Seven people have been shot, at least five of the victims killed, after a shooting spree between Chicago and Evanston. A U of C student and security guard are among those dead. The suspect was also killed in a police-involved shooting.
Corporations suspending campaign donations to 127 lawmakers who voted to nix president-elect Joe Biden’s victory
Many of the people who broke into and ransacked the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday acted like they did not think there would be any consequences. For many of them, there have been consequences. Some of them have lost work. And many of the people whose photos went viral online and on TV have been arrested. The FBI says it is searching for the rest.CNN's Evan Perez notes that the big arrests so far have been the low-hanging fruit, the people who "were on social media boasting about this."Public records for more than 120 people arrested so far document that "the insurrectionist mob that showed up at the president's behest and stormed the U.S. Capitol was overwhelmingly made up of longtime Trump supporters, including Republican Party officials, GOP political donors, far-right militants, white supremacists, members of the military, and adherents of the QAnon myth that the government is secretly controlled by a cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophile cannibals," The Associated Press reports. "Records show that some were heavily armed and included convicted criminals."Jake Chansley, the "QAnon Shaman," surrendered to the FBI in Phoenix on Saturday.Embed from Getty ImagesFederal prosecutors in Washington, D.C., Sunday evening charged two men believed to have worn tactical gear and carried plastic restraints in the Senate chamber. Eric Gavelek Munchel was arrested in Tennessee.Embed from Getty ImagesAnd Larry Rendell Brock, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel, was picked up in Texas.> UPDATE: Spokesman for Hillwood Airways confirmed to me tonight Larry Rendall Brock Jr. "no longer works for the company." The @USAirForce Lt. Col. was IDed w/ zip-ties & combat gear on the Senate floor during the armed riot at the U.S. Capitol Wed. that killed 5 @CourthouseNews pic.twitter.com/pubhmiboeb> > — David Lee (@davejourno) January 10, 2021The FBI arrested Doug Jensen, photographed in a QAnon shirt, in Des Moines, Iowa, on Friday.> CAPITOL RIOT ARREST UPDATE: > Iowa man who was videeotaped chasing a cop up the steps has been booked on 5 federal charges.https://t.co/yy4aZIKdW4 pic.twitter.com/Srwk45b6yT> > — Jim Roberts (@nycjim) January 10, 2021Adam Johnson, arrested in Florida on Friday, was allegedly the man photographed carrying the House speaker's lectern.Embed from Getty ImagesThe FBI is seeking help identifying numerous other Capitol raiders, including the guy photographed carrying the Confederate battle flag. Others been identified but not arrested, like Josiah Colt of Idaho.> To the best of my knowledge, Josiah Colt (also pictured here) has not been arrested. pic.twitter.com/P9KgBdw8qG> > — Austin Kellerman (@AustinKellerman) January 11, 2021CNN identified the man in a "Camp Auschwitz" sweatshirt as Robert Keith Packer of Virginia.> We're very close to IDing this guy thanks to tipsters. pic.twitter.com/XKgDLhlZLR> > — Adam Goldman (@adamgoldmanNYT) January 10, 2021One of the evident planners of the assault on the Capitol, Ali Alexander, says he's in hiding and needs money for armed guards, The Daily Beast reports.More stories from theweek.com 7 scathing cartoons about Trump's Capitol riot Trump reportedly told Kelly Loeffler he'd 'do a number on her' if she didn't back Electoral College challenge Sympathy for Ashli Babbitt
An urgent briefing between Rep. Jason Crow and Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy has revealed new details about the tense timeline of sending National Guard troops to the scene of the U.S. Capitol siege, and steps taken in the aftermath.
Saturday's plane crash in Indonesia, in which a Sriwijaya Air carrying 62 people plunged into the Java Sea shortly after takeoff, has once again turned the microscope on the safety of the country's aviation industry. Indonesia's aviation record is one of the worst in Asia, with more civilian airliner passenger accidents since 1945 than any other country in the region. While experts say there have been many improvements in recent years, the latest crash has experts questioning the true progress of Indonesia's aviation oversight and regulation.
Mr Munchel said his intention was not to fight with the police but ‘to show them that we can, and we will’
President-elect Joe Biden plans to release nearly every available dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines when he takes office later this month rather than holding back millions of second doses, his transition team said Friday. The decision is meant to "ensure the Americans who need it most get it as soon as possible."The Trump administration has insisted it's necessary to retain second doses, with Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar on Friday expressing concern that Biden's plan could backfire if there are any manufacturing mishaps.Outside of the White House, Dr. Leana Wen of George Washington University, was also apprehensive, noting that there is "an ethical consideration" since those who volunteered for the initial dose were reasonably expecting to receive the second in the proper amount of time. Biden does not intend to delay the second shot for those patients, and is instead counting on an increased production to keep pace. But, Wen says, not only is there no guarantee of a smooth manufacturing process, much of the slowdown has occurred between distribution and injection, so until that stage improves the risk of delay remains.> First, the bottleneck now is not supply, but the "last mile" between getting the vaccine to distribution sites & injecting it into people's arms. Speeding up this process should be the focus, or else vaccines will just sit in different freezers. > > (2/6)> > -- Leana Wen, M.D. (@DrLeanaWen) January 9, 2021Harvard University's Juliette Kayyem, however, is more on board with the plan. She believes it's unlikely there will be a supply problem and is encouraged by recent upticks in actual vaccinations. > Quick thoughts: we are unlikely to have a supply problem by Feb with Biden announcement (he is not changing FDA standards, only distribution timing of first vaccine because of reliance on supply chain per @ScottGottliebMD good idea) and other vaccines (johnson and johnson). 2/> > -- Juliette Kayyem (@juliettekayyem) January 9, 2021More stories from theweek.com 7 scathing cartoons about Trump's Capitol riot Trump reportedly told Kelly Loeffler he'd 'do a number on her' if she didn't back Electoral College challenge Sympathy for Ashli Babbitt
After video of unruly Trump supporters harassing lawmakers in airports and reports of distruptions on flights to and from Washington the same week Trump loyalists descended on D.C. and stormed the Capitol, the head of the Federal Aviation Administration vowed to take "strong enforcement action" . In a statement over the weekend, FAA Administrator Steve Dickson said quote, "I expect all passengers to follow crew member instructions, which are in place for their safety and the safety of flight." Earlier this week, the flight attendants union said Trump supporters who stormed the Capitol should not be allowed to depart Washington on commercial flights after exhibiting quote "mob mentality behavior" on flights into the region. Alaska Airlines said on Friday it banned 14 passengers from future travel with the carrier after a number of passengers were quote "non-mask compliant, rowdy, argumentative and harassed our crew members" on a flight from Washington to Seattle last Thursday. American Airlines temporarily halted alcohol service on flights departing and arriving in Washington after last Wednesday's events. Republican Senator Lindsey Graham was harassed on Friday by supporters of Trump and called a "traitor" at Washington's Reagan National Airport before departing on a flight.
Donald Trump suggested he could start his own social media platform in order to reach the 88 million followers he can no longer talk to on Twitter. Many of the president's supporters were moving to other lesser known forums which are less stringent on policing inflammatory political comments. After his personal Twitter account was banned, Mr Trump used the official presidential one - @POTUS - to promise them he would be in touch shortly. He said: "We have been negotiating with various other sites and will have a big announcement soon, while we also look at the possibility of building out our own platform in the near future...STAY TUNED!" Since Twitter began adding warnings to Mr Trump's tweets claiming election fraud his advisers had been warning that a permanent ban could be coming, and have been working on contingency plans. In a statement Twitter said it had closely reviewed the president's recent tweets "and the context around them - specifically how they are being received and interpreted on and off Twitter." The social media giant said it had acted "in the context of horrific events this week" and "due to the risk of further incitement of violence". Specifically, it cited Mr Trump's tweet on Jan 8 saying his voters would have a "GIANT VOICE long into the future" and one saying he would not attend the inauguration. Twitter said: "We have determined that these tweets are in violation of the Glorification of Violence Policy. "They were highly likely to encourage and inspire people to replicate the criminal acts that took place at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021." It also said that Mr Trump 's tweet that he would not be at the inauguration might serve as "encouragement" to those considering violent acts, indicating that it would be a "safe" target as he was not attending.
National Guard troops deploying to Washington, D.C., will have access to lethal weapons.
In his first sermon since winning his Senate race on Tuesday, Rev. Raphael Warnock told worshipers at the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta that he wanted to talk to them about "God's victory over violence."On Wednesday, one day after Warnock was elected Georgia's first Black senator and fellow Democrat Jon Ossoff was elected the state's first Jewish senator, a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol. "Just as we were trying to put on our celebration shoes, the ugly side of our story — our great and grand American story — began to emerge as we saw the crude and the angry and the disrespectful and the violent break their way into the people's house, some carrying Confederate flags, signs and symbols of an Old World Order passing away," said Warnock, the senior pastor at Ebenezer Baptist Church."They were not protesters, they were rioters, tearing up the people's house, and they were handled with the kind of kid gloves with humanity," Warnock continued. "One could not help but juxtapose that to the response to those who were responding this summer to the deaths of George Floyd and the death of Breonna Taylor, those who rose up in peaceful, nonviolent struggle, and were met with brute force."The U.S. must face what happened on Wednesday, he said, acknowledging that "we cannot and we will not change until we confront or are confronted by the sickness of our situation. That applies to individuals, that applies to institutions, that applies to nations. You can never get better until you have an actual diagnosis."More stories from theweek.com 7 scathing cartoons about Trump's Capitol riot Trump reportedly told Kelly Loeffler he'd 'do a number on her' if she didn't back Electoral College challenge Sympathy for Ashli Babbitt
Support for President Donald Trump has been consistently strong among evangelicals, with some professing that he has been the best friend Christians have had in the White House. On the first Sunday since a mob of his supporters seeking to overturn President-elect Joe Biden's election stormed the U.S. Capitol and five people including a police officer died, the messages from the pulpits of Christian leaders who've backed Trump were as disparate as the opinions of the nation's citizenry. Brian Gibson, pastor and founder of HIS Church, spoke to his Christian congregation and online viewers about his bus tour around the U.S. the past month to speak with supporters of President Trump.
An unlicensed dog breeder was forced to give up two rescued pets after she became the first to have a private prosecution brought against her by an animal charity. Nicola Palmer, 39, of Kesgrave, Suffolk, was taken to court by Phoenix Rehoming after she breached her adoption contract by failing to neuter her male and female dog brought to the UK from Romania. Palmer had no licence to breed the dogs but allowed them to have a litter of nine puppies, five of which were sold for £300 each. The remaining dogs were given to family members. Animal welfare chiefs said the case reflected how "growing numbers" of people were looking to cash in on rising demand for puppies exacerbated during the coronavirus pandemic. Phoenix Rehoming, which spotted that Palmer's female dog Esme was pregnant at the age of 10 months, sought help from the charity Animal Protection Services which organised the private prosecution. Ms Palmer was accused of three counts of theft relating to the two adult dogs and the litter, and breeding dogs without a licence. She gave back the adult dogs when she was served with the summons at her home three days before Christmas and was allegedly told the police would be called if she did not comply. The theft charges were dropped at Suffolk magistrates court in Ipswich last Wednesday, in return for her pleading guilty to not having a breeding licence. Ms Palmer who is on benefits was given a conditional discharge, and ordered to pay £230 towards the estimated £11,000 costs of the prosecution, and a £21 victim surcharge. A spokesperson for Animal Protection Services which investigates and prosecutes animal cruelty said: "We believe this is the first ever private prosecution relating to an unlicensed dog breeder. "We have found that there are a growing number of people cashing in on the huge demand for puppies caused by the coronavirus pandemic and people spending more time at home. "While this case related to a woman who had broken the condition of adopting dogs, there are also organised crime groups who are getting involved in breeding. Many groups are switching from drugs to puppies because there is so little enforcement. "The law about licensing breeders is supposed to be enforced by local authorities, but they have only brought a handful of cases. "We are in the process of bringing a further seven private prosecutions of people involved in unlicensed breeding." Anyone making more than £1,000 a year from dog breeding has to have a local authority licence, although the requirement is not enforced for the breeding of family pets. The law introduced in 1999 to crack down on puppy farms was strengthened in 2018 when a licence became compulsory for anyone breeding three or more litters a year, even if not for profit, instead of the previous limit of five. Ms Palmer who lives in Kesgrave, Suffolk, made a donation of £530 to the charity for the pups. She said: "It wasn't made clear to me when I took on the dogs that the charity still owned them even though I had paid for them. I had all their paperwork and passports showing they had been imported from Romania so in my mind, they were entirely mine.”
Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Soviet leader, said he expects U.S. President-elect Joe Biden to extend the last major nuclear arms control treaty between Moscow and Washington when it expires next month, but that the two countries have much more to do. In an interview with Russia's RIA news agency published on Monday, Gorbachev, 89, said he was counting on Biden, whom he said he had met many times, to extend the New START treaty. The pact limits the number of strategic nuclear warheads, deployed missiles and heavy bombers the world’s two biggest nuclear powers can have and is widely regarded as the cornerstone of global arms control.
The storming of the Capitol by Trump supporters on Jan. 6 stunned the world. In China, many watching the events in Washington D.C. immediately made comparisons to the violent occupation of Hong Kong's legislature in mid-2019.
Actor and former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) posted a video Sunday about Wednesday's assault on the U.S. Capitol, and he made some not-so-subtle comparisons to the Nazis. He said the "Nazi equivalent of the Proud Boys" had terrorized and rampaged against the Jews in the 1938 "Night of the Broken Glass," or Kristallnacht, and "Wednesday was the Day of Broken Glass right here in the United States. The broken glass was in the windows of the United States Capitol. But the mob did not just shatter the windows of the Capitol, they shattered the ideas we took for granted."Then Schwarzenegger got personal, noting that he was born in 1947 Austria, "in the ruins of a country that suffered the loss of its democracy." He shared a "painful story" about his father — and the other war-torn fathers who lived next door — getting drunk and beating their families."Growing up, I was surrounded by broken men drinking away their guilt over their participation in the most evil regime in history," Schwarzenegger said. "Not all of them were rabid anti-Semites or Nazis. Many just went along, step by step, down the road. They were the people next door," and they got violently drunk because "they were in physical pain because of the shrapnel in their bodies and in emotional pain from what they saw or did. It all started with lies, and lies, and lies, and intolerance.""President Trump sought to overturn the results of an election, and of a fair election!" Schwarzenegger said. "He sought a coup by misleading people with lies. My father and our neighbors were misled also with lies, and I know where such lies lead." He called "a number of members of my own party" spineless cowards and said while Trump is "a failed leader" who "will go down in history as the worst president ever," the elected leaders who "enabled his lies and his treachery" should remember that patriotism means to stand by the country, not the president.The video could have gone off the rails when Schwarzenegger pulled out out his sword from Conan the Barbarian, but he used it to illustrate a hopeful message about the strength and resilience of American democracy.More stories from theweek.com 7 scathing cartoons about Trump's Capitol riot Trump reportedly told Kelly Loeffler he'd 'do a number on her' if she didn't back Electoral College challenge Sympathy for Ashli Babbitt
The Trumps 'lack character, and have no moral compass,' former White House aide Stephanie Winston Wolkoff says
With Trump now finally accepting he will leave office, the future leadership of his movement is increasingly up for grabs – and many are jostling for the positionThe motives that drove a pro-Donald Trump mob to attack Congress last Wednesday ranged from hazy to proudly hateful. But the actions of certain ambitious Republican officeholders in the days leading up to the tragedy were not clouded by confusion.Trump may have lost the election, but his movement was on the march, and for politicians hoping someday to succeed Trump as president, that meant an opportunity was afoot.With Trump now finally accepting he will leave office, the future leadership of his movement is increasingly up for grabs, with a ragtag band of senators, congressman, Trump family members – and Trump himself – already jostling for the position.Whether anyone apart from the president is able to successfully ride the tiger of racism, nihilism and grievance politics that carried Trump to near-re-election after four years of American chaos and hundreds of thousands of preventable pandemic deaths is an open question.It also might be an irrelevant question, if Trump decides to stage a 2023-24 stadium tour doubling as a new presidential campaign.“Absent disqualification, the 2024 GOP presidential nomination remains his if he wants it,” tweeted Dave Wasserman, Congress editor of the Cook Political Report.But with Trump gone, for the moment, after years of rock-like reign over the Republican party, powerful currents of political ambition and realignment have swirled into the vacuum.Longtime Trump loyalists, chief among them the vice-president, Mike Pence, have suddenly broken with the president over his fight to reverse the election result. Mick Mulvaney, the former chief of staff and special envoy to Northern Ireland whose loyalty helped Trump escape conviction in the impeachment scandal, resigned over the Capitol riot debacle, saying: “I can’t do it. I can’t stay.”Two firebrand conservative senators, Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley, went the other direction, taking up Trump’s cause – only to see their campaign result almost immediately in the death of a police officer and four others, and the vandalization of the US Capitol.A third young senator with designs on the presidency, Tom Cotton of Arkansas, blasted his plotting colleagues “who, for political advantage, were giving false hope to their supporters”, he said. The Republican old guard, meanwhile, in the guise of Mitt Romney, who has actually run for president – twice – accused his colleagues of being “complicit in an unprecedented attack against our democracy”.Even the former Republican House speaker John Boehner, who since his 2015 retirement has mostly limited his commentary on politics to tweeted pictures of himself mowing his lawn, said the Grand Old party (GOP) was in trouble.“I once said the party of Lincoln and Reagan is off taking a nap,” Boehner wrote on Thursday. “The nap has become a nightmare for our nation. The GOP must awaken.”For certain Republicans, the violent and deadly near-sacking of the Capitol on Wednesday by white supremacists and other Trump sympathizers seemed to be only the second most disturbing event of the week.The night before, Republicans had lost two runoff US senate elections in Georgia, a state that until 2020 had not voted for a Democrat for president for 30 years. The two Georgia losses meant that Republicans lost control of the Senate – and leader Mitch McConnell lost his majority.“Emotions [are] running high among McConnell-aligned Republicans,” National Journal columnist Josh Kraushaar reported, “after [the] reality of what transpired in Georgia settled in. May be the heat of the moment, but mood is for declaring war on Team Trump.”A former McConnell chief of staff and campaign manager, Josh Holmes, was quick to knock down the idea.“A lot of emotions. People are angry,” Holmes replied on Twitter to Kraushaar. “Nobody is declaring war on anything. We’ll get through this.”But even the people with money, whose interests McConnell has expertly defended, grew agitated at the mess Trump had made.“This is sedition and should be treated as such,” Jay Timmons, president of the National Association of Manufacturers, an influential business trade group, said. “The outgoing president incited violence in an attempt to retain power, and any elected leader defending him is violating their oath to the constitution and rejecting democracy in favor of anarchy.” The chiefs of multiple Wall Street banks echoed the sentiment.That is not even to mention the cavalcade of Republicans who had long since broken with Trump, who piled on the president after the Capitol was sacked. The conservative columnist George Will said: “The three repulsive architects of Wednesday’s heartbreaking spectacle” – Trump, Hawley and Cruz – “will each wear the scarlet ‘S’ of sedition.” The conservative National Journal declared: “Trump must pay.” Matt Drudge’s web ite ran the sarcastic banner “Thanks, Donald”. The National Review hailed “Trump’s final insult”. A second former Trump chief of staff, John Kelly, joined those calling for his immediate removal from office.The Republican cross-currents do not mean that the party will not find direction in time to win back the Senate, plus the House, in 2022 – or to win the presidency in 2024, whether with Trump’s name on the ticket or tattooed on the nominee’s forehead.But Trump’s role in the party, and the politics, has never been to introduce order, except when that means that everybody falls behind him. For now, everybody is doing the opposite: falling out.
An American Airlines pilot on flight 1242 from Washington D.C. to Phoenix threatened to divert his plane to Kansas if passengers didn’t behave. “We will do that if that’s what it takes, so behave, please.”
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Saturday that he is lifting "self-imposed restrictions" on contacts between American diplomats and their Taiwanese counterparts, ending a practice that was in place to appease China.The United States, like most countries, doesn't have official relations with Taiwan, which China claims as its territory, but the Trump administration has "ramped up" its support for the self-ruled, democratic country over the years, Reuters notes, and Pompeo's latest move appears to be part of an effort to "lock in a tough approach" to Beijing before the White House transition takes place later this month.Taiwan's government welcomed the decision, but Chinese state media was unsurprisingly critical. One piece of commentary published by CGTN, the English-language channel of state broadcaster CCTV, called it a "cowardly act of sabotage" that "crossed a dangerous red line." And Hu Xijin, the editor of China's state-owned Global Times, warned — in a since-delated tweet — that Taiwan could face repercussions for Pompeo's actions, The Associated Press reports. "The option of using military means to solve [the] Taiwan question will also be put on the table," the tweet reportedly read.The move may not be universally applauded stateside, either, per Reuters. Bonnie Glaser, an Asia expert at Washington's Center for Strategic and International Studies, predicts the Biden administration will "rightly be unhappy that a policy decision like this was made in the final days of the Trump administration." Read more at Reuters and The Associated Press.More stories from theweek.com 7 scathing cartoons about Trump's Capitol riot Trump reportedly told Kelly Loeffler he'd 'do a number on her' if she didn't back Electoral College challenge Sympathy for Ashli Babbitt
QAnon followers and militia groups reportedly considered their choice of weapons to bring
