David Kurtz
Four months after the worst insurrection since the Civil War, the House GOP ousted one of its leaders for not condoning the vast Trump-led conspiracy to overturn the election that culminated with the insurrection. That Liz Cheney is a firebrand conservative and the scion of one of conservatism’s leading families for the last half century only sharpens the point. American democracy may be past the event horizon and we still not know it.
We have a beehive of activity on the Hill today, a combination of the Liz Cheney ousting and several committee hearings, all of which one way or the other flows directly from the Jan. 6 insurrection.
We, as in the nation, are still grappling (poorly) with the aftermath of what happened then. We, as in TPM, decided it was worth covering today as one big Jan. 6 story with distinct but highly related moving parts. And we’re doing it right here. I hope this gives you more context and grounding in where we are four months after the attack on the Capitol than a bunch of disparate stories about separate hearings would. Feedback welcome, as always. Check it out.
A historic proposal by any standard. Join us here to watch the culmination of the day’s rollout.
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From the closing argument of impeachment manager Madeleine Dean (D-PA):
For those who say we need to get past this, we need to come together, we need to unify, if we don’t set this right and call it what it was, the highest of constitutional crimes by the president of the United States, the past will not be past. The past will become our future.
Correction: I initially misidentified Dean.
Well, that didn’t last long.
Dems seemed to have seized the advantage, backed by five GOP senators, to present at least some witnesses in the second impeachment trial of Donald Trump. The fierce reaction of GOP senators to what House impeachment managers and Dem senators wanted to do testified to the the advantage Dems had taken hold of.
Big unexpected news this morning as the Senate has voted 55-45, with five Republicans joining all 50 Democrats, to consider witnesses subpoenas. This was on the heels of last night’s CNN report that put into sharper focus the phone call between President Trump and Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) during the Capitol siege.