End Days for an Evil Man - January 16th, 2021

 ♦ Beyond Trump’s Dismal Approval Rating, Polls Show Some Troubling Republican Trends

 ♦ DHS Signs Agreements With States That Could Hamper Biden’s Immigration Policies

 ♦ FDA blindsided as Trump Admin cripples agency on its way out

 ♦ GOP freshman lawmakers splinter over Trump

 ♦ Grievance politics is a dead-end road

 ♦ Ted Cruz’s Former Staffers Are ‘Disgusted’ by His New Low for Trump

 ♦ 'My neighborhood is being destroyed to pacify his supporters': the race to complete Trump's wall

 ♦ 'I’m facing a prison sentence': US Capitol rioters plead with Trump for pardons

 ♦ Capitol Police Are Investigating Whether Lawmakers Gave Tours To Rioters Before Capitol Attack

 ♦ Atlanta Prosecutor Appears to Move Closer to Trump Inquiry

 ♦ What motivates the "motivated reasoning" of pro-Trump conspiracists?

 ♦ Capitol Police arrested a man with an ‘unauthorized’ inauguration credential and a gun at a security checkpoint

Beyond Trump’s Dismal Approval Rating, Polls Show Some Troubling Republican Trends

The toplines of a tranche of new polls released since the Capitol insurrection show general themes: that Americans do not support the takeover of their government seat, and that President Donald Trump’s approval rating is steadily dropping. 

Members of the National Guard and the Washington D.C. police keep a small group of demonstrators away from the Capital after thousands of Donald Trump supporters stormed the United States Capitol building
Spencer Platt/Getty

But the crosstabs reveal a much darker picture. Majorities of Republican voters do not hold Trump or GOP lawmakers responsible for the violence their election fraud lies helped incite, and in some cases are even inclined to be sympathetic to the rioters themselves. 

Trump’s GOP Allies

A full 70 percent of Republican voters  in a Quinnipiac Poll released January 11  said that the Republican lawmakers who tried to stop the formal certification of President-Elect Joe Biden’s win were protecting democracy. Only 23 percent said they were undermining it. 

Democrats in the same poll overwhelmingly saw the Republican lawmakers as undermining democracy by 90 percent, with only 9 percent saying they were protecting it.

The Republican numbers are similar in an  ABC/Washington Post poll  released Friday: of the 78 percent who approve of GOP lawmakers’ attempts to help Trump overturn the election, 51 percent said they didn’t go far enough. A mere 16 percent of Republicans said their attempts went too far. 

And again, in an  Economist/YouGov poll : 67 percent of Republicans either somewhat or strongly support the objections to the Electoral College certification. 

The data helps explain the galling lack of introspection and self-reflection on the Republican side, when it comes to reckoning with their behavior that led to the mob. Their constituents, as captured in the polling, don’t believe they did anything wrong by crying election fraud despite a lack of proof.

Instead, most GOP lawmakers have been preaching “ unity ,” encouraging the incoming administration to turn the page on the insurrection and start the process of “healing.” 

Trump Himself

Republican absolution held steady when the question was applied to Trump in the Quinnipiac poll: 73 percent of Republicans said Trump is protecting democracy to 20 percent who said he’s undermining it. Democrats, by 95 percent, said he’s undermining democracy to 4 percent saying he’s protecting it. 

Meanwhile, in the same poll, a whopping 80 percent of Republicans do not hold Trump accountable for the Capitol siege.   

That result is born out in the later ABC/Washington Post poll, where 78 percent of Republicans said that Trump bears no responsibility for the riot, or only some.

The Economist/YouGov poll shows a similar result: 72 percent of Republicans do not think Trump incited his supporters to violence, while 11 percent do. For the Democrats, 81 percent think Trump did incite the mob. 

This attitude may explain the Republican resistance to punishing Trump thus far. On Wednesday, only 10 House Republicans joined the Democratic caucus to impeach Trump. Those 10 are already facing repercussions; there is a full-fledged intra-party campaign to boot Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), the highest-ranking Republican to vote for impeachment, from her leadership role.

The numbers may also be indicative of how the Senate trial portion of impeachment will shake out, if it ever happens. Reports of Republicans like Senate Majority Mitch McConnell (R-KY) seriously considering voting to convict Trump may be framing up the vote to be closer than it will be. Based on this data, Republicans will be voting in direct contradiction to how the vast majority of their constituents feel if they vote to remove Trump from office, or at least keep him from holding it again, depending on when the trial happens.

Trump’s Mob

In this area, the Quinnipiac poll shows Democratic and Republican voters to be on largely the same page when it comes to the rioters who stormed the Capitol: majorities of both, 70 percent of Republicans and 95 percent of Democrats, said the rioters were undermining democracy. Even bigger majorities of both groups want them held accountable.

But the Economist/YouGov poll suggests that many of these same voters share the rioters’ underlying objection to certifying the election. Seventy one percent of Republicans somewhat or strongly approve of the Trump supporters protesting the Electoral College certification — approval only slips when the Trump supporters breached the Capitol building itself.

In the same poll, Republicans also displayed sympathy to the rioters, with a plurality, or 42 percent, saying that they were “mostly peaceful” to 35 percent saying they were “mostly violent.” A large majority of Democrats, 84 percent, said the rioters were mostly violent. 

Another poll,  CBS News/YouGov , adds a shade of nuance to how Republicans feel about the Capitol invasion. While 73 percent of them say it was not an attempt to overthrow the government, 56 percent say it was an attempt to overturn the election and keep Trump in power. It’s a sign of how effective Trump’s conspiracy theory peddling has been that a majority of Republicans, at least in this poll, see overturning the November election result as preserving, not overthrowing, the government. 

They’re also much more generous about the rioters’ aims than Democrats are, with 43 percent of Republicans describing the mob’s actions as “patriotism” and 50 percent saying the rioters were “defending freedom.”

Now, over a week after the insurrection, Democrats are demanding accountability and Republicans are starting to reckon with what a thoroughly Trumpified party is without Trump at its head. 

These polls lay bare the massive problems with both holding Republicans to account for their behavior and purging Trump from the party. Trump’s poisonous election conspiracy theories, amplified by Republican lawmakers, have effectively seeped into the worldview of their constituents captured by this polling. Even if they don’t like the invading of the Capitol itself, the majority of Republicans appear to agree with the rioters’ underlying fury stemming from a conviction that the November election was stolen, and that Trump’s administration is coming to an unfairly early end.

When one party has so fully absorbed the fictionalized account that Biden is an illegitimate president, true “unity” seems a long way off.

DHS Signs Agreements With States That Could Hamper Biden’s Immigration Policies
“This is just another last-ditch effort to try and ingrain a reckless hyper enforcement system," one legal expert said.

The Department of Homeland Security has signed agreements with multiple jurisdictions, including the state of Arizona, that appear to be an unusual effort to hamstring the incoming Biden administration’s goals to pause deportations, prioritize immigration arrests to only those with serious criminal backgrounds, and increase avenues to asylum.

The agreements would require the DHS to provide notice of immigration policy changes and allow the jurisdictions six months to review and submit comments before the agency moves forward with any of the proposed changes, according to documents obtained by BuzzFeed News.

Just how the agreements will actually play out after Joe Biden takes office remains to be seen. Still, Sarah Pierce, a policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, told BuzzFeed News it’s clear that the Trump administration is “willing to do anything they possibly can to give their restrictive immigration policies staying power.”

“In its final days, the Trump administration is staying true to its strategy of trying anything and everything to implement its restrictive immigration agenda and give it staying power after their time in office,” she added.

Ken Cuccinelli, the acting second in command at DHS, signed the so-called Sanctuary for Americans First Enactment Agreement (SAFE) with Arizona, Louisiana, Indiana, and the Rockingham County Sheriff’s Office in North Carolina, this month, according to documents obtained by BuzzFeed News. The copies are also signed by representatives of the various jurisdictions.

“DHS recognizes that Agency, like other state agencies and municipalities, is directly and concretely affected by changes to DHS rules and policies that have the effect of easing, relaxing, or limiting immigration enforcement,” the agreement with Arizona begins. “Such changes can negatively impact Agency’s law enforcement needs and budgets, as well as its other important health, safety, and pecuniary interests of the State of Arizona.”

The agreement establishes a “binding and enforceable commitment between DHS and Agency” that the local jurisdiction will cooperate with DHS on border security and immigration enforcement in exchange for “DHS’s commitment to consult Agency and consider its views before taking any action, adopting or modifying a policy or procedure, or making any decision that could” reduce or relax immigration enforcement, decrease the number of ICE agents performing enforcement within the jurisdiction’s area, pause deportations, decrease immigration arrests, or increase or expand immigration benefits, among other policies.

The agreement continues by laying out that DHS will “prioritize the protection of the United States” by enforcing immigration laws in a way that prioritizes detention and results in arrests of “removable aliens.”

DHS is required to provide the local jurisdictions with 180 days of written notice of “the proposed action and an opportunity to consult and comment on the proposed action, before taking any such action” listed above.

If either of the parties does not “comply” with the obligations, they will be entitled to “injunctive relief,” according to the agreement. Either party can “request in writing” to terminate the agreement, but must provide 180 days of notice.

Lt. Kevin Suthard, a spokesperson for the Rockingham County Sheriff’s Office, said that the sheriff signed the agreement late last year.

“It’s not political, it’s about public safety. Doing all that we can to keep the residents of Rockingham County that we serve safe,” he said in an email. “That is always our number one priority.”

Officials from Arizona, Indiana, and Louisiana did not respond to a request for comment. A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson declined to comment.

Pratheepan Gulasekaram, an immigration law professor at the Santa Clara University School of Law, said the agreement appears to be an attempt by the Trump administration to create a mechanism for the states to potentially sue in federal court over any policies that are changed or introduced by the incoming administration.

“This is just another last-ditch effort to try and ingrain a reckless hyper enforcement system, but completely unmoored from legal, constitutional ways of implementing policy,” he said.

Naureen Shah, senior advocacy and policy counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, called the agreements "a transparent attempt by Trump officials to tie the Biden-Harris administration’s hands and preserve Trump's grotesque immigration enforcement policy."

The Biden administration has the authority, mandate, and responsibility to break from the Trump administration’s legacy, and nothing about these reported agreements changes that reality," Shah added.

The Trump administration has released a slew of last-minute regulations as an attempt to finalize immigration policies in its final days, including efforts to restrict asylum.

Earlier this week,   Chad Wolf resigned as acting DHS secretary , citing some of the issues the agency has had in enforcing the last-minute policy rush.

“Unfortunately, this action is warranted by recent events, including the ongoing and meritless court rulings regarding the validity of my authority as Acting Secretary,” Wolf said, apparently referencing the fact that many of the policies issued during his tenure had been challenged in court as advocates argued he had not been legally appointed to his role.

Federal judges have noted that Wolf appeared not to be lawfully appointed in issuing rulings that have blocked DHS policies.

FDA blindsided as Trump Admin cripples agency on its way out
It's “a full-frontal assault on public health," one official said.

The US Food and Drug Administration is under siege from the Trump Administration, which is forcing through a steady stream of changes in its final days that threaten the remaining independence of the regulatory agency.

  Stephen Hahn, commissioner of the US
Food and Drug Administration.
Getty | Bloomberg

Perhaps the most dramatic meddling came on Monday, when FDA officials were blindsided as the agency cycled through   three different top lawyers . FDA’s Chief Counsel, Stacy Cline Amin—a Trump appointee—resigned Monday, which FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn announced in an email. Hahn’s email also included the news that career civil servant Mark Raza, the FDA’s principal deputy chief counsel, would serve as Cline Amin’s replacement on an acting basis. But that decision was abruptly overturned Monday night when the Department of Health and Human services   tweeted   that James Lawrence, deputy general counsel for the HHS, would serve as the FDA’s new chief counsel until January 20.

"We were all very surprised," a senior FDA official   told Politico . "But it's consistent with all the fire bombs that keep getting thrown over the fence."

Last week, HHS said it had finalized a rule that would cause all FDA regulations to expire after 10 years unless they are reviewed. Critics of the rule, called   Securing Updated and Necessary Statutory Evaluations Timely   or “SUNSET,” noted that the FDA already has mechanisms to sunset outdated regulations, making automatic expiration dates unnecessary. But   in a statement   announcing the rule, HHS Secretary Alex Azar said that “finalizing our SUNSET rule will deliver for the American people better, smarter, less burdensome regulations in the years to come.”

Next, the HHS moved   to permanently waive FDA’s review requirements of medical devices   before they hit the market. Seven types of medical gloves have already been permanently exempted, and the HHS has proposed exempting 84 other medical devices, including ventilators, fetal heart monitors, infusion pumps, pediatric facemasks, and medical imaging equipment.

The HHS also moved to force the FDA to publish on its website the   time it takes to review new drug applications , claiming that the agency’s current reviews are often too slow.

“A clear abuse of power”

According to   reporting by Politico   on Tuesday, the FDA is now fighting to keep the HHS from stripping the agency of its oversight of genetically modified organisms—oversight that would instead be transferred to the US Department of Agriculture. The industry-backed plan to transfer oversight is reportedly being pushed by the White House.

FDA Commissioner Hahn reportedly told the HHS that he would refuse to sign the memorandum on the transfer, citing questions about legality and potential health implications for relaxed oversight of certain genetically modified animals.

An FDA source told Politico that the Trump Administration’s move amounted to “a full-frontal assault on public health.”

In   a tweet , former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb echoed the concern, writing, “I've been disappointed to see HHS infringing on FDA's public health prerogatives in the closing days of the administration. The way they're pursuing these unilateral actions will have long-term consequences at a time when FDA's stature is critical to seeing us through this crisis.”

In   yet another strike , Politico reported Thursday that the Trump Administration is working to ram through term limits on top career scientists at the FDA, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and other health agencies. The regulation would mandate job reviews every five years, in which scientists would either be renewed or reassigned.

“It’s been a step-by-step escalation in retaliation by HHS against career scientists throughout the pandemic,” a current senior administration official told Politico, blaming HHS Secretary Azar for the flurry of attacks. “It’s a clear abuse of power by Azar.”

GOP freshman lawmakers splinter over Trump
The clashing factions of the freshman class reflect the broader fight within the party

The House GOP’s high-profile freshman class is fracturing less than two weeks into the new Congress, and it’s all over one man: Donald Trump.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) wears a "Trump Won" face mask as she arrives on the floor of the House to take the oath of office on the year's opening session on Jan. 3, 2021 in Washington, D.C.
Erin Scott-Pool/Getty Images

Trump’s failed gambit to overturn the election — and the deadly Capitol riots that followed — forced the newest House Republicans to take some of the toughest and most consequential votes of their careers during their very first days in office.

Grievance politics is a dead-end road
Conservatives must stand up to those who peddle victimization

President Donald Trump’s post-election circus of denial casts in bright relief the damage Trumpism has done to conservatism. The ease with which so many Republicans and supposedly conservative thought leaders have parroted his specious election fraud stories underscores a deeper problem: the all-out embrace of grievance politics, which is the rhetorical and epistemological cornerstone of Trumpism. 

Victimization, the core of grievance politics, has captured much of the conservative mind, and in case anyone doubted that it could produce real destruction, the events at the U.S. Capitol on January 6 settled the matter. Trump’s populism has always been more about an  aggrieved anti-elitism  than bolstering the economic situation of the  working class  or whatever other worthy cause we have been told repeatedly he was elected to fulfill. By embracing Trumpism, his supporters have discarded the virtues of responsibility and prudence that have long characterized conservatism.

There is a famous Ronald Reagan quote that some Trumpists probably recited in their pre-Trump careers: “We must reject the idea that every time a law’s broken, society is guilty rather than the lawbreaker. It is time to restore the American precept that each individual is accountable for his actions.” Trumpists have proved willing to disregard and even break laws because they believe themselves to be the victims of a guilty society masterminded by activists and elites.

In a January 6 tweet, removed by Twitter before the president was permanently banned from the platform, Trump proclaimed after his supporters invaded the U.S. Capitol, “These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is  so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated  for so long. Go home with love & in peace. Remember this day forever!” (emphasis added).

This type of rhetoric—that violent protest is justified when the unjustly powerful take what is not theirs from the powerless—is familiar turf to the activist left, which conservatism has a proud history of opposing. Not anymore. 

The signatories of the December 10  statement  from the Conservative Action Project, an umbrella organization of conservative movement leaders  dedicated  to “constitutional conservatism based on first principles,” claimed that the “unlawful and invalid” election outcome was the result of “a coordinated pressure campaign by Democrats and allied groups.” Rudy Giuliani  said  in December that fear “of the elite reaction” was the one big obstacle to Republicans speaking up about election fraud. Evangelical Trump booster Eric Metaxas, who  said  he would be glad to die in the stolen-election fight, claimed in November that the alleged election fraud was “like holding a rusty knife to the throat of Lady Liberty.” Fox News host Tucker Carlson  declared , “It’s not your fault; it’s their fault,” to the violent protesters the day after the insurrection. In their  letter  of support for the Texas lawsuit, 126 Republican members of the House of Representatives claimed that the “constitutional authority of state legislatures was  simply usurped  by various governors, state courts, state election officials, and others” (emphasis added). 

These themes—abuse by elites, the end of America, conspiratorial usurpation—recur over and again among Trumpian purveyors of grievance politics. Their common feature is an implicit loss of faith in the virtues of civic duty and personal responsibility. Like children who blame others for problems they have caused themselves or who don’t have the patience to utilize proven solutions, peddlers of victimization in today’s political life have converted learned helplessness into a virtue. When progressives engage in this kind of behavior, conservatives call them childish. It is no less childish when conservatives do it, and it is no way to run a republic. 

Conservatism at its core holds that the ordered liberty on which our society depends is maintained first and foremost by actions of individuals, prior to the actions of the state. G . K .  Chesterton once wrote, “In short, the democratic faith is this: that the most terribly important things must be left to ordinary men themselves—the mating of the sexes, the rearing of the young, the laws of the state.” This is why, he said, the principle of democracy is “analogous to writing one’s own love-letters or blowing one’s own nose. These things we want a man to do for himself, even if he does them badly.”

This is why conservatives have always made such a big deal of prudence, which Edmund Burke famously called “the god of this lower world,” as essential to balancing our liberties and traditions. A civil society requires citizens and leaders who understand what history and experience teach them about their obligations, rather than relying on ideological abstractions or fashionable neologisms of the day. Prudence presupposes a sense of responsibility for one’s duties and one’s community. It requires understanding institutions enough to work in and through them rather than vitiating them through power grabs and the airing of grievances. Prudence is antithetical to the pathos of victimization. 

It is learned, as Russell Kirk wrote, through the “performance of our duties in community,” and no matter how well-trained our civil servants may be, they “cannot confer justice and prosperity and tranquility upon a mass of men and women deprived of their older responsibilities.” A sense of responsibility for one’s life, community, and country implies a faith in the goodness and efficacy of investing our time in the public and private institutions on which our social order depends.  

Bill Buckley wrote in his book  Gratitude , “Materialistic democracy beckons every man to make himself a king; republican citizenship incites every man to be a knight”—not out of some archaic notion of chivalry, but from a debt of gratitude to the dead whose sacrifices compel us also to sacrifice our time and treasure for the public good. Gratitude is the basic conservative disposition, as Yuval Levin has written. “Conservatives,” he  says , “tend to begin from gratitude for what is good and what works in our society and then strive to build on it, while liberals tend to begin from outrage at what is bad and broken and seek to uproot it.” 

America does not need outraged conservatives bent on uprooting that which needs reforming and nourishing. It needs grateful ones who believe that working in and through our public and private institutions is noble and necessary. Alexis de Tocqueville noted early in the 19th century that “everyone takes as zealous an interest in the affairs of his township, his county, and of the whole State, as if they were his own, because everyone, in his sphere, takes an active part in the government of society.” Even the “lower orders” understand that the general prosperity of the country benefits their own welfare, he noticed, and therefore “the citizen looks upon the fortune of the public as his private interest.”

Grievance politics is a dead-end road. It is time for conservatives to call out members of their own community who continue to peddle victimization. They need to recognize once again that individual agency and personal responsibility are essential, and reinforce their understanding that our institutions—political, media, academic, familial, communal—form the public square within which we exercise our prudence and apply our sense of responsibility to real-world issues and challenges. The continual airing of grievances ultimately results in either a self-imposed subservience to the objects of those grievances or, as we saw on January 6, an attempt to overthrow them in a rage. Neither is good, and neither is necessary.

None of this means conservatives should not fight for those who have been excluded—sometimes unfairly and discriminatorily—from institutions. But thinkers and activists on the right have shown they know how to amass clout and representation in politics and the media. They are outnumbered in academia but still have a strong enough presence upon which to build. And they have plenty of communities and families in which to discharge their civic responsibilities. Once enough conservatives recover this way of thinking and acting, the culture of victimization that has overtaken so much territory within conservatism will begin to recede.

Ted Cruz’s Former Staffers Are ‘Disgusted’ by His New Low for Trump

Ted Cruz h as long had a public reputation   as an unctuous asshole. Even so, his staffers have tended to hold him in high regard as a kind and geeky man who treated his underlings well even while his fellow senators   loathed him . Now, though, “most of Cruzworld is pretty disgusted” with the senator for choosing to back Donald Trump’s absurd claims of widespread election fraud, in the words of one former aide. As another former aide put it, “Everyone is upset with the direction things have gone, and the longer they’ve been with the senator, the more distaste they are expressing.”

 Erin Schaff/AP/Shutterstock

Intelligencer spoke to more than half a dozen former Cruz staffers who have spent the past week trying to reconcile the man they once believed in with the politician they saw on January 6 when — hours after a mob tore through the Capitol — Cruz voted to throw out electoral votes from states that voted for Joe Biden, just as the rioters and Trump wanted. They say their former boss has become unrecognizable to them.

They have asked themselves and each other how the candidate who began his political career as an unwavering “constitutional conservative” could allow himself to fall in line with Trump’s fraudulent and delusional election challenge; how the man they once viewed as   deeply principled   has been so willing to behave so cravenly. When Cruz first ran for the Senate in 2011, he boasted about fighting against the Bush administration   in court   as Texas’s solicitor general to make clear his willingness to stand up to politicians from either party when they violated the Constitution.

“Personally, it’s painful. It sucks,” that former Cruz aide told Intelligencer. “We’ve always backed him because the country deserves principled conservative leadership … I’d say he got unlucky the Capitol was stormed by a mob, but in reality he placed himself at the political mercy of others.”

Amanda Carpenter, a former Cruz aide in his Senate office, told Intelligencer: “The biggest conversation I’ve had with fellow Cruz supporters is, ‘Was he always this way or did he change?’” Carpenter, who has become a vocal Trump critic, said she “could have never imagined that he could have gone down this road” and that she could have never envisioned that the political career of a legal scholar with a reverence for the Constitution would “culminate in a stand to potentially cancel votes in a way that defied any standards of federalism and constitutionalism.”

Another former Cruz aide pointed to an earlier reason for his change: his loss to Trump for president in the 2016 race and the backlash to his speech at the Republican National Convention that year where he urged Republicans to “vote their conscience.” The next morning, Cruz was booed and heckled at a gathering of Texas delegates to the RNC who viewed his comments as a rebuke and betrayal of Trump. “That’s when things started to get wobbly,” said the former Cruz aide. At that point, one former aide said, “I think blind ambition started to get the better of him after coming so close in 2016 then having to endure Trumpism’s takeover of the party. Psychologically, after he lost in ’16, he must have watched Trump’s messaging to his core base and concluded that maybe this group of voters he needed were going to be more receptive to a message like that.”

Cruz waited to endorse Trump until late September 2016 and has been behind the president ever since. He has dismissed Trump’s vile personal attacks on him during the 2016 primary when Trump called his wife ugly and accused his Cuban-born father of being part of a supposed conspiracy that killed John F. Kennedy. Since all that, Cruz has walked back his fervent criticism of Trump as “a pathological liar” and “utterly amoral.” Cruz continued to be so eager to court Trump’s favor that he even offered via Twitter to represent the president before the Supreme Court in a scurrilous election lawsuit about the 2020 election.

Others suggested that his character hasn’t changed but that it has simply been revealed.

Rick Tyler, a former top spokesman on Cruz’s presidential campaign, pointed to a moment early in the 2016 campaign in which he saw the Texas senator betray political principle for expediency. At the time, Cruz abandoned his longstanding support for free trade because he saw political advantage in opposing the Trans-Pacific Partnership. “That’s Ted Cruz, that’s who Ted Cruz is,” Tyler said. “He will abandon principle, he will abandon conservative values for expediency, and you’re seeing it again, only more dangerous.”

Chad Sweet, a close personal friend of Cruz who served as his campaign chairman in 2016, publicly broke with him after he objected to electoral votes. “Donald Trump and those who aided and abetted him in his relentless undermining of our democracy — including Senators Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz — must be denounced,” Sweet wrote in   a LinkedIn post.   “In moments like this, all freedom-loving Americans must put the survival of our democracy above loyalty to any party or individual.” Lauren Blair Bianchi, the communications director in his Senate office, resigned after Cruz’s objection to counting Arizona’s pro-Biden electors.

One comparison repeatedly brought up in Cruz’s orbit is that of Representative Chip Roy, the Texas senator’s former chief of staff. An ardent conservative, Roy vocally opposed the Republican effort to throw out electoral votes in swing states that voted for Biden as an attempt “to unconstitutionally insert Congress into the center of the presidential election process.”

In conversations with former Cruz aides, it was suggested Cruz’s objections were motivated by one thing and one thing only: the desire to outflank Senator Josh Hawley in the 2024 Republican presidential primary for the Trump base. As one former senior White House official put it, “Ted for sure thought that Hawley had jumped the line, like, ‘How dare you!’” After all, Cruz’s presidential ambitions have long been a topic of discussion among his alumni. “We’ve all talked about 2024, it never left the discussion,” said a former aide. ”From the moment he dropped out of the race [in 2016], the organization was building for 2020. Now, none of us are certain where the path is to 2024.”

In the meantime, the former aide pointed out that Cruz is left in a political trap of his own making for any future presidential bids. “After you’ve gone all in on Trump this many times, that’s your only move left. There’s no room to try to throw it in reverse and find a spot where you can pick and choose what you like about the last four years. Those seats are taken, and there’s plenty of new candidates still getting on the bus that won’t have baggage with them.”

Cruz’s attempts to appeal to Trump’s base didn’t even impress those in the outgoing president’s orbit. The former senior White House official was scornful of the effort. “I think Cruz has tried at different times to be an ally to the president. For somebody so rough on him before. But he now has shown himself to be a craven, calculating politician and somebody who incited — arguably, he helped incite this. That’s what everyone got out of this.”

“He’s supposed to be a smart asshole,” said the former top Trump aide. “That’s where there’s a bit of consternation for me. He’s totally misguided by his own bullshit. He buys into his bullshit more than other people. He’s supposed to at least be a smart, savvy asshole.”

For Cruz, it’s a return to a familiar role in some ways. As one former aide put it: “He really believes he’s an outsider. He psychologically thinks like an outsider and feels most comfortable taking up the political causes of outsiders.” But at this point, it’s not fellow Ivy League graduates or fellow senators ready to cast him out — it’s the people who have spent years of their lives in service of his ambitions. That doesn’t make him an outsider anymore, just alone.

'My neighborhood is being destroyed to pacify his supporters': the race to complete Trump's wall
In his final months in office, Donald Trump has ramped up construction on his promised physical border between the US and Mexico – devastating wildlife habitats and increasing the migrant death toll

Construction along the border wall at Signal Mountain outside of Mexicali, California.
Kevin Cooley/Redux/Eyevine

A t Sierra Vista Ranch in Arizona near the Mexican border, Troy McDaniel is warming up his helicopter. McDaniel, tall and slim in a tan jumpsuit, began taking flying lessons in the 80s, and has since logged 2,000 miles in the air. The helicopter, a cosy, two-seater Robinson R22 Alpha is considered a work vehicle and used to monitor the 640-acre ranch, but it’s clear he relishes any opportunity to fly. “We will have no fun at all,” he deadpans.

McDaniel and his wife, Melissa Owen, bought their ranch and the 100-year-old adobe house that came with it in 2003. Years before, Owen began volunteering at the nearby Buenos Aires National   Wildlife   Refuge, and fell in love with the beauty and natural diversity of the area, as well as the quiet of their tiny town. That all changed last July when construction vehicles and large machinery started “barrelling down the two-lane state road”, says Owen.

Once work on President Donald Trump’s border wall began, construction was rapid. Sasabe, a sleepy border town, located over an hour from the nearest city of Tucson, was transformed into a construction site. “I don’t think you could find a single person in Sasabe who is in favour of this wall,” Owen says.

The purpose of our helicopter trip today is to see the rushed construction work occurring just south of the couple’s house, as contractors race to finish sections of the border wall before Trump leaves office. Viewed from high above the Arizona desert, in the windless bubble of the cockpit, this new section of wall stretches across the landscape like a rust-coloured scar. McDaniel guides us smoothly over hills and drops into canyons, surveying the beauty of the landscape. Here, as on much of the border, the 30ft barrier does not go around; it goes over – stubbornly ploughing through cliffs, up steep mountainsides, and between once-connected communities.

Nota from Bob Nelson: The Original Article is a long-form, with lots of photos and human-interest stories. It's a good read.

'I’m facing a prison sentence': US Capitol rioters plead with Trump for pardons
Arrested supporters say they were ‘listening’ to the president

Jenna Ryan, a Texas real estate broker who took a private jet to Washington to join the attack on the US Capitol, has pleaded with   Donald Trump   to pardon her after she was arrested by federal authorities.

After surrendering to the FBI on Friday, Ryan said: “We all deserve a pardon.”

“I’m facing a prison sentence,” she told CBS11 at her home. “I think I do not deserve that.”

Turning to look into the camera, she said: “I would ask the president of the United States to give me a pardon.”

Jenna Ryan is seen in front of the Capitol during the riot last week.
Twitter

On Wednesday, Trump was impeached for inciting the attack on 6 January that left five people dead, including a police officer, and sent lawmakers fleeing for their lives.

Ryan said she had been “displaying my patriotism”, adding: “I listen to my president who told me to go to the Capitol.”

Ryan left a trove of information online.   Court papers show   she posted a picture of herself taking a private jet to Washington DC the day before the riot, subsequently posing on the steps of the Capitol and beside a window smashed as the pro-Trump mob broke in.

“We’re gonna go down and storm the Capitol,” Ryan said in a video posted to Facebook. “They’re down there right now and that’s why we came and so that’s what we are going to do. So wish me luck.”

During a live Facebook video at the scene of the incursion, Ryan stated: “We are going to fucking go in here. Life or death, it doesn’t matter. Here we go.”

She climbed the steps of the Capitol, then promoted her real estate business to camera: “Y’all know who to hire for your realtor. Jenna Ryan for your realtor.”

Later, Ryan posted on Twitter: “We just stormed the Capital [sic]. It was one of the best days of my life.”

Trump has largely used the presidential pardon power to benefit political allies. Ryan is the latest person to request a pardon over the Capitol attack.

A lawyer for Jacob Chansley, an Arizona man who wore horns, animal skin and face paint while carrying a spear and entering the Senate chamber, said Trump should do the “honourable thing and pardon those of his peaceful followers who accepted the president’s invitation”.

Albert Watkins said his client had no criminal history and was an “active practitioner of yoga”. He also mentioned Chansley’s diet, which has caused him to reject non-organic meals in federal custody.

Chansley faces six federal charges. On Friday, a judge   ordered   him held without bail.

Capitol Police Are Investigating Whether Lawmakers Gave Tours To Rioters Before Capitol Attack

The Capitol Police said on Friday that they are investigating whether members of Congress had inappropriately provided visitors access to the U.S. Capitol before last week’s insurrection, responding to concerns raised by several lawmakers that some of their colleagues may have given rioters in Trump’s mob an inside look at the building ahead of its attack. 

Police intervene as US President Donald Trumps supporters breached security and entered the Capitol building in Washington D.C., January 06, 2021.
Mostafa Bassim/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

“It is under investigation,” Eva Malecki, a spokeswoman   told ABC News .

News of the inquiry, which was also  confirmed by the New York Times,  comes after Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-NJ) suggested that some of her Republican colleagues had  participated in a “reconnaissance”  allowing rioters into the building in groups a day before the Jan. 6 attack.

Sherrill was joined by more than 30 lawmakers on Wednesday who demanded an investigation into visitors’ access to the Capitol ahead of the Capitol siege, noting “extremely high numbers of outside groups” who came into the Capitol the day before Wednesday’s riot when most tours had been restricted due to the coronavirus pandemic.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) on Friday warned that if any House Republicans had “aided and abetted” the rioters in an effort to carry out Trump’s plot to overturn his election loss, they would face consequences. 

“In order to serve here together, we must trust that people have respect for their oath of office, respect for this institution,” Pelosi said. “If in fact it is found that members of Congress were accomplices to this insurrection — if they aided and abetted the crimes — there may have to be action taken beyond the Congress in terms of prosecution for that.”

Pelosi announced that she had named retired Army lieutenant general Russel Honoré to lead a security review of the Capitol in the wake of the deadly rampage, noting that she had asked the 

Pelosi said she had asked the former Army general to launch “an immediate review of the Capitol’s security infrastructure, interagency processes and procedures, and command and control,” in an effort to scrub out future security failures.

Atlanta Prosecutor Appears to Move Closer to Trump Inquiry
The Fulton County district attorney is weighing an inquiry into possible election interference and is said to be considering hiring an outside counsel

Prosecutors in Georgia appear increasingly likely to open a criminal investigation of President Trump over his attempts to overturn the results of the state’s 2020 election, an inquiry into offenses that would be beyond his federal pardon power.

President Trump made several calls to Georgia officials
that raised alarms about election interference.
Doug Mills/The New York Times

The new Fulton County district attorney, Fani Willis, is already weighing whether to proceed, and among the options she is considering is the hiring of a special assistant from outside to oversee the investigation, according to people familiar with her office’s deliberations.

At the same time, David Worley, the lone Democrat on Georgia’s five-member election board, said this week that he would ask the board to make a referral to the Fulton County district attorney by next month. Among the matters he will ask prosecutors to investigate is a phone call Mr. Trump made in which he pressured Georgia’s secretary of state to overturn the state’s election results.

Jeff DiSantis, a district attorney spokesman, said the office had not taken any action to hire outside counsel and declined to comment further on the case.

Some veteran Georgia prosecutors said they believed Mr. Trump had clearly violated state law.

“If you took the fact out that he is the president of the United States and look at the conduct of the call, it tracks the communication you might see in any drug case or organized crime case,” said Michael J. Moore, the former United States attorney for the Middle District of Georgia. “It’s full of threatening undertone and strong-arm tactics.”

He said he believed there had been “a clear attempt to influence the conduct of the secretary of state, and to commit election fraud, or to solicit the commission of election fraud.”

The White House declined to comment.

Mr. Worley said in an interview that if no investigation had been announced by Feb. 10, the day of the election board’s next scheduled meeting he would make a motion for the board to refer the matter of Mr. Trump’s phone calls to Ms. Willis’s office. Mr. Worley, a lawyer, believes that such a referral should, under Georgia law, automatically prompt an investigation.

If the board declines to make a referral, Mr. Worley said he would ask Ms. Willis’s office himself to start an inquiry.

Brad Raffensperger, the secretary of state, is one of the members of the board and has said that he might have a conflict of interest in the matter, as Mr. Trump called him to exert pressure. That could lead him to recuse himself from any decisions on a referral by the board.

Mr. Worley said he would introduce the motion based on an outside complaint filed with the state election board by John F. Banzhaf III, a George Washington University law professor.

Mr. Banzhaf and other legal experts say Mr. Trump’s calls may run afoul of at least three state criminal laws. One is criminal solicitation to commit election fraud, which can be either a felony or a misdemeanor.

There is also a related conspiracy charge, which can be prosecuted either as a misdemeanor or a felony. A third law, a misdemeanor offense, bars “intentional interference” with another person’s “performance of election duties.”

“My feeling based on listening to the phone call is that they probably will see if they can get it past a grand jury,” said Joshua Morrison, a former senior assistant district attorney in Fulton County who once worked closely with Ms. Willis. “It seems clearly there was a crime committed.”

He noted that Fulton County, which encompasses much of Atlanta, is not friendly territory for Mr. Trump if he were to face a grand jury there.

The inquiry, if it comes to pass, would be the second known criminal investigation of Mr. Trump outside of federal pardon power. He is already facing a criminal fraud inquiry into his finances by the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr. Even Georgia’s Republican governor, Brian Kemp, does not have the power to pardon at the state level, though it’s not assured that he would issue a pardon anyway, given his frayed relationship with Mr. Trump. Nonetheless, in Georgia, pardons are handled by a state board.

The question of whether or not to charge the nation’s 45th president would present a unique challenge for any district attorney. Ms. Willis, who took office only days ago, is a seasoned prosecutor not unaccustomed to the limelight and criticism. A graduate of Howard University and the Emory University School of Law in the Atlanta area, she is the first woman, and the second African-American, to hold the job of top prosecutor in Fulton County, Georgia’s most populous, with more than one million residents.

Ms. Willis, 49, is known for the leading role she played in the 2015 convictions of 11 educators in a standardized-test cheating scandal that rocked Atlanta’s public school system. She is taking office at a time when Atlanta, like other big cities, is seeing a rise in crime.

She must also deal with the high-profile fatal shooting of a Black man, Rayshard Brooks, by a white police officer in June 2020 and has said she will take a fresh look at charges brought against the officer by her predecessor.

Several calls by Mr. Trump to Georgia Republicans have raised alarms about election interference. In early December, he called Mr. Kemp to pressure him to call a special legislative session to overturn his election loss. Later that month, Mr. Trump called a state investigator and pressed the official to “find the fraud,” according to those with knowledge of the call.

The pressure campaign culminated in a Jan. 2 call by Mr. Trump to Mr. Raffensperger. “I just want to find 11,780 votes,” Mr. Trump said on the call, during which Mr. Raffensperger and his aides dismissed the president’s baseless claims of fraud.

After the Jan. 2 call, a complaint was sent to the election board by Mr. Banzhaf. (Three of his law students once brought a complaint that forced former Vice President Spiro Agnew to pay back to the state of Maryland money he had received as kickbacks.) Mr. Banzhaf has subsequently supplemented his complaint to incorporate the call made to the Georgia election investigator.

The complaint was also sent to Ms. Willis, and to Chris Carr, the Republican attorney general; a spokesperson for Mr. Carr could not be reached Friday.

Of the three Republicans on the board besides Mr. Raffensperger, one of them, Rebecca N. Sullivan, did not return a phone call, and another, Anh Le, declined to comment. The third, T. Matthew Mashburn, said that it would be inappropriate for him to comment on how he would vote before the motion was presented.

However, Mr. Mashburn also said that he was troubled by some of the language Mr. Trump had used in his phone call to Mr. Raffensperger. Mr. Mashburn noted, in particular, a moment when the president told Mr. Raffensperger, “There’s nothing wrong with saying that, you know, um, that you’ve recalculated.”

“The use of the word ‘recalculate’ is very dangerous ground to tread,” Mr. Mashburn said.

What motivates the "motivated reasoning" of pro-Trump conspiracists?

Motivated reasoning is the idea that our mental processes often cause us to filter the evidence we accept based on whether it's consistent with what we want to believe. During these past few weeks, it has been on display in the United States on a truly grand scale. People are accepting context-free videos shared on social media over investigations performed by election officials. They're rejecting obvious evidence of President Donald Trump's historic unpopularity, while buying in to evidence-free conspiracies involving deceased Latin American dictators.

If the evidence for motivated reasoning is obvious, however, it's a lot harder to figure out what's providing the motivation. It's not simply Republican identity, given that Trump adopted many policies that went against previous Republican orthodoxy. The frequent appearance of Confederate flags confirms some racism is involved, but that doesn't seem to explain it all. There's a long enough list of potential motivations to raise doubts as to whether a single one could possibly suffice.

A recent paper in PNAS, however, provides a single explanation that incorporates a lot of the potential motivations. Called "hegemonic masculinity," it involves a world view that places males from the dominant cultural group as the focus of societal power. And survey data seems to back up the idea.

Masculinity and its discontents

So, what exactly is hegemonic masculinity? The researchers behind the new work, Theresa Vescio and Nathaniel Schermerhorn at Penn State, consider two ways of viewing masculinity. One, termed precarious masculine identity, is largely about personal perceptions of one's own masculinity. From this perspective, masculinity isn't a permanent state; it's one that's constantly re-evaluated, and those who want to maintain a masculine identity have to reinforce it regularly. "Masculinity is earned and maintained through continual behavioral displays of manhood," is how the authors put it.

This can, however, drive societal-level behaviors. People can perceive those who don't conform to traditional gender roles as a threat to masculinity and treat them with hostility. It can influence policy to the extent that support for policies like war and lax gun regulations help enable displays of masculinity.

Hegemonic masculinity, in contrast, is based on a societal-level perception of the appropriate role of males. Specifically, it views the traditional role of males—namely that they're the dominant focus of society—as how it society should be ordered. It "justifies and legitimizes the power of dominant men (i.e., White, straight, upwardly mobile, and able-bodied men) over women and marginalized men," the authors write. In this view, women aren't responsible for enhancing feelings of masculinity in men; instead, they're expected to help reinforce the societal order.

This view allows for a large number of threats beyond people who don't conform to gender norms, including the prosperity of any group like minorities or immigrants that might weaken the dominance of the current hegemonic group of males.

(Obviously, there's a lot more to both of these ideas than can be conveyed in a few paragraphs.)

Vescio and Schermerhorn suggest that the symptoms of hegemonic masculinity line up well with the appeals of Trump. His nostalgia for the past was focused on a time when the dominance of white males was taken for granted by most of society. He regularly suggested his image as a successful businessman was an indication of his superiority. He regularly attacked minorities and immigrants. That said, Trump also displayed some behaviors that are typical of responses to perceived threats to masculinity: "Trump was openly hostile toward gender-atypical women, sexualized gender-typical women, and attacked the masculinity of male peers and opponents."

Masculinity and (some) US voters

While there is significant overlap between these perceptions of masculinity, it's possible to distinguish between the two. People who accept hegemonic masculinity shouldn't necessarily find their masculinity threatened by losing a sporting competition, to give one example, as long as the people to whom they lose belong to the dominant male population. (Though they could find it threatening if they endorse both concepts.) By asking a series of about 65 questions, Vescio and Schermerhorn were able to determine how much individuals endorsed each of these two concepts.

The researchers then performed a series of surveys, both around the 2016 election and prior to the 2020 one, obtaining demographic information, political views, and views on masculinity. While the surveys involved over 2,000 people, one of the biggest weaknesses is the nature of this population: it's primarily composed of college students and Mechanical Turk participants. These are unlikely to represent the US voting population as a whole, and so this study should really be viewed as a way of finding out whether these ideas are worth pursuing in a more representative population.

Within this population, however, the researchers were able to gauge both support for Trump and the participants' feelings on masculinity, racism, and sexism. The researchers started doing a series of regressions, controlling for affects like the participants' political affiliations, gender, and so on, before getting into the meat of the analysis.

That analysis showed that the sort of prejudices you might expect—sexism, racism, and xenophobia—were associated with support for Trump. But even after those were adjusted for, hegemonic masculinity was still associated with support for Trump. This was true even though hegemonic masculinity was also associated with prejudices like sexism and racism that also drove support for Trump—it had its own effect independent of them. It had no association with support for either of the Democratic candidates in these elections.

And the association held in a variety of demographic groups. "[Hegemonic masculinity] predicted voting for and evaluations of Trump equally well for women and men, White and non-White participants, Democrats and Republicans, and across levels of education," Vescio and Schermerhorn conclude. And the association was far stronger than that for the threat-focused masculinity.

Masculinity and “great again”

One oddity in the data is that support for Trump didn't necessarily equate to voting for him. For voting, the prejudices had a stronger association than masculinity issues.

Again, it's important to note that the population here doesn't necessarily reflect that of the US voting population. And the presence of the associations seen here don't mean that all Trump supporters are motivated for these reasons. But hegemonic masculinity does seem to provide a behavioral framework to explain the intense nostalgia behind the "great again" phrasing of Trump's slogan—it's a nostalgia for a social order that no longer exists and has no realistic chance of coming back any time soon. And, thanks to that framework, it's something we can potentially study and understand in more detail.

There was no guarantee that motivating force produced by this nostalgia would necessarily lead to the wave of misinformation that's now swept up a large fraction of the US public. But it's clear that a lot of people intuited that it could and have attempted to use that to their advantage.

Capitol Police arrested a man with an ‘unauthorized’ inauguration credential and a gun at a security checkpoint