Thursday, January 07, 2021

Omar Trump Impeachment Resolution Charges 'Attempted Coup Against Our Country'

"The urgency of this moment is real," said the Minnesota Democrat.


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 Published on Thursday, January 07, 2021 
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President Donald Trump arrives at a rally on January 6, 2021 in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images)

President Donald Trump arrives at a rally on January 6, 2021 in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images)

Rep. Ilhan Omar released on Thursday articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump, calling the president "the single greatest threat to our democracy."

The privileged resolution (pdf), co-led by fellow Democrats including Reps. David Cicilline (R.I.), Ayanna Pressley (Mass.), Jamaal Bowman (N.Y.), and Veronica Escobar (Texas), comes amid swelling calls for Trump's ouster—using arrest, the 25th Amendment, or impeachment—in the wake of an extremist, pro-Trump mob's Wednesday rampage through the U.S. Capitol in a failed coup attempt. 

"Every day that he remains in the office of the presidency—overseeing the United States military and nuclear arsenal—is a day the safety of the American people and the world are threatened," Omar (D-Minn.) said in a statement.

"The very administration officials who have been complicit in his crimes cannot be relied upon," she continued. "We must impeach and remove him from office immediately so that he cannot threaten our democracy and the world any longer or hold public office ever again. Congress should reconvene immediately to carry out this constitutional duty."

The resolution lists two articles of impeachment, the first of which accuses Trump of violating his constitutional oath to faithfully execute the office of President of the United States through an unlawful attempt to overturn the results of the November election, which he lost to President-elect Joe Biden. The second article addresses Trump's abuse of "the powers of the presidency to incite violence and orchestrate an attempted coup against our country"—a reference to Wednesday's violence in the Capitol.

The resolution further points to Trump's ginning up of the extremists when he told the crowd before the Capitol was breached: "You'll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong," and his comments to the mob after the attack on the building: "We love you, you're very special."

"Please call the House to order and let's get it done. Today. Right now," Omar tweeted, a message directed at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). "The world is watching and waiting for us to act."

Cicilline (D-R.I.) also announced Thursday the introduction of a separate impeachment resolution. That effort is being co-led by Reps. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) and Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) and also points to Trump's Wednesday incitement of violence. The resolution states that Trump "will remain a threat to national security, democracy, and the Constitution if allowed to remain in office."

Progressive groups including Patriotic Millionaires have backed the call for Trump's impeachment.

In a Thursday statement, Morris Pearl, chair of the Patriotic Millionaires, assessed Wednesday's violence and chaos by saying that Trump "actively recruited and nurtured this group of traitors, whipped them into a violent frenzy, and directed them to attack the Capitol."

"There must be consequences," said Pearl. "They must be immediate. They must be severe. And they must unequivocally affirm our lawmakers' and this nation's commitment to democracy and the rule of law."

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Ocasio-Cortez Says Cruz and Hawley 'Must Resign'—or Be Expelled From Senate

"No 'turning the page,'" said Public Citizen regarding Republicans who helped incite Wednesday's pro-Trump mob. "No abstract 'healing.' Accountability. Immediately."


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 Published on Thursday, January 07, 2021 
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In this screenshot taken from a congress.gov webcast, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) speaks during a Senate debate session to ratify the 2020 presidential election at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021 in Washington, DC. Congress has reconvened to ratify President-elect Joe Biden's 306-232 Electoral College win over President Donald Trump, hours after a pro-Trump mob broke into the U.S. Capitol and disrupted proceedings. (Photo: congress.gov via Getty Images)

 In this screenshot taken from a congress.gov webcast, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) speaks during a Senate debate session to ratify the 2020 presidential election at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021 in Washington, DC. Congress has reconvened to ratify President-elect Joe Biden's 306-232 Electoral College win over President Donald Trump, hours after a pro-Trump mob broke into the U.S. Capitol and disrupted proceedings. (Photo: congress.gov via Getty Images)

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Thursday vehemently rejected a call by Sen. Ted Cruz for lawmakers and Americans to put the current "anger and division behind us," 24 hours after the senator himself baselessly contested the presidential election results—an action which helped incite a mob of thousands to storm the Capitol building in what has been characterized as an insurrection. 

Cruz and other lawmakers who challenged the results "must resign," the New York Democrat tweeted. "If you do not, the Senate should move for your expulsion."

In addition to President Donald Trump's repeated false claims that the election was "stolen" from him and that the results in several states were illegitimate, the two months preceding Wednesday's attack on the nation's Capitol—where lawmakers were convening to certify President-elect Joe Biden's victory—were characterized by the refusal of other Republicans in both the House and Senate to accept the results. 

Cruz joined with seven other senators including Sens. Josh Hawley of Missouri and Rick Scott of Florida to vote to overturn the election results on Wednesday night, hours after the insurrection was brought to an end. One hundred and thirty nine Republican House members also voted against certifying the election results despite dozens of federal and state court rulings which have rejected Trump's and other GOP members' challenges.

Amid the challenge, Ocasio-Cortez noted, Trump supporters who believe that Biden's victory is fraudulent—as more than three-quarters of Republican voters now do, according to a recent poll—descended on the Capitol building, forcing lawmakers and journalists to go into hiding while barricades were breached, windows broken, and offices vandalized in an assault that led to the death of four people.

"Sen. Cruz, you must accept responsibility for how your craven, self-serving actions contributed to the deaths of four people yesterday," Ocasio-Cortez tweeted.

Government watchdog Public Citizen echoed Ocasio-Cortez's rejection of Cruz's statement, in which he defended his decision to repeatedly challenge the "integrity" of the election—found by the Trump-created Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) to be "the most secure in American history"—while also claiming to want a "peaceful and orderly transition of power."

"No turning the page," tweeted the organization, calling for immediate "accountability" for those who stoked the flames that led to Wednesday's violence. 

In addition to calling for the resignations of Cruz and Hawley, who was the first senator to announce he would challenge the election results, Ocasio-Cortez on Wednesday joined Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) in calling for the expulsion of other lawmakers who objected to certifying the election. On Thursday, Reps. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.) and Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) joined the call. 

"The Republican members of Congress who incited the attempted coup our Capitol should be expelled from Congress," tweeted Bowman. 

The congressman urged supporters to sign a petition supporting the resolution, which has garnered more than 141,000 signatures so far. 

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'White Privilege on Steroids': Ire After Pro-Trump Mob Gets Red Carpet Compared to Black Lives Matter

Had the Capitol insurrectionists "been Black and Brown," they "wouldn't have made it up those steps," asserted Rep. Cori Bush. 


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Police brutally cleared Black Lives Matter protesters from near the White House in Washington, D.C. on June 1, 2020. (Photo: Jose Luis Magana/AFP via Getty Images)

A Black Lives Matter protester is assaulted by a police officer during a June 1, 2020 Washington, D.C. protest against the police killing of unarmed Black man George Floyd in Minneapolis. (Photo: Jose Luis Magana/AFP via Getty Images)

For many Black Americans, Wednesday's deadly mob insurrection in Washington, D.C. and the manner in which it was managed by police was yet the latest affirmation of the double standards inherent in a nation built upon a foundation of slavery—in the case of the U.S. Capitol literally so—and enduring racial oppression.

"We must acknowledge the profound inequity of a broken system that allows peaceful protesters to get tear-gassed for a photo op, while domestic terrorists who storm the Capitol in a violent coup attempt get to roam the streets freely."
—Rep. Barbara Lee 

Incited by calls from President Donald Trump and his leading accolytes to "take back our country" in a "trial by combat," hundreds of die-hard loyalists—almost all of them white—violently attacked the beating heart of American democracy while lawmakers attempted to perform their crucial duty. 

Some of the police officers stood aside and even opened the gates so the insurrectionists, some reportedly armed with guns and bombs, could rush in. Others scaled walls and surged past overwhelmed officers to join the marauding MAGA mob inside. Many of the attackers appeared unopposed as they ransacked and looted the place while lawmakers and staff fled for their lives. 

When police finally regained control of the building, some of them laughed and posed for selfies with the seditious invaders. Another officer held hands with a trespasser to help her down the Capitol steps. 

The contrast between Wednesday's attempted coup against the United States government and police treatment of Black Lives Matter protests in Washington, D.C. and around the country in recent years is, as numerous observers have noted, "black and white." 

"It's definitely a difference," Lecia Brooks, chief of staff at the Southern Poverty Law Center, told The Globe and Mail. "It is a starkly different picture when the protesters are white. This is white privilege. These Trump supporters can walk boldly in to take over the... Capitol." 

When racial justice advocates peacefully protested in Washington last summer for Black lives cut short by police and white supremacist violence, the response from law enforcement was swift and brutal.

Although the protesters were a block away from the White House and did not attempt to breach its grounds, thousands of heavily armed federal and local law enforcement officers, backed by military air support and surveillance, were deployed to brutally disperse them so that Trump could make his way to a nearby church to pose for a photo with a Bible. 

It was a scene repeated around the nation during Black Lives Matter protests in recent years. Indigenous, anti-war, and other protesters have experienced similarly horrific violence. But Blacks have borne the brunt of such brutality ever since they started standing up for their lives, their dignity, and their equality. 

"White privilege is on display like never before in the U.S. Capitol," noted author and scholar Ibram X. Kendi. "If these people were Black... well, we all know what would be happening right now to them."

In an interview with MSNBC on Wednesday, newly sworn-in Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) agreed, saying that "had it been people who look like me, had it been the same amount of people, but had they been Black and Brown, we wouldn't have made it up those steps. We wouldn't have made it to be able to get into the door and bust windows and go put our feet up on the desks of Congress members."

"It was white privilege, and it was the call of our president and it was encouraged by our Republican colleagues," said Bush, who on Wednesday said she would introduce a resolution calling for the expulsion of GOP lawmakers whom she accused of inciting the violence.

Condemning Wednesday's attack as "domestic terrorism at its worst," human rights advocate Martin Luther King III—whose father was assassinated for championing Black lives and opposing what he called the "evil triplets" of racism, militarism, and materialism—told 9 News Australia that the police reaction to the Trumpist "treason" was "white privilege on steroids." 

"If you look at how Black Lives Matter demonstrations—peaceful demonstrations—have been handled, and how these individuals were able to get into the Capitol... and offices of Congress members, this is perplexing," said King. "And it's all because the president called for it. Under a different set of circumstances, he would be prosecuted to the full extent of the law." 

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The Insurrection Was Predictable

Yesterday’s events were the expression of a dangerous authoritarian movement that has been long in the making.
Pro-Trump protesters gather in front of the US Capitol Building on January 6, 2021 in Washington, DC. (Jon Cherry / Getty Images)

Two months ago, we published a series of reports on the growing threat of a coup attempt, wondering why it wasn’t being taken more seriously by Democrats and the media. We were scoffed at and eye-rolled, as if such things could never happen in America.

Nobody is scoffing or eye-rolling anymore, after Wednesday’s events at the US Capitol. There, insurrectionists stormed the building and halted the certification of the national election, as security forces allowed them to breach the Senate chamber and shut down the proceedings. There was a notable difference in the way federal security forces met last year’s Black Lives Matter protests with a show of force, and the way they allowed the Capitol to be overrun by right-wing authoritarians that they knew were coming.

About a decade ago, I wrote a book called The Uprising, which described how we were entering an era of chaos in which right-wing groups would try to seize power under the guise of populism. Clearly, that has been happening — we saw it speed up during the Tea Party backlash, and it was further accelerated by Donald Trump, who is a unique president in his willingness to use the White House megaphone to foment and destabilize.

Wednesday’s events were the result of all that incitement. It was a culmination that happened inside a culture of total impunity— and it is worth considering five points of context to understand what we’re really dealing with here, because it will likely continue after Trump leaves the White House.

We have long known that the far right — and specifically many Trump supporters — are hostile to democracy. Polling data from Monmouth University in 2019 found that about one-third of the strongest supporters of Trump scored in the highest ratings for authoritarian tendencies. In all, Democracy Fund data show that roughly one-third of Americans “say that an authoritarian alternative to democracy would be favorable.” That’s what was on display Wednesday.

While Trump has tried to blame violence on the Left, his administration has been trying to downplay the threat of right-wing authoritarianism and white supremacy. In a whistleblower complaint, a former top Homeland Security official alleged that Trump officials ordered him to modify an agency report’s section “on white supremacy in a manner that made the threat appear less severe.” Politico reported earlier this year that Homeland Security officials have “waged a years-long internal struggle to get the White House to pay attention to the threat of violent domestic extremists” — but they gave up because Trump wasn’t interested. Instead, federal security forces were focusing on deporting immigrants and investigating environmental activists.

The Capitol Police have a $460 million budget and 2,300 personnel to guard the US Capitol complex. For comparison, that is twice the size of the budget of my own city’s police department, which is used to secure an entire metropolis. Somehow, this army of Capitol security forces was unable — or unwilling — to stop insurrectionists from breaching the building and taking over the floor of the US Senate. And it’s not like they were caught by surprise — they had advance warning of the potential for unrest. So it’s almost as if they weren’t trying to stop the mayhem.

Washington mayor Muriel Bowser’s request to send National Guard reinforcements to the Capitol was initially rejected by the Defense Department — the same department whose leadership was recently purged and then replaced with Trump loyalists. That doesn’t seem like a coincidence, considering Trump initially refused to call for the insurrectionists to disperse.
The insurrection clearly fed off months of misinformation by Republican Party officials who continued to push the lie that the national election was plagued by fraud. Those lies spread: a survey last month found that three-quarters of Republican voters believe the election was fraudulent. Even though nobody has produced evidence of systemic fraud, Republican lawmakers in Washington continued to fuel the conspiracy theories, ultimately pressing Congress to overturn the national election. One photo caught Missouri senator Josh Hawley raising a fist to the oncoming insurrectionists as he headed to the Capitol to try to halt the certification of the election.


From our Francis Chung, Sen. Josh Hawley greeting protesters in the east side of the Capitol before riots began. pic.twitter.com/I8DjBCDuoP
— Manuel Quinones (@ManuelQ) January 6, 2021


As I wrote earlier this week, the Republican Party officials who fueled and abetted this insurrection did so because they assume they will experience no political, social, or legal consequences for their behavior. On the contrary, they will likely be rewarded with higher approval ratings and support from many Republican voters. And if the Look Forward Not Backward™ crowd gets its way and makes sure there are no legal consequences for any of Trump’s many crimes, then these Republicans will know they have a lifetime get-out-of-jail-free card for their own extremist behavior.

After all of this, if nothing changes, then I tend to agree with Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s aide Dan Riffle, who today said that “it always — even in moments like this — can get worse. If recent history is any guide, it almost certainly will.”


But things can still change — and they must.

In The Uprising, I argued that the best way to counter the rise of right-wing populism and to prevent it from proliferating is for an opposition movement and party to not just issue vague paeans to democracy and the soul of the nation. The opposition must also deliver tangible, material gains for working people — rather than continuing to be an elite and effete caretaker of a let-them-eat-cake establishment that right-wing provocateurs can forever burn in effigy.

The New Deal delivering such gains to the working class helped tamp down the outbreak of right-wing fascism in America. Nearly a century later, the Georgia elections this week proved the same point. There, two right-wing Republican authoritarians were defeated by the black reverend who runs Dr Martin Luther King Jr’s church and by a Jewish guy — and the Democratic duo won by relentlessly campaigning on a simple promise to deliver $2,000 checks to millions of Georgians facing eviction, starvation, and bankruptcy.

Of course, no matter what Democrats might deliver — survival checks, a higher minimum wage, guaranteed medical care, massive investments in job creation, a crackdown on abusive corporations — there will always be a right-wing authoritarian movement in America willing to weaponize racism and illiberalism for its cause.

So it’s not simple: there is not a straightforward one-to-one relationship between enacting policies that improve people’s lives and instantly snuffing out the kind of fascism that reared its head at the Capitol on Wednesday. But delivering for millions of people who’ve been economically pulverized for generations is the best and probably only way to try to halt fascism’s wider spread to more of the general population over the long haul.

That work must begin now.

Not tomorrow. Not in a few months.

Right now.


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Manuel Quinones
@ManuelQ
From our Francis Chung, Sen. Josh Hawley greeting protesters in the east side of the Capitol before riots began.
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