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Ten days after joining Congress, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene continues building the case for her removal from the House of Representatives. In the wake of the violent attack on the Capitol by supporters of Donald Trump trying to keep Congress from formalizing his loss to President-elect Joe Biden, Greene tweeted out another incitement to violence.

“These Democrats are the enemies to the American people who are leading the impeachment witch hunt against President Trump,” Greene tweeted Wednesday. “AGAIN!”

Then, ominously, “They will be held accountable.”

Enemies to the American people who will be held accountable, huh? That sounds like a call to violence from a member of Congress who described Jan. 6 as a “1776 moment.” When you have spent months trying to overturn an election and then compared the day on which a violent attack on the Capitol was planned to the American Revolution, you don’t get the benefit of the doubt on “enemies of the people” who “will be held accountable.”

Marjorie Taylor Greene is dangerous and she’s reveling in it. She’s positioning herself as some kind of brave freedom fighter, but she’s standing on the sidelines, in a position of privilege, egging others on to do her dirty work. She’s joined Trump in spending months working to convince his followers that the election was stolen—every single fact to the contrary—and now she’s trying to use that belief to get people killed. To get elected Democrats killed in a larger coup attempt.

She needs to go before (more) people are killed, not after.

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The new security measures at the Capitol building in Washington, D.C., were predictable. Also predictable, the response of pro-gun, pro-school metal detector conservatives whining about having to go through metal detectors. Many of the “freshman” representatives, like Republican Lauren Boebert of Colorado have been openly flaunting their gun carrying around the Capitol. They do this because they’re cowardly folks, with small ideas, fragile egos, and an inability to manage the rage they feel that Santa Claus didn’t turn them into the most popular people in the universe.

Like Boebert, Republican Rep. Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina is a special kind of terrible. A day after the insurrection on the Capitol building, Cawthorn told a newspaper that he had a gun on him, “Fortunately, I was armed, so we would have been able to protect ourselves.” While it is against the law for even permitted citizens to carry firearms on Capitol grounds, these officials are trying to stretch an old rule that allows members of Congress to keep guns in their office and carry them around “Capitol grounds.” Of course, even this rule does not allow for guns on the House floor—a law that Cawthorn and Boebert may have already violated.

Cawthorn has not responded to questions about how he happened to have his concealed firearm on him when the Capitol building was beset by insurrectionists. If he was able to go back to his office and retrieve his gun, or someone else was, in between the point when the House chamber was closed down and representatives were escorted to safety, is not known. In fact, it seems rather unlikely. Cawthorn’s communications director Micah Bock released a statement that didn’t assuage anyone’s fears that Cawthorn isn’t absolutely breaking the law. “Rep. Cawthorn exercises his 2nd Amendment rights, as well as the privileges available to members of Congress. Congressman Cawthorn seeks to follow the guidance of Capitol police and is immensely grateful for the work that they do.”

Cawthorn, like a good bootlicking Republican, has attempted to decry the new security regulations, while also saying he isn’t entirely against them, reportedly telling the news that he “didn’t want to be patted down like a criminal,” while also saying “I had no problem being wanded. But I don’t want to be handled and patted down just because I’m in a wheelchair.”

Is it the wheelchair thing or the criminal thing, Rep. Cawthorn? Because Black and brown kids in city schools without wheelchairs and with wheelchairs go through that every day and they haven’t promoted an insurrection against the government. As one House Democrat told CNN, “Until there’s an investigation and until we understand our colleagues’ level of complicity in the attack, we don’t know how involved they really were. Until we have answers, I don’t think we should trust them—not all of them of course, but some of them.”

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Pennsylvania Sen. Doug Mastriano has been a big anti-coronavirus lockdown protest organizer for the past few months. This is basically most of what one needs to know about Mastriano. That and you might remember how after the election—the one being contested on no grounds other than seditious ones—Mastriano, his son, and his son’s friend had to abruptly leave a secret meeting in the Oval Office with Donald Trump because they had tested positive for COVID-19.

This gave the world about a week or two of no Mastriano news. And even with God and nature telling Mastriano to sit this one out, you cannot stop someone hell-bent on making their brand fascism. In the least surprising news of the last two weeks, it turns out the Pennsylvania official was an active part of the Washington, D.C. protest-turned-riot-turned-insurgency at the Capitol building. Calls for his resignation have grown, especially after social media posts showing Mastriano and two-time Republican loser Rick Saccone surfaced showing the two fake-triots at the Washington event. Mastriano also reportedly organized one of the bus trips from Pennsylvania down to the rally.

Mastriano tried to defend himself on Facebook, saying: “At no point did we enter the Capitol building, at no point did we tread upon the Capitol steps, and at no point did we tread upon police lines,” and stated he left before the violence began. He also called the riot repugnant while blaming it on a few bad apples in the crowd. This appeal by Mastriano has not satisfied many. Reps. Brian Sims and Tim Kearney continue to call for his resignation.

WHYY reports that records show the Pennsylvania senator used “thousands of dollars on charter buses ahead of the Washington D.C.” Those “thousands” came from his campaign and as such are logged into his campaign finance ledger.

Below you can watch Mastriano appearing on some right-wing radio show on Jan. 4, saying things like: “Where are we at as a nation? We’re calling out to God for divine intervention. I feel like my back is up against the Red Sea right now, and we’re waiting for something to happen, some revelation to come forth, and part the waters and the truth will come forth.” He also had this to say: “But on our side here, I feel like Wile E. Coyote, you know, we are so self-righteous and think we’re so smart while the Democrats run circles around us and we don’t even realize that, you know, basically we’re in this death match with the Democrat Party where we’re playing by all these, you know, Chatham House Rules and what have you. And meanwhile, they’re running circles around us.”

”Death match?” Gotcha. It’s interesting that Mastriano says he’s like Wile E. Coyote, a predatory animal that keeps on trying to murder another animal and is outsmarted at all points. Is the predator white guys with guns? Just asking so we can all understand how you think of our democracy.

Here’s Mastriano rallying the crowd on Jan. 6 in Washington, D.C., telling them that “it’s time to rise up, Americans.”

Obviously feeling the pressure, Mastriano posted a placard on his Twitter account early Wednesday, Jan. 13, that reads: “Please, do not participate in rallies or protests over next ten days Let’s focus on praying for our nation during these troubling times”. Guess he won’t be using any of his campaign finances for new bus rides to the Capitol.

Here he is talking about Wile E. Coyote.

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From the GOP rank and file to those in leadership roles, Republican lawmakers are placing their bets—about their own political futures, the future of the party, and even how history will reflect on this fraught moment for the country.

And while Democrats’ resolve to hold Donald Trump to account for inciting violence has proven uniquely unifying for most of the country, the Republican party is dividing amongst itself between those who think Trump is culpable and even impeachable and those who have hitched their raft irrevocably to Trumptanic. And make no mistake, Trump’s support is tanking, even among Republican voters. A Morning Consult poll of GOP voters released Wednesday found that just 42% of them said they would vote for Trump in a 2024 presidential primary. Given what Trump has done, that level of support still seems high, but it’s slipped 12 points from a Nov. 21-23 survey when the outlet posed the same question. And it’s a far cry from the high-80s/low-90s support Trump has enjoyed among Republican voters throughout his term.

Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the House GOP’s No. 3, became the highest-ranking Republican Tuesday to firmly plant her flag on the side of impeaching Trump, saying, “There has never been a greater betrayal by a President of the United States of his office and his oath to the Constitution.”

Last Wednesday, Cheney was attempting to convince her GOP colleagues to vote for certification when she received a phone call from her father informing her that Trump had attacked her in his rally speech. In her statement Tuesday declaring she would vote to impeach Trump, she wrote, “The president could have immediately and forcefully intervened to stop the violence. He did not.”

Cheney’s declaration marked a sharp break with her fellow GOP leaders, Reps. Kevin McCarthy of California and Steve Scalise of Louisiana, both of whom echoed Trump’s post-election fraud claims and then voted to reject the election results even after his cultists stormed the Capitol. 

Meanwhile in the upper chamber, soon-to-be Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, signaled his much squishier lean toward potentially convicting Trump through anonymous sources to several different outlets.

Among rank and file GOP members, a smaller anti-Trump cadre has emerged with some members faulting Trump and his GOP enablers for the siege and others even stepping up to back impeachment. 

“To allow the President of the United States to incite this attack without consequence is a direct threat to the future of our democracy. For that reason, I cannot sit by without taking action,” New York Rep. John Katko, the ranking Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee and a former federal prosecutor, wrote in a statement. 

The reality is, many of these GOP members stepping forward also fear for their lives now that Trump has turned the party into a raging mob. CNN is reporting that many of Republican lawmakers are getting direct pressure from Trump not to defect on the impeachment vote, which isn’t exactly surprising but certainly underscores the urgency of his removal from office. McCarthy has reportedly urged his pro-Trump members not to verbally attack pro-impeachment Republicans because their lives could be on the line.

But at the end of the day, impeachment is happening, with or without House Republicans. And momentum is clearly on the side of Democrats’ strong stand against Trump as corporate titans, big tech, public opinion, military leadership, and other entities join the push to draw a line in the sand. 

The McCarthys of the world have bet wrong. There’s simply no way he can erase his fealty to Trump, and he also doesn’t have the spine to disavow Trump. And as hard as it is to imagine a Trump loyalist losing his leadership role in the party, it’s equally as hard to imagine having a GOP leader who can’t fundraise because he’s been shunned by corporate donors and polite society alike as a seditionist. That is simply an impossible position for a GOP congressional leader.  

And if there’s one way to judge exactly how incomprehensible that posture is, it’s by looking at the Republican leader of the Senate caucus. McConnell’s lower-profile openness to potentially convicting Trump is both a seismic shift and a window into his vision for safeguarding the future existence of the party. And if McConnell ultimately supports conviction of Trump, some GOP sources are openly wondering if the 67 votes to convict might actually materialize. 

“If Mitch is a yes, he’s done,” said one Senate GOP source who asked not to be named, according to CNN.

Meanwhile, McCarthy has been running around pushing to censure Trump in an effort to ostensibly hold Trump accountable without actually holding him accountable. Safe to say McCarthy’s political fortunes aren’t particularly bright at this moment. Perhaps he can form a support group with Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Josh Hawley of Missouri. 

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The final debate to impeach Donald Trump for inciting insurrection is currently underway in the House of Representatives . A vote is expected later this afternoon. 

Follow the speeches and vote here.

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A retired U.S. Navy SEAL special warfare operator who videotaped himself on Facebook bragging about “breaching the Capitol” last Wednesday was obviously seeking attention, and as of recently, he got it in the form of FBI questioning, according to ABC News. Adam Newbold, 45, was on his way home from the Capitol riot when he said on camera that he was “proud” of the deadly attempted coup and that “destruction” was necessary.

“There are stories to tell from generations upon generations, um, that hopefully, uh … that hopefully it pans out to be a positive revolution,” he said. “HOOYAH!” He also attempted to explain away vandalism that occurred in the riot. “There was destruction, breaching the Capitol, our building, our house,” he said in the video since deleted from Facebook. “And, um, to get in you had to destroy doors and windows to get in.”

Newbold, who wore a T-shirt representing his firearms training company Advanced Training Group Worldwide, seemed to imply in the video that he witnessed the destruction himself and that there may be more to come. “I’m hoping the message was strong enough,” he said. “Unfortunately, maybe it wasn’t. I’d hate to see this escalate more.”

In another video posted on his YouTube page Dec. 13, Newbold talked about “a storm coming.” “Hello patriots,” he started the video. “There are dark forces in this world pulling the strings behind the curtain, and you’d better believe it’s not just Joe Biden because we have bigger worries.”

He continued:

“I’m not an anti-government guy, but I am anti-corrupt government. I believe in the Constitution of the United States. Most all of my military, law enforcement, FBI, CIA, and other federal agent friends as well as Intelligence Committee personnel feel the same way. There’s a storm coming. Noone’s coming to save us. It’s up to we the people to stand up and voice our opinions strongly. Prepare yourself, for you are the protector of family, friends and country. Get ready for whatever’s coming. God bless our country. Keep us all safe, all safe, right and left-leaning personnel. Everyone thinks they’re doing what’s right for this country. Democrats are not bad people. I’m a Republican. Republicans are not bad people. They believe in what they’re doing, but they are, we are, being manipulated, and we’re putting, we’re being pit against each other for the purpose, I believe, of destroying our country. We’re not going to let it happen. Stay safe and effective.”

A spokesperson for the Naval Special Warfare Command declined to comment to ABC News. “It would be inappropriate to discuss the actions of an individual, whose reserve service ended almost four years ago, that are subject to an ongoing federal investigation,” the spokesperson said.

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New security measures at the Capitol included metal detectors at the entrance to the House chamber Tuesday night, and many Republicans responded with predictable entitled temper tantrums. Or, as freshman Republican Rep. Peter Meijer put it, “I am sorry some of my colleagues are being assholes.”

Meijer was not exaggerating about the assholes part. His fellow new Republican member, Rep. Lauren Boebert, set off the metal detector and then refused to have her purse inspected, leading to a standoff with police. Boebert has bragged about planning to carry her Glock on the grounds of the Capitol, and her support for the insurrectionists who broke into the Capitol on Jan. 6 gives her Democratic colleagues good reason to worry that she intends them harm.

Reporters witnessed groups of Republican House members simply walking around the metal detectors, or setting off the alarms and just pushing through. In one case, HuffPost’s Matt Fuller tweeted, “Another member—I believe it was Russ Fulcher—just pushed his way through. He went through the metal detector, set it off, ran into a cop, and then pushed his way past her.”

Respect for police just oozed off these members (that was sarcasm): “Reps. Markwayne Mullin and Steve Womack erupted at Capitol Police as they were forced to go through the mags. Womack shouted ‘I was physically restrained!’ And Mullin said ‘it’s my constitutional right’ and ‘they cannot stop me,’” CNN’s Manu Raju tweeted.

Rep. Greg Steube took to the House floor to call the metal detectors an “atrocity” and “appalling.”

”Take note, America,” he said. “This is what you have to look forward to in the Joe Biden administration.” And that’s where the point that several Democrats made comes into play. 

”Do these people not understand that literally everyone else has to go through metal detectors to get in here?” Rep. Don Beyer tweeted. “Average people do not get to bring guns into the United States Capitol in normal times. Get over yourselves.”

Rep. Cori Bush laid it out on MSNBC: ”First of all, we’re talking about your job. Let’s just look at it from the most basic level. If you work at McDonald’s, you have to wear the uniform or you’re not working today! Wherever you are, when you’re told this is what you have to do, this is what you have to do or you’re not working. I don’t know, have they ever had a job before?”

She continued: “Also, how do you get on a plane? You have to go and say this is against your rights? Do you rush through and not go through the metal detectors before you get on the plane? This is them trying to push the limits as far as they can.”

All of us encounter times in our lives we have to go through metal detectors or other security. Many, many high school students in this country encounter that every single day. But these Republican members of Congress are so entitled and spoiled and in love with their sense of themselves as victims that they think they’re above it—even in the wake of a major attack on their workplace, with more violence threatened.

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The past week of Trump-free social media, the apparent demise of Parler, and the mass removal by Twitter and Facebook of far-right QAnon accounts and others spreading falsehoods about the outcome of the presidential election, have become powerful evidence that deplatforming works: By shutting off the spigot of inflammatory disinformation gushing from these conspiracist cesspits, its spread—and the insurrectionist violence it has inspired—has at least appeared to slow down.

However, it has also demonstrated its limitations: Even as extremists have been shut out from the major social media platforms where they did so much of their organizing and recruitment in the past four years, they are migrating to smaller, less restrictive platforms and reconstituting their efforts there—places such as the white nationalist-friendly app Telegram, where the insurrectionary and violent chatter has suddenly spiked since last week’s riot at the Capitol, as Anna Schecter at NBC News reports.

Much of the talk revolves around plans to engage in large-scale violence in Washington, D.C., on Inauguration Day, Jan. 20, particularly a planned “Million Militia March” protest being organized that day.

A common theme running among the discussions is urging would-be protesters to forget about protests at various state capitols around the nation that are being planned simultaneously and to focus their efforts on turning out thousands of armed insurgents in Washington. Some are sharing recipes for making, concealing, and using improvised explosives and homemade guns.

“Do not attend armed protests at state capitols before inauguration! Possible sinister plot hatched by radical left to take away gun rights!” a Telegram far-right chatroom post reads.

One of the problems presented by this migration to more secure platforms is that it becomes harder for law enforcement, journalists, and monitoring organizations to keep tabs on their activities and their plans.

“Now that they forced us off the main platforms it doesn’t mean we go away, it just means we are going to go to places they don’t see,” commented one Telegram user in a channel for refugees from Parler, the right-wing platform that was briefly taken down this week.

An October profile of the extremist channels at Telegram by Tess Owen of Vice revealed how Telegram has become the preferred platform of white nationalists. “Telegram makes a lot of sense for those groups,” she notes. “The app allow users to upload unlimited videos, images, audio clips and other files, and its founder has repeatedly affirmed his commitment to protecting user data from third parties—including governments.”

Some high-profile far-right extremists have announced they intend to make Telegram their main base of operations. Joey Gibson, the founder and leader of the street-brawling Patriot Prayer outfit responsible for a running series of violent protests on the West Coast, recently announced that he was moving his show to Telegram after his website was taken down. “Fascist censorship is ramping up,” he complained.

Channels dedicated to such far-right groups as the Proud Boys and the Parler refugees have seen huge spikes in participants. And the tenor of the discussions has grown increasingly violent and openly extremist. One post discussed how to radicalize Trump supporters into neo-Nazi beliefs.

Other platforms are gaining new customers from the far right as well. QAnon cultists have been shifting their organizing to text message chains. The white nationalist-friendly platform Gab claims it also has seen a significant increase in new users.

The migration makes clear that deplatforming primarily is capable of sidelining extremists, and its most powerful effect is in limiting the ability of extremists to recruit and radicalize vulnerable targets on mass mainstream platforms.

Frank Figliuzzi, a former FBI assistant director, told Schecter that he is concerned the shutdowns of platforms like Parler could be a “double-edged sword.”

“We had all this success with ISIS: We took out their command site but we also took away the ability to see the next lone wolf. We force them into the dark corners of the internet,” Figliuzzi said.

As terrorism expert J.M. Berger noted on Twitter, the discussion of deplatforming tends to treat it as a panacea that will solve the problems rather than a tool in the fight that can be applied strategically. “One option is to corral extremists on platforms where they can be tracked but can’t reach big audiences,” he wrote. “Periodic soft purges to keep their audiences small, but not so much pressure that they’re forced to innovate.”  

At best, deplatforming is proving a kind of Band-Aid approach to a deeper systemic cancer within the political landscape. Moreover, it also lets the officials currently holding positions of authority within the system escape culpability for their failures in stopping the spread of far-right extremism, forcing the problem solely into the laps of social media platforms—which took measures this week that have been long overdue regardless.

It is already, for example, a federal crime to share bomb-making recipes on the internet. It’s also a federal crime to advocate the assassinations of public officials or to otherwise threaten them with violence. Yet what began as a few angry voices on the fringes of the internet—and thus easy for law enforcement authorities to ignore—has grown into a massive flood in large part because these laws are only selectively and lightly enforced.

Deplatforming is a blunt instrument. It works best—as we have seen not just with Trump’s ban from Twitter and Facebook, but even earlier with the social media bans that transformed Milo Yiannopoulos from a central figure in the rise of the alt-right to a fringe crank still trying desperately to reach a mass audience from limited platforms—when it removes major media figures spewing disinformation and bigotry from major platforms with which they can reach mass audiences. Cutting off that flow is in fact essential to limiting the spread and recruitment of extremist ideologues.

It works less well when it comes to actually defanging the extremism itself. As we have seen, far-right extremists—whose raging ideologies fuel their determination—have proven extremely ingenious at devising workarounds to the obstacles presented by deplatforming. The smaller platforms also provide a greater expanse for inflaming their extremism to violent levels and then organizing it.

As we have seen over the years, extremist groups become the most dangerous when they are forced into these hidden spaces in large part because monitoring their activities becomes harder, but also because they are more likely to become even more deeply radicalized. Confronting this level of extremism requires the engagement of all levels of society—government, law enforcement, media, communities of faith, even mass culture—in taking the threat seriously and responding appropriately.

This means, first of all, applying the laws already on the books and enforcing them. It becomes a powerful disincentive for sharing bomb-making plans or threatening to hang Nancy Pelosi when the people doing it find themselves behind bars—as federal law dictates—and when the people sharing neo-Nazi belief systems in the hope of recruiting mainstream conservatives are exposed for the terrorists and seditionists they are.

Until that begins to happen, then we are locked into a political landscape where far-right extremists will be organizing to stop inaugurations, execute liberal politicians, commit acts of domestic terrorism, and destroy American democracy, regardless of how shrunken their platforms have become.

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On Tuesday night, New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez hopped onto an Instagram live video and shared her experience during the pro-Trump insurgency at the U.S. Capitol last Wednesday. In a moving address straight to followers (of which more than 100,000 people joined in to listen and watch), the progressive lawmaker said she had a “very close encounter” with the rioters and  “I thought I was going to die.” She repeated the chilling sentiment later in the hour-long video, saying, “I did not know if I was going to make it to the end of that day alive.” She did not give more details on the encounter, citing security reasons.

What did she give more details on? Her concerns about sheltering with some Republican lawmakers. Why? Because she was afraid some of them might give up her location or enable chances for her to be hurt or kidnapped by insurgents. Let’s dive more into that horrifying possibility, as well as the lawmaker’s discussion of trauma and political nihilism, below.

“I didn’t even feel safe going to that extraction point because there were QAnon and white supremacist members of Congress who I felt would disclose my location and create opportunities to allow me to be hurt,” Ocasio-Cortez stated. She did not explicitly name the colleagues she thought might expose her to danger. 

“Let me give you a sneak peek,” she stated in an address to Republican Sens. Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz. “You will never be president. You will never command the respect of this country, never. Never. And you should resign.”

Ocasio-Cortez also stressed that the two conservatives essentially cast their votes in an effort to overturn election votes “not out of genuine belief” but instead out of “political ambition.” She also described Donald Trump as a “traitor to our country,” which, of course, he is.

“I don’t want to see the Republican Party talk about blue lives ever again,” Ocasio-Cortez said in reference to a Capitol police officer losing their life during the riot. “This was never about safety for them. It was always a slogan. … Because if they actually care about the rule of law, they would speak up when people break the law.”

Ocasio-Cortez also spoke intimately about trauma, saying, “You have all of those thoughts where, at the end of your life, these thoughts come rushing to you. That’s what happened to a lot of us on Wednesday. I did not know if I was going to make it to the end of that day alive. And not just in a general sense, but in a very specific sense.” She also brought up that in addition to members of Congress, staffers, and even the children of lawmakers, were at the Capitol that day. 

On a personal level, Ocasio-Cortez said she found herself sleeping more in the days after the riot, and that, “to me is telling me that my body is going through something and my brain is trying to heal.”

People, as usual, were impressed by the progressive’s ability to connect with people—even at 11 PM on a weeknight.

And her transparency was, as ever, moving and important.

In speaking about nihilism in politics, Ocasio-Cortez really hit home with an emotional address, saying, “What claim will you have? That you rule over a destroyed society? That the ashes belong to you?” Those are questions every member of the Trump administration should answer. 

You can also watch snippets of the live stream on YouTube below.