One week after a violent mob stormed the U.S. Capitol, groups of National Guardsmen were situated inside the building Wednesday, reflecting the stringent security measures being implemented in the wake of the attack and ahead of President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration next week.
National Guard officials say about 6,200 soldiers and airmen are on the ground in D.C. to support law enforcement and security efforts at the Capitol. Startling photos on Wednesday morning showed scores of troops sleeping in the halls of the Capitol building as reporters and lawmakers headed to the House for the impeachment vote.
Ahead of the inauguration, on Jan. 20, the guardsmen who will be working with Capitol security will be armed with lethal weapons, Politico and CNN reported.
In early January, there were about 340 guardsmen assigned to manage traffic and assist law enforcement in Washington, according to the D.C. Air National Guard. But when hundreds of pro-Trump rioters broke into the Capitol during the counting of Electoral College votes on Jan. 6, forcing Congressmembers to evacuate the House and Senate chambers, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser requested more help, prompting acting Defense Secretary Chris Miller to bring thousands more guardsmen to the area.
The attack at the Capitol left at least five people dead. It also led Democratic lawmakers to bring forth an article of impeachment against President Trump for inciting the riot. Trump had given a speech before the riot at a rally on the National Mall, where he repeated false claims about the election being stolen from him and urged his supporters to fight back.
The U.S. House will vote on impeachment Wednesday afternoon.
—Crystal Hill/Yahoo News
Members of the National Guard gather at the U.S. Capitol as the House of Representatives prepares to begin the voting process on a resolution demanding Vice President Mike Pence and the cabinet remove President Trump from office, on Tuesday. (Erin Scott/Reuters)
Members of the National Guard are given weapons before Democrats begin debating one article of impeachment against President Trump at the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday. (Joshua Roberts/Reuters)
National Guard members look at the ceiling as Democrats debate one article of impeachment against President Trump at the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday. (Joshua Roberts/Reuters)
Hundreds of National Guard troops in repose inside the Capitol visitor's center to reinforce security at the Capitol. (J. Scott Applewhite/AP Photo)
Members of the National Guard rest in a hallway of the Capitol. (Sarah Silbiger/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
National Guard member poses for a picture with a statue of civil rights activist Rosa Parks as Democrats debate an article of impeachment against President Trump. (Joshua Roberts/Reuters)
Members of the National Guard take a rest in the Rotunda of the Capitol, near a bust of Abraham Lincoln ahead of an expected House vote impeaching President Trump. (Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)
Members of the National Guard play cards in the Capitol Visitors Center as the House of Representatives votes on the impeachment of President Donald Trump. (Caroline Brehman/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
Members of the National Guard rest in the visitor's center of the Capitol. (Stefani Reynolds/Getty Images)
Members of the National Guard rest in the Capitol visitor's center on Capitol Hill, ahead of an expected House vote impeaching President Trump. (Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)
Members of the National Guard rest in the rotunda of the Capitol as the House of Representatives votes on the impeachment of President Trump. (Caroline Brehman/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
Members of the National Guard rest in the Capitol visitor's center on Capitol Hill, ahead of an expected House vote impeaching President Trump. (Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)
National Guard members sleep, before Democrats begin debating one article of impeachment against U.S. President Donald Trump. (Joshua Roberts/Reuters)
Members of the National Guard sleep in the rotunda of the Capitol as the House of Representatives convenes to impeach President Trump. (Kent Nishimura/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., walks past members of the National Guard sleeping in the halls of the Capitol as the House of Representatives convenes to impeach President Trump. (Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
The House impeachment debate on Wednesday heard a distorted account of President Donald Trump's remarks to his supporters a week ago when he exhorted them to “fight like hell" before they swarmed the Capitol. THE FACTS: Trump's speech was a call to action — a call to fight and save the country. Reschenthaler accurately quoted a line from Trump, when the president told supporters “I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”
Moncef Slaoui, the chief adviser for Operation Warp Speed, has resigned but will be available to the incoming Joe Biden administration as a consultant for about four weeks, a Biden transition official told Reuters late on Tuesday. Slaoui's role leading the COVID-19 vaccine development for the government effort is expected to be diminished after Jan. 20, according https://cnb.cx/3bAxEce to CNBC, which first reported the development. The Biden team has not asked Slaoui to stay past his current contract, which includes a 30 days' notice before termination, CNBC said.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) is speaking out about her "traumatizing" experience at the Capitol building during last week's deadly pro-Trump riot, revealing a "very close encounter" made her fear for her life. The New York lawmaker spoke on Instagram about what she described as a "traumatizing week for so many people" after a mob of President Trump's supporters stormed the Capitol building in a riot that left five people dead. She referenced a "close encounter" she had during the riot, one she said she couldn't provide further details on for security reasons."I had a pretty traumatizing event happen to me," she said. "And I do not know if I can even disclose the full details of that event due to security concerns, but I can tell you that I had a very close encounter where I thought I was going to die. ... I did not know if I was going to make it to the end of that day alive. And not just in a general sense, but also in a very, very specific sense."Ocasio-Cortez told viewers that it "is not an exaggeration to say that many, many members of the House were nearly assassinated" during the riot, and lawmakers were "very lucky that things happened within certain minutes" so they weren't harmed. "But many of us nearly and narrowly escaped death," Ocasio-Cortez added. She also described having feared, after being taken to a secure location with other lawmakers, that certain "white supremacist members of Congress" would "disclose my location" and "create opportunities to allow me to be hurt" or "kidnaped." > "I had a very close encounter where I thought I was going to die." @AOC says she feared for her life as a mob looted the Capitol in Washington DC.> > Read more on this story here: https://t.co/67A9hRXauR pic.twitter.com/cZvZZEWnRw> > -- Sky News (@SkyNews) January 13, 2021More stories from theweek.com Do Democrats realize the danger they are in? America's rendezvous with reality What 'Blue Lives Matter' was always about
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has cancelled a trip to Europe trip at the last minute. Mr Pompeo had been due to fly out on Tuesday but Reuters reports that Luxembourg’s foreign minister and several top European Union officials have declined to meet with him. The secretary was supposed to meet with his counterpart in Luxembourg before travelling on to Brussels.
The man identified as the rioter photographed sitting in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office chair during last week’s Capitol insurrection made his initial federal court appearance Tuesday. Richard Barnett, 60, of Gravette, Arkansas, appeared before U.S. Magistrate Judge Erin Wiedemann in Fayetteville, Arkansas, to hear the charges against him. Among them is a charge that he unlawfully entered a restricted area with a lethal weapon — in this case, a stun gun.
The tipping point came just before 6pm on Tuesday night. Almost simultaneously, Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate, and congresswoman Liz Cheney, the third ranking Republican in the House of Representatives, made clear they have abandoned Donald Trump. It was the moment the political sands shifted under the president's feet. Other, previously loyal, Republicans will follow. And the way is now clear, not just for Republicans in the House to join Democrats in impeaching Mr Trump, but potentially for the Senate to convict him. Mr Trump would be the first US president to meet such an ignominious fate. Hours earlier it had still seemed a very remote possibility. Mr McConnell is a quietly spoken individual, but when he strikes he is lethal. Nothing he does is without calculation. On Tuesday, perfectly timed for reporting on the evening TV news, the New York Times carried a bombshell that Mr McConnell had "told associates" his thinking. And it was devastating. He now "hates" Mr Trump, it was said, and believes the president has committed impeachable offences. He would be "pleased" if Mr Trump was impeached because it would help to "purge" him from the Republican party. Mr McConnell does not do things by half measures. Tellingly, there was no denial of the report from his office. Within minutes Ms Cheney was out with a blistering statement saying she would join Democrats in voting to impeach. Dick Cheney's daughter did not hold back either.
As the fallout continues following last Wednesday’s Capitol insurrection, Democratic New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez took to her social media this week to share the terror she experienced that day – at times fearing her own congressional colleagues would turn her over to the angry mob to be killed. Have you subscribed to theGrio’s podcast “Dear Culture”?
In an extraordinary letter Tuesday, all eight of the top U.S. military officers told U.S. service members that last week's deadly mob attack on the U.S. Capitol was an illegal "direct assault" on not just Congress but also America's constitutional order, and "the rights of freedom of speech and assembly do not give anyone the right to resort to violence, sedition, and insurrection."The letter from the Joint Chiefs of Staff followed Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy's approval of 15,000 National Guardsmen, some armed with lethal weapons, to help secure the Capitol amid credible threats of violence from armed militia groups leading up to President-elect Joe Biden's inauguration next Tuesday. Biden, the four-star generals reminded U.S. forces in their letter, "will be inaugurated and will become our 46th commander in chief."> The Joint Chiefs of Staff have sent this letter to the U.S. military about the attack on the U.S. Capitol, and the forthcoming transition of power to President-elect Biden as "our 46th Commander in Chief." pic.twitter.com/IzlYmAygfe> > — Breaking News (@BreakingNews) January 12, 2021"As service members, we must embody the values and ideals of the nation," the Joint Chiefs said. "We support and defend the Constitution. Any act to disrupt the constitutional process is not only against our traditions, values, and oath; it is against the law."Some retired military officers participated in Wednesday's insurrection, and Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) asked the Pentagon on Monday to cooperate with the FBI and Capitol Police to determine the extent of participation in the "seditious conspiracy" by current and former service members. Another veteran, Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colo.), said Sunday that McCarthy should screen any military personnel involved in inauguration security to make sure none are "sympathetic to domestic terrorists."More stories from theweek.com Do Democrats realize the danger they are in? America's rendezvous with reality What 'Blue Lives Matter' was always about
A Central Florida firefighter photographed inside the U.S. Capitol during last week’s pro-MAGA riot was arrested Tuesday on charges of disorderly conduct and unlawful entry.
Israeli warplanes carried out intense airstrikes in eastern Syria early Wednesday, apparently targeting positions and arms depots of Iran-backed forces.
Officials investigating last Saturday's Boeing airliner crash in Indonesia are understood to be probing a possible link to the plane's prolonged grounding during last year’s Covid-19 lockdowns. The 27-year-old Boeing 737-500, which crashed into the sea off Jakarta with 62 people on board, spent nearly nine months out of service last year because of reduced flight timetables caused by the pandemic. While officials conducting the inquiry have not yet commented on the cause of the crash, experts are now speculating that it may be due to technical faults caused by the plane’s lack of regular use. “There’s a major problem starting to raise its head in terms of restoring these aircraft because while out of service for nine or 10 months, they need to be kept operating, otherwise they deteriorate,” said Hugh Ritchie, chief executive of Aviation Analysts International, an Australian air safety consulting firm. The Indonesian plane did not fly between March 23 and Dec 19 last year, and was then used 132 times after it resumed operating, according to aviation data provider Flightradar24.
Ethiopia said on Wednesday its military had killed three members of the Tigray region's former ruling party, including former Ethiopian Foreign Minister Seyoum Mesfin. The three Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) officials were killed, and five other party members were captured, after they refused to surrender to the military, the government's task force for the crisis in Tigray said on Twitter. Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed's government declared victory in its conflict with the TPLF on Nov. 28 last year after nearly a month of fighting.
President Trump's second impeachment trial will likely have to wait until he's out of office.With just one week left in Trump's term, the Senate would have to return early from its recess to hold an impeachment trial — even a protracted one — and vote to remove Trump from office. But Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's (R-Ky.) team confirmed Wednesday that he won't use his emergency powers to do so, meaning the Senate won't return until its scheduled date of Jan. 19. That's just a day before the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden.> Can confirm —> https://t.co/l2U1WlyQSF> > — Doug Andres (@DougAndres) January 13, 2021The House was also on recess after last week's attack by Trump supporters on the Capitol, but reconvened for Wednesday's vote to proceed with articles of impeachment against Trump. The House, with a Democratic majority and support from a handful of Republicans, is expected to move the impeachment effort to the Senate. Trump can still be convicted in the Senate after he leaves office, which could block him from running in 2024 again.More stories from theweek.com Do Democrats realize the danger they are in? America's rendezvous with reality What 'Blue Lives Matter' was always about
“I’m grateful to Senator Cruz for the opportunity and wish him and his first-rate staff nothing but the best,” said Lauren Blair Bianchi. Sen. Ted Cruz‘s (R-Texas) communication director has announced her resignation after the deadly events at the U.S. Capitol. According to Punchbowl News, Lauren Blair Bianchi who had worked with Cruz since July 2019, shared a brief statement revealing her decision to step down.
A Kansas woman was executed Wednesday for strangling an expectant mother in Missouri and cutting the baby from her womb, the first time in nearly seven decades that the U.S. government has put to death a female inmate. Lisa Montgomery, 52, was pronounced dead at 1:31 a.m. after receiving a lethal injection at the federal prison complex in Terre Haute, Indiana. As a curtain was raised in the execution chamber, Montgomery looked momentarily bewildered as she glanced at journalists peering at her from behind thick glass.
Come home from a day of exploration to a charming forest-clad cabin or a chic art-filled loft—the choice is yours Originally Appeared on Architectural Digest
While members of Congress were in lockdown during last week’s siege on the Capitol, Republican members were captured on video refusing to wear masks. Since the attack, at least three House members have tested positive for COVID-19.
