The Morning Dispatch: January 6 Committee Gets Going

Happy Wednesday! The disinformation is coming from inside the house! In yesterday’s TMD, we included a “Presented Without Comment” featuring a heavily-lei’d Emmanuel Macron in French Polynesia. 

We weren’t clear enough that the post was a photoshopped joke, so Dispatch fact checker Alec Dent decided to take us to task. Mea culpa, Alec.

Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories

• The Centers for Disease Control updated its COVID-19 mask guidance on Tuesday, recommending that fully vaccinated people wear masks indoors once again in areas of “substantial or high transmission” to provide additional protection from the Delta variant.

• The Tokyo Metropolitan Government reported a record number of confirmed coronavirus infections Tuesday, at 2,848 new cases city-wide. The surge comes as the Japanese capital hosts the Olympics Games after a year-long postponement due to the pandemic.

• GOP State Rep. Jake Ellzey defeated fellow Republican Susan Wright, the widow of former Rep. Ron Wright, by nearly 7 percentage points in a special election for Texas’s sixth congressional district on Tuesday. Former President Donald Trump had endorsed and campaigned for Wright.

• After resuming letter correspondence in April, South Korean President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un came to an agreement to reestablish communication between their two countries. 

• The man accused of killing eight people at three Atlanta area spas in March pleaded guilty to four of those murders in a deal with Cherokee County prosecutors announced Tuesday. He received four consecutive life sentences plus 35 years—without parole. Fulton County prosecutors had previously planned to seek the death penalty.

• The U.S. women’s Olympic gymnastics team failed to win gold yesterday after star gymnast Simone Biles pulled out of the event midway, saying she was not in the right place mentally to compete. America remains atop the medal count with 30 total medals, but its 10 golds lag behind the 11 each of China and Japan.

• The United States confirmed 71,129 new cases of COVID-19 yesterday per the Johns Hopkins University COVID-19 Dashboard, with 4.6 percent of the 1,541,670 tests reported coming back positive. An additional 458 deaths were attributed to the virus on Tuesday, bringing the pandemic’s American death toll to 611,409. According to the CDC, 27,802 Americans are currently hospitalized with COVID-19. Meanwhile, 395,489 COVID-19 vaccine doses were administered yesterday, with 188,996,475 Americans having now received at least one dose.

‘Do We Hate Our Political Adversaries More Than We Love Our Country?’

A Capitol Police officer wiping away tears. A D.C. cop slamming his hand on the table in frustration. A Republican lawmaker struggling to speak without sobbing. The Democrat-led January 6 select committee got off to a dramatic start on Tuesday, forcing lawmakers once again to grapple with the events of that day and providing a stark reminder to Republicans that its political salience isn’t fading anytime soon.

The committee’s nine members—and dozens of reporters—crammed into a small hearing room in the Cannon House Office Building yesterday to hear the testimony of four law enforcement officers present at the Capitol on the day of the riot: U.S. Capitol Police Sgt. Aquilino Gonell and Private Harry Dunn, and D.C. Metropolitan Police Department officers Michael Fanone and Daniel Hodges.

“We are not asking for medals, recognition,” Gonell—an immigrant from the Dominican Republic and Iraq War veteran—said, moments after lawmakers played footage of the violent and chaotic scenes of that day. “We simply want justice and accountability. For most people, January 6 happened for a few hours, but for those of us who were in the thick of it, it has not ended. That day continues to be a constant trauma for us literally every day.”

Until yesterday, most of the conversation surrounding the committee had centered on its members. As a reminder, Speaker Nancy Pelosi appointed seven Democrats and two Republicans; Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy withdrew his remaining three appointees after Pelosi blocked Reps. Jim Jordan and Jim Banks from serving. And if Tuesday was any indication, Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson—the chair of the committee—is going to rely heavily on his Republican peers to make his case.

Rep. Liz Cheney spoke second on the day, reminding viewers how the committee came to be. “Every one of us here on the dais voted for and would have preferred that these matters be investigated by an independent, non-partisan commission,” she said. “Although such a commission was opposed by my own leadership in the House, it overwhelmingly passed with the support of 35 Republican members. It was defeated by Republicans in the Senate, and that leaves us where we are today.”

In her opening remarks, Cheney hinted at where the the committee—equipped with subpoena power—is headed. “We must … know what happened every minute of that day in the White House, every phone call, every conversation, every meeting leading up to, during, and after the attack,” she said. “If those responsible are not held accountable and if Congress does not act responsibly, this will remain a cancer on our constitutional republic, undermining the peaceful transfer of power at the heart of our democratic system. We will face the threat of more violence in the months to come and another January 6th every four years.”

“Will we preserve the peaceful transition of power, or will we be so blinded by partisanship that we throw away the miracle of America? Do we hate our political adversaries more than we love our country and revere our Constitution?”

Rep. Adam Kinzinger, the committee’s other GOP member, said he accepted Pelosi’s invitation to serve “not in spite of my membership in the Republican Party, but because of it.”

“I’m frustrated that six months after a deadly insurrection breached the United States Capitol for several hours on live television, we still don’t know exactly what happened,” he continued. “Why? Because many in my party have treated this as just another partisan fight.”

The House GOP’s current leadership seemed determined to prove Kinzinger right. Minutes before the select committee hearing began, McCarthy, Rep. Steve Scalise, and Rep. Elise Stefanik held a press conference outside the Capitol in an attempt to counter-program those McCarthy has deemed “Pelosi Republicans.”

“The American people deserve to know the truth,” Stefanik said, referencing the Capitol’s lack of preparedness for the angry mob former President Trump directed its way. “Nancy Pelosi bears responsibility as the Speaker of the House for the tragedy that occurred on January 6th.” Pelosi’s office responded with news reports pointing out she does not solely oversee the day-to-day operations of the Capitol Police.

“Speaker Pelosi will only [put] people on to the committee that will ask the questions she wants asked,” McCarthy added. “That becomes a failed committee and a failed report. A sham that no one can believe.”

Neither Stefanik nor McCarthy directly criticized the four law enforcement officers themselves, but some of their fellow partisans had no problem going there. Pro-Trump media personalities dismissed the officers as actors and attention-seekers and dismissed their emotional testimony as “far left theater.”

Most of the officers’ testimony on Tuesday was not new—many of those present had shared their January 6 experiences publicly before—but it was gripping. “I was grabbed, beaten, tased, all while being called a traitor to my country,” Fanone said. “I was at risk of being stripped of and killed with my own firearm, as I heard chants of ‘Kill him with his own gun.’” After his colleagues rushed him to a nearby hospital, he learned that he had suffered a heart attack and a concussion.

Thompson wrapped the hearing with a pledge to “get to the bottom of what happened that day,” so as not to “allow what happened on January 6 to ever happen again.” The committee’s next hearing, he added, will likely occur sometime during the August recess, and subpoenas will be coming quickly—though he declined to identify who will be compelled to testify. The Justice Department, in a letter reported by Politico yesterday, indicated it will not seek to block any former Trump administration officials from sharing what they know about that day.

Of Mask Recommendations and Vaccine Mandates

Seventy-five days after telling Americans they could ditch their masks once fully vaccinated, the CDC issued updated guidance on Tuesday encouraging anyone in an “area of substantial or high transmission”—defined as counties with 50 or more new COVID cases per 100,000 residents or greater than 8 percent testing positivity over the past seven days—to start masking indoors again. At present, just over 63 percent of counties meet the criteria nationwide, concentrated in the South and West.

“CDC recommends fully vaccinated people wear masks in public indoor settings to help prevent the spread of the Delta variant and protect others,” CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky told reporters yesterday, taking care to note the guidance also applies to students, teachers, and staff at K–12 schools. With the Delta variant now responsible for more than 8 in 10 new COVID infections nationwide, confirmed new cases have, by The Dispatch’s count, risen 63 percent week-over-week, and hospitalizations 44 percent. Deaths attributed to the virus, however, have only increased by 6 percent over the same time period.

Walensky justified the about-face by referencing “information” indicating that “in rare occasions, some vaccinated people infected with the Delta variant after vaccination may be contagious and spread the virus to others.” An anonymous administration official, however, told STAT News that public health officials don’t actually have studies proving fully vaccinated people are transmitting the virus—they have studies showing that fully vaccinated people who come down with the Delta variant may infect others because they have a higher amount of virus in their noses and throats.

But public health officials remained adamant yesterday that the vaccines are effective at preventing severe illness, hospitalization, and death—even from the Delta variant. So was yesterday’s guidance for vaccinated individuals more about protecting their unvaccinated countrymen and women? Walensky struggled to answer that question.

“The vast majority of transmission … is occurring through unvaccinated individuals,” she said. “But on that exception that you might have a vaccine breakthrough, we thought it was important for people to understand that they could pass the disease on to someone else.”

Americans highly attuned to public health messaging may be able to suss out the throughline in the CDC’s shifting messaging, but many will likely see Tuesday’s announcement as one big flip-flop—and a flip-flop that removes an incentive to get vaccinated at that.

“It might well be the case that this discourages some people from getting the vaccine,” Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease specialist at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center, told The Dispatch. “It makes it even more imperative for us to get the argument out that, ‘If you unvaccinated people would just get vaccinated, we wouldn’t have had to do this.’”

Vaccine uptake in the United States has more or less stalled at just under 70 percent of adults (about 87 percent of whom are fully vaccinated), but inoculation advocates have another tool at their disposal—and they’re starting to utilize it. 

Although discussions of a “vaccine passport” dominated social media and the airwaves for months back in the spring, the United States never implemented—or really came close to implementing—any form of a universal passport as a ticket back to normalcy. In its stead, various institutions across the country have begun implementing their own more specific mandates—and the pace is accelerating.

On Monday, the Department of Veterans Affairs became the first federal agency to require a subset of its employees to get the shot, providing them eight weeks to be fully vaccinated. Municipal employees in New York City and Los Angeles will have to do the same by September, or face burdensome weekly testing requirements. Hundreds of colleges and universities will mandate students be fully vaccinated before returning to campus this fall, and the Washington Post will do the same for its reporters when they’re back in the office in September. The National Football League last week implemented its own unique incentive: Games canceled due to a COVID outbreak among unvaccinated players will result in a forfeit for their team. The NFL announced yesterday that 85 percent of its players had gotten at least one vaccine dose, and 14 of the league’s 32 teams have vaccination rates over 90 percent.

There will always be those who refuse a vaccine no matter what—14 percent of respondents in a recent Kaiser Family Foundation survey fell under this category—but mandates are vaccine proponents’ last, best hope to convince the 10 percent in “wait and see” mode and 6 percent in the “only if required” category. Lindsey Simon, a server at a Missouri resort recently interviewed by Politico, is an example: She had held off on getting the jab for months, but took the plunge recently in order to see a live performance from her favorite comedian, Gabriel Iglesias. A soldier stationed at Fort Hood in Texas recently told The Atlantic’s Kori Schake why so many members of the military have yet to get vaccinated: “Because if it was really important, the military would make us do it.”

For federal employees and contractors, such a move could be on the way. “That’s under consideration right now,” Biden said Tuesday when asked. CNN subsequently reported that the president is planning to announce such a requirement on Thursday, though it would exempt the U.S. military—at least for now. That, according to Schaffner, will likely wait until the vaccines have full Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval—not just emergency use authorization (EUA).

“Once we get formal licensure and we move away from the emergency use authorization—the ‘experimental vaccine,’ as it’s called—then I think that this will accelerate the process,” Schaffner said. “I think the military would be poised to go the moment the vaccine is licensed.” An FDA spokesperson said this week the agency is “working as quickly as possible” to review applications for full approval, but many in the public health community are frustrated it’s taken this long already. 

Even without this official licensure, most institutions looking to implement vaccine mandates will have the law on their side. A federal judge in Texas last month dismissed a lawsuit brought by a group of Houston Methodist Hospital employees suspended for refusing the vaccine. This week, the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel reiterated that federal law does not prohibit public and private entities from imposing vaccine requirements, “even when the only vaccines available are those authorized under EUAs.”

“There is no federal law preventing employers from requiring employees to be vaccinated in general,” Gabriel Malor, an appellate litigator and writer based in Virginia, told The Dispatch. “But they must allow carve outs for individuals who aren’t vaccinated for medical reasons, and for people who aren’t vaccinated for religious reasons.”

On the state level, however, we could soon be headed for a collision course. Several governors—Greg Abbott in Texas, Ron DeSantis in Florida, and Kay Ivey in Alabama, among others—have in recent months enacted legislation aimed at prohibiting entities from implementing COVID vaccine mandates, or punishing those that do. But as a JD Supra analysis of the Texas law notes, it “does not restrict a business from implementing COVID-19 screening and infection control protocols in accordance with state and federal law to protect public health,” and “while businesses cannot require customers to show proof of vaccine, they are not prohibited from offering an incentive to customers who volunteer this information.”

Worth Your Time

• In National Review, Michael Brendan Dougherty lambasts the photography company Kodak, which removed a collection of photographs from its website in order to keep peace with the Chinese government. “What this teaches us is the primacy of the political,” he writes. “Human nature and the laws of economics shape and limit what states can do. But the American state must also be on guard for the ways in which simple greed and the protection of shareholder value can introduce a powerful foreign tyranny into our lives.”

Presented Without Comment

Toeing the Company Line

• Sarah & Co.’s 2024 GOP primary series continued in yesterday’s Sweep, taking a look at a few of the more anti-Trump characters who could feasibly jump in the race: Govs. Larry Hogan and Chris Christie and Rep. Liz Cheney. Plus, Chris Stirewalt has a warning for Democrats about carrying a big-spending message into the midterms.

• National Review’s Dan McLaughlin stopped by The Remnant yesterday for a conversation with Jonah about the January 6 select committee, the difference between being a political commentator and political operative, and the increasingly fragile state of fusionism on the right.

• David makes a provocative argument in his latest French Press (🔒): The Supreme Court should not assume that reversing Roe v. Wade will be more disruptive than upholding it. “By returning the abortion question to states, overturning Roe could de-escalate national politics, de-escalate the judicial nomination wars, and perhaps cause voters to focus more on political races closer to home,” he writes. “It’s not as if the case presents the court with a choice between stability and instability. The instability is already here, and it’s been building for almost 50 years.”

Let Us Know

What was your reaction to hearing the CDC wants vaccinated people in some places to go back to masking after all? If you’re in a moderate-to-high transmission community and vaccinated, do you intend to follow that advice?

Reporting by Declan Garvey (@declanpgarvey), Andrew Egger (@EggerDC), Charlotte Lawson (@charlotteUVA), Ryan Brown (@RyanP_Brown), Harvest Prude (@HarvestPrude), Tripp Grebe (@tripper_grebe), Emma Rogers (@emw_96), Price St. Clair (@PriceStClair1), Jonathan Chew (@JonathanChew19), and Steve Hayes (@stephenfhayes).