Morning Briefing: The January 6th Committee to Hear Testimony From Former Vice President's Advisors
Morning Briefing: The January 6th Committee to Hear Testimony From Former Vice President's Advisors
U.S. House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack is scheduled to hold a third day of hearings, and former advisors to former Vice President Mike Pence are scheduled to testify.
Morning Briefing: U.S. House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack is scheduled to hold a third day of hearings, and the witnesses scheduled to testify include Greg Jacob and J. Michael Luttig, former advisors to former Vice President Mike Pence.
The hearings will reportedly focus on how former President Donald Trump “with help from conservative lawyer John Eastman, tried to pressure Pence to use his largely ceremonial role at the joint session of Congress to throw out lawful electoral votes for Joe Biden.”
The Select Committee released surveillance video footage that “showed people in a Republican-led tour group taking photos of staircases, hallways, and tunnel entrances at the Capitol complex the day before the attack.”
The Select Committee also released video from the deposition of former Trump White House attorney Eric Herschmann, during which Herschmann “outlines how he warned conservative attorney John Eastman to back off plans to file appeals in Georgia based on the election results after the events of January 6, 2021.”
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John Fea writes that “some will say that the Trump presidency is behind us now and we should try to move forward as a nation instead of dwelling in the past. There are a lot of reasons to reject such a sentiment—not the least of which is the fact that there are people running for office right now who were at the Capitol that day or who continue to believe that Joe Biden stole the 2020 presidential election… The extent of the damage Donald Trump has leveled on our democracy will be a story that only future historians will be able to tell in full. Right now it appears that a significant number of American citizens are so brainwashed by conservative media outlets that they are incapable of weighing the evidence the Committee is presenting to them.” [Current]
Chrissy Stroop writes that “as should be surprising to no one, actual groomers and paedophiles thrive in spaces defined by patriarchal theology, or, more generally, by the ideologically reinforced imposition of social hierarchies based on immutable characteristics. Perhaps no recent news underscores the elements of projection and deflection in these hateful developments more clearly than the release of a report on widespread sexual abuse and cover-up in the Southern Baptist Convention – the largest Protestant denomination in the US – over the last 20 years. SBC leaders kept a secret list of 703 known abusers, while simultaneously denying that the denomination could maintain such a database and covering up child sexual abuse and other sexual misconduct by pastors at every turn.” [openDemocracy]
Molly Olmstead writes that “many politically powerful conservatives promote home-schooling as a way to undercut or weaken the influence of public schools, and to shield their children from the liberalism they believe public schools foster. The Federalist was just one of a number of conservative voices calling for home-schooling in the wake of the Uvalde tragedy. (And there were plenty of news stories about parents who were considering it.) But the groundwork of the movement was laid by conservative Christians who have been working for years to siphon power from public schools, pushing both home-schooling and parental rights legislation at the state and federal level. It’s just that finally, their ideas are becoming mainstream.” [Slate]
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