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Given that a mob of pro-Trump insurgents stormed the U.S. Capitol less than one week ago, it’s all too easy to forget that our nation—and, really, the entire world—is still facing the novel coronavirus pandemic. And while there have been meager guidelines offered up by the federal government and disparate approaches between states and even cities, a number of elected officials—and even private entities—are begging people to do one simple thing: wear a face mask. But as we saw on Monday night in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, some people can’t seem to resist not heeding that simple request.

As reported by AL.com, Alabama fans celebrated their national championship win over Ohio State in typical fashion on Monday night. What does that entail? Lots of cheer and celebration, as one might expect, including descending into the streets, hugging, kissing, and shouting. As the local outlet reports, there was a local police presence on the scene and a previously announced request from both the university and the city to not take to the streets to party. So what did people do? While some wore masks, many did not, and of course, social distancing was sparse. The big picture takeaway? Instances like this one reinforce the recent findings from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which reports that counties where large universities held in-person classes saw a rise of more than 50% in COVID-19 cases. Let’s check out more about Alabama, and the bigger picture study, below.

If you’re wondering just how big the crowd was on the Strip in downtown Tuscaloosa, local outlet WBRC reports that Tuscaloosa Mayor Walt Maddox estimated about 5,000 people were present. Of those 5,000, 14 people were arrested. The mayor told the outlet that the plan was to let people celebrate for a couple of minutes, but things spiraled out of control to the point where Tuscaloosa’s police chief used pepper spray to break up the crowd. And again: We’re living in a global pandemic and cases are surging across the South, specifically.

Here are some videos from Twitter for reference.

Now, onto that CDC study. The study, released on Friday, compared the rates of COVID-19 exposure in counties with big colleges and universities that held classes in-person versus those with virtual learning. Surprising absolutely no one, in counties where large higher education institutes held classes in-person, COVID-19 cases rose 56%. This rise in cases occurred within three weeks of holding in-person classes, most of which were in early September, according to the report. 

As a contrast, the same report found that counties that did not have a big college saw a 5.9% drop, and counties with large schools that were virtual-only had a 17.9% decrease. 

The takeaway: Researchers found that counties where colleges held in-person classes were more likely to be “hotspots” of the virus on at least one occasion than counties where colleges held remote classes. Looking at the footage from the post-football victory in Tuscaloosa, it’s not hard to see why. And, to be fair, it isn’t just one night of football to blame. There have been reports of virus outbreaks in Greek life housing, bars, and campuses across the nation.

At a minimum, we need stricter guidelines about social distancing and face masks as college students (who are, of course, also at risk of getting the virus and becoming potentially deathly ill) don’t exist in a bubble. These students interact with faculty and staff, and, when they go out and about or go home for breaks, they come into contact with service and transit workers and their own families. Celebrations feel like a sweet relief from a dark year, but the potential cost is far from worth it in the face of a deadly pandemic. After all, Alabama doctors are already anticipating another COVID-19 surge in the state by mid-January. 

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Chad Wolf, the unlawfully appointed acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, resigned (is it possible to quit a job you never lawfully had?) on Monday after occupying the office for over a year. In a statement sent to department employees, Unlawful Chad wrote that his exit “is warranted by recent events, including the ongoing and meritless court rulings regarding the validity of my authority as Acting Secretary.”

Well, not exactly. Court rulings finding Unlawful Chad has been unlawfully serving at DHS are not recent at all. He should have resigned immediately following those decisions, but didn’t. In fact, when the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office concluded months ago that he was ineligible, DHS officials instead launched personal attacks on the office. Unlawful Chad didn’t leave then. Instead he’s leaving as the president he’s served is throwing democracy into chaos.

“Rep. Bennie Thompson, chair of the House Homeland Security Committee, blasted Wolf in a statement on his announced resignation days before he was to help coordinate security for the presidential inauguration,” BuzzFeeds News reported. “For months we have known Chad Wolf has been serving illegally in his position, so the timing of his resignation from the Department today is questionable,” Thompson said.

Thompson said in the report that Unlawful Chad “has chosen to resign during a time of national crisis and when domestic terrorists may be planning additional attacks on our government.” Recall that while he launched federal agents on outraged citizens protesting the police killings of Black people, that same force was missing in action when it came to seditionists in Washington, D.C. Additionally, Thompson noted that if Unlawful Chad is citing court rulings in his resignation, then his deputy Ken Cuccinelli, similarly unlawfully installed at DHS and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, should also be quitting.

Replacing Unlawful Chad as acting DHS secretary until President-elect Joe Biden is sworn in next week is Federal Emergency Management Agency administrator Pete Gaynor. Experts worried that that Gaynor would possibly do a redo on the anti-immigrant and anti-asylum policies that have been struck down by the courts due to Unlawful Chad’s status, but a subsequent statement from him may have calmed some of those fears, at least slightly.

What’s for sure is that Unlawful Chad is leaving office in disgrace. “Don’t forget,” tweeted MSNBC correspondent Jacob Soboroff. “Chad Wolf prepared an early memo for Trump’s then-DHS secretary, Kirstjen Nielsen, outlining border policy options, including systematically separating families arriving at the border.” Immigrant rights advocacy group America’s Voice noted that “[a]lthough he was never officially confirmed by Congress, that didn’t stop Wolf from implementing cruel and unconscionably inhumane immigration policies that will plague our system for years to come.”

Unlawful Chad will likely try to rehabilitate his image like the former DHS secretary he once served as chief of staff to, but don’t forget he was a willing participant in this disaster before us, including corruptly using his office to try to keep Trump in power. After launching what was essentially a campaign tour ahead of the presidential election, the chief of Office of Special Counsel’s Hatch Act unit agreed to open a probe into Wolf and other DHS officials.

Many also noted that pro-immigrant programs that Unlawful Chad helped to try to end, like the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy, outlasted him after all. “Chad Wolf did nothing but inflict pain and suffering through family separation, undermining asylum laws, and ordering a violent response to peaceful protests,” tweeted California Rep. Barbara Lee. “Good riddance.”

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As Donald Trump’s Republican allies continue to justify their prior demands that the presidential elections be nullified and Trump reinstalled, their allies already in government continue to retaliate against any in government who are not obsequious in their praise for Republican authoritarianism. After Trump Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, a traitor who collaborated with Trump to hide evidence of Trump’s extortion of a foreign leader for personal gain long before he silently allied himself with a now-violent coup, appeared on Voice of America to give a typically puffy speech, Voice of America White House reporter Patsy Widakuswara asked questions of Pompeo as Pompeo walked out of the building’s foyer.

For asking questions of Pompeo after a Pompeo appearance, Trump’s treason-backing Voice of America appointees immediately removed Widakuswara from her position as White House reporter.

The good news is we have ironclad evidence of who took the action and their supposed reasoning. It was VOA director Robert Reilly, a fellow Trump loyalist installed by the rancid Bannonite Michael Pack. It follows a year of retaliation against reporters whose questions or reports displeased the malignant Republican toadies.

The foundations of this Republican coup attempt were laid from the beginnings of Trump’s “presidency,” when his aides staffed government with collections of the party’s most far-right fringe figures, white nationalists, hoax-promoters, authoritarians, propagandists, incompetents, and seditionists. Those figures received support from their party as they killed 400,000 Americans through incompetence, purged government of the non-ideological and the non-corrupt, and either decapitated government agencies to immobilize them or turned them into willing tools of one-party rule.

The “denazification” of government will be an all-consuming job for the next administration—or the nation will indeed fall. So long as one party believes preserving its own power and removing opposition is worth trampling over all government norms, worth pardoning any criminals whose actions assisted their party, and worth nullifying even elections themselves if the outcomes are not what they desire, a second, third or fourth coup attempt will remain a clear and present threat.

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Rep. John Katko has become the first House Republican to issue a statement supporting the impeachment of Donald Trump.

“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,” wrote Katko.

Katko joins nearly all House Democrats in calling for impeachment, which the House will take up Wednesday morning.

Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is now reported to believe Trump’s actions are impeachable offenses and is allegedly “pleased” that impeachment efforts are going forward, according to The New York Times. The Times report, however, gives no indication that McConnell will take action based on that belief, publicly support impeachment efforts, or ask others in his party to support those efforts.

Update: Rep Liz Cheney becomes the second Republican to join the impeachment effort.

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Newly elected Republican Congressman Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina has already distinguished himself as a cowardly bigot who is very much at ease with peddling easily verifiable lies to the public. Whether it’s saying the COVID-19 pandemic is “overblown” or lying about the results of a national election, Cawthorn is everything the Republican Party stands for these days. It was no surprise that Cawthorn joined other dirtbags like Sens. Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley and Rep. Mo Brooks, all of whom voted against confirming Biden’s electoral victory over Trump on Jan. 6.

Cawthorn was named by Democratic officials in a letter sent to Speaker Nancy Pelosi, asking for him to be “held accountable for his seditious behavior and for the consequences resulting from said behavior.” When voting against Biden’s victory, Cawthorn compared the insurgency attack on our nation’s Capitol with this past summer’s Black Lives Matter protests. Now Henderson County Sheriff George Erwin of North Carolina is telling the public that while he endorsed Cawthorn in the run-up to election, he now realizes he made a terrible mistake. According to Blue Ridge Public Radio, Erwin was slated to be Cawthorn’s district director, but now Erwin wants nothing more to do with him. “Once a word leaves your mouth you can’t take it back in. And you can either incite or you can calm with the words you use. And I have seen no calming words.”

It’s important to explain here that the issue with Cawthorn is not simply that in the face of all the terribly seditious results he promoted—including attacking the integrity of our elections armed with zero evidence—he still decided to vote against the election of Biden. The problem here is that Cawthorn said all kinds of inflammatory things, and even told the Jan 6. MAGA-mob at the “Save America Rally” that the elections had been stolen.

According to HuffPost Cawthorn has attempted to play both sides here, saying: “I think when the president said we’re going to march down to the Capitol and I’m going to march with you, that was a major mistake. He never should’ve directed that crowd toward the Capitol. The bad outcome was destined at that point.” Classic: Throw the other guy under the bus for supporting the thing he was supporting literally about five hours earlier when he was telling the crowd: “My friends, the Democrats with all of the fraud they have done in this election, the Republicans hiding and not fighting, they are trying to silence your voice.”

This is the guy who told the crowd that there were too many Republicans saying “we should sit idly by and sit on our hands.” This is also the guy who a couple of weeks earlier said at a Turning Point USA event: “Call your congressman and feel free, you can lightly threaten them and say, you know what, if you don’t start supporting election integrity, I’m coming after you, Madison Cawthorn is coming after you, everybody’s coming after you.”

The Citizen Times reports that Change.org says its fastest-growing petition right now is one that calls for Cawthorn to be held accountable for his actions and to leave office. For his part, Cawthorn is all over the place. He’s an unsophisticated mind, but an angry one. In an interview with the Smoky Mountain News the day after the insurrection, Cawthorn boasted that as distressing as the siege on the Capitol building was, when he and a few other legislators were separated from their Capitol police escort during evacuation—something, according to Cawthorn, that happened because he needed to take a different route due to his wheelchair—“Fortunately, I was armed, so we would have been able to protect ourselves.”

Whether or not this means that Cawthorn was and has been potentially carrying a loaded and concealed weapon on the floor of the House (which is not permitted) remains to be seen. Cawthorn is technically allowed to have a firearm in his office and is allowed to carry that weapon around Capitol Hill—but not on the floor. How Cawthorn would have been able to access his firearm from his office during the events on Jan. 6 is murky.

Here’s Cawthorn telling the the MAGA crowd in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, hours before insurrection, that the county clerk controlled our democracy—not the millions of votes cast for Joe Biden over Donald Trump. He told the crowd the “Constitution was violated” by the 2020 election. He must be expelled. 

You can watch his whole stupid speech starting around 1:16:05.

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Six days after the attack on the U.S. Capitol, an FBI representative and the acting U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C., Michael Sherwin, finally came to give a press briefing on the ongoing investigations. It was … not very satisfactory. As former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe pointed out on CNN immediately afterward, this level of event should draw a briefing from top FBI leadership, not the assistant director in charge of the Washington field office and an acting U.S. attorney.

Steven D’Antuano, the aforementioned FBI official, spewed law enforcement cliches with aplomb but offered basically zero information. Sample: “We are up to the challenge. As Director Wray says, we do not do easy.” They will “leave no stone unturned.” Etc.

Sherwin was mildly more informative, offering the assurance that in many cases where we’re hearing about very minor charges, often misdemeanors, being brought against rioters, those are the easy initial charges to bring that allow for arrests, and more serious charges may follow. Sherwin emphasized the huge range of criminal behavior on January 6 at the Capitol, saying that charges including seditious conspiracy and felony murder are on the table. Sherwin also confirmed that the pipe bombs found outside the DNC and RNC were “real devices.”

Both men emphasized that more than 160 case files have been opened since January 6, and, again, Sherwin did repeatedly say that serious crimes are under investigation. But far more questions went unanswered than were answered. One big one: D’Antuano insisted that the FBI had, acted on, and shared intelligence about planned violence, but offered notably few specifics, let alone an answer to what went wrong. Asked about the indications that some of the rioters were planning to take hostages, D’Antuano had little to say but “We are looking at all angles.” Thanks, guy.

The spoken message of this press conference was that we should be confident that the FBI and Justice Department have got this and can be trusted to fully investigate and prosecute. But the six-day wait for this much information and the relatively low-level personnel sent out to offer it suggest otherwise. With serious threats of further violence, they need to do better.

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The U.S. Capitol Police were critically understaffed last Wednesday, a reality which no one will accept responsibility for and which will have to be thoroughly investigated in the coming days and weeks. But it wasn’t just a lack of force that helped an insurrectionist mob lay siege to the People’s House, it was in some cases support for the insurrectionists. That’s led to several U.S. Capitol Police officers being suspended and more than a dozen others being investigated.

Just to be clear, the officers whose duty is to protect the capitol and the lawmakers and staff within it are under investigation for “suspected involvement with or inappropriate support for the demonstration last week that turned into a deadly riot.” There are currently eight separate investigations now in process by Congress, according to an aide who spoke with The Washington Post. That includes investigations into messages of support for the Trump protests that proceeded the attack posted by Capitol Police officers, “including touting President Trump’s baseless contention that the election had been stolen through voter fraud.” Another investigation revealed that an officer posted “inappropriate” images of President-elect Biden on a social media account.

Former Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund resigned Sunday. He has said that he was rebuffed by both the House and Senate sergeants at arms (who have also both resigned) when he tried to have National Guard forces on standby. But the immediate problem now is the fact that there are members of his force who are at the very least sympathetic with the insurrectionists.

“The Department also has been actively reviewing video and other open source materials of some USCP officers and officials that appear to be in violation of Department regulations and policies,” then-Acting Capitol Chief Yogananda Pittman said in a statement Monday. “Our Office of Professional Responsibility will investigate these behaviors for disciplinary action, up to, and including, termination.” One of the suspended officers was in an image that went viral after the attack, “posing for a rioter to take a picture with the officer.”

According to Rep. Tim Ryan, whose committee has financial oversight of the Capitol Police, another suspended officer was photographed wearing a red “MAGA” hat while the rioters were surrounding the building. “One video taken during the mayhem appears to show an officer wearing a MAGA cap leading a line of men in black helmets and body armor as they leave the Capitol to a crowd of applauding rioters. It is unclear whether other men behind him are officers or rioters.” Another officer who spoke with the Post said that the rioters put the cap on the cop, a Black man, and he kept it on in order to convince the mob to help him extract fellow officers who were surrounded. “He used those two White guys, basically, used those Trump supporters to help get his people out of harm’s way,” the officer told the Post. “If it wasn’t for them, those guys wouldn’t have gotten out.”

There are most definitely hero Capitol Police officers, first and foremost Officer Eugene Goodman, another Black officer who quite possibly saved the U.S. Senate by making himself bait to draw the mob away from the entrance to the Senate chamber one minute before that chamber was sealed.

Then there’s the officer who is currently being investigated by the Secret Service. The officer posted comments on their Facebook page the day after the siege accusing the lawmakers who certified Biden’s win of “committing treason on live tv,” and saying “Good morning patriots! Yesterday started out beautiful and as usual Antifa soured the mood and attacked police and an Air Force veteran was murdered….It
s OFFENSE time finally!!”

Two fellow officers are dead, one killed by the mob and one by suicide after the attack. Another turned their gun in and asked for medical leave in the aftermath, fearing the potential for self-harm. One officer who spoke to the Post anonymously said that the force is demoralized and feels betrayed by their leadership. They were not “prepared whatsoever” and left essentially powerless to face the mob. “In my time as an officer, we have never failed so miserably than we did on that day,” the officer said. “We were failed by our management. … We were put in a situation to fail. … It’s like trying to climb Mount Everest and they give you house slippers.”

The Capitol Police have now issued dire warnings that another siege of the Capitol is being planned by Trump’s mob. And now, just now, the FBI and Department of Justice are going to have a news conference on last week’s mob, the first public statements after the revelation that the FBI had advance knowledge of the violence planned by the mob last week.

Maybe this time, ahead of the inauguration and the promised coup attempts over the next eight days, they’ll be prepared to take the necessary actions to prevent more bloodshed. Because the Capitol Police are in no position to deal with what’s coming.

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Just over one week ago, Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert went viral because of a video she sent out to Twitter in which she appeared to be strutting around Washington, D.C., with a Glock handgun. (A spokesperson for Boebert later clarified that the lawmaker was not actually carrying the gun throughout the video shoot.) Since then, the pro-Trump Colorado representative has gone viral for an even more nefarious reason. In fact, this isn’t even just a head-scratching digital ad. Many of her colleagues are calling for Boebert’s resignation over her behavior both before, and during, the pro-Trump insurgency against the U.S. Capitol last Wednesday.

Now, as a quick review, Congress was set to vote to certify the Electoral College vote for President-elect Joe Biden’s win. Boebert, who has fully leaned into efforts to overturn the presidential election results, formally objected. That morning, before the insurgency, she tweeted: “Today is 1776.” What she tweeted while rioters were actually at the Capitol is what’s really chilling.

Here is the 1776 tweet.

While pro-Trump insurgents were descending upon the Capitol, many lawmakers did take to Twitter. Boebert joined them … and decided to tweet out that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had been removed from the House Chambers. Though she did not specify where Pelosi had been moved to, obviously this tweet stunned countless people. After all, the viral photo of a man with his foot up on Pelosi’s desk is not quick to leave any of our minds soon. Nor is the report of a man who traveled from Colorado to Washington, D.C. who was arrested for allegedly making threats against Pelosi. There are reports that some who invaded the Capitol were searching for not only Pelosi but also Vice President Mike Pence and Schumer. 

So it’s safe to say Boebert’s tweets were both chilling and concerning.

Boebert, however, only doubled down in releasing a statement on the calls for her resignation, saying in part, “We should take Democrats at their word when they say never let a crisis go to waste. Their hypocrisy is on full display with talks of impeachment, censure and other ways to punish Republicans for false accusations of inciting the type of violence they have so frequently and transparently supported in the past.”

In terms of her choice to tweet about Pelosi, Boebert argued, “They accuse me of live-tweeting the Speaker’s presence after she had been safely removed from the Capitol, as if I was revealing some big secret, when in fact this removal was also being broadcast on TV.”

She suggested that “leading Democrats” have encouraged “mob violence,” including former President Barack Obama and President-elect Joe Biden. She also accused a number of celebrities of doing the same, for who knows what reason, including Madonna and Johnny Depp.

And earlier Tuesday, she’s back with a pseudo unity call on Twitter.

There are currently 211 House members, and 28 senators who are on record supporting impeachment & removal, and over 200 House members have cosponsored the impeachment resolution. Regardless of where your members of Congress stand, please send them a letter.