Bye, Don

This piece was originally published in the January 19, 2021 edition of CAP Action’s daily newsletter, the Progress Report. Subscribe to the Progress Report here.

127

The number of Congressional Republicans who voted to overturn the election results, effectively rejecting the will of thousands of Black voters, and then had the audacity to post a statement praising Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. yesterday

Trump and his extremist allies in Congress incited a violent insurrection of white supremacists who attacked the U.S. Capitol.

The House has rightfully impeached him. Now, it’s time for the Senate to convict him — and to bar him from holding federal office again.

Share this video on Twitter and Facebook, then tell the Senate to convict Trump:

IN THE NEWS

• We watched his administration cruelly separate children from their families and lock them in cages. We watched him insult hurricane victims in Puerto Rico. We heard him encourage law enforcement officers to brutalize detainees as too many Black Americans to count were being killed by the police. We endured a constant stream of racism, islamophobia, and xenophobia — both in policy and in rhetoric — straight from the Oval Office. And finally, we saw him rile up a crowd of conspiracy-fueled white supremacists and direct them to the Capitol to overturn the results of a legitimate election. But above all, Donald Trump’s legacy will be marked by his final year in office: A year that was defined by his own deeply incompetent and often malicious response to the coronavirus pandemic.
• We’ve now suffered through nearly a year in the thick of this pandemic, and the state of affairs here at home is darker than at any time in recent memory. As of this afternoon, 400,000 Americans have died from COVID-19. More than half of those deaths took place since Election Day. Projections suggest we could surpass half a million deaths by the spring if the trajectory doesn’t change soon.
• At least twelve members of the National Guard have been removed from inauguration duty because of their ties to right-wing extremist groups, according to the AP. At least two of the reassigned members had posted or texted messages directly related to the Wednesday inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden. The news comes after the FBI announced that they’d be vetting the thousands of National Guard troops who have already been stationed in the nation’s capital for days ahead of tomorrow’s inauguration.
• It’s worth noting that these troops have not been removed from the National Guard entirely — they just can’t serve in Washington, D.C. this week. The precarious nature of safeguarding tomorrow’s inauguration when those responsible for security can’t always be trusted is a reminder that America’s law enforcement has a systemic white supremacy and extremism problem — just like we witnessed in real time at the Capitol on January 6.

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

• Joe Biden announced the appointment of Dr. Rachel Levine, Pennsylvania’s chief health official and a key voice in the Commonwealth’s pandemic response efforts, to a top post in the Department of Health and Human Services. Levine, who is a transgender woman, would be the first openly trans person to be confirmed to such a role by the Senate.
• A false alarm that briefly put the Capitol complex on lockdown on Monday ended up shedding light on a different kind of crisis — homelessness. The incident, which turned out to be a fire at a nearby homeless encampment located under a highway overpass, has sparked a discussion about the invisibility of unhoused Americans and the growth of our country’s unhoused population to nearly 500,000 during the coronavirus pandemic.

Oh, one last thing: Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will become the president and vice president tomorrow. Follow along with our team on Twitter (@CAPAction) for live coverage, and be sure to follow the official inauguration accounts on Twitter (@BidenInaugural) and Facebook.

WHAT WE’RE READING

• Cori Bush Is Bringing the Movement to Congress by Derecka Purnell (Teen Vogue)
• Kamala Harris makes history by Eileen Rivers (USA Today)
• Lies About George Floyd and Breonna Taylor Are Still Spreading on Facebook by David Gilbert (VICE)