THE BIG STORY

Trump has become the first president to ever be impeached twice, this time for inciting a deadly insurrection

With ten Republicans joining Democrats to vote in favour, on Wednesday the House of Representatives charged President Donald Trump with “incitement of insurrection.” This makes Trump the first-ever president to be impeached twice, and it happened while he has a week left in office.

It’s important to contextualize this moment. National Guard troops have swarmed the Capitol. Extremists are threatening to return to DC ahead of Joe Biden’s inauguration. Trump has largely been forced silent, stripped of access to his followers on social media.

And in the middle of all that, impeachment. Democrats say they plan to speedily transmit the articles of impeachment to the Senate. Having said that, Trump’s trial may be delayed until Jan. 19, because the Senate is not in Washington, meaning it could continue into the first days of Biden’s administration.

Turning to the future: all eyes are on Mitch McConnell, who will have to pick a side. Whether or not Donald Trump will be banned from running for office ever again essentially sits with him. One Democratic Senate put it like this: “If he publicly says he will impeach, then the dam breaks.”

In extraordinary scenes, the National Guard slept on the floor of the Capitol to protect lawmakers ahead of the impeachment vote.

Saul Loeb / Getty Images

STAYING ON TOP OF THIS

A week after the Capitol riots

We’re still making sense of the insurrection at the Capitol. Here are the latest developments:

👉 The man wearing a “Camp Auschwitz” sweatshirt at the Capitol has been arrested.

👉 Using a pseudonym, a QAnon believer raised $40,000 to send people to the DC riot. At least one person whom “Thad Williams” helped send to DC bragged about carrying a firearm to the nation's capital.

👉 Two off-duty cops were arrested after taking a selfie during the attack on the Capitol. “Not like I did anything illegal,” one of the cops wrote on Facebook, according to a federal complaint filed against him.

👉 Oath Keepers, one of the largest right-wing militia groups in the US, says its website was taken down days after it sent members to the Capitol riots.

Trump supporters wearing Oath Keepers patches gather outside the Capitol in Washington, DC. Manuel Balce Ceneta / AP

SNAPSHOTS

Airbnb has cancelled all reservations during inauguration week. The company cited safety concerns and said existing reservations will be canceled and refunded, and new stays will not be allowed.

Michigan’s former governor has been charged with willful neglect in Flint’s water crisis. The charges against former governor Rick Snyder come nearly seven years after the city switched its water source, resulting in a major public health crisis.

The Capitol insurrection was the end result of a presidency defined by violence. Crimes fueled by hate and online conspiracy theories over the past four years repeatedly offered warnings of the forces that drove last week’s attack on the US Capitol.

Andrew Yang is running for mayor of New York City. Yang, an entrepreneur who developed a national following in the 2020 Democratic primary, enters the already-stacked New York race as both a national star and a target for a sprawling field of competitors.

BODY WEEK 2021

My breast reduction finally made me feel at home in my body

“I developed breasts sometime around the fourth grade,” Olivia Niland writes, “and was promptly gifted a no-nonsense underwire bra from my mother, a flesh-colored garment that I hated with a burning passion.”

We’re a little over halfway through Body Week 2021, and the pieces we’ve published so far have been moving, vulnerable, hopeful, thought-provoking. Don’t miss Niland’s piece on the anxieties of growing up with breasts that “only ever felt like a burden — grotesque and inappropriate and embarrassingly out of sync with the person I wanted to present to the world.”

Niland describes the freedom that came with getting the breast reduction surgery she always wanted: “For the first time in my adult life, I didn’t have daily back pain, and I felt vindicated in my suffering and only a little angry at the gaslighting I’d received about it.”

AHOY, MATEY

TikTok is now obsessed with sea shanties, and it’s so wholesome

I have to say: this is not a development I saw coming.

A handful of viral TikToks have flung the platform into a full-blown sea shanty phase, and it’s beautiful to see. Sea shanties, for those who were not privateers among us, are the songs sung aboard the ships to coordinate the crew.

TikTokers are currently obsessed with sea shanties, and it seems to trace back to Scottish singer Nathan Evans. We talked to him about how we got here.

Take extra care to speak to yourself with gentleness today,

Elamin