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Opinion: Don't forget what happened four years ago on Jan. 6

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Opinion: Don't forget what happened four years ago on Jan. 6

Four years ago on Jan. 6, not even most Republicans would have imagined this 2025 anniversary: The West Front of the Capitol — where rioters battled outnumbered police to breach the building, marauding and hunting for lawmakers — is currently getting gussied up for this month’s inauguration of the 2021 mob’s inciter: Donald Trump.

“All I can say is count me out, enough is enough,” South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham famously harrumphed in the Senate back then. He was one of many Republicans who condemned Trump for the attack after it was put down and members of Congress — along with the day’s chief target, Trump’s Vice President Mike Pence — could safely return to certify the 2020 election of Joe Biden.

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Jackie Calmes

Jackie Calmes brings a critical eye to the national political scene. She has decades of experience covering the White House and Congress.

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Within a month, those same Republicans, cowed by Trump’s fanatically loyal voters, ate their words and returned to his fold — and, in shape-shifter Graham’s case, to his golf courses.

Ever since, the Republican Party has either downplayed the violence of Jan. 6 or, like Trump, denied that it was anything more than “great patriots” exercising their 1st Amendment rights or making “a normal tourist visit” to the Capitol, though we all watched an insurrection in real time and in countless video replays. They’ve condemned Americans to be bit players in a Marx Brothers comedy: “Who you gonna believe, me or your own eyes?” But this charade isn’t funny.

Let’s mark this anniversary by recalling some facts about what happened that day and afterward, in the run-up to President Biden’s inauguration. And by calling the gaslighting, the lying, just what it is.

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Lies like this: On Tuesday, Republican Rep. Eric Burlison of Missouri told the right-wing Newsmax that those criminally charged after Jan. 6 — nearly 1,600 people, including almost 1,000 who’ve pleaded guilty, according to a Justice Department update — were entrapped by the FBI “to do things that they didn’t even know might be illegal.”

Who doesn’t know that assaulting police with iron pipes, tasers, pepper spray, bats and flagpoles, injuring more than 140 of them, contributing to the deaths of several, and doing millions of dollars of damage to federal property is illegal? And how does a political party that professes to support law enforcement come to make these absurdist arguments?

Blind fealty to, or fear of, the incoming president is how.

But the voters have spoken, and a narrow plurality chose Trump, the Jan. 6 instigator, to become president in two weeks. And his “day one” promises include pardoning those he calls “the J-6 hostages.”

“Those people have suffered long and hard,” the usually unempathetic president-elect said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” last month. Trump first excused those who’d assaulted police — “They had no choice” — and then suggested the police actually invited the rioters into the Capitol: “You had the police saying, ‘Come on in. Come on in.’ ” (Now you know where the likes of Burlison get their nonsense.)

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According to Trump, it’s the Democrats and Republicans who were on the House Jan. 6 investigatory committee — “political thugs” and “creeps” — who should be in jail. This from the former and future commander in chief who, the committee found, sat in the White House for three hours that day — “187 minutes of dereliction” — watching the mayhem on TV and drinking Diet Coke as aides, family, friends and Fox News hosts implored him to do something, say something, to stop it.

As the Jan. 6 committee’s final report concluded: “There’s no question that President Trump had the power to end the insurrection. He was not only the Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. military, but also of the rioters.”

Biden delivered his answer to Trump’s perverse judgment this week: He awarded the nation’s second-highest civilian honor to Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi and former Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the Democratic chair and Republican vice chair of the Jan. 6 committee — Cheney for “putting the American people over party” and Thompson for “dedication to safeguarding our Constitution.” But Trump’s pliant Justice Department could get the last word, alas.

In the meantime, Biden is providing the “smooth transition” that sore-loser Trump denied him after the 2020 election. “Welcome back,” the president told Trump a week after the 2024 election at the traditional White House meeting of incoming and outgoing presidents, another norm Trump scorned in 2020 as he contested his loss in a free and fair election.

Back then, the post-Jan. 6 preparations for Biden’s inauguration had a wartime feel amid fears of a repeat attempt to prevent his taking office. Among the security measures were 7-foot fencing topped with razor wire around the Capitol, concrete barriers, boarded-up windows, barricaded roads and closed subway stations, military vehicles and 25,000 National Guard troops on the streets, with thousands more police from around the nation deputized to help.

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On Inauguration Day 2021, Trump was not on the platform — one of the few presidents in U.S. history to willfully refuse to attend his successor’s swearing-in — but Pence was. On this Jan. 20, Trump will be there, of course, with Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris looking on as he’s sworn in. Pence will be absent, repudiated in favor of a vice presidential pick, JD Vance, more likely than Pence proved to be to put Trump above the Constitution.

Four years ago, given the security threat and still-spreading pandemic, Biden spoke to an empty expanse; a “field of flags” stood in for crowds on the National Mall. “We learned again that democracy is precious, democracy is fragile,” the new president said. But, he added, “At this hour, my friends, it has prevailed.”

Democracy will prevail again on this Jan. 20. To the benefit of, but no thanks to, Donald Trump.

@jackiekcalmes

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Video: Walz Drops Re-Election Bid as Minnesota Fraud Scandal Grows

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Video: Walz Drops Re-Election Bid as Minnesota Fraud Scandal Grows

new video loaded: Walz Drops Re-Election Bid as Minnesota Fraud Scandal Grows

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Walz Drops Re-Election Bid as Minnesota Fraud Scandal Grows

Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota abandoned his re-election bid to focus on handling a scandal over fraud in social service programs that grew under his administration.

“I’ve decided to step out of this race, and I’ll let others worry about the election while I focus on the work that’s in front of me for the next year.” “All right, so this is Quality Learing Center — meant to say Quality ‘Learning’ Center.” “Right now we have around 56 kids enrolled. If the children are not here, we mark absence.”

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Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota abandoned his re-election bid to focus on handling a scandal over fraud in social service programs that grew under his administration.

By Shawn Paik

January 6, 2026

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Pelosi heir-apparent calls Trump’s Venezuela move a ‘lawless coup,’ urges impeachment, slams Netanyahu

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Pelosi heir-apparent calls Trump’s Venezuela move a ‘lawless coup,’ urges impeachment, slams Netanyahu

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A San Francisco Democrat demanded the impeachment of President Donald Trump, accusing him of carrying out a “coup” against Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro.

California state Sen. Scott Wiener, seen as the likely congressional successor to Rep. Nancy Pelosi, also took a swipe at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Wiener has frequently drawn national attention for his progressive positions, including his legislation signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom designating California as a “refuge” for transgender children and remarks at a San Francisco Pride Month event referring to California children as “our kids.”

In a lengthy public statement following the Trump administration’s arrest and extradition of Maduro to New York, Wiener said the move shows the president only cares about “enriching his public donors” and “cares nothing for the human or economic cost of conquering another country.”

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KAMALA HARRIS BLASTS TRUMP ADMINISTRATION’S CAPTURE OF VENEZUELA’S MADURO AS ‘UNLAWFUL AND UNWISE’

California State Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, speaks at a rally. (John Sciulli/Getty Images)

“This lawless coup is an invitation for China to invade Taiwan, for Russia to escalate its conquest in Ukraine, and for Netanyahu to expand the destruction of Gaza and annex the West Bank,” said Wiener, who originally hails from South Jersey.

He suggested that the Maduro operation was meant to distract from purportedly slumping poll numbers, the release of Jeffrey Epstein-related documents, and to essentially seize another country’s oil reserves.

“Trump is a total failure,” Wiener said. “By engaging in this reckless act, Trump is also making the entire world less safe … Trump is making clear yet again that, under this regime, there are no rules, there are no laws, there are no norms – there is only whatever Trump thinks is best for himself and his cronies at a given moment in time.”

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GREENE HITS TRUMP OVER VENEZUELA STRIKES, ARGUES ACTION ‘DOESN’T SERVE THE AMERICAN PEOPLE’

In response, the White House said the administration’s actions against Maduro were “lawfully executed” and included a federal arrest warrant.”

“While Democrats take twisted stands in support of indicted drug smugglers, President Trump will always stand with victims and families who can finally receive closure thanks to this historic action,” White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said.

Supporters of the operation have pushed back on claims of “regime change” – an accusation Wiener also made – pointing to actions by Maduro-aligned courts that barred top opposition leader María Corina Machado from running, even as publicly reported results indicated her proxy, Edmundo González Urrutia, won the vote.

“Trump’s illegal invasion of Venezuela isn’t about drugs, and it isn’t about helping the people of Venezuela or restoring Venezuelan democracy,” Wiener added. “Yes, Maduro is awful, but that’s not what the invasion is about. It’s all about oil and Trump’s collapsing support at home.”

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EX-ESPN STAR KEITH OLBERMANN CALLS FOR IMPEACHMENT OF TRUMP OVER VENEZUELA STRIKES THAT CAPTURED MADURO

Around the country, a handful of other Democrats referenced impeachment or impeachable offenses, but did not go as far as Wiener in demanding such proceedings.

Rep. April McClain-Delaney, D-Md., who represents otherwise conservative “Mountain Maryland” in the state’s panhandle, said Monday that Democrats should “imminently consider impeachment proceedings,” according to TIME.

McClain-Delaney said Trump acted without constitutionally-prescribed congressional authorization and wrongly voiced “intention to ‘run’ the country.”

SCHUMER BLASTED TRUMP FOR FAILING TO OUST MADURO — NOW WARNS ARREST COULD LEAD TO ‘ENDLESS WAR’

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One frequent Trump foil, Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., cited in a statement that she has called for Trump’s impeachment in the past; blaming Republicans for letting the president “escape accountability.”

“Today, many Democrats have understandably questioned whether impeachment is possible again under the current political reality. I am reconsidering that view,” Waters said. 

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“What we are witnessing is an unprecedented escalation of an unlawful invasion, the detention of foreign leaders, and a president openly asserting power far beyond what the Constitution allows,” she said, while appearing to agree with Trump that Maduro was involved in drug trafficking and “collaborat[ion] with… terrorists.”

Wiener’s upcoming primary is considered the deciding election in the D+36 district, while a handful of other lesser-known candidates have reportedly either filed FEC paperwork or declared their candidacy, including San Francisco Councilwoman Connie Chan.

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California Congressman Doug LaMalfa dies, further narrowing GOP margin in Congress

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California Congressman Doug LaMalfa dies, further narrowing GOP margin in Congress

California Rep. Doug LaMalfa (R-Richvale) has died, GOP leadership and President Trump confirmed Tuesday morning.

“Jacquie and I are devastated about the sudden loss of our friend, Congressman Doug LaMalfa. Doug was a loving father and husband, and staunch advocate for his constituents and rural America,” said Rep. Tom Emmer (R-Minn.), the House majority whip, in a post on X. “Our prayers are with Doug’s wife, Jill, and their children.”

LaMalfa, 65, was a fourth-generation rice farmer from Oroville and staunch Trump supporter who had represented his Northern California district for the past 12 years. His seat was one of several that was in jeopardy under the state’s redrawn districts approved by voters with Proposition 50.

Emergency personnel responded to a 911 call from LaMalfa’s residence at 6:50 p.m. Monday, according to the Butte County Sheriff’s Office. The congressman was taken to the Enloe Medical Center in Chico, where he died while undergoing emergency surgery, authorities said.

An autopsy to determine the cause of death is planned, according to the sheriff’s office.

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LaMalfa’s district — which stretches from the northern outskirts of Sacramento, through Redding at the northern end of the Central Valley and Alturas in the state’s northeast corner — is largely rural, and constituents have long said they felt underrepresented in liberal California.

LaMalfa put much of his focus on boosting federal water supplies to farmers, and seeking to reduce environmental restrictions on logging and extraction of other natural resources.

One LaMalfa’s final acts in the U.S. House was to successfully push for the reauthorization of the Secure Rural Schools Act, a long-standing financial aid program for schools surrounded by untaxed federal forest land, whose budgets could not depend upon property taxes, as most public schools do. Despite broad bipartisan support, Congress let it lapse in 2023.

In an interview with The Times as he was walking onto the House floor in mid-December, LaMalfa said he was frustrated with Congress’s inability to pass even a popular bill like that reauthorization.

The Secure Rural Schools Act, he said, was a victim of a Congress in which “it’s still an eternal fight over anything fiscal.” It is “annoying,” LaMalfa said, “how hard it is to get basic things done around here.”

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In a statement posted on X, California Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff said he considered LaMalfa “a friend and partner” and that the congressman was “deeply committed to his community and constituents, working to make life better for those he represented.”

“Doug’s life was one of great service and he will be deeply missed,” Schiff wrote.

Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom in a statement called LaMalfa a “devoted public servant who deeply loved his country, his state, and the communities he represented.”

“While we often approached issues from different perspectives, he fought every day for the people of California with conviction and care,” Newsom said.

Flags at the California State Capitol in Sacramento will be flown at half-staff in honor of the congressman, according to the governor.

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Before his death, LaMalfa was facing a difficult reelection bid to hold his seat. After voters approved Proposition 50 in November — aimed at giving California Democrats more seats in Congress — LaMalfa was drawn into a new district that heavily favored his likely opponent, State Sen. Mike McGuire, a Democrat who represents the state’s northwest coast.

LaMalfa’s death puts the Republican majority in Congress in further jeopardy, with a margin of just two votes to secure passage of any bill along party lines after the resignation of Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene on Monday evening.

Adding to the party’s troubles, Rep. Jim Baird, a Republican from Indiana, was hospitalized on Tuesday for a car crash described by the White House as serious. While Baird is said to be stable, the Republican House speaker, Mike Johnson from Louisiana, will not be able to rely on his attendance. And he has one additional caucus member – Thomas Massie of Kentucky – who has made a habit of voting against the president, bringing their margin for error down effectively to zero.

President Trump, addressing a gathering of GOP House members at the Kennedy Center, addressed the news at the start of his remarks, expressing “tremendous sorrow at the loss of a great member” and stating his speech would be made in LaMalfa’s honor.

“He was the leader of the Western caucus – a fierce champion on California water issues. He was great on water. ‘Release the water!’ he’d scream out. And a true defender of American children.”

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“You know, he voted with me 100% of the time,” Trump added.

A native of Oroville, LaMalfa attended Butte College and then earned an ag-business degree from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. He served in the California Assembly from 2002 to 2008 and the California State Senate from 2010 to 2012. Staunchly conservative, he was an early supporter of Proposition 209, which ended affirmative action in California, and he also pushed for passage of the Protection of Marriage Act, Proposition 22, which banned same-sex marriage in California.

While representing California’s 1st District, LaMalfa focused largely on issues affecting rural California and other western states. In 2025, Congressman he was elected as Chairman of the Congressional Western Caucus, which focuses on legislation affected rural areas.

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