When the Proud Boys and their far-right cohorts led the violent Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, they did so largely operating under their longstanding belief that the police were on their side. This weekend, breaking their weeks of quiet amid a stream of post-Jan. 6 arrests, they held an armed “Second Amendment” rally in Salem, Oregon—without a whiff of police presence.
While Republican officeholders like Kevin McCarthy double down on their strategy of gaslighting the public about what transpired at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, a reality check may be in order: As prosecutors themselves earlier suggested, it is now apparent that this event is becoming the largest and most complex prosecution in U.S. history, as the Justice Department made clear over the weekend that it expects to charge more than 500 people in the matter.
Facebook executives have been dismissive from the start about attempts to hold them accountable for their social media platform’s role in inciting and organizing the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol—including CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s testimony to Congress last month in which he evaded questions about his company’s culpability, saying: “I think that the responsibility here lies with the people who took the actions to break the law and do the insurrection.
Amid hysterical claims that wolves are driving ranchers out of business, Idaho’s Republican state Senate this week approved legislation that would enable hired contractors to exterminate up to 90% of the state’s wild wolf population. The bill, if signed (as expected) by GOP Gov. Brad Little would end tag limits on wolves and allow year-round trapping on private land.
A self-described “lifetime member” of the Oath Keepers has become the first defendant in the Jan. 6 insurrection cases to enter a guilty plea as part of a cooperation agreement with prosecutors, following a hearing in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., Friday morning.
The plea bargain for Jon Schaffer, 53, a heavy-metal guitarist from Indiana who was photographed assaulting officers with bear spray and entering the U.S. Capitol, was approved by Judge Ahmit Mehta.
Ethan Collins had it all figured out. Like a lot of far-right extremists, he fantasized a lot about committing various acts of terrorism—bringing down the power grid, bombing police stations, that sort of thing—and thought about ways to make them happen. The Colorado man decided his best shot was to try to infiltrate a federal law enforcement agency and pull off his crimes from within its ranks.
Fortunately, Collins is a terrible liar.
Ammon Bundy is nothing if not consistent. When the Idaho-based leader of the anti-public health measure “People’s Rights” network says he won’t be forced to wear a mask, he apparently means it—even if that leads him to miss his trial on trespassing charges at the Idaho Statehouse last year, leading to a warrant for his arrest and his subsequent imprisonment.
If there has been a silver lining in the Jan. 6 insurrection, it would be this: Law enforcement officials finally appear to be taking far-right extremist criminal behavior seriously. That’s become abundantly clear in the wave of arrests of multiple extremists in the weeks following, not all of whom are connected to the attack on the Capitol.
The reason MAGA-loving Republicans lie so obviously and remorselessly is really pretty simple: It works.
The two most brazen falsehoods they keep repeating to justify the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection—“the election was stolen” and “antifa did it”—are in fact widely believed by Republican Donald Trump voters, over 70% of whom ardently believe the first claim, and some 58% of whom lap up the latter lie as well.
If you watched Republicans on the Sunday news talk programs this weekend, you could be forgiven if you experienced a surreal, out-of-body feeling seeing every Republican official invited on for interviews claim, without a scintilla of evidence, that the November presidential election was stolen by Joe Biden. Even worse, they did so with zero pushback from their network hosts.
In those moments, you could see the various strands of right-wing narrative regarding the Jan.
If you watched Republicans on the Sunday news talk programs this weekend, you could be forgiven if you experienced a surreal, out-of-body feeling seeing every Republican official invited on for interviews claim, without a scintilla of evidence, that the November presidential election was stolen by Joe Biden. Even worse, they did so with zero pushback from their network hosts.
In those moments, you could see the various strands of right-wing narrative regarding the Jan.
One of the aspects of killer whales that is most tantalizing and fascinating is their communications with each other. These are a series of specific calls—each one used solely within their familial groups—as well as chirps and other sounds, notably the clicks that comprise their echolocation.
The people who besieged the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday were not merely rioters and insurrectionists. Some of them appear to have been intent on taking hostages and murdering them, and there are signs that the attempt was carefully planned out.
Photo evidence shows people who entered the building came prepared to take hostages, and to bind them with zip ties.
There’s no education like the kind that children receive in the outdoors, particularly when they get to experience up-close some of the wonders that nature has to offer.
The men who plotted to invade the state Capitol in Lansing, Michigan, and murder state officials this year were members of a militia group. Those “III Percenters” who have been showing up to urban street demonstrations in camo body armor and toting AR-15s organize themselves into militias.
Probably the most insidious aspect of the creep of proto-fascist movements in America is the way they have been able to insinuate themselves within the traditional mainstream, sometimes by attempting to create a false image through the adoption of labels that create an image of legitimacy: Think of the seditious “Patriot” movement with its “III Percent” militias and Oath Keepers that try to claim a nonexistent connection to the Constitution.
Peter Yeager, the man who walked into Democratic Party headquarters in Spokane, Washington, on Wednesday claimed he had a bomb, and the wires sticking out of his backpack seemed to substantiate that. He also had a manifesto that he was eager to see disseminated in the media.
Twenty months and 800 pages later, the royal commission examining the deadly March 2019 attack on two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, by a white supremacist has issued its completed report—and it largely confirms what most of us already suspected about the event that claimed 51 people’s lives.
It’s become apparent that, even as Donald Trump tries to deny reality and continue claiming he won the election, the hate group that he ordered, on national television, to “stand back and stand by” now considers (per leadership’s statements that “standby order has been rescinded,” as well as other threatening statements on social media) those orders null and void: The Proud Boys are now playing the role of Trump’s goon-squad defenders in the streets&m
While killer whales are somewhat naturally feared by humans—they are, after all, huge, tremendously powerful, and merciless predators—the mythology around them has always been exaggerated, since no orca on record has ever harmed a human being in the wild. This is why when sailors near Galicia off the coast of Spain began reporting that their boats were being attacked by orcas this summer, scientists and observers alike were perplexed.
Four years ago this month, a trio of humpback whales—two adults and a juvenile, sex unknown—decided to spend several hours hanging out along the western side of Washington State’s San Juan Island and vocalizing. No one could see them because it was late at night and moonless. But underneath the surface, they put on a performance that lasted well over an hour—and it was being picked up on a hydrophone.
The anti-democratic strategy concocted and nurtured by the radical right over the past four years—organize busfuls of out-of-town far-right thugs to invade liberal urban centers in order to engage in faux “protests” primarily designed to spark violence—came to the nation’s capital this weekend. The results were as ugly as they were predictable.
As promised, thousands of hardcore Donald Trump supporters flooded downtown Washington, D.C., Saturday, for a “Million MAGA March,” falsely claiming he and not Joe Biden had won the presidential vote and demanding election officials “Stop the Steal.” Also as promised, Trump himself swung by to acknowledge what organizers had billed as “the largest Trump rally in U.S. history”—albeit briefly, from inside a slow-moving limousine.
A caravan of Donald Trump supporters driving dozens of mostly banner-festooned pickup trucks and SUVs deliberately ambushed a Biden-Harris campaign bus traveling to Austin and other parts of Texas on Thursday, harassing them constantly en route, forcing Democrats to cancel at least two campaign events out of concern for public safety. The participants, however, all proudly boasted about the harassment on social media, and police made no arrests.
The Republican Party’s descent into the quagmire of far-right conspiracism deepened Tuesday night in Delaware when Lauren Witzke, a onetime QAnon cult promoter with ties to white nationalists, notably through her former campaign manager, won the Delaware GOP primary for a U.S. Senate seat.
FRIDAY HARBOR, Washington—Late last Saturday afternoon, seemingly out of the blue, whale watchers out in Haro Strait between San Juan and Vancouver islands were treated to what has become a rare event: a “superpod,” one of the large gatherings of all three pods—some 72 whales—in the endangered Southern Resident killer-whale (SRKW) population of the Salish Sea.
FRIDAY HARBOR, Washington—The endangered Southern Resident orcas have been scarce in the San Juan Islands this summer, appearing for two weeks in July and then disappearing for the rest of the summer. Their appearance this year was full of hopeful signs, including several noteworthy pregnancies, and the fact that they largely appear to be well-fed.
If there is one thing we already know about Ammon Bundy, it’s that he’s anointed himself the arbiter of all things constitutional and legal—which is why he’s so frequently inclined to ignore the laws he considers “unlawful,” including the federal government’s ownership of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, as well as the efforts of Idaho’s governor to clamp down on the COVID-19 pandemic.
Facebook is failing the public—and the underlying principles of an open society, including the free exchange of ideas—on a multitude of fronts. The social-media giant has become the home, organizationally and (dis)informationally, of a broad menu of far-right extremists and their endless supply of frequently absurd conspiracism: QAnon, white supremacists, “Boogaloo Bois,” you name it.
Ted Cruz organized a Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing earlier this week whose primary purpose was to blame “radical leftists,” “anarchists,” and “antifa” for protest-related violence around the country.