NEW: @StateDept's top counterterrorism official says the Jan 6 siege of the #USCapitol "wasn't just an assault on the Capitol. It was an assault on democracy, w/a violent mob trying to interfere with the results of the election"

NEW: @RudyGiuliani in GA hearing "Let me conclude by saying ... our Founding Fathers, miraculously, probably envisioned everything that would happen to us. They even envisioned this. A disputed election. Cheating. Stealing. And they made a choice. They made a choice of where to

2/ put the responsibility in a difficult situation like that. Article I, Section II of the of Constitution puts that responsibility right here, in the legislatures of the several states. You are responsible for the selection of the electors. Not the Governor. Not your Secretary

3/ of State, who is covering up everything that he can cover-up. Not anybody else, but you. It's your power. It doesn't come from the state constitution. It comes from the United States Constitution. You are not subjected to needing a special session. The governor has no right,

4/ really, to interfere. He has no right to call a special session or not call a special session. The Constitution has taken him out of the process. The Constitution put the power in the state legislature, so strong, that you can take that power back right up to the last moment,

5/ you can take it back two minutes before the electoral votes are counted, because ultimately it's your responsibility. You delegated it to them in the first place. And if you feel they are exercising it improperly, it is your obligation to stop them from doing it. And you KNOW

Dear Media, here is the clear truth:

Donald Trump is explicitly seeking to turn America into a white Ethnostate.

He is following an openly racist plan, crafted by open racists.

If you report this story any other way you are not reporting the facts or being objective.

1/

If you think this is an extreme position or an opinion, you haven't read enough about the white nationalist movement, Stephen Miller, Bannon, Sessions, etc.

Eliminating birthright citizenship is a central plank in a well-articulated, coherent movement to make America whiter.
2/

Blaming Soros is a central tool. It is part of a (crazy, wrong, but internally coherent) theory of the case:
- By nature, people can only form society with their closer kin.
- Yadda Yadda (the arguments are terrible) White people have certain values that non-whites don't.

3/

(continuing the white power explanation)

- All whites, by nature, would know they only want a white society.

- An outside group--hint, it's the Jews!--is tricking them into going against their nature (white nationalists think they know a lot about core human nature).

4/

(continuing views I hate to explain them)

- There is an existential race to save America. By 2046, it will become majority minority and then (in this fevered nonsensical view) there will be a civil war because unlike people can't form stable societies.

5/

So I've been reporting a story about how you'd fix the impeachment process. It doesn't work for removal, as currently designed. Impeachment was built for a political system without parties. It fails in a system with polarized parties.

The one time it functioned as intended, confusingly, was the time it didn't happen: Richard Nixon wasn't impeached! But the impeachment process, which came at the low ebb of party polarization in American history, convinced his party to force him to resign.

Would Republicans force Nixon to resign today?

Oh, you're cute. Thank you. I needed that.

The problem of impeachment is pretty simple: Presidents are leaders of parties. Parties are tied to the political fortunes of presidents. You're asking a party to basically wreck its immediate political future for the good of the system.

This doesn't just have the effect of making impeachment ineffective as a remedy. It's worse than that. It makes impeachment dangerous to the president's party, and gives them a reason to defend him and either normalize or minimize his crimes. As we are seeing right now.