"The American people - and people around the world - look to this house for steadiness in the inevitable storms of history, and my prayer is that in the coming years will be a time of prosperity, peace, and grace for our nation," Biden continued.
"May God bless you and guide you as He has blessed and guided our beloved country since our founding," he closed.
Shouting broke out Tuesday night on CNN over a heated discussion over recent presidential pardons and commutations, including violent offenders found guilty of attacking police officers on Jan. 6.
On Tuesday, the International Association of Chiefs of Police and the Fraternal Order of Police issued a rare joint statement slamming recent pardons from President Donald Trump and former President Joe Biden. Trump pardoned about 1,500 people in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, including more than 600 charged with assaulting, resisting, or obstructing police officers.
Biden commuted the death sentence for Daryl Lawrence, who killed a police officer — he will now serve a life term in prison — and freed Ferrone Claiborne and Terence Richardson, known as the "Waverly Two," who were convicted in the death of a police officer. In that case, a jury found the men not guilty, but a judge sentenced both to life in prison based on other guilty pleas.
The pardons became the topic of a heated discussion late Tuesday on CNN's "NewsNight," with Republican strategist Scott Jennings backing Trump's defense of the Jan. 6 pardons.
"How many were prosecuted ultimately because lots of people had their charges dropped," he said, prompting an immediate answer from anchor Abby Phillip, who shot back: "I actually have the answer for you. And its hundreds of them who were charged and prosecuted."
Jennings wouldn't hear it, though, and tried to cut her off.
"I saw an analysis that most people who were charged had their charges dropped," he insisted. When asked what charges those people faced, Jennings tried to push back, "All kinds of charges."
Phillip fact-checked him to his face though, noting those who saw their charges dropped included failure to disperse and similar crimes.
"Those who were charged with violent crimes, those charges were not dismissed, those were prosecuted," she fired back.
Then Phillip asked Jennings and Michael van der Veen, who represented six Jan. 6 defendants, if they see a "substantive difference" between Jan. 6 and the George Floyd riots.
"Why the federal has a desire, in fact a necessity to prevent that from ever happening again — don't you think there's a substantive difference?" she asked.
When Jennings jumped in to say he doesn't see a difference, Phillip pushed back again.
"You don't think there's a difference between trying to overturn an election and violent social justice protests?!" she asked, incredulous.
Jennings said both groups of people were "mad" and sought to seek change by "taking matters into their own hands, which they should not have done."
Jennings then blamed "culture and public discourse" for deciding one group was "good" and the other was "bad."
"The reality is they had the same motivations," he said, leading to a chorus of shouts on the panel.
He received swift opposition from Democratic political commentator Ashley Allison, who turned to a profane acronym to sum up her feelings.
"F.A.F.O." she said. "Ok? Go Google it if you don't know what that means. I can't say it on national television. But this is the era that we are in."
As Allison tried to assert that Black Lives Matter protesters rioted over the "unjust" murder of a Black man at the hands of police, Republicans on the panel shouted at her.
"That doesn't give you the right to break into the Nike store! That doesn't give you the right to break into Tiffany's!" shouted Rudy Giuliani’s lawyer Arthur Aidala.
"How about this?! How about you let me finish?!" Allison fired back.
"Blowing up a police precinct!" Aidala retorted.
Aidala and Phillip clashed again later in the discussion, as he tried to insist no more than 100 protesters attacked police officers.
"Arthur let's just stop with the hyperbole," Phillip tried to calm her guest.
"It's not hyperbole! It's a fact! I'll be in federal court tomorrow! It's a fact!" he exclaimed.
"You gave the impression that it's a handful of people that's charged with violent offenses. That is not true," Phillip scolded.
Upon taking office, Trump issued pardons to about 1,500 people in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, including many accused of attacking police officers. More than 600 faced charges for assaulting, resisting, or obstructing police officers.
Trump's widely criticized pardon spree came just hours after Biden issued preemptive pardons to members of his extended family, a move also met with swift criticism.
Prior to those pardons, Biden in January and December commuted the sentences of thousands of people, including multiple felons convicted of killing police officers.
Biden commuted the death sentence for Daryl Lawrence, who killed Columbus Police Officer Bryan Hurst in 2005. He will now serve a life term in prison.
Meanwhile, Biden commuted the sentences of Ferrone Claiborne and Terence Richardson, known as the "Waverly Two," who were convicted in the 1998 death of police officer Allen Gibson, allowing them to be released. In that case, a jury found the men not guilty, but a judge sentenced both to life in prison based on other guilty pleas.
On Tuesday, the International Association of Chiefs of Police and the Fraternal Order of Police issued a rare joint statement slamming the pardons.
The organizations said they've had "long standing and positive relationships" with both presidents and "greatly appreciated their support of the policing profession."
"However, the IACP and FOP are deeply discouraged by the recent pardons and commutations granted by both the Biden and Trump administrations to individuals convicted of killing or assaulting law enforcement officers,' the organizations said in their statement. "The IACP and FOP firmly believe that those convicted of such crimes should serve their full sentences."
The organization added that crimes against law enforcement agents are "not just attacks on individuals or public safety — they are attacks on society and undermine the rule of law."
"Allowing those convicted of these crimes to be released early diminishes accountability and devalues the sacrifices made by courageous law enforcement officers and their families," the statement said.
The organizations warned that criminals — particularly those in serious crimes — who aren't held fully accountable sends a "dangerous message" that the repercussions of attacking law enforcement are "not severe," which could embolden others to do the same.
They urged policymakers, judicial authorities and community leaders to ensure such offenders see that full sentences are served and ensure "justice is upheld."
President Joe Biden’s last day in office – which saw President Donald Trump sweep back into power – was anything but normal in the legal world as pardons flew from the outgoing president with more expected to come from the new commander-in-chief.
That’s according to CNN’s senior legal analyst Elie Honig, who said Monday that Biden ushered in “a new moment in U.S history” with his flurry of pardons in his remaining minutes as president. They are likely to be followed be Trump’s long-held promise to pardon Jan. 6 rioters.
“This is the most abnormal day we've ever seen in the history of the pardon power,” Honig said hours after Biden issued preemptive pardons to members of his extended family.
“We started off the day with Joe Biden in his last minutes in office, issuing blanket preemptive pardons to five of his own family members,” he said. “Now – what is to come – the pardons that Donald Trump is going to exercise soon I think are best understood as a raw exercise of political power."
Honig, a former federal prosecutor, added that there is “no legitimate law enforcement” reasoning for pardoning Jan. 6 rioters. But he told viewers on Monday that he would watch for two key developments as the first full day of Trump’s second term unfolds.
“One – where does Donald Trump draw the line?” Honig said. “Will he only pardon people who were convicted of misdemeanors, will he get up to people who were convicted of destroying property, of violence against police officers? How are they going to draw the lines – there are 1400 people who have been charged.”
Honig noted that it remains unclear what the Department of Justice would then do “with the hundreds of still pending January 6 cases."
A heated discussion broke out Friday night over a pair of reports in The New York Times that President Joe Biden's inner circle shielded him for years, and that Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) begged him in July not to seek a second term.
The Times put out the reports late Friday.
“If you run and you lose to Trump, and we lose the Senate, and we don’t get back the House, that 50 years of amazing, beautiful work goes out the window,” Schumer told Biden, according to the report. “But worse — you go down in American history as one of the darkest figures.”
"If I were you, I wouldn’t run, and I’m urging you not to run," he said.
The report became the topic of a passionate discussion on CNN's "NewsNight."
Not only did they not want to tell him the reality but they were shielding the American people. They were deceiving us and they were trying to obscure the reality of what was actually happening. And it was premeditated," declared Pete Seat, former White House spokesman for President George W. Bush.
Anchor Abby Phillip read from the Times report, which said Biden's family and closest inner circle "recognized his physical frailty to a greater degree than they have publicly acknowledged." That circle, the report said, then "cooperated" to "manage his decline."
Democratic strategist Keith Boykin, a former Clinton White House aide, immediately pivoted to declare the public knows more about Biden's health than President-elect Donald Trump's assassination attempt, his bout with COVID-19 and his medical records from when he was president.
Boykin's assertion was met with shouts from the panel, forcing Phillip to regain control of the panel. When asked whether Boykin would've rather heard from Biden that the president planned to take a step back, Boykin noted he was opposed to Biden running in 2020. But after seeing Biden in office for four years, Boykin found him to be a "very consequential and effective president."
But as Boykin tried to tout Biden's accomplishments, culture writer Touré cut in.
"Keith. Keith. We're on the same side. You're not answering the question. And this is a huge mistake that the Biden team made. The people around him knew that he was not well and they did not say anything. They have endangered the country — not just the party — but the country by not making clear, 'I'm sorry but Grandpa is too old to drive.'"
People in Biden's orbit, said Touré, kept Americans from knowing the truth about Biden's decline.
But Boykin pushed back, insisting Americans could see Biden for his current state, warts and all.
"He's an 82-year-old man. Do you expect him to move like he's a 50-year-old or 60-year-old?" asked Boykin.
Phillip noted that to Democrats, the election carried "existential" stakes.
Later in the discussion, Boykin again questioned why people were surprised to see Biden's decline when they could watch his speeches. The panel again broke out into shouts, with Seat firing back, "Then why was he at the Resolute Desk?" and former Congressional candidate Gail Huff Brown demanding to know, "Who was running the country?"
When Phillip tried to push back that the White House led people to believe Biden was "at the top of his game," Boykin doubled down.
"White Houses always say that stuff. Nobody believes that," he insisted.
Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro is raising eyebrows over a flurry of last-minute ship-naming decisions made in the waning days of President Joe Biden’s administration – which included two future aircraft carriers named for former Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.
The ship-naming spurt includes 12 ships, four submarines and a new class of logistics ships, Politico reported Friday. But, as the publication noted, about half “are either not under contract or don’t have an approved design.”
And that’s out of the ordinary, according to a retired Navy officer at the Hudson Institute.
“There's nothing untoward about Del Toro doing this, but it is just unusual to me that it’s for ships this far in advance,” Bryan Clark told Politico.
A Navy official declined to offer more details into why the secretary has pushed through so many premature ship names, telling Politico only that the “naming decisions speak for themselves.”
The publication added one certainty remains: “Anything named by this administration is something that can’t be named by the next one.”
“The ships the furthest from entering the fleet include two aircraft carriers — the USS William J. Clinton and USS George W. Bush — which should join the fleet in the late 2030s if current plans hold,” Politico reported. “Carriers are meant to last for 50 years, so their names tend to take on an outsized significance.”
President-elect Donald Trump has not yet weighed in publicly.
What’s even “more surprising,” Politico pointed out, was that out of the four submarines the Navy secretary announced names to, none are under contract. Similarly, the ships named in honor of Clinton and Bush are not yet in the Navy’s budget.
President Joe Biden, just days before he will exit the White House, announced on Friday that the Equal Rights Amendment, which would enshrine in the U.S. Constitution equal rights for women, is now the 28th Amendment and “the law of the land.” Although he has some legal scholars backing this declaration, experts say there are still legal hurdles and a legal battle to overcome.
“Today I’m affirming what I have long believed and what three-fourths of the states have ratified: The 28th Amendment is the law of the land, guaranteeing all Americans equal rights and protections under the law regardless of their sex,” President Biden wrote. “I have supported the Equal Rights Amendment for more than 50 years and have long been clear that no one should be discriminated against based on their sex. We must affirm and protect women’s full equality once and for all.”
“On January 27, 2020,” President Biden explained in his statement on the White House website, “the Commonwealth of Virginia became the 38th state to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment. The American Bar Association (ABA) has recognized that the Equal Rights Amendment has cleared all necessary hurdles to be formally added to the Constitution as the 28th Amendment. I agree with the ABA and with leading legal constitutional scholars that the Equal Rights Amendment has become part of our Constitution.”
“It is long past time to recognize the will of the American people. In keeping with my oath and duty to Constitution and country, I affirm what I believe and what three-fourths of the states have ratified: the 28th Amendment is the law of the land, guaranteeing all Americans equal rights and protections under the law regardless of their sex.”
CNN calls Biden’s announcement “a last-minute move that some believe could pave the way to bolstering reproductive rights.”
“It will, however, certainly draw swift legal challenges – and its next steps remain extremely unclear as Biden prepares to leave office.”
The news network also credits U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) with “making a major push for certification, saying in a memo to interested parties that it would give Biden a way to ‘codify women’s freedom and equality without needing anything from a bitterly divided and broken Congress’ in the aftermath of the 2022 Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade.”
In 2020, after Virginia became the 38th state to ratify the ERA, the necessary requirement of three-fourths ratification may have been met.
As The Brennan Center for Justice noted just days later, “there are still hurdles in the ERA’s path. The ratification deadlines that Congress set after it approved the amendment have lapsed, and five states have acted to rescind their prior approval. These raise important questions, and now it is up to Congress, the courts, and the American people to resolve them.”
Congress could try to waive the deadline and try to ignore the states that rescinded their ratification.
President Biden did not order the National Archivist to certify the ERA as the 28th Amendment. Some have suggested neither has the legal authority to do so at this point.
But some have also suggested the deadline was unconstitutional.
The Associated Press called President Biden’s declaration “a symbolic statement that’s unlikely to alter a decades-long push for gender equality,” and “unlikely to have any impact.”
“Presidents do not have any role in the amendment process. The leader of the National Archives had previously said that the amendment cannot be certified because it wasn’t ratified before a deadline set by Congress,” the AP added. It noted that the National Archives said, “the underlying legal and procedural issues have not changed.”
President Joe Biden announced on Friday that the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) has officially been affirmed.
In a statement, Biden said Virginia's 2020 vote means that enough states have ratified the law. This move will likely begin the legal debate over whether it is official and can be considered law. Congress had set a timeline for ratification, and Virginia's ratification was after that deadline.
"The American Bar Association (ABA) has recognized that the Equal Rights Amendment has cleared all necessary hurdles to be formally added to the Constitution as the 28th Amendment. I agree with the ABA and with leading legal constitutional scholars that the Equal Rights Amendment has become part of our Constitution," Biden said in a statement.
"But there's still another step -- and a legal fight -- ahead," said Moms Demand Action Shannon Watts.
"But he also has no formal role in the process, and WH officials say he is not ordering the archivist to help ratify it," said Washington Post reporter Matt Viser.
Former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance wrote a Blue Sky thread on the legal debate saying, "The ERA needs to be formally published or certified to come into effect by the National Archivist — it's not clear what that means with the change in administrations."
"Next the archivist should publish the ERA. That task is 'purely ministerial,' he's required to do it once the law is ratified," she added. "It could happen today but more likely, Biden has put Trump in the position of letting it go into effect or holding it up. If Trump does, expect lawsuits because, ministerial."
She also pointed out that Trump has promised to replace the Archivist because the incumbent in the office played a role "in noticing Trump was illegally holding on to classified documents and asking to get them back. So, expect the new guy to be thoroughly in Trump's control."
"There is a legitimate legal issue BUT, there is no impediment to putting ERA into law, IF elected officials agree women deserve equal rights. There is no reason it shouldn't be done," she said, implying that Biden is forcing Republicans to argue women don't deserve equal rights publicly.
That involves the letter Biden will likely be leaving for Trump. According to the AP, "it'd be a first" if he did.
"History and politics now have intertwined to put President Biden in the unique position of writing a letter — if he so chooses — to Trump, his successor and the predecessor who left a note for him," the report says. It goes on to quote Mark Updegrove, president and CEO of the LBJ Foundation.
“This will mark the first time that a president who has received a letter from an outgoing president may well be writing a letter to the same person who’s the incoming president,” he said.
The report also says, "When Trump takes office on Monday, he’ll be the first president to serve nonconsecutive terms since Grover Cleveland in the late 1800s, when the letter-writing tradition didn’t exist."
"So this is a highly unusual situation, as so many things are in modern day Washington with Donald John Trump," the expert said.
Donald Trump's incoming administration may be in for some surprises next week when they take over from president Joe Biden, who issued a series of executive actions that could be hard to undo.
The outgoing president's actions have touched on nearly all areas of government and will likely continue up until his final hours in office, according to administration sources, and while that flurry of activity isn't unusual, the Washington Post reported that Biden's wide-ranging efforts reflect his belief that Trump presents a unique threat to American traditions.
He's also considering action on advancing the Equal Rights Amendment, according to sources familiar with the discussions, and his team has been discussing preemptive pardons for individuals who Trump might target for retribution, and many of the recent moves have been the result of months of planning that began when Biden dropped out of the race, shared with his Cabinet in September and accelerated after the Nov. 5 election.
“This Cabinet meeting comes at a time when we have four months left in the administration,” the president told Cabinet members in September, when he asked them to take action to burnish his legacy. "We’re going to keep running through the tape, because the vice president and I are determined to keep making sure that the democracy delivers what the American people are asking for and what we provided.”
The administration has focused on spending money already allocated by Congress and proposing regulations that would make it more difficult for the incoming administration to derail those plans, but Republicans could use the the Congressional Review Act to disapprove more than 1,300 climate, education, health-care and labor regulations set forth by Biden.
"In another little-noticed example, the incoming Trump administration will find what may be an unwelcome surprise Tuesday, when a new rule becomes legally effective, giving a 12 percent pay raise to about 14,500 blue-collar employees who serve at three Army depots and some Veterans Affairs facilities," the Post reported. "The raise, authorized by the Office of Personnel Management in October, will appear as a final rule in the Federal Register on Jan. 21, meaning the incoming Trump administration will have to pay for it, at a cost of $150 million a year."
That move comes as Trump and his allies Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy have vowed to cut trillions of dollars from the federal budget and drastically reduce the workforce, but they may find some of Biden's workplace protections are too well-established by now to overturn.
“It does strike me as reasonable to get your preference into place and make them as difficult as possible to overturn,” said Andrew Rudalevige, a professor at Bowdoin College who has studied executive actions. “A lot of this unilateral action is fragile, so it makes it limited to what you can do.”
Speaking with Lawrence O'Donnell, Biden was asked about his political approach to the pandemic.
"You said it was stupid — as a joke — that you didn't sign the checks that went out to people from your administration when you were giving Covid help after Donald Trumpput his name on the checks that went out during his administration," said O'Donnell.
The host said he suspected Biden took former President Franklin D. Roosevelt's approach to social security checks. When they first went out in 1940 as FDR sought re-election, the checks went out with the signature of a Treasury officer.
"Because it would be indecent and beyond his comprehension that a president would dare take credit for something that was legislated by the Congress and was enacted that way," O'Donnell continued. "Did it cross your mind to put your name on the checks?"
In response, Biden said the thought only crossed his mind because he kept hearing people say back to him they received a check from the president.
"'The president did that. Why aren't you helping me?'" Biden said he heard.
"It did cross my mind," he confessed. "The mistake we made was — I think I made — was not getting our allies to acknowledge that the Democrats did this. So for example, build a new billion-dollar bridge over a river. Well, call it the 'Democratic bridge' figuratively speaking. Talk about who put it together. Let people know that this is something that Democrats did. That it was done by the party."
Biden then added: "I'm not a very good huckster. That wasn't a stupid thing for [President-elect Donald Trump] to do. It helped him a lot and it undermined our ability to convince people that we were the ones that were getting this to them."
The outgoing president said he likely spent too much time on policy.
"Not enough time on the politics," he said with a chuckle.
Biden said while he probably ought to have done a better job of promoting his and his party's accomplishments, even the thought didn't sit quite right.
"It just seems, I know it sounds so stupid to say, just bad taste," he said, shaking his head.
Joe Biden wanted to go down in history as the man who saved America from Donald Trump. Instead he may be remembered for handing Trump a second term in the White House.
In years to come Biden, 82, may be judged more kindly. The Democrat steered a divided country out of the Covid-19 pandemic and the chaos of Trump's first four years, before pushing through an impressive raft of legislation.
But Biden's single term will now be bookended by his rival's presidencies. And it will be defined by a single fateful decision -- to defy mounting concerns about his age and run for reelection in 2024.
For many the defining image of the 46th US president will be a haunted-looking Biden lost for words in the disastrous debate against Trump that eventually forced him out of the race.
His replacement as Democratic candidate, his Vice President Kamala Harris, was left with an almost impossible task to prevent Trump's return.
If Biden insisted until the end that he could have beaten his Republican nemesis, he still admitted that it may take a while to restore his reputation.
"It will take time to feel the full impact of all we have done together, but the seeds are planted," he said in his farewell address.
- Historic challenges -
Biden's inauguration in January 2021 was a remarkable comeback for an often underestimated politician who spent a lifetime battling both political odds and personal tragedy.
But he was an unlikely savior.
Biden was America's oldest elected president at the time -- until Trump's election in 2024 -- and arguably more famous for his gaffes and for being Barack Obama's vice president.
And he faced historic challenges. The country was reeling from the January 6, 2021 Capitol assault by Trump supporters protesting his election defeat, while the US economy was shattered by Covid.
But Biden quickly forced a massive pandemic recovery scheme and a huge green investment plan through Congress as he sought to rebuild American industry and infrastructure.
In Harris he appointed the first Black, South Asian and female vice president.
Western allies welcomed his commitment to the alliances Trump had trashed.
Perhaps Biden's proudest achievement was supporting Ukraine against Russia's 2022 invasion -- and his top secret trip to Kyiv in 2023.
- 'Get back up' -
But Biden's popularity suffered an early blow with the chaotic US withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 -- and never really recovered. His approval rating was just 36 percent in a final CNN poll.
His pandemic stimulus sent inflation soaring, part of the reason Americans punished Harris at the polls. His lax border policies led to a record crossings of illegal immigrants, which Trump pounced on.
While he claimed a late boost to his legacy with a Gaza ceasefire deal, he angered many with his unstinting support for Israel's war on Hamas despite a soaring death toll.
Despite it all, Biden believed he was the only person who could beat Trump again.
Fond of folksy tales about his upbringing as a child with a stutter from a blue-collar, Irish Catholic background in Pennsylvania, he would often quote his father's mantra: "When you get knocked down, you get back up."
He had battled through the tragedy of a car crash that killed his wife and baby daughter in 1972, just days after he'd been elected a US senator at the age of 29 -- then rebuilt his life with the help of his second wife, First Lady Jill Biden.
Then there was the death of his older son Beau from brain cancer in 2015, and the drug and legal problems of his younger son Hunter, to whom he controversially issued a pardon.
- 'Magic of America' -
But age was a battle he couldn't win.
Trump dubbed Biden "Sleepy Joe" and every stumble -- on the stairs of Air Force One, off his bike -- was relentlessly replayed on social media.
Republican attacks -- and Democratic doubts -- mounted after Biden reneged on his promise to be a bridge to a new generation and announced in 2023 that he'd seek reelection.
The White House insisted there was no problem and increasingly shielded Biden from unscripted public appearances -- until it was too late.
In his final days in office, Biden provided the smooth transition that Trump denied him. He invited Trump to the White House and the two rivals engaged in unprecedented cooperation on the Gaza deal.
Yet he also had a parting shot for Trump, warning in his farewell speech of a dangerous "oligarchy taking shape in America."
And if Biden's 50-year-political career ended in disappointment, he saw a bright side.
"Only in America do we believe anything is possible, like a kid with a stutter from modest beginnings... sitting behind this desk in the Oval Office as president," he said.
Outgoing President Joe Bidenreceived high marks from many political commentators for his farewell address delivered on Wednesday — and that was because of a particularly resonant fact about the speech, former White House press secretary turned MSNBC commentator Jen Psaki wrote on Thursday.
A key moment that exemplified this, she argued, was the beginning of his speech, where Biden delivered a powerful bit of symbolism involving the Statue of Liberty.
"Like America, the Statue of Liberty is not standing still," said Biden. "Her foot literally steps forward atop a broken chain of human bondage. She’s on the march. And she literally moves. She was built to sway back and forth to withstand the fury of stormy weather, to stand the test of time because storms are always coming. She sways a few inches, but she never falls into the current below."
Put another way, wrote Psaki, "Biden didn't promise the American people that the government — the Supreme Court, Congress, the president — will protect them from the storm, instead, he told the American people they’ll have to protect themselves. With this speech, Biden didn't pass the baton to his successor, as he would likely do if it were any other politician, he passed the baton to them. To that end, the last few lines of the president’s speech were, perhaps, the most striking. Biden told the American people that it’s their turn 'to stand guard.'"
Biden noted his necessary and important duty in assuring a peaceful transition of power, but — Psaki said — he made abundantly clear in his speech that he was counting on a very different sort of power to lead the way after he leaves.
"Biden's final message to America was that we cannot count on these people to protect us," she concluded. "We have to protect ourselves, all of us, and the institutions that make America what it is."
