The ongoing threat of political violence

The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol is set to hold its final public meeting on Monday and publish a report of its findings two days later. The panel is reportedly considering asking the Justice Department to pursue multiple criminal charges against Donald Trump. Outgoing Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger, who served on the committee, said this week that the ex-president is “absolutely guilty.” If Trump is not held to account, Kinzinger continued, “what we’ve basically said is presidents are above the law, and they can do everything short of a coup as long as it doesn’t succeed.” But with the Republicans taking over Congress in a couple weeks, what will become of the committee’s work? This congressional report is more significant than previous presidential investigations, such as those conducted by Ken Starr or even Robert Mueller. Whatever the DOJ’s current investigation yields, the fact that a bipartisan congressional committee is poised to make a criminal referral of a former American president or senior officials tied to him for trying to overthrow a lawful election is massively consequential and won’t just go away. There will be plenty of fodder for a future Democratic Congress to return to, and that could have serious political ramifications in 2024 and beyond. —Miles Taylor, Executive Director, Renew America Foundation

• Government shutdown temporarily averted after Senate adopts spending bill —The Washington Post

• Russia launches another major missile attack on Ukraine —Associated Press

• Last-minute push to pass bipartisan immigration deal fails, dooming yet another reform effort —CBS News

• Pelosi backs adding TikTok government device ban to funding bill —Yahoo! News

• Watchdogs demand Biden investigation after firing of nonbinary official Sam Brinton —Washington Examiner

• D.C. bar panel finds Giuliani violated attorney rules in bid to overturn 2020 election —Politico

• Trump's NFT trading card collection draws ridicule, sells out —USA Today

• House committee takes step toward potential release of Trump’s tax data —The New York Times

• Texas cop Aaron Dean guilty of manslaughter in Atatiana Jefferson case —USA Today

• National Archives releases records on President John F. Kennedy's assassination —Axios

‘I carry a gun everywhere I go’

If the holiday season and the relative calm of the post-election period left you with a sense that maybe—just maybe—America’s warring political factions had reached a shaky detente, the news this week brought somber reminders of our ongoing political violence crisis. The man charged with attacking the husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in October also had plans to target Hunter Biden, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, and actor Tom Hanks (what?!). Meanwhile in Michigan, three members of a militia group who were convicted of several crimes in relation to a plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer were given years-long prison sentences yesterday. —ABC News

• Militia sympathizers…in the government? It seems like an oxymoron, but an investigation by the Project On Government Oversight and the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project found that more that 300 individuals on a leaked membership list of the far-right militia group the Oath Keepers described themselves as current or former employees of the Department of Homeland Security. The leader of the group was recently found guilty of seditious conspiracy for his role in planning the Jan. 6 insurrection. Could that help explain why an intel analyst tried to prevent the Jan. 6 attack—but DHS failed to act? —Yahoo! News

• “Shame on you.” On the Hill, survivors of the Club Q mass shooting in Colorado last month directly tied Republicans' rhetoric to the massacre at the LGBTQ nightclub and detailed their experiences on the night of the shooting, in testimony to the House Oversight and Reform Committee on Wednesday. During the hearing, Republican Rep. Nancy Mace revealed her own struggles with the results of reckless political rhetoric, revealing that the problem isn’t limited to one side of the political aisle. —CNN

• “You dox, you get suspended.” Over on Twitter, controversial CEO Elon Musk deplatformed several prominent technology reporters from The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, and other outlets last night, claiming they violated Twitter’s policies on “doxxing” and put him and his family in jeopardy. “Criticizing me all day long is totally fine, but doxxing my real-time location and endangering my family is not,” he said. Musk’s allegations are somewhat spurious. The reporters’ culpability seems to be limited to the fact that they covered Musk’s dispute with Jack Sweeney, the creator of @elonjet, an account that tracks the movements of Musk’s private jet. —The Hill

MORE: QAnon sees new life in Musk's Twitter ownership —The Washington Post

Waldman: To stop the violence, leaders must step up

“Anyone of either party who commits genuine crimes should be held to account. But the more vivid and violent fantasies of locking up people you disagree with are toxic to our politics, especially because those who don’t realize they are fantasies might take matters into their own violent hands. Leaders of all kinds, whether those in office or those with large social media followings, can choose to pander to those violent impulses or tamp them down.” —Paul Waldman in The Washington Post

Paul Waldman is an opinion writer for The Washington Post. 

MORE: Midterms do little to change public opinion of parties —The Hill

Georgia considers voting changes

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has proposed new changes to the state's voting rules that could benefit voters and third-party candidates. Currently, Georgia is one of only two states that require runoff elections if no candidate receives a majority, a system that not only is inconvenient to voters but also costs the state millions to conduct a second election. Raffensperger will petition the state legislature with three proposals—one to force large counties to open more early voting locations, another that would lower the vote total needed to avoid a runoff from 50% to 45%, and a third to use ranked-choice voting for future elections. The "instant runoff" system would eliminate the need to hold a runoff election at a later date. —Reason

MORE: Rob Richie: Ranked-choice voting was a winner on Election Day —The Free Lance-Star

Rethinking and Rebuilding Tribal Politics

By Joel Searby

For many years, “tribe” was a dirty word to me. After nearly two decades in the political space—including seven years fighting the radical partisanship that gave rise to Donald Trump—I concluded along with many other politicos that tribalism was killing the great American experiment. It was tribalism that was causing the political pendulum to swing wildly to the fringes of our two major political tribes, the Democratic and Republican parties, and driving the national agenda toward extremism. 

The solution, I firmly believed, was a restorative disruption, a wholesale rejection of our established political parties and, thus, of the tribal paradigm. Independent-minded candidates are the wave of the future, I argued. Without tribal baggage weighing them down, they could provide a new voice of unity and pragmatism that the moderate majority of Americans is craving. Independents are the real deal, with the courage to be the change we wish to see, not just partisans claiming to be different. I put my money and reputation where my mouth was, helping independent candidates run for mayor, U.S. House, U.S. Senate, and governor’s seats, including the only independent governor in the country at the time—Bill Walker of Alaska. These efforts earned me a unique distinction: I have lost more independent campaigns than any consultant in U.S. history.

I still believe much of the underlying philosophy, but have come to understand something which is significantly altering how I approach politics—humans are tribal, and tribes themselves are not the problem. It isn’t primarily pernicious tribal loyalty that keeps Americans voting for division and dysfunction; it’s the lack of any other viable options. Our current primary system encourages partisan warfare by rewarding candidates who focus on pleasing a narrow radical base rather than, well, the greater good. Election after election, we’re essentially forced to vote for the tribe we deem to be “less bad” at the moment. That’s not a recipe for positive civic engagement or good governance.

Clearly, the system is ripe for reform, but as I’ve come to believe, so is the concept of the tribe. Research on tribalism shows it is fundamental to human nature to form groups around shared characteristics. Tribes aren’t inherently belligerent, and some academics have even suggested that the negative connotation of the word is derogatory toward indigenous peoples. At its heart, a tribe is a community of people with common goals working toward the best social and economic interests of the whole. That’s the kind of tribe I’d like to be a part of. Wouldn’t we all?

So what does this mean for our politics? Historically, our political tribes are ideologically and operationally organized via parties. As with other types of tribes, political parties don’t have to be hostile; they’ve just developed that way over time. So I still believe a restorative disruption is in order, and that independent-minded candidates are the wave of the future. But I now believe these candidates, too, need a tribe, one that reorganizes the existing system for the better.

Look no further than the recent midterm election for proof of this. With independent voter share at increased levels across the board, why didn’t serious, credible, experienced independent and minor-party candidates like Evan McMullin in Utah, Bill Walker in Alaska, Clint Smith in Arizona, and Chris Vance in Washington win their races? There are numerous valid explanations, including a system that makes it difficult for such candidates to compete in the first place, but I would contend there’s another simpler reason: they have no tribe.

Independents and minor-party candidates performed as well or better than they ever have before, but to get to the next level, they need a party. They need the infrastructure only an organized party can provide—volunteers, donors, and activists working together to support a candidate institutionally, financially, and on the ground. The new Forward Party, of which I am grateful to be a part, aims to be that tribe, building on the principled progress these candidates have made and working at the foundational level to reform the system that unfairly sidelines them.

These are precarious times for our nation. We desperately need a new force that rejects the chaos, battle metaphors, endless trolling, cynical gamesmanship, and go-nowhere politics. The Forward Party is that force. We are committed to bringing people together to get big things done, and we invite you to join us. If we’re not for you, that’s okay too. Tribes don’t have to be at war. In fact, as our politics take a different shape, we look forward to forming positive alliances with others to advance the causes that best serve our first and most important civic tribe—the American people.

Millions of Americans are ready for a new way of conducting our politics but have felt “politically homeless” for years. Or perhaps more accurately, “tribeless.” If that’s you, welcome home. 

Joel Searby is the director of communities and building at the Forward Party.

I suspect there are many others, like me, who remain registered with a party in order to vote in their state’s (Florida, in my case) primary in a closed-primary state—even though I am at heart an independent. Opening primaries might lead a lot more of us to register as independents. —Suzanne L., Florida

The American idea of free speech has long been an outlier even among liberal democratic nations. Take Charlottesville in the summer of 2017. The ACLU and others insisted that racists and bigots of all kinds can say whatever they want, however they want so long as it does not meet the O.W. Holmes definition of incitement. But what about the Black folk, Jews, and other minorities who had to cower in their homes during the Charlottesville hate fest? What about their rights to life and liberty? No one even mentioned that at the time. So no wonder we have social media run amok.

My view: Cybercom tech qualifies as critical infrastructure, and we have a time-tested model for managing critical infrastructure: a public utility. Read the preamble to the 1934 statute creating the FCC, and you'll readily see the rationale. 

But we'll never do this. So the consequences of Musk-like Twitter (and this is just the start) are on us, the body politic that doesn't think and doesn't really care so long as the bread and circus continues. Hey, at least no one was bored on the Titanic before it hit the iceberg. —Dr. Adam Garfinkle, Founding Editor of The American Interest

The views expressed in "What's Your Take?" are submitted by readers and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff or the Renew America Foundation.