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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
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Kari Paul (now), Joanna Walters, Joan E Greve and Martin Belam (earlier)

Twitter permanently suspends Trump's account, citing risk of 'further incitement of violence' – as it happened

Friday evening summary

A chaotic, shocking, tragic, and terrifying week in our country’s history comes to an end with a Friday afternoon flurry of breaking news. Here are the top stories of the evening.

  • At least one Republican senator of the majority needed to impeach Donald Trump has suggested she would side with Democrats. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska has called for the president to resign.
  • The House will introduce articles of impeachment against Trump on Monday except in the unlikely case he resigns before then.
  • Donald Trump is permanently suspended from Twitter. The company has blocked his account @realDonaldTrump from tweeting and in the hours since played Whac-A-Mole with his other accounts, blocking him from tweeting from @POTUS.
  • Conservative-friendly app Parler has been suspended from the Google Play store and is facing a ban in the Apple App Store if it doesn’t better manage hate speech on its platform in the next 24 hours.
  • Congress members pen inquiry to FBI and DHS over how it handled online warnings of this week’s insurrection.
  • Mitch McConnell said if the House impeaches Trump, the Senate won’t deal with it until after Trump is out of office.

Updated

McConnell says impeachment action unlikely until after Trump is out of office

Senator Mitch McConnell said in a memo to fellow senators on Friday that if impeachment articles against Trump are filed this week, the earliest the Senate will address them would be 19 January – the day before Biden’s inauguration.

In the message, reported by the Washington Post, McConnell said under the law unanimous agreement of all 100 senators would be required to take on impeachment proceedings before then.

This means Democrats will need to decide if they want to impeach Trump and thus spend the first several days or weeks of Biden’s presidency carrying it out.

Updated

Congress members pen inquiry to FBI and DHS over how it handled online warnings of this week’s insurrection

Today 35 Congress members have signed a letter addressed to the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security requesting more information on how extremist threats leading up to Wednesday’s riot at the Capitol were handled.

The letter, spearheaded by Virginia representatives Jennifer Wexton and Don Beyer, cites ample evidence on social media of a planned insurrection and asks why more was not done to prevent Wednesday’s disaster.

In the first week of January there were more than 1,200 posts from QAnon conspiracy theorists containing threats of violence and a video on TikTok encouraging people to bring guns to the capitol that had more than 270,000 views.

The agencies are being asked to respond by 15 January to a list of eight questions demanding accountability for the attacks, including whether they alerted relevant law enforcement agencies of threats of violence found on the platforms.

Updated

No changes to Facebook’s Trump suspension

After Twitter made its suspension of Trump permanent on Friday evening, a reminder that the president is still only temporarily suspended from Facebook and Instagram.

The company has reiterated today that Trump will be suspended from posting on Facebook at least until Joe Biden is inaugurated on 20 January, though the ban could be made permanent after that.

Updated

In its explanation of ban, Twitter warned of more violence

In its blog post explaining its reasoning for permanently suspending Trump, Twitter says they incite violence and could encourage similar actions in the future – in particular one planned for 17 January at the Capitol again.

Some have cited a message being circulated on Parler that said “many of us will return on January 19 2021 carrying our weapons”.

Updated

We regret to report Trump is at it again on Twitter

Donald Trump, after being permanently suspended from Twitter under his personal account @theREALDonaldTrump, has tried to hijack the official presidential account @POTUS to tweet his grievances.

Twitter is quickly deleting the posts before they can be shared, but users briefly could see messages from Trump slamming Twitter for coordinating with Democrats and the “radical left” to “silence” the president.

The social media platform had already said it will remove any new postings from Trump to @POTUS. If Trump attempts to make a new account, it will also be permanently suspended “at first detection”, according to Twitter’s rules.

Updated

Twitter users react to a Trump-free platform

As of Friday, the 8th of January, Donald Trump is no longer a Twitter user. Here is how users reacted to the shocking removal.

Twitter employees played a large role in Trump’s removal

Reporting from the Washington Post suggests internal pressure from Twitter employees on CEO Jack Dorsey may have played a role in the final decision to suspend Trump’s account.

The newspaper reviewed an internal letter addressed to the executive in which “roughly 350 Twitter employees asked for a clear account of the company’s decision-making process regarding the President’s tweets” surrounding the events on Wednesday.

In the letter, they also requested an investigation “into the past several years of corporate actions that led to Twitter’s role in the insurrection,” the Post reports. Full story here.

What happens to Trump’s old tweets?

Many people are sharing the weirdest and funniest posts from Donald Trump in memory of the president’s suspended account. But in all seriousness, what happens to social media records created by a president?

When an account is suspended, it is no longer searchable on Twitter’s platform. This means it will be difficult for journalists, historians, and anyone else to look back on what the president tweeted to confirm accuracy. Independent archives of Trump’s tweets do exist, but some have suggested an official resource maintaining them should remain.

I’ve reached out to Twitter to see if it has any policy around archiving world leaders’ tweets and will update this coverage with any response.

In memoriam, some truly deranged Trump tweets

Donald Trump used Twitter to facilitate his rise to power, and to incite real-world violence with grave consequences. He also used it to scream into the void about Kristen Stewart and all the “haters and losers” who dared to challenge him.

After the president was permanently removed from the platform on Friday, users shared some memorable posts.

That time he was mad about Barney Frank’s nipples

That time he tweeted about his high IQ

That time he wished a happy 9/11 to all his haters and losers

That time he was very preoccupied with Kristen Stewart for some reason

Politicians – both friends and foes of Trump – react to his suspension from Twitter

Critics of Donald Trump including his colleagues on Capitol Hill have long called for his account to be disabled, while his allies have attempted to defend or excuse the president’s online mayhem. Here are a few reactions from Friday evening:

  • Mark Warner, US Senator from Virginia
  • Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen
  • Nikki Haley, former US Ambassador to the UN under Trump and former South Carolina governor
  • Representative Jimmy Gomez of California

Updated

Parler suspended from Google Play store

We interrupt this coverage of Donald Trump being punted off Twitter forever to let you know that Google is now removing Parler, an app that positions itself as a conservative, “pro-free speech” alternative to mainstream social media such as Twitter and Facebook, from its app store.

That means it cannot be downloaded by new users. In the aftermath of Trump’s suspension, traffic to Parler surged, leaving the app unusable for many. Meanwhile, Apple has given Parler a ultimatum to improve its moderation policies or be removed from the app store.

Updated

How other platforms stack up to Twitter after its removal of Trump

Twitter’s permanent suspension of Donald Trump’s account on Friday marked an unprecedented step from a social media giant against an elected official.

But actions against the president have been snowballing since he encouraged a march on the Capitol on Wednesday that resulted in a violent riot. Here’s what other platforms have taken action:

  • Facebook: Has blocked Trump’s account “indefinitely and at least for the next two weeks” until the end of his presidency. It said Friday a permanent ban is “likely but not definite.”
  • Apple: Issued an ultimatum to Parler, a conservative social media platform, that if it does not improve its content moderation policies in the next 24 hours it will be removed from the App store.
  • Reddit: Removed the subreddit r/DonaldTrump, a community of Trump supporters. It had already removed a more volatile community of Trump supporters under r/the_Donald in June 2020.
  • TikTok: Has blocked all hashtags associated with the January 6 march, including #stormthecapitol and #patriotparty (Trump does not have his own official TikTok account).
  • Twitch: For the next two weeks until the end of Trump’s term his channel with be disabled. The company did not say whether it will reinstate it after.
  • Shopify: Has stopped hosting stores that sell Trump merchandise

Donald Trump, Jr. calls his father’s suspension from Twitter ‘absolute insanity’

Donald Trump, Jr. tweeted in support of his father, the president, who was removed from Twitter on Friday evening.

“We are living Orwell’s 1984,” he tweeted, referencing a dystopian science novel written by a socialist in criticism of totalitarianism. “Free-speech no longer exists in America. It died with big tech and what’s left is only there for a chosen few.”

Trump, Jr. has also been censored on big tech platforms, including inn July 2020 when Twitter forced him to delete a video spreading misinformation about the Covid-19 pandemic.

Civil rights advocates celebrate Trump’s removal from Twitter, but say it’s too little too late

Those who have long called for Donald Trump’s removal from Twitter praised the decision to finally disable the president’s account on Friday - but many said the move, which came after years of the president sharing lies and misinformation to his 88 million followers, was too little too late.

“These actions are long past due and appropriate,” said Angelo Carusone, president of Media Matters for America, a nonprofit media watchdog. “But, Twitter (and other platforms) doing this now is a lot like senior administration officials resigning with only days left – too little too late. Trump has repeatedly broken Twitter rules. If only Twitter and other platforms had acted earlier, Wednesday’s awful events could have been avoided. It is time for Facebook and other platforms to follow suit.”

This is not the first time Trump has used his platform to call for violence. Before his presidency, in 2012, Carusone points out, Trump did the same. He tweeted in May encouraging protestors to be shot, after which the tweet was hidden but his account remained online. There are hard lessons to be learned from these failures, said Joan Donovan, an expert in misinformation at Harvard.

“Tech companies have assumed for far too long that their products are neutral,” Donovan said. “But political elites and the millionaires behind them, knew this assumption could be weaponized. This is a major failure of those who built this technology and claimed they could secure it.”

Cracking down on Trump’s accounts does have positive effects on hate speech, however. Daily interactions of right-leaning Facebook pages significantly dropped after Trump’s temporary Facebook suspension, research from Media Matters found. It also showed right-leaning, left-leaning, and nonaligned pages each earned roughly a third of total engagement during this time.

Updated

Twitter explains why it has permanently suspended Trump

After years of calls to remove Donald Trump from Twitter, why is the platform taking action now? Twitter outlined its decision-making process on Friday that led to the suspension of Trump’s account in a blog post.

The final tweets that led to Trump’s suspension are as follows:

On January 8, 2021, President Donald J Trump tweeted:

“The 75,000,000 great American Patriots who voted for me, AMERICA FIRST, and MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, will have a GIANT VOICE long into the future. They will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape or form!!!”

Shortly thereafter, the president tweeted:

“To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20th.”

Twitter said that after assessing the tweets in the context of a violent storming of the Capitol on Wednesday, it determined these tweets violated Twitter’s glorification of violence policy and constituted immediate removal from the platform.

The refusal by Trump to attend the inauguration marked a rejection of a peaceful transfer of power and and his tweet calling followers “patriots” could be read as a glorification of the storming of the Capitol on Wednesday.

Together, these messages are “likely to inspire others to replicate the violent acts that took place on January 6, 2021”, Twitter concluded, and thus suspended the account.

Updated

Donald Trump’s account has been permanently suspended from Twitter

The Twitter account of president Donald Trump has been permanently suspended from the platform over repeated violations of the its rules, including incitement of violence.

The company explained its decision in detail in a blog post. The move comes after days of increasing criticism of the platform for allowing the president, who had more than 88m followers, to share misinformation and hate speech unabated.

“After review of Tweets from the @realDonaldTrump account and the context around them – how they are being received and interpreted on and off Twitter – we have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement of violence,” the company said.

Trump had previously had his account suspended for tweeting praise of his supporters who stormed the US Capitol on Wednesday, but was granted access again after deleting two tweets that violated platform rules.

This suspension appears to be indefinite, if not permanent.

Updated

House to introduce articles of impeachment against Trump on Monday

House lawmakers are set to introduce articles of impeachment against Donald Trump on Monday, accusing him of inciting an insurrection after the president encouraged a mob that stormed the Capitol building on Wednesday.

The articles of impeachment – written by representatives David Cicilline of Rhode Island, Ted Lieu of California and Jamie Raskin of Maryland – have garnered signatures from more than 150 House Democrats.

Though Trump has just less than two weeks left in office, lawmakers say the risk of leaving the volatile leader in office leaves no option but impeachment. The action would mark an unprecedented second impeachment during Trump’s presidential term.

“This conduct is so grave and this president presents such a clear and present danger to our democracy, I don’t think you can simply say let’s just wait it out” Cicilline said in an interview.

Pelosi has repeatedly pressured Vice-president Mike Pence to remove Trump using the 25th amendment to no avail. She said in a letter to House Democrats on Friday if Trump does not voluntarily leave office she will move forward with impeachment.

“Today the House Democratic Caucus had an hours-long conversation that was sad, moving, and patriotic,” Pelosi said in a statement. “It was a conversation unlike any other, because it followed a day unlike any other.”

Pelosi said deliberations are continuing. Here are the steps that need to be carried out in order to impeach Trump:

  • The House, reconvening early from its recess, votes with a simple majority to pass articles of impeachment.
  • Articles are then sent to the Senate, triggering an automatic trial that would start at 1 pm the next day.
  • Following the trial, a two-thirds majority vote is needed in the Senate to remove Trump from office.

The Senate is currently split 50-50 between Republican and Democratic parties, meaning a number of Republicans would need to break allegiance to the party to vote Trump out early. One and a half Republican Senators have indicated they may jump ship and vote for impeachment thus far. (Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska has explicitly called for Trump to go; Senator Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania said he believed Trump had committed “impeachable offences” but stopped short of committing himself to an impeachment vote.)

Some representatives said impeachment proceedings should be launched more quickly. Ilhan Omar, a Democratic Congresswoman from Minnesota said “Monday isn’t early enough”.

“The nation is waiting for us to respond ASAP,” she tweeted on Friday. She previously strongly condemned Wednesday’s attack, saying “we can’t allow Trump to remain in office.”

“It’s a matter of preserving our Republic and we need to fulfill our oath,” she wrote.

  • This article was updated on 12 January 2021 to name the “one and a half senators” who might back impeachment.

Updated

Murkowski has little to lose from quitting Alaska GOP

Again, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska has become the first Republican senator to call for Donald Trump to resign, immediately. She has threatened to leave the Republican party if it does not distance itself from the president, as fallout over his encouragement of a march on the Capitol continues.

As some critics have noted, Murkowski has little to lose politically from leaving the Republican party in Alaska, which recently implemented a top 4 primary system. Moving to an independent status over her condemnation of Trump could further change the balance of the Senate.

Updated

Hello readers, this is your friendly tech reporter Kari Paul, taking over the blog for the next few hours. Stay tuned for updates on this chaotic Friday evening.

Afternoon summary

There is so much more news to come, US live blog followers, and we’ll bring you all the developments. For the next few hours that will be courtesy of Kari Paul of our team in California. It’s been a dramatic day so far.

Here are the key events:

  • Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski has become the first Republican member of the Senate to call for Donald Trump to resign, immediately, noting that if the GOP couldn’t separate itself from him then she might have to separate herself from the party instead (FYI GOP Rep Adam Kinzinger yesterday called for Trump to be removed from office via the 25th Amendment as unfit to perform his role).
  • Newly-elected West Virginia Republican state delegate Derrick Evans was arrested and faces federal charges after taking part in the rioting and storming of the US Capitol on Wednesday.
  • President-elect Joe Biden said Donald Trump’s decision not to attend his inauguration on January 20th as the 46th President of the United States is “one of the few things he and I have ever agreed on”.
  • Biden said any plans to subject Donald Trump to an unprecedented second impeachment for inciting the attack on the US Capitol was a decision for Congress, not for him or his incoming White House team.
  • Losing Republican David Perdue in Georgia conceded defeat to his Democratic challenger for the Senate seat, Jon Ossoff (whose victory this week, along with Raphael Warnock’s in the two Georgia runoff races assured the Democrats control of the US Senate).

Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski calls on Trump to resign

Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski said this afternoon that Donald Trump should resign the presidency immediately and that if the Republican party cannot separate itself from Trump, she isn’t certain she has a future with the party.

“I want him to resign. I want him out. He has caused enough damage,” Murkowski told the Anchorage Daily News during a 17-minute interview from her small Capitol office, steps away from the Senate chambers where pro-Trump rioters caused havoc and death on Wednesday.

Lisa Murkowski on Capitol Hill last summer.
Lisa Murkowski on Capitol Hill last summer. Photograph: Reuters

She added: “I think he should leave. He said he’s not going to show up. He’s not going to appear at the inauguration [of Joe Biden on 20 January]. He hasn’t been focused on what is going on with Covid.

“He’s either been golfing or he’s been inside the Oval Office fuming and throwing every single person who has been loyal and faithful to him under the bus, starting with the vice-president. He doesn’t want to stay there.

“He only wants to stay there for the title. He only wants to stay there for his ego. He needs to get out. He needs to do the good thing, but I don’t think he’s capable of doing a good thing,” she said.

She blames Trump for inciting the attack on the Capitol. Read the full report here.

She is the first Republican senator to call on Trump to resign.

Updated

The White House has issued a statement on the prospect of an unprecedented second round of impeachment proceedings against Donald Trump.

“As President Trump said yesterday, this is a time for healing and unity as one nation. A politically motivated impeachment against a president with 12 days remaining in his term will only serve to further divide our great country,” it said.

Updated

Donald Trump will reportedly fly to Mar-a-Lago the day before Joe Biden’s inauguration, according to CNN.

Trump announced earlier today that he would not attend Biden’s inauguration, breaking 150 years of tradition of outgoing presidents attending their successors’ inaugurations.

It’s unclear whether Mike Pence will attend the inauguration, although Biden said today that the vice-president is “welcome” to be part of the event.

A draft of House Democrats’ articles of impeachment against Donald Trump includes an article for “incitement of insurrection.”

The draft, obtained by CNN, accuses the president of having “gravely endangered the security of the United States and its institutions of government.”

“President Trump’s conduct on January 6, 2021 was consistent with his prior efforts to subvert and obstruct the certification of the results of the 2020 presidential election,” the draft says.

“He threatened the integrity of the democratic system, interfered with the peaceful transition of power, and imperiled a coordinate branch of government. He thereby betrayed his trust as President, to the manifest injury of the people of the United States.”

House Democrats could file the articles of impeachment as soon as Monday, according to multiple reports, potentially setting up a mid-week vote.

Jen Psaki, the incoming White House press secretary, said Joe Biden will receive his second dose of the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine on Monday.

During a virtual briefing with reporters, Psaki added that some members of the incoming administration, including close aides to Biden and Kamala Harris as well as cabinet secretaries, are starting to receive the vaccine as well.

West Virginia legislator arrested for alleged role in Capitol riot

Derrick Evans, a newly elected legislator in West Virginia, has been arrested on federal charges related to the violent riot at the Capitol.

A reporter for the local NBC affiliate WSAZ shared a video of Evans, who serves in the West Virginia House of Delegates, being taken into federal custody.

A woman who identified herself as Evans’ grandmother confronted the reporter as he was put in a car.

Asked for a comment about the arrest, the woman said, “He’s a fine man, and thank you, Mr Trump, for invoking a riot.”

Joe Biden said he believed the violent siege of the Capitol made it easier to unify the country because Americans of both parties were horrified by what took place.

“My overarching objective is to unify this country,” Biden told reporters in Wilmington, Delaware. “We must unify this country.”

The president-elect applauded Republicans who have denounced the violence and the baseless claims of widespread election fraud that helped spur it, such as Mitt Romney.

Biden noted he spoke to Romney this morning, and he applauded the Republican senator as “a man of enormous integrity”.

Asked whether senators Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz should resign for supporting Donald Trump’s lies about the election, as some Democrats have suggested, Biden said, “I think they should be just flat beaten the next time they run.”

The president-elect has now wrapped up his event in Wilmington.

Updated

Biden agrees with Trump's decision not to attend inauguration

Joe Biden said Donald Trump’s decision not to attend his inauguration is “one of the few things he and I have ever agreed on”.

“It’s a good thing, him not showing up,” the president-elect told reporters in Wilmington, Delaware. “He has exceeded even my worst notions about him. He’s embarrassed us around the world.”

Trump announced earlier today that he would not attend Biden’s inauguration, making him the first president since 1869 not to attend his successor’s inauguration.

Asked later about Mike Pence, Biden said the vice-president is “welcome to attend”.

Updated

Joe Biden condemned the rioters who stormed the Capitol as “a bunch of thugs,” “domestic terrorists” and “white supremacists.”

The president-elect specifically called out the rioters who wore shirts saying “6MWE.”*

“6MWE” is an anti-Semitic phrase that stands for “Six million wasn’t enough,” referring to the six million Jewish people who were murdered during the Holocaust.

“These shirts they’re wearing? These are a bunch of thugs,” Biden said.

• This blogpost was amended on 11 January 2021 to clarify facts around Joe Biden’s reference to an image of a man wearing the slogan “6MWE” during last week’s attack on the US Capitol. That image had been cited and widely discussed in media reporting of the events. In fact, subsequent reporting demonstrated that the image had been recorded at an earlier event.

Updated

Biden on Trump impeachment: 'That’s a decision for the Congress'

Joe Biden is now taking questions from reporters at his event in Wilmington, Delaware, after introducing his nominees to lead the labor and commerce departments.

No surprise here: the first question (from CNN’s Arlette Saenz) was focused on House Democrats’ plans to file articles of impeachment against Donald Trump, after the president incited a violent mob to storm the Capitol.

“I’ve thought for a long, long time that President Trump wasn’t fit to hold the job. That’s why I ran,” Biden said.

When pressed on whether he would advise a Democratic lawmaker to support impeachment, the president-elect dodged, saying, “That’s a decision for the Congress to make. I’m focused on my job.”

Biden noted he would be having a phone call with Democratic congressional leaders later this afternoon, when impeachment will likely come up.

Perdue formally concedes to Ossoff in Georgia Senate race

Former Republican senator David Perdue has formally conceded to Jon Ossoff in their Georgia Senate runoff race.

“Although we won the general election, we came up just short of Georgia’s 50% rule, and now I want to congratulate the Democratic Party and my opponent for this runoff win,” Purdue said in a statement.

After a bitter campaign defined by sharp attacks from both candidates, Perdue did not mention Ossoff by name in his concession statement.

Purdue’s concession comes one day after Republican Kelly Loeffler conceded to Democrat Raphael Warnock in the other Georgia Senate race.

After the victories of Warnock and Ossoff, the Senate is now evenly split 50-50 between Democrats and Republicans. Once Kamala Harris is sworn in as vice-president, Democrats will take the majority.

Joe Biden’s event is ongoing, but the blog is going to pivot back to Capitol Hill, where a prominent Democrat addressed calls for two of her Republican colleagues to resign.

Patty Murray, the third-ranking Senate Democrat, said she believed senators Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz should resign for their role in stirring up baseless doubts about the legitimacy of the election, after a violent pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol on Wednesday.

“I come to the Capitol every day to fight for what I believe in,” the Washington Democrat said in a statement. “I use my voice to tell people what I believe to be right, and I listen to the other side. We hear each other out, we vote, and whoever has the votes wins. And I accept that. Do I always like the outcome? No, but I accept it, because that is what our democracy requires.”

Murray condemned the rioters who stormed the Capitol on Wednesday, describing them as “people who don’t accept democracy, and want to take this country by use of force.”

“As a Senator, I respect every member who disagrees with my ideas. I reserve my right to use my voice to fight for what I believe in. But at the end of the day, our job is to keep this country a democracy where voices win, not brute force,” Murray said.

“Any Senator who stands up and supports the power of force over the power of democracy has broken their oath of office. Senators Hawley and Cruz should resign.”

Joe Biden said he gave “serious consideration” to nominating Bernie Sanders as labor secretary, but the two agreed that it was too risky to jeopardize control of the Senate.

After Democrats swept the Georgia Senate races this week, they took control of the chamber, which will now be 50-50, with vice-president-elect Kamala Harris providing a tie-breaking 51st vote for Democrats.

Sanders has served as one of Vermont’s senators since 2007, and his cabinet nomination would trigger a special election.

The labor secretary nomination ultimately went to Marty Walsh, the mayor of Boston, and Biden said Sanders told him he had made a good choice.

Updated

Biden introduces nominees to lead commerce and labor departments

Joe Biden is now introducing his nominees to lead the commerce and labor departments, rounding out his cabinet nominations.

Gina Raimondo, the governor of Rhode Island, will be nominated to lead the commerce department, and Marty Walsh, the mayor of Boston, will be nominated as labor secretary.

Biden celebrated his nominees as the right people to help the millions of Americans desperately seeking financial assistance amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Joe Biden said he would lay out the groundwork for the next round of coronavirus relief next week, emphasizing the need to offer more financial assistance to American families amid the pandemic.

“We need more direct relief flowing to families, small businesses,” Biden said. “Our focus will be on small businesses on Main Street.”

The president-elect also criticized the rollout of coronavirus vaccines so far. “Vaccines give us hope, but the rollout has been a travesty,” Biden said.

The Democrat previously pledged to distribute 100 million doses of the vaccine over his first 100 days in office.

Joe Biden noted that, with his announcement today, he will have completed his cabinet nominations, and he called on the Senate to swiftly confirm his nominees.

The president-elect applauded himself for building a cabinet that “looks like America,” noting that this would be the first presidential cabinet to be evenly divided between men and women.

Updated

Biden offers sympathy to family of fallen Capitol Police officer

Joe Biden has taken the podium in Wilmington, Delaware, for his event to introduce members of his economic team.

The president-elect opened his remarks by expressing his “deep sympathy” for the family of Brian Sicknick, the Capitol Police officer who died as a result of his injuries from the violent siege of the Capitol.

“The people responsible should be held accountable -- and they will be,” Biden said.

Biden also said he would take reporters’ questions after he introduces his cabinet members, and he will likely be pressed on calls to remove Donald Trump from office.

Updated

Rioter from viral photo in Pelosi's office arrested - report

The rioter who was photographed sitting in the office of House speaker Nancy Pelosi amid the violent siege of the Capitol has been arrested, according to multiple reports.

A Trump supporter sits in Nancy Pelosi’s office amid the violent siege of the Capitol.
A Trump supporter sits in Nancy Pelosi’s office amid the violent siege of the Capitol. Photograph: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images

NBC News reports:

Richard Barnett, 60, of Gravette, Arkansas, was taken into custody in his home state on charges of entering and remaining on restricted grounds, violent entry and theft of public property. Further details were not immediately available.

Barnett spoke to a New York Times reporter shortly after storming the Capitol, and he recounted stealing an envelope from the Democratic speaker’s desk.

“I didn’t steal it,” Barnett told the reporter. “I put a quarter on her desk, even though she ain’t fucking worth it, and I left her a note on her desk that says, ‘Nancy, Bigo was here, you bitch.’”

Updated

Did you wonder, as did many, if the pro-Trump hooligans and rioters who invaded the US Capitol on Wednesday filled it full of Covid as well as chaos and vandalism?

It was extraordinary when Congress resumed its business at 8pm that evening not long after those hundreds of people had been packed into corridors, chambers, offices and the rotunda, all huffing and puffing, few wearing face masks (though some had face covered presumably to help avoid identification as well as, possibly, coronavirus).

But it appears some GOPers weren’t necessarily that bothered anyway.

Congress certified Joe Biden’s election win shortly before 4am on Thursday after agreeing to work as long as it took without break, after they resumed in the wake of the riot.

Canada’s Justin Trudeau has issued a video in which he condemns Donald Trump and his superfan political allies for the attack on the US Capitol two days ago.

“What we witnessed was an assault on democracy by violent rioters, incited by the current president and other politicians,” Trudeau, the prime minister, said.

Interesting to note the reporter’s subsequent note, however.

Biden to release vaccine supplies across wider spread

US president-elect Joe Biden will release most available Covid-19 vaccine doses to speed delivery to more people when he takes office, a reversal of the Trump administration policy, his office said this afternoon.

Sandra Lindsay, a nurse at Long Island Jewish Medical Center, is inoculated with the coronavirus vaccine by Dr. Michelle Chester from Northwell Health at Long Island Jewish Medical Center in New Hyde Park, New York last month.
Sandra Lindsay, a nurse at Long Island Jewish Medical Center, is inoculated with the coronavirus vaccine by Dr. Michelle Chester from Northwell Health at Long Island Jewish Medical Center in New Hyde Park, New York last month. Photograph: Reuters

The move came after the US suffered its deadliest ever day from the coronavirus pandemic yesterday, with more than 4,000 people dying from the virus amid warnings the situation could deteriorate further this month, my colleague Oliver Milman writes.

The record daily death toll of 4,085, according to Johns Hopkins University data, has brought the total number of US deaths to more than 365,000 since the pandemic began, with more than 21.5 million people having contracted the disease – both totals are far greater than any other country in the world.

“The president-elect believes we must accelerate distribution of the vaccine while continuing to ensure the Americans who need it most get it as soon as possible,” spokesman TJ Ducklo said in a statement. Biden “supports releasing available doses immediately, and believes the government should stop holding back vaccine supply so we can get more shots in Americans’ arms now”.

Under the Trump administration’s approach, the government has been holding back a supply of vaccines to guarantee that people can get a second shot, which provides maximum protection against Covid-19. Both the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna vaccines require a second shot about three weeks after the first vaccination. One-shot vaccines are still undergoing testing.

After a glow of hope when the first vaccines were approved last month, the nation’s inoculation campaign has gotten off to a slow start. Of 29.4m doses distributed, about 5.9m have been administered, or 27%, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Read the full story here.

Today so far

Here’s where the day stands so far:

  • Nancy Pelosi spoke to the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff about curbing Donald Trump’s access to the nuclear codes, after the president incited a violent mob to storm the Capitol on Wednesday. Pelosi told her Democratic colleagues that she spoke to Mark Milley to “discuss available precautions for preventing an unstable president from initiating military hostilities or accessing the launch codes and ordering a nuclear strike.”
  • Donald Trump announced he would not attend Joe Biden’s inauguration. The announcement came one day after Trump expressed commitment to “a smooth, orderly and seamless transition of power.” Trump’s absence will make him the first president to skip his successor’s inauguration since 1869.
  • The House could vote on new articles of impeachment as soon as next week. According to the AP, three House Democrats intend to introduce articles of impeachment on Monday, which could set up a mid-week vote.

The blog will have more coming up, so stay tuned.

Nancy Pelosi told fellow House Democrats that she had received reassurances about safeguards to prevent Donald Trump from launching a nuclear attack, according to multiple reports.

A spokesperson for Mark Milley, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, also confirmed the call with Pelosi and said the chairman answered the speaker’s questions about nuclear command authority.

A spokesperson for Nancy Pelosi confirmed that a laptop was stolen from the speaker’s office, amid the violent siege of the Capitol on Wednesday.

But the spokesperson, Drew Hammill, said the laptop was stolen from a conference room and “was only used for presentations.”

House Democrats to introduce articles of impeachment on Monday - report

Three House Democrats reportedly plan to introduce articles of impeachment against Donald Trump on Monday, with a vote on impeachment potentially happening as early as the middle of next week.

The AP reports:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has not yet said whether the House will vote on impeachment, and the caucus is meeting at noon to discuss the idea after pro-Trump supporters ransacked the Capitol on Wednesday. But if leadership does decide to move forward, they could vote on articles of impeachment drafted Wednesday by Reps. David Cicilline of Rhode Island, Jamie Raskin of Maryland and Ted Lieu of California. They are expected to be introduced Monday, said the people, who were granted anonymity to discuss the planning.

The articles say Trump ‘willfully made statements that encouraged — and foreseeably resulted in — imminent lawless action at the Capitol.’

Katherine Clark, the assistant speaker of the House, told CNN this morning that it was possible an impeachment vote could happen by the middle of next week, but she later said the timeline was not yet determined.

Again, even if the House does vote to impeach Trump (for the second time), that does not guarantee the Senate will vote to convict him and remove him from office, which requires a two-thirds majority.

In her letter to Democratic colleagues, Nancy Pelosi made no mention of how the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Mark Milley, responded to her concerns about Donald Trump’s access to the nuclear codes.

It’s unclear whether there is any mechanism for restricting a president’s access to such classified information.

Of course, if Trump were removed from office, he would lose access to the codes, but it’s unclear whether the cabinet or the Republican-controlled Senate feel compelled to pursue that course of action.

It does, however, seem increasingly likely that the Democratic-controlled House will impeach Trump for the second time.

Pelosi expresses concern about Trump's access to nuclear codes

Nancy Pelosi said she is committed to “preventing an unhinged president from using the nuclear codes,” in a new letter to her House Democratic colleagues.

In the “Dear colleague” letter, the Democratic speaker notes that she spoke to the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Mark Milley, this morning about “discuss available precautions for preventing an unstable president from initiating military hostilities or accessing the launch codes and ordering a nuclear strike.”

Pelosi writes, “The situation of this unhinged President could not be more dangerous, and we must do everything that we can to protect the American people from his unbalanced assault on our country and our democracy.”

Pelosi also addressed Democratic calls to remove Donald Trump from office, after the president incited a violent mob of his supporters to attack the Capitol.

On the possibility of invoking the 25th amendment to oust Trump, Pelosi said, “Yesterday, Leader Schumer and I placed a call with Vice President Pence, and we still hope to hear from him as soon as possible with a positive answer as to whether he and the Cabinet will honor their oath to the Constitution and the American people.”

Updated

A bipartisan group of senators has announced plans to hold hearings on how a pro-Trump mob was able to breach the Capitol.

Rob Portman and Gary Peters, leaders of the Senate homeland security committee, and Roy Blunt and Amy Klobuchar, leaders of the Senate rules committee, issued a statement announcing their plans to conduct oversight.

“Wednesday’s violent and criminal acts directed at our Capitol, a symbol of American Democracy, will forever be a stain on our nation’s history,” the senators said in the statement.

“Due to the heroic acts of many, the perpetrators of this attack failed to achieve their goal. It is our duty as bipartisan leaders of the Senate committees with jurisdiction over homeland security, oversight and Capitol operations to examine the security failures that led to Wednesday’s attack.

“Let us be clear: An attack on the Capitol Building is an attack on every American. We plan to conduct oversight and hold bipartisan hearings on these horrific events, and work together to make the necessary reforms to ensure this never happens again.”

Mike Pence’s spokesperson said the vice-president has not yet decided whether he will attend Joe Biden’s inauguration.

Politico reported yesterday that Pence was expected to attend the January 20 inauguration, even though Donald Trump does not plan to join him.

To the surprise of pretty much no one, Donald Trump is not sticking to the message he shared in a video yesterday, when he condemned the violence at the Capitol and called for a smooth transfer of power to Joe Biden.

Here’s what the president said yesterday about a pro-Trump mob storming the Capitol: “The demonstrators who infiltrated the Capitol have defiled the seat of American democracy. To those who engaged in the acts of violence and destruction, you do not represent our country. And to those who broke the law, you will pay.”

And here’s what Trump said over Twitter today: “The 75,000,000 great American Patriots who voted for me, AMERICA FIRST, and MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, will have a GIANT VOICE long into the future. They will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape or form!!!”

In the video, Trump also acknowledged that Biden would soon take office, saying, “Congress has certified the results. A new administration will be inaugurated on January 20. My focus now turns to ensuring a smooth, orderly and seamless transition of power.”

But today he announced he would not attend Biden’s inauguration, breaking with more than 150 years of tradition of outgoing US presidents attending their successors’ inaugurations.

Donald Trump’s absence from Joe Biden’s inauguration will make him the first outgoing president not to attend his successor’s inauguration since 1869.

Interestingly, the last president not to attend his successor’s inauguration -- Andrew Johnson -- was also impeached by the House but acquitted by the Senate.

The only other two presidents to skip their successors’ inaugurations were John Adams in 1801 and John Quincy Adams in 1829.

Trump says he will not attend Biden's inauguration

Donald Trump said that he will not be attending Joe Biden’s inauguration on January 20, just a day after acknowledging he will soon be leaving office.

“To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20th,” Trump said in a new tweet.

It is considered a hallmark of the peaceful transfer of power for the outgoing presidents to attend the inaugurations of their successors, even when they have just lost reelection. (George HW attended the inauguration of Bill Clinton in 1993, for example.)

But there was widespread speculation that Trump would not attend Biden’s inauguration, as he continued to spread baseless claims that the president-elect had secured victory through widespread fraud.

In the video he posted to Twitter last night, Trump said, “Congress has certified the results. A new administration will be inaugurated on January 20. My focus now turns to ensuring a smooth, orderly and seamless transition of power.”

Many would consider Trump attending Biden’s inauguration to be a part of that “smooth, orderly and seamless transition of power,” but the president apparently does not.

Katherine Clark, the assistant House speaker, clarified that Democrats are still working to determine the timeline for the potential impeachment of Donald Trump.

“We face obstruction and attempts to delay us by the GOP defenders, but we‘re resolute. We will act to protect the American people,” Clark said.

The Democratic congresswoman told CNN earlier today that an impeachment vote could come as soon as the middle of next week.

“Donald Trump needs to be removed from office, and we are going to proceed with every tool that we have to make sure that that happens to protect our democracy,” Clark said.

House Democrats consider swift impeachment of Trump - report

House Democrats are reportedly discussing the possibility of swiftly impeaching Donald Trump before he leaves office on January 20.

The AP reports:

House Democrats are set to hold a caucus meeting at noon, the first since Wednesday’s harrowing events at the Capitol, and could take up articles of impeachment against Trump as soon as next week. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi discussed the prospect of impeachment with her leadership team Thursday night, hours after announcing the House was willing to act if Vice President Mike Pence and other officials did not invoke Section 4 of the 25th Amendment — the forceful removal of Trump from power by his own Cabinet.

If Trump were impeached, he would become the first president in US history to ever be impeached twice. But it seems unlikely that two-thirds of the Senate would support removing him from office, as the constitution requires.

Trump commends 'American patriots' who supported him

Donald Trump has unsurprisingly pivoted back to praising his supporters, a day after releasing a statement condemning the violent siege of the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob.

“The 75,000,000 great American Patriots who voted for me, AMERICA FIRST, and MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, will have a GIANT VOICE long into the future,” Trump said in a tweet. “They will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape or form!!!”

The tweet came less than a day after Trump posted a video to Twitter, in which he called for an end to the violence and acknowledged Joe Biden would be inaugurated later this month.

Trump said in the video, “The demonstrators who infiltrated the Capitol have defiled the seat of American democracy. To those who engaged in the acts of violence and destruction, you do not represent our country. And to those who broke the law, you will pay.”

The president did not acknowledge his own role in the events of Wednesday, even though he urged his supporters at a Washington rally to go to the Capitol shortly before it was stormed.

Updated

Nancy Pelosi released a statement offering her condolences to the family of Brian Sicknick, the Capitol Hill police officer who died as a result of his injuries from the violent siege of the Capitol.

“The perpetrators of Officer Sicknick’s death must be brought to justice,” the Democratic speaker said.

“The violent and deadly act of insurrection targeting the Capitol, our temple of American Democracy, and its workers was a profound tragedy and stain on our nation’s history. But because of the heroism of our first responders and the determination of the Congress, we were not, and we will never be, diverted from our duty to the Constitution and the American people.”

Pelosi noted she has ordered the flags at the Capitol to be flown at half-staff in honor Sicknick.

“The sacrifice of Officer Sicknick reminds us of our obligation to those we serve: to protect our country from all threats foreign and domestic,” the speaker said. “May it be a comfort to Officer Sicknick’s family that so many mourn with and pray for them at this sad time.”

Senator Ben Sasse, a Republican of Nebraska, said he would consider articles of impeachment against Donald Trump if they are passed by the House.

Speaking to CBS News this morning, Sasse condemned the “insurrectionist mob” that stormed the Capitol on Wednesday and offered his prayers to the families of those who died as a result.

Sasse then said, “If they come together and have a process, I will definitely consider whatever articles they might move, because as I told you I believe the president has disregarded his oath of office.

“He swore an oath to the American people to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution. He acted against that. What he did was wicked.”

House speaker Nancy Pelosi has said the chamber is prepared to consider articles of impeachment if Trump is not removed from office by invoking the 25th amendment.

This is Joan Greve in Washington, taking over for Martin Belam.

Nancy Pelosi is ordering flags at the Capitol to be flown at half-staff in honor of Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick, a spokesperson for the Democratic speaker said.

Sicknick was injured after a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol, and he died of his injuries last night. His death is fifth reported in connection to the violent siege of the Capitol.

At NBC News, Sahil Kapur has been looking at the improved prospects for Joe Biden getting his legislative program into action now that there will be Democratic control of the Senate. Kapur writes:

The power shift also means Biden won’t have to negotiate with Mitch McConnell over top administration personnel or judicial nominees — nor will Republicans have the power to vote them down. Cabinet secretaries and other jobs that require Senate confirmation need simple majorities.

Biden has promised to put a Black woman on the Supreme Court. Justice Stephen Breyer, 82, who was appointed by Bill Clinton, is seen as a potential candidate to retire. McConnell and Senate Republicans changed the rules in 2017 to require only 51 votes to confirm Supreme Court nominees.

Current and former Democratic aides said the best bet to pass new programs is through the budget reconciliation process, in which policies of taxing and spending can pass with simple majorities. That could mean unemployment assistance and aid to state and local governments, as well as spending on infrastructure and clean energy and bolstering the Affordable Care Act. It is the same process Republicans used to enact a major tax cut in 2017.

Kapur reminds us though that a tightly-balanced 50-50 Senate has its own drawbacks:

Republicans will still have the power to filibuster and force a 60-vote threshold for most legislation. That means that to secure policies like a higher minimum wage, gun control, voting protections and changes to the immigration system, Democrats will need bipartisan support.

Read more here: NBC News – Biden’s agenda gets a fighting chance after Democrats capture Senate control

And that’s it from Martin Belam in London. Joan Greve will be here to take you through the rest of the day. Have a good weekend, take care and stay safe…

Mike Pompeo is still tweeting his CV…

Bloomsberg are reporting that former Trump campaign lawyer Sidney Powell is being sued for defamation by the voting-machine company Dominion:

The complaint filed Friday by Dominion Voting Systems Inc. seeks $1.3 billion from Powell, who filed numerous unsuccessful court cases seeking to overturn the election results. She was dumped by the Trump campaign not long after a Nov. 19 press conference in which she claimed that agents from Iran and China infiltrated Dominion’s voting machines to help Biden, and that the software had ties to Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez, who died in 2013.

The court filing is public, and I think you’ll enjoy it. I’ve only got to page two and it already includes this gem:

Powell’s wild accusations are demonstrably false. Far from being created in Venezuela to rig elections for a now-deceased Venezuelan dictator, Dominion was founded in Toronto for the purpose of creating a fully auditable paper-based vote system that would empower people with disabilities to vote independently on verifiable paper ballots.

Read more here: Bloomberg – Sidney Powell sued by Dominion voting over election-fraud claims

Updated

While Mike Pompeo has been relentlessly tweeting his credentials this morning – he’s still going by the way – Sen. Marco Rubio has also been laying out what looks like his post-Trump Republican 2024 vision in a video clip uploaded to social media today. In the clip he repudiates Trump’s recent actions – not that he mentions the president by name. Rubio says:

Many of those in that mob are believers in a ridiculous conspiracy theory, and others were lied to. Lied to by politicians that were telling them that the vice president had the power to change the election results. And the result is that now four people have died, police officers were seriously injured. And our country was embarrassed before the entire world.

But before you think Rubio is making a clean break with Trumpism, he goes on to say:

This country needs a viable and attractive alternative to the agenda of the radical left. We welcome legal immigrants, but we have to enforce our laws. We have to take the threat of China seriously. We have to investigate what went wrong in the last election and fix our election laws, so people can have faith and confidence in the,. We must continue to call out the media bias instead of being bullied by it. And we must oppose political correctness and social media censorship and identity politics and this cult of wokeness. And we can do all these things without indulging the darkest instincts, or inciting the most destructive impulses and without the rhetoric and behaviour that keeps the millions of Americans who agree with us from joining us in this right.

He also at one point claims that “state officials mutilated election integrity laws to help the Democrats.” You can watch it here:

Graham Lee Brewer this morning has the latest in our This land is your land series, looking at the expectations from the incoming Biden administration.

It was one of Donald Trump’s most controversial early moves as president: to radically shrink two national monuments in the American west. Now indigenous peoples are hopeful that Joe Biden will undo that decision – and more broadly effect a sea change in how the US treats the interests of tribal nations.

On the campaign trail, the president-elect pledged to reverse Trump’s reduction of two monuments in Utah, Grand Staircase-Escalante national monument and Bear’s Ears national monument. Adding to the hopes of conservationists and indigenous tribes is Biden’s recent nomination of the New Mexico congresswoman Deb Haaland to head the US interior department. Haaland, a member of the Laguna Pueblo, would be the first indigenous person appointed to a cabinet position and is widely expected to work closely with tribes, including those in the coalition that helped establish Bear’s Ears in the first place.

Bear’s Ears, designated by Barack Obama, and Escalante, designated by Bill Clinton, were reduced in 2017 by Trump by a combined 2m acres. Bear’s Ears alone was reduced by a total of 85%.

While many locals who saw the monument designations as federal intrusion cheered Trump’s move to reduce the boundaries, environmentalists, archeologists and tribal citizens with ties to the land were outraged at the loss of federal resources to protect the lands. The conflict led to a federal lawsuit challenging the presidential power to reduce national monuments.

The history of who has access to lands in the south-western US, and how they are treated, means that whatever path Biden takes will be fraught. Many arguments in this part of the country concerning national monuments are grounded in the history of how Mormon settlers took lands through force, as well as in government policies, boarding schools and foster care systems that stripped indigenous families of their traditions and languages.

Both the distrust of federal control harbored by Mormon settlers and their descendants, as well as the grievances of indigenous peoples subjected to genocide, are at the center of every discussion.

Read more of Graham Lee Brewer’s piece here: Hope grows that Biden will restore US national monuments shrunk by Trump

US lost 140,000 jobs in December, ending seven months of jobs growth

The recovery in the US jobs market collapsed in December, the last full month of Donald Trump’s presidency, as coronavirus infections soared across the country.

The US lost 140,000 jobs in December, down from a gain of 245,000 in November, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The loss ended seven months of jobs growth. The unemployment rate stayed at 6.7%, close to twice as high as it was in February before Covid-19 hit the US. It is also three percentage points higher than the 4.5% rate Trump inherited from his predecessor Barack Obama.

Friday’s latest jobs report comes after months of worrying signs in the jobs market. On Thursday the labor department said another 787,000 people had filed first-time claims for jobless benefits in the week ending 2 January. The figure was slightly lower than the previous week but remained more than twice as high as pre-pandemic levels.

On Wednesday ADP, the US’s largest payroll supplier, said the private sector had shed 123,000 jobs from November to December, the first decline since April 2020. Losses were primarily concentrated in retail, leisure and hospitality – all areas that suffered heavy losses in the first wave of the pandemic. On the same day minutes from the last Federal Reserve meeting showed policymakers expected the escalating number of coronavirus cases “would be particularly challenging for the labor market in coming months”.

The crisis has left millions of Americans facing food shortages and homelessness as unemployment officers across the country have struggled to keep up with the huge numbers of claims.

According to the Associated Press only three states, North Dakota, Rhode Island and Wyoming, have met the federal standard of getting benefit payments out to successful claimants within three weeks for 87% of applicants.

Emma Brockes has filed her latest column for us, arguing that we should have been ready for it, yet the spectacle at the Capitol came as a shock…

“It can’t happen here” is a phrase that, even as it was used in conjunction with darker warnings about Trump, betrayed a bedrock faith in American democracy that overlooks its savage foundations. The white supremacist project, still going strong as an overt tenet of even liberal government policy well into the 20th century – black Americans were largely cut out of the New Deal – should at least have raised as a possibility a white mob storming the government at the behest of a racist president. The fact that they looked, in their costumes and homemade gas masks, so utterly ridiculous wasn’t even out of keeping with precedent: that end of the extra-political spectrum has always gone in for fancy dress and flaming theatrics.

From a processing point of view, what was stranger, on Wednesday, was that an event with the force of a foregone conclusion still broke a fundamental rule of superstition: that by anticipating the worst, we invite the universe to pleasantly surprise us. The word “coup” has been used in relation to Trump plenty of times since November. Prior to the president’s incitement of the mob, however, it was, even in sincere contexts, used if not as hyperbole, then at least with the expectation that by naming it we lessened the likelihood it would happen. You could take Trump seriously as a threat to national security, believe wholly in his efforts to corrupt the election and still not get fully behind the notion he would encourage a power grab – not just because he is lazy, chaotic and a fool, but because, as an extremely broad principle, nothing ever tends to unfold as predicted.

Read more here: Emma Brockes – We should have been ready for it, yet the spectacle at the Capitol came as a shock

Updated

I should note that virtually the whole time I’ve been doing the live blog today, secretary of state Mike Pompeo appears to have been tweeting out his CV for making a presidential bid in 2024. It’s very glossy.

A very quick snap from Reuters just now to say that the House Democratic caucus will be having a conference call at noon ET (that’s at 17:00 if, like me, you are in London).

Presumably impeaching Donald Trump will be very high on the agenda, following assistant House speaker Katherine Clark’s words on CNN earlier this morning.

Donald Trump needs to be removed from office and we are going to proceed with every tool that we have to make sure that that happens to protect our democracy.

David Ignatius at the Washington Post offers this analysis of went wrong with Wednesday’s security operation in DC – but pins the blame squarely with Republicans:

The FBI underestimated the number of protesters, predicting a maximum of 20,000, which turned out to be less than half the number who showed up. The Capitol Police didn’t stand their ground at the perimeter or at the Capitol itself. The mayor was slow to request additional troops from the D.C. National Guard. The acting attorney general was similarly tardy in ordering elite FBI units into the Capitol. And the Pentagon brass worried more about avoiding politicization of the military than about stopping an insurrection.

But as we look for who to blame in this catastrophe, let’s focus on the real culprits: President Trump, who incited the rioters and urged them toward the Capitol; the 13 Republican senators and 138 House members who challenged President-elect Joe Biden’s victory and egged on the insurgents; and the smug, self-appointed patriots who trashed the people’s house. Trump should face legal action for fomenting this riot. The members who risked the lives of their colleagues by encouraging the fanatics should be censured. The insurgents who ransacked the Capitol should be arrested and prosecuted.

He ultimately casts it as a defeat for the MAGA mob:

Trump’s ragtag army of sedition has lost big. Their narrative of victimization has turned upside down; their claims of election fraud have been demonstrated to be false. Biden’s election has been certified, and leading Republicans such as vice president Pence and Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell have finally broken from Trump.

Read more here: Washington Post – What went wrong with the protection of the US Capitol

We are going to see a lot of this over the next couple of weeks, I should imagine, as former members of the Trump administration, having supported him for years, go on the record to explain why, at the very last moment, they could no longer support the president.

Former White House comms director Alyssa Farah has spoken to Politico last night, and explained her decision to quit:

I made the decision back in December to step down because going back to the day after Election Day, I was scheduled to go on TV and was prepared to deliver a message that I was proud of, which is: It looks like we lost, but Republicans were able to turn out record Hispanic support, record African-American support. And we helped get a record number of women elected to the House of Representatives.

But I was advised by the campaign to stand down. That wouldn’t be the message. We weren’t going to be acknowledging the loss, and they were going to pursue avenues to reconcile that. And I’m of the mind that it’s foundational to our democracy that if you think there was fraud or irregularities, the president absolutely should pursue legal recourse to determine if there was. But we’re now at a point where we’ve seen something like 60 cases, and conservative judges ruling against them. And there just has not been compelling evidence of anything to show that the election went any way different than it did.

So, long answer short: I made the decision to step down in December because I saw where this was heading, and I wasn’t comfortable being a part of sharing this message to the public that the election results might go a different way. I didn’t see that to be where the facts lay.

Then Wednesday was really a boiling point showing that misleading the public has consequences. And what happened was unacceptable. It was unpatriotic. It was un-American. And I certainly fault the protesters—frankly, we should call them terrorists, but I fundamentally fault our elected leadership who allowed these people to believe that their election was stolen from them. The president and certain advisors around him are directly responsible.

Katelyn Fossett, who interviewed her, immediately points out: “You also wrote, ‘Dear MAGA, I’m one of you.’ You worked for Trump and Pence, you’ve worked for Chief of Staff Mark Meadows earlier in your career, and Congressman Jim Jordan and the House Freedom Caucus.”

Read more of what Alyssa Farah had to say for herself here: Politico – I stepped down because I saw where this was heading’

Assistant speaker Clark says House will move to impeach Trump if 25th amendment not invoked

Democratic assistant House speaker Katherine Clark has been on CNN this morning, saying that if vice president Mike Pence does not use the 25th amendment to remove Donald Trump from office, the House could move forward to impeach the president by the middle of next week.

She said that if Trump is not held accountable for his actions in inciting a mob to storm the Capitol in an attempt to disrupted the certification of Joe Biden’s election victory, then American democracy will be damaged. She told the network:

Donald Trump needs to be removed from office and we are going to proceed with every tool that we have to make sure that that happens to protect our democracy.

Here’s our reminder of how the 25th amendment works.

One set of people who won’t want Donald Trump to follow that advice from the UN are his most ardent supporters, some of whom are already furious at Trump’s change of tone. Peter Beaumont reports:

Donald Trump’s belated “concession” to a peaceful and orderly transition of power after the storming of the US Capitol has provoked anger and conspiracy theories among some of his most ardent followers.

For some of those who flocked to social media channels and chatrooms like Parler and 4chan, where far-right Trumpists have gravitated, as other social media sites have increasingly shut out Trump, some were complaining of betrayal.

Trump, claiming he was “outraged by the violence, lawlessness and mayhem” of the Capitol siege that he incited, said those who “broke the law will pay” in a move perhaps designed more to protect himself from mounting legal and political hazard than reflecting a newfound sense of contrition and integrity.

This promoted an outpouring of anger and grief and denial from his hardline acolytes. “A punch in the gut,” said one. “A stab in the back” another railed. From a third: “I feel like puking.”

A widely shared screengrab summed up the sentiment of this group. “He says it’s going to be wild and when it gets wild he calls it a heinous attack and middle-fingers to his supporters he told to be there.”

Others turned to conspiracy theories, not least in the dark corners of the online world of 4chan and Parler, where the cult of QAnon holds sway. Many in these places saw not a Trump concession forced on him by his dangerous and insurrectionary behaviour, but either a “deep fake” video concocted by Trump’s enemies, or they scoured for evidence of secret messages that indicated Trump was still on track to deliver on QAnon’s deranged promises.

“FAK fake fake He’s been locked out of his Twitter he can’t get into it he couldn’t get into it he couldn’t get into today it’s been closed out for ever,” opined someone called Magafree, while Brenda amplified the theory. “He has a plan here President Trump would not back down that easily. We need to stand strong, keep watch and pray. Something big is coming and Gid [God] is going to see it through.”

But the reactions of the more mainstream parts of the Trump-era echo chamber have been the most instructive. Sites such as Breitbart and the Daily Caller appear to have swung into line behind an emerging Republican consensus that has become increasingly hostile to Trump, blaming him not only for the storming of Congress, but also for delivering the presidency, the House of Representatives, and, on Tuesday, the Senate to the Democrats.

Read more of Peter Beaumont’s report here: Donald Trump fans cry betrayal as he rebukes Capitol violence

Donald Trump has not been the biggest fan of the United Nations during his time in office, and developments today are unlikely to shift that. Reuters report that the UN rights office has today said that the president should disavow the “very dangerous” language he and other political leaders have used about the US election result and the storming of the Capitol in Washington this week.

“We are deeply troubled by the incitement to violence and hatred by political leaders and we are calling on the president of the United States and other political leaders to disavow, openly disavow, false and dangerous narratives that are being spread” UN human rights office spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani said in response to a question about Trump’s personal responsibility for events at the Capitol.

“This kind of inciteful language can be very dangerous,” she told an online briefing.

Her comments follows UN human rights boss Michelle Bachelet’s call late on Thursday for a thorough investigation into the events in Washington which have left five people dead.

A noose is seen on makeshift gallows as supporters of Donald Trump gathered by the Capitol on Wednesday.
A noose is seen on makeshift gallows as supporters of Donald Trump gathered by the Capitol on Wednesday. Photograph: Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP/Getty Images

Shamdasani also expressed concern about the display of symbols of “white supremacy” outside the Capitol such as the Confederate flag, anti-Semitic symbols and a noose. “We condemn this display of overtly racist symbols.”

Jan-Werner Müller writes today wanting to remind us that there’s nothing wrong with exerting pressure on elected officials in the halls of power and that rowdy protest has its place – but stressing that Trump’s supporters crossed a line:

On Wednesday, Trumpist demonstrators crossed the line into insurrection. Line is not just a metaphor: one of the great democratic features of Washington is that it offers a vast physical space for people to voice protest, but also clear boundaries of where pressure on representatives must stop. The “March on Washington” is nowhere mentioned in the constitution, and yet it’s a great American political institution. But it is about citizens converging on their capital to contest what their representatives are doing, not to put themselves in their place and usurp power. This is what Trump incited his far-right movement to do – though, in true Trump-style, he was too lazy to join his own “March to Save America” and instead enjoyed it as a TV spectacle.

It would be fundamentally wrong, if the result of Wednesday’s full-frontal attack on one of the three branches of government were simply calls for more security and shielding politicians more effectively from citizens. It’s perfectly fine for people to come close and put pressure on elected representatives.

Read it here: Jan-Werner Müller – Yes, condemn the insurrection. But also defend the right to loud, rowdy protests

Brad Brooks and Nathan Layne at Reuters have been speaking to some Trump supporters about the aftermath of Wednesday’s events in Washington DC.

A backer of the president in west Texas, Eddie Emerson said he disliked the violence he saw on TV on Wednesday, but echoing a sentiment held by many Trump supporters, Emerson expressed frustration with what he called the hypocrisy of those who condemned the riots but turned a blind eye to violence at Black Lives Matter protests last summer.

“What about Portland?” he asked “When it’s the left behind the violence, then it’s just them expressing their voice, their creativity.”

In two dozen interviews with Trump backers across deeply conservative slices of Texas and Georgia, they condemned Wednesday’s violence, but at the same time did not hold the president responsible. Rather, they said they understood the anger behind it, expressing their own anger with what they believe was a fraudulent election won by Democrat Joe Biden.

They blamed the violence on left wing protesters - without any evidence - and expressed little hope that the deeply divided country would unify anytime soon.
And none were prepared to abandon Trump.

“Trump isn’t a politician,” said Emerson, 67. “We sent him to Washington to get rid of the swamp, but the swamp got rid of him. And as far as I’m concerned, the swamp now includes the Republican Party, along with the Democrats.”

As the threat of a second impeachment loomed, Trump belatedly denounced the violence and finally committed in public to a transition of power. Several administration officials have resigned but Trump’s fans appeared to care little about what politicians - even Republicans - had to say in Washington.

“You can’t take what happened yesterday and blame it on one person,” said Anslee Payne, a 34-year-old mother of two at her job in Homer, a rural town in northern Georgia.

“None of us believe in the violent aspect of what happened yesterday. People are getting to a point where they feel like - left, right or in between - they are not being listened to,” she said, describing Wednesday’s violence as a prelude to a further fraying of society. She said Trump supporters were tired of being wrongly labeled as ignorant, violent or racist.

“I’m sad for our country and for what it is going to come to, but this is just the doorway into what is going to happen because people don’t understand what is going on and they don’t know what to believe in anymore,” she said.

Despite top Republican election officials in Georgia debunking allegations of widespread voter fraud, the interviews in Homer showed an enduring belief among his supporters that their leader was robbed.

Linda Mashburn, 39, a waitresses at the Tiny Town Restaurant, said they she sympathize with the frustration behind the violence even if she did not condone it. “I feel like he was cheated. We just all feel like our votes didn’t count,” said Mashburn.

LeBron James and his Los Angeles Lakers teammates were already upset after a Wisconsin prosecutor on Tuesday decided not to charge the Kenosha police officer who shot Jacob Blake last year.

Then came Wednesday when a violent mob loyal to US president Donald Trump stormed the US Capitol to delay Congress from certifying the results of November’s election. What James watched on television along with his family continued to reinforce his view of the wide divide in the country.

“We live in two Americas and a prime example of that was yesterday. If you don’t understand or see that then you need to take a step back. Not just one step but four or five or even 10 steps backward,” James said Thursday night. “How do you want your kids or grandkids to live in this beautiful country? Yesterday was not it. I couldn’t help but to wonder if those were my kind storming the Capitol what would have been the outcome. We all know what would have happened if anyone even got close let alone storm or get in the offices.”

James wore a shirt walking into Staples Center before the game that said ‘DO YOU UNDERSTAND NOW?’ in large block lettering. He also had the message written on his sneakers during the game. In smaller letters, the shirt also contained a slogan invoked by James in the past: “In memoriam of the countless Black lives lost to police brutality and racial injustice.”

Read more here: ‘We live in two Americas’: LeBron blasts ‘shameful’ Trump in scathing appraisal

There’s still some pictures coming through this morning taken as workers began yesterday to clear up the mess after a pro-Trump mob rampaged through the US seat of government after being incited to violence by the president.

The US Supreme Court is seen through a broken window.
The US Supreme Court is seen through a broken window in the Capitol. Photograph: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images
Boarded up broken windows and overturned furniture are pictured on the first floor of the Capitol.
Boarded up broken windows and overturned furniture are pictured on the first floor of the Capitol. Photograph: Michael Brochstein/SOPA Images/REX/Shutterstock
Workers walk while clearing damage.
Workers walk while clearing damage caused after the assault on the seat of US government. Photograph: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images
A vandalized statue is covered in plastic inside the US Capitol. In 2020, following Black Lives Matter protests, president Trump called for anybody damaging federal statues and monuments to serve ten years in jail.
A vandalized statue is covered in plastic inside the US Capitol. In 2020, following Black Lives Matter protests, president Trump called for anybody damaging federal statues and monuments to serve ten years in jail. Photograph: Shawn Thew/EPA

Secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, who attracted criticism in November for suggesting there would be a “smooth transition to second Trump administration” days after Joe Biden’s election victory, does appear to now accept that he will be out of a job. He’s currently tweeting about the foreign policy legacy he is leaving behind.

Overnight Sen. Ted Cruz has tweeted about the Capitol police officer who was killed after the pro-Trump mob rampaged through the Capitol on Wednesday. The Texas Senator says that he and his wife Heidi are “lifting up in prayer” the family of Brian Sicknick.

As you can probably imagine, there are a lot of replies to the tweet highlighting Cruz’ role in fomenting the unrest by what journalist Brooke Binkowski describes as “the weaponized disinformation you’ve so gleefully sown”.

Cruz was one of the Republican senators who, even after the assault on the Capitol, still voted against the certification of states’ votes when Wednesday’s joint session to confirm Joe Biden’s election eventually got underway.

Updated

Clayton Dalton, a Harvard-trained emergency physician who lives and works in New Mexico, has written for us today on the topic of coronavirus, saying that this Covid wave has trapped healthcare workers in a nightmare:

“Hope is here,” reads a flashing road sign on the highway in New Mexico, where my wife and I live. We now have two coronavirus vaccines available in the United States that are safe and effective. I received my first dose just five days after the FDA issued an emergency approval for its use, a logistical miracle. Nearly 5 million Americans have received a dose of a Covid-19 vaccine. If all goes well, enough people may be vaccinated to enable a return to something like normal by the end of the summer. It’s tempting to focus our attention on the future, as the end of the pandemic begins to come just barely into view.

After “Hope is here,” the next message that cycles through on the highway road sign says “Keep wearing your mask.” Even as the vaccine rolls out, the virus’s most frightening surge yet continues to gather astonishing power and momentum. All across the country, hospitals are beyond capacity and ICU beds are full. Hospital gift shops are being turned into makeshift patient rooms. But making room for new beds isn’t enough; you need nurses, environmental service workers, physicians and techs to staff those beds. And right now, all of those people are bone-tired and stretched thin. You can buy new beds, but training personnel takes time. We’re edging up to a hard limit on the number of patients we can take care of nationwide, and the virus is still finding thousands upon thousands of new hosts every day.

Some of those patients will get sick enough to need treatment in the hospital. Will we have room for them? Or will some people die simply for want of space and providers to tend them? The solidarity I’ve seen among my frontline colleagues has been extraordinary, but I worry about the moral injury of fighting this pandemic in the face of fragmented leadership, petty politicization and a simple lack of critical equipment and supplies.

Read more here: Clayton Dalton – This Covid wave has trapped healthcare workers in a nightmare. I see it every day

US records over 4,000 daily Covid deaths for first time, according to Johns Hopkins university

One of the most pressing items on the agenda for the Biden administration will be dealing with the coronavirus pandemic that Donald Trump and his team have allowed to run out of control.

According to the Johns Hopkins university figures, yesterday the US recorded its highest ever tally of daily Covid deaths – 4,085. It is the first time the university’s tracker has recorded a number over 4,000. The US has now seen 365,321 deaths in total.

The nation also recorded 274,703 new cases, the second highest daily total of the entire pandemic. The total caseload for the US has now exceeded 21.5m, more than double of that of India, the country with the second-highest number of recorded cases.

Christina Maxouris writes for CNN that:

The pandemic is not yet showing any signs of slowing down. Rather, across the country, states are reporting an increase in numbers. California reported more than 1,000 Covid-19 deaths in just two days and hospitalizations are at record-high levels, with nearly 23,000 patients admitted with the virus. In Los Angeles County, one person now dies of Covid-19 every eight minutes.

Arizona’s top health official said Thursday that “coming out of the Christmas holiday,” the state’s Covid-19 numbers are inching upward. “Cases and percent positivity are rising, as are inpatient and intensive care unit beds occupied by those with Covid-19. Regrettably, deaths from Covid-19 follow these trends,” Dr. Cara Christ, director of the state’s Department of Health Services.

Texas reported record-high Covid-19 hospitalizations statewide for the fifth day in a row. And while vaccinations are now several weeks in, it will be months before they’re widespread enough to make a meaningful impact in the pandemic’s course, experts have warned.

Democrats may have reclaimed control of the Senate with two victories in Georgia but their majority is slim and will herald an era where every senator wields an inordinate amount of power over the vital upper chamber.

In other words, every senator will be the deciding vote in a situation that has happened only a few other times in the chamber’s history and is likely to prove a tricky challenge for the incoming president, Joe Biden – albeit one preferable to dealing with continued Republican control.

That dynamic is a shift from recent years in which control of the chamber has been more concretely with Republicans or Democrats. But the addition of the incoming senators Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock of Georgia means that the Senate will be split evenly 50-50, a divide that’s happened only three times in American history.

Democrats control the chamber only through Vice-President-elect Kamala Harris who will act as the tie-breaking vote when she is sworn in on 20 January. Her replacement in her California senate seat, Alex Padilla, will join the chamber quickly after that so Democratic control starts on 21 January.

The split means any senator can gum up legislation making its way through the chamber by withholding a vote, possibly until other tweaks have been made.

“It only takes one senator to object and that doesn’t mean that you’re going to have the power to ultimately stop something, but being in control of how much time something takes gives you enormous power,” said Joe Britton, a former Senate Democratic chief of staff. “Especially at 1pm on a Thursday afternoon.”

For Democrats, that’s the best outcome after disappointing results in a handful of Senate races they had thought they would win in the November elections. It means, though, that two separate groups of Republican and Democratic “moderates” are likely to command significant attention.

Read more of Daniel Strauss’ report here: ‘You can’t lose a single vote’: can Biden navigate the 50-50 Senate?

A video has been doing the rounds on social media showing John Minchillo of the Associate Press being attacked on Wednesday while covering the pro-Trump clashes with police.

His colleague, Julio Cortez, posted it to Instagram overnight, saying:

Thankfully, he wasn’t injured. He was labeled as an anti protesters, even though he kept flashing his press credentials, and one person can be heard threatening to kill him. This is an unedited, real life situation of a member of the press keeping his cool even though he was being attacked. A true professional and a great teammate, I’m glad we were able to get away.

You can view the video here.

Here’s a reminder that the mob that stormed the Capitol this week didn’t just consist of MAGA extremists from the fringes of the internet. Gustaf Kilander at the Independent rounded up a list of six Republican state lawmakers who posted to social media indicating that they were present or took part in the invasion of the building. They were:

  • The West Virginia delegate Derrick Evans, who the New York Times reported had posted a video of himself entering the building before deleting the post.
  • The Virginia state senator Amanda Chase, who wrote on Facebook, “These were not rioters and looters; these were Patriots who love their country and do not want to see our great republic turn into a socialist country. I was there with the people; I know. Don’t believe the fake media narrative,” according to the Henrico Citizen.
  • The Missouri state representative Justin Hill, who marched to the Capitol but did not enter, according to the St Louis Post-Dispatch. Hill missed his own swearing-in ceremony to be there.
  • The Pennsylvania state senator Doug Mastriano organised a bus of people to attend the protests but, according to a video he released, did not attend himself, according to the Hill.
  • The Michigan state representative Matt Maddock, according to the Hill.
  • The Tennessee state lawmaker Terri Lynn Weaver, who told the Tennessean that she was “in the thick of it” and tweeted a picture from the attack:

Trump’s actions this week have also seen some long-term allies in the media turn against the outgoing president. Fox News host Tucker Carlson, a strong advocate for the Republican president over the last four years, last night blamed Donald Trump for the unrest.

Carlson, naturally, was mostly attacking reaction to the assault on the Capitol, which he described as “a political protest” that “got out of hand”.

He was angry that the events were being labelled as “insurrection” and “domestic terrorism”, claiming:

The Trump protests at the Capitol yesterday is already being used as a pretext for an unprecedented crackdown on civil liberties. Just in the last several hours we have heard people in positions of power and authority demand that those who support Donald Trump should no longer be allowed to publish books or use the internet or fly on airplanes.

However, along the way Carlson criticised the president as well, saying that he had “recklessly encouraged it”.

Carlson’s reference to book publishing was about Sen. Josh Hawley, who was pictured greeting the mob before they stormed the Capitol.

Simon & Schuster have withdrawn from a deal to publish Hawley’s book, saying it cannot support the senator after his role in what became a dangerous threat to our democracy and freedom.

Jeff Masons at Reuters has been looking at what Wednesday’s violence might mean long-term for the Donald Trump political project.

The outgoing one-term president has previously dangled the possibility of running again in 2024, and political operatives had expected him to exert influence over the Republican Party for years to come.

But, Mason reports, his behavior on Wednesday - goading supporters to march on the Capitol to encourage lawmakers to overturn Democrat Joe Biden’s win, and then failing quickly to call on them to stand down after violence ensued - has sickened people who work and used to work for him and, they said, changed the equation for his post-presidential relevance.

“It was a dereliction of duty as commander-in-chief and I think he will be mortally wounded from a political career going forward,” one former White House official who worked for Trump said on Thursday. “He has blood on his hands from yesterday. A woman died.”

“There’s no recovering from what happened. It was sedition. I don’t see how there’s a future,” said another former administration official, referring to Trump and his top aides. “I think the Cabinet members that stayed and that aren’t speaking out now or even quietly resigning have a stain forever.”

Trump’s low-key video address on Thursday night is as close as he has come to a concession and it came after intervention from his daughter, Ivanka, according to one current White House official. They noted that the political hit from the week’s events would extend to his family members, such as daughter-in-law Lara Trump, a potential candidate for the US Senate in North Carolina.

Mason says that the anonymous former officials who spoke to Reuters for this story had been broadly supportive of the president, even after leaving their posts earlier in his four-year tenure.

Trump has raised massive amounts of money in the period since the election, capitalizing on discontent he has fomented by falsely claiming the election was rigged against him through widespread voter fraud. But another former White House official said the president’s ability to bring in cash would be inhibited now, too, with the exception of smaller donations from still-ardent supporters in his political base.

“I think anything above low-dollar-crazy is going to be a problem,” the former official said. “Anything above the $100 giver is out.”

“I don’t think he’s going to be elected to anything else,” a third former White House official said of Trump. “As time goes on, he will continue to be a very strong voice and he will have a very big following, but ... I think this lessens the chances that he runs for anything.”

Lois Beckett has been looking at how rightwing impunity fueled the pro-Trump mob at the Capitol this week.

The playbook for the Maga invasion of the nation’s Capitol building on Wednesday has been developing for years in plain sight, at far-right rallies in cities like Charlottesville, Berkeley, and Portland, and then, in the past year, at state Capitols across the country, where heavily armed white protesters have forced their way into legislative chambers to accuse politicians of tyranny and treason.

“No one should be surprised,” said Sarah Anthony, a Black state lawmaker who was on the legislative floor in Michigan’s Capitol on 30 April when hundreds of anti-lockdown protesters, including white militia members with guns, tried to force their way inside. “This has been escalating in every corner of our country for months.”

From screaming matches in the lobby of the state house in Michigan to looting the office of speaker of the house Nancy Pelosi, the demonstrators have grown bolder and their aims more ambitious.

But many elements of these incidents repeat each time: the chaotic mix of well-known extremists and unknown Trump supporters who showed up to participate; the strikingly soft and ineffectual response from the police; the expressions of shock from Republican lawmakers that any of their supporters would take action in response to the lies they had been repeating; and of course, the behavior of Trump himself, who first openly incites the violence, and then, when it spirals out of control, praises it instead of condemning it.

Read more of Lois Beckett’s piece here: From Charlottesville to the Capitol: how rightwing impunity fueled the pro-Trump mob

If you missed it – and you won’t have seen it on Facebook as his account has been indefinitely suspended – here is how Donald Trump finally addressed Wednesday’s violence in the Capitol late last night, and accepted that there would be a new administration in the White House from 20 January.

Welcome to our live coverage of US politics for Friday. Here’s a quick catch-up of where we are, and what we can expect today

  • Joe Biden condemned the “domestic terrorists” who stormed the Capitol. The president-elect said of those who breached the Capitol, “Don’t call them protesters. They were a riotous mob, insurrectionists, domestic terrorists.”
  • Biden continued to prepare for government by introducing Merrick Garland as his pick for Attorney General.
  • Donald Trump finally accepted there would be a peaceful transition of power and urged an end to the violence following a day of silence after his unprecedented encouragement of rioters bent on insurrection.
  • A US Capitol police officer has died of injuries suffered during the attack led by a pro-Trump mob.
  • Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer called for Trump to be removed from office through the invoking of the 25th amendment. Pelosi said that the House was prepared to impeach Trump (again) if he was not removed from office.
  • With less than two weeks of his administration to go, transportation secretary Elaine Chao and education secretary Betsy Devos resigned from Trump’s cabinet.
  • Simon & Schuster have cancelled Sen. Josh Hawley’s book contract after he was pictured giving a clenched fist salute to the mob before they invaded the Capitol. He says it is leftist “cancel culture” in action, and has threatened to sue them over it.
  • Facebook indefinitely suspended Trump’s account in response to his comments about the events at the Capitol. Twitter re-opened his account.
  • President Donald Trump has no engagements in his public diary today. Joe Biden is expected to make a transition announcement from Wilmington, Delaware and will receive the presidential briefing.
  • The US recorded more than 4,000 deaths from Covid yesterday, and there were 274,703 new cases recorded, taking the US total caseload over 21.5m.
  • We’ll get the monthly jobs reports at 8:30 ET.

Updated

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