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It turns out New York police have caught up with the 22-year-old woman shown on video tackling the teen son of Grammy Award-winning trumpeter Keyon Harrold. When they did, Miya Ponsetto—who has made no attempt to turn herself in—fled arrest, tried to slam her door on an officer, and still got away with only supervised release and a restraining order, a spokeswoman with Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance’s office said Saturday in an email to Daily Kos. 

Ponsetto faces one count of endangering the welfare of a child, attempted robbery in the third degree, attempted grand larceny in the fourth degree, and two counts of attempted assault in the third degree. The child she is shown on video attacking and falsely accusing of stealing her iPhone on Dec. 26 at the Arlo SoHo hotel is 14 years old. Even so, Ponsetto attempted to paint herself as every bit the victim in a virtual CBS interview with journalist Gayle King Friday.

“I’m a 22-year-old girl. How is one girl accusing a guy about a phone a crime?” Ponsetto asked during the interview. King challenged Ponsetto on that question. “You have to at least understand your actions that day,” she said. “You seem to have attacked this teenager about the phone. And then it turned out he didn’t even have your phone. That’s the thing. You’re 22-years-old, but you’re old enough to know better.” At that point, Ponsetto, seated next to her attorney, extended her hand forward and said, “Enough.” That may fly in an interview, but here’s the thing with being accused of multiple crimes, including endangering a child: The accused criminal doesn’t get to determine how much accountability is enough. The court does. 

”After committing this crime, and despite extensive media coverage, the defendant made no attempts to surrender, instead relaying her version of events to various media outlets,” spokeswoman Naomi Puzzello said in the email. “She was eventually located and police officers attempted to take her into custody during the course of a traffic stop, during which she was again driving with a suspended license. Rather than submit to their authority, the defendant fled and then refused to exit her vehicle, attempting to slam the door of her car on an officer.”

Ponsetto, a former cheerleader at Simi Valley High School in California, has three open cases in California from last year alone, Puzzello said. She was charged with public intoxication when she, her mother, and a third person were “involved in a physical altercation inside a hotel” on Feb. 28, Puzzello said. She was charged with driving under the influence when a witness saw her drive away from a supermarket “clearly intoxicated” and responding officers spotted open containers of alcohol and marijuana in her car on May 29. “She was also charged with driving with a suspended license,” Puzzello said.

In yet another incident, Ponsetto was charged with resisting arrest, driving under the influence, and driving with a suspended license on Oct. 10 when police responding to a 911 call arrived to find her in “a physical altercation with her mother.” Ponsetto had allegedly “abandoned” her car at a nearby intersection, and when officers tried to arrest her, she is accused of resisting so furiously that she brought one of them down to the ground. “A later test to determine her blood alcohol content revealed it was a .14,” Puzzello said.

“Despite her conduct here, “ Puzzello later added, “her prior interactions with the criminal justice system in California, and her lack of ties to New York, no bail may be set in this matter as she is not charged with any bail eligible offenses.

“However, for those reasons she poses a risk of flight, and Tier 2, Level 5 of Supervised Release is the least restrictive means that will ensure her return to Court.” 

The state is requesting that Ponsetto “have no contact with the victims and abide by the requested orders of protection”, and that she “appear at all scheduled court dates for her open cases in California.” Her next scheduled court date is March 29.  

RELATED: Woman shown attacking son of Grammy Award-winning trumpeter was arrested before

RELATED: Woman who falsely accused black teen of stealing her cell phone in NYC hotel identified

RELATED: ‘He is a child!!!’ Teen son of Grammy Award-winning trumpeter wrongfully accused of stealing

RELATED: Investigation underway after Keyon Harrold’s son falsely accused of stealing iPhone

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It’s another Sunday, so for those who tune in, welcome to a diary discussing the Nuts & Bolts of a Democratic campaign. If you’ve missed out, you can catch up any time: Just visit our group or follow the Nuts & Bolts Guide. Every week I try to tackle issues I’ve been asked about. With the help of other campaign workers and notes, we address how to improve and build better campaigns, or explain issues that impact our party.

The exit of failed Terrorist Leader Donald J. Trump gives America a chance to evaluate what our country stands for and what our nation hopes to become. Trump talked to people about taking things back to a good old time where things were as they remembered them and nothing was wrong. That time, though, was terrible for most people who didn’t look exactly like them. The future is a changing and diverse one. For conservatives, that can be scary. The Democratic Party is committed to the ABCs of governance: acceptance, belonging, and compassion. Bringing those key elements to all of our acts allows us to connect with the American people beyond labels. It must be the mission of our party over the next two years.

Policies and positions resonate with wonks and people really attached to specific positions. The joking phrase you often hear in politics is, “You could have a beer with them.” Why is that true? Why do voters value the ability to connect with someone, especially on the Democratic side? “Democratic voters fall in love while Republican voters fall in line” is another common phrase among consultants. In truth, though, voters from both parties look for some of the same things, even if their end goal may be different. The Democratic Party has a real opportunity to expand on these items by remembering the ABCs of policy.

Acceptance

Asking the Democratic Party to accept rioters, traitors, and others should not be something we ever consider. The party, however, has room to accept those who are looking for a home and to be heard. Young people who care about the environment. Rural Democratic voters who want a seat at the table. Listening to voices within all of the diverse ethnic communities that make up the American coalition, because that Rainbow Coalition that Jesse Jackson talked about? It’s that acceptance that helps make people feel as though the Democratic Party is a place they can call home. 

We are not a perfect party. We are not a perfect people. As it was in 1984, it is today. The party that comes forward with an acceptance of America is the party that can inspire. A party that lives in division and disrespect leaves so many alienated that it has only one path: to shrink. It shrinks as it puts more and more people on the outside. That is the Republican Party right now. It’s a party that doesn’t accept, a party that sets limits on who can be accepted. Acceptance and growth—that is always our path forward.

Belonging & Buy In

So often in our party and in our daily life, we discuss diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). For DEI to be truly successful, there have to be two Bs: Belonging and Buy-In. People must feel as though they belong to the group that you’re creating. They have to feel as though the acceptance is real, genuine, and that it provides them safety for who they are—that the acceptance provides them more than a “Well, we accept you;”—it’s a “You are welcomed.” This is the difference between just accepting a person or a position and welcoming it.

The second is buy-in. Candidates and party officials work to show, as a party, buy-in to the policies that are promoted by the administration. This also must go the other way: that the administration buys in to the issues that matter to the diverse base they now reflect. This mutual buy-in is required because without it, there is no level of training, no words or speeches that can be said, nor any token actions provided that bring up the excitement needed among voters to say, “Not only am I accepted, but I feel respected.” This is what buy-in is about.

Compassion

It is eerie to hear how often Republican candidates and their party seem to refer to compassion as though it’s a sin, and that those who offer it are enablers. In truth, history has shown that it’s just who you decide to offer compassion to that matters. Republicans have for a very long time offered a great deal of compassion to heavily invested donors and corporate interests, as well as their own base. Democratic elected officials should not shy away from similar compassion. While everyone is eager to talk about a $2,000 stimulus, the party should be clear: This is not the end, it’s a start, and if more is needed, it’s possible. There is nothing to rule out another stimulus in April for the people, or further relief from student loan debt. 

People deserve compassion. Republican messaging provides almost no compassion while framing their discussion around caring for the future. You will frequently hear Republicans talk about saddling future generations with debt—debt they themselves have created through outlandish tax breaks for their friends. At no point, though, do we ever truly rob the future through debt. We invest in the present in hope of a better future. Imagine yourself buying a home. You find the home you want and get a 30-year mortgage. You have now gone into debt. Did you do it to rob from the children you do not yet have, or did you generate debt to provide a house for those children?

When the U.S. government takes out debt for a stimulus, are they concerned about future debt a child might face 40 years from now, or are they concerned that a short-term investment now in the ability to have good nutrition, housing, and education will benefit them later so that they’re in a better place and generate less social debt? 

This is why the Republican argument fails: They lack the compassion to look at the immediate results under the assumption everyone is okay and that debt pushed to later is terrifying. They come up with this conclusion at the same time that Americans turn to payday and high interest loans just to feed and shelter themselves. 

The Democratic Party has to recognize arguments about future debt are, except for a small number, not arguments that influence a single person. Meanwhile, saving someone from ruin and protecting their children now matters.

The 2020 election is over. The path to the 2021 and 2022 elections flows through this simple path: A-B-C.

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By now, nobody is under the illusion that wealthy Americans are subject to the same laws and regulations governing the rest of the nation. The courts are set up to cater to those with the most lawyers and brush aside those with none; the nation’s tax laws are structured to be pointlessly onerous for those with little income, but provide numerous shields behind which the rich can hide their cash; state and federal governments are both filled with elected officials selected by the wealthy and the corporate for their pliability, and provided future campaign money based on how efficiently they convert that pliability into action.

Everything is garbage, the nation is inherently corrupt, democracy is hanging by a thread, and the con-artist class is partying it up at Donald Trump’s private club, during a pandemic, boozing it up but slightly put out that their cash did not, this New Year’s Eve, grant them an expected audience with the nation’s god-king of corruption.

Trump’s private Palm Beach club, Mar-a-Lago, held their usual New Year’s for-profit party last week, and prolific video evidence proves that the elite, plasticized party posse paid little attention to the county’s mask mandate while doing so. The Washington Post reports that Lake Worth Beach-based State Rep. Omari Hardy has filed a complaint about this latest likely superspreader event,
asking that county officials close the club down for its repeated violations of pandemic safety measures.

This is what would happen if the club were not owned by Trump, and did not cater to the Palm Beach “socialite” class, a particularly parasitic collection of people who either lucked or cheated their way into money, and who now spend large quantities of their time being seen rather than, say, doing anything that would benefit any other human being to even the slightest extent. They seem bent on proving to the rest of the nation that the rich are, indeed, absolutely useless, while protecting themselves from would-be revolution primarily by injecting themselves with enough Botox to render themselves inedible.

The message of Mar-a-Lago is the same message Trump spreads everywhere he goes. The wealthy are allowed to be superspreaders; it is their right. The wealthy are allowed to injure and kill; it should go without saying. Whatever laws exist, they no longer exist in the areas where cash collects. It is a game.

Donald Trump is not allowed to live at Mar-a-Lago, a business, as his permanent residence; he gave that up in negotiations to turn the mansion into a for-profit club, despite the objections of his new neighbors. He claims it as his residence anyway, and states that he intends to live there. Trump is not allowed to hold for-profit events that mock the county’s pandemic safety precautious; yet he did so, his guests photographed it all (remember the being seen part, which subsumes all other considerations), and nobody truly believes the county will do anything in response—because the revelers have money and the county has less.

The whole of the country is corrupt. It took only the slightest push from Trump to send the entire Republican Party hurdling into hoaxes and delusions, because the party was already nine-tenths of the way there. They were already declaring non-Republican rule to be illegitimate. They were already declaring non-Republican wins to be the result of the wrong people voting. They were already responding to scandal and superscandal by claiming that the real outrage was that law enforcement, tax officials or the press still dare to probe such things.

The McConnells are free to trade away Russian sanctions for Russian investments, Georgia’s senators are free to game the stock markets to profit off national disasters, and Donald Trump is allowed to use his military to extort specific propaganda from foreign countries in benefit not to the nation, but to himself, and Mar-a-Lago is allowed, by corporate charter, to spread whatever disease they wish to spread, at whatever ticket prices the market will bear.

It is not that the wealthy can get away with violating petty laws intended to better secure the safety of petty people. They can mock those laws. They can turn the laws that irritate them into a new campaign, with captured faux-press outlets bellowing day after day to the common rabble that they, too, are terribly wounded by having to do the most trivial of things for their fellow man. They can turn it into a movement. On a whim.

Mar-a-Lago guests know they are not bound by even the most petty and trivial of laws because they, for decades, haven’t been subject to any of the others. We may have to eat them, Botox or no Botox. This is an invasive species that does more damage than any other; putting them on the menu may be the only way to reduce their numbers to more manageable levels.

Or we could just close their stupid club for a while. On this one, the hacks may be right: The depression caused by not being seen for an entire month might do more damage than the threat of catching a deadly disease ever could. Close down Mar-a-Lago for a month or two, and the socialites will be falling out of Florida trees like chilled iguanas.

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In a phone interview with Reason reporter Matt Welch published on January 8, newly sworn in Republican Rep. Peter Meijer, of Michigan, wasted no words in condemning those responsible for the attempted toppling of our government. But he also reported a chilling detail from the events of that night: Rep. Meijer claims that some Republican lawmakers voted to throw out the ballots from Arizona and Pennsylvania not because they truly believed Trump’s claims, but were concerned for “the safety of their families.”

“One of the saddest things is I had colleagues who, when it came time to recognize reality and vote to certify Arizona and Pennsylvania in the Electoral College, they knew in their heart of hearts that they should’ve voted to certify, but some had legitimate concerns about the safety of their families. They felt that that vote would put their families in danger,” said Meijer.

That, too, is a signal of just how dangerous the American fascist movement and Donald Trump have become. If lawmakers are altering votes based on the threats Trump and his allies pose to their own families—and in light of a genuine coup attempt looking to murder those disloyal to Trump, their concerns are valid—then we are already in a period in which our government’s actions are being controlled, at least in part, by terrorists.

Through the rest of the interview, Rep. Meijer was clear-eyed as to was responsible for fomenting this insurrection against our nation. And it should be singled out, because the congressman stands largely alone in his party in saying so.

“[Trump supporters] were being lied to. They were being misled. Some of my colleagues in Congress, they share responsibility for that. Many of them were fundraising off of this Stop the Steal grift. I don’t understand how you can look in the mirror and go to sleep at night without that weighing on your conscience, I fundamentally do not. I’m just at a loss for words about how some of them have acted in ways that are just knowingly, provably false. And they know they’re lying, too.

“I mean maybe I’m coming in here with too naive an expectation of human capacity and decency, but I also was an interrogator in Iraq, so it’s not like I’m a Pollyanna.”

And he sounds truly furious with his Republican colleagues:

“What to me was the most bewildering was folks giving speeches that were written that morning as if we weren’t in a body that had windows broken in just a few hours earlier, law enforcement drawing weapons. As if a woman hadn’t been shot and killed 100 feet from where they stood, right? There was still dried blood out there. And they were giving the exact same speeches, the exact same arguments, telling what they thought their people wanted to hear rather than telling them what they needed to hear.”

But it is the news that at least a few of those colleagues stood by their “provably false” claims because they feared pro-Trump forces would target their own families that turns Wednesday’s events darker still. Trump’s terrorist allies did not need to succeed in their insurrection to bend some in Congress towards their demands. The threats were sufficient.

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The next stop in our 50-state tour to calculate the results of the 2020 presidential election by congressional district is Kansas, which saw Donald Trump turn in the weakest performance by a Republican since 1992. While his 56% share of the vote was the same as it was four years ago, the toplines mask what is by now a familiar story: Suburbs that had once reliably voted for the GOP continued to march to the left, while a weaker showing by third-party candidates helped boost Joe Biden’s take. You can find a larger version of our map here.

The ongoing transformation in suburbia was best demonstrated in the 3rd Congressional District, located in the Kansas City area, which just eight years ago supported Mitt Romney by a 54-44 margin. Hillary Clinton then flipped the district in 2016, winning by a narrow 47-46 spread, but Joe Biden blew it open in November, romping to a 54-44 win—the same margin as Romney, and a 20-point cascade in under a decade.

Against this backdrop, Democratic Rep. Sharice Davids was able to wrest this seat from Republicans in the 2018 blue wave, and they did little to try to win it back last year. The deep-pocketed outside groups that spent hundreds of millions of dollars to return the House to GOP hands completely ignored Davids’ reelection bid, in which she defeated Republican Amanda Adkins 54-44, matching Biden’s performance.

Elsewhere in the state, which by and large is much more rural, Trump won comfortably. While Democrats had hoped to compete in the open 2nd District, where they narrowly fell short in the midterms, Trump’s solid 56-41 win wasn’t much different from his 56-37 victory four years earlier, and Republican state Treasurer Jake LaTurner defeated Democrat Michelle De La Isla, the mayor of Topeka, by a similar 55-41 margin. The other two districts, the “Big” 1st and the 4th, both went for Trump by even wider margins.

Republicans could fight back against Democratic gains in the suburbs, however, by further locking in minority rule through gerrymandering. In fact, Kansas Republicans openly campaigned against Democrats’ efforts to roll back the GOP’s legislative supermajorities last year, with their state Senate president at the time saying, “I guarantee you we can draw four Republican congressional maps [sic]”—she meant districts—so that they could “take out” Davids.

The plot worked—Democrats in the legislature fell just short of winning the seats they’d need to be assured of upholding vetoed by Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly. That means if Republicans can remain unified, they can ram through a new map that splits up the Kansas City region and leaves Davids with a much redder district—but that’s a big “if.” The Kansas GOP has for the longest time been bitterly divided between conservative and more moderate factions, and while the latter bloc has been decimated in recent years, Republican leaders are likely to have a hard time enforcing perfect discipline.

Part of the problem is that raw partisan politics often take a back seat to parochial interests in redistricting. For instance, if an influential Republican lawmaker with a base in the KC area is eyeing a challenge to Davids in 2022, they may not want to see the 3rd District carved up too aggressively, lest such a map usher in too many unfamiliar voters—and open the door for another ambitious politician to seek a promotion.

This, of course, is purely hypothetical, but it’s reflective of many dramas we saw play out in redistricting a decade ago. If she’s lucky, then, Davids may therefore be saved by a combination of GOP disunity and individual self-interest.

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For years, prominent human rights attorney Natasha Lycia Ora Bannan has positioned herself as an advocate for Latinx communities, most recently identifying as a Puerto Rican woman from New York determined to aid the island and bring attention to the economic and humanitarian crises produced by colonization. Unbeknownst to many in the Latinx communities she worked alongside and claimed as her own, Bannan is a white woman who grew up in Georgia. Since at least 2006, she has accepted opportunities expressly intended for Latinas and other people of color.

The 43-year-old, who is currently senior counsel at LatinoJustice Puerto Rican Legal Defense & Education Fund, has publicly identified as a Latina for years, though the specifics of her identity and origin story have shifted over time. News of Bannan’s misrepresentation comes on the heels of reports that Hillary “Hilaria” Baldwin spent more than a decade pretending to be from Spain. While the concept of “passing” originated with lighter-skinned African Americans who attempted to pass as white in an effort to evade racial terror, Bannan is part of a recent phenomenon of white women—including Rachel Dolezal, Jessica Krug, and Kelly Kean Sharp—caught cosplaying as Black, Latina, and Afro-Latina for personal gain.

Shifting identities

Nothing in Bannan’s lineage indicates that she can lay claim to a Latina identity. According to historical public documents, including census and naturalization records, Bannan’s paternal family arrived in the United States from Ireland and Italy. Her Italian grandmother Lycia, the source of Bannan’s middle name, arrived in the U.S. in 1912. Records also indicate that Bannan’s maternal family all arrived in the U.S. from Russia. Court records from 1994, when Bannan was 17 years old, identify Natasha Lycia Bannan as a white “non-Hispanic.” Nevertheless, in a statement to Prism, Bannan said she has identified as Latina for as long as she can remember because it was the culture she was “raised in.”

In public comments going back more than a decade, she has claimed varying forms of Latina identity, presenting vague and shifting descriptions of her ethnic and cultural origins. In 2007, Bannan told the the Spanish-language newspaper El Diario that she was “a little bit Spanish, a little bit Colombian, and a Sephardic Jew.” When asked about the article, which is no longer available online, Bannan told Prism that she never identified as Spanish.

”I believe I let the reporter know back then that was a misprint in the article,” said Bannan in a statement.

The reporter in question told Prism that she has no recollection of whether Bannan contacted her about an error in the story.  

In a 2015 video, Bannan mentioned dancing in a salsa competition while visiting family in Colombia when she was 8 years old. By 2017, claims of a Puerto Rican identity entered the public sphere. In one video, Bannan tells Voice Latina that she’s a “cultural mix of Puerto Rican, Colombian, Italian, and some other.”

Shortly after being contacted by Prism for this story, Bannan wrote a Facebook post Monday afternoon clarifying that she is “racially white” and that her “cultural heritage” and her identification as a Latina come from who her family “has been” and not where her “ancestors were from.” Bannan told Prism that she has been public about her white identity but declined to provide significant examples supporting this claim.

“I am racially white, and have always said that. However my cultural identity was formed as a result of my family, both chosen and chosen for me, and that has always been Latinx. My identity is my most authentic expression of who I am and how I pay honor to the people who have formed me since I was a child,” Bannan said.

In a subsequent email, Bannan shared a private 2016 Facebook post as proof that she has publicly identified as white.

“My biological origins are Italian, atheist Jewish/Sephardic, some unknown (adopted grandfather) and who knows what else. My biological parents were born in the United States, and I was raised with only one of them,” reads the post. “Yet the Colombian family who I grew up with and who were responsible in grand part for raising me, who helped form my character and identity were from many different ethnic identities and backgrounds.”

Bannan told Prism that her maternal grandfather was adopted, however he is listed as white in both the 1930 and 1940 census. Bannan didn’t clarify who her Colombian family is, or how long she was connected to them. Public records indicate Bannan’s mother was married to a man with a Spanish surname for five years, during the time Bannan was ages 6 to 11. Another marriage record indicates her mother had a subsequent marriage to a different man with a Spanish surname in 1995.

In the post, Bannan also wrote of her “deeply spiritual and cultural connection with Borinquen that has lasted many lives and took over my spirit, accent and soul from a young age.”

‘Actual Latinas couldn’t get away with what she does’

Bannan appears in a multitude of videos across the internet, mostly focused on Puerto Rico as she has positioned herself as a Puerto Rican attorney and expert on the sociopolitical conditions facing the island and its people. No subject is off limits. In one video, she appears alongside survivors of Hurricane Maria. In a DemocracyNow clip following the 2016 Pulse Nightclub shooting in which 23 of the 49 victims were LGBTQ+ Puerto Rican people, Amy Goodman offers her “deepest condolences” for the tragedy to show guests Bannan and San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz, along with her co-host Juan Gonzales, appearing to operate under the assumption that all three were of Puerto Rican ancestry. Bannan accepted without comment. 

Actual Latina attorneys who spoke to Prism said that while stories like Baldwin’s are played for laughs, Bannan’s case is more serious.

Chicana immigration public defender and policy advocate Sophia Gurulé is based in East Harlem and does removal defense in the Bronx, representing detained immigrants fighting deportation. Her professional and social circles overlap with Bannan’s and Gurulé said that watching clips of Bannan talk about the importance of Latina representation in the legal profession makes her feel “disgusted.”

“There’s an interview she did for LatinasRepresent that is just unbelievable to me because she acknowledges Latinas are so underrepresented in this profession. To me, it’s clear she has some kind of white savior complex,” Gurulé said. “In the video, she talks about being the only point of reference her Latino clients know; she says she’s a ‘bridge’ for them. All of it centers her and is framed like she is coming in to save our communities.”

As a public defender, Gurulé said it’s her job to advocate for people who cannot advocate for themselves because of the circumstances they’re in, but she takes her lead from them.

“I actually don’t know a lot of the experiences of the people I represent. I was born in the United States. I did not migrate to this country. I did not face the violence at the border. I did not face the violence of the police state in the same way that the people I represent do,” Gurulé said. “[Bannan] has no self-awareness or analysis of how she’s positioned herself or the power imbalance. She’s pretending to be Latina and pretending there is some singular lived experience associated with it that she somehow understands. It’s honestly very disturbing, especially given her progressive politics and her constant talk of the colonization of Puerto Rico.”

Bannan has maintained that her identification as a Latina comes from her “lived experiences” and is an “authentic expression” of who she is. “Given that Latinx is not synonymous with race,” Bannan said, it “does not discount” her “lived experience as a racially white person.” There are certainly white Latinos, but all available evidence, including Bannan’s own statements, indicate that she is not one. Ethnicity does not come through osmosis. Being in proximity to Colombian and Puerto Rican people does not make one Colombian or Puerto Rican.

To Latina attorneys whose identities have created more hurdles than opportunities, Bannan’s “authentic representation” appears to lean into stereotypes about Latina women.  

Ana Gabriela Urizar, a Guatemalan immigrant practicing corporate immigration law at a private practice, said that watching videos of Bannan is “sad and funny.”

“It’s like she’s wearing a Latina costume and dresses according to Latina stereotypes,” Urizar said, as Bannan is almost always seen in media appearances wearing oversized jewelry and dark makeup. “A lot of us endure so much criticism because of the way we look and the way that we talk; the hate and harassment we receive means we have to tone ourselves down. Actual Latinas couldn’t get away with what she does.”

There is also Bannan’s way of speaking. At a 2015 event in support of Puerto Rican activist Oscar López Rivera, Bannan addressed the crowd in what appears to be an affected accent, eerily similar to the one used by Jessica Krug in the now infamous video of the George Washington University professor speaking to the New York City Council.

Urizar told Prism that her accent has created hurdles for her in the legal profession and that it seems as if Bannan doesn’t understand that carrying the identity of a Latina attorney is not just a “luxury,” but rather something that comes with many challenges.

“If you really have an accent, you will have very negative experiences in this industry. People have made comments about whether I belonged here. Several people asked me if I took the bar exam in Spanish. At the time, it was extremely hurtful because I knew they were making assumptions about my capabilities,” Urizar said.

“I’ve been asked if I’m the paralegal or the secretary. People have said, ‘Where are you really from?’ Honestly, there were times when I wished I didn’t have an accent. It took a long time for me to be comfortable with my background and learn how to use it as a tool to advocate for others. So yes, it makes me angry to know that [Bannan] treated this identity like something she could jump in and out of for her own advantage.”

Urizar said that in professional environments, she is extremely cognizant of the stereotypes that Latinas are loud, hyper-sexual, and wear “flamboyant and colorful clothing” and “huge earrings.” In predominantly white lawyering spaces, Urizar said she is a “watered down version” of herself— she dresses more conservatively, intentionally picking smaller earrings and more muted colors.

Denia Pérez had a similar experience. The policy adviser to the New York City Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs was the first Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals beneficiary to become a licensed attorney in Connecticut. In law school, Pérez said she was one of just a few students of color and the only undocumented person.

“There were so many hurdles, sometimes stuff I didn’t even anticipate. I’m very animated when I speak; I use my hands a lot and because of this, comments were made about me,” Pérez said, noting that a white male attorney at a networking event referred to her as “spicy” and in another instance while preparing for a moot court competition, she was advised to “tone down” her gestures to appear more professional. “I kept getting this feedback that I knew was gendered and related to stereotypes and ideas of who Latinas are and how we move in the world.”

‘Latinidad’ and professional opportunities

Latinas account for less than 2% of American lawyers and the opportunities available to them in the predominantly white legal field are limited—a fact Bannan acknowledged in a 2017 video in which she said she “can’t stress enough the importance of having Latino lawyers.” But that did not stop Bannan from siphoning resources, positions, and other opportunities intended for Latinas and other people of color in spaces where she already had a significant leg up as a white woman—and in spaces where her claimed Latina identity was never necessary for her to advance in her career.

In 2006, she was one of just 22 Latina fellows chosen to participate in the National Hispana Leadership Institute. In 2008, she was the recipient of the Peace, Health, and Justice Award from Casa Atabex Ache, an organization in the South Bronx that facilitates “collective transformation and social change for women of color.” In 2009, Bannan was president of CUNY Law School’s Latin American Law Students Association, and also served as one of two law student fellows at the school’s Center for Latino/a Rights and Equality (CLORE). Despite her resume identifying herself as a fellow, Bannan was an intern in 2010 for the Center for Constitutional Rights’ Ella Baker program, named after the African American civil rights and human rights activist. Bannan became the National Lawyers Guild’s (NLG) president in 2015 and was heralded as the organization’s first Latina president. In 2016, she attended the Aspen Institute’s invitation-only Justice and Society Seminar as a Ricardo Salinas Scholar, courtesy of the Ricardo Salinas Scholarship Fund aimed at increasing the participation of Latinos in the Aspen Institute’s highly coveted events. Her writings have also been featured in a series of anthologies showcasing Latinos, including the 2018 book Latinas: Struggles & Protests in 21st Century USA and the 2019 book Aftershocks of Disaster: Puerto Rico Before and After the Storm.

Bannan declined to comment on whether she regrets accepting benefits and opportunities intended for Latinas and people of color, but the harm is real. Pérez said that Bannan’s practice of inserting herself into the limited spaces carved out for Latinas “crosses a boundary.”

“It just feels really gross to me, especially when I think back to how hard law school was,” said Pérez, the first person in her family to go to college. “So much of the story about my desire to go to law school is tangled up with trauma as undocumented person and the daughter of people who were on verge of deportation for half my life. There were so few spaces in law school where I felt like I had people. Having that community with Latinos who had parallel or similar experiences made law school bearable. It makes me upset that someone would try to co-opt an identity or experience to get opportunities or access to spaces they could have accessed anyhow [as an ally].”

According to conversations with attorneys who didn’t want to speak on the record, Bannan’s assumed identity isn’t exactly a secret in the legal advocacy community. In one story relayed a few times, Bannan was confronted by a Puerto Rican attorney at a National Lawyers Guild convention. The attorney wanted to know where in Puerto Rico Bannan’s family was from. Unable to answer, Bannan reportedly said she was “culturally Puerto Rican.”

In her 2016 Facebook post, Bannan said that where she grew up in Georgia had “a rich cultural and political identity,” but “there was no political space to be anything except white or Black.”

“It was my Latino family that offered me the opportunity to culturally define myself within another context and to shape the work that I ultimately wanted to dedicate my life to,” the attorney wrote in the post she shared with Prism. “As an adult, I have only deepened my relationship with my culture, which has consistently defined me, trying to live a life and work that reflects my latinidad.”

Afro-Latino and Indigenous cultural workers and writers like Alan Pelaez Lopez have long urged Latinx people to reject Latinidad, an over simplistic, singular geopolitical identity that erases Black and Indigenous communities and pretends wildly different communities tidily fall under the same umbrella. The Nation’s Research Director Miguel Salazar wrote that Latinidad is an “exclusionary identity fabricated by—and for the benefit of—white and mestizo elites and the American political class.” It should come as no surprise then that Bannan found freedom in Latinidad, which allowed her to take up an astounding amount of space in organizations, programs, and as part of opportunities specifically created for Latinx people and other people of color.

Prism asked Bannan to comment on Latina attorneys’ views that pretending to be Latina is harmful—both to clients and to Latinas in the profession. Bannan would only say that her participation in committees, organizations, and movement spaces is a result of her “work and commitment” and “has always been designed to open those spaces up, not close them out.”

“She is quite literally taking spaces from people. Latinas are underrepresented, but there is another really important part of this conversation related to which Latinas get opportunities,” Gurulé said. “I’m a white Chicana. I have white skin. The longer I’m in this field, the more I see that most of the Latinas in this field look like me. There aren’t many Black Latinas; there aren’t many brown Latinas, there aren’t many Indigenous people. She is absolutely taking up space that is already so limited and when opportunities do go to Latinas, it’s usually people who are already extremely privileged within these spaces.”

The Latina attorneys who spoke to Prism said it should also be cause for concern that Bannan has said that her Latina identity helped her build trust in immigrant communities, including those facing deportation or living through traumatic events. Bannan declined to answer when asked whether she’s concerned about having misled immigrant clients who may not have trusted her if they knew she was a white woman.

‘An accountability process’

Despite more than a decade of misrepresentation to organizations, community members, and Latino and immigrant clients, Bannan’s current employer, LatinoJustice—where she has been employed since 2015—is standing by her side.

“Natasha Lycia Ora Bannan is a valuable member of our staff serving as Senior Counsel to us for years. Her race and ethnicity have had no bearing on the quality of her work for LatinoJustice and for our clients,” said Juan Cartagena, president and general counsel of LatinoJustice, in an emailed statement to Prism.

He directed questions about Bannan’s identity to Bannan herself.

However, members of the National Lawyers Guild’s United People of Color Caucus and Anti-Racism Committee sent Prism a statement acknowledging the “harm” of Bannan “misrepresenting herself as a Latina/Puerto Rican and a person of color when in reality she is white and of european descent.”

“ARC is initiating an accountability process with Natasha that is rooted in our abolitionist politics and focused on addressing the harms she has caused, internally and externally, by claiming and performing a culture and ethnicity that are not hers and by taking up leadership space under the guise of being a person of color,” reads the statement.

“As abolitionists, we recognize that carceral logic is harmful to everyone involved and will do nothing to further the healing or reckoning process. We wish to navigate this conflict in ways that center the people harmed by Natasha’s actions without losing sight of Natasha’s humanity, so we are asking people not to call for Natasha’s disposal from the Guild or other punishment.”

Despite whatever process the National Lawyers Guild has initiated to repair her harm, Bannan continues to assert a Latina identity in statements to Prism and on her Facebook account. She did not respond to any questions about the harm she’s perpetuated and has not expressed any regret or remorse.

The NLG’s United People of Color Caucus and Anti-Racism Committee told Prism that an “internal process” related to Bannan’s deception was triggered in mid-2020, however she remains co-chair for the Guild’s Puerto Rico Subcommittee, Colombia Subcommittee, and Taskforce on the Americas.

The United People of Color Caucus and Anti-Racism Committee are urging those “who have been harmed by [Bannan’s] appropriation” to contact the anti-racism committee at [email protected]. When asked how the NLG will undertake an accountability process with Bannan, the committee said that “bringing Natasha to a place where she can acknowledge the harm she has caused is part of the accountability process, not a prerequisite to it.”

Latino attorneys, advocates, journalists, and others in Bannan’s circle over the years are grappling with the news of her misrepresentation. Puerto Rican journalist and founder of Latino Rebels, Julio Ricardo Varela, said he was “shook” by the revelation. Bannan appeared on a radio program with Varela and two other actual Puerto Rican commentators. Varela said he was “impressed” by Bannan’s knowledge and later hosted a few online shows with her as a guest.

“I’m really shocked,” Varela said, noting that Bannan and her work are deeply respected. “I had no idea she actually wasn’t Puerto Rican. I don’t understand why she couldn’t just say: ‘I’m a white person and I want to be an ally.’ We need allies, but now I’m thinking about all of the badass Puerto Rican women attorneys whose voices were left out because [Bannan] was uplifted as an expert.”

A number of Bannan’s colleagues and fellow legal advocates declined to be interviewed for this story. While acknowledging that she has done harm, they went on to say that Bannan is a “nice person” who does “good work.” Gurulé says this doesn’t bode well for accountability.

“Look at the roles she has held, the boards she has served on, the organizations she has represented. Her presence benefited them so that they could say, ‘See? We have a Latina,’” Gurulé said. “She hasn’t been creating spaces; she’s been taking the spaces—and she’s been sprinkling herself all over the place to get recognition and power.”

Tina Vasquez is a senior reporter for Prism. She covers gender justice, workers’ rights, and immigration. Follow her on Twitter @TheTinaVasquez.

Prism is a BIPOC-led nonprofit news outlet that centers the people, places and issues currently underreported by our national media. Through our original reporting, analysis, and commentary, we challenge dominant, toxic narratives perpetuated by the mainstream press and work to build a full and accurate record of what’s happening in our democracy. Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

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Only days after a violent coup by supporters of Donald Trump came unspeakably close to murdering top U.S. leaders, including Trump’s own vice president, Republicans are expressing outrage not over the coup attempt, the attempted murders, or the unforgivable lack of federal response, but over private companies deciding that they cannot continue to support the online tools used to help coordinate the violent attack.

Republican lawmakers have given only lip service to coup condemnations; instead, they have devoted the vast majority of their statements to insisting that “unity” demands taking no action to remove Donald Trump, even after he provoked an insurrection, and declaring that the greater travesty is online efforts to isolate and expel those that advocated for and planned the violence.

Trump’s own handpicked leader of the Republican National Committee, in the meantime, a woman who willingly abetted malevolent hoaxes claiming that the United States elections that removed Trump from power were fraudulent and should be nullified, was reelected to lead the party by a unanimous vote.

That is evidence enough that Republican lawmakers and leaders have no remorse over their own parts in stoking, relentlessly, the fraudulent propaganda that domestic terrorists then used as justification for attempting to murder Trump’s enemies in Congress. It is also the reason the acts of individual lawmakers should be investigated, by Congress, and expelled en masse if warranted. But further evidence can be found in the materials being distributed by Republican candidates and officeholders in the immediate aftermath of the murders.

They want constituents to know that their attacks on America’s democracy and government will continue, and that they are proud of their actions to date.

In new campaign materials, recent North Carolina Republican congressional candidate Sandy Smith bragged of her involvement in an attempted overthrow of the government.

“I was at the March for Trump and the Stop the Steal Rally, supporting the President, fighting for our country and our Constitution!” says Smith, a fascist, seditionist and traitor. Of the participants in the event: “None were inciting violence,” she claims.

Of “Republicans in DC”: “To them, it’s fine if Biden stole the election and takes office.”

“No wonder the establishment cheated to get Trump out.”

Sandy Smith, a Republican congressional candidate, is unrepentant in continuing to stoke the provably false propaganda claim that the United States elections were “stolen.” Every court in the land has decried these claims; there is, literally, no evidence for them. Not a stitch. The claim is a lie, and it is a lie that Trump’s fascist enablers signaled before the election he would pursue if he lost. It is a hoax intended to overthrow this nation’s government, and Sandy Smith is a traitor knowingly peddling it.

In a pinned Tweet, Smith claims she herself won her election for North Carolina’s 1st District seat, “if we audit” it. She did not. She lost. Her claims are false, and she is a traitor.

She is not the only Republican who has continued to claim that the elections that ousted Trump were fraudulent, of course. Over a hundred Republican lawmakers claimed the same, even as pooled blood continued to dry outside the chamber doors Wednesday evening. It is a false claim, explicitly demanding the nullification of an election based on a propagandistic hoax perpetrated by a deranged madman and his fascist allies. The Republican Party is a fascist movement. There are no “good” Republicans after Wednesday: There are only ex-Republicans or seditionists. The party has made clear what it stands for.

The Arizona Republican Party and other state parties, all of them stripped of any leaders perceived to be insufficiently loyal to their orange-hued tax-dodging rapist leader, have only doubled down on their support for a traitor, which is to be expected. It is a party with no remaining morals; it cannot be forced to condemn a coup it itself attempted to bring into being with anti-American lies.

This coup is not over. From Jim Jordan, Devin Nunes and Kevin McCarthy to Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley, the party continues to claim the election that ousted Trump is invalid and that “unity” requires allowing the organizational tools of the coup, its party allies, and their own seditious rhetoric to go unmolested as they continue to push the same pro-Trump hoaxes that American fascists used to justify their attempted murder of top national leaders. This coup is not over, and its enablers fully intend to rebuild their hoaxes rather than abandon them.

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Twenty years after 9/11, when part of the Pentagon itself was destroyed in a terrorist attack intended to decapitate United States military leaders, the federal reaction to a new act of terrorism on American soil proved so incompetent as to defy description. As mobs chanted demands that the vice president be killed and hunted congressional leaders like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Capitol Police officers were left on their own, without help, and no word on when help would arrive.

A large part of that was due to what appears to be no substantive response from the Department of Defense as this nation’s top lawmakers hid from terrorists in the halls of the U.S. Capitol. And it now appears that that inaction, by Trump Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller, very nearly caused the fall of the U.S. government. And that, regardless of intent, is an inexcusable failure. Miller has proven unfit for his office, at best. His failure to respond to a terrorist attack in any substantive way endangered the entire country; during a national crisis, he proved at best incompetent.

He must be removed from his post immediately for that failure alone. It may be more important to remove “acting” Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller from his post than it is to remove Trump himself; while Trump worked to provoke the attack, during an assembly of known-violent extremists known to law enforcement as potential domestic terrorists, it is Miller that decapitated the nation’s response to the insurrection as terrorists hunted officials inside the breached halls of Congress.

A later investigation will determine whether Miller’s intent was treasonous. There is no interpretation of the facts, however, that can justify Miller’s disgraceful failure to mount a response to an ongoing terrorist act. He cannot remain in his post.

As we learn the true events of last Wednesday’s attempted coup, the true nature of both the attack and the horrific lack of federal response are becoming clear. We now know that the attack was not spontaneous; within the larger crowd of willingly violent Trump allies, a subset was armed, knew where they were going, and intended to execute Vice President Mike Pence, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and other Trump opponents. As calls for backup from Capitol Police, lawmakers, and congressional staff went unanswered, the assassins came very close to succeeding.

We also know that top Trump administration officials knew in advance of the threat to the Capitol, but downplayed threat assessments given to the Capitol Police and to Congress so as to justify a far weaker law enforcement presence than for any other major (or even minor) planned mass protest. This lack of preparation comes after a Trump administration gutting of Department of Homeland Security intelligence officials, part of a larger purge of officials deemed insufficiently loyal to Donald Trump.

But perhaps the most consequential actions were by newly appointed Trump Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller—the same Christopher Miller that President-elect Joe Biden called out for blocking national security briefings to the incoming administration. The timeline now makes clear that even long after Capitol Police had reported multiple officers injured and the Capitol building being overrun, Miller still took no significant action.

According to the timeline of the Wall Street Journal, officer injuries were reported at 1:18pm. By 1:41, Capitol Police were overrun. Capitol Police chief requested National Guard support at 2:22pm, one of numerous officials to do so—many hiding inside the building awaiting immediate help.

It was not until 5:45pm formally approved the dispatch of the Maryland National Guard. The delay in response? Hours.

It is difficult to imagine that, after two decades of security theater and an unending list of curtailed public freedoms after 9/11, the federal response to an actual terrorist assault on the U.S. Capitol could consist of exactly nothing, for hours, as congressional security forces fought by themselves to protect national leaders from execution. It is impossible to imagine—and yet it happened, and many days after the attack, neither Miller nor any other executive branch appointee has deigned to so much as brief the public on how such a massive failure could have taken place. We were under the impression federal forces were competent enough to defend from even far larger terrorist attacks. We were wrong.

Even with ample advance notice of the threat, even after the attackers had used social media to publicly plan their assault, brag about their weaponry, and announce their intent, the terrorists remained unimpeded by federal forces for hours.

We were told that the security precautions that have justified the aggressive paramilitary treatment of American protesters for decades was for security purposes, to keep the nation safe: Met with an actual terrorist attack, the same forces stood down.

Either we have been lied to, and for decades, or Chris Miller and other administration leaders willingly looked the other way as an attack on this nation’s capital unfolded. It is almost certain to be both.

Acting Secretary of Defense Miller must answer for his apparent role in defeating a timely response to an insurrection. He, and his Department of Justice counterparts, must answer for the lack of backup outside and inside the designated target of a mass gathering of known insurrectionists—and, especially, for the inability to muster such backup even as McConnell, Pelosi, Pence, and other leaders hid in offices as their own security teams made clear that inaction could lead to executions.

It is not forgivable, or recoverable. Miller operated either with an assumption that the terrorists were not who they plainly self-identified to be—and remember, there was no reason to believe that foreign actors could not have been mingling with the crowd, carrying out their own missions or assisting American counterparts in identifying routes and strategies—or Miller willingly sat on his hands as the attempted coup unfolded.

In prior remarks, Joe Biden singled out the Department of Justice and Department of Defense as the two agencies where political hires were continuing to stonewall national security briefings of the incoming administration. It should not go without notice that these were the two agencies responsible for assessing the risk to the Capitol in advance and providing backup and rescue services when it became necessary—and that both of those teams failed, spectacularly and perhaps deliberately, in both tasks. In a recent open letter, all living ex-secretaries of defense condemned Trump’s attempt to overturn the election results and warned, specifically, that military leaders could be charged with crimes for abetting them. It was an unprecedented warning amid a sea of unprecedented warnings. And it was prescient.

It is now necessary to ask whether Chris Miller mounted an incompetent response to a terrorist attack because he truly is incapable of his job, or whether he did so in a conspiracy siding with the terrorists. That is how horrific his response is. That is how unthinkable the actions of top federal leaders are. We need not await an answer before acting: Whatever may have occurred, it was so damaging to the nation that Miller cannot remain in his post another moment. He must be removed.

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In the days since a group of pro-Trump insurrectionists stormed the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., sending elected officials into temporary hiding and the nation into a period of shock and horror, a number of Republicans have spoken out against Donald Trump. Whether they’ve criticized his endless insistence that he actually won the 2020 presidential election (he didn’t), called for Trump to resign, both long-standing critics and newly vocalized GOP members are speaking out against Trump.

In a moving, personal video, former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger succinctly described Trump as a “failed leader” and someone who “will soon be as irrelevant as an old tweet.” Direct jabs aside, however, Schwarzenegger also dove deep into serious matters and discussed intergenerational trauma, personal examples from his youth in Austria, and directed a very important message to not only Trump but the Republicans who enabled him. He also wished “great success” to President-elect Joe Biden for when he takes office in less than a month. Let’s check out the video below.

First, in reference to Trump, Schwarzenegger states, “President Trump sought to overturn the results of an election. He sought a coup by misleading people with lies. He will go down in history as the worst president ever. The good thing is he will soon be as irrelevant as an old tweet.” Obviously, the extra layer of zing here is that Twitter (as well as a handful of other social media platforms) recently permanently suspended Trump from their platforms.

On a personal note, Schwarzenegger discussed growing up in the long-term wake of Kristallnacht (also known as the Night of Broken Glass). Schwarzenegger described Kristallnacht as “a night of rampage against the Jews carried out in 1938 by the Nazi equivalent of the Proud Boys,” and said the insurgent’s attack on the Capitol last Wednesday was “the Day of Broken Glass right here in the United States. But the mob did not just shatter the windows of the Capitol. They shattered the ideas we took for granted [and] trampled the very principles on which our country was founded.”

Schwarzenegger talked about how intergenerational trauma (though he didn’t use that term) can affect an entire society. In his case, Schwarzenegger described being a child and watching his father come home drunk once or twice a week, hitting and scaring his mother. He said it felt normal because he knew it happened at neighbors’ houses, too. Why? According to Schwarzenegger, this behavior tied to collective guilt and horror after World War II, saying these men were “in emotional pain for what they saw or did.” In his words, he grew up “surrounded by broken men drinking away the guilt over their participation in the most evil regime in history.”

“It all started with lies, lies, lies, and intolerance,” Schwarzenegger stated. “Being from Europe I’ve seen firsthand how bad things can spin out of control.”

In terms of his fellow Republicans, Schwarzenegger called out those who “enabled” Trump’s “lies and his treachery.” He also quoted former President Teddy Roosevelt to them, saying, “Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president.”

“To those who think they can overturn the United States constitution, know this: You will never win,” he stated, asking for the people responsible for the attack on the U.S. Capitol to be held accountable. 

Here’s the video on Twitter, which has garnered more than 6 million views at the time of writing. It’s about seven minutes long, but honestly, is worth the full watch.

You can watch the full video on his YouTube channel below.

There are currently 159 House members, and 24 senators who are on record supporting impeachment & removal. Regardless of where your members of Congress stand, please send them a letter.

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If anyone is still asking if it’s fair to classify Wednesday’s attack at the Capitol as an attempted coup, the short answer is yes. But Atlantic magazine contributor Zeynep Tufekci, who has lived through four coups in Turkey, told NPR the public needs to focus less on how to classify what happened and start paying attention to just how close rioters came to achieving their goal.

President Donald Trump called for his supporters to march to the Capitol to block Congress from certifying President-elect Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory. “We will never give up. We will never concede. It doesn’t happen,” he said at a Save America rally Wednesday in Washington D.C. “You don’t concede when there’s theft involved. Our country has had enough. We will not take it anymore, and that is what this is all about.”

Trump incited a mob that stormed the legislature, where the election was being certified, Tufekci told NPR. “So that is absolutely some sort of coup attempt,” she said. Tufekci said that moments of the insurrection Wednesday felt “intimately familiar” and that she’s been describing Trump’s actions since the election as attempts at a coup.

She said as an academic, she can appreciate Americans debating the best technical term to classify Trump’s attempt to overthrow election results.”You know there is some value in the precision there, but that shouldn’t overshadow what was coming our way, as I was writing, what is being attempted” she said. “The president of the United States was attempting to steal the election by falsely asserting that he won it and trying to mobilize all the extralegal forces he could muster from his office to try to get them to overturn the election in his favor.”

By Merriam-Webster’s definition, a coup, short for coup d’état, is defined as “a sudden decisive exercise of force in politics especially: the violent overthrow or alteration of an existing government by a small group.”

“I think people are mistaking ridiculous with not serious,” Tufekci said. Protesters looked ridiculous, angry mobs of people punctuated with those wearing horns and flag capes, “but it’s not unserious,” Tufekci said. After the mob disrupted the certification process, the majority of the GOP caucus, 138 of 211 Republican representatives, voted to overthrow the results of the Pennsylvania election, “even the Pennsylvania representative who was just elected with those votes,” Tufekci said. 

“These are not normal hiccups of a transition,” she added. “These are attempts to steal an election.” Tufekci said there are a lot of ridiculous coup attempts around the world that fail “the first time or the second time, or the third time and then they succeed.” GOP legislators voting to throw out legitimate votes even after an attempted coup, “that should scare us,” Tufekci said.

Rioters crossed a line in storming the Capitol and so did 65% of Republican legislators who voted to throw out legitimate votes. “It’s how we react to that line being crossed that will determine whether they’ll try again,” Tufekci said. “And there’s no reason to assume the next time will be similarly ridiculous or incompetant because this time was very serious.”

RELATED: Here’s a roundup of people getting arrested for their part in Trump’s failed revolt