Trump Nevada

The Washington Post

Storm the Capitol

For The Washington Post

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Trump mob storms US Capitol

Protesters overrun Capitol 

Capitol Riot Seattle Police

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January 6th Reconciliation

 Kyle Fitzsimons

Image from Complaint & Statement of Facts filed in the US District Court for the District of Columbia

Capitol Riot Trial

Supporters of U.S. President Donald Trump gather in Washington

REUTERS

from Criminal Complaint filed with the US District Court for the District of Columbia

A collage with Former President Donald Trump, Attorney General Merrick Garland, Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation Christopher A. Wray and an image from outside the Capitol in Washington, District of Columbia on January 6, 2021. 

J6Probe

Capitol Riot Marines Charged

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Michael Riley

Contributor

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Bonnie Jo Mount

The Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol, as shocking as it was, might have seemed at the time like a last, desperate and ultimately unsuccessful attempt by loyalists to President Donald Trump to disrupt the certification of Joe Biden’s election win.

Instead, it marked the blossoming of a Republican Party with a majority that remains in denial about what happened in the 2020 presidential election and aspects of what took place at the Capitol that day. On the anniversary of <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/01/03/january-6-congress/">an event that shook the country </a>and ushered in a year of new threats to democracy, questions about the strength of the electoral system have rarely been more urgent.

Though debate and discord have long been part of the American experience, the Founding Fathers probably did not anticipate the conditions that exist today: a major political party in which most followers embrace falsehoods and some traffic in conspiracy theories; a former president unrelenting in his efforts to sow division and spread misinformation; and a largely broken Congress that struggles to function collectively to protect democracy, or lacks the will to do so.

A century and a half ago, the bitter debate over slavery ultimately brought on the Civil War, the outcome of which prevented the United States from splitting apart, North and South. Today, concerns about the future have become so acute that three retired generals warned <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/12/17/eaton-taguba-anderson-generals-military/">in a </a><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/12/17/eaton-taguba-anderson-generals-military/">recent Washington Post op-ed </a>that the country could be heading toward another insurrection after the 2024 election, and a possible military breakdown that could lead to civil war. They are not alone in their fears.

Through much of the country’s history, despite sometimes rancorous debate, those on opposing sides generally found common ground in shared values and a commitment to making the American experiment a success. Today, because of the fracturing of information sources, a toxic social media environment and increased hostility between opposing sides, those bonds have been weakened to the point of near breaking.

That leaves open some questions: Who or what protects democracy from crumbling, other than a communal belief in its value and the goodwill of citizens on whatever side of the political divide they live to protect it? Are there guardrails — the presidency, Congress, the Justice Department, the Supreme Court and lower courts, local officials, or citizens themselves — that are capable and prepared if the need is there? These questions, at the start of this year, remain unanswered.

Amanda Voisard for The Washington Post

Alan Abramowitz, an Emory University political scientist, noted that in 2020, democracy’s guardrails held. Courts <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/judges-trump-election-lawsuits/2020/12/12/e3a57224-3a72-11eb-98c4-25dc9f4987e8_story.html">repeatedly rejected </a>the false claims and pleas from Trump and his allies to overturn the election results. Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger resisted <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-raffensperger-call-georgia-vote/2021/01/03/d45acb92-4dc4-11eb-bda4-615aaefd0555_story.html">direct hectoring from Trump </a>to change certified (and recounted) results. Congress completed the certification of the electoral college results in the early-morning hours after the assault on the Capitol.

But Abramowitz said he is not confident that things would play out the same way in the future. “There is a growing concern that the next time we see an attempt by a defeated candidate to overturn the results of a fair and free election, it may have a much greater chance of success because of widespread support from leaders and voters from the defeated candidate’s party and possibly even from the courts and election officials,” he said in an email exchange.

Lilliana Mason, a political scientist at Johns Hopkins University’s SNF Agora Institute, said the fact that the guardrails worked also, ironically, gave them greater visibility, making these protections the targets of those who would weaken them. “The guardrails held because everybody agreed that they were important, that they were a necessary part of the road, to try to stop the car from going off the road,” she said. “But the rhetoric that we’ve seen since the election, I think, has made keeping the car on the road less of a priority.”

A collective commitment to democracy is based on an acceptance of and adherence to norms. Today, Mason added, the Republican Party is largely enforcing loyalty to Trump rather than holding to traditional norms of opposition to anti-government violence or efforts in states to make it easier to block the certification of election results.

[Before, during and after the assault on the Capitol]

Trump was widely condemned for helping to incite the rioters who stormed and occupied the Capitol. Those who criticized him in the moment included prominent Republican leaders, among them current Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (Calif.). Many of them, like McConnell, have since retreated — and some, including McCarthy, have even sought to curry favor with the former president. Rep. Liz Cheney (Wyo.) stands as a rare sentinel in her party, putting her political career at risk to call out the former president as a threat. She and her father, former vice president Richard B. Cheney, were the only Republicans in the House chamber as commemorations of the riot anniversary began Thursday.

Blair Guild

Meanwhile, a year after the Jan. 6 attack was lambasted across the political spectrum, 34 percent of Americans — including 40 percent of Republicans, 41 percent of independents and 23 percent of Democrats — say there are times when it is justified to use violence against the government, according to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/01/01/post-poll-january-6/">a Washington Post-University of Maryland poll</a>. That percentage is higher than in past polls dating back decades.

Questions about accountability for Trump for his role in the Capitol assault continue to be raised by one side and dismissed by the other. The House committee investigating Jan. 6 could recommend that legal action be taken to hold him accountable. Whether the Justice Department has the appetite to make such a case is questionable; it is not an easy call, for legal and political reasons. Trump’s future as a political figure and force probably will have to be settled at the ballot box, and Trumpism might outlive his active candidacy.

Amanda Andrade-Rhoades for The Washington Post

What marks the anniversary of the riot is that attitudes and perceptions among Trump’s voters have changed so little. According to the Post-UMD poll, most Americans today say Trump bears either “some” or “a lot” of responsibility for what happened that day, which included the president encouraging his followers to head to the Capitol <a href="https://www.poynter.org/fact-checking/2021/a-timeline-of-what-donald-trump-said-before-the-capitol-riot/">to “show strength” and “stop the steal.”</a> But 83 percent of Trump voters and 72 percent of Republicans say he bears little or no responsibility. Among those Trump voters, 61 percent say he bears no responsibility at all.

[Desperate, angry, destructive: How Americans morphed into a mob]

While most Americans agree there is no solid evidence to support Trump’s claims of widespread irregularities in the 2020 election, 64 percent of Trump voters say there is. Despite the absence of evidence to support those claims that the system is beset with fraud, and much evidence to the contrary, Trump voters have moved only marginally over the past year on this fundamental question about the 2020 election.

Election administration could be improved, and if there were any spirit of bipartisanship in Congress, some changes could be made, if only to update the outdated Electoral Count Act of 1887, which governs the process by which Congress reviews the results from the states. But the overall integrity of the U.S. system has been proved time and again. That is not a crisis facing the country.

Michael Robinson Chavez

In this election year, the political stakes will be especially high, and with it new attention on the workings of democracy. Republicans have their sights set on taking control of the House and perhaps the Senate. Biden is beset with challenges. His approval rating has sagged, and his signature legislative proposal, the Build Back Better plan, remains in limbo with more negotiations ahead. Democrats are frustrated and worried. The <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/coronavirus/" target="_blank" class="contextual_link">coronavirus</a> is still a danger. Trump, in full control of his party, continues to pressure Republicans to embrace his election falsehoods, his sights apparently set on running in 2024. Meanwhile, Democratic-sponsored voting legislation is blocked in the Senate.

Much of the focus in coming months will be on the question of who will wield power in Congress next January. The answer inevitably will have an impact on questions about the future of U.S. elections and the institutions of democracy. How would a Republican-controlled Congress deal with a disputed election in early 2025?

In the days just before Jan. 6, 2021, it seemed possible to think that the country was moving toward calmer and less-contentious times, with a coming change in administrations, an incoming president pledging unity and the lowering of temperatures — and a deadly virus able to be overcome collectively with newly developed vaccines.

Few today would say the year ahead looks anything like the beginnings of a coming together on any front. Instead it begins in a charged environment amid heightened attention to whether the guardrails will hold, if they are needed once again.

Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly said the Electoral Count Act passed in 1877. It passed in 1887. The article has been corrected.

John Chancellor Award for Excellence in Journalism, 2017

Robin Toner Prize for Excellence in Political Reporting, 2015

White House Correspondents Association's Merriman Smith Award for deadline writing, 2011

Gerald R. Ford Award for Coverage of the Presidency (shared), 2002

American Political Science Association's Carey McWilliams Award, 1999

Storming the Gates: Protest Politics and the Republican Revival

The Battle for America 2008: The Story of an Extraordinary Election

Collision 2012: Obama vs. Romney and the Future of Elections in America"

University of Illinois, B.S. in communications and M.S. in communications

Dan Balz is chief correspondent at The Washington Post. He has served as the paper’s deputy national editor, political editor, White House correspondent and Southwest correspondent.