Hearing from heroes

The select committee investigating the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 began its work today with a hearing on Capitol Hill. Testifying were Capitol Police officers Harry Dunn and Aquilino Gonell, and D.C. Metropolitan Police Department officers Michael Fanone and Daniel Hodges, all of whom were on duty—and wounded—on the day of the attack. Their testimony was brutal and compelling, leading some in the room, both on the panel and in the audience, to become emotional.

• — "The indifference shown to my colleagues is disgraceful." Each officer recounted in detail the intense violence they encountered during the attack and did not hold back from calling the insurrectionists "terrorists" acting in allegiance to Donald Trump. The officers also described the sense of betrayal they have experienced since, as members of Congress and others have downplayed the attack as a "tourist visit."
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• — "Disheartening that we live in a country with people like that." Dunn, who is Black, recalled being bombarded with racial slurs, which he said were used as "weapons." He also said, "Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger are being lauded as courageous heroes, and while I agree with that notion, why? Because they told the truth? Why is telling the truth hard? I guess in this America, it is."
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• — "We're defined by how we come back from bad days." Cheney and Kinzinger may be in the minority on the panel and in the GOP (House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy is referring to them as "Pelosi Republicans"), but they made their presence felt at the hearing too. In her opening statement, Cheney admonished fellow Republicans for attempting to cover up what happened. Kinzinger said, "I'm a Republican. I'm a conservative. But in order to heal from the damage caused that day, we need to call out the facts." Indeed. —ABC News

Daley: Gerrymandering could give us a worse insurrection

"[I]magine a replay of Jan. 6 in 2025, in which gerrymandering hands Republicans the U.S. House, and Congress refuses to ratify the results of the presidential election. That insurrection failed seven months ago. It might not next time. This is how free and fair elections crumble before our eyes. And it's how the gerrymanders that could be designed over the next few months threaten the very foundations of majority rule and representative democracy as we know it." —David Daley in The Boston Globe

David Daley is the author of "Unrigged: How Americans Are Battling Back to Save Democracy" and "Ratf**ked: Why Your Vote Doesn't Count."

MORE: What gerrymandering means and why it's here to stay —Bloomberg

Big Tech vs extremism

A counterterrorism organization formed by some of the biggest U.S. tech companies, including Facebook, Microsoft, Google, Twitter, and YouTube, will crack down on white supremacist and other extremist content by sharing it in a key database. Until now, the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism's database has focused on videos and images from Islamist terrorist groups such as ISIS, al Qaeda, and the Taliban. Over the next few months, the group will add attacker manifestos, other publications, and links flagged by the intelligence-sharing association Five Eyes, to include far-right militia groups such as the Proud Boys, the Three Percenters, and neo-Nazis. —Reuters

MORE: PayPal to research transactions that fund hate groups, extremists —Reuters

Thanks a lot, anti-vaxxers

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is recommending that fully vaccinated people begin wearing masks indoors again in places with high COVID-19 transmission rates. Nearly two-thirds of U.S. counties currently have high or substantial transmission of the virus. Federal health officials believe fully vaccinated individuals represent a very small amount of transmission, but some vaccinated people could be carrying higher levels of the virus than previously understood and potentially transmit it to others. The CDC is also recommending that everyone in K-12 schools wear a mask, regardless of their vaccination status, when school resumes in the fall. —CNBC

MORE: New vaccine mandates are coming for government employees and healthcare workers —NPR

Fisher: The lucrative business of disinformation

"[There's] a secretive industry that security analysts and American officials say is exploding in scale: disinformation for hire. Private firms, straddling traditional marketing and the shadow world of geopolitical influence operations, are selling services once conducted principally by intelligence agencies. They sow discord, meddle in elections, seed false narratives, and push viral conspiracies, mostly on social media. And they offer clients something precious: deniability." —Max Fisher in The New York Times

Max Fisher is an international reporter and columnist for The New York Times, covering conflict, diplomacy, social change, and other topics.

MORE: The most influential spreader of coronavirus misinformation online —The New York Times

Focus on Georgia elections

Several Republican state legislators in Georgia are building a case for the state government to take over elections in Fulton County, Ga. The newfound power to fire local elections officials, created by Georgia's voting law, passed in April, worries voting rights advocates, who say it could be abused for partisan purposes to tamper with the heavily Democratic county, which includes Atlanta.

• — Under the new law, the State Election Board can replace a county's election board after a performance review, audit, or investigation, giving a temporary superintendent full authority over vote-counting, polling places, and staffing. Fulton's election board is currently composed of two Republicans, two Democrats, and an appointee of the majority-Democratic County Commission.
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• — "It's a chronic problem. They have a history of not running efficient elections, and we need to get to the bottom of why this is," says Republican State Sen. Brandon Beach, who supports Donald Trump's unproven voter fraud accusations. "Fulton County elections on its best day is incompetent. We need to see how they can get their house in order."
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• — Ultimately, the decision rests with the four-member State Election Board. The Republican assembly has already removed Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger from the board after he certified the 2020 presidential election and refused Trump's call to "find" more votes. Sara Tindall Ghazal, the lone Democrat on the board, says elections should be run by nonpartisan county election workers rather than a political appointee, but she's outnumbered 3-1. Stay tuned. —The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Olsen: Who will win the divided GOP?

"Democrats want to focus voters' attention on Trump and paint the entire Republican Party in his image. The outcome of [the party's] internal debate, however, will ultimately have more impact in determining whether the GOP cannot only survive, but thrive." —Henry Olsen in The Washington Post

Henry Olsen is a Washington Post columnist focusing on politics, populism, and American conservative thought, and a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.

MORE: Cheney-McCarthy war of words heats up over Jan. 6 investigation —Politico

"McCarthy, meanwhile, has ramped up his public attacks on Pelosi in pointedly personal terms after she rejected Jordan and Banks, calling her a 'lame duck speaker' and accusing her of destroying the institution."

Gee, McCarthy, I thought those treasonous domestic terrorists who invaded and defiled the Capitol and talked about lynching the Vice President of the United States were bent on 'destroying the institution.' —Jim V., New York

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