The Morning Dispatch: One Day More

Happy Tuesday! Yesterday was an eerily slow news day, so we’ll try to keep this one quick. (Us typing that out almost guarantees today is going to be an insane day.)

Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories

• Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was sentenced to 30 days in prison on Monday, less than 24 hours after he was arrested in a Moscow airport. He faces a sentence of up to three and a half years if he is charged for violating parole in a second hearing scheduled for next month. Navalny urged democratic activists to “take to the streets” in a video message released yesterday. “No one can protect us but ourselves, and there are so many of us that if we want to achieve something, we will achieve it.”

• Vice President-elect Kamala Harris officially resigned from her Senate seat on Monday, clearing the way for California Gov. Gavin Newsom to formally appoint Alex Padilla—California’s secretary of state—who will finish out the final two years in Harris’s term.

• The Michigan GOP is attempting to oust Aaron Van Langevelde, the Republican member of the state’s Board of Canvassers who voted to certify Joe Biden’s victory in November.

• President Trump on Monday night ordered the lifting of coronavirus-inspired travel restrictions on the United Kingdom, Ireland, Schengen Area, and Brazil effective January 26, citing a Centers for Disease Control order that will require travelers provide proof of a negative COVID-19 test before flying to the United States. Incoming White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, however, said the Biden administration will reverse the order and keep the travel restrictions in place.

• Beijing on Monday announced that China’s gross domestic product grew 2.3 percent in 2020, making it the only economic superpower to experience growth during the coronavirus pandemic. Economists attribute the growth to China’s “V-shaped” recovery from the pandemic-driven slow down.

• The United States confirmed 144,912 new cases of COVID-19 yesterday per the Johns Hopkins University COVID-19 Dashboard, with 7.1 percent of the 2,054,111 tests reported coming back positive. An additional 1,445 deaths were attributed to the virus on Monday, bringing the pandemic’s American death toll to 398,977. According to the COVID Tracking Project, 123,848* Americans are currently hospitalized with COVID-19. According to the Centers for Disease Control, 31,161,075 COVID-19 vaccine doses have been distributed nationwide, and 12,279,180 have been administered.

Jangled Nerves and Fake News 

One day before Joe Biden’s inauguration, D.C. has some serious jitters. The ease with which a violent mob was able to occupy the U.S. Capitol earlier this month unnerved the city’s residents, and while the massive mobilization of the National Guard in response to that attack means the government is less likely to be surprised again, having the city’s downtown transformed overnight into a high-alert security complex hasn’t exactly lowered anyone’s cortisol levels either.

This ambient stress at the epicenter of U.S. politics and political media may have something to do with the number of sensationalized and misleading headlines about the imminent prospect of more violence that have rocketed around social media over the past few days.

On Saturday afternoon, CNN anchor Jim Sciutto tweeted something chilling: U.S. Capitol police had one day prior arrested a man trying to enter downtown D.C. “with fake inaugural credentials, a loaded handgun & over 500 rounds of ammunition.” The tweet sounded like confirmation of the sort of thing many residents feared: That extremists emboldened by the January 6 attack would be back for more violence this week. The tweet quickly went viral.

By that evening, however, a fuller picture had emerged: The Washington Post reported that the man had been a hired security guard, that the credential was not “fake,” but rather a valid Park Police pass that was not recognized by the Secret Service, and that the man had no prior extremist ties. He was charged with illegally carrying an unregistered firearm and unregistered ammunition into D.C., but—according to the Post—“cooperated fully with law enforcement and was cleared of further investigation.” The man was released pending his trial on no-cost bail, to which prosecutors did not object.

Yesterday morning brought another brief scare: An inaugural rehearsal was paused and people at the Capitol were warned to shelter in place and stay away from doors and windows “due to an external security threat.” Naturally, this prompted another barrage of unnerved reportorial tweeting—but the warnings turned out simply to have been issued out of an abundance of caution following a fire at a nearby homeless encampment that had caused a Coleman heater to explode.

Or how about this Associated Press headline, another seemingly perfect confirmation for D.C. residents’ anxieties: “FBI vetting Guard troops in D.C. amid fears of insider attack.” Rep. Steve Cohen, a Democrat from Tennessee, took that logic and irresponsibly ran with it in an appearance on CNN: “You know, I was thinking—the Guard is 90 some-odd percent, I believe, male; only about 20 percent of white males voted for Biden. You’ve got to figure that in the Guard, which is predominantly more conservative … they are probably not more than 25 percent of the people that are there protecting us who voted for Biden. The other 75 percent are in the large class of folks who might want to do something.”

And yet so far, at least, that vetting effort appears to be something federal law enforcement is doing out of an abundance of caution, not because they have any concrete reason to believe troops might support insubordinate acts. The same AP story says as much: “Army secretary Ryan McCarthy … warned commanders to be on the lookout for any problems within their ranks as the inauguration approaches. So far, however, he and other leaders say they have seen no evidence of any threats, and officials said the vetting hadn’t flagged any issues that they were aware of.”

None of this is to suggest that it’s unreasonable to be concerned about the prospect of more violence this week, or that it’s overkill for federal law enforcement to work to minimize that prospect. The Washington Post reported late last night that the FBI briefed law enforcement agencies about chatter of a potential plot by QAnon adherents to pose as National Guard members in Washington this week. But the FBI reportedly added in that briefing that there is “nothing that points to any specific action.”

The bottom line: With people this on edge, it’s wiser than ever to double check the veracity of stories before letting them stress you out.

Uganda’s Troubled Election

One of the African continent’s longest-serving leaders declared victory over his challenger yet again Saturday in an election plagued by rampant fraud and political violence. Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni’s government, which has been in power since 1986, claimed victory over opposition leader Bobi Wine by an improbable margin of 59 percent to 39 percent.

Heavily armed government forces surrounded Wine’s residence Friday, placing him on house arrest the day after the vote. On Monday, soldiers and police officers raided the opposition party’s Kampala-based headquarters in what Wine has described as an act of intimidation. The same day, the U.S. Ambassador to Uganda was reportedly turned away from Wine’s home by guards.

“We are fighting for our rights and we are doing this morally. We are doing this legally. We are doing this non-violently,” Wine said in an interview shared to his Twitter page. “Our entire campaign team is in prison. They are being charged with trumped-up cases while others are on the run. That alone keeps us going, knowing that by getting freedom for ourselves, we will be getting freedom for everybody else.”

As the election reached its conclusion last week, Uganda experienced a nationwide internet blackout that critics have called a concerted effort by the government to stifle the spread of information and dissent. Wine—a former musician whose given name is Robert Kyagulanyi—reported that he and his wife were unable to make or receive calls. Although the country’s internet was restored Monday after Museveni’s reelection, certain restrictions on social media sites remain.

The opposition leader rejected the election results as illegitimate, claiming to have unearthed evidence of widespread fraud and calling the sitting president a “dictator.” According to Maria Burnett, senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), the few local accredited election observers were arrested the day of the election and detained until after the election results had been announced—a clear attempt to prevent any scrutiny of the election.

“There’s no doubt that Uganda has experienced a really serious democracy deficit and backsliding by every metric since the 2006 elections. The most recent election was a particularly classic example of a performative election in an authoritarian context,” Burnett told The Dispatch. “The government’s actions indicated that their central goals were opacity and intimidation.” 

Two people have been killed, and 23 arrested, in protests that broke out in the wake of Museveni’s win.

“Uganda under this current government has a pretty long history of unaccountable military and police when it comes to their deployment domestically,” Burnett added. “There is a real problem with using criminal charges of terrorism and treason against people who the government deems to hold divergent views or to be members of the political opposition.”

Wine has been arrested several times for being a thorn in the president’s side, and he’s not alone. Several of Museveni’s other presidential challengers have been placed under house arrest and faced criminal charges ranging from treason, to terrorism to, in one case, rape. These charges tend to vanish after the election.

Jake Sullivan, President-elect Biden’s designate for National Security Adviser, condemned the tactic Sunday. “The news from Uganda is deeply concerning. Bobi Wine, other political figures, and their supporters should not be harmed, and those who perpetrate political violence must be held accountable,” he said. “After this flawed election, the world is watching.”

Outgoing Secretary of State Mike Pompeo condemned the widespread fraud as well, ensuring “that those responsible” will be held accountable. “We condemn the continuing attacks on political candidates and urge the government to respect their human rights and fundamental freedoms, including the freedom of expression,” he said in a statement. “We are gravely concerned by harassment of and continued threats to civil society.”

As renewed attention is paid to political freedom in Uganda, the United States and allies are being forced to reassess their financial commitments to its anti-democratic leadership. The U.S. provided just short of $1 billion in aid to the country last year, primarily to fund healthcare but also to support military training. 

“It’s a really critical moment for the United States, the European Union, and the United Kingdom to come together and reflect on to what extent their foreign assistance has been complicit in abuses and in concretizing abuses in Uganda, particularly around campaigns and elections,” Burnett said. “President Museveni has now been in power since 1986, he’s an incredibly savvy diplomat and politician, and I think it’s going to require some very savvy diplomacy to ensure that foreign assistance doesn’t end up being on the wrong side of history.”

Worth Your Time

• Over the past week, Buzzfeed News reporter Rosie Gray caught up with some of the Trump supporters she has interviewed in the past to get their thoughts on the Capitol siege and Joe Biden’s forthcoming inauguration. The result? President Trump, Gray concluded, “leaves behind him a movement that appears to have made a decisive break with reality.” Gray reports that many of the Trump supporters she interviewed are now “disgusted with the GOP” and simply refuse to believe that Biden will be sworn in on January 20, showcasing how fringe elements of the Trump base have slithered into the mainstream. “From years of covering white nationalists and the alt-right, I already knew that the right contained violent and anti-democratic elements,” she writes. “What Jan. 6 showed was how deeply even the nice church ladies and retired grandpas who have nothing to do with those groups have descended into an alternate universe.”

• National Review’s Michael Brendan Dougherty has another, slightly different take on President Trump’s legacy. Nationalist-populist politics are here to stay, he argues, even if the president himself failed to realize many of the political goals he championed while in office. “We haven’t moved to the skills-based immigration system he promised,” he writes. “We haven’t fully withdrawn from long wars where there is no reasonable hope of a satisfying conclusion or national objective to be achieved. Trump’s trade war with China concluded without any fundamental changes to the economic and political dynamics of the Sino-American relationship.” Even still, Dougherty thinks Trump’s nationalist-populism will likely remain a fixture of the Republican Party over the next few years: “Trump may be leaving the national stage, but the voters he brought into the coalition and the challenges he identified are not going anywhere.”

• And over at The Atlantic, McKay Coppins focuses less on Trump himself, but the “officials, apparatchiks, and commentators” who gained newfound prominence in the Trump years—and what they’re going to do now that their relevance is crashing back to earth and the party is more or less in tatters. “How will the GOP recover from the complicity and corruption of the Trump era?” he asks. “To many Republicans, the answer is simple: Pretend it never happened.”

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Let Us Know

Today is the final full day of the Trump presidency. A smorgasbord of questions for your morning reflection: What was the best thing the Trump administration accomplished? The worst thing that happened? What lessons do you hope the incoming Biden administration draws from the last four years?

Reporting by Declan Garvey (@declanpgarvey), Andrew Egger (@EggerDC), Haley Byrd Wilt (@byrdinator), Audrey Fahlberg (@FahlOutBerg), Charlotte Lawson (@charlotteUVA), and Steve Hayes (@stephenfhayes).

Correction, January 19, 2021: An earlier version of this newsletter miscounted the number of Americans that are currently hospitalized with COVID-19.