Post Politics Now After dramatic first night, Jan. 6 panel plans several more high-profile hearings

The GOP race to take on Democratic Virginia Rep. Abigail Spanberger is anybody’s game.

As Meagan Flynn reports, the six-way GOP primary in Virginia’s 7th Congressional District is quite tight and has become one of the state’s most competitive congressional GOP primaries.

State Sen. Bryce Reeves is arguably the most visible public official in the primary. He is hoping a decade-long track record in the state Senate is what Republican voters will turn to June 21 as they select the nominee who will take on Spanberger in November.

Nearly 19 million people tuned in Thursday night to watch the first Jan. 6 hearing, according to preliminary ratings data obtained by The Washington Post.

The prime-time hearing was watched by roughly 18.8 million people across the six major American broadcast and cable networks that aired it Thursday night, Jeremy Barr reports. The data, collected by Nielsen ratings service, does not include the millions more who watched the hearing on streaming apps or social media — where many clips of testimony went viral.

I am confused as to who had responsibility to contact the National Guard and additional police during the insurrection. I have heard that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) had some kind of responsibility. Is this true? — asks a reader from North Carolina

Washington is not a state. Because of this, the Defense Department has complete authority over D.C.'s National Guard. At the time of the insurrection, that meant then-Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy controlled the D.C. Guard.

Ahead of the insurrection, D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) requested that about 340 members of the D.C. Guard be sent to protect the Capitol grounds and work with D.C. police in the case of protests in the city. The Defense Department greenlighted this request.

Former Justice Department officials Jeff Rosen, Rich Donoghue and Steve Engel will testify during the third Jan. 6 hearing, which will be held on Wednesday, according to a letter sent to the House select committee.

During Thursday’s hearing, the committee chair and vice chair, Reps. Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.) and Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), signaled that the third hearing will center on former president Donald Trump’s efforts to use the Justice Department to hold on to office.

In a letter to Thompson, Reginald Brown, a lawyer for Rosen, thanked the committee for inviting the former official to testify.

The Biden administration has spent months on the defensive to address inflation. On Friday, during an appearance at the Port of Los Angeles, Biden made several sympathetic comments but did not relay specific details on his plans to tackle the issue.

Biden said he understands that inflation “is a real challenge to American families.”

“Today’s inflation report confirms what Americans already know — Putin’s price hike is hitting America hard,” Biden said.

The issue, however, is likely to remain at the top of Americans’ minds, as the latest report showed that inflation in May hit a new peak of 8.6 percent compared with a year earlier — the fastest pace in 40 years.

LOS ANGELES — President Biden said he didn’t watch the first Jan. 6 hearing Thursday night, but stressed that the select House committee’s work is key to secure the future of America’s democracy.

“The insurrection of Jan. 6 is one of the darkest periods of our nation’s history,” Biden said during an event here at Port of Los Angeles. “The same forces that allowed Jan. 6 remain today.”

It’s important, he said, for the American people to understand what really happened on Jan. 6.

“I never thought that it was going to be this straightforward, the challenge” to defend democracy, Biden said. “The battle for the soul of America has been far from won.”

Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, pressed 29 Republican state lawmakers in Arizona — 27 more than previously known — to set aside Biden’s popular-vote victory and “choose” presidential electors, emails show, according to The Post’s Emma Brown.

The Post reported last month that Thomas emailed two Arizona House members after the 2020 election to urge them to help overturn Biden’s victory by selecting presidential electors — a responsibility that belongs to Arizona voters under state law.

The Jan. 6 committee hearings, which continue Monday, could mark the pinnacle of the political career of Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) or the end of it.

Paul Kane, Josh Dawsey and Jacqueline Alemany write:

The former rising star of the GOP has already been alienated by party leaders, abandoned by longtime supporters and consistently attacked by former president Donald Trump and his allies, who are backing a primary challenger Cheney will face in August.

While most of the nine other Republicans who voted to impeach Trump after Jan. 6 have either decided not to run for reelection or mostly avoided discussing the former president, Cheney has made her role as the vice chair of the select committee investigating the insurrection central to her pitch to voters. She is trying to convince them she’s on the right side of history — and that her Trump-free approach to conservatism is the right one.

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