5 Years After Jan. 6, Lawlessness Has Triumphed -- New York Times Editorial Board
"It was a day that should live in infamy. Instead, it was the day President Trump’s second term began to take shape...That day was indeed a turning point, but not the one it first seemed ... It was a turning point toward a version of Mr. Trump who is even more lawless than the one who governed the country in his first term. It heralded a culture of political unaccountability, in which people who violently attacked Congress and beat police officers escaped without lasting consequence. The politicians and pundits who had egged on the attack with their lies escaped, as well. The aftermath of Jan. 6 made the Republican Party even more feckless, beholden to one man and willing to pervert reality to serve his interests. Once Mr. Trump won election again in 2024, despite his role in encouraging the riot and his many distortions about it, it emboldened him to govern in defiance of the Constitution, without regard for the truth and with malice toward those who stand up to his abuses. Tragically, America is still living in a political era that began on Jan. 6, 2021. Recognizing as much is necessary to bring this era to an end before it has many more anniversaries...
Mr. Trump has also learned that congressional Republicans will bow to him even when he treats them with contempt or ignores the Constitution. He has defied the War Powers Act by blowing up boats in international waters, set high tariff rates without consulting Congress and nominated preposterous candidates for the Senate to confirm....He has suggested that the House of Representatives has little independent power. “I’m the speaker and the president,” he recently joked. In private, legislators acknowledge that they obey him partly because they fear violence from his supporters.
Mr. Trump likewise plays the courts more successfully than in his first term. The Supreme Court has helped him, first by ruling in 2024 that presidents have almost complete immunity from future prosecution. As a result, he knows that he faces little legal jeopardy for his most outrageous actions. The justices have also proved unwilling to halt some of Mr. Trump’s most dubious second-term policies, ... Much as he ran out the clock on his post-Jan. 6 prosecutions, he has reshaped U.S. trading relationships, immigration policy and other areas before the legal system has roused itself to intervene.
Again and again, Mr. Trump dares the system to stop him. He does so knowing that the same system that failed to hold him to account for Jan. 6 is unlikely to do so now. The effects might outlast him. He has shown his Republican would-be successors, starting with Mr. Vance, that they can rewrite palpable history, encourage federal crimes for political ends by pardoning guilty people, exact revenge on those who do their duty to uphold the law and manipulate a docile Supreme Court majority willing to hand sweeping, unprecedented powers to a president.
In Mr. Trump’s second term, he has governed as if Jan. 6 never ended. The damage to the nation is severe.
As dark as this story has become, it is not over. Its next chapters will depend on what Americans do now, especially those who share some of Mr. Trump’s policy preferences but remain loyal to American democracy...
The past few months offer some new reasons for hope. Mr. Trump’s approval ratings have fallen. His party has lost elections. Lower-court judges, including some appointed by Mr. Trump, have blocked some of his policies and called out his brazen disregard for truth. Even some congressional Republicans have voted against him on a few matters, like the Jeffrey Epstein files and health care subsidies. These developments make it possible to imagine a better future. The Jan. 6 ... anniversary will always be a mournful one for America. The nation’s challenge now is to ensure that the day is ultimately viewed as it initially was: as an aberration. Americans must summon the collective will to bring this era to an end and make certain that the violence, lawlessness and injustice of Jan. 6 do not endure."
Amen. And Right Now Today...
The NYT must pledge to use its massive investigative powers to immediately publish facts and timelines of current leaders' future "violence, lawlessness and injustice" -- in the context of Jan 6 -- so that Americans will never again endure past corporate normalizing of such lawlessness in Trump's remaining years.
More detailed review of that day and the last four years at https://archive.ph/JSXUh
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Last edited Tue Jan 6, 2026, 04:15 PM - Edit history (1)
The Gray Lady set its standard a hundred seventy-five years ago, to report on what secures or endangers Americans' freedom. She needs to return to those standards as of the date of this editorial.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/04/insider/the-birth-of-the-times.html?searchResultPosition=1