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​Images of the day a president's mob sought to defeat democracy

rioters at Capitol
Samuel Corum/Getty Images

American democracy has been pushed to the precipice: A mob urged on by a defeated president rampaged through the Capitol as the whole world watched, before the unparalleled insurgency was put down and Congress reconvened to affirm early Thursday that a different president had without question been elected.

That summary hardly does justice to the shocking, heart-stopping images of the vandalism and violence fueling what amounted to an attempted coup — sedition incited by the most powerful person in the nation, the one most responsible for preserving and protecting the Constitution. Four years after an inaugural address in which he vowed that "American carnage stops right here," the very spot where President Trump stood was overwhelmed Wednesday with rioters wreaking carnage in his name.

There is no shortage of dogged reporting and smart analysis available elsewhere; the news is moving fast and our team is small. And pictures tell the story in ways words cannot convey. For those paying attention to Trump's steadily intensifying assault on the norms of our republic, his encouragement of the climatic occupation of the Capitol is little surprise. But for those worried about the lasting depth of our democracy's challenges, the memories captured in these photographs must never be forgotten.


President Trump speaks at a rally near the White House before the gathering turned into a riot at the Capitol. (Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images)

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Poll: 82% of Americans Want Redistricting Done by Independent Commission, Not Politicians

Capitol building, Washington, DC

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Poll: 82% of Americans Want Redistricting Done by Independent Commission, Not Politicians

There may be no greater indication that voters are not being listened to in the escalating redistricting war between the Republican and Democratic Parties than a new poll from NBC News that shows 8-in-10 Americans want the parties to stop.

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The White House and money

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Nationalization by Stealth: Trump’s New Industrial Playbook

In the United States, where the free market has long been exalted as the supreme engine of prosperity, a peculiar irony is taking shape. On August 22, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick announced that the federal government had acquired a stake of just under 10% in Intel, instantly making itself the company’s largest shareholder. The stake - roughly 433 million shares, valued at about $8.9 billion, purchased at $20.47 each - was carved out of the Biden-era CHIPS Act subsidies and repackaged as equity. Formally, it is a passive, non-voting stake, with no board seat or governance rights. Yet symbolism matters: Washington now sits, however discreetly, in Intel’s shareholder register. Soon afterward, reports emerged that Samsung, South Korea’s industrial giant, had also been considered for similar treatment. What once would have been denounced as creeping socialism in Washington is now unfolding under Donald Trump, a president who boasts of his devotion to private enterprise but increasingly embraces tactics that blur the line between capitalism and state control.

The word “nationalization,” for decades associated with postwar Britain, Latin American populists, or Arab strongmen, is suddenly back in circulation - but this time applied to the citadel of capitalism itself. Trump justifies the intervention as a matter of national security and economic patriotism. Subsidies, he argues, are wasteful. Tariffs, in his view, are a stronger tool for forcing corporations to relocate factories to U.S. soil. Yet the CHIPS Act, that bipartisan legacy of the Biden years, remains in force and politically untouchable, funneling billions of dollars into domestic semiconductor projects. Rather than scrap it, Trump has chosen to alter the terms: companies that benefit from taxpayer largesse must now cede equity to the state. Intel, heavily reliant on those funds, has become the test case for this new model of American industrial policy.

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