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From New Yorker

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From Vox

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+A man with an unauthorized inauguration credential — and a handgun — was arrested by Capitol Police. He says it was a misunderstanding. +

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+A man was arrested by US Capitol Police on Friday after officers found an unregistered gun and ammunition in his vehicle when he attempted to present what the department described as an unauthorized inauguration credential at a security checkpoint, according to CNN. +

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+However, the man who was arrested — a Virginian named Wesley Beeler — said Saturday that he was merely on his way to work, and that his arrest was caused by what he called an “honest mistake.” +

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+The arrest came after Beeler was stopped at a security checkpoint, roughly half a mile away from the Capitol area. Beeler reportedly attempted to pass through the checkpoint using an unauthorized inauguration credential, and when officers checked a list of those allowed to be in the area, he wasn’t on it. +

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+After police stopped him, they reportedly searched his car and found a handgun, as well as 509 rounds of handgun ammunition and 21 shotgun shells. The New York Times and CNN report that Beeler was asked whether he had a weapon in the vehicle, and that he told police he had a loaded Glock pistol in the truck’s center console. His truck also reportedly had multiple gun-related bumper decals. +

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+“Beeler is charged with carrying a concealed weapon, possessing an unregistered firearm, unlawful possession of ammunition and possession of a large capacity ammunition feeding device,” NBC Washington reports. The gun Beeler had was not registered in DC, according to NBC Washington; in the District, possession of an unregistered firearm is illegal and subject to penalty. +

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+On Saturday, Beeler’s father told the Times that his son was working on security with Capitol Police. An anonymous federal law enforcement official said that he was a contractor and that his credential was not fake, according to the paper. Beeler was authorized to have a firearm for his security work, but the gun was not registered in Washington, DC, the Times reported. +

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+After his release on Saturday, Beeler told the Washington Post he’d neglected to take his firearm out of his vehicle because he had been running late for work; he told the paper he works with MVP Protective Services, and that that company gave him the inauguration credentials that were rejected by the security forces. +

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+“I pulled up to a checkpoint after getting lost in DC because I’m a country boy,” Beeler said. “I showed them the inauguration badge that was given to me.” +

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+Beeler added, “I don’t know what the DC laws are. It still comes back on me, but I’m not a criminal.” +

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+The arrest comes as security in Washington, DC, ramps up in anticipation for the January 20 inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden. Normal inauguration security has been even more robust than usual in the wake of the violent attack of the Capitol on January 6. As Vox’s Alex Ward reported, as many as 25,000 National Guard members will be stationed in Washington for the event, in addition to thousands of police and Secret Service members. +

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+The Secret Service has also worked with local officials to facilitate a large number of street closures, according to the Washington Post, dividing the area around the White House, National Mall, and the Capitol into “red” and “green” zones. In the red zones, which encircle federal buildings and national monuments, traffic is limited to authorized vehicles; in the green zones surrounding these red zones, resident and business traffic is allowed. +

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+Law enforcement officers have been on high alert for additional violence after pro-Trump rioters stormed the Capitol in a mob attack on the building that led to five deaths. The FBI has also raised warnings about potential demonstrations at state capitols — and the US Capitol — leading up to Inauguration Day next Wednesday. +

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+Officials are looking back as well: Four House committees have now opened an investigation into why security failed to block rioters from breaking into the Capitol, as Vox’s Aaron Rupar reported. Through the checkpoints and troop presence, law enforcement hopes to prevent a similar attack from happening again. +

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+A new poll finds a nation united on opposing the Capitol attacks but divided on who is to blame. +

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+An overwhelming majority of Americans disapprove of the storming of the US Capitol on January 6, but most Republicans say President Donald Trump bears no responsibility for the assault — and nearly half say Republican lawmakers didn’t go far enough in supporting the president’s efforts to overturn the election’s results, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll. +

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+The poll — which surveys 1,002 US adults, and was taken from January 10 to 13 — paints a striking picture, and finds a national consensus on the impropriety of what transpired at the Capitol, while revealing familiar divisions on who is to blame for the episode. +

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+The poll found that almost 9 in 10 Americans oppose the storming of the Capitol, and that 80 percent strongly oppose the attack. +

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+But the country’s divisions are apparent in questions on who is to blame — and what, if any, repercussions Trump should face for promoting a “wild” rally that eventually overran the country’s legislature and resulted in the deaths of five people. +

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+While majorities of the public disapprove of the president’s behavior, Trump still retains a large, if somewhat diminished, degree of support from Republicans, as does his disinformation campaign to discredit the 2020 election results. +

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+The poll found 56 percent of Americans believe that Congress should remove Trump from office and prevent him from holding elected office in the future. But among Republicans, 89 percent oppose such a course of action. +

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+The reason for that appears to be straightforward: The pollsters found most Republicans don’t think he did anything wrong. +

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+While 66 percent of Americans believe Trump has acted irresponsibly in his statements and actions since the election, 66 percent of Republicans think he acted responsibly, according to the poll. +

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+And while 57 percent of Americans believe Trump bears a great deal or good amount of responsibility for the violent attack, 56 percent of Republicans say Trump bears no responsibility — and another 22 percent say he bears some. +

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+A large percentage of Republicans also feel GOP leaders should in fact have gone further in their efforts to back Trump’s bid to overturn the election results. While 52 percent of Americans believe GOP leaders went too far in supporting Trump’s false claims about the election results, 48 percent of Republicans said they did not go far enough. +

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+A similar divide is also apparent in the poll’s results on whether Trump should be held legally liable for the attack. Most Americans think he should be criminally charged for his role; only 1 in 8 Republicans agree. +

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+These findings of Republicans as reluctant to assign blame to Trump match trends in other surveys. As Vox’s Sean Collins wrote in an analysis of polling conducted immediately after the Capitol Hill attack, considerable portions of Republicans are inclined to believe that the riot was not only not Trump’s fault, but actually something Democrats should be blamed for. +

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+“Instead of placing the insurrection at Trump’s feet, 52 percent of Republicans told YouGov that it was actually Biden’s fault; 42 percent of Republicans told Morning Consult the same — and 48 percent of Republicans told Morning Consult that Democrats in Congress were also to blame,” Collins wrote last week. +

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+Trump’s support has dropped sharply, but hasn’t collapsed +

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+There are, however, signs that a significant set of Republicans are skeptical that Trump is the right leader for their party going forward. According to the new Washington Post-ABC News poll, fewer than six in 10 Republicans and Republican-leaning independents say party leaders should follow Trump’s lead in the future, while 35 percent say they should move away from Trump — “a sentiment that has roughly doubled from 18 percent in 2018.” +

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+As FiveThirtyEight’s approval poll tracker shows, Trump’s support had one of the biggest drops of his presidency after the attack, and he has reached the lowest level of support in his tenure, at an average of about 38 percent approval and 58 percent disapproval. A shift in Republicans’ views accounts for much of the drop. +

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+Conservatives’ lingering commitment to Trump poses significant dilemmas for Republicans after Trump leaves office. Of late, Trump has taken a somewhat adversarial stance against certain segments of his party, threatening to back the primary opponents of lawmakers he does not like. Establishment Republicans are worried that a Trump-fueled split in the party could damage their prospects as they prepare for midterm elections. +

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+And some Republican lawmakers find Trump’s political style unpredictable, overly transgressive of political norms, and a distraction from their policy agenda. This is reportedly part of why Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is said to be contemplating voting to convict Trump in a Senate impeachment trial and why some Republicans are already working to defeat Trump-style candidates in the 2022 elections. +

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+But, as this poll demonstrates, Trump still has the enthusiastic support of many in the GOP. Regardless of how top lawmakers in the party may view him, they could risk alienating their own base if they try to move too far away from him, or sanction him. +

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+Higgs was the 13th federal prisoner executed since July 2020. +

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+In the early hours of Saturday morning, the Trump administration executed Dustin Higgs for taking part in a triple murder in Maryland in 1996, a crime of which he claimed to be innocent, including with his final words. +

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+Higgs’s execution was the 13th, and final, federal execution carried out by the Trump administration over the course of six months, a run which has broken starkly with modern precedent both in terms of speed and intensity: The federal government has carried out more federal executions since last summer than in the last 67 years combined. +

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+The Trump administration has argued that the executions were conducted as a matter of law, noting that all of those executed were found guilty at trial. “If you ask juries to impose and juries impose it, then it should be carried out,” former Trump administration Attorney General Bill Barr, told the Associated Press days before his resignation in December. +

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+But many criminal justice advocates — and some members of the Supreme Court — have argued that the schedule has been rushed in a way that neglected appropriate deliberation of the legality of the killings, and that they unfairly targeted people of color, as well as, people suffering from severe trauma. +

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+And some legal analysts note that Higgs’ execution was enabled by the Supreme Court through a maneuver that they describe as a transparent bid to facilitate Trump’s agenda. +

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+Higgs was found guilty in 2000 of first-degree premeditated murder, three counts of first-degree felony murder, and three counts of kidnapping resulting in death. The Justice Department said that in 1996 Higgs traveled with two male friends and three women to a Maryland wildlife refuge, and ordered one of his friends to shoot the three women, one of whom had allegedly rebuffed an advance by him. +

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+Higgs has said he is innocent of the crime, and that he gave no order for a killing. His friend who fired the shots who is serving a life sentence, Willis Haynes, has disputed the prosecutions’ argument that Higgs coerced him into the act in a signed affidavit, saying, “The prosecution’s theory of our case was bullshit. Dustin didn’t threaten me. I was not scared of him. Dustin didn’t make me do anything that night or ever.” +

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+Higgs reportedly claimed innocence again in his final words. “I’d like to say I am an innocent man. ... I am not responsible for the deaths,” he said, while mentioning the names of the victims. “I did not order the murders.” +

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+Higgs was diagnosed with Covid-19 before the execution, and his attorney had attempted to delay the execution on the basis that it was cruel, because of concerns that the virus might intensify the lethal injection of pentobarbital. Also at issue was whether Higgs could be executed in Indiana, where he was being held, after being sentenced in Maryland using a death penalty law that no longer exists. +

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+The execution went forward anyway. Higgs was given a lethal injection at the federal penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana, and pronounced dead at 1:23 am on Saturday morning. +

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+The Supreme Court appears to have acted extraordinarily to back Trump +

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+A number of legal analysts have described the Supreme Court’s handling of Higgs’ execution as “unprecedented” and “beyond extraordinary.” +

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+Slate’s legal writer Mark Joseph Stern explained that with Higgs, the high court ended up circumventing the traditional appeals process in order to swiftly provide legal backing to Trump’s order to proceed with the execution despite questions about Higgs’s sentencing before he left office: +

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+Federal law requires a federal death sentence to be implemented “in the manner prescribed” by the state in which it was imposed. But Higgs was sentenced by a federal court in Maryland, which abolished capital punishment in 2013, so there is no “manner prescribed” for Higgs’ execution. An appeals court upheld the district court’s stay, setting oral arguments for Jan. 27. On Jan. 11, Trump’s Department of Justice asked the Supreme Court to clear away these roadblocks. In a stunning move, the court agreed: It issued a summary decision on the merits of the case, short-circuiting the traditional appeals process. +

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+The Supreme Court’s 6-3 vote, in which the liberal wing of the court voted against the decision to clear the way for the execution, was accompanied by a blistering dissent from Justice Sonia Sotomayor. +

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+“This is not justice,” Sotomayor wrote in her dissent, arguing that the high court was not fulfilling its duty to deliberative process in green-lighting the act — and that it had similarly failed to do so with respect to the 12 executions prior to Higgs’. “After waiting almost two decades to resume federal executions, the government should have proceeded with some measure of restraint to ensure it did so lawfully. When it did not, this court should have. It has not.” +

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+Justice Stephen Breyer, argued that the Court had been negligent in considering the constitutionality of the executions, and that it had particularly failed in its duty to unusual issues, such as how the pandemic might affect the legality of executions. In his dissent, he asked, “How just is a legal system that would execute an individual without consideration of a novel or significant legal question that he has raised?” +

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+Jaime Santos, a partner at Goodwin Procter’s appellate litigation practice, described the ruling as “a political decision, not a doctrinal one and not one that is in any way consistent with the norms and precedents governing Supreme Court practice.” +

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+It is decisions such as these that have led observers like Vox’s Ian Millhiser to describe a conservative majority court as an “anti-democratic threat.” And Santos’s comments underscore concerns that the Supreme Court has become an institution that often privileges conservative political goals over traditional process. +

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+Trump’s capital punishment agenda +

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+Higgs’s death marks the end of a remarkably focused program of conducting federal executions that critics of capital punishment have deemed “a killing spree.” Strikingly, the federal executions were conducted amid a pandemic that drastically shrunk the number of executions carried out on the state level, and in the wake of a racial justice movement critical of an overly punitive criminal justice system. +

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+Experts say Trump’s emphasis on capital punishment in his final half-year in office marked a sharp departure from federal government norms, a trend which stands out all the more because support for the death penalty is at the lowest its been in decades. +

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+“No one has conducted this number of federal civilian executions in this short period of time in American history,” Robert Dunham, executive director of Death Penalty Information Center, told Vox in December. +

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+The uptick in federal executions also stood out in a year where capital punishment was used less than it had been in decades at the state level, largely due to pandemic-related slowdowns and shutdowns of the criminal justice system. +

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+“The fact that we’re having a record-high number of federal executions, at the same time that we’re near a record low in state executions, in the middle of a pandemic, shows how much the Trump administration is either out of touch or that it cannot resist gratuitous acts of cruelty,” Dunham told Vox in December. +

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+The Trump administration has routinely defended its use of capital punishment. For instance, Barr described the Trump administration’s commitment to the death penalty as carrying out the punishment against “the worst criminals.” +

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+But as the ACLU points out, many of those executed don’t tick off the conventional boxes for “worst criminals”: +

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+Our federal government killed two Black men for crimes they committed 20 years ago as teenagers; it killed a woman who was a victim of unthinkable sexual violence and torture; it killed two Black men who didn’t kill anyone; and a man with an intellectual disability so severe that it’s impossible to ignore in his final words. The Supreme Court paved the way for many of these executions to go forward despite lower court findings that the executions were unconstitutional or barred by federal law. +

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+Beyond seeking to revive and expedite the use of capital punishment, the Trump administration also expanded the way that it can be carried out. Last year the Justice Department created and finalized a rule that allows the government to use more ways to kill prisoners, including electrocution and firing squad. +

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+But while the revival of federal capital punishment has been a signature feature of Trump’s political and policy agenda, it is not clear to what extent it will be part of his legacy. President-elect Joe Biden has said he will work to abolish the federal death penalty, and Senate Democrats recently put out legislation that would abolish it. +

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From The Hindu: Sports

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From The Hindu: National News

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From BBC: Europe

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From Ars Technica

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From Jokes Subreddit

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