Facebook and Instagram have banned Donald Trump, and Twitter has frozen his account. Sen Schumer and Speaker Pelosi have called for the 25th Amendment, or failing that, impeachment.
Elaine Chau and Betsy DeVos have resigned (too cowardly to invoke the 25th?). And Donald Trump is sorry as the House moves to impeach.
Welcome to Friday.
WSJ editorial board:
Donald Trump’s Final Days
The best outcome would be for him to resign to spare the U.S. another impeachment fight.
Adam Davidson/Twitter:
I woke up furious.
I have received so much anger from old friends at NPR and the NYT for warning them, telling them, and, yes, sometimes publicly tweeting about how their coverage is normalizing Trump and his followers, legitimizing their lies and downplaying the crisis.
Yesterday's crisis was created by Trump and his followers.
And yesterday showed that many journalists are willing to state that some actions by an elected leader are unacceptable.
But they will return to institutional cowardice.
“That is the overwhelming sentiment of my caucus,” from her presser yesterday.
WaPo on LARPing (live action role play):
Internet detectives are identifying scores of pro-Trump rioters at the Capitol. Some have already been fired.
As he strolled past gold-framed portraits of past Congressional leaders, one rioter who stormed the Capitol in a pro-Trump mob on Wednesday wore a red Trump hat, a commemorative sweatshirt from the president’s inauguration and a lanyard around his neck.
When a photo of him went viral, it didn’t take Internet sleuths long to realize that the lanyard held his work badge — clearly identifying him as an employee of Navistar Direct Marketing, a printing company in Frederick, Md.
He’s not alone among the rioters who wreaked havoc in Congress. While police and the FBI work to identify and arrest members of the mob, online detectives are also crowdsourcing information and doxing them — exposing the rioters to criminal prosecution, but also more immediate action from their bosses.
USA Today editorial:
Invoke the 25th Amendment: Donald Trump forfeited his moral authority to stay in office
Our View: By egging on a deadly insurrection and hailing the rioters, the president's continuance in office poses unacceptable risks to America
This month, time is short, and Trump retains considerable support among congressional Republicans. Shamefully, even after Wednesday’s insurrection, 139 representatives and eight senators backed Trump’s efforts to overturn the will of the voters in Arizona and Pennsylvania.
That leaves the 25th Amendment, which sets out procedures for replacing an unfit president.
EE News:
Biden climate team says it underestimated Trump's damage
Some climate moves can't happen until Biden officials remedy those deficiencies, a senior transition official said, because "those have been very carefully directed budget cuts to the very parts of the [EPA] that are going to be necessary to get rid of [Trump's] outrageous rollbacks."
For instance, the official said, EPA's research laboratories have been hollowed out, and its science advisory boards have been depopulated. At the operational level, each of Trump's rollbacks has shuffled the staff and funding that had been in place to carry out regulations.
The EPA workforce has shrunk by more than 600 people since the beginning of Trump's term, another source familiar with the agency review process said.
That's on top of the agency's moves to restrict the kinds of public health research that EPA can use for regulations, and its watering down of the social cost of carbon, the government's metric for analyzing the benefits of emissions cuts.
NY Times:
Trump Is Said to Have Discussed Pardoning Himself
The discussions occurred in recent weeks, and it was not clear whether he has brought it up since he incited supporters to march on the Capitol, where some stormed the site.
In several conversations since Election Day, Mr. Trump has told advisers that he is considering giving himself a pardon and, in other instances, asked whether he should and what the effect would be on him legally and politically, according to the two people. It was not clear whether he had broached the topic since he incited his supporters on Wednesday to march on the Capitol, where some stormed the building in a mob attack.
Mr. Trump has shown signs that his level of interest in pardoning himself goes beyond idle musings. He has long maintained he has the power to pardon himself, and his polling of aides’ views is typically a sign that he is preparing to follow through on his aims. He has also become increasingly convinced that his perceived enemies will use the levers of law enforcement to target him after he leaves office.
KHN:
In Los Angeles and Beyond, Oxygen Is the Latest Covid Bottleneck
It’s gotten so bad that Los Angeles County officials are warning paramedics to conserve it. Some hospitals are having to delay releasing patients as they don’t have enough oxygen equipment to send home with them.
“Everybody is worried about what’s going to happen in the next week or so,” said Cathy Chidester, director of the L.A. County Emergency Medical Services Agency.
History will not be kind.
Greg Sargent/WaPo:
Democrats are drafting new impeachment articles. Inaction is increasingly untenable.
Some Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee are circulating drafts of new articles of impeachment directed at President Trump for his role in inciting the violent mob assault on the Capitol, a Democratic aide tells me.
It’s unclear whether these will get a vote, or whether they’re intended to pressure members of Trump’s Cabinet to seriously consider removing Trump via the 25th Amendment. Judiciary Committee Democrats have already signed a letter urging Vice President Pence to proceed with that process.
And Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), who will be senate majority leader in the new Congress, has now called for the 25th Amendment to be invoked, adding in a statement: “If the Vice President and the Cabinet refuse to stand up, Congress should reconvene to impeach the president.”
The new articles of impeachment circulating among House Judiciary Democrats argue that Trump committed high crimes and misdemeanors and violated his oath to defend the Constitution and faithfully execute the office of the presidency by inciting Wednesday’s violence.
Max Boot/WaPo:
Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy have led Republicans to disaster. They must go.
In 2016, Never Trumpers predicted that by nominating an ignorant and egomaniacal bigot, the Republican Party would lead the country and itself to ruin.
The consequences have proved far worse than even President Trump’s opponents could have predicted. Who, after all, could have imagined that more than 360,000 Americans would die during Trump’s last year in office because of his catastrophic mismanagement of a pandemic? Or that the U.S. Capitol would be invaded by a mob of Trump supporters?
But the political consequences for the Republican Party have not been as dire as they should have been. Until now.