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FBI report warned of ‘war’ at Capitol, contradicting claims there was no indication of looming violence

FBI report warned of ‘war’ at Capitol, contradicting claims there was no indication of looming violence

The Washington Post reports: A day before rioters stormed Congress, an FBI office in Virginia issued an explicit internal warning that extremists were preparing to travel to Washington to commit violence and “war,” according to an internal document reviewed by The Washington Post that contradicts a senior official’s declaration the bureau had no intelligence indicating anyone at last week’s pro-Trump protest planned to do harm. A situational information report approved for release the day before the U.S. Capitol riot painted…

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Extremists move to secret online channels to plan for Inauguration Day in D.C.

Extremists move to secret online channels to plan for Inauguration Day in D.C.

NBC News reports: Right-wing extremists are using channels on the encrypted communication app Telegram to call for violence against government officials on Jan. 20, the day President-elect Joe Biden is inaugurated, with some extremists sharing knowledge of how to make, conceal and use homemade guns and bombs. The messages are being posted in Telegram chatrooms where white supremacist content has been freely shared for months, but chatter on these channels has increased since extremists have been forced off other platforms…

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Insect populations suffering death by 1,000 cuts, say scientists

Insect populations suffering death by 1,000 cuts, say scientists

The Guardian reports: Insect populations are suffering “death by a thousand cuts”, with many falling at “frightening” rates that are “tearing apart the tapestry of life”, according to scientists behind a new volume of studies. The insects face multiple, overlapping threats including the destruction of wild habitats for farming, urbanisation, pesticides and light pollution. Population collapses have been recorded in places where human activities dominate, such as in Germany, but there is little data from outside Europe and North America…

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Yes, it was a coup. Here’s why

Yes, it was a coup. Here’s why

Fiona Hill writes: Since last Wednesday, people have been arguing what to call what happened at the U.S. Capitol – was it a riot? An uprising? An insurrection? I’ve been public in calling it a coup, but others disagree. Some have said it’s not a coup because the U.S. military and other armed groups weren’t involved, and some because President Donald Trump didn’t invoke his presidential powers in support of the mob that broke into the Capitol. Others point out…

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Two Capitol Police officers suspended and 10-15 more under investigation for alleged roles in riot

Two Capitol Police officers suspended and 10-15 more under investigation for alleged roles in riot

CNN reports: Two US Capitol Police officers were suspended and up to 15 more are under investigation for their behavior during last week’s assault on the Capitol, and federal agents will look at whether current and former law enforcement officers played a role in the riot. One of the Capitol police officers took a selfie with someone who was part of the mob that overtook the Capitol and the other wore a “Make America Great Again” hat and started directing…

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Does Trump face legal jeopardy for his incendiary speech before the riot?

Does Trump face legal jeopardy for his incendiary speech before the riot?

The New York Times reports: Scrutiny increased on Monday on how President Trump sought to foment anger at a rally of his supporters and then dispatched them to the Capitol shortly before they rioted last week, as House Democrats on Monday unveiled an article of impeachment accusing him of inciting an insurrection. Here is an overview of some of the broader forms of legal jeopardy the president may be facing. What criminal laws might apply? If a grand jury were…

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Storming the U.S. Capitol was about maintaining white power in America

Storming the U.S. Capitol was about maintaining white power in America

Hakeem Jefferson writes: It is not by chance that most of the individuals who descended on the nation’s capital were white, nor is it an accident that they align with the Republican Party and this president. Moreover, it is not a coincidence that symbols of white racism, including the Confederate flag, were present and prominently displayed. Rather, years of research make clear that what we witnessed in Washington, D.C., is the violent outgrowth of a belief system that argues that…

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Who dies for Donald Trump?

Who dies for Donald Trump?

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,…

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Some Covid survivors haunted by loss of smell and taste

Some Covid survivors haunted by loss of smell and taste

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…

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A newfound source of cellular order in the chemistry of life

A newfound source of cellular order in the chemistry of life

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…

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Post-truth is pre-fascism

Post-truth is pre-fascism

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….

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‘Our president wants us here’: The mob that stormed the Capitol

‘Our president wants us here’: The mob that stormed the Capitol

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…

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The inaction of Capitol Police was by design

The inaction of Capitol Police was by design

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…

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D.C.’s acting U.S. attorney calls scope of Capitol investigation ‘unprecedented’

D.C.’s acting U.S. attorney calls scope of Capitol investigation ‘unprecedented’

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…

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U.S. diplomats in extraordinary protest against Trump for riot

U.S. diplomats in extraordinary protest against Trump for riot

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…

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