Racial bias can mean we give people the benefit of the doubt based on the color of their skin, writes Ruiz, comparing security planning on Jan. 6 to last summer's BLM protests.
Another Capitol riot lesson: Unconscious biases can have deadly consequences
Ruiz is CEO of BiasSync, a business that provides online assessments and training to help organizations reduce unconscious bias in the workplace.
There are many who could shoulder the blame for the attack on the Capitol, and many epic intelligence and security failures that remain to be diagnosed. But there is one clear cause for the paltry defense against the insurrection that should not be ignored: unconscious bias. And, more specifically, confirmation bias and affinity bias.
Warning signs were missed and even disregarded, signs that were publicly right in front of so many — and made clear ahead of Jan. 6 that the loyalists to Donald Trump posed a significant security threat.
Science and research show that unconscious biases cause all of us to make decisions about certain groups of people based on the images, messages and reinforced stereotypes we have experienced or been exposed to in our lives.
We know that law enforcement and security agencies are overwhelmingly white and conservative. We know that the participants and the planners of the attack on democracy were also primarily white and conservative. Bias can mean we give people the benefit of the doubt, and even a pass, when they are like us — and that affinity for similarity can be based on race, gender and group affiliation.
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Security failures were likely partly due to unconscious race bias, favoring a certain group, and also confirmation bias, which can be defined as the tendency to gather evidence that confirms preexisting expectations — typically by emphasizing or pursuing supporting evidence while dismissing or failing to seek contradictory evidence.
The role of affinity bias, which leads us to favor people we have a connection or similarity to, also should not be underestimated.
To illustrate, compare the security response at the Capitol on Jan. 6 to that of June 1, when a Black Lives Matter rally across downtown Washington drew mainly Black protesters and other people of color.
The Washington Post has detailed the stark differences in the preparation for and resulting security response to each. Before the BLM protest, a secure perimeter was created around the White House and guarded by local police in riot gear, the U.S. Park Police, the U.S. Marshals Service and the National Guard. Despite the lack of any attempt to breach the perimeter, those forces dispersed the crowd by force, hitting them with batons and riot shields and deploying tear gas, flash-bang grenades and pepper balls.
In contrast, days before the pro-Trump rally an FBI report warned of a coming "war on the Capitol." Social media posts called for violence with language such as "Congress needs to hear glass breaking, doors being kicked in, and blood ... being spilled." It was widely known the crowd would include members of such extremist groups as the Oath Keepers, Proud Boys, Boogaloo Bois, QAnon, neo-Nazis and neo-Confederates, many likely armed. Despite this intelligence, when the crowd arrived there were no Capitol Police in riot gear and no backup from D.C.'s Metropolitan Police or the National Guard. Those reinforcements were not activated until two hours after the attack began.
This difference is because of the classic white vs. Black chasm. Studies show a majority of Americans have a negative Black racial bias, meaning they associate Black people with being much more dangerous, violent and more likely to be criminals than white people.
Study after study blames the images and portrayals in the media (primarily news and entertainment) and family belief systems we're exposed to from a young age. They reinforce stereotypes including white is good and Black is bad.
In the days before Jan. 6, the snap judgments many made were based on such stereotypes along with the mental process that "evaluates" what is similar and known to us and what is different from us. That's how unconscious biases work. No one is immune.
Multiple law enforcement officials have belatedly questioned, The Post reported, whether "investigators failed to register the degree of danger because the overwhelming majority of the participants in the rally were White conservatives."
As a result of the failures before and on Jan. 6, at least five people are dead. Had the security apparatus and law enforcement not fallen into racial, confirmation and affinity bias traps, the prime symbol of our democracy likely would not have been desecrated.
A thorough dissection of the decisions made before and on the day the Capitol was defiled must include a real assessment of the role such biases played. This should be followed by a commitment and a plan to mitigate those dangers in the future.
Training, important for education purposes, is not enough. Awareness strategies, such as bias assessments for individuals to understand how their brains work unconsciously, should be deployed. And processes also need to be put in place for objective threat assessments and the development of response plans, especially because high-stress situations amplify the ability for unconscious biases to kick in.
The threat from extremists and insurrectionists has not ended. It cannot be ignored that those who attacked the Capitol intended to capture or kill members of Congress — and that five families lost loved ones. In other words: Our unconscious biases can kill.
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As worker bees like Republican Sen. Rob Portman head for the exits, it will become even harder for Congress to pass legislation.
After the attack, government's 'first branch' struggles to keep from breaking
To bemoan the trials faced by members of Congress these days may seem naïve, even perverse.
The lawmakers on Capitol Hill represent one of the most hated classes in American public life. If service in Congress has become polarized, fruitless and even dangerous, anti-government rhetoric from Capitol Hill ideologues is at least partly to blame. Public approval for Congress stands at just 25 percent — up a few points from last month, but still well below most public institutions.
Yet it is fair to say that House members and senators are in the throes of an existential, electoral and institutional crisis.
The mob assault on the Capitol is over but the death threats continue, and congressional aides are leaving the Hill in droves. So are many lawmakers, including relative moderates like Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio, one of four Republican senators who have already announced they won't run again in 2022.
A delay in the release of detailed census data that has now stretched to five months, into September, will significantly delay the once-a-decade redrawing of congressional districts — leaving dozens of incumbents as well as their potential challengers in the dark about where they will even run their campaigns and when they can get started.
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As Steve Israel, a former congressman who once ran the House Democrats' campaign operation, told Politico, you "have your players lined up," but "you don't know where the field begins and ends."
Renewed Republican assaults on voter access — in the legislatures of many of the biggest states under their control— may also complicate congressional elections, making it harder for candidates in both parties to mobilize and turn out would-be constituents.
All this comes on the heels of an unprecedented, four-year assault on public servants by former President Donald Trump. His evisceration of the professional civil service in federal agencies, and his attacks on state election officials who were then threatened with violence, have been well documented. But Congress, too, was sidelined by Trump's chaotic governing style, and by the constant demand for lawmakers to respond to his erratic tweets and policy moves.
Add to this the logistical hurdles and health threats posed by the pandemic, combined with Congress' ongoing failure to modernize its own operations, and morale on Capitol Hill may have reached a nadir. Deficits in staff training and pay, weakened committees, and escalating partisanship and campaign costs all have taken their toll. Now, in the wake of the Jan. 6 insurrection, many lawmakers are literally fearing for their lives.
"They realize they can't get anything passed," says Brad Fitch, president of the Congressional Management Foundation, a nonprofit that works to make the legislative branch more functional. "They realize the committees have been neutered on some level by leadership. And they can't serve their constituents, because they don't have power to do that."
The problem is not that the supply of congressional candidates will dry up. The 2022 midterm promises to be funded with billions of dollars and extremely hard fought — especially as Republicans, who almost always do well the first election after a Democrat enters the White House, set out to build on 2020 gains that put them only a handful of seats from the House majority.
The problem is rather what caliber of public servant might seek out a life on Capitol Hill as it is today.
Congress has always had its share of colorful outliers, of course. The late Jim Traficant, an Ohio Democrat who was the last person expelled from the House after a 2002 bribery conviction, comes to mind. But the arrival in the House of Georgia's Marjorie Taylor Greene, a far-right conspiracy theorist with little to no policy agenda and recently stripped of both her committee posts, bodes poorly for the institution. So does the departure of Portman, one of a long list of lawmakers known as worker bees willing to work across the aisle who has left or is heading for the exits.
Some lay the blame squarely on the shoulders of Republicans, who even following his departure continue largely to defend Trump, amplify his election falsehoods and stoke ideological divisions and obstructionism.
But the solution to Capitol Hill's woes will not come from one party alone. One of its few bright spots lately has been the work of the House Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress, which toiled in the previous two years to issue 97 bipartisan recommendations for how to make the institution work better — and was rewarded with two more years to propose even more improvements.
The panel's recommendations include shoring up congressional staff and support organizations, streamlining the congressional calendar to create blocks of time for committee work, modernizing the budget process — and encouraging more bipartisan oversight, retreats and training. Some of the proposals are already being implemented and more will be soon. The goal is a Congress that's more transparent, accountable, effective and even civil.
The committee's work is supported by some 70 groups, including the CMF and the Partnership for Public Service, in the vanguard of a growing coalition to reform and revitalize the battered Congress.
It's a mission that's gained urgency since Jan. 6, which spawned a new initiative by close to two dozen civil society groups dubbed CapitolStrong. That coalition will work to strengthen and invest in Congress and those who work there, particularly congressional staff.
Voters "like to demonize the institution," notes Fitch. "But in reality, we need a robust and healthy Congress. We need public service professionals."
Some voters might roll their eyes, but if the "first branch" breaks, democracy will pay the price.
Carney is a contributing writer.
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Donald and Melania Trump board Air Force One for the final time on Wednesday.
The democracy Trump leaves behind: His 7 most serious tests of the system
As Donald Trump's brazenly chaotic and exhausting presidency comes to an end, he leaves behind this fundamental question:
Did his relentless attacks on our democracy make its festering problems even more malignant than he found them? Or did his unstoppable assault on civic institutions and governing norms succeed in highlighting the system's fragility while also tempering its resilience?
The nation's collective behavior in the years ahead will determine whether American democracy's metaphorical glass has been irreparably emptied or has a sufficient reservoir for survival. For now, the 45th president's infuriated yielding of power on Wednesday allows for a quick countdown of seven ways he rattled the republic the most. Such inventories are a necessary first step for those dedicated to fixing the system — so the next four years under Joe Biden don't come close to replicating the stress and anxiety of the Trump era.
7. He exposed the limits of governing without experience.

Ron Galella/Getty Images
Commander-in-chief is the only position of public trust Trump ever sought — or held. A real estate promoter and reality television star, he had never so much as served on a small-town zoning board until Jan. 20, 2017. All of his 44 predecessors had been leaders in federal or state government: governors, members of Congress, generals or Cabinet secretaries.
Fans saw his unique measure of inexperience as a badge or honor for the ultimate outsider committed to dismantling business as usual. But skeptics worried his total lack of familiarity with how governments operate, both mechanically and ethically, would be a debilitating if not dangerous liability.
At the start, much of Trump's norm-busting behavior and disregard for the rule of law came off as a form of willful ignorance that was a part of his unique brand of political theatrics.
But even Republican allies soon found themselves ascribing his most perplexing and outrageous conduct to someone "still growing" into the presidency's awesome requirements and limits. It was an excuse many kept citing almost to an end marked by his mismanagement of a crippling pandemic and the violence that flowed from his refusal to accept defeat. Those miseries, fueled by his inabilities on the job, will be more prominent parts of his legacy than the achievements for which he claims credit: installing three Supreme Court justices and 54 appeals court judges, pushing a substantial tax cut through Congress, and engineering expansive business and environmental deregulation.
6. He propelled political spending to unseen heights.

President Trump attends a 2018 fundraiser in South Dakota.
Nicholas Kamm/AFP via Getty Images
Trump claimed the White House in the second presidential election after the Supreme Court's landmark Citizens United decision effectively unlocked the last meaningful shackles impeding the flow of money in politics. He claimed to have spent $66 million of his own money, smashing the record for self-funding by a national candidate, and the grand total for candidate and outside group spending on presidential and congressional races topped $7 billion for the first time.
Four years later, those numbers seem almost quaint. The enormous potential business consequences from Trump's reelection or defeat combined with the political passions of millions of Americans — at all income levels and all along the ideological spectrum — pushed the campaign finance system into overdrive.
Two billionaires, Michael Bloomberg and Tom Steyer, each tapped many multiples of their fortunes more than Trump but gave up near the Democratic primary's starting gate.
More importantly, spending on all federal elections more than doubled, cresting $14 billion for 2020 — the size of West Virginia's budget, Instagram's revenue and Amazon's projected profit for the year. That was because small-dollar donations, contributions by business super PACs, and money from outside groups backed by billionaire donors and closely tied "dark money" groups all went through the roof.
Trump did not single handedly cause the cavalcade of cash, but neither did he make any effort to slow it or assure its minimal regulation was carried out. Most seats on the already weakened and gridlocked Federal Election Commission were kept vacant until the end of his presidency. Only at that point came Trump's unintended but potentially biggest contribution to the cause of campaign finance reform: the wave of companies closing their checkbooks indefinitely to Republicans who backed Trump's effort to overturn the election.
5. He toppled the boundaries of civil discourse.
The presidential bully pulpit has the ability to shape the national conversion, and Trump did so with a tone that was consistently hyperbolic, defiant, uncompromising — and largely free of facts. Civic educators, parents and politicians all agree his rhetorical legacy is making it more difficult for Americans to bridge their differences through conversation.
His pronouncements bore all the hallmarks of demagogues and autocrats, focused on delegitimizing all criticism and maintaining the allegiance of his loyalists. And his refusal to reflect subtlety or countenance compromise had a profound effect on magnifying the polarization of politics. Nuance is almost impossible in 280 characters, a point Trump underscored in the more than 60,000 tweets and retweets before both Twitter and Facebook locked him out this month. But in short bursts or meandering ramblings at rallies, Trump made little time for the truth: Fact checkers have come up with 30,000 as the consensus total of his presidential lies and falsehoods.
The only oddly saving grace was that his social media addiction and love of speechmaking produced a new sort of government transparency. Salted amid all the disinformation was a steady diet of policy pronouncements, personnel moves, shifting views and flat reversals — along with stream-of-consciousness insights into the complex mindset of the world's most powerful person.
4. He succeeded in expanding the swamp he vowed to empty.

President Trump plays a round of golf at his Virginia course in November.
Samuel Corum/Getty Images
If one aspect of Trump's 2016 candidacy made democracy reformers happy, it was his repeated vow to "drain the swamp." But his disregard for that campaign pledge went way beyond shelving his own plans for tightening lobbying regulation, limiting campaign donations from foreign companies and setting congressional term limits.
Instead, he personally led an unprecedented presidential enhancement of influence for well-heeled private interests — starting with his own. The rasher of pardons at the end of his term, larded with clemency for his own political allies and favor-doers, was only the final example after four years of special and sometimes lucrative treatment for the people and institutions in his familial, financial, social and political orbits.
The government was compelled to spend millions at Trump's properties — the golf courses where he played most weekends, the D.C. hotel that became a de facto Oval Office waiting room, the Florida resort he made his weekend White House and the hotels around the world where his family stayed. His eponymous real estate business kept pursuing deals with both American allies and adversaries. He sidestepped anti-nepotism rules so his son-in-law Jared Kushner could have a top West Wing post. He used his office to promote companies run by supporters and to steer federal contracts and other government business to allies.
Beyond that, he named former lobbyists and corporate executives to jobs with oversight of the industries of their former clients, and four of "only the best people" in his original Cabinet were forced out under ethical clouds. He went to the Supreme Court to preserve, at least for his time in office, his distinction as the first president since the 1970s to keep his tax returns a secret.
Finally, on his last night in the Oval Office, he revoked an executive order, signed days after he took office, that had stopped his appointees' from spinning through the revolving door to lobby for five years after leaving the administration.
3. He sought to obliterate the balance of power.

President Trump meets with Democratic congressional leaders in December 2018.
Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images
While intermittently attacking the independence of the federal judiciary, and more frequently the integrity and importance of a free press, Trump has reserved a special measure of substantive scorn for the powers and prerogatives of Congress. And the legislative branch — mostly under the control of Republicans the past four years and dysfunctional to the point of paralysis in any case — has essentially permitted itself to get bowled over by all the stiff arms.
All presidents have sought to recalibrate the system of checks and balances to the favor of executive power and the disadvantage of those who write the laws and conduct government oversight. But Trump stands out as the most aggressive and assertive in modern times. He invoked rarely used emergency powers to execute plans (construction of his border wall, most famously) that Congress explicitly rejected. He used money Congress appropriated for specific projects and spent it instead on proposals lawmakers rebuffed. He threatened government whistleblowers who revealed untoward administration behavior and dismissed inspectors general who did likewise, violating rules designed to protect their honesty and independence.
Most notably, perhaps, he consistently ordered his administration to slow-walk, challenge in court or flatly ignore congressional subpoenas — on matters ranging from the bureaucratically arcane to the underpinnings of Trump's first impeachment.
The silver lining here is that Democrats newly in charge on Capitol Hill have prepared a comprehensive package to realign the balance of power, even with Biden in the White House. And because the new president is a Democrat (and their own authority is on the line), Republicans may be willing to give the package a bipartisan stamp of approval.
2. He sowed unmatched distrust in the electoral system.
No other president has done so much to incubate distrust in the elemental acts of American democracy — the casting and tabulating of ballots for public office.
But the public consciousness is now saturated with Trump's more recent and even more insidious unprecedented assault on democracy, working to reverse the election he lost even to the point of fomenting a mob attack on the Capitol. And so his remarkable effort to undermine the electorate's faith in the security and reliability of voting has slipped to secondary consequence.
That campaign began seven months before Election Day, perversely a part of his effort to simultaneously leverage and downplay national anxiety about how the burgeoning coronavirus was going to upend every aspect of American life.
"Mail ballots are a very dangerous thing for this country, because they're cheaters," he told reporters at a briefing April 7. "There's a lot of dishonesty going along with mail-in voting."
It was the first of more than 150 false or misleading claims, catalogued by the Washington Post during the campaign, concerning fraudulent ballots or the alleged dangers of absentee voting — inconsistently focused on states that proactively deliver vote-by-mail packets to all registered voters. And that does not include the burst of wholly inaccurate claims in the summer that he had the power to postpone the election if he decided unilaterally it was not going to be on the up-and-up.
The crusade ended up backfiring. Either because of political pressure or as a consequence of the most litigated election ever, two-thirds of states made it easier to cast a ballot in 2020, mostly by making it easier to vote by mail. By highlighting the states' control and other aspects of the election system that generally get overlooked, Trump ended up ensuring the public was better informed than ever about voting mechanics.
That, and Trump's polarizing nature, prompted 67 percent of those eligible to cast a ballot — the highest turnout in 120 years. Two-fifths of the votes came in envelopes, up from one-quarter in the previous two elections. There was no evidence of widespread fraud or irregularities, prompting Trump's own administration to declare it the most secure election in history. And, ultimately, the president's own strategy worked decisively against him by producing a "red mirage" on election night: His dominance of that day's volume at the polls disappeared when mailed votes were counted and went decisively for Biden, the candidate who did not declare them untrustworthy.
1. He fomented an insurrection against his government.

President Trump rallies his supporters before they storm the Capitol on Jan. 6.
Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images
No other president has been impeached twice, and Trump would not have been — and just a week before leaving office — but for the shocking seriousness and palpable validity of the alleged offense. The Senate will soon try him on the House's charge of "inciting violence against the government of the United States" in his quest to overturn Biden's election.
Whether formally convicted or not, and then barred from seeking the presidency again, on his last full day in office he heard Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell affix the blame for the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6. "The mob was fed lies," he said. "They were provoked by the president."
The damage and injury wrought by the thousands of violent insurrectionists who heard his rhetoric that day as a call to arms, to disrupt the tabulating of the Electoral College results that sealed his defeat, will almost certainly stand as the most tangible evidence of his assault-on-democracy-itself legacy. The memory has been lastingly seared on the global consciousness.
The riot was quelled and the election result was finalized — albeit with two out of three House Republicans, and one in six GOP senators, voting with the ousted president and against the election that ousted him.
So does Wednesday's inauguration — a peaceful transfer of power, perhaps, only because 25,000 troops are belatedly standing guard — mean democracy has survived or only that its fragility has been magnified? Are the politicians' fresh declarations after the riot — "This is not who we are" because "We are better than this" — viable exhortations for a recommitment to longstanding virtues or only naive bromides about a past that has rarely been as venerable as described?
Probably it means the system has proved itself both resilient and more threadbare than ever before.

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"Te shameful and deeply irrational response at the Capitol to the election was simply the most recent manifestation of a longstanding movement to subvert our democracy," according to the authors.
The simple, hopeful message from the mind-boggling and awful assault on democracy
Berkman and Beem are on the political science faculty at Penn State University.
We direct our university's McCourtney Institute for Democracy, which is committed to promoting democracy in the United States and abroad. Last week's disturbing events in the nation's capital imperil our American democracy. They require some thoughtful reflection about how we got here and what we do about it.
If history proves anything, it is that people disagree. Vehemently. Unity of opinion is not possible. Democracy exists as a way for people to disagree and yet still live together peaceably. Elections are the means by which we do that. They are the backbone of a democratic system. Every vote counts the same and the candidate who receives the most votes wins. A peaceful transition of power occurs as losers accept the outcome and come back prepared to fight again another day.
If any aspect of this system fails, democracy becomes impossible. Over the last many months, since well before Joe Biden's clear and commanding presidential victory, we have spoken forcefully that it was not only factually wrong but also dangerous to claim that the 2020 election was unfair, rigged or otherwise tainted.
Indeed, we have celebrated the hard work and successful efforts of election workers and others around the country who managed to carry out this election under difficult circumstances.
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But the shameful and deeply irrational response at the Capitol to the election was simply the most recent manifestation of a longstanding movement to subvert our democracy.
The scenes we saw should not be seen as sudden or unpredictable. They are rather the inevitable outcome of a sustained and reckless assault on the propositions that make democracy possible. The chronic denigration of the rights of the other side, the easy dismantling of democratic norms and procedures — and ultimately, the rejection of even the foundational idea that there is one reality, one truth, for all of us — all facilitated the breakdown we saw before us.
Every one of the politicians or pundits who took part in this authoritarian charade, who blithely put their own political or economic calculus ahead of the well-being of our nation and our democracy, will have to live forever with the humiliation of this moment.
But all Americans of good will have to take on the burden of rebuilding what has been lost. As we now know too well, democracy is fragile. If it is to continue, let alone thrive, it will require a renewed commitment from all of us.
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