A week ago, @LindseyGrahamSC described his long ride with President Trump as a "hell of a journey," adding: "I hate it to end this way. Oh my God, I hate it." Turns out, it's not quite over. Graham is flying to border w/Trump, per the incomparable @KellyO, today's pool reporter.

https://twitter.com/jeffzeleny/status/1349019736181497861

Harvard Institute of Politics removes GOP Rep. Elise Stefanik from its Senior Advisory Committee, citing her unfounded claims of voter fraud in the November election.

Letter from Harvard Kennedy School Dean Douglas Elmendorf —>

State Rep. Matt Maddock, R-Milford, and his wife, Meshawn Maddock, who is poised to become the next co-chair of the Michigan Republican Party, have joined a Facebook group where members have discussed the possibility of a civil war, decried a ban on open carry inside the state Capitol and hope for a "big cleanup" of elected leaders.

The Maddocks have played a leading role in the effort to overturn Michigan's election results, and the two were in Washington, D.C., when the president's supporters stormed the Capitol building in a deadly assault last Wednesday. Meshawn Maddock helped organize buses bringing Michigan Trump supporters to Washington, and she and her husband spoke during a rally of Trump supporters the day before the violent mob attacked the Capitol. At least six Michigan residents have been arrested in connection with the riot, and at least one Michigan resident entered the Capitol building.

The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee has called for Matt Maddock's resignation, claiming he bears responsibility for the assault on the Capitol. Meanwhile, Meshawn Maddock has faced pressure to withdraw as a candidate to serve as the state's GOP co-chair.

Neither responded to requests for comment Monday on the Facebook group the couple joined.

https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/detroit/2021/01/12/meshawn-matt-maddock-facebook-group-civil-war/6624802002/

And the threat to the U.S. government hasn’t passed.

On the West Lawn of the Capitol Wednesday, a man in a pom-pom beanie clamored for blood. “Execute the traitors!” he shouted into a megaphone. “I wanna see executions!”

The man got the deaths he wanted, if not the executions. Four rioters died as a result of Wednesday’s insurrection at the Capitol. The mob beat a police officer with a fire extinguisher, law-enforcement sources told The New York Times; the officer later died. Some of them had bigger plans too: Before the protest, pro-Trump radicals had posted online about their intentions to kill Vice President Mike Pence. They brought zip ties and wore Kevlar vests. Rioters erected a wooden gallows next to the Capitol Reflecting Pool, and police discovered two pipe bombs on Capitol Hill.

The violence could have been even worse. Some of the rioters clearly wanted it to be. And Wednesday’s attack may have had another, more insidious effect: to embolden extremists. Already, Trump-supporting zealots online are promising to return to Washington around Inauguration Day.

“President Trump has ignited fire within people,” a protester named Maria told me on Wednesday afternoon, before either of us knew that rioters had broken into the Capitol. “Some of these guys … they’re ready to go to war or die for their country today. This is not going away anytime soon.”

As the rioters breached the Capitol walls, Representative Susan Wild of Pennsylvania was in the House gallery, watching her colleagues debating on the floor below. She watched as the Capitol Police evacuated Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer. Suddenly, officers announced that rioters had entered the Capitol Rotunda, and ordered Wild and her colleagues to put on the gas masks below their chairs. Wild dropped to the floor. She and several other members of Congress crawled on their hands and knees from one side of the gallery to an open exit on the other. She FaceTimed her two adult children to reassure them. After she hung up, the panic set in—the sensation of being trapped, cornered like a caged animal. This, Wild told me, was probably the moment captured in the now widely circulated photo of her being comforted by Representative Jason Crow of Colorado, a former Army Ranger. “I had an image of an overwhelming number of armed people invading the Capitol coming in to shoot us up,” she said. “I remember thinking, Wow, this is what it’s come to.”

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2021/01/trump-rioters-wanted-more-violence-worse/617614/

What we have all witnessed since the day Donald J. Trump was sworn in as the 45th President of the United States is criminal, and what I have personally experienced since the day he was elected on Nov. 8, 2016, is shocking, awful, disheartening and shameful. Every single MAGA mob rioter who stormed the U.S. Capitol did so “at the direction of, and in coordination with” President Trump, and it was an assault on human life and our great democracy. Unfortunately, our president and first lady have little, if any, regard for either.

Everyone around them has stoked and massaged their egos and wittingly agreed to the falsehoods and poisonous lies, veiled as truths, that built this house of mirrors. I take responsibility for being Melania’s enabler, and her using me became the basis of our friendship. I can’t believe how blind I was to the depth of her deception and lack of common decency.

I wish I could say I was shocked by President Trump's actions, but sadly I can not, or say I don’t comprehend Melania’s silence and inactions, but pathetically, they are both expected. Melania knows how to “Be Best” at standing up and reading from a teleprompter and not from the heart. She and her husband lack character, and have no moral compass. Although my intentions to support the first lady in the rollout of her initiatives were always pure, I’m disheartened and ashamed to have worked with Melania.

It is our moral imperative to instill in our children the skill set needed to embrace values of empathy and communication that are at the core of kindness, mindfulness, integrity, and leadership, all of which instill positive feelings of mutual respect. We all know that our children learn by example, and it goes without saying, it begins at home. Melania told me boldly, “Look, I know what the truth is, and it doesn’t need to be explained. Some things don’t need to be dignified with an answer.” As I said in my book, Melania and Me: The Rise and Fall of My Friendship with the First Lady, “A Trump is a Trump is a Trump.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/melanias-ex-bff-stephanie-winston-wolkoff-says-theres-blood-on-her-hands

Republican bill would sidestep the popular vote and enhance the power of gerrymandering

If Wisconsin had picked its Electoral College delegates using a congressional district method, President Donald Trump would have received the majority of Wisconsin’s 10 votes in 2020. Six, to be precise.

And that is what a new bill authored by Rep. Gary Tauchen (R-Bonduel) would do. It would make Wisconsin a state where the winner of the popular vote does not get all — or even necessarily the most — Electoral College votes. Tauchen’s bill (LRB 0513/1) would distribute the presidential electors by assigning one vote for each of Wisconsin’s eight congressional districts, then giving the remaining two electors to the statewide winner of the popular vote.

That would exacerbate partisanship and give added incentive to gerrymander the map of Wisconsin’s congressional districts to favor one party over the other, says UW-Madison Prof. Barry Burden, founder and director of the Elections Research Center.

“Doing it by congressional district is actually a terrible idea, because what it will do is amp up the partisan efforts to draw those districts to favor one side or the other,” says Burden. “It’s already an ugly process, but it will be on steroids if those districts affect not only control of Congress but also control the presidency.”

https://wisconsinexaminer.com/2021/01/08/gop-eyes-bill-to-reallocate-wisconsins-electoral-votes-by-congressional-district/