Trump cancels news conference for Capitol attack anniversary – US politics live

The Insurrection Index has identified more than 1,000 Americans in positions of public trust who acted as accomplices in Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election result, either by participating in the 6 January attack on the US Capitol or spreading the “big lie” that the vote count had been rigged.

This index was set up by Public Wise, a voting rights group whose mission is to fight for government that reflects the will and the rights of voters, with legal advice from Marc Elias, one of the most influential election lawyers in the US who was Hillary Clinton’s top counsel in the 2016 presidential campaign and who successfully led Joe Biden’s resistance to Trump’s blitzkrieg of lawsuits contesting the 2020 results.

Some of the individuals listed in the index include:

• Mark Finchem, a member of the Arizona House of Representatives who was present at Trump’s “stop the steal” rally in Washington on 6 January and who is now vying to become Arizona secretary of state – the top election official who oversees the presidential count.
• Jake Hoffman, a lawmaker who represents Arizona’s 12th district, who wrote to fellow Republicans a day before the Capitol insurrection urging them to pressure then vice-president Mike Pence into blocking Biden’s victory.
• The 147 members of Congress who objected to the certification of the 2020 election results.

The Guardian’s Ed Pilkington has more here:

The Guardian’s David Smith takes a look at the control that Donald Trump has had on the Republican party – and how it’s grown since the 6 January attack on the US Capitol.

Here’s a sweet story from one of the worst days in our country’s history.

Politico Huddle tells the tale of how in the chaos of the 6 January attack on the US Capitol, Joe Lowry, the director of emergency preparedness for the House of Representatives, found a gold earring on the floor of the house chamber balcony.

Assuming it was lost in the rush to safety, he tweeted out his discovery, hoping to reunite it with its owner. After holding onto the earring for almost an entire ear, he tried again, just ahead of the one-year anniversary of the attack.

Almost immediately, Politico reporter Sarah Ferris recognized it as hers. She went back after evacuation to try and find it, but to no avail.

Ferris told the Huddle that she had borrowed those earrings from her mother, who is now “very thrilled I didn’t forever lose her favorite earrings.”

With one day to go to the anniversary of the 6 January attack on the US Capitol, congressman Andy Kim, a Democrat from New Jersey, is tweeting out what Republicans said in the immediate aftermath of the violence in a bid to “not let them forget”.

All these quotes have been previously reported and the ones republished below are fact-checked. But after a year of hearing leaders like Kevin McCarthy and Mitch McConnell backtrack – plus, you know, the whole acquittal of Donald Trump in his second impeachment – it’s jarring to remember how strongly they spoke against the former president in the days that followed.

A new Axios-Momentive poll is reporting today that just 55% of Americans polled believe Joe Biden legitimately won the 2020 presidential election – even though proof of his legitimate victory has been proven in courts across the country time and time again.

Of those polled, 26% definitively said no, they did not believe Biden legitimately won – a fact that has, once again, been proven false – and 16% said they were not sure.

About 37% of those surveyed say they’ve lost faith in American democracy, while 10% said they never had any faith. But this figure skews more toward the right than toward the left — 47% of Republicans said they lost faith while only 28% Democrats agreed.

Ahead of the anniversary of the 6 January attack on the US Capitol, about 57% of Americans — about half of Republicans and seven in 10 Democrats — believe that more events like 6 January will happen in the next few years. Only about 58% said they support the work of the House select committee investigating the events of 6 January — 88% among Democrats, 58% among independents and 32% among Republicans.

Ahoy there, live blog readers. Happy Wednesday.

Much of today’s focus appears to be in preparation of tomorrow’s anniversary of the 6 January attack on the US Capitol.

Attorney general Merrick Garland will deliver remarks this afternoon on the investigation by the justice department into the attack. The Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin noted that for some, “patience is wearing thin with Garland”, who has yet to tie Donald Trump to the events of the insurrection.

“Garland does not want to give specifics about who is being investigated and for what. Fine. But he then must describe the crime,” Rubin wrote. “On the eve of the anniversary of the Capitol riot, he must explain in clear terms that the assault on democracy was both violent and nonviolent, beginning well before 6 January.”

Ahead of Garland’s remarks, senate majority leader Chuck Schumer will be speaking about the attack at the senate rules committee oversight meeting. Reminder that earlier this week, Schumer connected the anniversary of the attack to another attack on our democracy – the attack on voter rights. He laid down a plan to hold to a vote by or on 17 January, Martin Luther King Jr Day, to change the rules to the filibuster, a parliamentary tactic that Republicans have used repeatedly to block voter rights legislation, using strong language about the 6 January anniversary.

Meanwhile, Trump has cancelled his planned Mar-A-Lago press conference for tomorrow, just as the House select committee investigating the attack requested the cooperation of Trump adviser and Fox News host, Sean Hannity. Politico is reporting that this news came as a relief to congressional Republicans, who knew they’d be asked to give a response to whatever Trump said.