Fitting bookends framed the House Republicans’ first week of majority control/not control in a new Congress. Between them is a story of the party’s radicalism and dysfunction — past, present and, almost certainly, future.
Aptly, the week ends on the second anniversary of the Jan. 6, 2021, pro-Trump attack on the Capitol. It is a reminder that in one of House Republicans’ first acts of the previous Congress, two-thirds of them — two-thirds! — voted within hours of the failed coup to do just as the insurrectionists wanted: to overturn electoral votes for President-elect Joe Biden. Most of those Republicans are still in power, reinforced by newly elected election deniers. Several of them, evidence now suggests, allegedly plotted with the defeated Donald Trump to keep him in power, even by force (“Marshall Law!”).
Biden planned to mark the Jan. 6 anniversary at the White House by awarding the Presidential Citizen Medal to a dozen state officials, election workers and police who, unlike Republicans from Trump down, defended the Capitol and democracy. House Republicans have no plans to observe the date; they vow instead to investigate the investigators of the nation’s Jan. 6 betrayal.
