Where the partisan divide comes from

The halls of Congress aren’t as hateful as you might think. I witnessed plenty of bipartisanship firsthand on Capitol Hill. Sen. Barrasso shared a laugh with Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) during an Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing when the chairman forgot to reconvene the meeting. I saw Republican and Democrat senators mingling on the Senate floor, exchanging smiles and pleasantries like old friends instead of political rivals. And outside the office, there’s the annual Congressional Baseball Game for Charity, a bipartisan tradition since 1909.

The entire U.S. Capitol was buzzing the day the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. I was there for it. I stood at the window with my fellow staffers in the office of U.S. Sen. John Barrasso (R., Wyo.), watching protestors march up Constitution Avenue toward the Supreme Court Building on First Street. We closely monitored our emails, receiving instructions from U.S. Capitol Police who told us not to bring anyone, whether they were on official business or not, onto Capitol grounds. We were instructed to avoid the Supreme Court and keep our congressional badges concealed as we exited the Dirksen Senate Office Building, lest protestors become violent.

WASHINGTON — In a surprise hearing before the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection, a top aide to former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows testified that former President Donald Trump knew of the possibility for violence when he urged his supporters to “fight like hell” in remarks that morning, and then became irate when his security detail would not let him to go to the Capitol.

WASHINGTON — Even before the beginning of Thursday’s hearing of the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection, some in former President Donald Trump’s orbit had cause for concern.

WASHINGTON — Over nearly three hours of emotional testimony Tuesday, witnesses before the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection detailed the extreme measures that former President Donald Trump and his allies took to pressure them to overturn the 2020 election.

WASHINGTON—In the days leading up to Jan. 6, 2021, when then-Vice President Mike Pence was set to certify President Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election, officials supporting former President Donald Trump’s unverified claims of widespread election fraud were warned repeatedly that their plans to deny the outcome of the election had the potential to unleash violence and yet they proceeded with those designs anyway, officials testified Thursday.

WASHINGTON — Lawmakers investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection detailed Monday their findings into the origins of what they called the “big lie,” the unsubstantiated allegation by former President Donald Trump and others in his orbit that the 2020 presidential election was plagued by voter fraud and that Trump, not President Joe Biden, was the legitimate winner.

WASHINGTON — Lawmakers investigating the deadly Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol formally presented their findings to the public for the first time Thursday night, just steps from the site of the failed attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election 17 months ago.