By Jackson Wedel, Staff Writer
January 6, 2022 marks the one year anniversary of the 2021 Capitol insurrection, where an enormous mob of thousands of former president Donald Trump’s supporters burst into the Capitol building demanding that the results of the 2020 presidential election be overturned.
For months after the 2020 presidential election, Donald Trump and his supporters falsely asserted that Joe Biden’s victory was illegitimate. This came to a head on January 6: the day Biden’s victory in the Electoral College was set to be certified by Congress. The year following the insurrection was filled with investigations into the event, including hearings of top Trump campaign officials and criminal charges of over 700 rioters.
To mark the anniversary, President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris gave a speech at the U.S. Capitol about the insurrection and the threat to democracy it embodied.
“You can’t love your country only when you win. You can’t obey the law only when it’s convenient. You can’t be patriotic when you embrace and enable lies,” Biden argued, condemning the rioters of the 6th. He criticized Trump’s conduct after the election, though never by name: “Because his bruised ego matters more to him than our democracy or our constitution, he can’t accept he lost.”
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi also planned a series of events surrounding the day, including a moment of silence in the House of Representatives and a prayer at the Capitol Building.
Public opinions about American democracy are at an all-time low. According to a Pew Research Center poll, approximately 85% of Americans believe that their political system either needs to be completely reformed or needs major changes. Over the past year, American democracy has remained under fire with the passage of new laws in 19 states restricting voting rights. These laws, which play into Trump’s false “election fraud” narrative, limit the ways that America’s underserved communities can engage with its government.
However, Congress has introduced two key bills in the past year that aim to reverse attacks on democracy: the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. The Freedom to Vote Act would mandate the likes of early voting and mail-in voting nationwide, and would outlaw discriminatory practices like disenfranchising felons and spreading misinformation. The John Lewis Voting Rights Act resurrects a Civil Rights Movement-era policy preventing regions with histories of discriminatory voting regulations from passing further restrictions without Congressional consent.
Various government groups – especially the House of Representatives’ January 6 Select Committee – have been working to uncover the full story behind the insurrection. Text messages from Trump allies Sean Hannity and Mark Meadows have been revealed which indicate that they had some prior knowledge of the January 6 insurrection. Most recently, a witness testimony claimed Trump was watching the insurrection live for hours before encouraging his supporters to leave the Capitol.
Attorney General Merrick Garland and the U.S. Department of Justice have played a key role in the January 6th investigation. They have been seeking out and pressing charges against individuals involved in the insurrection, though specific details of their investigation procedures remain confidential. “The actions we have taken thus far will not be our last. The Justice Department remains committed to holding all January 6 perpetrators, at any level, accountable under law—whether they were present that day or were otherwise criminally responsible for the assault on our democracy,” Garland asserted during a speech yesterday.
Still, efforts to reveal the full truth behind the insurrection face a long road ahead. While about 700 indictments have been made thus far, most estimates assert that there were around 10,000 people present at the Trump rally that day.
Donald Trump had originally prepared to give his own press conference the night of January 6, though he gave no confirmation that he planned to speak about the 2021 Capitol insurrection. However, this announcement drew ire from Democrats and Republicans alike, who argued the conference would be harmful. Trump later cancelled this news conference, postponing it to January 15.
Former Trump advisor Steve Bannon, who has come under fire over the past year for his alleged role in organizing the January 6 insurrection and was indicted for contempt of Congress, is hosting a special edition of his podcast on the anniversary. Joining him are Representatives Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene – two of the most fervently pro-Trump representatives in the country. Bannon made a controversial decision to host Darren Beattie, a former Trump speechwriter who previously met with white nationalists and has promoted baseless conspiracy theories that the January 6 rioters were not actually Trump supporters.
Despite the threat to democracy the insurrection faced and further attacks on voting rights that have occurred, Biden shared a message of hope in his speech. “Our democracy held. We the people endured. We the people prevailed,” he said.