Trending Now
We have updated our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use for Eurasia Group and its affiliates, including GZERO Media, to clarify the types of data we collect, how we collect it, how we use data and with whom we share data. By using our website you consent to our Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy, including the transfer of your personal data to the United States from your country of residence, and our use of cookies described in our Cookie Policy.
{{ subpage.title }}
US political violence increases; Democrats seek Jan 6 accountability
Jon Lieber, head of Eurasia Group's coverage of political and policy developments in Washington, shares his perspective on US politics:
What was the biggest takeaway from the first January 6th hearing?
The House Committee investigating the January 6th riot at the Capitol hosted its first hearing last night. And while a major focus of the committee is making the case for the criminal culpability of former President, Donald Trump, for his role in instigating the riots, much of the facts revealed last night were already well known through leaks from the committee and are unlikely to change any minds for either supporters or detractors of the former president.
The committee also spent significant resources uncovering a connection between two nationalist groups, the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, in their role in deliberately stoking violence that day. The committee showed video evidence that group members coordinated in advance to attack the Capitol and disrupt the certification of a completely valid election. And they were egged on by Donald Trump's appearance at the White House that morning. The existence of these nationalist groups and their ability to organize online is going to be an ongoing challenge in the United States, which is starting to see elevated levels of political division and outright political violence.
While political violence was relatively common in the 1960s and 1970s, the trend had subsided for several decades before an uptick in recent years, both in the form of lone-wolf attacks and less successful group plots. The January 6th riot was the most high profile, explosive and important example of this trend, which has included assassination attempts against policymakers and judges, violent protests over police violence across the country in 2020, a mass assassination attempt at a Congressional baseball practice in 2017, a plot to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, a violent standoff between federal agents and militia members in Oregon in 2016, the deadly white nationalist rally in Charlottesville in 2017, and just this week, a barely thwarted attempt to kill Supreme Court Justice, Brett Kavanaugh at his home.
Polling shows Americans are increasingly open to the idea of political violence, with one in four saying it is sometimes okay in early 2022. Other studies suggest these results may overstate the actual level of support for political violence. Though, as was the case in the 1960s, it only takes one successful lone-wolf willing to commit epoch-defining political violence, such as the assassinations of the Kennedy brothers and Martin Luther King in the 1960s.
So while one key goal of the committee is to keep the violence of January 6th and the Republican Party's connection to it on top of mind for voters as Democrats face a very challenging political environment in November, equally important will be holding these groups accountable for their role in trying to disrupt the democratic transition of power, and demonstrating to Republicans, who continue to play down the violence of that day, that this is a serious threat to the security of the United States that must be met with condemnation and potentially reforms to make sure it can't happen again.
Democrats hope to use Jan 6 Trump focus to gain edge in midterms
Jon Lieber, head of Eurasia Group's coverage of political and policy developments in Washington, shares his perspective on US politics:
What role will the January 6 riots play in the midterm elections?
This week there was another round of primaries that continue to show good news for Republicans as they are looking to take over Congress in November's midterm elections. Although issues like gun control and abortion continue to take up some political space, inflation and the economy remain the number one issue for voters and the data here is not good for President Biden. Inflation remains high at around 8% and the Federal Reserve has indicated that it's willing to raise interest rates until it has inflation under control, which could result in economic slowdown sometime later this year or early next year. This is a big drag for President Biden whose approval ratings remain low and as a result, polls show a strong advantage for Republicans in the midterm elections.
So far, this has showed up in primary turnout. Turnout among Republicans in primaries is up around one-third relative to the last midterm election while it is roughly flat for Democrats. This may not be as bad as it sounds since the last midterms were a wave election for Democrats, so sustaining the high level of engagement they had in 2018 is not necessarily a bad thing given the headwinds that they face this year.
One thing Democrats are hoping to do is to turn the midterm election away from being a referendum on current President Joe Biden and keep the focus on former President Donald Trump, who remains the most popular person in the Republican Party and continues to play a role in Republican primaries.
The primaries so far have really been a mixed bag for him. Several candidates he endorsed have come from behind to win, but few have managed to capture outright majorities of Republican electorate and he's had several high-profile rebukes including this week when across the country, several more conservative Republican candidates failed to beat moderate Republicans in primaries in California and elsewhere.
One of the tactics Democrats are using to keep the focus on Donald Trump is the January 6th commission, which will kick off a series of hearings this week that will last until September with a public hearing in prime time this Thursday. The commission is charged with investigating the attack on the Capitol that happened in the wake of the 2020 election. President Trump had a clear role in agitating the crowd that day and some on the committee argued that his role in attempting to disrupt the transfer of power was a criminal act.
The hearing organizers say they will be unearthing new facts about what wrong last January and they've been leaking for months information on President Trump's role in stoking the riots. The hearings will also focus on the role of outside organizer who planned the riots and on policing failures by the Capitol and DC police that day.
There's a clear political undertone to all of this. Many of the facts unveiled at the hearing are already well known and will land in a very polarized atmosphere. This could change, but it seems like there's very little momentum for legislative reforms at the moment to prevent this from happening again and building momentum would require a significant internal effort that has nothing to do with rallying the public which is what these hearings are ostensibly about. By stretching them out over several months, Democrats hope they will be able to sustain media attention on something other than inflation.
Thanks for watching. This has been US Politics In (a little over) 60 Seconds.
- Partisan wrangling likely to block January 6 commission in ... ›
- 2022 Top Risks: US & China domestic dysfunction (not US-China ›
- Virginia's governor race tests Democrats ahead of 2022 midterms ... ›
- Jon Lieber: What's different about the 2022 midterms is 2024 Trump ... ›
- Jan 6 hearings: The case against Trump's big lie - GZERO Media ›
- Have Republicans ruined their chances of taking the Senate? - GZERO Media ›
- Herschel Walker's abortion news bad for GOP, but ad spend will determine control of US Senate - GZERO Media ›
- Will US Congress change Social Security? - GZERO Media ›
- How Trump dominates the GOP & "impressed" these DC journalists - GZERO Media ›
Progress on infrastructure bill despite Senate vote against it
Get insights on the latest news in US politics from Jon Lieber, head of Eurasia Group's coverage of political and policy developments in Washington:
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi barred two Republican members from serving on the Jan. 6 commission. What's going on?
Well, the Jan. 6 commission was designed to be a bipartisan commission, taking input from members from Democrats and Republicans. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy had the opportunity to make recommendations but the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, could always veto those recommendations. In this case, she did, saying no to two members, Jim Banks and Jim Jordan, both of whom are strongly aligned with President Trump and who voted against certifying the election results in 2020. The Republicans for the most part see the Jan. 6 commission as an opportunity to score political points against them, and the Democrats say this is going to be a fair, non-biased, and nonpartisan investigation into what happened on Jan. 6, starting with a hearing next week with some of the police officers who were involved in the battle with the protesters inside the Capitol.
Both sides are probably correct on this. So the Democrats can use this as an opportunity to keep the Jan. 6 in the media and to keep Republicans connected to the riot at the Capitol. The Republicans, in turn, are going to use this to try to expand the scope and talk about all kinds of things that are really beyond strictly focusing on Jan. 6. So, it seems unlikely there's going to be a lot of real value that comes out of this commission, but you do have members like Liz Cheney who will be participating, who say they want to get to the bottom of what happened beyond President Trump's involvement.
Progress on a bipartisan infrastructure bill, is that really possible?
So this week, the Senate actually voted down, moving to proceed to a bipartisan infrastructure bill. And strangely, that may be the first sign that the bipartisan infrastructure bill could actually happen. Republicans voted against moving to the bill, opening debate on it, because they didn't have the text yet and they say it wasn't ready. The vote lost; it didn't get the 60 votes needed to proceed. But the 22 members, Republicans and Democrats, who are working on a bipartisan compromise, since the vote happened, have said they've made significant progress and are planning to try again early next week.
They need to try to cut a deal over the weekend and produce legislative text, and in the legislative text is where you're going to find a lot of things that could potentially trip up this bill. Because no other members have seen what's in this yet, there could be policy riders that people don't like, and the scores that come out of the Congressional scorekeepers telling everybody how much money to spend and how much revenue it raises may not add up. So there's still a lot that can go wrong between now and next week, but strangely, this negative vote was the first step towards actually getting something done this year on infrastructure.- Biden's big bet on Big Government - GZERO Media ›
- Joe Biden's plan to remake America - GZERO Media ›
- Texas grid shows need to fix infrastructure in US; RIP Rush ... ›
- Senate's bipartisan $1T infrastructure bill could double US spending - GZERO Media ›
- How the Democrats plan to tax the rich; Newsom wins CA recall - GZERO Media ›
- Biden's legacy rests on pandemic leadership (not Afghanistan mistakes) - GZERO Media ›
- Moderate Democrats will determine the infrastructure bill's fate - GZERO Media ›
- What's next for infrastructure and Biden's Build Back Better plan? - GZERO Media ›
Partisan wrangling likely to block January 6 commission in Congress
Get insights on the latest news in US politics from Jon Lieber, head of Eurasia Group's coverage of political and policy developments in Washington:
What is the status of the proposed January 6 commission to investigate the Capitol assault?
The January 6 commission was an idea originally from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who proposed a commission modeled after the very successful 9/11 commission, which looked at intelligence failures leading up to the terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers in Manhattan on September 11th, 2001. Pelosi wanted to form a bipartisan commission to look at the Capitol insurrection on January 6th. Why it happened, how it happened, what the security failures were that led to it happening, who's responsible, and how to prevent it from ever happening again? And initially, Republicans were fairly cold to this idea because Pelosi had proposed a commission that was stacked in favor of the Democrats, with more democratic members than Republicans. House Republican minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, empowered representative John Katko from New York to go ahead and negotiate the commission. And eventually he came up with a compromised proposal that would have been evenly balanced between Republicans and Democrats, had subpoena power, and been able to produce a report by the end of the year.
Republicans, however, decided in the meantime that this commission was not good news for them. They began to be concerned that the Democrats would use this as a partisan opportunity to link them to the insurgence that took over the Capitol building, who were largely both in favor of Donald Trump, and also inspired by him to go and charge the Capitol. And the Republicans just don't want to be talking about this anymore. They want to move on and talk about Biden's policy agenda, where they think they're on much more stable political ground.
McCarthy now opposes the commission, which passed the House this week with about 35 Republican members voting for it, members who thought they were operating in good faith and typically want to be part of the problem solvers group in the House of Representatives. But it's unlikely to go anywhere in the Senate because minority leader McConnell opposes the commission, and probably represents the views of enough Republicans to successfully filibuster this thing.
So this isn't going to go anywhere. There may be congressional investigations into what happened on January 6th, but those investigations in the grand tradition of the hearings into Benghazi, and other purely partisan issues are going to be led by Democrats with Republicans. Maybe they participate, maybe they don't, but this is turning into a very partisan issue, as many other issues are in the US today.