 | | Hundreds of pro-Trump demonstrators gathered outside of the Capitol building in Sacramento on Wednesday.Adam Beam/Associated Press |
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It is official. After a nightlong debate — and an onslaught of violence that left four people dead as a pro-Trump mob overran the Capitol building — Congress has certified President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory and President Trump’s loss. |
The violent run-up to the final vote, driven by the president’s repeatedly debunked claim that the election had been stolen, riveted and divided the state as it did the rest of the nation. Californians voted 2-to-1 for Mr. Biden, but more than six million voted to give Mr. Trump a second term in the White House. |
There was defiance: In Orange County, Los Angeles, Sacramento and elsewhere, the president’s supporters took to the streets, waving Trump flags and “Stop the Steal” signs. “We’re here to stand — to stand for America and against evil,” Ken Rickner, 62, a stucco contractor from Antioch, said, carrying a Trump flag in a cold rain outside California’s Capitol, where about 300 people held a demonstration. |
There was disgust: “I’m sickened. This is not our country,” Representative Jared Huffman, a Democratic congressman from San Rafael, told The San Francisco Chronicle by phone from his Capitol office as the insurrection unfolded around him and “constant sirens” blared outside. Representative Karen Bass called for the arrest of marauders, tweeting their photos. As the anarchy wore on, a rising chorus of Democrats — many from California — called for Mr. Trump to be removed from office. “The President of the United States continues to be detached from reality,” Representative Ted Lieu tweeted. “You know it. I know it. We all know it.” |
There was denial: The Republican leader of the State Senate, Shannon Grove of Bakersfield, posted, then quickly deleted, a tweet insisting that the mob that stormed the Capitol in Washington had been led not by fellow backers of Mr. Trump, but by the leftist, antifascist group known as antifa. Ms. Grove later replaced the claim with a tweet scolding: “Patriots don’t act like this!! This is the way Antifa behaves.” |
There was sorrow: Though the police in Washington, D.C., did not immediately release her identity, The San Diego Union-Tribune reported that one of the casualties was a woman from the San Diego area who was shot to death by Capitol Police. Relatives identified her, based on bystander videos, as a 35-year-old Air Force veteran and Trump supporter who owned a pool supply company. “It’s her. It’s her. It’s definitely her,” one family member told the paper. Her ex-husband called her “a wonderful woman with a big heart and a strong mind.” |
There was even silence: As the president’s posts on social media became progressively less true and more inflammatory, Twitter, based in San Francisco, locked his account and Facebook and Instagram, based in Menlo Park, barred him for 24 hours from publishing on their sites. |
But there was mainly a collective “told ya,” from a state known for its Trump resistance. |
“Insurrection at the Capitol should be shocking, but sadly today’s events were not surprising if you had been listening to Trump,” California’s newly appointed senator-to-be, Alex Padilla, tweeted. |
“Donald Trump is responsible for this madness. He unleashed unchecked chaos that endangered many lives,” tweeted his fellow Democrat, Senator Dianne Feinstein. |
Gov. Gavin Newsom canceled a news briefing on Covid-19 “out of an abundance of caution,” calling the chaos “reprehensible and an outright assault to our democracy and Democratic institutions.” |
There was also fear: Ms. Pelosi, a frequent target of the president and his supporters, wrote that the episode presented a “shameful picture of our country” that was “instigated at the highest level.” The dispatch went out from a secure location, where security officers had taken her and other members of Congress after the stately government building devolved into chaos. |
In her absence, invaders pillaged her office for trophies. The website Ars Technica reported that a host for the conservative website The Blaze tweeted and later deleted photos from Ms. Pelosi’s desk, gloating that “emails are still on the screen along side a federal alert warning members of the current revolution.” |
California Republicans decried the mob, too, some later than others. Only two of the state’s House Republicans — Representatives Young Kim of Orange County and Tom McClintock of Elk Grove — had made it clear before Wednesday that they would certify the election, flouting the president’s entreaties. |
Earlier this week, Representative Mike Garcia, who represents the high desert exurbs of northern Los Angeles County, had echoed the president’s disinformation in an op-ed, saying that “fraud needs to be eradicated.” By midafternoon Wednesday, he was tweeting: “This behavior isn’t patriotism. It’s sedition.” |
And the House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, who had championed Mr. Trump and encouraged his party to contest the victory of President-elect Biden, also had second thoughts. |
“This is so un-American,” Mr. McCarthy, a Bakersfield Republican, told Fox News as the network — long a megaphone for Mr. Trump — broadcast images of the mob scaling the Capitol’s walls and breaking its windows, convinced by the president that they had been dealt an existential injustice. |
Here’s what else to know today |
- Calling on state lawmakers to fast-track pandemic relief to Californians, Gov. Gavin Newsom proposed on Wednesday that the state send $600 checks to an estimated four million low-income families, including undocumented immigrants who file state tax returns. [The New York Times]
- Superintendents of seven of California’s largest school districts took issue with the governor’s plan to reopen classrooms for face-to-face instruction, saying it failed to set a clear standard for reopening, siphoned funds for education and risked giving an “effective veto” to local interests. Teacher unions have resisted an in-person return to campuses. [The Los Angeles Times]
- Representative Michelle Steel, a Republican who questioned mask mandates when she was a supervisor in Orange County, was not at the Capitol during the siege on Wednesday because she was in quarantine, having tested positive for Covid-19. [Patch]
- California has surpassed 2.5 million cases of the coronavirus, with more than 28,040 deaths since the beginning of the pandemic. [The New York Times]
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 | | A Trump supporter broke into Representative Nancy Pelosi’s office on Wednesday.Saul Loeb/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images |
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Jill Cowan grew up in Orange County, graduated from U.C. Berkeley and has reported all over the state, including the Bay Area, Bakersfield and Los Angeles — but she always wants to see more. Follow along here or on Twitter. |
California Today is edited by Julie Bloom, who grew up in Los Angeles and graduated from U.C. Berkeley. |
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