Chaos grips House floor — again — as Biden observes insurrection’s second anniversary
(Bloomberg) — The second anniversary of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the US Capitol arrives with the building again in turmoil, this time as House Republicans quarrel over a speaker to lead the chamber.
The chaos unfolding on the House floor threatens to tarnish the new GOP majority, which voters put back in power less than two years after a mob instigated by Donald Trump fought through police lines to ransack the building and try to stop certification of President Joe Biden’s election victory.
Lawmakers allied with Trump who have publicly sympathized with the rioters are at the center of the fiasco over speaker, repeatedly blocking Representative Kevin McCarthy’s bid for the position.
Biden on Friday will seize on the anniversary and the drama in the House to draw a contrast between his party and Republicans, holding a White House ceremony to recognize police officers who defended the Capitol and state election officials who endured harassment by Trump supporters in certifying Biden’s 2020 victory.
Biden and the Democratic Party outperformed in the 2022 midterms in part by warning that democracy remains at risk from extremist Republicans, and he and his aides are banking that they can keep that concern at the forefront of voters’ minds headed into his 2024 re-election bid.
“Pray to God it never happens again,” Biden said of Jan. 6 on Thursday during a Cabinet meeting.
Biden has repeatedly blamed Trump directly for the violence at the Capitol two years ago, and urged voters to reject Republican candidates beholden to the former president as a threat to the country’s democratic institutions. In scores of battleground states and districts, including Arizona, Michigan and Georgia, voters did just that.
The president has already drawn a link between the Jan. 6 attack and the dysfunction in the early days of the GOP-controlled House, where lawmakers have voted 11 times for speaker without any candidate winning a majority. It’s been a century since a speaker’s election required more than one vote.
Democrats are using the moment to showcase unity within their own ranks. In the House, the minority party seamlessly selected their own leaders and unanimously supported Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York in each of the speaker votes.
In the White House ceremony on Friday, Biden will mark two years since the riot at the Capitol by honoring a dozen people with the Presidential Citizens Medal, the White House’s second-highest civilian award after the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
The recipients include former Washington Metropolitan Police officer Michael Fanone, who was injured in the attack and has publicly pressured Republicans to take greater responsibility for the incident, and Capitol Police officer Eugene Goodman, who famously diverted rioters from the Senate chamber, a move that some lawmakers have credited for potentially saving their lives.
Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick, who confronted rioters and later died after suffering a stroke, will be honored posthumously.
Biden will also honor Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, who presided over certification of Biden’s 2020 victory in the state in the face of threats from Trump supporters; former Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers, a Republican drummed out of office for resisting efforts to overturn Biden’s victory in his state; and Shaye Moss, an election worker in Fulton County, Georgia, who has been baselessly targeted by Trump’s supporters.
The police officers and public officials “demonstrated courage and selflessness during a moment of peril for our nation,” the White House said in a statement announcing the awards on Thursday.
Last year on the anniversary, Biden condemned Trump for trying to prevent a peaceful transfer of power and called Jan. 6 among the country’s “darkest days.” Biden’s warnings about the former president’s threats to democracy are sure to remain a staple of his stump speeches, with Trump again running for president.
The House committee that investigated the attack recommended last month that Trump be barred from holding public office and charged with federal crimes. Trump has ridiculed the committee and its findings and insists he did nothing wrong.
But the insurrection continues to reverberate. Threats against members of Congress have increased 400 percent in the last six years, Thomas Manger, the chief of the Capitol Police, said in congressional testimony in December. There were more than 9,000 in the last year alone, he said.
In October, the husband of Nancy Pelosi was assaulted with a hammer at their home by an intruder who intended to harm the former speaker.
Biden warned voters during the midterms that so-called “MAGA” Republicans — a reference to Trump’s allies — jeopardize the integrity of the country’s electoral system with false claims of widespread vote fraud.
Even some Democrats were initially skeptical the message would resonate. But it proved effective.
A September NBC News poll found 20% of voters ranked “threats to democracy” as their top issue, above the economy and abortion. And in November, voters largely rejected candidates on the ballot who were known election-deniers.
“The threat’s not going away, and I think we have to be sober and honest about that fact,” Democrat Chris Deluzio of Pennsylvania, a freshman representative, said Thursday. “I still see too many members of the House and the Senate who lack the courage or the backbones to condemn exactly that violence and condemn these forces of extremism on the right.”
–With assistance from Zach Cohen.
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