A year ago this week, Senator John Thune and 21 of his Republican colleagues defied Donald Trump and voted to send $60 billion in U.S. aid to Ukraine as it tried to ward off Russia’s invasion. “America cannot retreat from the world stage,” the South Dakota senator later said, explaining his vote. “American leadership is desperately needed now more than I think any time in recent history, and we need to make sure that Ukraine has the weaponry and the resources that it needs to defeat the Russians.”

The vote was gutsy: It drew a rebuke from Trump, who was then heavily favored to capture the GOP presidential nomination. And it was taken even though the bipartisan bill faced uncertain odds in the House, until Speaker Mike Johnson backed it two months later. The measure passed, and assistance continued to flow to Kyiv.

Twelve months later, Ukraine’s future is even more imperiled. Over the past week, the Trump administration has made clear that the United States will no longer be Kyiv’s largest and most crucial supporter, and that it might sideline Ukrainians from negotiations meant to bring an end to the war. But the response from Republicans has been noticeably different. Thune, now Senate majority leader, has remained silent, as have many of his GOP colleagues. He did not respond to interview requests this week.

[Read: The accidental speaker]

Republican capitulation to Trump is a familiar story line, but the moment is nonetheless worth marking. With a few, mostly timid exceptions, the party that once prided itself on standing up to Moscow—the party of Cold Warriors Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush—has bowed to a president who himself is bowing to an adversary. And as Trump officials yesterday embarked on negotiations with their Russian counterparts that could reward Vladimir Putin’s gamble on seizing territory from a sovereign neighbor, Republicans faced a new, extraordinarily high-profile test: whether to prioritize their long-held national-security beliefs or their loyalty to the president.

“The founders intended Congress to be first among equals of the three branches of government, [but] you’d be hard pressed to know it though looking at today’s Republican-controlled Congress,” Richard Haas, the former president of the Council on Foreign Relations, told me. Haass, who worked in three previous Republican administrations, said that Republicans have been “not just subservient but invisible,” while “not holding hearings or otherwise challenging the Trump administration’s unconditional embrace of Putin’s Russia, the dismissal of Europe’s interests and Ukraine’s demands.”

No representatives from Ukraine or other European nations were present at a hurriedly arranged meeting between U.S. and Russian officials yesterday in Saudi Arabia. Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters afterward that Russia and the United States had agreed to work on a Ukraine peace deal and to explore “the incredible opportunities that exist to partner with the Russians” both geopolitically and economically. The message amounted to a dizzying change from President Joe Biden’s isolation of Moscow after the Ukraine invasion, which many Senate Republicans broadly supported.

Last week, Trump’s White House signaled a fundamental shift in relations with both Europe and Russia by stridently dismissing longtime democratic allies while looking to re-establish ties with the nuclear-armed autocracy to the east. The president prioritized a call with Putin over one with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky and invited the Russian leader, and not the Ukrainian one, for multiple summit meetings. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth ruled out Ukraine joining NATO or receiving substantial future American security guarantees as part of the negotiations to end the war. Vice President J. D. Vance upbraided European leaders for freezing the far right out of government in their nations. And then yesterday, at a Mar-a-Lago news conference, Trump chided Ukraine for the conflict, snapping, “You should never have been there,” and ignoring that it was Russia that invaded.

[Read: The day the Ukraine war ended]

Some Republicans in the Senate offered outright support for Trump’s Putin-friendly view of American security. “I don’t think anybody really believes Ukraine should be in NATO now,” Senator Eric Schmitt told reporters last week. “Unless you want World War III.”

Others took a more measured approach, expressing the wish that the U.S. would still support Ukraine—or at least not yield to Putin—while still avoiding outright criticism of Trump. Senator John Cornyn, who voted for the aid package last year, told reporters after Trump’s call with Putin, “Ukraine ought to be the one to negotiate its own peace deal. I don’t think it should be imposed upon it by any other country, including ours. I’m hopeful.” But he added: “I can’t imagine President Trump giving up leverage. I don’t know what his strategy is for negotiating, but he’s pretty good at it. I think it surprises people, including me, sometimes what he’s able to pull off.”

Few represent the Republican Party’s evolution more than Senator Lindsey Graham, who spent years as the late Senator John McCain’s wingman, earning a reputation as a globe-trotting national security hawk. But he has since become one of Trump’s most obsequious supporters, often offering over-the-top praise of the president in a way that McCain would not have recognized. Over the weekend, Graham highlighted Trump’s plan to seize half of Ukraine’s rare earth minerals as payment for the United States’ support of Kyiv in the war, praising the scheme as “a game-changer.”

Zelensky immediately declined the proposal. But only a few Republican senators—including Mitch McConnell and Susan Collins—publicly opposed Trump’s concessions to Russia. “This was an unprovoked, unjustified invasion,” Collins told reporters. “I appreciate that the president is trying to achieve peace, but we have to make sure that Ukraine does not get the short end of a deal.” Senator Roger Wicker criticized Hegseth’s declaration last week that Ukraine would not recover its territory, deeming the statement a “rookie mistake” on the world stage. But the White House believes those voices of GOP dissent will stay in the minority, a senior administration official told me under the condition of anonymity to discuss internal strategy.

[Read: Trump is remaking the world in his image]

Trump has been eager to strengthen ties with Putin and asked aides to schedule a summit with the Russian leader in the weeks ahead, the official said. The president has told aides he believes that resetting relations with Russia reduces the chances of a nuclear war and will allow the U.S. new economic opportunities. American officials who spoke to reporters after the Riyadh meeting suggested that Biden-era sanctions on Russia could be lifted, and they did not spend much time in their briefing with reporters discussing Moscow’s violation of international law in invading Ukraine or the war crimes allegations against Putin for the attacks.

Instead, Rubio, whose own views have seemingly evolved since his time in the Senate as a Russia hawk who supported NATO, made a point to repeatedly praise Trump’s approach to Russia. “For three years,” Rubio said, “no one else has been able to bring something together like what we saw today, because Donald Trump is the only leader in the world that can.”

Thom Tillis, another Republican senator who strongly supported the funding bill a year ago, has continued to support Kyiv even though he cast the deciding vote to confirm Hegseth. Tillis, in fact, made a trip to Kyiv on Monday with two other senators, pledging support for the war effort even as the Trump team was landing in Riyadh to begin negotiations without Ukraine.

“I believe, first, we should understand that this is just the beginning of a dialogue. There is no specific framework that’s been mapped out yet,” Tillis said. “We expect that that will come to pass very quickly, we hope, and that Ukraine has to be front and center as a part of the negotiations to make sure that it’s something sustainable.”

Tillis then turned to his colleagues for validation. Both assented. But both were Democrats.

Move over, Greenland. Donald Trump has his eyes on a new prize: Gaza. At a news conference with visiting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu yesterday, the president declared that “the U.S. will take over the Gaza Strip,” “level it out,” and “create an economic development that will supply unlimited numbers of jobs and housing for the people of the area.” These people would not all be Gazans, whom Trump suggested should be resettled elsewhere, at least temporarily. The president also expressed openness to deploying U.S. troops in order to turn Gaza into the “Riviera of the Middle East.”

Trump’s Gaz-a-Lago plan has just one minor defect: It is a nonstarter with pretty much all of the parties required to make it work. Fresh off failed forays into Iraq and Afghanistan, many Americans will balk at inserting themselves into one of the Middle East’s most intractable conflicts. “I think most South Carolinians would probably not be excited about sending Americans to take over Gaza,” Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, one of the most hawkish lawmakers in Congress, told reporters. Trump named Jordan and Egypt as two Arab countries that could take in displaced Gazans during the territory’s reconstruction, but both regimes would rather swallow broken glass than grant citizenship or even a foothold to large numbers of Palestinians, whose cause they celebrate but whose people they routinely denigrate.

Trump’s scheme also conflicts with an essential component of the Israeli ethos. The country prides itself on “defending itself by itself,” as home to a formerly persecuted people no longer reliant on foreign powers for its security. This pose is something of a polite fiction—Israel very much relies on American weapons and diplomatic support—but it’s true to the extent that the country has always fought its own wars with its own fighters. Trump’s proposal would upend that doctrine and risk turning Israel into a liability for the United States, rather than a strategic asset. As for the Palestinians, many Gazans would readily seek a new life elsewhere if offered the opportunity to escape their horrific circumstances, but many others would not. If done at the point of a gun, such a transfer would constitute ethnic cleansing—a far-right Israeli dream into which Trump just breathed new life, whatever his intentions.

[Read: Trump’s wild plan for Gaza]

But as flawed as Trump’s proposed solution is, it does identify a real problem. The U.S., Arab states, the European Union, the United Nations, and countless human-rights organizations all claim to care about Gaza. In the decades since Israel withdrew its troops and settlements from the territory, however, the international community has participated in a perverse cycle: It shovels money and aid into Gaza; watches that money get appropriated by Hamas to bankroll its messianic war against Israel’s existence; relegates the military response to Hamas to ever more hawkish Israeli governments, elected by voters pushed to the right by rocket attacks; rebuilds Gaza with more soon-to-be-compromised aid after yet another ruinous conflict between Israel and Hamas; then proclaims itself shocked and appalled when the cycle repeats.

The latest war has been catastrophic for the Palestinian people, and that is the culmination of years of bankrupt international policy. “The Gaza thing has not worked; it’s never worked,” Trump told reporters yesterday. “It’s a pure demolition site. If we could find the right piece of land or numerous pieces of land and build them some really nice places … I think that would be a lot better than going back to Gaza, which has had just decades and decades of death.” As is often the case, Trump accurately diagnosed a fundamental failure of the reigning policy elites, but offered a half-baked solution to the problem.

With significant revisions, this proposal could contain a semblance of something workable. Temporarily housing Gazans in dignified conditions elsewhere while the devastated territory is rebuilt under the watchful eyes of America and its allies would provide the Gazan people with much-deserved relief while depriving Hamas of its source of power and income. The civilians would no longer be shields for Hamas to place between itself and Israel, and Hamas would no longer be able to skim funds from the population’s aid. Ultimately, the Gazan people could then return to a home no longer hostage to either Hamas or Israeli blockade. Should Trump’s Arab allies talk him into something like this, it would certainly be better than rerunning the old playbook and expecting a different result.

Trump’s proposal could be a negotiating tactic—a grandiose plan intended to be bargained down to something practical. It could be a flight of fancy that won’t survive contact with the regional players, or a vision he intends to push through with American might. No one honestly knows. More immediate questions also remain unanswered: Does Trump intend to ensure that the current Israel-Hamas cease-fire holds through its second phase, which is scheduled to begin in March, or will the war reignite? If the president is unable to strike a new accord with Iran, Hamas’s weakened patron, will he back Israeli strikes on its nuclear sites? Trump also dropped another surprise toward the end of his press conference, when he said that his administration would announce its policy on potential Israeli annexation of the West Bank—territory that Palestinians claim for their future state—in the next four weeks.

Whether Trump will follow through on any of the ideas he tossed like grenades into the discourse yesterday is anyone’s guess. What’s certain is this: The old rules of the Middle East no longer apply, and no one knows what the new ones are.

President Donald Trump, who campaigned on a promise to put America First, just proposed the wildest and most improbable intervention by the United States in overseas affairs since the invasion of and occupation of Iraq, more than 20 years ago.

At a joint press conference with the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump promised that the U.S. would become the occupier of Gaza.

“The U.S. will take over the Gaza Strip and we’ll do a job with it too. We’ll own it,” Trump said. “I do see a long-term ownership position, and I see it bringing great stability to that part of the Middle East, and maybe the entire Middle East.” Trump suggested that U.S. troops would be used, if needed, to implement his vision for Gaza.

He presented this idea, one never before suggested by a U.S. president or Middle East peace negotiator, as a way to end generations of conflict between Israel and the Palestinians and, also, as a bonus, an opportunity to create sweet real-estate development opportunities. The idea was breathtaking in its audacity, and it would be fair to say that its implementation would run into myriad obstacles at home and abroad, except that the overwhelming likelihood is that the U.S. would never come near implementing this notion.

Trump’s proposal to displace 2.2 million Palestinian residents from their homes, which he expanded on today, has already angered  the Arab world. A direct American intervention in Gaza would radically expand the U.S.  footprint in the Middle East, giving it possession of a territory devastated by 15 months of fighting between Hamas and the Israel Defense Forces, ignited by the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023. And it could further destabilize a region never known for its stability.

Trump, as is his practice,offered few details as he outlined the expansive idea at a White House press conference, standing next to a smiling Netanyahu.

The president—who has long been vociferously opposed to U.S. military intervention abroad—did not rule out sending the American military to secure Gaza while it was being rebuilt. Asked if U.S. troops would be deployed, Trump said that “we’ll do what’s necessary. … We’ll take it over and develop it.”

The plan would permanently remove Gaza’s residents from Palestinian territory and settle them outside of their land. Trump did not specify where homes for the new refugees might be found, though he again repeated his desire for Egypt and Jordan to take in Gaza’s residents. Both of those nations have firmly declined, their leaders quietly panicking, according to regional diplomats, at the thought of Trump forcing them to take radicalized Palestinians as refugees.

The displacement would presumably be met with outrage across the region. Palestinians, like Israelis, want to stay on their land. Neighboring Arab nations—even those with close U.S. ties—would not want to abet an Israeli expulsion of Palestinians from the strip. The Saudi foreign ministry released a statement offering its “unequivocal rejection” of any attempt “to displace the Palestinian people from their land.”

A ceasefire took hold in Gaza just before Trump took office, bringing a tentative halt to a conflict that has reportedly killed more than 20,000 Palestinian civilians and as many as 20,000 Hamas militants, leveled much of the strip, and created a devastating humanitarian crisis. Trump’s plan would pull the United States even more deeply into the conflict by taking over the territory, which has been fought over since Egypt occupied it in 1948.

The region has already been reshaped by Israel’s response to the October 7 attacks that killed nearly 1,200 people and saw another 250 taken hostage. Israel has pummeled Hamas, destroying its leadership, and also delivered devastating blows to Hezbollah in Lebanon. Combined with the collapse of the Assad regime in Syria, the events of the past year have left Iran more isolated than it has been in decades, and Trump today ordered the return of the “maximum pressure” campaign to sanction Tehran.

Trump’s Gaza plan, were it to be carried out, would appear to be a remarkable win for the far-right members in Netanyahu’s governing coalition, who have longed for permanent Israeli expansion into both Gaza and the West Bank. Netanyahu—a longtime Trump ally, and the first foreign leader to visit the White House in the president’s second term—suggested he was open to the idea, noting that Trump “sees a different future for that piece of land.” He added: “It’s worth paying attention to this. We’re talking about it. It’s something that could change history.”

One White House official told me that Trump’s comments were not a spur-of-the-moment suggestion but reflective of a newfound, post-election confidence that he could put together the ultimate deal and change decades of history.

“Look, the Gaza thing has not worked. It’s never worked,” Trump told reporters. “I think they should get a good, fresh, beautiful piece of land, and we get some people to put up the money to build it and make it nice and make it habitable and enjoyable.” Trump has been buoyed by two first-term Middle East initiatives that Washington experts said would have devastating consequences for U.S. national security, but did not: The decision to move the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to the capital, Jerusalem, and the order to assassinate the Iranian Quds Force leader Qassem Soleimani.

Trump—who also has been publicly and privately musing about winning a Nobel Peace Prize—has been known to first take an outlandish position and then move to a more moderate stance. Sometimes there is a method to his madness, and sometimes there is simply madness in his madness. World leaders, from Denmark to Panama to the Middle East, have spent the past two weeks trying to discern the difference.  

“It occurs to me that Trump may have floated this idea to raise the stakes after Arab countries refused his request to take in Palestinians,” Mark Dubowitz, CEO of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, wrote on X. “Now, he’s cranking up the pressure: If you won’t take them, we’ll remove them ourselves and take control of Gaza. Classic Trump: Go to the extreme, making what once seemed outrageous suddenly look like the reasonable middle ground.”

Whatever motivated Trump’s comments, his proposal remains a repudiation of the principle of national self-determination, which has been a cornerstone of U.S. foreign policy for more than a century, albeit one that has been imperfectly honored.

Any direct U.S. intervention in Gaza would fly in the face of Trump’s long-standing desire to disengage from foreign entanglements; he began negotiations to withdraw U.S. forces from Afghanistan, wants to slash aid to Ukraine and has threatened to abandon military positions in Korea, Europe, and Syria. And it may face pushback from at home from some usually reliable allies.

“I think that would be an interesting proposal,” Senator Lindsey Graham told reporters on Capitol Hill after Trump spoke. “We’ll see what our Arab friends say about that. I think most South Carolinians would probably not be excited about sending Americans to take over Gaza. It might be problematic.”

The plan also, ultimately, was at least a little bit about real estate. Trump remains a developer at heart, and his son-in-law Jared Kushner said last year that Gaza’s “waterfront property could be very valuable” and that Israel should remove civilians while it “cleans up” the strip. The president today suggested that the appeal of Gaza’s beachfront property would be a draw for the strip’s future inhabitants, whether or not they be Palestinian, when asked whom he imagined living in the rebuilt region.

“I envision world people living there,” Trump declared. “The Riviera of the Middle East.”

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Americans keeping close track of political news may have been toggling their screens today between Senate confirmation hearings: the second day of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s for secretary of Health and Human Services, and the first for Tulsi Gabbard’s for director of national intelligence and Kash Patel’s for FBI director. But each of those three hearings deserves the public’s full attention: Donald Trump’s nominees offered new glimpses into their approaches to policy, truth, and loyalty to the president.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Day Two

Ahead of Kennedy’s first day of hearings, our colleague Nicholas Florko noted that the HHS nominee is no stranger to conspiracist statements: “RFK Jr. has insinuated that an attempt to assassinate members of Congress via anthrax-laced mail in 2001 may have been a ‘false flag’ attack orchestrated by ‘someone in our government’ to gin up interest in the government preparing for potential biological weapon threats. He has claimed that COVID was ‘targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people,’ and that 5G is being used to ‘harvest our data and control our behavior.’ He has suggested that the use of antidepressants might be linked to mass shootings.”

“If Republican senators skirt around [Kennedy’s] falsehoods during today’s confirmation hearings,” Nicholas wrote, “it will be evidence of their prevailing capitulation to Trump. And it also may be a function of Kennedy’s rhetorical sleights … He’s capable of rattling off vaccine studies with the fluency of a virologist, which boosts his credibility, even though he’s freely misrepresenting reality.” But Kennedy’s sleights didn’t serve him quite as well today as he might have hoped.

At several points, senators encouraged Kennedy to acknowledge that vaccines are not the cause of autism, but instead of confirming what numerous studies have shown to be true, Kennedy insisted that he would need to “look at all the data” before coming to any conclusions. “The room went silent today during Senator [Bill] Cassidy’s closing questions,” Nicholas noted when we spoke this afternoon. “Cassidy was practically begging Kennedy to recant his previous statements on vaccines. Kennedy, like everyone else in the room, had to know this was a make-or-break moment for his confirmation. But despite the potential fallout, Kennedy refused, promising only that he would look at any studies presented to him disproving a link between vaccines and autism.”

The nominee for HHS secretary also showed, for the second day in a row, his lack of understanding about basics of the Medicare system, fumbling his answers to a series of rapid-fire questions from Senator Maggie Hassan, a Democrat from New Hampshire. Hassan also shared that she is the mother of a 36-year-old with cerebral palsy, and accused Kennedy of relitigating settled science on the fact that vaccines do not cause autism. “It’s the relitigating and rehashing and continuing to sow doubt so we can’t move forward, and it freezes us in place,” she argued.

Cassidy, whose vote could prove key to whether RFK Jr. is confirmed, said after today’s hearing that he is “struggling” over whether to confirm Kennedy.

Tulsi Gabbard

Gabbard came into her confirmation process with a history that raises questions about her commitment to national security (she has, among other things, met with former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and expressed sympathetic views toward Russian President Vladimir Putin). As our colleague Tom Nichols wrote in November, “Gabbard has every right to her personal views, however inscrutable they may be. As a private citizen, she can apologize for Assad and Putin to her heart’s content. But as a security risk, Gabbard is a walking Christmas tree of warning lights. If she is nominated to be America’s top intelligence officer, that’s everyone’s business.”

The topic that ultimately received much attention in her confirmation hearing today was her refusal to say whether Edward Snowden is a traitor. Despite pressure from Democratic and Republican senators, Gabbard refused to answer the question, repeating that Snowden had broken the law and that she would take steps to make sure whistleblowers know how to properly make a complaint. Gabbard also revealed that she was unable to extract any concessions in her 2017 meeting with Assad. “I didn’t expect to,” she said.

Gabbard’s potential confirmation will depend on how her somewhat incoherent set of policy views sits with Republican senators. Last week, our colleague Elaine Godfrey explored the one through line—besides ambition—that has guided Gabbard’s otherwise inconsistent political career.

Kash Patel

Donald Trump is not always clear about what he means when he refers to “DEI,” but presumably it involves how someone’s identity is taken into consideration during the hiring process. In this morning’s press conference addressing the tragic plane crash last night, Trump asserted, without evidence but crediting his “common sense,” that DEI hiring at the Federal Aviation Administration was at fault.

It was odd, then, that a few hours later, Republican senators used Patel’s confirmation hearing to highlight his identity: Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina asked about examples of racism Patel has experienced, and Senator Mike Lee of Utah acknowledged the struggles Patel and his father must have faced as racial minorities in the United States and Uganda, respectively. Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina, as if he were reading from a book report about the Gujarati people, lauded the religious diversity in Gujarat, India, where Patel’s family is originally from, omitting the state’s extreme tensions and violent history. Patel opened his own remarks by acknowledging his family’s journey from abroad. He invoked the phrase Jai Shri Krishna, a standard greeting for a sect of Hindus seeking blessings.

Patel was calm and still—he became riled up only when questioned by Senator Amy Klobuchar about his past suggestion that he would “shut down the FBI Hoover Building on day one and reopen it the next day as a museum of the ‘deep state.’” But he was walking a tightrope. Today’s hearing may be the rare instance when Patel has publicly broken with Trump, to whom he has otherwise been unequivocally loyal. He refused to explicitly state that Trump lost the 2020 election, but he also said, “I do not agree with the commutation of any sentence of any individual who committed violence against law enforcement.”

Overall, Patel seemed to be trying to carefully toe a line, answering questions about the culture-war issues that Trump and congressional Republicans care about—Senator Marsha Blackburn, for example, asserted during the hearing that the FBI prioritizes DEI and “counting Swiftie bracelets” over conducting investigations—while attempting not to alienate the employees he hopes to lead. Pressed by Blackburn, Patel made a vague statement about the “high standards” FBI employees must meet.

Related:

RFK Jr. has a lot to learn about Medicaid. What everyone gets wrong about Tulsi Gabbard

Here are four new stories from The Atlantic:

The memo that shocked the White House The near misses at airports have been telling us something. Donald Trump is just watching this crisis unfold. Jonathan Lemire: “What I saw at Trump’s first press conference”

Today’s News

Officials announced that there are no survivors in the crash last night between a U.S.-military Black Hawk helicopter and a regional American Airlines passenger jet landing at an airport near Washington, D.C. Three soldiers were aboard the helicopter, and 64 people were on the flight from Wichita, Kansas. Donald Trump appointed Christopher Rocheleau as the acting administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration. The agency had not had an administrator since the start of Trump’s new term. Eight hostages were released from Gaza by Hamas, and Israel released 110 Palestinian prisoners.

Dispatches

Time-Travel Thursdays: Don Peck interviews Nicholas Carr about h​​ow online life has rewired our brains.

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“The ‘exciting business opportunity’ that ruined our lives” Trump’s war on meritocracy If Iranian assassins kill them, it will be Trump’s fault, Tom Nichols writes. Don’t politicize aviation safety. The return of snake oil Why Meta is paying $25 million to settle a Trump lawsuit

Evening Read

Illustration by Ben Kothe / The Atlantic. Source: Getty.

Your FOMO Is Trying to Tell You Something

By Faith Hill

I feel deeply haunted by the thought that if I don’t go to the party or the dinner or the coffee stroll, my one wild and precious life will be void of a joyful, transformative event—one I’d surely still be thinking about on my deathbed, a friend at my side tenderly holding my hand and whispering, Remember? That time we went bowling and the guy in the next lane over said that funny thing? Every year, my New Year’s resolution is to keep one night of the week free from social plans. Almost every week, I fail.

Read the full article.

Culture Break

Illustration by The Atlantic. Source: Jamie McCarthy / Getty.

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Buried within one of the dozens of executive orders that President Donald Trump issued in his first days in office is a section titled “Terminating the Green New Deal.” As presidential directives go, this one initially seemed like a joke. The Green New Deal exists mostly in the dreams of climate activists; it has never been fully enacted into law.

The next line of Trump’s order, however, made clear he is quite serious: “All agencies shall immediately pause the disbursement of funds appropriated through the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 or the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.” The president is apparently using “the Green New Deal” as a shorthand for any federal spending on climate change. But the two laws he targets address much more than that: The $900 billion IRA not only funds clean-energy programs but also lowers prescription-drug prices, while the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure law represents the biggest investment in roads, bridges, airports, and public transportation in decades. And the government has spent only a portion of each.

In one sentence, Trump appears to have cut off hundreds of billions of dollars in spending that Congress has already approved, torching Joe Biden’s two most significant legislative accomplishments. The order stunned even some Republicans, many of whom supported the infrastructure law and have taken credit for its investments.

And Trump didn’t stop there. Yesterday, the White House ordered a pause on all federal grants and loans—a move that could put on hold an additional tens of billions of dollars already approved by Congress, touching many corners of American life. Democrats and government watchdogs see the directives as an opening salvo in a fight over the separation of powers, launched by a president bent on defying Congress’s will. “It’s an illegal executive order, and it’s stealing,” Representative Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, told me, referring to the order targeting the IRA and infrastructure law.

Withholding money approved by Congress “undermines the entire architecture of the Constitution,” Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland told me. “It essentially makes the president into a king.” Last night, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said that Trump’s freeze on federal grants and loans “blatantly disobeys the law.”

The Constitution gives Congress the so-called power of the purse—that is, the House and the Senate decide how much money the government spends and where it goes. Since 1974, a federal law known as the Impoundment Control Act has prohibited the executive branch from spending less than the amount of money that Congress appropriates for a given program or purpose. During Trump’s first term, the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office found that the administration had violated that law by holding up aid to Ukraine—a move that became central to Trump’s 2019 impeachment.

[Jonathan Chait: Trump’s second term might have already peaked]

Trump has argued that the Impoundment Control Act is unconstitutional, and so has his nominee for budget director, Russell Vought, who had the same job at the end of the president’s first term. Vought also helped write Project 2025, the conservative-governing blueprint that attracted so many attacks from Democrats that Trump disavowed it during the campaign.

In his Senate confirmation hearings this month, Vought repeatedly refused to commit to abiding by the impoundment act even as he acknowledged that it is “the law of the land.” “For 200 years, presidents had the ability to spend less than an appropriation if they could do it for less,” he told senators at his first hearing. During his second appearance, when Van Hollen asked him whether he would comply with the law, Vought did not answer directly. “Senator, the president ran against the Impoundment Control Act,” he replied. His defiance astonished Democrats. “It’s absolutely outrageous,” Van Hollen told me.

The pause on funds for the Biden-signed laws did not draw as much attention as other moves Trump made on his first day back in the White House, especially his blanket pardons for January 6 defendants. Nor was it the only one that appeared to test the limits of his authority. A separate executive order froze nearly all foreign aid for 90 days, while others targeted birthright citizenship and civil-service protections for federal employees.

But the order cutting off spending for the IRA and the infrastructure law could have far-reaching implications. State and municipal governments in both Democratic and Republican jurisdictions worry that they may not be able to use investments and grants that the federal government promised them. “It’s creating chaos,” DeLauro said. “I honestly don’t think the people who are dealing with this know what they are doing.” She listed a range of popular and economically significant programs that appear to be on pause, including assistance for home-energy bills and money to replace lead pipes that contaminate drinking water.

“It was alarming,” Representative Don Bacon of Nebraska told me. Bacon, a Republican who narrowly won reelection in a district Trump lost, called the White House after reading the text of last week’s executive order to seek assurance that money he’d secured for Nebraska—including $73 million to upgrade Omaha’s airport—wouldn’t be stopped.

The immediate confusion became so intense that a day after Trump signed the order, the White House issued a memo seeking to clarify its scope that seemed to slightly narrow its impact and open the door for some spending to continue. Bacon told me that he was assured the directive applied mostly to Biden’s electric-vehicle mandate, which Trump railed against on the campaign trail and is part of the IRA. DeLauro, however, said the memo offered little clarity: “Everything is at risk.”

Yesterday’s memo extending the funding pause to all federal grant and loan programs set off another frenzy. The directive sought to exempt Medicare and Social Security recipients, as well as other direct aid to individuals. But according to a copy of the memo published by The Washington Post, it explicitly targets “financial assistance for foreign aid, nongovernmental organizations, DEI, woke gender ideology, and the green new deal.”

Whether the funding pause constitutes an illegal impoundment is unclear. The executive branch does have some latitude in how it spends money. And yesterday’s memo instructs federal agencies to halt funding only “to the extent permissible under applicable law.” Describing last week’s order targeting the IRA and infrastructure law, Vought told senators that it was merely a “programmatic delay,” a term that arguably falls within what federal departments are allowed to do.

More broadly, executive orders are frequently less consequential than they appear, Nicholas Bagley, a law professor at the University of Michigan and occasional Atlantic contributor, told me about last week’s directive. “It’s one thing to try to get a really nice headline for cutting back on government spending. It’s another thing altogether to decline to spend money that people are expecting you to spend,” Bagley said. “I would not be surprised if rhetoric does not match reality.”

To Charlie Ellsworth, a senior adviser with the nonprofit watchdog Congressional Integrity Project, Trump’s executive order on clean energy unmistakably oversteps the law. “They could have done this legally, but they didn’t,” Ellsworth, a former Schumer aide, told me. A new administration, for example, could have justified a pause in spending to ensure that a program was being funded in accordance with the law. But the order instead instructs agencies to ensure that the spending aligns with new policies set by the Trump administration. Ellsworth said that the order is “self-evidently” illegal.

The fight is almost certain to wind up in the courts, which have repeatedly ruled against the president’s ability to withhold funds appropriated by Congress. Indeed, Vought’s Senate testimony seemed to invite a legal challenge that could lead the Supreme Court, now with a 6–3 conservative majority and three Trump-appointed justices, to reconsider the question. “That seems to be their game plan,” Ellsworth said. “They want to get sued. They want to go to the Supreme Court.”

Van Hollen told me that he believes the Court would rule against Trump but that preferably the dispute won’t get that far. “You would hope that Republicans in Congress recognize they have an institutional interest in protecting Article I [of the Constitution] and the power of the purse, which is clearly congressional,” Van Hollen said.

[David A. Graham: It’s already different]

Beyond the question of legality, Van Hollen warned that Trump’s orders would jeopardize virtually all negotiations over spending on Capitol Hill, because Democrats would not be able to trust the administration to keep its end of any agreement. Although Republicans have majorities in both the House and the Senate, they will need to strike deals with Democrats to avert government shutdowns and a catastrophic default on U.S. debt.

There were early signs of GOP pushback on last week’s spending freeze, but it fell well short of a revolt. Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, the chair of the Homeland and Governmental Affairs Committee, said at one of Vought’s hearings that he disagreed with the administration’s view on spending and impoundments. “I think if we appropriate something for a cause, that’s where it’s supposed to go, and that will still be my position,” Paul said. And Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, the chair of the Budget Committee, said at a second Vought hearing that he, too, had “concerns” about impoundment. But neither of them planned to stand in the way of the nominee who has argued for the president to wrest control of spending from Congress. “When you win, you get to pick people,” Graham told Vought. “And I’m glad he picked you.”

On the Republican side, the fight might be left to lawmakers such as Bacon, who has some protection from presidential retribution because he represents a purple district where voters might reward him for standing up to Trump. The GOP, he said, should go after policies it opposes through legislation, not executive order. “You just can’t determine what laws you want to execute and what you don’t,” Bacon said of Trump. Executive orders, he added, “have gotten out of hand” from presidents in both parties. “You can’t change the law,” Bacon said. “I think Republicans should stay true to that notion.”

The staff was still setting up dinner on Mar-a-Lago’s outdoor patio on a balmy early-January evening when Donald Trump sat down. He was surrounded by several top advisers who would soon join him in the West Wing and who wanted to get his input before his attention shifted to his wealthy guests and Palm Beach club members.

Susie Wiles, the incoming chief of staff, led the conversation, listing some of the dozens of executive orders that had been teed up for Trump’s signature once he reclaimed the presidency. She wanted to talk about sequencing, according to a Trump adviser present at the meeting, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations. How would he like to stagger the orders over the first few weeks back in office?

“No,” Trump replied, this person told me. “I want to sign as many as possible as soon as we show up.”

“Day one,” he said.

Trump has followed through on the promise of an onslaught, unleashing in his first week more than two dozen executive orders, holding a nearly hour-long news conference and other question-and-answer-filled public appearances, and posting several times a day on social media. Some of this, of course, is in Trump’s nature. He is an inveterate showman whose instincts are to seek attention and dominate the discussion.

[Jonathan Chait: Trump’s second term might have already peaked]

But this time around, Trump’s ubiquity is also a deliberate strategy, several of his aides and allies told me. Part of the point is to send a message to the American people that their self-declared “favorite” president is getting things done. The person at the Palm Beach meeting and another Trump adviser, who also requested anonymity to describe private conversations, told me that the White House’s flood of orders and news is also designed to disorient already despairing Democratic foes, leaving them so battered that they won’t be able to mount a cohesive opposition.

Trump’s actions in his first week have been a mix of signal and noise, of distraction and seriousness. He has taken some defeats. But Trump has succeeded, at least, in creating a stark contrast with the quiet of his predecessor, and in (yet again) shifting the nation’s political discourse back toward him. And compared with 2017, the resistance has been far more muted. The Democrats, without an obvious head of the party and still digging out from November’s election disappointment, have yet to make a focused counterargument to Trump, instead getting largely drowned out in the national discourse.

“This is four years in the making. It’s days of thunder. The scale and the depth of this has blown the Democrats out. It’s blown out the media,” Steve Bannon, a former senior White House aide who still informally advises Trump, told me. “He vowed to start fast and now knows what he’s doing. This is a totally different guy than in 2017.”

When Trump left office in disgrace after the January 6, 2021, insurrection, former administration officials, conservative lawyers, and think-tank researchers began drafting orders and legislation—most famously, the Heritage Foundation initiative known as Project 2025—that could act as the foundation of a Trump revival. And after he won, his inner circle made clear that this time the administration would be staffed with true loyalists.

Wiles, who also co-chaired Trump’s campaign, told a closed-door gathering of Republican donors in Las Vegas in the early days of the transition that the president’s first moves would be to reinstate some executive orders from his first term that President Joe Biden had revoked, according one of the Trump advisers and another person familiar with the meeting. Wiles told the private gathering, for a group called the Rockbridge Network, that Trump would begin by withdrawing from the Paris climate treaty and the World Health Organization. Trump, indeed, signed those orders on his first day back in office, but they were only two of the directives to which he affixed his signature—with a giant Sharpie—in ceremonies held at the Capitol; inside a sports arena in Washington, D.C.; and in the Oval Office during his inauguration festivities and in the days that followed.

His executive orders so far have covered immigration, trade, demographic diversity, civil rights, and the hiring of federal workers. Trump ordered DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) programs in the federal government to be eliminated. He curtailed the Department of Justice’s civil-rights investigations. Federal health agencies were ordered to halt public communications. And he moved to expand presidential power by eliminating protections for federal workers—so he could more easily staff agencies with supporters—and by refusing, without citing any legal authority, to uphold the U.S. ban on TikTok despite a unanimous Supreme Court ruling in the ban’s favor.

“The EOs are so much better-executed now,” Bannon told me. “Back in 2017, we were writing things on the back of envelopes. It was like a playground game, shirts and skins. Now they have good people working, real lawyers.”

Some of Trump’s moves have been symbolic, such as one order to rename the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America and another to insist that, even in national times of mourning, flags be flown at full staff on Inauguration Day. Others ordered government reviews—to examine China’s compliance with trade deals, for example, or the feasibility of creating an External Revenue Service to collect tariffs—but might not have real heft. If it was hard to tell the difference between what was real and what was for show, that was by design, the two advisers told me—to make it difficult for Trump’s opponents to focus their outrage.

His aides debated for weeks about how to enact his campaign pledge to pardon the January 6 rioters, whom the incoming president had declared “hostages.” Days before Trump took office, many advisers, including Vice President J. D. Vance, expected that pardons would be issued for many of the offenders but not, at least immediately, for those convicted of violent crimes, including assaulting police officers. But Trump overruled them, issuing a blanket pardon, and he included commutations for the leaders of the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys, each of whom had been sentenced to more than 15 years in prison for seditious conspiracy. The two Trump advisers said that Trump thought leaving anyone out would invalidate the underpinning of the Capitol riot—his insistence that he won the 2020 presidential election. Trump also decided that any blowback would be manageable.

[Read: Trump’s first shot in his war on the ‘deep state’]

Not everything has worked out for Trump in his first week. Even some staunch Trump allies recoiled from the pardons for violent January 6 offenders; Senator Lindsey Graham called them “a mistake” on Meet the Press. Perhaps most notable, Trump’s move to end birthright citizenship generated a wave of legal action and was blocked by a federal judge. On his first day in office, Trump took on the Fourteenth Amendment by issuing a directive to federal agencies to stop issuing citizenship documents to children born on U.S. soil to parents in the country illegally or under temporary visas. The U.S. government has long interpreted the Fourteenth Amendment to mean that those born on American soil are citizens at birth, regardless of their parents’ immigration status. The U.S. district court judge who blocked the order, John Coughenour, called it “blatantly unconstitutional” and told a Trump administration attorney, “I have difficulty understanding how a member of the bar could state unequivocally that this is a constitutional order.”

Trump has also struggled to achieve his goal of fast-tracking Cabinet confirmations in the early days of his administration. His choice for secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, became the first Pentagon nominee to require the tie-breaking vote of the vice president to be confirmed. And Trump’s team is even more concerned about his pick for director of national intelligence, former Representative Tulsi Gabbard. The president’s aides are not certain that she has the needed support, and Trump himself has expressed some doubt that she’ll be confirmed, the two Trump advisers told me.

Despite these stumbles, the White House has reveled in Trump’s bombastic, over-the-top style, believing that his message is breaking through. Immigration officers have conducted raids in Chicago; Newark, New Jersey; and other cities. A dozen Guatemalan men in shackles were boarded onto a military aircraft in El Paso, Texas, for the deportation flight to their native country, according to the Department of Homeland Security. Trump threatened tariffs on Colombia in a tiff, now seemingly resolved, over deportation flights. His advisers have also aimed to keep the media off-balance. The White House press office has not sent out a daily schedule to reporters, and has given little notice for Trump’s events. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt has yet to hold a formal briefing (though the first is tentatively slated for later today).

The speed and volume of Trump’s orders so far seem to be scrambling the left. Millions of protesters marched in cities across the nation on January 21, 2017. Democratic civic groups exploded in popularity, liberals organized voter-registration drives, and cable-TV ratings and newspaper subscriptions soared. Late-night comics made Trump their top punch line. Trump’s hastily written travel ban on Muslim-majority countries went into effect seven days into his term in 2017, sending lawyers and even ordinary citizens sprinting to airports to assist those who were suddenly subject to detainment. That moment, in many ways, was the early high-water mark of the resistance and set a template for the Democrats’ defiance going forward.

Yesterday marked the first week of Trump’s second term. No large-scale protests have taken place. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries argued during last week’s caucus meeting that Democrats cannot chase every outrage, because the Trump administration will “flood the zone” with maddening changes, one person in the room told me. In a Saturday Night Live sketch this past weekend, the show’s Trump character shut down a performance based on Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton, which became a liberal totem a decade ago. The mood among Democrats, at least in some quarters, feels more like resignation than resistance.

So far, the action on the left has been centered more in the courtrooms than in the streets. Deirdre Schifeling, the chief political and advocacy officer of the American Civil Liberties Union, told me that the organization has filed lawsuits to contest a variety of Trump’s immigration orders and has worked to train volunteers in dozens of states to help local officials in responding to the administration’s plans.

“We’re in a different moment. People are not as surprised as the first time. But I would not mistake that for a lack of willingness to fight,” Schifeling said. “It seems like this first week is one giant test balloon—seeing what will stick, seeing what they can get away with. It’s incumbent on all of us to stay calm and firmly push back on them. Don’t give them an inch.”

[David A. Graham: It’s already different]

Jennifer Palmieri, a longtime Democratic strategist who served as White House communications director for Barack Obama and worked on Hillary Clinton’s and Kamala Harris’s campaigns, told me that Democrats “can’t stay demoralized” and must recognize that Trump proposed “an agenda that people bought into”—that even gave him a popular-vote victory.

“Now [we need] to stay most focused on those issues—like prices—which he is the most vulnerable on,” Palmieri said. Inflation was a core campaign issue, and Trump himself noted during the transition that he “won on groceries,” telling Meet the Press in December, “We’re going to bring those prices way down.”

“It’s a tangible thing, and he needs to deliver,” Palmieri said.

That hasn’t started happening yet. For all the shock and awe of Trump’s first week, none of his initial actions directly took on inflation. But nor are Democrats making Trump look particularly vulnerable.

Donald Trump promised his supporters that if he won the presidency again, he would pardon at least some of the January 6 rioters who have been prosecuted. “Tonight I’m going to be signing on the J6 hostages pardons to get them out,” he told the crowd at Capital One Arena on Monday night. “And as soon as I leave, I’m going to the Oval Office, and will be signing pardons for a lot of people.”

Many prominent Republicans seem to agree with Trump’s view that the January 6 insurrectionists, including men convicted of assaulting police officers, are government “hostages.” The view seems to be that Democrats are using the events of January 6 as an excuse to carry out what Trump calls a “witch hunt.”

Prominent Republicans weren’t always blasé about January 6. Immediately following the attack on the Capitol, and even into the following year, many leading Republicans condemned the attack on the Capitol and the police officers assigned to protect it.

As an antidote to amnesia, here is an incomplete compilation of remarks about the January 6 violence made by Republicans who now are seeking Cabinet-level positions in the new Trump administration, or are otherwise in Trump’s inner circle.

Elise Stefanik, United Nations Ambassador-Designate, January 6, 2021 (press release now deleted): “This is truly a tragic day for America. I fully condemn the dangerous violence and destruction that occurred today at the United States Capitol. Americans have a Constitutional right to protest and freedom of speech, but violence in any form is absolutely unacceptable and anti-American. The perpetrators of this un-American violence and destruction must be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”

Marco Rubio, Secretary of State nominee, January 6, 2021: “There is nothing patriotic about what is occurring on Capitol Hill. This is 3rd world style anti-American anarchy.”

Kristi Noem, Homeland Security Secretary nominee, January 6, 2021 (tweet now deleted): “We are all entitled to peacefully protest. Violence is not a part of that. What’s happening in the Capitol right now must stop.”

Doug Burgum, Interior Secretary nominee, January 6, 2021: “We support the right to peacefully protest. The violence happening at our nation’s capitol is reprehensible and does not represent American values, and needs to stop immediately.”

Vivek Ramaswamy, Department of Government Efficiency co-leader, September 13, 2022: “It was a dark day for democracy. The loser of the last election refused to concede the race, claimed the election was stolen, raised hundreds of millions of dollars from loyal supporters, and is considering running for executive office again. I’m referring, of course, to Donald Trump.”

Kevin McCarthy, then–Speaker of the House, January 13, 2021: “The president bears responsibility for Wednesday’s attack on Congress by mob rioters. He should have immediately denounced the mob when he saw what was unfolding. These facts require immediate action from President Trump—accept his share of responsibility, quell the brewing unrest, and ensure that President-Elect Biden is able to successfully begin his term. And the president’s immediate action also deserves congressional action, which is why I think a fact-finding commission and a censure resolution would be prudent. Unfortunately, that is not where we are today.”

Lindsey Graham, South Carolina senator, January 6, 2021: “Those who made this attack on our government need to be identified and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Their actions are repugnant to democracy.”

Mike Lee, Utah senator, January 6, 2021: “The violence at the United States Capitol is completely unacceptable. It is time for the protesters to disperse. My staff and I are safe. We are working to finish our constitutional duty to finish counting votes today.”

Ted Cruz, Texas senator, January 5, 2022: “A violent terrorist attack on the Capitol where we saw the men and women of law enforcement … risk their lives to defend the men and women who serve in this Capitol.”

Nikki Haley, 2024 presidential candidate, January 12, 2021: “We need to acknowledge [Trump] let us down. He went down a path he shouldn’t have, and we shouldn’t have followed him, and we shouldn’t have listened to him. And we can’t let that ever happen again.”

Ron DeSantis, governor of Florida and 2024 presidential candidate, January 6, 2021: “Violence or rioting of any kind is unacceptable and the perpetrators must face the full weight of the law.”

[Peter Wehner: No one will remember Jack Smith’s report]

Steve Scalise, Louisiana representative, now–House Majority Leader, January 12, 2021: “Like many Americans, I am deeply upset and outraged over the domestic terrorism we witnessed last week in our nation’s Capitol. It is clear that tensions in our country are dangerously high. It is incumbent upon leaders to be focused, first and foremost, on uniting our country and ensuring a smooth transition of power to the Biden administration over the coming days.”

John Barrasso, Wyoming senator, now–Senate Majority Whip, January 6, 2021: “This violence and destruction have no place in our republic. It must end now.”

Tom Emmer, Minnesota representative, now–Majority Whip of the House of Representatives, January 6, 2022: “One year ago, we saw an unacceptable display of violence that runs counter to everything we stand for as a country. Those responsible for the violence must continue to be held accountable, and Congress must focus on providing our men and women in law enforcement around the Capitol—and across the nation—with the resources, training, and support they need to ensure something like this never happens again.”

Lisa McClain, Michigan representative, now–chair of the House Republican Conference, January 6, 2021: “Today was an atrocious day for Democracy. What started out as Members of Congress following a sacred and Constitutional tradition, quickly was overcome by violent protestors. I wholeheartedly condemn the violence and vandalism at the Capitol and all who participated in such evil behavior. These vile acts are a slap in the face to peace-loving Americans.”

Kevin Hern, Oklahoma representative, now–Chair of the House Republican Policy Committee, January 7, 2021: “Our Capitol building has been a symbol of American freedoms and democracy around the world, yet it was invaded by law breakers seeking to undermine our republican form of government and erode those ideals. There is no excuse for the violent actions witnessed in the halls of Congress. This summer, when Antifa rioters burned American cities to the ground and held Portland hostage for over 100 days, I called for the investigation, arrest, and prosecution of those involved. I consider the crimes committed at the Capitol today to be of the same magnitude, and I support the investigation, arrest, and prosecution of those involved in the violent acts to the full extent of the law.”

Mario Díaz-Balart, Florida representative, January 6, 2021: “The Capitol building is the center and sacred symbol of democracy. Today’s violent actions undermine the principles and values that our nation was founded on. Individuals who broke into the US Capitol or assaulted our law enforcement should face the full consequences of the law.”

[Read: What I saw on the January 6 committee]

Dan Crenshaw, Texas representative, January 7, 2021: “On Wednesday the Capitol of the most powerful nation the world has ever known was stormed by an angry mob. Americans surely never thought they’d see such a scene: members of Congress barricaded inside the House chamber, Capitol Police trampled, and four Americans dead. A woman was shot near the elevator I use every day to enter the House floor. It was a display not of patriotism but of frenzy and anarchy. The actions of a few overshadowed the decent intentions of many.”

Cynthia Lummis, Wyoming senator, January 6, 2021: “Call it what it is: An attack on the Capitol is an attack on democracy. Today we are trying to use the democratic process to address grievances. This violence inhibits our ability to do that. Violent protests were unacceptable this summer and are unacceptable now.”

Cathy McMorris Rodgers, then–Washington representative, January 6, 2021 (press release now deleted): “What happened today and continues to unfold in the nation’s capital is disgraceful and un-American. Thugs assaulted Capitol Police Officers, breached and defaced our Capitol Building, put people’s lives in danger, and disregarded the values we hold dear as Americans. To anyone involved, shame on you. We must have a peaceful transfer of power. The only reason for my objection was to give voice to the concern that governors and courts unilaterally changed election procedures without the will of the people and outside of the legislative process. I have been consistent in my belief that Americans should utilize the Constitutional tools and legal processes available to seek answers to their questions about the 2020 election. What we have seen today is unlawful and unacceptable. I have decided I will vote to uphold the Electoral College results and I encourage Donald Trump to condemn and put an end to this madness.”

Rick Scott, Florida senator, January 6, 2021: “Everyone has a right to peacefully protest. No one has a right to commit violence. What happened today at the Capitol is disgraceful and un-American. It is not what our country stands for.”

John Thune, South Dakota senator, now–Senate Majority Leader, January 6, 2021: “I hope that the types of people who stormed the capitol today get a clear message that they will not stop our democracy from moving forward.”

Marsha Blackburn, Tennessee senator, January 6, 2021: “These actions at the US Capitol by protestors are truly despicable and unacceptable. While I am safe and sheltering in place, these protests are prohibiting us from doing our constitutional duty. I condemn them in the strongest possible terms. We are a nation of laws.”

John Kennedy, Louisiana senator, January 6, 2021: “I condemn this violent assault on the democratic process & will not be intimidated by a mob that confuses chaos & destruction with strength & wisdom. I’ll continue to work for LA.”

[Listen: January 6 and the case for oblivion]

Steve Daines, Montana senator, January 6, 2021: “Today is a sad day for our country. The destruction and violence we saw at our Capitol today is an assault on our democracy, our Constitution and the rule of law, and must not be tolerated. As Americans, we believe in the right to peaceful protest. We must rise above the violence. We must stand together. We will not let today’s violence deter Congress from certifying the election. We must restore confidence in our electoral process. We must, and we will, have a peaceful and orderly transition of power.”

Tim Scott, South Carolina senator and 2024 presidential candidate, January 6, 2021: “The violence occurring at the United States Capitol right now is simply unacceptable, and I fully condemn it.”