Sunday News: “Pope urges U.S. to shun violence, protect democracy after mob attack”; “The American Abyss”; “Trump’s Capitol Offense”; “Trump’s Removal Is Taking Too Long”; “Big Tech Is Purging Trumpworld’s Biggest Conspiracy Theorists”

by Lowell

Here are a few national and Virginia news headlines, political and otherwise, for Sunday, January 10.

• Pope urges U.S. to shun violence, protect democracy after mob attack
• Pompeo lifts restrictions on U.S.-Taiwan relationship as clock runs out on Trump administration
• Indonesia locates black boxes of crashed jet as body parts recovered
• U.S., Canada, Britain, Australia condemn Hong Kong arrests of activists
• The American Abyss (“A historian of fascism and political atrocity on Trump, the mob and what comes next” This is brilliant – definitely read it!)
• Trump’s Capitol Offense
• Trump’s final days put the country at a dangerous crossroad (“Donald Trump’s presidency is in its final, chaotic spiral. But even with the end so near, each hour seems to carry a new threat to America’s fragile democracy.”)
• Trump’s Removal Is Taking Too Long (“Trump is an unstable and desperate man who has incited violence against the government of the United States. He cannot be trusted with the keys to Armageddon, and so he must be removed by any legal and constitutional means available.”)
• Pence has not ruled out 25th Amendment, source says (It should already have happened.)
• These Black Capitol Police Officers Describe Fighting Off “Racist Ass Terrorists”
• A mob insurrection stoked by false claims of election fraud and promises of violent restoration
• ‘Nobody should be surprised’: Experts says years of hate and violence led to Capitol riot
• For Trump and the Nation, a Final Test of Accountability (“The push by Democrats to impeach the president for his role in inciting the attack on the Capitol underscores how American politics has been profoundly shaken in ways still hard to measure.”)
• ‘Our President Wants Us Here’: The Mob That Stormed the Capitol (“From QAnon and the Proud Boys to elected officials and Trump-supporting Americans, the protesters came from around the country with one allegiance. The mayhem was the culmination of a sustained assault by President Trump and his enablers on fact-based reality, one that began long before the election”)
• Are We Stuck With Trump in the White House? (“Let’s talk about options to remove him, and to change norms.”)
• Stewing in the White House, Trump Plots a Boastful Media Tour and Screams ‘I’m Not Going to Resign’ (Raving lunatic.)
• White House Forced Georgia U.S. Attorney to Resign
• ‘Find the fraud’: Trump pressured a Georgia elections investigator in a separate call legal experts say could amount to obstruction (Add that to Trump’s long list of serious crimes.)
• Inside the Capitol siege: How barricaded lawmakers and aides sounded urgent pleas for help as police lost control
• In Capitol Riot, Communications Between Agencies Hampered Forceful Response
• Now it’s sinking in: Wednesday’s Capitol Hill riot was even more violent than it first appeared
• Republicans largely silent about consequences of deadly attack and Trump’s role in inciting it (Silence is not acceptable.)
• Toomey says Trump ‘committed impeachable offenses’
• Dems grapple with impeachment realities in race to punish Trump
• Pelosi urges Democrats to prepare to return to DC this week amid impeachment calls
• Trump considering Giuliani and Dershowitz for impeachment defense team (Pathetic.)
• Group of State Department Officials Call for Consultations on Trump’s Removal
• Violence in the Capitol: A Historic Wake-Up Call
• The day America realized how dangerous Donald Trump is (Seriously? Many of us – Hillary Clinton, for instance – realized it in 2016!)
• Confederate flag tied to door of Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York City
• Democrats Are Determined to Pressure Biden to Investigate Trump
• Where’s Congress? — We’re in a national crisis. The House and Senate should get to work. (Agreed; it’s inexcusable that they’re on recess.)
• Members of Several Well-Known Hate Groups Identified at Capitol Riot
• Pence intends to attend Biden’s inauguration.
• Pence to attend Biden inauguration; Trump never called him in the Capitol bunker, sources say
• The Case for Removing Donald Trump (“However the legal drama ends, the worst option for the country is allowing Trump to remain in office until Inauguration Day.”)
• It’s time to change how we count electoral votes (“The Electoral Count Act’s prolix text should promptly be changed to make crystal-clear that the states, not Congress, are the ultimate arbiters of their elections for presidential electors, and that their votes will be considered ‘regular’ except for rare circumstance in which the Constitution or federal law may have been violated — by the election of an ineligible person, say, or by holding the election on an unauthorized date. Congress should also consider making the president pro tem of the Senate responsible for the vote count. This would eliminate, beyond any doubt, the scenario under which a vice president could purport to decide the votes’ validity himself.”)
• As Inauguration Nears, Concern Of More Violence Grows
• The Silence of the Damned (“Still, I’m not used to this eerie silence from the most chatty Oval Office inhabitant in modern American history”)
• Dems grapple with impeachment realities in race to punish Trump (“Several top Democrats raised concerns that Joe Biden’s early presidential agenda could be delayed for weeks by a Senate trial.”)
• McCarthy and Scalise face internal dissension after riot
• ‘Now The World Gets To See The Difference’: BLM Protesters On The Capitol Attack
• House Republicans Ask Biden: Get Pelosi to Back Off Impeachment
• How Trump’s GOP Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love Rioting (“Today’s right-wing activist is citing instances of bad behavior on the left to justify not only replicating that behavior but dramatically escalating it.”)o
• Pelosi Tells Lawmakers to Prepare for Action on Trump
• Pro-Trump dark money groups organized the rally that led to deadly Capitol Hill riot (There need to be serious consequences for these people.)
• Joe Biden wants to set aside deficit concerns to invest in ailing U.S. economy
• It’s Almost Over. That’s the Problem. (“What most Americans are waiting for is what Trump supporters find intolerable.”)
• In Pulling Trump’s Megaphone, Twitter Shows Where Power Now Lies
• It Was Supposed to Be So Much Worse (“And the threat to the U.S. government hasn’t passed.”)
• Capitol’s double standard: 2014 Lakota song
• Election gambit blows up on Hawley and Cruz
• A cynical ploy like Hawley and Cruz’s looks harmless. Until it isn’t. (“Fake outrage — over election-fraud lies and other supposed offenses — has real consequences.”)
• Republicans Confront the Consequences of Their Doomsday Rhetoric (“The Capitol riot showed how the ominous tenor of contemporary GOP messaging could be fueling white conservatives’ extremism.”)
• Trump Media Empire? Don’t Bet on It.
• Big Tech Is Purging Trumpworld’s Biggest Conspiracy Theorists (Waayyyy too late.)
• Parler may go offline after Amazon, Apple and Google reject social network (“Parler could go down from Sunday night after Amazon reportedly said it would stop hosting the network in the wake of the US Capitol attack”)
• Amazon suspends Parler, threatening to take pro-Trump site offline indefinitely
• Amazon, Apple and Google Cut Off Parler, an App That Drew Trump Supporters
• Amazon Is Booting Parler Off Of Its Web Hosting Service (“Amazon on Saturday kicked Parler off its Web hosting services. Parler, a social network favored by conservative politicians and extremists, was used to help plan and coordinate the January 6 attempted coup on Washington D.C”)
• Trump Just Had to Light the Match (“The Capitol attack shows the danger of forgetting America’s history.”)
• Trump scrambles to find new social network after Twitter ban, as White House prepares to blast big tech
• A man with an assault rifle was charged with threatening Speaker Nancy Pelosi, officials said.
• Maricopa County Republican Committee votes to censure Cindy McCain, who endorsed Joe Biden for president
• Trump Does Not Order Flags Lowered for Fallen Officer
• FBI releases new wanted poster of 10 more MAGA mob rioters they’re hunting following the arrests of more than 80 others …
• FBI arrests Des Moines man photographed at U.S. Capitol riot. He faces five federal charges
• Georgia man among those facing federal charges following Capitol riot
• Derrick Evans resigns W.Va. House after entering U.S. Capitol with mob
• Sen. Warner Urges Wireless Carriers, Social Media Companies to Preserve Digital Evidence Related to Attack on U.S. Capitol
• Sen. Tim Kaine “Still Just Furious” About “A Day Never Imagined” (Kaine: “there is a distinction between the instigators and the craven, sheep-like followers, and the instigators were Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz”)
• Several VA01 Dem Committees Request That Speaker Pelosi Move to Expel Rep. Rob Wittman (R-VA01) For His “repeated actions in furtherance of the overthrow of the lawful government of the United States”
• Sen. Warner Urges Wireless Carriers, Social Media Companies to Preserve Digital Evidence Related to Attack on U.S. Capitol
• Rep. Don Beyer (D-VA08) Calls for House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy to Resign For Having “spread the very lies that helped incite this violence” (McCarthy “always enables Trump’s worst and most destructive acts”)
• Editorial: The value of steady leadership has never been clearer (“Two leaders, President Donald Trump and Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam, showed two different approaches to leadership on Wednesday. Only one was good.”)
• CASEY: Who should you report to the Democracy Stoppers Hotline? (“I’m sure the FBI is getting swamped with thousands of tips as to the insurrectionists’ identities. A case can be made that three congressmen from western Virginia ought to be considered suspects.” Yep, expel all three.)
• Editorial: After a shameful week in Washington, Virginia lawmakers have to set the standard for good governance
• Big ideas face the hard reality of coronavirus as Virginia General Assembly prepares to convene (“The session gets underway Wednesday under limitations Democrats did not foresee when they took power a year ago.”)
• Virginia lawmakers will start the 2021 session this week — mostly virtually, as pandemic continues (“Lawmakers will consider bills that would legalize marijuana and change other parts of the justice system. They’ll also grapple with how the coronavirus has affected people’s lives and the economy.”)
• Short session, long to-do list: Virginia General Assembly kicks off Wednesday
• Jennifer Carroll Foy Shares Vision to Protect State Buildings, Address Inequities Highlighted by Insurrection at U.S. Capitol
• Ongoing problems that hurt Virginia’s vaccine rollout cloud its promises to widen eligibility and go faster
• Saturday (1/9) Virginia Data on COVID-19: New Cases Hit 1-Day (+5,798), 2-Day (+11,036), 3-Day (+16,415), 10-Day (+49,370) Record Highs; Also, New Record High (3,032) Hospitalizations
• Opinion/Editorial: Virginia must step up vaccinations
• Colleges in Virginia should do more COVID-19 testing to stop transmission, experts say
• Democrat-Suing Attorney Tim Anderson Runs for Delegate and Says “You’re Not Gonna Want to Vote For Me” (Anderson’s positions have changed significantly since 2019, when he said “I believe abortion is a fundamental right” and supported “a national healthcare program through the government”)
• Fairfax County board asks Va. legislators for flexibility to recover from pandemic in 2021
• Richmond community clinics essential to filling health care gaps among Black, Latino populations get vaccinated
• At rally, protesters call for Trump’s ouster (“Indivisible Charlottesville on Saturday held a rally to denounce fascism, decry Wednesday’s insurrection at the Capitol, and call for the ouster of Donald Trump and Fifth District Rep. Bob Good.”)
• Dozens of Virginia Tech athletes got COVID-19. Tech still won’t say how many.
• Staying sunny today with lighter winds; cool and mostly dry through midweek