Democrats mark Jan. 6 at Capitol, White House
WASHINGTON — President Biden conferred high honors Friday on those who stood against the Jan. 6 Capitol mob two years ago and the menacing effort in state after state to upend the 2020 election, declaring that “America is a land of laws, not chaos,” even as disarray rendered Congress dysfunctional for a fourth straight day.
Democrats at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue commemorated the police officers attacked that day and the election workers and state officials nationwide who faced fierce intimidation from supporters of former President Trump fighting to keep him in office after his defeat.
“Our democracy held,” Biden said in awarding Presidential Citizens Medals to about a dozen recipients from across the country in the White House East Room. “We the people did not flinch.”
Yet democracy’s vulnerability was on display at the Capitol until Republicans broke their stalemate early Saturday to elect the next House speaker, which had left the chamber in limbo all week under the new GOP majority.
Ahead of Saturday’s resolution to the immediate crisis, GOP leadership continued negotiations to appease the party’s hard-right flank, with Bakersfield’s Kevin McCarthy finally flipping colleagues to support him in his quest to lead the chamber.
On Friday, lawmakers held a moment of silence to commemorate the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the building, drawing mainly Democrats, with brief remarks from outgoing and incoming House Democratic leaders — Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco and Hakeem Jeffries of New York — and none from the GOP.
The event was focused on the Capitol Police officers who protected the building that day and families of law enforcement officers who died after the riot. Jeffries said 140 officers were seriously injured and “many more will forever be scarred by the bloodthirsty violence of the insurrectionist mob. We stand here today with our democracy intact because of those officers.”
At the White House ceremony, Biden described the violence in evocative and at times graphic detail — the officer speared by a flagpole flying the American flag, the beatings, the bloodshed and racist screams from rioters who professed to be pro-law enforcement as they overran police and hunted for lawmakers.
“Sick insurrectionists,” the president said. “We must say clearly with a united voice that there is no place ... for voter intimidation or election violence.”
Although the horrors of that day came down on members of both parties, it is being remembered in a largely polarized fashion now, like other aspects of political life in a divided country.
Biden, in his afternoon remarks, played up the honorees’ heroism, whether in the face of the violent Capitol mob or the horde of Trump-inspired agitators who threatened election workers or otherwise sought to overturn the results.
But he couldn’t ignore warning signs that it could happen again.
In November’s midterm election, candidates who denied the outcome of 2020’s free and fair vote were defeated for many pivotal statewide positions overseeing elections in battleground states, as were a number of election deniers seeking seats in Congress.
Yet many of the lawmakers who brought baseless claims of election fraud or excused the violence on Jan. 6 continue to serve and are newly empowered.
Trump’s 2024 candidacy has been slow off the starting blocks, but his war chest is full, and some would-be rivals for the Republican presidential nomination have channeled his false claims about the 2020 results.
Several lawmakers who echoed his lies about a stolen election at the time were central in the effort to derail McCarthy’s ascension to speaker despite Trump’s appeals from afar to support McCarthy and end the fight.
The protracted struggle had left the House leaderless, unable to pass bills and powerless to do much more than hold vote after vote for speaker until McCarthy finally won a majority Saturday. National security briefings, helping constituents navigate the federal bureaucracy and more were on pause all week because the members-elect couldn’t take their oath of office.
Some Democrats saw a through line from Jan. 6.
The chaos of the speaker’s election “is about destruction of an institution in a different way,” said returning House member Pramila Jayapal of Washington, one of the lawmakers who fled the rioters two years ago.
In 2020, the insurrectionists trapped some lawmakers in the House chamber but never breached it. They held up national business for hours that day.
Some felt trapped in the same chamber this week by the repeated, fruitless votes for speaker that held up House business.
“The stream of continuity here is extremism, elements of Trumpism — norms don’t matter,” said returning House Democrat Mike Quigley of Illinois. “It’s not about governing; it’s about pontificating and advocating an extremist point of view.”
Democrat Ann McLane Kuster of New Hampshire said that it was “a very small minority who want to throw this institution into chaos.”
At least nine people who were at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, died during or after the attack, including a woman who was shot and killed by police as she tried to break into the House chamber, and three other Trump supporters whom authorities said suffered medical emergencies.
Officers Howard Liebengood of the Capitol Police and Jeffrey Smith of D.C.’s Metropolitan Police Department were at the Capitol and died by suicide in the days that followed. Biden honored both Friday with posthumous medals.
A third, Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, collapsed and died after engaging with the protesters. A medical examiner later determined he had died of natural causes.
The Metropolitan Police announced months later that two more of their officers who had responded to the insurrection, Kyle DeFreytag and Gunther Hashida, had also died by suicide.
On Friday, the group of mostly Democratic lawmakers held a 140-second moment of silence on Capitol Hill in honor of the late officers, as some of their families said their names and a bell was rung in their honor.
“I wish we didn’t have to be here,” said Ken Sicknick, brother of Brian Sicknick, after the ceremony.
After the unsatisfying midterm election for Trump allies, the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack wrapped up its work with a recommendation to the Justice Department to prosecute the former president. A special counsel and ultimately Atty. Gen. Merrick Garland will decide whether to indict him.
Though the congressional investigations have ended, the criminal cases are still very much continuing, both for the 950 arrested and charged in the violent attack and for Trump and his associates who remain under investigation. A second seditious conspiracy trial began this week, for members of the far-right Proud Boys.
In a measured but significant step, Congress amended the Electoral Count Act in December to limit the vice president’s role in counting electoral votes; to make it harder for individual lawmakers to mount objections to properly certified election results; and to eliminate “fake electors” like those deployed by Trump allies in a bid to overturn his defeat.
Biden, who has made it a tentpole of his agenda to prove to the world that democracies can deliver for their citizens, said then that this was “the first time we’re really getting through the whole issue relating to Jan. 6. Things are settling out.”
But then came the fight for speaker, rare in the annals of Congress.
“And now, for the first time in 100 years, we can’t move?” Biden said earlier this week. “It’s not a good look . ... how do you think it looks to the rest of the world?”