ET curfew.
Armed protesters stormed the Senate chamber and the offices of several lawmakers, with one climbing the dais and proclaiming, “Trump won that election!”
While some of the Trump supporters inside the Capitol said their intention was to stay there overnight, others began dispersing as darkness fell. One man with a megaphone called out to the mob that the National Guard was coming and that the group “needed to go to CNN and MSNBC instead, because that’s where it all started.”
At the “Stop the Steal” rally, Trump had gone after the news media with particular vigor, and soon his supporters had attacked a news crew.
A woman leaving the Capitol in tears said she had been sprayed with Mace by the police when she attempted to force her way inside the building. Asked why she wanted to get in, the woman, who identified herself as Elizabeth from Knoxville, Tenn., said, “We’re storming the Capitol, it’s a revolution!”
Predictably, some of Trump’s backers in Congress blamed the violence on left-wing provocateurs from antifa.
Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., meanwhile, announced she was introducing a new set of articles of impeachment against Trump.
Other Democrats also called for Trump to face swift consequences for what transpired Wednesday.
“He must be impeached and removed from office immediately,” Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker said in a statement.
Trump’s predecessor also pointed the finger at the 45th president.
“History will rightly remember today’s violence at the Capitol, incited by a sitting president who has continued to baselessly lie about the outcome of a lawful election, as a moment of great dishonor and shame for our nation,” former President Barack Obama said in a written statement.
Former President Bill Clinton also had harsh words for the current White House occupant.
“The match was lit by Donald Trump and his most ardent enablers, including many in Congress, to overturn the results of an election he lost,” Clinton said in a statement.
Democrats weren’t the only ones lashing out at the soon-to-be-former president, however.
“Today, the United States Capitol — the world’s greatest symbol of self-government — was ransacked while the leader of the free world cowered behind his keyboard — tweeting against his Vice President for fulfilling the duties of his oath to the Constitution,” Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., said in a written statement. “Lies have consequences. This violence was the inevitable and ugly outcome of the President’s addiction to constantly stoking division.”
Without mentioning Trump by name, former Republican President George W. Bush put the blame for the event on those who had fostered “falsehoods and false hopes” about the election results.
“The violent assault on the Capitol — and disruption of a Constitutionally mandated meeting of Congress — was undertaken by people whose passions have been inflamed by falsehoods and false hopes,” Bush said in a statement.
As Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, gathered other lawmakers at a secure location, he was equally pointed in who was to blame.
“This is what the president has caused today, this insurrection,” Romney said, according to the New York Times.
National Guard troops clear a street from protestors outside the Capitol. (Roberto Schmidt/AFP via Getty Images)
Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., also didn’t mince words.
“The President bears responsibility for today’s events by promoting the unfounded conspiracy theories that have led to this point,” Burr said in a statement. “It is past time to accept the will of the American voters and to allow our nation to move forward.”
Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., also urged Trump to move on from the election.
“It’s past time for the president to accept the results of the election, quit misleading the American people, and repudiate mob violence,” Cotton said in a statement. “And the senators and representatives who fanned the flames by encouraging the president … should withdraw those objections.”
Longtime Trump ally and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie issued another scathing assessment of Trump’s role in the melee to ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos.
“Those people today who had been lied to consistently by the president about a fraudulent election acted out, and acted out not just on their own George, but through his encouragement, and I did listen carefully to what he said this morning at that rally,” Christie said.
In the afternoon, hours after the mob took control of the Capitol, rumors swirled in Washington about the 25th Amendment, which contains a provision whereby the vice president and a majority of the cabinet can rule that a president has become incapable of doing his job, could be used to remove Trump from office.
Momentum for the 25th Amendment built throughout the day until all the Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee wrote a letter to Pence asking him to invoke it, saying “President Trump revealed that he is not mentally sound and is unable to process and accept the results of the 2020 election.”
Numerous officials inside the Trump administration were said to be considering resigning in disgust. The first person to make that announcement was first lady Melania Trump’s chief of staff, Stephanie Grisham. The second was White House deputy press secretary Sarah Matthews.
White House social secretary Rickie Niceta and deputy national security advisor Matt Pottinger has resigned in the wake of the riot at the Capitol.
At 5:56 p.m., nearly four and a half hours after the insurrection had begun, the sergeant-at-arms announced that the Capitol had been cleared of the mob, eliciting cheers from the lawmakers who had remained inside the building. One hundred and thirty-six National Guard troops took up positions on the Capitol grounds, according to an update sent to law enforcement and obtained by Yahoo News.
While thousands of Trump supporters took part in the violence at the Capitol, by 9:30 p.m, Washington police said they had made slightly more than 52 arrests, most on charges of violating curfew.
But the incident itself would have broader repercussions. For starters, some of the Republicans who said they would protest the certification of the Electoral College vote announced they had reconsidered in light of the attack on the Capitol.
As the Senate resumed its business, outgoing Majority Leader Mitch McConnell spoke sternly about the mob.
“The United States Senate will not be intimidated,” he said, adding, “They tried to obstruct our democracy. They failed.”
Schumer, the man in line to lead the Senate, was more precise. “This mob was in good part President Trump’s doing,” the New York Democrat said.
One by one, Senate Republicans who had planned to protest the Electoral College certification, including James Lankford of Oklahoma and Kelly Loeffler of Georgia, stepped forward to say they were dropping their objections.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) speaks during a Senate debate session to ratify the 2020 presidential election at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. (Photo by congress.gov via Getty Images)
One of the president’s most dependable supporters, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, delivered an especially stinging rebuke of the plan to deny certification.
“If you’re a conservative, this is the most offensive concept in the world — that a single person could disenfranchise 155 million people,” Graham said, adding, “Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are lawfully elected.”
Back at the White House, Trump and his lawyer Rudy Giuliani continued to pressure senators to protest the certification. When the vote came up to challenge the electors in Arizona, Sens. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., Cindy Hyde-Smith, R-Miss., Roger Marshall, R-Ks., Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., Ted Cruz, R-Tex., and John Kennedy, R-La., obliged, less than half of those who initially committed to doing so.
Georgia, the next state challenged by members of the House, did not receive the support of a single Senator, killing debate before it began. The same pattern held in Michigan and Nevada.
But Sen. Hawley joined the challenge to Pennsylvania’s electoral votes put forth by Republican House members, delaying Biden’s inevitable victory even further.
As was clear before they began, the final votes on the challenges, however, did not go in Trump’s favor, and when Hawley was asked by CNN’s Manju Raju whether Trump bore responsibility for the violence in Washington on Wednesday, even he gave an answer the president was sure to dislike.
“I don’t think urging people to come to the Capitol was a good idea,” he said.
A bigger question that remains, however, is what lasting damage the mob takeover will have on the party of the man who beckoned his supporters to Washington to stage Wednesday’s uprising.
Caitlin Dickson contributed reporting to this story.
Eric Alterman on Holding Trump Enablers Accountable
By Eric Alterman January 8, 2021
Sen. Josh Hawley greeting protesters in the east side of the Capitol before riots began. (Photo by Francis Chung, E&E Daily, Twitter)
I’ve been forced to write about Donald Trump an awful lot during the past five years and the problem I always face when writing in a limited space, like this one, is which of his countless horrific qualities to focus on. The same thing happens when I need to address the consequences of the policies of his administration. There are so many terrible ones, so many victims and so many enablers. I always found myself asking, “Who deserves a thousand words today?”
Not today. I don’t dispute the genuine horror, outrage and sadness genuinely patriotic people feel at seeing the desecration of one of the most potent symbols of American democracy. I share those feelings. But another part of me is glad about it. Finally, Trumpism has clarified itself. It’s not about “economic insecurity.” It’s not about globalization. It’s not about being “forgotten,” “disdained by elites,” or “fear of the future.” It’s just about hatred: hatred of anyone and anything who is not a white, Christian, right-wing, American-born American. Any other attempt to defend or explain Trump’s appeal is a lie and a dangerous one at that because it’s a lie that perpetuates all the other lies that have allowed him and his minions to conduct a rampage against America and all that it stands for; the same rampage that finally found its physical manifestation in the insurrectional riot we saw on Wednesday.
What made all this possible? Obviously, there is Trump himself. His entire life, beginning with his real estate career, his TV celebrity, his presidential campaign and then of course, his presidency, had been built on a foundation of easily disprovable falsehood. And somehow, it worked. Trump apparently told the right kind of lies; the kinds of lies that were in the interests of the powerful people allied with him to pretend to believe. As for his victims, who cared? If they had any power in the first place, they would not have been victims. As far as Trump was concerned, lying worked. It pumped up his ego and got him what he wanted. After all, he got elected president of the United States without having any appreciable qualifications. It’s not much of a mystery as to why he kept it up.
The more compelling question for our future is who were the people who bought into his lies, pretended to believe (or at least excuse) them and benefitted as a result? These, after all, are the people who betrayed their country and will still be around when Trump is either serving time or living in exile. Second, of course, was the structure of enablement his lies enjoyed. The Trump administration was one big bribe. The rich got their massive tax cuts and extremely relaxed enforcement of financial crimes. Evangelicals got their Federalist Society–appointed judges and extreme Zionism put into practice. Racists, Nazis and nationalists got their attacks on everyone who did not look and “think” like them. (These people came cheap.) Cops got to beat up and sometimes murder people with impunity. Corporations were free to pollute their communities and disempower their workers. The right-wing press got to give their “middle finger” as National Review editor Rich Lowry named it, at the rest of us and the mainstream media got ratings, subscriptions and stock prices they could not have imagined five years earlier. Remember CBS CEO Les Moonves speaking about Trump’s candidacy, before Moonves lost his job following numerous claims of sexual misconduct? He may have been speaking for the entire industry when he said: “It may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS.”
All this added up to an irresistible bargain for all of them to embrace Trump’s lies and pass them along to the voters, viewers, stockholders, churchgoers, whomever. The net result was the creation of an entire world of unreality in which nearly half the country lived and most of the rest of it agreed to indulge. Trump-supporting Kentucky Republican, Thomas Massie, sounds like he’s making complete sense when he says, “Trump has a 94 percent approval rating among my Republican electorate—I’ve actually polled it twice,” Massie said. “Those are people that vote in the primaries in Kentucky’s Fourth District … I’m going to have a lot of explaining to do.” The poor fellow…
Almost all the mainstream media commentators expressed profound shock at the sight of Trump’s most devoted followers attacking Congress on Wednesday. It played out as a “Drunk History” parody version of the Bolsheviks’ 1917 storming of the Tsar’s winter palace. Didn’t these people know a wink when they saw one? Didn’t they understand, as Selena Zito lectured the rest of us back in September, 2016 (in the Atlantic, no less,) that while, “the press takes him literally, but not seriously; his supporters take him seriously, but not literally?” Apparently, not. These people have been fed a diet of literally nothing but political lies for decades now in the fantasy “propaganda loop” that right-wing billionaires like Rupert Murdoch, Sheldon Adelson, the Koch brothers and Rebekah Mercer have created for them. Donald Trump was just the Frankenstein monster that (we now see) pushed things a little too far. But give credit where it’s due. Trump’s 30,000 or so presidential lies were built on a mountain of lies that came before him, thanks to Ronald Reagan, Newt Gingrich, both George Bushes (but especially the second one) and all of the politicians and pundits who embraced and enabled them.
Viewed from a certain perspective, one is almost tempted to feel sorry for these clowns — or “very special” people as Trump called them — in the Viking hats and the “Camp Auschwitz” sweatshirts. They had become, what Hannah Arendt called, “the ideal subject of a totalitarian state”; that is, the person “for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (that is, the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (that is, the standards of thought) no longer exist.” Too bad, however, that — just like with Covid deniers — their purposeful ignorance combined with their maniacal aggressiveness is endangering the rest of us to the point of that (My God!) even Mitch McConnell recognized as a potential “death spiral” for democracy and said enough was finally enough.
The obvious question for which there is just as obviously no clear answer yet is, “Are we too far gone to save ourselves?” As posed by the punditocracy, it takes some form of, “How much of the Republican Party will remain in thrall to this guy that we now all suddenly discovered is a dangerous lunatic?” This question is always followed by references to rhetorical flamethrowers, Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley and the total of 179 lawmakers who, even after what they saw on Wednesday, still refused to recognize the rightful president-elect of the United States. (This is coupled with a running count of which rats are jumping from their sinking ship. ) But the Congressional Republican Party is just the head of an extremely pugnacious and poisonous snake. The reptilian structure it grows out of has strangled so many of institutions that make democracy possible and infected so many of the people who shape and influence it, one has a hard time imagining where we will find the resources to nurse the body politic back even to a semblance of good health.
One thing is for certain, however: we have no choice but to try. There is no “moving on” or “looking to the future” without first facing the truth. And that means legally holding responsible everyone who helped to create the criminal syndicate that took over our government and morally, everyone who supported it. They were not just “playing politics,” this time around. They were toying with treason. And that’s just how they need to be treated if we are to restore a semblance of functional democracy to our system and personal honor to our politics.
Senior Trump Official: We Were Wrong, He’s a ‘Fascist’
By Olivia Nuzzi January 8, 2021
The 11th hour. Photo: AFP via Getty Images
On Friday afternoon, 48 hours after the U.S. Capitol was stormed by violent insurrectionists encouraged by Donald Trump in an attempt to overthrow the government in protest of his election loss, a senior member of his administration spoke to me while he was driving to work.
“This is confirmation of so much that everyone has said for years now — things that a lot of us thought were hyperbolic. We’d say, ‘Trump’s not a fascist,’ or ‘He’s not a wannabe dictator.’ Now, it’s like, ‘Well, what do you even say in response to that now?’”
For four years, people like this official — lifelong Republican operatives — have convinced themselves that Trump’s obvious faults were worth tolerating if it meant implementing a conservative policy agenda. These officials believed the benefits of remaking the courts with conservative justices, or passing tax reform, outweighed the risks that a Trump presidency posed to democracy and to the reputation of the country in the world. Now, at the 11th hour, with 12 days left before Joe Biden is sworn into office, it’s clear to some that it was always a delusion.
“This is like a plot straight out of the later, sucky seasons of House of Cards where they just go full evil and say, ‘Let’s spark mass protests and start wars and whatever,’” the senior administration official said.
“I went through Access Hollywood, Charlottesville — all of these insane things. There’s some degree of growing accustomed to the craziness. It’s not like my heart is racing, like, Oh God, how am I supposed to react to this? It’s just more that I’m depressed. For people who devoted years of their lives to dealing with the insanity in an attempt to advance a policy agenda that you believe in, all of that has been wiped out. The legacy of the Trump administration is going to be that the president sparked an insurrection and people died because he tried his best to not abide by the Constitution and the tradition of a peaceful transition of power that’s been the norm since our founding. Nothing else is even going to be a side note.”
Trump’s world has grown ever smaller as the damage he inflicts on the United States continues to swell. Wednesday’s attack on the Capitol, which left five dead, including a police officer, prompted resignations in the administration and calls for Trump to do the same and threats — from Democratic and Republican lawmakers — of a second impeachment as well as vaguer discussions about the 25th Amendment. Trump is an increasingly symbolic figure — Norma Desmond with the nuclear codes and sycophantic butlers in his ears on a West Wing Sunset Boulevard soundstage. With no power left to grab, many staffers spent the weeks following November 3 making themselves scarce, plotting their post-White House careers, avoiding the president’s calls.
But many others are keeping their heads down and keeping their jobs, citing, among other self-serving interests, a desire to remain on their health-care plans, according to my interviews with staffers. Others justify their continued employment by citing the demands of the continuity of government.
“There’s not a single person I have talked to at any level, from 23-year-old assistants to members of the Cabinet, who are not disgusted and ashamed with what has happened,” the senior administration official said, adding that the conversations among remaining officials were about how to handle the next 12 days before Joe Biden’s administration — and whether to continue to be a part of the transition of power at all. “It’s different for everybody. If you’re a regular domestic-policy staffer in the West Wing or the EEOB, the implications of you quitting are different than if you’re a senior national security official, or you’re tasked with contributing to the continuity of government.”
“We are in a terrible spot,” the official said. “You can’t just say, ‘Well, this is outrageous and I quit’ in this situation.”
Trump’s inner circle has contracted amid the self-created chaos and carnage. For this reason, resignations have not had much of an effect on him directly. “He may not even notice,” one adviser said. “People aren’t around to begin with. There aren’t policy meetings with the president and eight or ten people in there anymore.”
Advisers have expressed concern and anger over Mark Meadows, the chief of staff, whose actions have been perceived as an effort to secure employment with Trump in his post-presidency, perhaps at the Trump Organization. “Jared has been telling people, ‘Don’t even deal with him anymore,’” one adviser said. “Mark’s responsible for bringing kook after crazy after conniver after Rudy into the West Wing.” (“This is completely false,” Avi Berkowitz, Jared Kushner’s spokesman, said in a tweet responding to this article, “Jared has never said that.”)A former senior White House official said, “Morale plummeted under him, huge mistakes were made — and now he’s scrambling to stick around after. He’s a dishonest asshole who pretends to be this religious Southern gentleman. Fuck that.”
The senior administration official put it this way: “The only way it gets to this point are a thousand really bad small decisions. The first time Sidney Powell calls the White House switchboard and is allowed to speak to the president, the next thing you know she and others are in the West Wing — these are areas where the chief of staff has unilateral authority to do what he wants to do.” Instead, the official said, Meadows tells Trump what he wants to hear, and often calls whomever Trump has directed him to call, repeats what Trump told him to say, and then apologizes, explaining that he just needs to be able to tell the boss that he followed his orders.
Meanwhile, the yes-men are countered mostly by the lawyers, who have tried to convey to Trump that he has put himself at risk of prosecution, not just by inciting Wednesday’s riot — for which the Justice Department is reportedly open to pursuing charges — but for his phone call to Georgia election officials, in which he attempted to pressure them to overturn the results, as well as in the many ongoing investigations related to his businesses and finances.
“It’s a lot to adjust to. If you think you’re going to be there for four more years, it’s a bit jarring,” the adviser said. “The smart lawyers have gotten to him. It’s all hit him since yesterday: You may have legal exposure from yesterday. You definitely have legal exposure from other things. You have less than two weeks to remain ensconced in here with executive privilege.”
This adviser, who spoke to Trump on Wednesday amid the siege, said Trump watched the events on television intently. CNN reported that he was so excited by the action, it “freaked out” some staffers around him. The adviser told me that Trump expressed disgust on aesthetic grounds over how “low class” his supporters looked. “He doesn’t like low-class things,” the adviser said, explaining that Trump had a similar reaction over the summer to a video of Brad Parscale, his former campaign manager, shirtless and drinking a beer in his driveway during a mental-health emergency in which police tackled him and seized his weapons. “He kept mentioning, ‘Oh, did you see him in his beer shirt?’ He was annoyed. To him, it’s just low class, in other words.”
The adviser said that Trump recently offered them a pardon, although they have not been charged with any crime. The adviser “politely declined.” Others are taking Trump’s pardon offers more seriously, whether they’ve been investigated or are at risk of jail time or not. “He’s just talking up a storm about giving pardons to allies: his kids, and their significant others, and staffers. He’s pretty generous with the offers. When you’re offered one, it’s like, Should I take it? Is it like insurance?”
One person close to Trump’s legal team told me that the lawyers have struggled to get his attention. “He’s sort of turning on everybody. The president is so visceral, he just can’t hear people unless he can respect them. And he thinks everybody’s a traitor, even the people who got him through impeachment. It’s just nuts.”
Futile open rebellion goes back to the Confederacy. Trump will also lose, but will also keep fighting.
By Neil Steinberg
Trump flags and Confederate flags are often seen side-by-side, which is fitting, since both represent futile rebellions by weaker parts of the country against dominant American principles and government. Getty
The South was never going to win the Civil War.
If you consider the resources of the North, the moment the first Confederate cannon fired on Fort Sumter, the South’s doom was sealed. A week later, the Chicago Tribune ran a prescient editorial explaining why.
“It is a military maxim of modern war that the longest purse wins,” it begins, outlining the North’s advantages in manpower, manufacturing, maritime strength and, most of all, money. “The little State of Massachusetts can raise more money than the Jeff Davis Confederacy.”
The conclusion may have been foregone, but it took four years and 620,000 American lives to play out.
It’s still unfolding. The Confederacy lost the war, but never gave up the fight — its baked-in bigotry, the proud ignorance required to consider another human being your property, marches on, from then to now. Manifesting itself plainly in the Trump era, his entire political philosophy being the slaveholder mentality decked out in new clothes, trying to pass in the 21st century. They even wave the same rebel flag. Kind of a giveaway, really.
The Lost Cause marches on, as we will see Wednesday, when Congress faces another ego-stoked rebellion: Donald Trump’s insistence that his clearly losing the 2020 presidential election in the chill world of fact can be set aside, since he won the race in the steamy delta swampland between his ears.
No way. Not as long as there are Americans, like the Chicagoans rushing to sign up to fight in April 1861, who are true patriots and willing to stand up for democracy.
Urged on by the president, Trump supporters have been showing up to protest in Washington, D.C. ever since the November election. This group with a Confederate battle flag were there in December. Trump has called for his backers to rally near the White House on Wednesday, the day Congress meets to count the Electoral College votes that gave the win to President-elect Joe Biden. Getty
While trying to thwart the will of the people, the president has, for the past two months, ignored a lethal pandemic raging across the country — one whose toll over two years may match the Civil War’s over four. Aided by Republican politicians in open rebellion to the Constitution and the laws of this country. And millions of Americans who support him because, like the slave-holding South, they have made a fundamental error in judgment. They believe their own self-aggrandizing delusions, convinced their opponents will collapse at a touch.
Almost exactly 160 years ago, the smaller, weaker South thought it could impose its will on the whole country by military force. During the past four years Trump, who received 10 million fewer votes than his opponents in two presidential elections, served not America, but only his fanatical base. Never forget the Trump administration initially tried to shrug off COVID as a blue state problem.
The South expected the Northern population to rebel with them, against their own government. Like today, their warped worldview was stoked by the media.
“This preposterous idea has been instilled into their noddles from reading such satanic and tory sheets as the New York Herald and Chicago Times,” the Trib editorialized, “which they were led to suppose reflected Democratic opinion in the Free States.”
(The copperhead Chicago Times, I hasten to point out, is no relation to the paper you’re reading now. It folded in 1901. Our forefather, the Chicago Daily Times, began in 1929.)
The South figured out how, in losing, to win, after a fashion. They waited out the federal troops of Reconstruction, then returned to slavery, barely altered and under a new name, keeping Blacks down in economic and legal bondage. For 100 years. First slaves couldn’t vote. Then Blacks in the South were kept from voting. And today the president tries to bat Black votes away, if not for him.
The fight continues. In the spring of 1861, the Tribune called the Southern secession “the most senseless and causeless rebellion of all history.” Until now. We may have surpassed it with Trump’s frantic tearing at our democracy, supported by a cast of cowards and traitors, hailed by the eternally duped. And for what? Lower taxes? A wall? Their fetus friends? An embassy in Jerusalem? I will never understand it.
No matter. They’re losers. They lost in 1865, lost in 2020. Evil always loses, eventually. Since they continue to fight, desperate to go back to the plantations of their dreams, they’ll continue to lose. Not every battle. But their war against the future is futile, doomed. Drowned out by the swelling ranks of diverse, accepting Americans, facing actual problems with courage and candor, dedicated to helping our nation become what she is destined to be.
Corporate America should torpedo the Republican party
Rick Newman, Senior Columnist
Imagine buying a stock, then learning the seller changed his mind and canceled the transaction, without consequence.
Imagine running a storefront with a landlord who raised the rent whenever he felt like it, regardless of what the lease stipulated.
Imagine receiving a patent for a new invention that competitors could copy anyway, cashing in on your breakthrough without investing any of the hard work.
This is the sort of chaos the Republican party —once, supposedly, the party of business—now advocates in its effort to overturn the legitimate election of incoming President Joe Biden. When Congress counts the presidential electoral votes on January 6, at least a dozen Republican senators and more than 100 Republican members of the House plan to challenge the vote tallies in swing states that Biden won, giving him the presidency. Every state ran a free and fair election, with no meaningful disruptions or illegalities. Yet Republicans, led by a petulant President Trump, want to overturn the results anyway, because they don’t like the outcome. The rules don’t matter.
American capitalism works because rules, laws and customs dominate. Buyers and sellers in virtually every transaction know what to expect and have legal recourse if the other side cheats. Contracts force everybody to abide by predictable norms. There are flaws, but enforceable rules make the system better for everybody: Big firms, small businesses, workers and consumers.
Trump and his Republicans conspirators trying to overturn Biden’s win are saying, just this once, let’s break the rules. No biggie.
But it is a biggie. These Republicans are endorsing Venezuela-style ad hockery to keep their group in power illegitimately. Markets seem to be writing off the GOP insurgency as political shenanigans that are just for show. It’s way worse than that. The former “law and order” party has morphed into a crime and disorder party that cannot be business-friendly if its only priority is to retain power at any cost. This is a metastasis of the crony capitalism Trump has practiced for the last four years. It rewards only those on the winning side, while punishing those who play by the rules.
In this Dec. 16, 2020 file photo, Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., asks questions during a Senate Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs Committee hearing to discuss election security and the 2020 election process on Capitol Hill in Washington. (Greg Nash/Pool via AP, File)
The many businesses that keep politicians in power by funding their campaigns should stop donating to any candidate who doesn’t overtly support the rule of law, in business and politics, both. Here’s a starter list of the 12 seditious senators who want to overturn Biden’s election, along with some of the top corporate donors for each, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. There’s no simple list of corporate donors to politicians, because companies donate to both campaign committees and political action committees that campaign on behalf of a favored politician. Some “dark money” donations aren’t even public. This list represents a combination of corporate donations to PACs and companies with the employees who donated the most to each candidate.
Marsha Blackburn, Tennessee: Top donors: HCA, Southwest Family of Companies, FedEx, AT&T, Comcast
Mike Braun, Indiana: Jasper Engines & Transmissions, Reyes Holdings, Alliance Coal, Eli Lilly, Wabash Valley Produce
Ted Cruz, Texas: Woodforest National Bank, Lockheed Martin, Berkshire Hathaway, Sullivan & Cromwell, Delta Air Lines, Insperity, Stewart Title Guaranty
Steven Daines, Montana: Charter Communications, Langlas & Associates, Amgen, Microsoft, Berkshire Hathaway, FedEx, United Parcel Service
Josh Hawley, Missouri: Diamond Pet Foods, Emerson Electric, Herzog Contracting, Hunter Engineering, Charles Schwab Corp, Edward Jones, Alliance Coal
Trump conspirators in the House say as many as 140 Republicans will join the 12 seditious senators to subvert Biden’s victory. There’s no full list of the plotters, yet, but 106 House Republicans signed on to a doomed Texas lawsuit that tried to overturn Biden’s victory in December, and failed. That’s likely the core group.
U.S. Senator Ted Cruz waves to the crowd as he is introduced during the SAVE AMERICA TOUR at The Bowl at Sugar Hill on January 3, 2021 in Sugar Hill, Georgia. (Photo by David J. Griffin/Icon Sportswire)
Not the business-friendly party anymore
Republicans won’t be able to prevent Biden from taking office, since Democrats control the House and obviously won’t block the electoral vote counting. So corporate donors might think they should just hold their noses until the whole mess blows over. It’s probably worth supporting the Republicans’ low-tax, deregulatory agenda even if it means overlooking a few cranks in the party.
That view deserves a rethink. The Trump GOP did cut taxes and regulations, but it did so in a partisan way that was fiscally unsustainable and likely to be temporary. Trump, meanwhile, kneecapped free trade and declared war on companies he held personal vendettas against, such as Amazon, Time Warner, Facebook and Harley-Davidson. Out of spite, he wrecked the postal service, which many small businesses rely on.
There is no longer a business-friendly Republican party. The criminal attempts to prevent Biden from taking office are really a scramble among ambitious Republicans to claim the Trump base as their own in future elections, and keep feeding these voters the nativist lies and reckless populism that earned Trump four years in office. Business lobbies that support Republicans today are asking for more Trumpian chaos, which could backfire as the party rampages toward extremism and marginalization.
The Democratic party is not a comfortable home for corporate interests, either, though a stable Biden administration would be better for business than Trumpian turmoil. With the Republican party devolving into a gang of kooks and hoodlums, it may be time to draft whatever honest and ethical Republicans are left into a new party that can claim the rational middle and reinforce the rules of democracy. It can’t be worse than what the Republican party offers now.
The Fine Print in a 5,593-Page Spending Bill: Tax Breaks and Horse Racing
Luke Broadwater, Jesse Drucker, Rebecca R. Ruiz – December 23, 2020
Senate Minority Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) departs a meeting at the Capitol in Washington late Tuesday, Dec. 15, 2020, with the top congressional leaders to discuss the omnibus package and COVID-19 relief. (Anna Moneymaker/The New York Times)
WASHINGTON — Tucked away in the 5,593-page spending bill that Congress rushed through Monday night is a provision that some tax experts call a $200 billion giveaway to the rich.
It involves the tens of thousands of businesses that received loans from the federal government this spring with the promise that the loans would be forgiven, tax free, if they agreed to keep employees on the payroll through the coronavirus pandemic.
But for some businesses and their high-paid accountants, that was not enough. They went to Congress with another request: Not only should the forgiven loans not to be taxed as income, but the expenditures used with those loans should be tax deductible.
“High-income business owners have had tax benefits and unprecedented government grants showered down upon then. And the scale is massive,” wrote Adam Looney, a fellow at the Brookings Institution and a former Treasury Department tax official in the Obama administration, who estimated that $120 billion of the $200 billion would flow to the top 1% of Americans.
The new provision allows for a classic double dip into the Paycheck Protection Program, as businesses get free money from the government, then get to deduct that largess from their taxes.
And it is one of hundreds included in a huge spending package and a coronavirus stimulus bill that is supposed to help businesses and families struggling during the pandemic but, critics say, swerved far afield. President Donald Trump on Tuesday night blasted it as a disgrace and demanded revisions.
“Congress found plenty of money for foreign countries, lobbyists and special interests, while sending the bare minimum to the American people who need it,” he said in a video posted on Twitter that stopped just short of a veto threat.
The measure includes serious policy changes beyond the much-needed $900 billion in coronavirus relief, such as a simplification of federal financial aid forms, measures to address climate change and a provision to stop “surprise billing” from hospitals when patients unwittingly receive care from physicians out of their insurance networks.
But there is also much grumbling over other provisions that lawmakers had not fully reviewed, and a process that left most of them and the public in the dark until after the bill was passed. The anger was bipartisan.
“Members of Congress have not read this bill. It’s over 5,000 pages, arrived at 2 p.m. today, and we are told to expect a vote on it in two hours,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., wrote on Twitter on Monday. “This isn’t governance. It’s hostage-taking.”
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, agreed — the two do not agree on much.
“It’s ABSURD to have a $2.5 trillion spending bill negotiated in secret and then — hours later — demand an up-or-down vote on a bill nobody has had time to read,” he wrote on Twitter on Monday.
The items jammed into the bill are varied and at times bewildering. The bill would make it a felony to offer illegal streaming services. One provision requires the CIA to report back to Congress on the activities of Eastern European oligarchs tied to President Vladimir Putin of Russia. The federal government would be required to set up a program aimed at eradicating the murder hornet and to crack down on online sales of e-cigarettes to minors.
It authorizes 93 acres of federal lands to be used for the construction of the Teddy Roosevelt Presidential Library in North Dakota and creates an independent commission to oversee horse racing, a priority of Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., the majority leader.
McConnell inserted that item to get around the objections of a Democratic senator, who wanted it amended, but he received agreement from other congressional leaders.
Alexander M. Waldrop, CEO of the National Thoroughbred Racing Association, said Tuesday that McConnell had “said many times he feared for the future of horse racing and the impact on the industry, which of course is critical to Kentucky.”
That the racing legislation — versions of which the industry had debated for years — passed as part of the COVID-19 relief bill was of no particular mind, Waldrop said.
“It just developed this way over the last several weeks,” he said. “The only approach left to us was a federally sanctioned, independent, self-regulatory organization. It was our only viable option left, and this legislation accomplishes that.”
But the tax provisions — including extending a $2.5 billion break for race car tracks and allowing a $6.3 billion write-off for business meals, derided as the “three-martini lunch” expense — have prompted the most hand-wringing.
The bill also lowers some taxes on alcoholic beverages.
No break is bigger, however, than the deductions that will soon be permitted under the Paycheck Protection Program. Businesses had been lobbying the Treasury Department and the IRS since the spring to deduct spending from PPP loans, but Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin was firmly opposed, saying deducting expenditures from funds not considered taxable income violated “Tax 101.”
The PPP was the most visible part of the federal government’s coronavirus relief efforts in the spring to keep small businesses afloat. So far, the government has distributed more than $500 billion in loans, which could be forgiven and turned into permanent grants as long as the businesses use most of the money to pay workers and keep people employed.
In passing the law in the spring, Congress explicitly said that the PPP funds should not be included as taxable income — unlike, say, unemployment benefits.
Despite that largess, businesses wanted more. In May, the heads of the tax-writing committees — Sens. Charles E. Grassley, R-Iowa, and Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Rep. Richard E. Neal, D-Mass. — wrote Mnuchin urging him to reconsider his opposition.
“Small businesses need help maintaining their cash flow, not more strains on it,” they wrote.
But a Brookings Institution analysis said the change would help far more wealthy than mom-and-pop business owners.
“So there’s no cost on the way in and no cost on the way out — those two don’t add up,” said Richard L. Reinhold, the former chairman of the tax department at Willkie Farr & Gallagher and a professor at Cornell Law School. Congress could have simply expanded the PPP program, but instead it did it almost by stealth, through a tax deduction.
“That’s the part that is troublesome,” he said.
Although there had been discussion of limiting the deduction to PPP recipients below a certain income threshold, the final provision was made available to anyone, regardless of income.
The Small Business Administration this month released data showing that just 1% of the program’s 5.2 million borrowers had received more than a quarter of the $523 billion disbursed.
That 1% included high-priced law firms like Boies Schiller Flexner and the operator of New York’s biggest horse tracks, which received the maximum loan amount of $10 million.
“The year 2020 is going to be one of the most unequal years in modern history,” Looney said. “Part of the inequity is the effect of COVID, which hammered service sectors the most and allowed rich, educated people to work on Zoom. But the government totally compounded these inequities with their response.”
Yet in the end, only six senators, all Republicans, voted against the coronavirus relief package and spending bill, mostly citing fiscal concerns about runaway spending, while 85 House members — a mix of Democrats and Republicans — voted against its military provisions. The bill increased military spending by about $5 billion.
Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., opposed the military spending but voted for other aspects of the bill. He and his liberal colleagues had lobbied for direct payments for most Americans as part of a relief package, and he said he shared colleagues’ concerns about a lack of time to review the final piece of legislation.
“We need a better system to have members review online text as it is being drafted and have input,” Khanna said. “That said, leadership did keep us informed on almost daily calls about the essential aspects of the bills and the issues at stake.”
Sen. Joe Manchin III, D-W.Va., one of the leaders of the bipartisan group that pushed for a $900 billion stimulus, said leadership intentionally waited until the last minute to unveil final proposals.
“Leadership likes the process the way it is,” he said. “Wait until the deadline, and then there’s no input at all. They say, take this or not. I’m sick and tired of how this game has been played.”
That said, there was plenty for lawmakers to cheer for. They sent out news releases promoting preferred provisions like the ban on most surprise medical bills, the restoration of college financial aid for incarcerated people, and the restrictions on the use of powerful planet-warming chemicals that are commonly used in air conditioners and refrigerators. The bill also creates new museums honoring women and Latinos.
“What you see at the end of every Congress is a clearing of the decks,” said Josh Huder, a senior fellow at the Government Affairs Institute at Georgetown University. “It’s all the stuff we wanted to pass but couldn’t. Everybody would love for legislation to be passed individually, but that is really a function of a bygone era that is not coming back.”
“There’s a lot of good stuff,” he said, “but something definitely gets snuck in.”
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