Experts from research group and public policy organization, The Brookings Institution warn that calls for insurrection may go far past the January 20th event.
This week, John Hudak, Brookings Institution Senior Fellow tells the Associated Press, “The way in which Donald Trump supporters are being looked at and talked about by law enforcement is exactly the way that we look at and talk about al-Qaida and ISIS. We’re talking about online chatter. We’re talking about the dark web. We’re talking about efforts to commit violence against the United States and its institutions and to assassinate members of the government. In that sense, there is no difference between the president’s supporters who believe in those types of ideals or lack of ideals, and al-Qaida and ISIS, they are domestic terrorists, and they are not going to hang up their guns and their ammo vests on January 20th.”
With less than a day before the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden, one of the biggest questions is whether or not the incoming president can deliver on his promise of uniting the nation.
One of the largest challenges for the Biden Administration is promoting unity during an ongoing pandemic and a heavily divided political climate. One that has led to one of the most scrutinized inaugurations yet.
As of January the 19th, federal agencies have announced the deployment of an estimated 25-thousand troops at the nation’s capital along with roadblocks and barricades starting earlier than originally planned.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. Capitol complex temporarily locked down Monday during a rehearsal for President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration after a fire in a homeless encampment roughly a mile away sent a plume of smoke into the air and caused security concerns in an already jittery city.
The false alarm briefly interrupted the rehearsal for Wednesday’s inauguration ceremony, a quadrennial exercise in which stand-ins take the roles of Biden and other VIPs and the U.S. Marine Corps Band goes through its paces, including practicing “The Star-Spangled Banner” for Wednesday’s performance by Lady Gaga. Rehearsal resumed not long afterward, accompanied by frequent passes by a helicopter patrolling the skies over the Capitol.
Law enforcement officials said there was no threat to the public and the fire was not believed to be a threat to the inauguration. Local firefighters put out the blaze quickly. The evacuation of some participants and the lockdown were ordered by the acting chief of Capitol Police in an abundance of caution, officials said.
But the fast decision to lock down underscores the fear that has gripped Washington since the deadly Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol by pro-Trump rioters and prompted extraordinary measures ahead of the inauguration. Armed protests planned for this past weekend around the country were mostly a bust, but anxiety is still skyrocketing.
U.S. Secret Service tightened security in and around the Capitol a week early in preparation, and the city center is essentially on lockdown with streets blocked, high fencing installed and tens of thousands of National Guard and other law enforcement officers stationed around the area.
But U.S. defense officials, worried about a potential insider attack or other threat from service members involved in securing the event, pushed the FBI to vet all of the 25,000 National Guard troops coming into the area. Acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller said in a statement Monday that vetting of National Guard troops continues and that the Pentagon has found no intelligence so far that would indicate an insider threat.
Still, the Secret Service issued a bulletin over the weekend about what it sees as an “uptick” in National Guard troops posting pictures and details of their operations online.
The Associated Press obtained the “all concerned” message sent to all the National Guard troops coming to Washington. Without getting into specific postings, the bulletin said, “No service members should be posting locations, pictures or descriptions online regarding current operations or the sensitive sites they are protecting” and urged them to stop immediately.
Asked about the bulletin, a spokesperson for the Secret Service issued a statement saying it “does not comment on matters of protective intelligence.”
President Donald Trump has refused to attend the inauguration, the first time a sitting president has not attended since Andrew Johnson, though Vice President Mike Pence will be there as well as other former presidents.
Capitol police spokeswoman Eva Malecki said there were currently no fires on or within the campus. “Members and staff were advised to shelter in place while the incident is being investigated,” she said in a statement.
Firefighters were called to the homeless encampment shortly before 10:15 a.m., where a woman who lived there had a portable heater with a flammable gas tank, fire department spokesman Vito Maggiolo said. The woman, who was injured but declined medical treatment, told firefighters that the flames spread quickly and her possessions were burned. The fire was extinguished almost immediately after firefighters arrived.
Participants were ushered from the West Front of the Capitol. Those who had gathered for a walk-through, including a military band, were directed to head indoors and moved in the direction of a secure location inside the Capitol complex.
People involved in the rehearsal said security officials yelled “this is not a drill.”
The lockdown was lifted about an hour later.
Five people died in the Jan. 6 riot, including a police officer.
Facing criticism that he was acceding to President Donald Trump’s demand to produce citizenship information at the expense of data quality, U.S. Census Bureau director Steven Dillingham said Monday that he planned to resign with the change in presidential administrations.
Dillingham said in a statement that he would resign on Wednesday, the day Trump leaves the White House and President-elect Joseph Biden takes office. Dillingham’s term was supposed to be finished at the end of the year.
The Census Bureau director’s departure comes as the statistical agency is crunching the numbers for the 2020 census, which will be used to determine how many congressional seats and Electoral College votes each state gets, as well as the distribution of $1.5 trillion in federal spending each year.
In his statement, Dillingham said he had been considering retiring earlier, but he had been persuaded at the time to stick around.
“But I must do now what I think is best,” said Dillingham, 68. “Let me make it clear that under other circumstances I would be honored to serve President-Elect Biden just as I served the past five presidents.”
A Census Bureau spokesman said the agency’s chief operating officer, Ron Jarmin, will assume the director’s duties. Jarmin served in the same role before Dillingham became director two years ago.
Last week, Democratic lawmakers called on Dillingham to resign after a watchdog agency said he had set a deadline that pressured statisticians to produce a report on the number of people in the U.S. illegally.
A report by the Office of Inspector General said bureau workers were under significant pressure from two Trump political appointees to figure out who is in the U.S. illegally using federal and state administrative records, and Dillingham had set a Friday deadline for bureau statisticians to provide him a technical report on the effort.
One whistleblower told the Office of Inspector General that the work was “statistically indefensible” and others said they worried its release would tarnish the Census Bureau’s reputation. After the release of the inspector general’s report, Dillingham ordered a halt to the efforts to produce data showing the citizenship status of every U.S. resident through administrative records.
In Monday’s statement, Dillingham said whistleblower concerns stemmed from what appeared to be misunderstandings about how the data would be reviewed and posted.
“There has been no suggestion to me that the work described above posed any potential violation of laws, rules, or regulations,” Dillingham said.
Leaders of several civil rights groups last week called for Dillingham’s resignation, and several Democratic lawmakers followed suit.
“Rather than ensure an accurate count, Dr. Dillingham appears to have acceded repeatedly to the Trump Administration’s brazen efforts to politicize the Census,” U.S. Rep. Carolyn Maloney, chair of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, said last Friday.
During Dillingham’s tenure, the Trump administration unsuccessfully tried to put a citizenship question on the 2020 census questionnaire and named a handful of political appointees that statisticians and Democratic lawmakers worried would politicize the once-a-decade head count of every U.S. resident. The president also issued two directives that advocacy groups said were part of efforts to suppress the participation of minorities and immigrants in the 2020 census.
Trump’s first directive, issued in 2019, instructed the Census Bureau to use administrative records to figure out who is in the country illegally after the Supreme Court blocked the citizenship question. In the second directive, Trump instructed the Census Bureau to provide data that would allow his administration to exclude people in the U.S. illegally from the numbers used for divvying up congressional seats among the states.
An influential GOP adviser had advocated excluding them from the apportionment process in order to favor Republicans and non-Hispanic whites, even though the Constitution spells out that every person in each state should be counted. Trump’s unprecedented order on apportionment was challenged in more than a half-dozen lawsuits around the U.S., but the Supreme Court ruled last month that any challenge was premature.
Oftentimes, Dillingham appeared cut out of the loop on these census-related decisions made by the White House and Commerce Department, which oversees the Census Bureau. At a congressional hearing in July, Dillingham said he wasn’t informed ahead of time before Trump issued his directive on the apportionment numbers.
The 2020 census which Dillingham oversaw experienced unprecedented obstacles because of the coronavirus pandemic, as well as wildfires in the West and hurricanes along the Gulf Coast. The pandemic and errors found in the data have forced the Census Bureau to delay releasing the numbers used to apportion congressional seats until early March.
Last week, the Department of Justice and municipalities and advocacy groups that had sued the Trump administration over concerns about the quality of the 2020 census agreed to put their lawsuit on hold for 21 days so the Biden administration can take power and decide how to proceed.
“Director Dillingham’s departure will coincide with the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, providing the new administration the opportunity to appoint competent, ethical leadership committed to the scientific integrity of the Census Bureau,” Arturo Vargas, CEO of the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO) Educational Fund, said Monday.
Governor Ron DeSantis out of Florida has asserted that lockdowns do not work. The Governor pointing to statistics in Florida, saying that even though they have the countries most vulnerable population, Florida has the lowest death per capita for Coronavirus.
DeSantis asserts that shutting down schools and businesses only hurt the community and the children saying that he has not mandated masks or lockdowns and his state is thriving because of his decision.
“We have schools open, we have businesses open. They single out the restaurant industry, our restaurants are open they are up and running. People are coming in, and yet no lockdowns no mandates.” DeSantis Said
“Florida despite having the most vulnerable population to Covid in the United States, we are less than the national average in per capita mortality when it comes to Coronavirus. 25 other states almost all lockdown states, have higher per capita mortality than Florida. The lockdowns don’t work. L.A county in the last 6 weeks has higher cases on a daily basis and hospitalizations than the entire state of Florida does and we are 22 million people. So you have one county that has the most draconian restrictions and yet the county does worse than a state that is completely open. I don’t know that the experts will ever admit the lockdowns don’t work, I know the media won’t ever admit it, but the fact is that we are at the point now that you cannot say this is a good policy [lockdowns] unless you toss out all the data. We are open, we are free and we are better off because of it.”
BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — A city councilman in Louisiana has been arrested for alleged election fraud, the state attorney general’s office said Wednesday.
Attorney General Jeff Landry said Amite City Councilman Emanuel Zanders was arrested Tuesday on eight counts of election fraud. He was booked into the Tangipahoa Parish Prison and later released on bond, booking records show.
In October the Tangipahoa Parish registrar of voters contacted the Secretary of State’s Office with concerns that voter registration forms had been turned in with fraudulent information. Landry accused Zanders, the city’s former mayor pro tem, of illegally registering voters at addresses in his council district at which they did not live, news outlets reported.
According to Attorney General Jeff Landry, Zanders allegedly told 22 people to use the addresses of vacant lots when they registered, in order to up the number of people voting for him.
Landry said Zanders “purposefully manipulated citizens into illegally changing their voter registrations,”
Zanders won re-election to his council seat 206 to 187 a difference of just 19 votes. Landry said his office started investigating after they received a tip.
Secretary of State Kyle Ardoin joined Landry at the news conference where he said election fraud would not be tolerated in the state and said he would push for Zanders’ prosecution.
WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. defense officials say they are worried about an insider attack or other threat from service members involved in securing President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration, prompting the FBI to vet all of the 25,000 National Guard troops coming into Washington for the event.
The massive undertaking reflects the extraordinary security concerns that have gripped Washington following the deadly Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol by pro-Trump rioters. And it underscores fears that some of the very people assigned to protect the city over the next several days could present a threat to the incoming president and other VIPs in attendance.
Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy told The Associated Press on Sunday that officials are conscious of the potential threat, and he warned commanders to be on the lookout for any problems within their ranks as the inauguration approaches. So far, however, he and other leaders say they have seen no evidence of any threats, and officials said the vetting hadn’t flagged any issues that they were aware of.
”We’re continually going through the process, and taking second, third looks at every one of the individuals assigned to this operation,” McCarthy said in an interview after he and other military leaders went through an exhaustive, three-hour security drill in preparation for Wednesday’s inauguration. He said Guard members are also getting training on how to identify potential insider threats.
About 25,000 members of the National Guard are streaming into Washington from across the country — at least two and a half times the number for previous inaugurals. And while the military routinely reviews service members for extremist connections, the FBI screening is in addition to any previous monitoring.
Multiple officials said the process began as the first Guard troops began deploying to D.C. more than a week ago. And they said it is slated to be complete by Wednesday. Several officials discussed military planning on condition of anonymity.
“The question is, is that all of them? Are there others?” said McCarthy. “We need to be conscious of it and we need to put all of the mechanisms in place to thoroughly vet these men and women who would support any operations like this.”
In a situation like this one, FBI vetting would involve running peoples’ names through databases and watchlists maintained by the bureau to see if anything alarming comes up. That could include involvement in prior investigations or terrorism-related concerns, said David Gomez, a former FBI national security supervisor in Seattle.
Insider threats have been a persistent law enforcement priority in the years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. But in most cases, the threats are from homegrown insurgents radicalized by al-Qaida, the Islamic State group or similar groups. In contrast, the threats against Biden’s inauguration have been fueled by supporters of President Donald Trump, far-right militants, white supremacists and other radical groups. Many believe Trump’s baseless accusations that the election was stolen from him, a claim that has been refuted by many courts, the Justice Department and Republican officials in key battleground states.
The insurrection at the Capitol began after Trump made incendiary remarks at the Jan. 6 rally. According to McCarthy, service members from across the military were at that rally, but it’s not clear how many were there or who may have participated in the breach at the Capitol. So far only a couple of current active-duty or National Guard members have been arrested in connection with the Capitol assault, which left five people dead. The dead included a Capitol Police officer and a woman shot by police as she climbed through a window in a door near the House chamber.
Gen. Daniel R. Hokanson, chief of the National Guard Bureau, has been meeting with Guard troops as they arrive in D.C. and as they gather downtown. He said he believes there are good processes in place to identify any potential threats.
“If there’s any indication that any of our soldiers or airmen are expressing things that are extremist views, it’s either handed over to law enforcement or dealt with the chain of command immediately,” he said.
The insider threat, however, was just one of the security concerns voiced by officials on Sunday, as dozens of military, National Guard, law enforcement and Washington, D.C., officials and commanders went through a security rehearsal in northern Virginia. As many as three dozen leaders lined tables that ringed a massive color-coded map of D.C. reflected onto the floor. Behind them were dozens more National Guard officers and staff, with their eyes trained on additional maps and charts displayed on the wall.
The Secret Service is in charge of event security, but there is a wide variety of military and law enforcement personnel involved, ranging from the National Guard and the FBI to Washington’s Metropolitan Police Department, U.S. Capitol Police and U.S. Park Police.
Commanders went over every aspect of the city’s complicated security lockdown, with McCarthy and others peppering them with questions about how the troops will respond in any scenario and how well they can communicate with the other enforcement agencies scattered around the city.
Hokanson said he believes his troops have been adequately equipped and prepared, and that they are rehearsing as much as they can to be prepared for any contingency.
The major security concern is an attack by armed groups of individuals, as well as planted explosives and other devices. McCarthy said intelligence reports suggest that groups are organizing armed rallies leading up to Inauguration Day, and possibly after that.
The bulk of the Guard members will be armed. And McCarthy said units are going through repeated drills to practice when and how to use force and how to work quickly with law enforcement partners. Law enforcement officers would make any arrests.
He said Guard units are going through “constant mental repetitions of looking at the map and talking through scenarios with leaders so they understand their task and purpose, they know their routes, they know where they’re friendly, adjacent units are, they have the appropriate frequencies to communicate with their law enforcement partners.”
The key goal, he said, is for America’s transfer of power to happen without incident.
“This is a national priority. We have to be successful as an institution,” said McCarthy. “We want to send the message to everyone in the United States and for the rest of the world that we can do this safely and peacefully.”
___
Associated Press writer Eric Tucker contributed to this report.
The Second Amendment Foundation has released a statement claiming that President-Elect Joe Biden is launching an attack on every gun owner in the nation..
In a statement the foundation points to a pledge made by Joe Biden to defeat the NRA saying, “it’s just cover for a bigger goal.”
“Joe Biden has labored relentlessly for decades to reduce the Second Amendment to rubble,” adding that “he may attack one group by name, but his goal is to crush the rights of every gun owner in our country.” SAF Founder and Executive Vice President Alan Gottlieb said,
“By attacking the second amendment rights of 100 million Americans, Biden is not bringing us together but dividing us further. If people take to the streets in protest, if violence occurs it will be his fault and he should be impeached for violating our constitutional rights and inciting violence. maybe it is time to ban him from Twitter and Facebook!” Gottlieb added, “He spent 47 years on Capitol Hill trying to turn the right to keep and bear arms into a regulated privilege. Now that he’s headed to the White House he thinks he will be able to complete his mission. We’re working to swell the ranks of our 2nd Amendment First Responder project to stop him.”
“We didn’t start the fire,” he said “Biden did.” The foundation was reacting to a pledge that President-Elect Joe Biden made on the 10th anniversary of the Tucson shooting, saying “I pledge to continue to work together with congresswoman Giffords, and with survivors, families, and advocates across the country, to defeat the NRA and end the epidemic of gun violence in America.”
Biden’s campaign for the presidency included many pledges about gun control including enacting taxes on rifles and “high capacity” magazines.
He has also advocated for universal background checks, a national buyback or surrender of firearms and removing liability protection for gun manufacturers.
As
the country continues to battle the COVID-19
pandemic…President-Elect Biden is hoping to reach a turning point
with the crisis with a recovery proposal totaling nearly 2 Trillion
Dollars.
News
Net’s Abigail Taylor is here now with a breakdown of what’s
packed into this plan….
Democrats in congress have said they will work to turn this proposal into a bill and pass it quickly, but it may meet resistance with Republicans – who have been resistant to padding state and local aid into the package.
A
drive-thru vaccination event at the Dover DMV left Delawareans
stunned after many were inoculated who aren’t currently eligible.
The
screening and vetting process was a failure on Saturday after some
were administered the vaccine but did not fall into the current
essential healthcare, first responder, and long-term care facility
categories.
Now
the Delaware Division of Public Health is vowing that screening will
be “tightened” moving forward to ensure that only those who are
eligible receive the vaccine.
The
State has faced challenges in distributing the vaccine ahead of its
plan for start phase
1B by
the end of the month,
which
will include senior citizens over the age of 65.
Moving
forward public health officials vow to implement a more thorough
screening process.
