The rats are running.

So far seven officials associated with Trump and his inner circle have said they are quitting, including members of Melania Trump’s team, after the deadly violence that surrounded the Congressional vote to certify Joe Biden’s presidential election victory in November.

…

In further fallout that underlined the fracturing of the Trump administration’s inner circles, Marc Short, Pence’s chief of staff, indicated to journalists he had been banned from the White House by Trump after the president “blamed” him for advice he gave to Pence on Trump’s demands he overturn the election result.

He was shocked, shocked, to discover that Trump blames people for things.

In stark language that underlined the toxic and swirling sense of crisis, the Washington Post quoted one administration official describing Trump’s behaviour on Wednesday as that of “a monster,” while another said the situation was “insane” and “beyond the pale”.

But everything before that was acceptable?

H/t Omar

Now they’re getting serious.

The social media giant added, “Future violations of the Twitter Rules, including our Civic Integrity or Violent Threats policies, will result in permanent suspension of the @realDonaldTrump account.”

Do it either way.

Queen Melania’s chief of staff has quit.

[Stepahnie] Grisham was one of the longest-serving Trump administration officials, having begun her tenure working for then-candidate Donald Trump in 2015 as a press wrangler on the campaign trail. Grisham entered the White House as deputy press secretary under Sean Spicer, but in March 2017, Melania Trump hired her for her East Wing staff. As East Wing communications director, Grisham quickly became the first lady’s most prominent staffer, acting as defender, enforcer and, often, protector.

But armed insurrection proved to be a step too far.

Republicans were saying it would all be fine, just ignore Trump’s tantrums, he doesn’t mean anything by them.

Those assurances were ridiculed at the time, and that ridicule was entirely vindicated Wednesday. As Congress began to accept the results of the electoral college, Trump supporters stormed the capitol, forcing both chambers to shut down as they were considering the first challenge to the results, from Arizona. Rioters clashed with police and forced their way into buildings and even the floor of Congress. There was broken glass. There was an armed standoff at the door of the House Chamber.

There was a woman shot and killed.

To be clear, this was something Trump and his allies flirted with repeatedly in the day and weeks before it happened — and indeed, not more than a couple hours prior. And the president also expressed approval for what he had seen shortly after the scenes subsided.

At a rally near the capitol earlier Wednesday, Trump’s personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani endorsed the idea of a “trial by combat” — an allusion to something being settled by physical violence rather than evidence. He cited supposed evidence of his baseless voter fraud claims but then turned to a method of justice that had no place for such things.

“If we’re wrong, we will be made fools of,” Giuliani said, despite courts having almost universally found his claims to be wrong. “But if we’re right, a lot of them will go to jail. So let’s have trial by combat.”

Remember – that guy used to be New York’s top federal prosecutor.

Whatever Trump has personally said, his claims have led allies to more than flirt with the prospect of violence. Just this weekend, Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Tex.), whose lawsuit on behalf of Trump was rejected by the Supreme Court, told Newsmax that violence was essentially what those court cases asked for.

“But if bottom line is, the court is saying: ‘We’re not going to touch this. You have no remedy’ — basically, in effect, the ruling would be that you got to go [to] the streets and be as violent as antifa and BLM …” Gohmert said, referring to Black Lives Matter.

You got to – in order to overturn an election that your guy lost.

Not a favorite uncle then:

Yes, do that. Certify the election and impeach and convict Trump, today…and into tomorrow if it takes that long, but do it fast.

That. Do it fast.

And Trump just called the people doing it “very special” and said “we love you.” Get him out.

Do it. Do it do it do it. Do it now.

There’s more:

Twitter has now, belatedly, taken it down.

I’ll just keep updating this for awhile.

Guardian Live:

Ivanka Trump was fiercely criticized after she described the rioters who stormed the US Capitol as “American patriots.”

The president’s daughter said in the now-deleted tweet, “American patriots – any security breach or disrespect to our law enforcement is unacceptable.”

It was Pence who sent in the National Guard.

The acting secretary of defense, Christopher Miller, said in a statement that he discussed the deployment of national guard troops to the Capitol with Mike Pence, not Donald Trump.

“Chairman Milley and I just spoke separately with the Vice President and with Speaker Pelosi, Leader McConnell, Senator Schumer and Representative Hoyer about the situation at the US Capitol,” Miller said in the statement.

“We have fully activated the DC National Guard to assist federal and local law enforcement as they work to peacefully address the situation. We are prepared to provide additional support as necessary and appropriate as requested by local authorities.”

Just Pence, not Trump. Trump was busy cheering the insurrectionists on.

Staffers saved the electoral college ballots.

Give that staffer a medal. First, though, remove Trump from office.

Ilhan Omar is drawing up articles of impeachment.

There had been some rumblings among Democrats about impeachment after Trump’s call with the Georgia secretary of state was made public, but some Democratic lawmakers said they did not think impeachment was necessary because Trump’s term will end in two weeks.

So that turns out to be a big mistake.

He heaps praise on the insurrectionists, he says “We love you, you’re special,” he repeats all the lies about the election. HE NEEDS TO BE REMOVED FROM OFFICE.

This is horrific. I’m dead serious that Trump needs to be locked up in some fashion right now. He needs at the very least to be locked away from being able to incite anything, phone taken away, no visitors, doors locked, end of story. No access to the nukes.

Um…

He’s a journalist, and it seems he’s locked in there with them.

Then he says there is shooting, there are guns drawn.

There’s a sound that could be a gunshot just as this clip ends:

His most recent tweet:

He’s actually done it.

The U.S. Capitol locked down Wednesday with lawmakers inside as violent clashes broke out between supporters of President Donald Trump and police.

An announcement was played inside the Capitol as lawmakers were meeting and expected to vote to affirm Joe Biden’s victory. Due to an “external security threat,” no one could enter or exit the Capitol complex, the recording said.

Both chambers abruptly went into recess.

…

Protesters tore down metal barricades at the bottom of the Capitol’s steps and were met by officers in riot gear. Some tried to push past the officers who held shields and officers could be seen firing pepper spray into the crowd to keep them back. Some in the crowd were shouting “traitors” as officers tried to keep them back.

Is “protesters” the right word there? Wouldn’t “rioters” be a better fit? What do they call it when BLM activists resist police violence in the streets? In the streets, please note, not on the Capitol steps.

The skirmishes came just shortly after Trump addressed thousands of his supporters, riling up the crowd with his baseless claims of election fraud at a rally near the White House on Wednesday ahead of Congress’ vote.

“We will not let them silence your voices,” Trump told the protesters, who had lined up before sunrise to get a prime position to hear the president.

He said quite a few other coup-inciting things.

Forgot to include these:

Invaluable Aaron Rupar records the attempted coup minute by minute.

He needs to be locked up. Now, this minute. He’s a threat to us all. He shouldn’t be free to go outside and do this. He NEEDS to be locked up.

Trump told his people to storm Congress and they’re doing it.

Oh about those laws being faithfully executed…

Trump’s fascists are storming Congress.

Capitol Police are ordering two House offices to be evacuated as hundreds of Trump supporters stormed barricades around the building.

Pence is disappointing The Loser. Sad!

Mike Pence has released a letter announcing that he will not attempt to block the congressional certification of Joe Biden’s victory today.

Citing his constitutional obligations, Pence writes that the vice-president does not have the “unilateral authority to decide which electoral votes should be counted”.

“Our Founders were deeply skeptical of concentrations of power and created a Republic based on separation of powers and checks and balances,” Pence said.

It would be nice if Pence had made that point before the last two weeks of Trump’s reign of terror.

Donald Trump has repeatedly pressured Pence to try to block Congress from finalizing Biden’s victory, even though there is no precedent for doing so.

The president said moments ago at the “March to Save America” rally in Washington, “Mike Pence is going to have to come through for us, and if he doesn’t, that will be a sad day for our country because you’re sworn to uphold our constitution.”

Funny thing, so is Trump, and he hasn’t been doing it. At all. He’s been counter-doing it. He’s supposed to see that the laws are faithfully executed, and instead he’s been smashing as many as he can.

Philosophy in action.

I’m not a philosopher, so I get to think it does have some bearing. I get to think that and I do think that: I think that the fact that people like Oseroff are doing things like checking to see whether specific individuals have signed an open letter bullying an individual woman colleague is in fact one reason to be very wary about signing that letter.

I think the fact that people like him – especially men like him – do this kind of crap is a sign that there’s something amiss with the whole thing – the issue, the activism, the movement, the campaign, the whatever it is.

The state of this.

Just look at that. Now they’re hunting around to check on WHAT COMMONISST FAGGOT TRAITOR TERF has failed to sign. They’re drawing up A List of People Who Need To Have Signed Because We Suspect Them and then checking the list name by name – have YOU signed the letter Condemning The Witch? And have you, and you, and you?

And, as many have pointed out, it’s pretty striking to see a philosophy academic call it “fussy” to think the facts claimed in the letter attacking a woman and a colleague should be accurate.

It’s knife-edge, but for now…Warnock won and Ossoff is claiming the win.

Democrat Jon Ossoff — who as of 9 a.m. ET Wednesday leads Republican David Perdue by about 16,000 votes in the Georgia runoff that could give Democrats control of the U.S. Senate — claimed victory Wednesday. The Associated Press, which NPR relies on for its results, has not yet called the contest.

Perdue hasn’t conceded.

Tentative celebrations.

A man redefining feminism for us, in such a way that it includes him and doesn’t include feminist women.

As if the social/historical realities had nothing to do with the physical (and, yes, anatomical) ones.

Always the same slogans where an argument should be, always the childish catastrophizing. It’s not cute when Trump does it, why would it be cute when trans activists do it?

I would love to know exactly how kylo knows she/he suffers violence “as a direct result of Stock’s arguments.” How would someone know that? I suppose the violence-source could shout Stock’s name while punching, but that seems pretty god damn unlikely, and short of that – what?

Nothing, which is why it’s wise to be careful about saying things like that, i.e. it’s wise to NOT SAY THEM. It’s stupid, it’s catastrophizing, it’s obviously not something a person could know. Saying it while claiming to be philosophy-backgrounded is a rooky error.

Also, no one is debating anyone’s existence. If there is a particular anyone, that anyone exists. No one is debating whether or not the person who composed that tweets. The debate is over description, and self-description, not existence.

Also no one is debating whether or not trans people are human beings.

There again – how does she/he know the macro- and micro-aggressions are a direct result of Stock’s work? Again I think it’s highly unlikely that anyone footnotes aggressions citing Stock as their source.

Also, speaking of micro-aggressions, there’s calling him “Nigel,” there’s the eye roll emoji, there’s the smirk emoji.

How not to persuade anyone of anything.

The Seattle National Weather Service people get great photos, on account of how their building is a few yards away from Lake Washington (which is the eastern boundary of Seattle).