‘Idiot’ Trump mocked after struggling to pronounce Yosemite: ‘And he questions Biden's cognitive abilities?’

There appears to be a new sheriff in town with regard to Russia. In response to massive protests over the imprisonment of opposition leader Alexei Navalny, in which more than 3,000 people were arrested and acts of police violence could be seen on social media, the Biden State Department was quick to pounce.

"The United States strongly condemns the use of harsh tactics against protesters and journalists this weekend in cities throughout Russia," a statement read, calling -- by name -- for the unconditional release of imprisoned opposition leader Navalny. "The United States will stand shoulder-to-shoulder with our allies and partners in defense of human rights – whether in Russia or wherever they come under threat."

In response to the events in Washington, DC, on January 6, politicians and journalists were quick to insist that "this is not who we are." Rather, the insurrectionary actions unfolding on Capitol Hill were the doing of pro-Trump extremists and domestic terrorists. The description of these acts as domestic terrorism serves to highlight their exceptional and un-American character. But a look at history suggests that in many ways, these events have a long tradition in this country.

In the late nineteenth century, Black abolitionists and anti-lynching activists used the term "terrorism" to describe the political rationality of a polity built on white supremacist principles of white domination and the oppression and exclusion of Black people. For the African American anti-lynching activist Ida B. Wells-Barnett, for example, terrorism was a means of expressing and enforcing what she called the "unwritten law" of white supremacy. Wells argued that to defy the Reconstruction amendments that had abolished slavery, guaranteed equal protection under the law, and prohibited disenfranchisement on account of race, the South relied on an unwritten law that directly contravened the new legal order and reversed the legal achievements of Reconstruction. Mob violence played a crucial role in enforcing this unwritten law, as "the mob did what the law could not be made to do."

On Friday evening Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer announced that opening arguments in the Senate impeachment trial for Donald Trump over the deadly Capitol insurrection will begin the week of Feb. 8.

"We all want to put this awful chapter in our nation's history behind us. But healing and unity will only come if there is truth and accountability. And that is what this trial will provide," said Senator Schumer.