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The company believes Trump’s tweets risk further violence during a critical time for democracy.

Twitter permanently suspended President Donald Trump’s social media account on Friday afternoon, citing the risk of further incitement of violence.

The decision comes in the wake of Trump’s encouragement of a rally in Washington, DC, that resulted in a mob storming the Capitol building and at least five deaths. For years, the president has used his Twitter account to reach his nearly 90 million now-former followers on the platform as a means to bypass traditional media. Many critics have long argued that Twitter should take a firmer stance against Trump due to his dangerous use of the platform to spread lies and violent rhetoric. While some may see the move as too little, too late, and Trump’s supporters are questioning it entirely, it nevertheless marks a historic exertion of Twitter’s ability to influence politics during a time when the strength of democracy in the US is being seriously tested.

“In the context of horrific events this week, we made it clear on Wednesday that additional violations of the Twitter Rules would potentially result in this very course of action,” read a company blog post on Friday explaining the decision. Despite the fact that Twitter has generally allowed world leaders like Trump to post more controversial content than the average user since their tweets are deemed newsworthy, the company said that these accounts are still “not above our rules entirely and cannot use Twitter to incite violence, among other things.”

Ahead of the permanent ban, Twitter had previously temporarily suspended Trump’s tweets on Wednesday for violating its policies on civic integrity and violence, and warned that it may permanently suspend him if he continued to violate its policies. Now, users can no longer see Trump’s tweets, and the president is unable to post on his account.

After close review of recent Tweets from the @realDonaldTrump account and the context around them we have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement of violence.https://t.co/CBpE1I6j8Y

— Twitter Safety (@TwitterSafety) January 8, 2021

The move comes as hundreds of Twitter’s own employees urged CEO Jack Dorsey to suspend Trump permanently, according to a report by the Washington Post.

The day before Twitter’s permanent suspension, Facebook blocked Trump’s account on its platform, which has tens of millions of followers, from posting and emphasized that the ban would be in place for at least two weeks until President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration.

Recent events leading to the decision

Twitter’s official explanation for why it permanently blocked Trump’s account was that his last two tweets violated the company’s Glorification of Violence policy and were part of a broader pattern of encouraging violence during the transition of presidential powers. Twitter specifically cited a concern that Trump’s followers seemed to interpret his announcement about not attending Biden’s inauguration as a signal that it would be a “safe” target for violent acts.

The first tweet that pushed Trump past Twitter’s tipping point stated that he would not attend Joe Biden’s inauguration. The second declared that the “75,000,000 great American Patriots” who voted for Trump would not be “disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape or form!!!”

Twitter said that, when read in the broader context of the recent violence in DC and how Trump’s tweets can be mobilized by his followers to incite further violence, those two tweets impelled the platform to suspend his account.

In the past week, a growing chorus of leaders in the political and tech communities have been placing more pressure than ever on social media companies to permanently ban Trump. Their concerns correspond with fears that Trump is encouraging his followers to stage some sort of coup by forcefully rejecting the certified results of the presidential election declaring Biden the next president.

“Now is the time for Silicon Valley companies to stop enabling this monstrous behavior — and go even further than they have already by permanently banning this man from their platforms,” former first lady Michelle Obama said in a statement Thursday afternoon.

In the technology industry, early Twitter investor Chris Sacca and former Facebook chief security officer Alex Stamos similarly called for Twitter to cut off the president’s access to social media.

And hundreds of Twitter’s own employees — who have rarely publicly protested the company’s decisions — came out to say that they felt the company had a moral obligation to shut down Trump’s account.

“We play an unprecedented role in civil society and the world’s eyes are upon us,” the employees wrote in a letter to Jack Dorsey and Twitter executives. “Our decisions this week will cement our place in history, for better or worse.”

People in Trump’s inner circle such as Donald Trump Jr. quickly derided Twitter’s decision, arguing that the company is holding his father to a double standard by not taking down the accounts of Iran’s Ayatollah Khamenei and “numerous other dictatorial regimes.”

A history of controversial tweets

Trump launched his political career on Twitter spreading racist “birtherism” conspiracy theories about former President Obama. And as he continued to gain political power, he has been a prolific user of the platform, regularly spreading false statements, conspiracy theories, and, at times, what many see as dangerous rhetoric veering on inciting violence.

Over the years, the former reality TV star has repeatedly used the platform to retweet conspiracy theorists such as QAnon supporters, spread medical misinformation about Covid-19, suggest potentially shooting into crowds of Black Lives Matter protesters, and at multiple points inched toward potentially provoking a nuclear war via the platform.

And for four years, Trump’s incendiary social media posts have largely gone unchecked by Twitter and other major tech companies. That’s because Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and other companies have repeatedly said they don’t want to interfere in politics but rather act as neutral platforms committed to free speech values.

Those limits have been tested by Trump’s repeated attempts to interfere with the integrity of the US elections process via social media. In the months leading up to and following the 2020 presidential election, Trump has endlessly spread baseless conspiracy theories about the election being purportedly “stolen” from him, despite having no substantial proof of any such allegations. His repeated assertion that the election was rigged has also inspired some of his fervent followers to doubt the legitimacy of the US Electoral College, fueling the “Stop the Steal” protests which led to Wednesday’s violence.

For some critics of Trump’s Twitter behavior, the company’s actions to limit the president’s tweets are several years overdue. Trump has already built an infrastructure of highly networked social media followers who continue to organize in private groups, alternate social media platforms like Gab and Parler, as well as through the Twitter accounts of other prominent Trump supporters.

What’s next

If Trump tries to start another Twitter account, per Twitter’s ban evasion policy, he’s liable to get kicked off the platform again.

However, his administration still has access to two official US government accounts: @POTUS and @WhiteHouse. Those accounts will be handed over to the Biden administration soon, according to Twitter. The company has said it will not suspend those accounts unless it deems that course of action absolutely necessary to alleviate real-world harm.

On Friday evening, Trump posted several tweets to the @POTUS criticizing Twitter for suspending his account and alleging without evidence that “Twitter employees have coordinated with the Democrats and the Radical Left in removing my account from their platform.” Twitter quickly deleted the tweets.

It’s unclear where Trump will go from here. The natural social media platform for Trump to migrate to, Parler, has fewer rules around content moderation, but those policies are suddenly proving problematic. Around the same time that Twitter permanently suspended Trump, Google banned Parler from its app store, and Apple has warned it may do the same if the platform doesn’t start moderating content more aggressively.

Twitter’s action in banning Trump was an unprecedented move by a major tech company to limit the platform of a major political figure in the interest of preserving democratic stability. And there’s a good chance we’ll be seeing more of that from other companies in the future, too.

It’s time for the world to get more ambitious with its emissions targets.

2020 was one of the two warmest years on record, tied only with 2016.

According to the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service, in 2020, average temperatures globally were 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit (1.25 degrees Celsius) warmer than preindustrial levels — the point at which scientists agree that human activity, and particularly the burning of fossil fuels, began to accelerate global warming.

In nearly every way, 2020 was a record year for climate-related disasters.

The impacts of the record heat have been felt both around the globe and in the United States. Historic wildfires burned in California, Colorado, Australia, and the Amazonian rainforest. The Atlantic hurricane season produced a record 30 named storms.

Swarms of crop-destroying locusts invaded East Africa, causing devastation to a region already struggling with food insecurity. The Arctic, the area that is currently warming faster than any other place on the planet, saw record declines in ice cover as well as records for how late in the year the ice actually froze.

️2020 has tied with 2016 as the warmest year on record, as well as being the hottest year recorded for Europe, according to our #CopernicusClimate Change Service.

Follow this thread for more details, or read the full press release on our website➡️https://t.co/aEj53ieM5u pic.twitter.com/qk87x1iKtg

— Copernicus ECMWF (@CopernicusECMWF) January 8, 2021

Even more troubling, 2020’s high temperatures occurred despite the absence of an El Niño event, which typically has the effect of warming the globe; 2016, the other warmest year on record, had an El Niño.

So 2020 being the warmest on record, without an El Niño event, indicates just how much human activity is changing the world around us.

Lockdowns due to the coronavirus pandemic and global traffic coming to a halt contributed to a 7 percent drop in emissions. However, the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide actually grew to record highs in May.

Recently released figures from NOAA found that more than 20 climate- or weather-related events costing $1 billion or more hit the United States last year — from a combined drought and heat wave in Colorado to hailstorms and heat waves that struck parts of Ohio. 

    <img alt=" " src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/k6Kwd8fcig6lpKK5Sk2UoY6cro8=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22223231/2020_billion_dollar_disaster_map.png" />
  <cite>Map by the <a class="ql-link" href="https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/billions/" target="_blank">National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration</a>, 2021</cite>
  <figcaption>A record-breaking 22 billion-dollar disasters hit the US in 2020.</figcaption>

According to figures from a report by Munich Re, environmental disasters cost the world $210 billion in 2020. The US alone accounted for $95 billion of that sum, nearly double the cost of damage in 2019.

Limiting warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels, the fundamental goal of the Paris climate agreement, will require countries worldwide to commit to making a rapid transition away from fossil fuel-intensive practices to renewable energy.

It’s time for the world to get more ambitious with its emissions targets

The Paris climate pact, which just had its fifth anniversary, contains a mechanism for countries to make even stronger commitments.

Yet while many countries in 2020 made headlines for announcing quicker timelines for moving to net-zero emissions, a recent analysis showed that just 45 parties (44 countries, plus the EU’s 27 member states, viewed as one bloc) met the deadline to share their updated targets. That may sound like a large number, but the world’s largest emitters — the United States, China, and India — were noticeably absent from the list.

Despite the bleak global outlook, experts say it’s possible to put the US on a 1.5-degree warming path and even cut 70 to 80 percent of emissions by 2035. But achieving rapid decarbonization requires essentially “electrifying everything,” as David Roberts reported for Vox in 2017: swapping out technologies that still run on combustion, like gasoline-powered vehicles, and natural gas heating and cooling with alternatives that run on electricity, like electric vehicles and heat pumps.

The ultimate goal is to quickly replace all carbon-heavy forms of energy with cleaner ones.

President-elect Joe Biden has announced plans to rejoin the Paris agreement on day one of his presidency, but in addition to rejoining, the US will have to make a more ambitious commitment if it truly wants to lead global efforts against climate change.

Murkowski is the first Senate Republican who has explicitly called for Trump to leave.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) on Friday became the first Senate Republican to explicitly call for President Donald Trump’s resignation in the wake of the violent attack at the Capitol earlier this week.

“I want him out. He has caused enough damage,” Murkowski said in an interview with the Anchorage Daily News’s James Brooks. “I think he should leave. He said he’s not going to show up. He’s not going to appear at the inauguration.”

Murkowski is the first Senate Republican to urge Trump to leave office, in addition to condemning his actions on Wednesday. Trump this week pressed his followers to march to the Capitol and contest the presidential election, fueling a violent storming of the building that led to five deaths. Many Republicans have criticized the violence and destruction that took place, as well as the president’s actions. But few — and before Murkowski, none in Congress — have so directly pushed for him to leave office.

Thus far, Sen. Ben Sasse (R-NE) has said he would consider articles of impeachment if the House brought them against Trump, but he did not commit to convicting the president in that scenario. Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT), a vocal Trump opponent, has also signaled that lawmakers may simply have to “hold [their] breath” until the president leaves on January 20.

In addition to her comments about Trump, Murkowski also spoke about her concerns regarding the trajectory of the Republican Party — raising questions about how she intends to align herself in the coming term.

“I didn’t have any reason to leave my party in 2010,” she said. “I was a Republican who ran a write-in campaign and I was successful. But I will tell you, if the Republican Party has become nothing more than the party of Trump, I sincerely question whether this is the party for me.”

Murkowski is currently a member of the Senate Republican conference, though she has broken with her colleagues in the past on key votes, including one to preserve the Affordable Care Act and one where she declined to confirm Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Her interview Friday suggested that she’s evaluating where the party goes from here after this week’s election certification vote signaled many Senate Republicans’ biggest break from Trump yet.

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