WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden conferred high honors Friday on those who stood against the Jan. 6 Capitol mob two years ago and the menacing effort in state after state to upend the election, declaring “America is a land of laws, not chaos,” even as disarray rendered Congress dysfunctional for a fourth straight day.
Democrats at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue commemorated the police officers attacked that day and the local election workers and state officials who faced fierce intimidation from supporters of former President Donald Trump, who fought to keep him in office after his defeat.
“Our democracy held,” Biden said in awarding Presidential Citizens Medals to about a dozen recipients from across the country in the White House East Room. “We the people did not flinch.”
Yet democracy’s vulnerability was equally on display at the Capitol as Republicans struggled to break their stalemate over the next House speaker, leaving that chamber in limbo for what should have been the first week under a GOP majority.
A resolution to the immediate crisis may be near as GOP leadership continued negotiations to appease its hard-right flank. Rep. Kevin McCarthy flipped more than a dozen colleagues to support him in his quest to lead the chamber, finally showing progress but still short of a majority.
Hours earlier, lawmakers held a moment of silence to commemorate the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the building that drew mostly Democrats, with brief remarks from Democratic leaders past and incoming — Reps. Nancy Pelosi and Hakeem Jeffries — and none from the GOP.
The event was focused on the Capitol Police officers who protected the building that day and families of law enforcement officers who died after the riot. Jeffries said 140 officers were seriously injured and “many more will forever be scarred by the bloodthirsty violence of the insurrectionist mob. We stand here today with our democracy intact because of those officers.”
At the White House ceremony, Biden described the violence in evocative and at times graphic detail — the officer speared by a flagpole flying the American flag, the beatings, the bloodshed and racist screams from rioters who professed to be pro-law enforcement as they overran police and hunted for lawmakers.
“Sick insurrectionists,” he said. “We must say clearly with a united voice that there is no place … for voter intimidation or election violence.”
Although the horrors of that day came down on members of both parties, it is being remembered in a largely polarized fashion now, like other aspects of political life in a divided country.
Biden, in his afternoon remarks, played up the heroism of the honorees, whether in the face of the violent Capitol mob or the horde of Trump-inspired agitators who threatened election workers or otherwise sought to overturn the results.
But he couldn’t ignore warning signs that it could happen again.
In the midterms, candidates who denied the outcome of 2020’s free and fair election were defeated for many pivotal statewide positions overseeing elections in battleground states, as were a number of election deniers seeking seats in Congress.
Yet many of the lawmakers who brought baseless claims of election fraud or excused the violence on Jan. 6 continue to serve and are newly empowered.
Trump’s 2024 candidacy has been slow off the starting blocks, but his war chest is full and some would-be rivals for the Republican presidential nomination have channeled his false claims about the 2020 race.
As well, several lawmakers who echoed his lies about a stolen election at the time are central in the effort to derail McCarthy’s ascension to speaker — unswayed by Trump’s appeals from afar to support him and end the fight.
The protracted struggle leaves the House leaderless, unable to pass bills and powerless to do much more than hold vote after vote for speaker until a majority is reached. Everything from national security briefings to helping their constituents navigate the federal bureaucracy is on pause because the members-elect can’t yet take their oath of office.