Three New York Times journalists were at the Capitol when it was breached. Here’s how they experienced it.

The economic recovery is backtracking, and women — particularly women of color — are bearing the brunt of the job losses.

The astroturfed #StoptheSteal group that drew thousands of Trumpists to the Washington, D.C. rally on Wednesday that turned into a violent insurrection at the Capitol has strong ties with the influential Christian Right Council for National Policy.

The day after pro-Trump rioters forced their way into the Capitol building to take selfies and smear shit on the walls, the people responsible for cleaning up other people’s messes on the Hill were back on the job, using leaf blowers to collect trash and sliding mops across the floors. The wreckage included pieces of broken office furniture that Capitol workers wheeled out in carts. Photographs of a jumble of apparently disassembled desks were circulated online.

President Donald Trump and his attorney Rudy Giuliani both mistakenly made calls to Republican Sen. Mike Lee as deadly riots were unfolding at the US Capitol earlier this week, a spokesman for the senator confirmed to CNN -- calls that were intended for another GOP senator the White House was frantically trying to convince to delay the counting of Electoral College votes.

Increasingly isolated, the president has lashed out at loyalists like Newsmax’s Chris Ruddy—“I could move your audience in a heartbeat”—and had to be pushed by advisers and allies, including Lindsey Graham, to call Thursday for a “smooth” transition as 25th Amendment and impeachment talk intensifies.

Read to the end for a good tweet about memes

A West Virginia Republican state lawmaker who recorded himself storming the US Capitol during a deadly riot there earlier this week is facing a criminal charge, US officials announced Friday. Derrick Evans, a member of the West Virginia House of Delegates, has been charged in a criminal complaint with entering a restricted area and entering the US Capitol, said Ken Kohl, a top official in the US attorney's office for Washington. The complaint will be made publicly available later Friday. Evans' lawyer, John Bryan, told CNN he hasn't yet seen the complaint and declined to provide any comment on the charge. The charge comes as federal authorities begin to arrest and bring charges against some of the scores of people who participated in the riot at the Capitol on Wednesday, which was incited in part by President Donald Trump and resulted in the deaths of five people, including a US Capitol Police officer.

Federal authorities have arrested Proud Boy Hawaii founder and alt-right media personality Nick Ochs in connection with the deadly pro-Trump rampage through the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday. In an indictment unsealed in D.C. District Court, Ochs—who promotes his extremist opinions online as part of the “Murder the Media” podcasting and Youtube crew—is charged with trespassing into a restricted building. Attempts to reach him were not immediately successful, and it was unclear if he had an attorney. Multiple photos of Ochs partaking in the mayhem appeared online and in the press during and after the attack on the Capitol—including a selfie Ochs shared on his Twitter account smoking a cigarette in the building.

Security video obtained by The Oregonian/OregonLive under a public records request clearly shows Rep. Mike Nearman, a Republican from Independence, open two doors to the Capitol during a Dec. 21 special legislative session, allowing violent demonstrators who were protesting immediately outside the door to illegally enter the building. Oregon’s Capitol was and is closed to the public due to the pandemic, although journalists are allowed inside to report on proceedings and the meetings are streamed live and archived online. The demonstrators, many of whom were unmasked and some of whom carried rifles, objected to the state’s coronavirus restrictions and sought to disrupt the session underway. State troopers and Salem police ultimately prevented them from entering the building’s rotunda or reaching the House or Senate chambers, but not before some of the rioters allegedly sprayed six troopers with a chemical substance that was reportedly pepper spray. The video shows spray being deployed. Some demonstrators physically attacked journalists who were reporting on the event. At least one person was arrested after trying to enter the Capitol by breaking the window in a door. People also gained entrance without breaking in — and this security footage shows exactly how. At least two people have so far been arrested on charges related to the breach on the morning of Dec. 21. House Speaker Tina Kotek said on Thursday that legislative leaders were exploring how they could sanction any lawmaker who aided rioters in forcing their way into the Capitol on Dec. 21. Oregon State Police are investigating the incident, she said.

Flynn and Powell both met with Trump at the White House in recent weeks as part of efforts to overturn the election results.

Meanwhile, crucially, the same evening, after the Capitol was cleared, the legislators moved back under heavy military presence and… many of them proceeded to vote to throw out the results of the election. Eight GOP senators and 138 GOP representatives (65% of the GOP caucus in the House) still objected to the electoral votes being certified.  Stay with me because that’s the most important part. That’s the reason why this matters so much: not just because of how outrageous it is to have thousands of people overrun our Capitol, but because they had allies who shared their objective, strong allies, at every level of government from the executive to the legislative.

Sweden's new punk-rock hell-raisers have made their name mocking right-wing fanatics, die-hard sports fans, drunken misogynists—and themselves.

Washington D.C. Metropolitan Police Department Chief Robert Contee confirmed a woman who died in Wednesday's protests at the U.S. Capitol was a Kennesaw resident.

And there was anger. It was directed at Trump for letting things get this far. Over on Parler, the social media platform beloved by the MAGA community for its lax moderation policies, users erupted in fury, calling him a “tranny cuck pedophile,” a “dildo,” and “100% THE SWAMP.”

A suspected human foot buried in a muddy field turned out to be a potato after a "large-scale" police search. A dog walker in Gateshead sent officers a photograph of what appeared to be a toe poking out of the soil. But after carrying out the search in the dark with specialist dogs, officers discovered it was a potato with a mushroom growing next to it. Police praised the woman for her "vigilance" and said the call had been made in "good faith". Northumbria Police said the photograph, sent on Tuesday when the woman had returned home from her walk in the Winlaton area, "did show what appeared to be a human foot".

The sperm kings of America are exhausted. These men are flying all over the place. They are shipping their sperm with new vial systems and taking the latest DNA tests because that is what women want now. Sure, they can talk on the phone, but they say it has to be quick because they are driving to Dallas or Kansas City or Portland, Maine, in time for an ovulation window. They would like to remind me they have day jobs.

In a speech addressing the rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol the previous day, GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) released a statement to widespread media praise Thursday saying “this apology is bullshit and I am lying to you.” “Nothing—and I repeat, nothing—I’m saying about the violent attack on Washington is an accurate representation of how I really feel,” said Graham in a video lauded by anchors across CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News for being “powerful” and “healing,” before adding that the expressions of anger and sadness that his facial expression implied were also entirely false. “As a longtime senator from South Carolina, I walk a delicate political tightrope that requires me to act with a certain amount of decorum, even when I don’t want to. That’s what this is. When some big event like this one seems to threaten our democracy, I get pressured into saving face, and so I do the convenient thing and say whatever horseshit about democracy gets people off my back. But let’s be completely clear, I am still the same person, and soon enough my actions will speak for themselves.” At press time, Graham confirmed that his speech had led to him being offered a position in Biden’s cabinet.

he supporters of President Donald Trump who stormed the Capitol on Wednesday to stop the ratification of President-elect Joe Biden's election victory were attempting a violent coup that multiple European security officials said appeared to have at least tacit support from aspects of the US federal agencies responsible for securing the Capitol complex. Insider spoke with three officials on Thursday morning: a French police official responsible for public security in a key section of central Paris, and two intelligence officials from NATO countries who directly work in counterterrorism and counterintelligence operations involving the US, terrorism, and Russia. They said the circumstantial evidence available pointed to what would be openly called a coup attempt in any other nation. None were willing to speak on the record because of the dire nature of the subject.

Dominion Voting Systems, one of the biggest election equipment manufacturers in the U.S. and the subject of numerous incoherent conspiracy theories about the 2020 election, has sued lawyer Sidney Powell, who pushed President Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn election results, for defamation.