\n<\/p>\n
This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.<\/p>\n
Because the fatal shooting of Ashli Babbitt on January 6, 2021, was caught on camera, what happened isn\u2019t really in doubt.<\/p>\n
Babbitt, an Air Force veteran, was part of a crowd that stormed the U.S. Capitol that day, fighting with and attacking police, breaking windows, and then rushing into the building. She eventually ended up outside of the Speaker\u2019s Lobby, an area just beside the House chamber. The doors were barricaded, but another member of the mob broke their glass. Police officers on the other side shouted at people not to enter, but Babbitt tried to climb through the window. When she refused to stop, a Capitol Police officer shot her in the shoulder. She died shortly thereafter.<\/p>\n
Babbitt\u2019s death was tragic, and not simply in the sense that any needless death is. She died fighting for a lie that she apparently believed: Donald Trump\u2019s claim that the 2020 election was stolen. Trump is not always one to return a favor, but he seems determined to repay Babbitt\u2019s devotion by making her an icon\u2014part of a bigger project to turn January 6 into a moment of triumph.<\/p>\n
Last week, the Air Force confirmed that it would grant military-funeral honors for Babbitt, which typically involve uniformed service members being present to play \u201cTaps,\u201d fold an American flag, and present it to the family. The honors had been denied by the Biden administration.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter reviewing the circumstances of Ashli\u2019s death, and considering the information that has come forward since then, I am persuaded that the previous determination was incorrect,\u201d Matthew Lohmeier, the undersecretary of the Air Force, wrote in a letter. He also invited Babbitt\u2019s family to visit him at the Pentagon. Lohmeier has not explained what the new information is.<\/p>\n
Even Trump\u2019s allies understood that Babbitt was no hero. Senator Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma, a MAGA loyalist who was present when she was shot, said that the officer who shot Babbitt \u201cdidn\u2019t have a choice at that time,\u201d adding that \u201chis actions, I believe, saved people\u2019s lives even more.\u201d Nevertheless, the Trump administration settled a wrongful-death lawsuit with Babbitt\u2019s family earlier this year, for a reported $5 million. The settlement looks like a political choice, not a legal one; until Trump took office, the Justice Department had been planning to fight the lawsuit. The president also infamously granted sweeping clemency for the rioters on his first day back in the White House, pardoning many and commuting others\u2019 sentences. The beneficiaries include many violent offenders who Vice President J. D. Vance had said just days earlier should not receive clemency.<\/p>\n
Trump then set about purging prosecutors who had worked on the cases, including line attorneys simply doing their job. Filling their place in the DOJ are people such as Ed Martin, who was an attorney for some of the rioters and now leads the aptly named Weaponization Working Group, and Jared Wise, who NPR reported last month was caught on tape during the insurrection encouraging the mob to \u201ckill\u201d police officers.<\/p>\n
As if that were not enough, the right-wing lawyer Mark McCloskey, best known for illegally brandishing a gun at protesters outside his St. Louis home, said last week that he is in discussions with the DOJ about a compensation plan for the rioters, hoping to win them financial damages for supposedly wrongful prosecution. McCloskey even compared the proposed fund\u2014I am not making this up\u2014to the one set up to compensate victims of the September 11 attacks. (The DOJ has not commented on his remarks.)<\/p>\n
The only real connection between the events is that both were violent attacks on the United States. The difference should be obvious: The 9\/11 fund compensates victims and their families, whereas any would-be January 6 fund is being dreamt up to compensate the perpetrators. The overall goal of the rioters was to prevent Congress from certifying the rightful election of Joe Biden. They wanted to prevent a constitutional process. Some carried weapons. Some beat police officers. Some called for the lynching of then\u2013Vice President Mike Pence.<\/p>\n
In October 2021, I argued that January 6 was becoming a \u201cNew Lost Cause,\u201d similar to the way southerners romanticized and justified the Confederacy\u2019s defeat in the Civil War. One rioter even marched through the Capitol with the flag of the Army of Northern Virginia. Four years later, it\u2019s not even clear that the cause lost. Trump not only won back the White House, but, with his actions, he has also managed to turn the insurrection into a delayed triumph. The perpetrators are the victims; the victims, meanwhile, are ostracized.<\/p>\n
The Trump administration isn\u2019t really rewriting history, the way his administration is attempting to do at the Smithsonian. No one seriously contests what happened on January 6, and hardly anyone still bothers to make the case for fraud in the election. It\u2019s simply justification by force, insisting that the bad guys were actually good. Not coincidentally, the administration is at the same time uplifting the original Lost Cause, placing a portrait of the traitor Robert E. Lee on display at West Point (in apparent defiance of a law that led to its removal) and planning to restore a monument to Confederate veterans at Arlington National Cemetery.<\/p>\n
These developments in the January 6 cases come at an eerie time. Two years after Trump\u2019s attempted election theft, his Brazilian ally Jair Bolsonaro lost an election and then allegedly incited his supporters to try to steal it. This week, Bolsonaro\u2019s trial on accusations of fomenting a coup is entering its final stage. Accountability is now something they might consider in foreign countries, not here.<\/p>\n
Related:<\/p>\n
Here are four new stories from The Atlantic:<\/strong><\/p>\n Today\u2019s News<\/strong><\/p>\n Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo announced that the state will work to eliminate all vaccine mandates, calling them \u201cwrong\u201d and \u201cimmoral\u201d and likening them to slavery.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n Dispatches<\/strong><\/p>\n Explore all of our newsletters here.<\/em><\/p>\n Evening Read<\/strong><\/p>\n Photo-illustration by The Atlantic. Source: Victor Colin Sumner \/ Fairfax Media \/ Getty.<\/p>\n When Your Kid\u2019s Best Friend Is a Great Big Problem<\/p>\n By Russell Shaw<\/p>\n When I was 10, my best friend taught me how to make a flamethrower. We duct-taped a can of WD-40 to one end of a two-by-four, melted a candle onto the other, and prepared for imaginary enemy marauders. We never lit it, thankfully.<\/p>\n If my parents had known, I wonder whether they would have forbidden the friendship\u2014though if they had, it might not have mattered. My pal and I still saw each other daily at school, where our recess schemes, such as building a roulette wheel from a broken turntable and getting classmates to gamble with the desserts from their lunches, mirrored our weekend mischief. The friendship died a natural death after sixth grade, when we went to different schools \u2026<\/p>\n Of course, knowing this doesn\u2019t make it any easier when your teen\u2019s friends seem to embody everything you\u2019ve tried to teach them to avoid.<\/p>\n Read the full article.<\/p>\n More From The Atlantic<\/em><\/p>\n Culture Break<\/p>\n Photo-illustration by The Atlantic. Source: Howard Earl Simmons \/ NY Daily News Archive \/ Getty.<\/p>\n Read. So many statues honoring sports heroes are disappointing\u2014but one, a tribute to a tennis legend, rises above the rest, Sally Jenkins writes.<\/p>\n Watch. Last year, Shirley Li recommended 15 of the buzziest films to add to your watch list.<\/p>\n Play our daily crossword.<\/p>\n Rafaela Jinich contributed to this newsletter.<\/p>\n When you buy a book using a link in this newsletter, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting <\/em>The Atlantic.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. Because the fatal shooting of Ashli Babbitt on January 6, 2021, was caught on camera, what happened isn\u2019t really<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19033,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[1671,11651,5285],"class_list":{"0":"post-19032","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-social-issues","8":"tag-atlantic","9":"tag-insurrectionists","10":"tag-triumph"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19032","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19032"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19032\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/19033"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19032"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19032"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19032"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n