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Tomorrow’s conversation, tonight. Know where the news is going next. | | | | | |  | | By Renuka Rayasam | | 
U.S. Capitol Police officers stand watch on the East Front plaza. | Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images | ‘A CLOUD OF SADNESS’ — In the year since the Jan. 6 insurrection, the far-right ecosystem has seen a massive expansion. More than 150 people have pleaded guilty to storming the Capitol. Scores of protesters from that day are now running for office. Congressional staffers worry about their personal safety. The Cheney family has become a hero to Democrats. Nightly spoke with Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.), a former CIA officer, during the Capitol riot last year, when she called us from a secure location she was sharing with Reps. Liz Cheney and Hakeem Jeffries. We spoke to her again today about how the events of the day changed her and her work in the Capitol. This conversation has been edited. How did Jan. 6, 2021 change you? Concurrent with the actual experience of what it was like to be in the House chamber, to be trapped in the gallery on Jan. 6, is the willingness of some of my colleagues to deny reality. That has been the most astounding part of the aftermath. It’s affirmed to me the fragility of our democracy in a way that I never recognized before. How did the events of that day change the work atmosphere in Congress? The remnants of that day continue to be there. We continue to have metal detectors surrounding the floor, which negatively impacts our daily experience when we’re at the office or when we’re voting. There’s a cloud of sadness around what used to be a boisterous place. There are some people who defend Jan. 6, who deny it. And there are members of Congress who blame the FBI, who blame law enforcement, and that really feels like the world is on its head. Has it affected how you work with Republicans? It depends on the person. There are people who are elected members of Congress, who are reenacting the march from the ellipse to the Capitol today. There are others who are too afraid or too unwilling to use their voices and the leadership roles that they have to speak out. And they know better, and that makes me deeply sad. Americans need leadership on both sides of the aisle. We can’t just rely on Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger and former electeds to be the only ones showing that leadership. Some pundits say that protecting democracy should be their only and primary focus in the 2022 midterms. Do you agree? That should have been the focus in January 2021. It’s the point that everybody should have been making a year ago. Democrats prioritized large, expansive packages, which I believe in, I co-sponsored and I voted for. But at the time I was vocal within my caucus that we should have pursued the John Lewis Voting Rights Act first and foremost. My response to that is, I agree with them. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com. Or contact tonight’s author at rrayasam@politico.com, or on Twitter at @RenuRayasam.
| | | | BECOME A GLOBAL INSIDER: The world is more connected than ever. It has never been more essential to identify, unpack and analyze important news, trends and decisions shaping our future — and we’ve got you covered! Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, Global Insider author Ryan Heath navigates the global news maze and connects you to power players and events changing our world. Don’t miss out on this influential global community. Subscribe now. | | | | | | | | — Harris was inside DNC on Jan. 6 when pipe bomb was discovered outside: Then-Vice President-elect Kamala Harris was inside Democratic National Committee headquarters on Jan. 6, 2021, when a pipe bomb was discovered outside the building , according to four people familiar with her movements that day. Capitol Police began investigating the pipe bomb at 1:07 p.m., according to an official Capitol Police timeline of events obtained by POLITICO. The timeline says that Capitol Police and the Secret Service evacuated an unnamed “protectee” at approximately 1:14 p.m. The four people, among them a White House official and a former law enforcement official, confirmed that Harris was the Secret Service protectee identified in the timeline, which has circulated on Capitol Hill.
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President Joe Biden delivers remarks on the one year anniversary of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, during a ceremony in Statuary Hall. | Drew Angerer/Getty Images | — Biden decries Trump’s ‘singular responsibility’ for the Capitol riot: President Joe Biden today marked one year since his predecessor’s supporters besieged the Capitol with a pointed rebuke of the violence — and a declaration that Donald Trump bears “singular responsibility” for the attack. “His bruised ego matters more to him than our democracy, our Constitution,” Biden said of the former president. Trump, he added, is “not just a former president. He’s a defeated former president, defeated by a margin of over 7 million of your votes in a full and free and fair election.” — Fed ethics scandal reignited over new disclosures by top official: Federal Reserve Vice Chair Richard Clarida quietly admitted last month that he had failed to fully disclose financial trades he made at the onset of the pandemic, the latest revelation in a string of ethics problems at the central bank. Clarida, whose term is set to end Jan. 31, had already come under fire in October because he had moved between $1 million and $5 million out of a bond fund into a stock fund on Feb. 27, 2020. That was just a day before Fed Chair Jerome Powell signaled that the central bank might move to cushion the economy when the pandemic hit the U.S. — Nick Kristof booted off Oregon ballot, vows appeal: Former New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof is ineligible to run for governor of Oregon because he does not meet a residency requirement, the state’s top elections official said today . “I stand by the determination of the experts in the Oregon Elections Division that Mr. Kristof does not currently meet the constitutional requirements to run or serve as Oregon governor,” state Secretary of State Shemia Fagan, a Democrat, said in a statement. “In this instance, the candidate clearly does not meet the constitutional requirement to run or serve as governor of Oregon.” In a press conference of his own, Kristof said he plans on appealing the decision in state court. “Because I’ve always known Oregon to be my home, the law says that I am qualified to run for governor,” he said during the press conference, emphasizing family roots in the state.
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Military vehicles of Russian peacekeepers are parked waiting to transport onto Russian military planes at an airfield outside Moscow to fly to Kazakhstan. | Russian Defense Ministry Press Service via AP | MORE FORMER SOVIET TURMOIL — Senior U.S. officials are urging Kazakhstan’s leaders to find peaceful resolutions to a series of protests, many of them violent, while questioning the wisdom of the authoritarian Central Asian country’s decision to seek security assistance from a Russian-dominated military alliance, Quint Forgey, Erin Banco and Nahal Toosi write. The protests, which began last weekend over a spike in fuel prices but evolved to cover political grievances and fury against corruption, also led the U.S. Embassy in Kazakhstan to ramp up security measures and weigh an evacuation, according to emails obtained by POLITICO. Kazakhstan is a large, landlocked country of roughly 19 million people that borders Russia and China, making it of strategic interest to the United States. U.S. companies such as Chevron and ExxonMobil have invested billions in the country’s energy sector. The unrest there further comes as the United States seeks to resolve tensions along the Russia-Ukraine border, where Moscow has amassed as many as 100,000 troops ahead of a potential re-invasion. Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke today with Kazakh Foreign Minister Mukhtar Tileuberdi. Blinken “reiterated the United States’ full support for Kazakhstan’s constitutional institutions and media freedom and advocated for a peaceful, rights-respecting resolution to the crisis,” according to a State Department readout. He “also raised the priority of promoting stability in Europe, including support for Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity in response to Russian aggression.” Speaking of Russia: Matthew Karnitschnig, Nahal and Paul McLeary have the latest on the key question surrounding Biden’s sanctions warnings over Ukraine: Will European countries really go along with serious penalties on Moscow?
| | | | | 7 minutes The amount of time between Capitol Police starting to investigate the pipe bomb outside the DNC and the department and Secret Service evacuating Kamala Harris. | | | | | ONLINE’S BIG LIE LIFESTYLE — A video on Facebook claiming that D.C. police unlawfully attacked Jan. 6 protesters racks up nearly 140,000 views. Across YouTube and Twitter, users post thousands of comments claiming Joe Biden’s presidency is a fraud. Within fringe social networks, extremists openly discuss violent attacks on Pennsylvania and Arizona election officials who approved the 2020 vote count, Mark Scott and Rebecca Kern write. A year after supporters of former President Donald Trump staged a deadly assault on the Capitol, the social media platforms where people organized and celebrated the riot are still ablaze with the same rumors, threats and election misinformation that flourished online before last year’s violence. The ongoing flood of extremist content, based on POLITICO’s review of thousands of social media messages across six separate networks, comes despite efforts by major platforms such as Facebook, Google and Twitter to turn down the temperature — including by removing Trump himself. Meanwhile, Congress remains gridlocked on even modest steps to toughen oversight of social media companies, such as forcing them to share data with the researchers and outside groups that track the spread of misinformation. Google, Twitter and Facebook’s parent company, Meta, say they have taken unprecedented steps to remove inciting content, deleting scores of posts and tens of thousands of accounts that questioned the outcome of the 2020 election and the causes of the Jan. 6 insurrection. Yet despite these efforts — many of which have drawn accusations from conservatives of unduly harming free speech — the online world has become even more polarized, violent and politicized since rioters stormed the Capitol in January 2021, according to policymakers, law enforcement and misinformation experts. That situation could prove to be a tinderbox once campaigning begins to heat up for November’s midterm elections. Did someone forward this email to you? Sign up here . | | | | Follow us on Twitter | | | | Follow us | | | | |  |
