Miranda Green writes: Ashli Babbitt did not hide her far-right political views. Outside her San Diego bungalow, located blocks from the beach, she flew both an American flag and a QAnon flag emblazoned with a giant Q and the acronym WWG1WGA, for “Where we go one, we go all.” She plastered her SUV with pro-Trump bumper stickers and a Blue Lives Matter flag. On the door of the local pool-servicing company that she ran with her husband, uncle, and brother,…
The New York Times reports: Until March, when everything started tasting like cardboard, Katherine Hansen had such a keen sense of smell that she could recreate almost any restaurant dish at home without the recipe, just by recalling the scents and flavors. Then the coronavirus arrived. One of Ms. Hansen’s first symptoms was a loss of smell, and then of taste. Ms. Hansen still cannot taste food, and says she can’t even tolerate chewing it. Now she lives mostly on…
Viviane Callier writes: Imagine packing all the people in the world into the Great Salt Lake in Utah — all of us jammed shoulder to shoulder, yet also charging past one another at insanely high speeds. That gives you some idea of how densely crowded the 5 billion proteins in a typical cell are, said Anthony Hyman, a British cell biologist and a director of the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics in Dresden. Somehow in that…
Timothy Snyder writes: When Donald Trump stood before his followers on Jan. 6 and urged them to march on the United States Capitol, he was doing what he had always done. He never took electoral democracy seriously nor accepted the legitimacy of its American version. Even when he won, in 2016, he insisted that the election was fraudulent — that millions of false votes were cast for his opponent. In 2020, in the knowledge that he was trailing Joseph R….
The New York Times reports: The advance publicity for the “March for America” had been robust. Beyond the repeated promotions in tweets by the president and his allies, the upcoming event was cheered on social media, including Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. But woven through many of the messages to stand up for Mr. Trump — and, if possible, block the congressional certification of the election he claimed he had won — was language that flirted with aggression, even violence. For…
Kellie Carter Jackson writes: What Americans witnessed on their TV screens on Wednesday was not just an insurrection against American democracy—it was also an expression of white supremacy. As mobs of white Trump supporters stormed the Capitol building to ransack offices, terrorize lawmakers, and interrupt the certification of the presidential election, they were met with a notably weak show of force by the Capitol Police, who were responsible for quelling the insurrection. According to reports, more than 50 officers were…
NPR reports: The acting U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, Michael Sherwin, says “hundreds” of people may ultimately face charges related to the storming of the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, which interrupted a session of Congress and left five people dead. Sherwin spoke with NPR’s Martin Kaste in an exclusive interview Saturday evening about the multiagency investigation, the challenges officials face and what they’ll be looking for. Sherwin says he doesn’t want to “Monday morning quarterback” the U.S. Capitol…
The Associated Press reports: In a highly unusual move, American diplomats have drafted two cables condemning President Donald Trump’s incitement of the deadly assault on the Capitol and calling for administration officials to possibly support invoking the 25th Amendment to remove him from office. Using what is known as the State Department’s “dissent channel,” career foreign and civil service officers said they fear last Wednesday’s siege may badly undermine U.S. credibility to promote and defend democratic values abroad. “Failing to…
The Wall Street Journal reports: Stripe Inc. will no longer process payments for President Trump’s campaign website following last week’s riot at the Capitol, according to people familiar with the matter. The financial-technology company handles card payments for millions of online businesses and e-commerce platforms, including Mr. Trump’s campaign website and online fundraising apparatus. Stripe is cutting off the president’s campaign account for violating its policies against encouraging violence, the people said. Spokespeople for the Trump campaign didn’t immediately respond…
The Wall Street Journal reports: JPMorgan Chase & Co. said it is pausing all corporate political-action committee donations to Republicans and Democrats for the next six months in the wake of last week’s riot at the Capitol. The largest U.S. bank by assets is among other companies that announced this weekend they would make changes to donations via company PACs. Some, including the Blue Cross Blue Shield insurance group and Marriott International Inc., said they would pause donations to Republican…
STAT reports: Three-quarters of Covid-19 patients still have at least one symptom six months after first falling ill, researchers who followed hospital patients in China reported Friday. The new findings suggest symptoms linger longer and in a higher proportion of patients than previously thought. The largest and longest analysis to date of post-Covid recovery also warns that some patients’ antibody levels fell sharply, raising concern that while waiting for a return to full health, they could be reinfected with the…
Jamelle Bouie writes: The most shocking thing about Wednesday’s assault on the Capitol is that it happened. A mob of Trump supporters, some of them armed, stormed and vandalized both chambers of Congress, sending duly-elected lawmakers into hiding and interrupting the peaceful transition of power from one administration to the next. That this was whipped up by the president — “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and…
Kathleen Belew and Elizabeth Neumann write: The stories from Wednesday should shake us: Members of Congress escaping the House and Senate floors moments before a mob broke through, barricading themselves in their offices or undisclosed locations for hours. Four people who stormed the building and one member of the Capitol Police department died. We are astonished that more lives weren’t lost: Had the pipe bombs detonated, had the molotov cocktails ignited, had the people who stormed the Capitol with heavy-grade…
Olivia Nuzzi writes: 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…
The Wall Street Journal reports: White House officials pushed Atlanta’s top federal prosecutor to resign before Georgia’s U.S. Senate runoffs because President Trump was upset he wasn’t doing enough to investigate the president’s unproven claims of election fraud, people familiar with the matter said. A senior Justice Department official, at the behest of the White House, called Trump-appointed U.S. Attorney Byung J. Pak and told him he needed to step down because he wasn’t pursuing vote-fraud allegations to Mr. Trump’s…