OUR PICKSThe Jan. 6 Report: A Summary with Some Analysis | Title 42 Might Be Nixed | Anti-Semitism in 2022 Feels Different, and more
Jan. 6 Committee’s Final Report
··The Jan. 6 Report: A Summary with Some Analysis
The report, typos and flaws and errors and inadequacies and all, is an essential document for accountability in the post-Trump era
··The Devastating New History of the January 6th Insurrection
The House report describes both a catastrophe and a way forward
··Jan. 6 Committee issues Final Report, Suggests Banning Trump from Office
The 14th Amendment allows barring people from office who “engaged in an insurrection”
··The Biggest Takeaway from the January 6 Report
Rather than conducting a large-scale dragnet, the committee zeroed in on the former president
··Donald Trump’s Infamous 187 Minutes
Trump wasn’t just dithering as the Capitol was attacked—he was rooting for the mob
··The January 6th Report Takeaway: Trump Incited the Riot
Violence was not a coincidence; it was the culmination
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Judge dismissed the claims of election-denier Lake for lack of evidence
··Antisemitism Isn’t New. So Why Did 2022 Feel Different?
This year, hatred against Jews got much harder to ignore.
··Demagoguery in America
What is a demagogue? And what threat might one pose in the distinct circumstances of our time and place?
Jan. 6 Committee’s Final Report
The Jan. 6 Report: A Summary with Some Analysis (Scott R. Anderson et al., Lawfare)
The committee’s final report, finally released Thursday evening, is the most comprehensive account of the insurrection of Jan. 6, 2021 anyone has yet produced. While it mostly reprises and elaborates on information released during the committee’s spree of hearings over the summer, it contains a lot of new details. Perhaps more importantly, it brings together all of the committee’s work in a single narrative, carefully documented and put together in an accessible fashion.
As with the 9/11 Commission report two decades ago, people will argue about the committee’s recommendations. Reasonable minds will disagree about its criminal referrals. But as with the 9/11 Commission report, this document’s impact lies in the story it tells. For it is a story no other entity could have told. It required the power of government, the ability to compel testimony and force the production of documents. Yet it also required the ability to tell a story, an ability generally off limits to prosecutors outside of the context of indictment Ent.
It is, typos and flaws and errors and inadequacies and all, an essential document for accountability in the post-Trump era.
The Devastating New History of the January 6th Insurrection (David Remnick, New Yorker)
In his career as a New York real-estate shyster and tabloid denizen, then as the forty-fifth President of the United States, Trump has been the most transparent of public figures. He does little to conceal his most distinctive characteristics: his racism, misogyny, dishonesty, narcissism, incompetence, cruelty, instability, and corruption. And yet what has kept Trump afloat for so long, what has helped him evade ruin and prosecution, is perhaps his most salient quality: he is shameless. That is the never-apologize-never-explain core of him. Trump is hardly the first dishonest President, the first incurious President, the first liar. But he is the most shameless. His contrition is impossible to conceive. He is insensible to disgrace.
On December 19, 2022, the committee spelled out a devastating set of accusations against Trump: obstruction of an official proceeding; conspiracy to defraud the nation; conspiracy to make false statements; and, most grave of all, inciting, assisting, aiding, or comforting an insurrection. For the first time in the history of the United States, Congress referred a former President to the Department of Justice for criminal prosecution. (Cont.)
