This is still true. This is even more important than it was yesterday. And don’t forget this.

This is the first time in going on 250 years of American history that the peaceful transfer of power and the constitutional processes to accomplish that have been disrupted by force. The first time. The Civil War was obviously a vastly graver breakdown of constitutional order. But the secessionists didn’t try to prevent Lincoln from being inaugurated. They just left. What we are seeing here has never happened before. Biden will still be inaugurated. The process that was underway will happen later today or tomorrow. But this has never happened before.

We’re in a bit of a fog of war situation. But the statement from the acting Secretary of Defense said he had spoken to Pence and the Republican and Democratic congressional leadership about mobilizing the National Guard. But there was no mention of having talked to the President. Now the Times is reporting that it was Pence who gave the order for the deployment. Now, I guess great that he did that. But on what basis would the Vice President give that order? The Vice President isn’t commander-in-chief. Is the President still President? Is he somehow even in the White House seen to be commanding the the insurrectionists, not functioning as President? That sounds hyperbolic. But again, what’s the legal basis here?

Longtime TPM Reader DC:

A few thoughts on what we witnessed today from an institutional perspective.

For almost 20 years, I’ve taught a course called Res Publica: A History of Representative Government.  It tries to pin down, historically and philosophically, the kinds of questions we should think about when we call our system of government a “republic” or a ‘democracy” or, most properly, a democratic republic.

CBS and only CBS is reporting that cabinet members are discussing invoking the 25th amendment to remove President Trump from office. I will believe it when I see it. But there have been a few hints over the last hours that the national security structure and some critical functions of government are operating separate from President Trump. The Secretary of Defense and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs conferred with Mike Pence and the Democratic and Republican congressional leaders about bringing in the National Guard. Apparently there were no discussions with the President and Mike Pence eventually gave the order, even though there’s no basis I can think of on which Pence could give such an order.
Read More

One more point about the President and the decision to call in the National Guard. I’ve mentioned several times below that the chain of command simply went around the President. Mike Pence gave the order even though there’s really no legal basis for him doing so. Most of these reports suggest the President was just checked out, maybe not interested in talking to them.

We’ll be picking apart the events of yesterday for the rest of our lives for meaning and understanding, but it’s imperative that we find out here and now what happened exactly and why. I know it seems simple: a mob breached the Capitol for a few hours. But the ticktock on the whole event is critical to understanding it, piecing together the colossal security failures, and sharpening the way we talk about these dreadful events.

Yielding the floor to TPM Reader BK:

I am a longtime reader and Prime Member and I consider your work to be invaluable. To put it in fast food industry terms I am a heavy user, checking your site literally dozens of times a day and night.

Like many Americans, I watched the events in Washington DC unfolding just a couple of miles from my home where we were under curfew.

However, unlike the breathless TV pundits, my reaction wasn’t one of “shock,” or “disbelief.” No, my reaction: I was enraged at what I watched. But none of this was shocking or unreal: it was entirely and utterly predictable.

I’ll write more on that at another time, but this morning I want to address one particular aspect of this story that very few want to talk about: race and white privilege.

And frankly, as much as I adore TPM, in my opinion, this is one area where you have a blind spot, or a lack on interest. I am not sure why, but it is one area where TPM is just like every other new organization/talking head on TV. There is simply no way to cover Trump, his mob, and what happened yesterday without talking about the racism flowing through our society and the racism that has been mainstreamed into our media.

Read More

We often forget that we don’t only arrest and prosecute people to exact individual punishment or to protect public safety. Arrest and prosecution is also how society communicates to itself the parameters of acceptable behavior. Yesterday was many things. But a critical part of it was the result of years and decades of treating violent right-wing extremism as a sort of wingnut performance art, crazy but essentially harmless and to be indulged. Think of the original Bundy clan standoff and the later Malheur standoff. An insurrectionist told a Capitol Police officer yesterday “You didn’t take it back, we gave it back,” as he walked out of the Capitol.

You saw them. They were strutting and proud. They gave their names to reporters. They posed for pictures.

TPM Reader JB, a former Hill staffer, is 100% right. A serious threat to the Capitol would never have been left to the Capitol Police. The failure is almost certainly rooted in the fact that federal law enforcement and the military were reluctant to plan for a threat from the President’s own supporters.

To your correspondent BK’s comments today I have to add the point that a serious threat to the Capitol — which yesterday’s riot certainly was — would never have been left to the Capitol Police alone had it been foreseen.