What a difference a year makes. Just a few days from now will be a year to the day where hundreds of people who didn’t like an election result went to Washington D.C. and proceeded to storm the Capitol. Investigations of what happened and who was involved in the Jan. 6th attempted insurrection are still ongoing, with many arrests and jail sentences. Meanwhile, some people still choose to live in an alternative reality and feel that the 2020 election was somehow stolen and rigged.
There has been news of possible coordination between Jan. 6th rioters and members of Congress reported by Rolling Stone. Rep. Cori Bush of Missouri has an idea to nip this in the bud once and for all. In a tweet, Bush calls on Congress to pass her House Resolution on the anniversary to expel any members of Congress who were involved.
So what is H.Res [House Resolution] 25, you ask? It was co-authored with other prominent House Democrats, including New York’s Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Minnesota’s Ilhan Omar.
According to Newsweek:
The text of H.Res 25 outlines a procedure for “directing the Committee on Ethics to investigate, and issue a report on, whether any and all actions taken by Members of the 117th Congress who sought to overturn the 2020 Presidential election violated their oath of office...and should face sanction, including removal from the House of Representatives.”
The text also notes a number of efforts by Republicans in Congress to try invalidating President Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election. This includes “the decision...to join efforts to invalidate votes in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin suppresses the votes of millions of people,” as well as “refusing to concede the outcome of the 2020 Presidential election and raising baseless allegations of fraud in States in which Black, Brown, and Indigenous people have been instrumental to the election outcome,” according to the bill.
Bush introduced the house resolution on Jan. 11th of last year. What Bush said in a statement echoes the same tone she has today:
“We must hold these Republicans accountable for their role in this Insurrection at our nation’s Capitol as part of a racist attempt to overturn the election results,” the statement continued. “There is no place in the People’s House for these heinous actions.”
The House committee’s investigation is still ongoing, digging through the underbelly of that day and the weeks and months leading up to it. While many arrests, jail sentences, and subpoenas are being issued, there’s still the elephant in the room and that is Congress. There’s no way you can have a functioning government if people who cheered as rioters put their feet up on congressional desks and issued threats are still present.
The fear is as this drags out and there are no consequences given, it’s just going to embolden people to try it again. And we’ll have people on the inside who will open the door for them. It’s not a tomorrow problem; it’s a yesterday emergency.