Part 1 of 2
Rep. Ro Khanna: Republicans Should Back Impeachment After Trump Incited Mob Violence Against Themby Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow.org
JANUARY 08, 2021
NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHTYOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ
THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.
Calls are growing for President Trump to resign or be removed from office after he incited supporters to storm the Capitol in an act of insurrection to disrupt the counting of Electoral College votes. The unrest left five people dead, including a Capitol Police officer who was reportedly struck in the head by a fire extinguisher. Trump is losing support from his inner circle, with Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao both resigning before the end of Trump’s term.
The chief of the Capitol Police is also expected to resign next week, as multiple reports reveal police officers aiding rioters, from removing barricades to giving out direction to the offices of specific lawmakers. Democratic Congressmember Ro Khanna says Republicans must support efforts to remove Trump, especially as much of Trump’s incitement targeted Republican lawmakers who refused to back his false claims of election fraud. “This was not an attack just on Democratic lawmakers. If anything, it was an incitement of violence against Republican lawmakers,” says Khanna.
TranscriptThis is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: Calls are growing for President Trump to resign or be removed office for inciting supporters to storm the Capitol in an act of insurrection Wednesday to disrupt the counting of Electoral College votes. The unrest left five people dead, including a Capitol Police officer who was reportedly struck in the head by a fire extinguisher.
On Thursday, White House aides pressured Trump to read a scripted video message, prepared by his staff, where he denounced the mob that stormed the Capitol and vowed there would be a smooth transition of power. The New York Times reports Trump only agreed to record the video after realizing he could be charged for his role in inciting the riots and facing the prospect of being removed from office. Just a day earlier, Trump had a very different message for the insurrectionists, saying, quote, “We love you. You’re very special.” The Times also reports Trump has had discussions in recent weeks with staff about pardoning himself before leaving office, a move no president has ever taken.On Thursday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi threatened to impeach the president again if Vice President Mike Pence and the Cabinet does not invoke the 25th Amendment to remove him.
SPEAKER NANCY PELOSI: I join the Senate Democratic leader in calling on the vice president to remove this president by immediately invoking the 25th Amendment. If the vice president and Cabinet do not act, the Congress may be prepared to move forward with impeachment.
AMY GOODMAN: On Thursday, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao both resigned from their offices, joining at least 10 other Trump administration officials to quit since Wednesday. The Wall Street Journal editorial page is urging Trump to resign. That’s the Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal.
Lawmakers are also vowing to investigate the massive security breach at the Capitol, where rioters overwhelmed Capitol Police. Congressional leaders ousted the sergeants-at-arms of both the House and Senate. The chief of the Capitol Police is also expected to resign next week.
Multiple reports are emerging of police officers aiding the rioters by removing barricades, to giving out directions to offices of specific lawmakers, including Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer — who will become the Senate majority leader.To talk more about this, we’re joined by Ro Khanna, Democratic congressmember from California, member of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, was inside the Capitol Wednesday during the insurrection.
Congressman Khanna, welcome back to Democracy Now! Where were you? And can you describe the scene, personally, from your vantage point?
REP. RO KHANNA: Amy, I was in my office in the Cannon Building, and then we heard that there was an evacuation because there was apparently a pipe bomb nearby. So I left my office, and I started to head towards the Capitol. Fortunately, I got frantic texts from people saying, “Don’t go into the Capitol. It is being overrun.” At that point, some of us turned back. We were told that the Cannon Building was clear, but we didn’t know, but that it was our best course, so I went to my office, locked the doors of the office and stayed in the office the rest of the day.
AMY GOODMAN: So, Congressman Khanna, you have the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, calling for the removal of President Trump. Can you talk about the different options? Can you talk about what the 25th Amendment invocation would mean? Can you talk about what impeachment would look like?
REP. RO KHANNA: Well, the 25th Amendment, Amy, is something that Vice President Pence can do. He just needs to get a majority of the Cabinet on board, and they can ask that the president be removed, and Vice President Pence then can become president. If they refuse to do that, then the House must impeach, and the Senate should convict.
Here’s why Republicans should be for impeachment. If you listen to the president’s incitement of violence and Rudy Giuliani’s incitement of violence, the target was actually Republican lawmakers. Donald Trump Jr. is saying, “Go show the Republicans they need to be on our side, and we’re going to have a trial by combat.” So this was not an attack just on Democratic lawmakers. If anything, it was an incitement of violence against Republican lawmakers.
AMY GOODMAN: Inside the Capitol, as the marauders smashed their way in, as, ultimately, five people died — a woman apparently trying to get in through a window was shot, it looks like, by Capitol Police. Now a Capitol Police officer has succumbed to his injuries, apparently slammed in the head by a fire extinguisher. And three others who died of medical emergencies on the Capitol grounds. Describe the feeling inside. Did you ever expect this would happen?
President Trump’s whole family was at the rally — you had Ivanka Trump, you had Eric, you had Donald Trump — calling for people to move forward. Trump said he would go with them to the Capitol. Of course, he didn’t. And what that means? Do you see him as the leader of the insurrection? And do you think he should be criminally charged? He’s out of office in less than two weeks, if he’s not ousted before.
REP. RO KHANNA: Well, it is a case of classic incitement. It is illegal conduct to encourage people to go break the law. And in this case, there was a direct connection. It’s not like he made some generic call for protesting. What he said is “Go march at the Capitol.” Rudy Giuliani is saying it’s a “trial by combat.” He’s saying, “Go show strength.” This is basically an incitement of a mob to go commit criminal attacks.
And so, it absolutely needs to be investigated from a Justice Department perspective. But the first thing is, he needs to be removed from office. I don’t understand how you can have a president of the United States who has incited a violent attack remain in office any longer.AMY GOODMAN: Do you support impeachment or the invoking of the 25th Amendment?
REP. RO KHANNA: I support both. I mean, I support whatever will get him out. What I don’t understand is why you can’t have McConnell call him and say, “President Trump, if you don’t resign, you’re going to be impeached.” And that is necessary not just for the stability of our democracy until Joe Biden gets into office; that’s necessary to send a message that in this country you cannot incite riots and have no consequences. I mean, what does it say to people if we have a president of the United States who has incited violence against the institution of the Capitol, and we say we’re fine with him still being president of this country? That is not a message that stands up for democratic values.
AMY GOODMAN: Contrast this with President Trump’s approach in Portland, Oregon, when he called for people put in jail for up to 10 years if they in any way damaged federal property. Here, as we saw people smashing the windows of the Capitol, climbing through those windows, you have President Trump safely at the White House saying, “We love you.”
REP. RO KHANNA: Well, his speech was reminiscent of Marc Antony’s speech in Julius Caesar, minus Shakespeare’s rhetorical genius, where he was basically manipulating people, saying, “OK, go home,” but really the thrust of the speech was: “We love you. We support you. I support what you’re doing.” And it was further inciting this violence.
But you’re right, Amy, to point out the racial disparity. I mean, I don’t think there’s a person in this country who believes if there were thousands of Black Lives Matter protesters or Black protesters there, that the response wouldn’t have been dramatically different. And that is something this country really needs to grapple with, the disparity in which we looked at white protesters for Trump and the way we looked at many African American protesters during this summer who were protesting for racial justice.
AMY GOODMAN: Forget thousands of Black Lives Matter activists. If 12 announced they were going to march on the Capitol and they were going to storm it, not to mention just protest in front of it, I daresay there would be a massive response. And that goes to the question — I mean, this wasn’t like a flash mob, where suddenly these people emerged. President Trump had been calling for this for weeks. The mayor of Washington, D.C., Muriel Bowser, already had written a letter to the Pentagon asking for the National Guard to come in. How is it possible that the Capitol Police were not only so completely unprepared, but actually we see the high-fiving, we see the selfies, we see the removal of the barricades, ushering people in? Now you have the resignation of the chief of the Capitol Police and the ousting of the sergeants-of-arms of both the Senate and the House.
REP. RO KHANNA: Well, there are a lot of questions that need to be answered. I agree with you that the Capitol Police acted in a way that was completely unprepared, and these incidents of taking selfies and letting people in are very troubling. I do think we need to acknowledge that there were a lot of first-line responders and police officers, who I personally saw, who were doing the right thing, who were risking their own lives to protect people in the Capitol. But the leadership was totally derelict. They did not have a plan. They did not take the proper precautions. And, of course, Washington, D.C., was restricted. It’s why we need it to become a state, because they couldn’t invoke the National Guard.
The final point, Amy, is that social media really needs to be looked at. This whole attack was being planned on Parler. People were actually talking about how they were going to get rifles. They were talking in specifics about what they were going to do. And nothing came down on those sites. And then Facebook and Twitter were live-streaming the calls to go march on the Capitol. So I think social media has to really — probably one of its most shameful days in contributing to what happened on the Capitol.
AMY GOODMAN: And you have the newly sworn-in Democratic Congressmember Cori Bush of Missouri tweeting, “My first resolution in Congress will be to call for the expulsion of the Republican members of Congress who incited this domestic terror attack on the Capitol.” This is Cori Bush speaking on MSNBC Wednesday.
REP. CORI BUSH: I’m walking through from the Capitol to my office, and there was not a lot of police activity. There was no one. No one came to the door to check and knock on the door to say, “Congressmember Bush, are you and your team OK?” You know, we’re sending text messages letting people know. I’m letting, you know, our committees know we’re OK, letting our other members know we’re OK. You know, this — something had to happen, because, I’ll tell you what, the National Guard, when they’re called — when they were called to Ferguson or any other part in St. Louis, that was not a — that was not a thing. We didn’t have to wait to find out if that was happening. Oftentimes that happened even when it was said that we were having a protest. So I don’t understand how this happened like this. I don’t understand how we were put in this position in our place of business. Our lives were — you know, our lives were at risk today.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s Missouri Congressmember Cori Bush. And I’m wondering, Congressmember Khanna, if you’re among the lawmakers who are demanding the resignation of Republican Senators Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley, blaming them for helping instigate the violent mob of Trump supporters that stormed the Capitol. Cruz and Hawley were at the forefront of the efforts objecting to the certification of the electoral votes for President-elect Joe Biden.
Congressmember Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted yesterday, “Sen. Cruz, you must accept responsibility for how your craven, self-serving actions contributed to the deaths of four people yesterday. And how you fundraised off this riot. Both you and Senator Hawley must resign. If you do not, the Senate should move for your expulsion,” unquote.
Meanwhile, publishing company Simon & Schuster said Thursday it’s canceling the publication of an upcoming book by Senator Hawley. And Senator Hawley’s home newspaper, The Kansas City Star, has said he “has blood on his hands.” Even after everything happened, Hawley insisted on continuing to object to the counts in Pennsylvania, for example. Your response?
REP. RO KHANNA: Well, Amy, I think what Hawley did is unconscionable. I mean, he actually was out there with a fist pump supporting and encouraging directly the protesters. And so, resignation, in that sense, makes complete sense. And there should be an ethics investigation.
I think there has to be a distinction between members of Congress, as much as I disagreed with them, who used the process to raise objections, and they should be defeated at the ballot box. But if there were senators, like Hawley, who were actually inciting violence, that breaks all ethics laws, and that is a grounds for expulsion. And that fact-based investigation should take place. In Hawley’s case, I think it’s clear and evident.
AMY GOODMAN: Finally, through all of this, it almost became a sideshow, but Wednesday began and ended with history being made in Georgia. The first African American Democrat elected to the Senate from the South, Reverend Raphael Warnock, that was the beginning, in the early hours. And then you had, in the midst of all of this, the announcement that Jon Ossoff had won the second seat in Georgia, flipping the U.S. Senate to being Democrat-led, at least 50/50, and, of course, Vice President Kamala Harris will be the deciding vote. What does that mean for you in the House and the kind of legislation you want to see put forward?
REP. RO KHANNA: It’s absolutely historic. We now can get things done, like a $15 minimum wage, like a major infrastructure bill, like $2,000 cash for people who need it. This is a moment now that we have to deliver for the American people, whose wages have stagnated, who have not had good, secure jobs. But more than that, Amy, is it’s a step, after all this country has gone through, towards a multiracial, multiethnic democracy. We have a new South, with Reverend Warnock, not just an African American senator from the South, but an African American senator who ran talking about criminal justice, who ran talking about human rights in Palestine, who ran talking about issues of economic dignity. It is a new voice for this country. And I am hopeful that we’re going to turn a page after Donald Trump and start the serious work of building that kind of a democracy.
AMY GOODMAN: Ro Khanna, I want to thank you for being with us, California Democratic congressmember from Silicon Valley, member of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform.
Next up, we look at President-elect Joe Biden’s pick to head the Justice Department, Merrick Garland — yep, the judge who Republicans denied a seat on the Supreme Court five years ago. Stay with us.
***********************
White Supremacy in Action: Police Stand Down as Trump Mob Storms Capitol to Disrupt Election Voteby Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow.org
The U.S. Congress has certified President-elect Joe Biden’s victory, hours after a violent, right-wing mob incited by President Trump interrupted proceedings and stormed the U.S. Capitol. Four people died during the chaos, which has been described as an attempted coup. The insurrection was the culmination of months of lies by President Trump, widely repeated in right-wing media and on social media platforms, that the 2020 presidential election was rigged for Joe Biden. At a rally Wednesday, Trump urged supporters to head to the Capitol, who later broke through barriers and lines of police outside the Capitol and made their way inside, where they ransacked offices and sent lawmakers scrambling. Bree Newsome Bass, an antiracist activist, artist and housing rights advocate arrested in 2015 after she tore down the Confederate flag at the South Carolina state Capitol, says it’s impossible not to note “the obvious difference in terms of how police have a coordinated, overtly militarized response to any kind of protest that is challenging racism in policing or racism in the government versus what we witnessed yesterday” in Washington, D.C. “It is very clear that the primary function of police forces in the United States is to enforce racism above enforcing public safety.”
TranscriptThis is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: The U.S. Congress certified the election of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris shortly before 4 a.m. Eastern time this morning, about 14 hours after a violent mob incited by President Trump stormed and occupied the U.S. Capitol in an act of insurrection to stop the counting of votes. Some lawmakers described the siege as an attempted coup.
Members of the right-wing mob smashed windows, broke down doors and scaled walls to enter the Capitol. They attacked Capitol Police. They ransacked and looted offices, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s. An armed standoff took place at the door of the U.S. House of Representatives. Rioters took over the Senate chamber, with some Trump supporters, including a prominent supporter of the QAnon conspiracy theory, posing for photos in the seat occupied by Vice President Mike Pence just minutes before. One man carried a large Confederate flag inside the Capitol. Another wore a shirt that read, quote, “Camp Auschwitz.”
Vice President Pence and many lawmakers were evacuated to secure locations just as the mob breached the Capitol. Other lawmakers hid in their offices.
Four people died, including a Trump supporter who was shot dead by police.
Meanwhile, explosive devices were found at the headquarters of the Republican National Committee and the Democratic National Committee.
As of last night, Washington police had made just 26 arrests on Capitol grounds. Lawmakers are calling for probes into the Capitol Hill Police after officers were seen moving barricades for Trump supporters and taking selfies with members of the right-wing mob.
The insurrection began shortly after Trump spoke at a rally urging supporters to head to the Capitol, after once again falsely claiming the election had been stolen.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: We’re going to walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women. And we’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them, because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength, and you have to be strong.
AMY GOODMAN: When Trump supporters stormed the Capitol, the president remained silent, safely in the White House. The New York Times reports he initially rebuffed and resisted requests to mobilize the National Guard to protect the Capitol.
Hours after the insurrection began, Trump released a video statement urging his supporters to go home, while telling them, “We love you. You’re very special.”
Calls are mounting for Trump to be removed from office before his term ends January 20th. Multiple news outlets report some members of his Cabinet have discussed invoking the 25th Amendment to remove him from power. Such a move would require the support of a majority of Cabinet members, as well as Vice President Mike Pence. The move has been backed by Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee, as well as the National Association of Manufacturers, which says it’s needed to, quote, “preserve democracy.” Congresswoman Ilhan Omar says she’s drawing up new articles of impeachment.
New Jersey Senator Cory Booker condemned the president for inciting the violence.
SEN. CORY BOOKER: I can only think of two times in American history that individuals laid siege to our Capitol, stormed our sacred civic spaces and tried to upend and overrun this government. One was in the War of 1812, and the other one was today.
What’s interesting about the parallel between the two is they both were waving flags to a sole sovereign, to an individual, surrendering democratic principles to the cult of personality. One was a monarch in England, and the other, with the flags I saw all over our Capitol, including in the hallways and in this room, to a single person named Donald Trump. The sad difference between these two times is, one was yet another nation in the history of our country that tried to challenge the United States of America, but this time we brought this hell upon ourselves.
AMY GOODMAN: President Trump’s former chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, announced this morning he would resign from his post as special envoy to Northern Ireland, following Wednesday’s insurrection. Shortly after the election, Mulvaney wrote an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal titled “If He Loses, Trump Will Concede Gracefully.” At least four other Trump administration officials resigned on Wednesday.
Shortly after Congress certified Biden’s victory, Trump issued a statement saying there will be an orderly transition of power on January 20th, but then repeated false claims that he had won the election, he keeps repeating, “by a landslide.” He ended the message saying, quote, “it’s only the beginning of our fight to Make America Great Again!”
The certification vote process was prolonged after Republican lawmakers challenged the election results in Arizona and Pennsylvania in a last-bid effort to overturn the election. The senators were led by Senator Hawley. The Kansas City Star said he “has blood on his hands” for continuing with challenging the vote after the mass insurrection.
We begin today’s show with two guests. Manisha Sinha is professor of American history at University of Connecticut. She’s author of The Slave’s Cause: A History of Abolition. And we go to North Carolina, where we’re joined by Bree Newsome Bass, artist and antiracist activist. Following the massacre of eight African American parishioners and their pastor by a white supremacist at the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston in June 2015, Bree scaled the 30-foot flagpole at the South Carolina state Capitol and removed the Confederate flag. There were Confederate flags in the Capitol yesterday, carried by the insurrectionists. She’s now a housing activist in North Carolina.
Bree, let’s begin with you. You were tweeting up a storm as the storm was unfolding in Washington, D.C., yesterday. You said, “Y’all the DC mayor requested the national guard. The pentagon was discussing the threat long before today. It’s not possible security forces were caught off guard, unprepared or simply failed. Please cease this ridiculous narrative.” So, take it from there, Bree.
BREE NEWSOME BASS: Yes. Thank you for inviting me to join you.
I mean, I was on social media all yesterday and, like everyone else, was just kind of gripped by watching the events that were happening. And one of the things that we saw throughout the day yesterday were people like myself, who have been present for various protests, you know, and mostly people of color, Black people, noting the obvious difference in terms of how police have a coordinated, overtly militarized response to any kind of protest that is challenging racism in policing or racism in the government versus what we witnessed yesterday. And I think that what we saw yesterday is just another one of these kind of flashpoint moments in history that just represents a culmination of everything that came before it, and really shines a spotlight on everything that is fundamentally wrong. And one of those things is clearly policing.
The idea that we had no idea that this was coming, which I think, is, frankly, one of the, like, ongoing, most disturbing talking points that we have gotten throughout the Trump administration — people say, “How could we have gotten here? This isn’t who we are,” which just completely flies not just in the face of American history — right? — but in the face of the events of just the past five years. I mean, everything that we have seen in the past five years pointed to what happened yesterday happening. And so, the idea that security officials, people who are tasked with protecting the Capitol, could not have foreseen the conflict that played out yesterday is clearly beyond belief. I mean, there’s no way to believe that that is the case.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Bree, quite apart from the fact that, you know, it was just an astounding spectacle of all these, I mean, effectively domestic terrorists invading the Capitol, what’s also strange, if not outright stunning, is the fact that there was such little comment from either the Department of Justice or security agencies responding to this extraordinary event, apart, of course, from the FBI asking for explicit help in identifying those who instigated the violence — an extremely bizarre request given that it was quite apparent who the instigators were.
BREE NEWSOME BASS: Absolutely. I mean, again, the central issue here is white supremacy. And white supremacy was foundational to the establishment of this nation. That is the central conflict. I mean, that is the main thing that I continue to say as an activist, is that, clearly, this is the central conflict. It is baked into our institutions. It was baked into our Constitution at the founding. And that continues to be the case. And that explains why — I wouldn’t even describe it as a difficulty in figuring out what is going on. It’s just the fact that it is the defining internal conflict of the nation. So, yes, of course, you have people within the military. You have people within policing. You have people within the government. It was elected officials who initiated the events that led to this riot.
One of the things that was most striking to me yesterday — I was among the people who kind of stayed up into the wee hours of the morning watching how things played out at the Capitol — was, you know, you would see congressperson after congressperson condemning the insurrectionist mob — so you’re talking about, you know, the civilians who showed up — but there was still very little acknowledgment of the fact that the people who led the insurrection, the people who have incited these people to mob the Capitol, were sitting there in the chamber, were still voicing their objection to the election.
So, you know, this idea that we are somehow just going to reach across the aisle and shake hands and carry on as though we did not witness things play out as it did, as though the primary inciter of violence yesterday was not the president of the United States, is just completely unrealistic. And there’s no way that that can happen.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Bree, you also — among your tweets yesterday, you wrote that what was happening yesterday was not the culmination of the last four years, but in fact the culmination of the last five centuries. Could you talk about that?
BREE NEWSOME BASS: Yeah, that was actually me retweeting someone else who made that excellent point. And again, it goes to the heart of this false notion that we could not foresee what was happening or that this is not America. This is absolutely America. We have an ongoing, prolonged history not just of colonization and slavery and genocide in this country, but also this constant back-and-forth where we try to make strides towards having a democracy that truly recognizes the rights and citizenship of all people, and violent, white supremacist backlash against that cause.
I mean, you know, people were bringing up the Wilmington riots — right? — of 1898, which that took place here in North Carolina, another example in the aftermath of the Civil War where you had Black people being elected to Congress, working in collaboration with white elected officials, and they were overthrown. There was a white mob that just came to town, burned down buildings and violently overthrew the democratically elected government. And we are still, in our state, in the year 2021, dealing with the aftermath of that conflict.
So this is not something that is foreign to the United States. This is something that is very much baked into our DNA. What happened yesterday cannot be separated, of course, from the fact that we just had an election that not only ousted a blatant white nationalist president, but we just elected a Catholic president, a vice president who is Black and Indian American, and then we had the Senate just flip, day before yesterday, with the election of a Black man and a Jewish man from Georgia. So, yes, you know, of course we’re going to see white supremacists in the Capitol waving Confederate flags. Of course we have known for years now that the greatest imminent threat to the United States is both white supremacist, far-right terrorists and the current president of the United States.
So, again, for anyone in a position of security or authority who is tasked with securing national security and securing the Capitol and the safety of the people who work and reside there to claim that this was somehow unpredictable, again, flies in the face of any logic. And if we are going to be serious about addressing the threats that we face right now from fascism and from the far right, we have to confront the presence of that element in our police forces, point blank, period. This has been the main point that we have been making in the Black Lives Matter movement, in the call for defunding the police and shifting resources, because it is very clear that the primary function of police forces in the United States is to enforce racism above enforcing public safety.
AMY GOODMAN: As you point out, I mean, yesterday was bookended — the early-morning hours of Wednesday, it was announced that the first African American Democrat was elected senator from the South. And that was Raphael Warnock. Then, yesterday afternoon, the Democrat Jon Ossoff, it was announced, had beaten David Perdue. And that shifted the power of the U.S. Senate. This bookends this insurrection at the Capitol. And also, just two days ago in Wisconsin, the DA chose not to bring charges against the white police officer who shot Jacob Blake in the back, the African American 29-year-old, seven times at point-blank range.
************************
