A collection of opinionated commentaries on culture, politics and religion compiled predominantly from an American viewpoint but tempered by a global vision. My Armwood Opinion Youtube Channel @ YouTube I have a Jazz Blog @ Jazz
and a Technology Blog @ Technology. I have a Human Rights Blog @ Law
In Statehouses, Stolen-Election Myth Fuels a G.O.P. Drive to Rewrite Rules
Republican legislators want big changes to the laws for elections and other aspects of governance. A fight over the ground rules for voting may follow.
WASHINGTON — Led by loyalists who embrace former President Donald J. Trump’s baseless claims of a stolen election, Republicans in state legislatures nationwide are mounting extraordinary efforts to change the rules of voting and representation — and enhance their own political clout.
At the top of those efforts is a slew of bills raising new barriers to casting votes, particularly the mail ballots that Democrats flocked to in the 2020 election. But other measures go well beyond that, including tweaking Electoral College and judicial election rules for the benefit of Republicans; clamping down on citizen-led ballot initiatives; and outlawing private donations that provide resources for administering elections, which were crucial to the smooth November vote.
And although the decennial redrawing of political maps has been pushed to the fall because of delays in delivering 2020 census totals, there are already signs of an aggressive drive to further gerrymander political districts, particularly in states under complete Republican control.
The national Republican Party joined the movement this past week by setting up a Committee on Election Integrity to scrutinize state election laws, echoing similar moves by Republicans in a number of state legislatures.“
“Even as the House passed President Biden’s pandemic aid plan with a minimum wage increase included, Democrats were searching for a Plan B for the wage hike, which was ruled out in the Senate.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California said on Friday that a minimum wage hike remained “a priority and we will get it done,” but stressed that President Biden’s relief package was still a “great bill” without it.Oliver Contreras for The New York Times
WASHINGTON — The House passed President Biden’s $1.9 trillion stimulus plan early Saturday in a nearly party-line vote, advancing a sweeping pandemic aid package that would provide billions of dollars for unemployed Americans, struggling families and businesses, schools and the distribution of coronavirus vaccines.
The vote was 219 to 212, with Democrats pushing the measure over unanimous Republican opposition. After hours of debate that stretched past midnight, two Democrats — Representatives Jared Golden of Maine and Kurt Schrader of Oregon — broke with their party and voted against the bill.
The plan would provide $1,400 direct payments to individuals earning up to $75,000 a year and to couples earning up to $150,000. It would also expand a weekly federal unemployment benefit that is set to lapse in mid-March, increasing the payments to $400 a week from $300 and extending them through the end of August. It would increase the child tax credit; provide more than $50 billion for vaccine distribution, testing and tracing; and allocate nearly $200 billion to primary and secondary schools and $350 billion to state, local and tribal governments.
“We believe this is something that meets the moment,” said Representative John Yarmuth, Democrat of Kentucky and the chairman of the Budget Committee. He called the legislation “an incredible piece of work that deals with the pandemic in all of its manifestations and in a way that will be truly effective.”
The aid package, which is Mr. Biden’s first significant legislative initiative, passed over widespread opposition from Republicans, who argued that the measure was too costly and too broad in scope. Democrats, with slim margins of control in both chambers, were pushing the legislation through Congress using a fast-track budget process, known as reconciliation, that shields it from a Senate filibuster — which requires 60 votes to overcome — and allows it to pass on a simple majority vote, bypassing Republican opposition.
“This isn’t a relief bill,” said Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the Republican leader. “It takes care of Democrats’ political allies, while it fails to deliver for American families.”
The legislation now heads to the Senate, where it was expected to be amended and then sent back to the House for a final vote in Congress.
The bill could change substantially during Senate consideration. While it included a marquee progressive proposal to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour by 2025, that measure has been ruled out of order by a top Senate official who said that it did not qualify under the strict budgetary rules governing reconciliation bills. Senate Democrats were exploring alternatives that would allow them to maintain a version of the wage increase in the stimulus package without imperiling the broader plan.
At a news conference before the measure passed, Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California said House Democrats had preserved the wage increase in their bill to send a message about its importance, even if it ultimately had to be removed from the final legislation.
The minimum wage increase “is a value, this is a priority, and we will get it done, but let’s not be distracted from what is happening in this legislation,” Ms. Pelosi said. “This is a spectacular piece of legislation. While the Senate has prevented us temporarily from passing one aspect of it, let us not be distracted from what is in here, because it is a great bill.”
In the Senate, Democrats sought to salvage their bid to push through the large increase in the federal minimum wage without scuttling the urgently needed pandemic aid package. But the effort faces long odds in the evenly divided chamber, where Republicans and some centrist Democrats are opposed to the idea of more than doubling the minimum wage as part of the stimulus plan.
After the Senate official’s ruling, Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, and other top Democrats were considering a plan on Friday that would penalize corporations that pay workers less than $15 per hour, a senior Democratic aide said.
Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, the chairman of the Finance Committee, said the still-evolving proposal would impose an escalating tax on the payrolls of large corporations, starting at 5 percent, if any of the companies’ workers earned less than a certain hourly wage. It would include what Mr. Wyden called “safeguards” to prevent companies from laying off workers and replacing them with contract employees to avoid the tax.
“While conversations are continuing, I believe this ‘Plan B’ provides us a path to move forward and get this done through the reconciliation process,” Mr. Wyden said in a statement.
Democrats are using the reconciliation process in order to speed Mr. Biden’s stimulus plan to enactment and steer clear of Republican obstruction. But on Thursday, Elizabeth MacDonough, the Senate parliamentarian, advised senators that their legislation to gradually increase the minimum wage to $15 by 2025 violated the stringent rules that limit what can be included in a reconciliation measure. The ruling opened the door for Republicans to demand that the proposal be jettisoned from the stimulus bill when it comes before the Senate.
It has prompted outrage among progressive activists, calls for Democratic leaders to fire or overrule Ms. MacDonough, and demands for the elimination of the filibuster to allow Democrats to enact the wage increase and other priorities over Republican objections.
Mr. Biden has made clear he does not support any of those actions, sending top congressional Democrats searching for a wage proposal that could meet the stringent requirements of a reconciliation bill, which must have a direct effect on federal spending or revenues.
It was not clear on Friday whether the tax penalty plan would qualify because if it achieved its objective of ensuring all large companies pay their workers at least $15 per hour, none of the firms would pay the tax, and federal revenues would not change.
Mr. Wyden said as part of the plan, very small businesses “with middle-class owners” would receive an income tax credit to cover 25 percent of their employees’ wages, up to $10,000 per year per employer, in an effort to incentivize higher pay at those businesses.
Democrats have embraced the Biden stimulus plan, which would provide billions of dollars for schools and vaccine distribution, as well as another round of direct payments to Americans.Doug Mills/The New York Times
As its details were being ironed out on Friday, the tax penalty proposal was drawing broad criticism, raising questions about whether it could garner enough support to pass even if it met Senate rules. Some progressive groups raised concerns that the plan would be difficult to enforce, relying on federal officials to collect huge amounts of new data on employee pay and hours at large companies.
And liberal lawmakers said Democrats risked losing a crucial opportunity by not insisting on a large wage increase now, at the start of Mr. Biden’s term.
“While I don’t want to ignore the tax being a factor, I also know that a tax break is just not a replacement for a $15 minimum wage,” Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat of New York, told reporters on Friday. “It sets the stage for how effective we’ll be for the rest of the term, so the earlier we can make these fixes, the more we can change people’s lives.”
Business groups dismissed the tax penalty idea and called on Democrats to instead work with Republicans and industry groups to draft a compromise bill to raise the minimum wage to a lower amount than $15 an hour.
“Enough political games,” Neil Bradley, an executive vice president and the chief policy officer at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, wrote on Twitter.
Austen Jensen, the senior vice president for government affairs at the Retail Industry Leaders Association, said in a news release that threatening businesses, many of which have suffered devastating blows during pandemic-mandated shutdowns, with a large payroll tax increase “should be a nonstarter for anyone who cares about economic recovery and getting furloughed workers back on private sector payrolls.”
Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the Republican leader, said the stimulus bill failed American families.Oliver Contreras for The New York Times
Some Republicans have offered their own proposals to raise the minimum wage, including a plan from Senators Mitt Romney of Utah and Tom Cotton of Arkansas that would gradually raise it to $10 over four years. On Friday, Senator Josh Hawley, Republican of Missouri, proposed applying the $15 increase championed by Democrats only to businesses with annual revenues of more than $1 billion.
If Democrats cannot find a way to include the wage increase in the stimulus measure, the bill could lose support from progressives, although Ms. Pelosi said the House would “absolutely” pass the measure without the wage increase if needed.
“I don’t think we can go back to voters and say, ‘Look, I know Republicans, Democrats, independents support this; we promised it, but because of an unelected parliamentarian who gave us a ruling, we couldn’t do it,” Representative Pramila Jayapal, Democrat of Washington and the chairwoman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, told reporters. “There’s a lot of great things in the package, but if it’s watered down, that’s a whole different issue. So we just have to see what it ends up as.”
House Republicans opposed the legislation with few exceptions. They have argued that the plan is too costly and contains provisions that are unrelated to pandemic relief. And while members of their party used the reconciliation process twice in 2017 to steer around Democratic opposition to their highest priorities — once to push through a $1.5 trillion tax cut and once in a failed attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act — they complained that Democrats had cut them out of drafting the stimulus measure.“
Desmond Caldwell, principal of John F. Kennedy Middle School Screenshot: Desmond Caldwell
White folks are so desperate to be oppressed that a simple plea to be considerate of the feelings of others is seen as a slight against their constitutional right to be an asshole. Staff and students at a Massachusetts middle school rallied behind their principal on Wednesday after he faced racist backlash for asking students not to display the Confederate flag during virtual learning.
According to Masslive, Desmond Caldwell, principal of John F. Kennedy Middle School in Northampton, Mass., had received concerns from students that they felt discomfort after seeing Confederate flags displayed by some of their peers during virtual learning. To address these concerns, Caldwell sent a video to students and teachers explaining the racist history associated with the flag, and asked for students not to have it displayed during virtual or in-person learning.
From Masslive:
In the video, Caldwell described how he had recently dealt with multiple cases of people wearing, posting and sharing imagery that contained the Confederate flag. He said he had no intention of debating that the Confederate flag is protected under the First Amendment, but said he also would not debate that the flag has ties to racist beliefs and organizations.
“What complicates the Confederate flag is that not all who carry or fly the flag do so from a place of hate. Yet many hate groups fly the Confederate flag,” he said, while providing background on the flag’s history.
In explaining his request to not display the Confederate flag, Caldwell said he was not doing so to step on anyone’s rights, but to “help create a safer and less-distracting” learning environment. He further asserted that he wasn’t accusing anyone of intentionally hurting others, but asked members of the school community to consider why they felt it necessary to display the flag when it carries hurtful connotations.
A select group took umbrage with the fact that a Black man had the sheer fucking audacity to ask “hey, why not be more considerate?” A Facebook page went live on Monday called the “JFK White Student Union,” and that went exactly how you think it did. The page, claiming to be run by a student at the school, called Caldwell an “anti-American tyrant,” and added that “across the U.S. whites are under attack.”
You mean the group of people who managed to storm the U.S. Capitol and mostly walk away with their lives? Those folks are under attack? This dude’s last name must be Armstrong because that’s a stretch
The page quickly disappeared and according to John Provost, superintendent of Northampton Public Schools, the Northampton Police Department has launched an investigation. While the page was alleged to be run by a student, Provost has said they’ve been unable to verify if that was true.
In response to the page, a group of 200 students held an anti-racist demonstration outside of the school on Wednesday in support of Caldwell. The demonstration was organized by Cecelia Ripley, Julia Albro-Fisher and Julian Clark, three students at the school.
Caldwell received an overwhelming amount of support from both students, faculty, and Provost as well.
Guardian investigation shows systems in Latino areas violate federal drinking water rules twice as much as those serving the rest of the US
Texas has the most high-violation systems, followed by California and Oklahoma. Illustration: Ricardo Santos and Max Whittaker/The Guardian
Millions of people in the US are drinking water that fails to meet federal health standards, including by violating limits for dangerous contaminants.
Latinos are disproportionately exposed, according to the Guardian’s review of more than 140,000 public water systems across the US and county-level demographic data.
Watersystems in counties that are 25% or more Latino are violating drinking water contamination rules at twice the rate of those in the rest of the country.
America’s worst public water systems – those that have accrued more than 15 “violation points” for breaking standards over five years – serve more than 25m Americans, the research shows. An estimated 5.8m of these are Latino.
Texas, where millions of residents lost access to water and power during therecent storm, has the most high-violation systems, followed by California and Oklahoma. The average number of violations is highest in Oklahoma, West Virginia and New Mexico.
The six-month investigation of five years of Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and other data also shows how:
Access to clean drinking water is highly unequal in the US, based on race, income and geography
Poorer counties have more than twice as many violation points as wealthy ones
Some water systems report hundreds of violation points year after year without any action from the government and without being required to notify customers
Rural counties have 28% more violation points than metropolitan ones
Scientists and former government officials describe a water regulation system that is broken. “Most policymakers believe compliance with environmental rules is high,” said Cynthia Giles, the former head of enforcement at the EPA under Barack Obama, but that belief was “wrong”.
Experts are most concerned about systems serving smaller communities. They say Latinos are particularly at risk because they often live near industrial farms in California and the west that have polluted local water with nitrates in runoff from fertilizers and manure. They are also more likely to live in the south-west, where arsenic violations are common.
Research has found that Latinos are more likely to distrust tap water.
Paloma Beamer, a public health researcher at the University of Arizona, found that most Latino residents in Nogales, Arizona, thought that drinking tap water was as unsafe as drinking alcohol and driving, and more detrimental to their health than smoking. Many turn to bottled water, but it is not subjected to the same testing requirements and regulations and may be as risky as, or worse than, tap water, Beamer said.
“There needs to be more transparency explaining how the water is tested, and what standards it’s held to and how they can rely on it to be a safe drinking water source. It is important for people to understand in their community what the primary violations are for and what their alternative water sources are,” Beamer said.
The consequences of even tiny levels of contaminants in water can be high. The EPA sets a limit of 10mg of nitrate per liter of water, but it is frequently exceeded. The standard is meant to protect against “blue baby syndrome”, which happens when a fetus hasn’t received enough oxygen, and thyroid disease, which can cause fatigue, weight gain and hair loss.
Nitrates are a big issue in communities in California’s Central Valley such as East Orosi, an unincorporated community of about 700 where children grow up learning not to open their eyes or mouths while they shower. Maria Orozco, a 30-year-old resident, doesn’t remember a time when she felt safe drinking water from the faucet. Recently, her daughters’ hair has started falling out in the shower, more than usual. Her hair has begun falling out too. “It’s like a knot in your stomach,” she said, of this constant worry over the water and her family’s health.
Advocates in East Orosi say they face multiple challenges just securing safe water. “The Central Valley produces a variety of food from grapes, almonds, apricots, blueberries and we also create a variety of blended, toxic water,” said Susana de Anda, executive director of the Community Water Center. “Our groundwater is a toxic blend of nitrates, arsenic, 123TCP, chromium.”
Public health campaigners are increasingly concerned about nitrates in drinking water.
“We’re just seeing so many new studies that show lower and lower levels of nitrate can be dangerous. They can increase the risk of cancer if you have low-level exposure over many years,” said Anne Schechinger, a senior economic analyst with the Environmental Working Group (EWG) who authored a recent report on nitrates. “It really makes you wonder if the EPA is keeping us safe with a lot of their maximum contaminant limits they’ve established.”
Asked to comment, an EPA spokesperson said: “Ensuring that all Americans have access to safe drinking water – including in communities of color and low-income communities – is a priority.” The agency said: “While over 92% of Americans receive drinking water that meets all health-based standards all of the time, EPA is continuing to work with its partners to close remaining gaps.”
In California alone, 5.25 million people in majority-Latino communities are drinking water that exceeds federal nitrate limits, according to Schechinger’s report for the EWG. Even more could be at risk from contaminated water in private wells, which are not regulated.
The Biden administration has promised to make tackling environmental justice a priority after four years of regulation cutting under Donald Trump.
The Guardian data investigation captures some of the scale of the challenge.
While Americans largely don’t have to worry about the type of biological contaminants that plague developing nations, they are likely to be exposed to much quieter threats – heavy metals, radiation and chemicals that can lead to significant health problems over time. Small systems – which can serve individual mobile home parks, highway fast food restaurants, churches and schools, often have the worst problems - and fewest resources to fix them.
“The horror stories start when you look at utilities serving fewer than 10,000 people,” said Betsy Southerland, former director of the office of science and technology for the office of water at the EPA.
Contamination
Water contamination in the US is wide-reaching.
The dangerous pollutants that water systems have difficulty filtering out vary across the country, from the nitrates from farm runoff in states where agriculture is prominent, including California, to radioactive mining substances in states such as West Virginia.
Health effects are wide-ranging. Arsenic, chlorine and radionuclides are tied with higher incidences of cancer; nitrate fertilizers can hinder the delivery of oxygen to red blood cells; the weed killer atrazine is linked to hormone disruption in women, premature births and lower IQ levels in children.
Among the communities with major drinking water challenges, the Guardian analysis showed:
Coal Mountain, West Virginia,which serves about 118 people, tops the list in our analysis, with its water system having the most violation points in the country: 595 points over five years. It has detected high levels of radionuclides, disinfection byproducts, arsenic, lead and copper, nitrates and coliform. The county’s median household income is $35,460, which is about half of the US median household income. The community has seen a rise inmountaintop removalcoal mining. The Appalachian Regional Commission – a federal-state partnership – said it was spending millions toupgrade the system.
Left:Extensive mountain top removal coalmining and logging in West Virginia.Right: A pond filled with wastewater from a mountain top removal coalmine showing evidence of pollution in West Virginia. Photograph by Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images
The Klondikeindependentschooldistrict in Dawsoncounty and Martincounty, in West Texas, had 390 violation points over five years. Its roughly 270 students in grades pre-K through 12 could have been exposed to arsenic, nitrates, coliform bacteria, disinfectants and disinfection byproducts, copper, inorganic chemicals and radionuclides. The district spans 600 sq miles of oilfields and cotton and peanut farms. About half of the students are Latino, Superintendent Steve McLaren estimated. Klondike spent about $1m on upgrades to meet tightened standards, including some funds from a philanthropic foundation. “We want to do the right thing, but sometimes it’s difficult to do the right thing because of finances,” McLaren said.
Lubbockcounty, Texas,is home to 24 of the top 1,000 water systems with the most violation points, including those for mobile home parks, a children’s sports camp and an assisted living facility for seniors.
The smaller a water system is, the more likely it is to experience problems. That’s often because there are fewer customers to charge for needed upgrades.
The American Water Works Association—whose members supply most of the nation’s drinking water—acknowledged that small systems have fewer resources to fix problems. But it said many of their violations are for inadequate monitoring, not for contaminants.
Of the more than 140,000 public water systems in the US, more than 97% serve fewer than 10,000 people. Small systems can struggle to afford testing and treating the water, or even issuing the public violation notices that the federal government requires when contaminant levels are too high. There is no government agency dedicated to responding to chronic diseases from water contamination. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention only responds to acute outbreaks, such as coliform bacteria.
“If no one is immediately dying, there’s no rush to do analysis on substances of concern,” said Carl Reeverts, a former program director at the EPA who was with the agency for 38 years. “Enforcement is incredibly low, and we don’t have a strong program for bringing people in line.”
Q&A
How we did our data analysis of US public water systems
Show
Broken reporting system
Repeated reviews under the Obama administration found that states are not telling the EPA about violations. For violations from lead and copper pipes, for example, 92% are not reported by states to the federal government, according to the most according recent EPA audit, conducted in 2008. The EPA has since discontinued annual audits of state files as the result of budget cuts.
The current reporting system is a “mess”, according to the water researcher Dr Upmanu Lall, chair of the department of Earth and environmental engineering at Columbia University and director of the Columbia Water Center.
Lall’s research cites an up to 38% under-reporting of drinking water violations on average, according to government data. Lall said most water systems test only at the plant, not at the point of use – meaning they can miss major problems such as contamination from lead pipes.
Lall doesn’t blame the people running the water systems, who largely live in the communities they serve. The systems are cash strapped, and banks are charging more and more for loans to update infrastructure. So they cut corners, trim staff, or stop monitoring and treating altogether, he said.
In addition to lacking tracking and enforcement, water standards aren’t strong enough to begin with, according to former EPA officials. The US government requires monitoring for 94 contaminants, not including known health hazards like PFAS, the “forever chemicals” that have been implicated in cancer, liver damage, decreased fertility and thyroid disease. PFAS include nonstick substances used in cookware and firefighting foam and are being discovered in water supplies around the country.
In a statement responding to this story, an EPA spokesperson said the agency would work with states to analyze and address “compliance challenges in struggling drinking water systems” and target assistance to underserved communities. It said it had a number of programs to assist disadvantaged communities and provided “technical assistance to help address lead and other regulated contaminants” and understood the “urgent need” to evaluate and address PFAS in drinking water.
The most recent to be regulated by the agencywas arsenic, in 2003.
Of the roughly 10,000 known chemicals that can be in consumer products, most have not been closely studied for health impacts, so there is no information about what happens if they enter the water supply.
The US water regulation system has failed to protect the most vulnerable Americans for decades, under both Republican and Democratic presidents. Donald Trump weakened rules that could fight water contamination at the source, where agriculture giants and industrial corporations are polluting groundwater. Joe Biden will seek to reverse those changes, but setting or tightening a standard for how much of a dangerous substance can be in drinking water is an arduous process.
Clean water advocates are calling for a significant injection of federal resources and a revamp of regulations to make it easier to protect the public, and harder for industry to resist tighter standards.
“Relying on the federal government is not going to get you very far,” said David Andrews, a senior scientist with the EWG. “Federal standards fall far behind what we know is necessary for human health.”
“The acting chief of the U.S. Capitol Police warned lawmakers Thursday that militia members involved in the Jan. 6 riot “want to blow up the Capitol and kill as many members as possible” during President Biden’s first congressional address.
The stark warning about another potential threat to Congress — which has not been corroborated by other law enforcement agencies — comes as a date for Biden’s first address on Capitol Hill has not been set. New presidents typically deliver a speech to a joint session of Congress in February.
Acting chief Yogananda D. Pittman told lawmakers there was “a direct nexus” between the threats and a Biden speech.
She cited that intelligence to explain why National Guard members who were deployed and the tall security barriers that were erected around the Capitol after the insurrection have not yet been removed.
“Based on that information, we think that it’s prudent that Capitol Police maintain its enhanced and robust security posture until we address those vulnerabilities going forward,” Pittman said.
It was not clear whether other agencies have also identified threats to the Capitol during Biden’s first congressional address. An FBI spokeswoman declined to comment. The bureau is regularly tipped to online chatter about all manner of threats, and officials have said it is difficult to separate that which is aspirational from that which poses real concern.
Troubling online conversation often fails to materialize into a tangible threat. In the run-up to Biden’s inauguration, for example, the FBI privately warned law enforcement agencies that far-right extremists had discussed posing as National Guard members in Washington, and that others have reviewed maps of vulnerable spots in the city. Officials took aggressive measures to secure the Capitol, and ultimately the day passed without incident.
But officials are eager to show they are taking threats seriously, particularly because lawmakers from both parties havecriticizedthe Capitol Police and the FBI for not responding to indications of possible violence before the Jan. 6 riot. An internal Capitol Police intelligence report three days before the siege warned“Congress itself” could be the target of violence, and an FBI office in Virginia warned one day before that demonstrators were prepared for “war.”
Pittman insisted Thursday there was “no credible threat” in the available intelligence that rioters would actually break into the Capitol. As a result, she said, the police “were not prepared” for the demonstration to turn into an angry mob, as she saida small subset of organized rioters whipped up the others present to increasing displays of aggression and violence.
And she said that “well in excess” of 10,000 people came onto the Capitol grounds during the Jan. 6 insurrection, and that about 800 entered the building — the first time an official has provided an estimate of the size of the crowd that broke through the Capitol’s perimeter.
“To stop a mob of tens of thousands requires more than a police force, it requires physical infrastructure or a regiment of soldiers,” Pittman said. “We know that some of those temporary enhancements are not popular, but these are necessary in the short term.”
Lawmakers, especially those in the GOP, are growing antsy over the continued presence of soldiers and barriers at the Capitol, which Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler (R-Wash.), the top Republican on the Appropriations subcommittee hosting Thursday’s hearing, said is costing $2 million per week to maintain.
Rep. Mark Amodei (R-Nev.) described the reinforcements as “stark visual sadness” and likened the current Capitol environment to “working in a minimum security prison.”
In the Senate, Rules Committee ranking member Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) also said Thursday that “there are ways to achieve the safety we need here without the fortresslike sense at the Capitol right now, and hopefully you get there sooner rather than later.”
This was the first week that current and former officials responsible for the response to the shortlived insurrection testified in public before congressional committees, the opening acts of what is likely to be a long-term effort to document the failings that led to the violence and avoid a similar calamity in the future.
So far, those hearings have failed to resolve even basic questions about what transpired, such as when the Capitol Police chief requested approval for backup from the National Guard.
Former Capitol Police chief Steven A. Sund and former House sergeant-at-arms Paul Irving, both of whom resigned following the riot, clashed over some details of the timeline that day. Sund claimed he had requested help from the National Guard two days before the riot and again as soon as the pro-Trump demonstrators broke through the outdoor security perimeter, requesting the Guard by 1:09 p.m. that day.
Irving told lawmakers he was on the floor of the House at that time and did not remember getting a call from Sund until nearly 1:30 p.m., when Sund told him he might be requesting the Guard be activated.
On Thursday, Pittman partially backed up Sund’s account, reading from his cellphone records that she said showed that he repeatedly contacted Irving, starting at 12:58 p.m. that day.
Matt Zapotosky, Mike DeBonis and Ashley Parker contributed to this report.”
