This time the fury enveloping the Capitol comes not from an insurgent mob but from within.
The anger on display is searing — Democrat against Republican; Republican against Republican; legislators of both parties against the catastrophic security failure that left top leaders of the government vulnerable to last week's violence as well as to the coronavirus in their ranks.
This is a “powder keg” moment, one Democrat said. It's certainly a historic one.
Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., rises to join House Republican members to object to confirming the Electoral College votes from Pennsylvania during a joint session of the House and Senate to confirm the Electoral College votes cast in November's election, at the Capitol, early Thursday, Jan 7, 2021, in Washington. (AP PhotoAndrew Harnik)
The House is moving toward making Donald Trump the first president to be impeached twice as part of an extraordinary effort to remove him from office before Democrat Joe Biden's inauguration a week from Wednesday. The charge to be brought against him: “incitement of insurrection.”
Once again the phrase of the founders, “high crimes and misdemeanors," has been turned against Trump, who was acquitted by the Senate in his first impeachment trial. And tempers are flaring in congressional hallways and offices still cleaning up from the trashing by the attackers.
Shaken members, long accustomed to protective bubbles, inquired whether they can expense their own bulletproof vests to taxpayers (yes they can). Democrats assailed a collection of always-Trumpers — Republicans who pressed the president's false accusations of a fraudulent election even after the mob, motivated by the same lies, had finally been cleared away.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., looks on in the House Chamber after they reconvened for arguments over the objection of certifying Arizona’s Electoral College votes in November’s election, at the Capitol in Washington, Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2021. (Greg NashPool via AP)
Democratic Sen. Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, among others, called for the expulsion or censure of Republican members who argued Trump's case for overturning the will of the voters, if those lawmakers refuse to resign. Democrats were primarily after Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and a selection of House lawmakers who had also tried to throw up obstacles to Biden's election certification.
“They have a full blown independent reality, totally cut apart from the world of facts, and that is the groundwork for fascism,” Casey said. “When you add racism, anti-Semitism, conspiracy theory and magical thinking, that is an absolute powder keg in terms of an assault on democracy."
There was Republican to Republican finger-pointing, too. Much of it was aimed at House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California for not showing enough leadership, according to congressional GOP aides who spoke on condition of anonymity and former lawmakers.
With the U.S. Capitol Building in view, members of the military stand on the steps of the Library of Congress' Thomas Jefferson Building in Washington, Friday, Jan. 8, 2021, in response to supporters of President Donald Trump who stormed the Capitol. (AP PhotoPatrick Semansky)
Some House Republicans are upset that McCarthy, one of Trump’s staunchest defenders in Washington, defended him too forcefully and for too long, making it harder to dissociate themselves from Trump after the Capitol siege.
In contrast, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky explicitly criticized Trump’s drive to overturn Biden’s election, saying it would “damage our republic forever.” He did so even as the mob breached the Capitol and lunged toward the chambers against outnumbered police.
McCarthy acknowledged outrage among his Republican colleagues over the attack in a letter to them Monday declaring “I share your anger and your pain” and making sure they knew the mob's threat also came close to him.
“Zip ties were found on staff desks in my office,” he wrote. "Windows were smashed in. Property was stolen. Those images will never leave us.”
As if nerves weren’t raw enough over the actions of Trump and his diehard loyalists, three of the Democrats who sheltered with Republican House members when they were all spirited to a secure room disclosed they had since tested positive for COVID-19. Some of the Republicans in that room over those hours had refused to wear masks.
Indeed, one of the newly infected, Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington, said “several Republicans not only cruelly refused to wear a mask but recklessly mocked colleagues and staff who offered them one.”
Reps. Bonnie Watson Coleman of New Jersey and Brad Schneider of Illinois were the others who announced positive tests after their time in the room as everyone waited to hear whether more cases were coming.
Democrats were livid. Reps. Debbie Dingell of Michigan and Anthony Brown of Maryland introduced legislation that would impose $1,000 fines per day on any member of Congress who refused to mask on Capitol grounds.
“In the midst of a deadly assault on our United States Capitol, a number of our Republican colleagues laughed off rules designed to keep not just their colleagues safe, but to protect the lives of the teams of workers keeping things going, law enforcement, and staff throughout the Capitol," Dingell said.
At a virtual meeting of the House rules committee, Democrats implored Republicans to stop peddling Trump's myths of a stolen election. Trump's accusations have been refuted for weeks by judges and election officials but motivated the mob and are still believed by legions of Trump supporters.
“When does service to Donald Trump end?” demanded Democratic Rep. Joe Morelle of New York. “It should be an easy one to answer.”
“When the people speak, it's over," he went on. Otherwise, “we have nothing. There is no America.”
There were some signs that the top Republican in the House was backing off his unwavering show of loyalty to Trump.
McCarthy had joined most House Republicans in December in supporting a lawsuit to block Biden’s election, and again last week in two votes against certifying Biden’s win. The lawsuit and both votes failed. He has so far avoided lambasting Trump publicly. But in a private conference call Monday with GOP colleagues, he expressed an openness to censuring Trump.
McCarthy “amplified the president’s disinformation about widescale election fraud,” former Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., who often clashed with Trump, said in an interview last week. “That has been irresponsible. Mitch doesn’t fall in that category.”
“McCarthy is all in with Trump,” said Paul Cook, who retired in January as a GOP congressman from California and had differences with him over the years. “I think sometimes you have the greater good of the country, it’s not always the party.”
A senior congressional Republican and defender of McCarthy, who would only speak anonymously, said the GOP leader would have been criticized no matter how the congressional challenge to Biden’s electoral votes played out. The Republican also said McCarthy’s strong relationship with Trump has benefitted GOP lawmakers because it’s enabled him to talk Trump out of attacking them, especially moderate Republicans who vote against him.
But to Cook, it all comes down to the oath. “You take an oath, a lot of people kind of forget the words to that," he said.
In their oath of office, lawmakers vow to defend the Constitution “against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — With the search for the Brown University shooter in its fifth day Wednesday, authorities were asking the public to review any security or phone footage from the week before the attack in the hopes it might help investigators identify the person, believing the attacker may have cased the scene ahead of time.
The request Tuesday came after authorities released several videos from the hours and minutes before and after Saturday's attack showing the person they're seeking standing, walking and even running along streets just off campus, but always with a mask on or their head turned.
“I believe that this is probably the most intense investigation going on right now in this nation” Providence’s police chief, Col. Oscar Perez, said at a Wednesday news conference, noting that investigators have collected a lot of crime scene evidence and that student witnesses' accounts of the shooter match the person in the video that authorities are seeking.
While Brown has installed 1,200 cameras on campus, the attack, which killed two students and wounded nine others, happened in a first-floor classroom in an older part of the engineering building that has “fewer, if any” cameras, Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha noted. Investigators also believe the shooter entered and left the building through a door that faces a residential street bordering campus. The building being right on the edge of campus also might explain why the cameras Brown does have didn't capture footage of the person.
Yet lingering frustration about the lack of campus video of the shooter led President Donald Trump to accuse the Ivy League school of being unprepared, posting Wednesday on Truth Social: “Why did Brown University have so few Security Cameras? There can be no excuse for that. In the modern age, it just doesn’t get worse!!!”
Investigators have described the person they're seeking as about 5 feet, 8 inches (173 centimeters) tall and stocky, but they've given no indication that they are close to zeroing in on their identity.
The attacker's motives also remain a mystery, though Perez said investigators haven't found any evidence to suggest that it was targeting a specific person.
Authorities have been canvassing the surrounding neighborhoods and have received hundreds of tips.
“There’s no discouragement among people who understand that not every case can be solved quickly,” the attorney general said Wednesday.
Asked why authorities haven't released all of the footage they have from day of the attack — including video of students fleeing the section of the building where more cameras were installed — Neronha said it wouldn't help the investigation.
“It does not advance our investigation to have reams of data out there that doesn’t help identify the shooter," he said.
Perez declined to say how many witnesses police had spoken to or how many people were in the classroom when the attack happened. But he said his department is being dogged and is hoping more students with information will come forward.
“We’re all over the place. If a tip tells us we need to go down to Connecticut, we’re going down to Connecticut. If a tip comes in and tells us that we got to go to Boston, we’re going to Boston,” the chief said.
But the timing of the attack, coming just before the winter break, could complicate the investigation, as remaining classes and exams were canceled after the shooting and many students have already gone home.
The investigation also comes as Boston-area police search for the person who killed a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor earlier this week. That attack happened in the professor's home, and the FBI said it had no reason to think the two attacks were linked.
Separately, Providence police on Wednesday released a new photo of a separate individual who they said was in “proximity of the person of interest" and asked the public to help identify that person so they could speak with them. The person in the new photo is wearing dark pants and a blue jacket, and carrying a light tan bag.
The attack and shooter’s escape have raised questions about campus security.
Paxson said Brown has two security systems. One, which is activated in times of emergency, sent out text messages, phone calls and emails that reached 20,000 people. The other features three sirens across the campus and was not activated Saturday, a decision Paxson defended because doing so would have caused people to rush into buildings, including the one where the shooting was happening.
“So that is not a system we would ever use in the case of an active shooter,” she said.
Brown's website says the sirens can be used when there is an active shooter, but Paxson said it “depends on the circumstances" and the location of the shooter.
With the shooter still at-large, Providence remained tense Wednesday as additional police were stationed at city schools to reassure worried parents that their kids would be safe. Some schools canceled afterschool activities and field trips.
Prior to the shooting, nearly 1,600 Providence residents were registered to receive texts through a city text alert service. According to the city, 760 new accounts have been created since Sunday, bringing the total number of people registered to receive texts to more than 2,300 as of late Tuesday.
Brown also cautioned people to refrain from accusing people online of having any link to the attack, after it said such speculation led to a student being doxed — their identifying information was posted.
“Accusations, speculation and conspiracies we’re seeing on social media and in some news reports are irresponsible, harmful, and in some cases dangerous for the safety of individuals in our community,” the school said in a statement.
And the police chief on Wednesday asked the public to stop circulating AI-generated images being shared on social media.
About 200 people gathered at a campus church service Tuesday to honor the victims, including Ella Cook and MukhammadAziz Umurzokov, the two students who died.
Cook was a 19-year-old sophomore from Alabama who was very involved in her church and served as vice president of the Brown College Republicans.
Umurzokov was an 18-year-old freshman from Virginia whose family immigrated to the U.S. from Uzbekistan and who hoped to go to medical school one day.
Mayor Brett Smiley said Wednesday that a third wounded student had been discharged, leaving five still hospitalized in stable condition and one in critical condition.
Contributing were Associated Press journalists Jennifer McDermott, Matt O'Brien and Robert F. Bukaty in Providence; Patrick Whittle in Portland, Maine; Kathy McCormack in Concord, New Hampshire; and Audrey McAvoy in Honolulu.
Flowers and candles surround photos of Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov, an 18-year-old freshman from Brandermill, Va., and Ella Cook, a 19-year-old sophomore from a suburb of Birmingham, Ala., in front of a Brown University gate in Providence, R.I., on Wednesday, Dec. 17, 2025. (AP Photo/Leah Willingham)
The U.S. flag flies at half-staff on the Main Green in honor of the victims of the campus shooting at Brown University, Wednesday, Dec. 17, 2025, in Providence, R.I. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)
Photos of Brown University shooting victims Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov, left, and Ella Cook, are seen amongst flowers at a makeshift memorial at the school's Van Wickle Gate, Wednesday, Dec. 17, 2025, in Providence, R.I. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)
A snowman begins to sag on the usually-bustling Main Green at Brown University, where the fall semester was canceled a week early following the campus shooting, Wednesday, Dec. 17, 2025, in Providence, R.I. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)
The U.S. flag flies at half-staff on the Main Green in honor of the victims of the campus shooting at Brown University, Wednesday, Dec. 17, 2025, in Providence, R.I. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)
A poster seeking information about the campus shooting suspect is seen on the campus of Brown University, Wednesday, Dec. 17, 2025, in Providence, R.I. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)
Visitors kneel at a makeshift memorial for the shooting victims outside the Engineering Research Center at Brown University, Tuesday, Dec. 16, 2025, in Providence, R.I.(AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)
Brown University students Gloria Kuzmenko-Latimir, left, and Haleema Aslam walk by Manning Hall on their way to a makeshift memorial for the shooting victims, Tuesday, Dec. 16, 2025, in Providence, R.I. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)
The choir enters St. Stephen's Church during a community service for the victims of the Brown University shooting, Tuesday, Dec. 16, 2025. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)
Participants light candles at St. Stephen's Church during a community service for the victims of the Brown University shooting, Tuesday, Dec. 16, 2025. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)
This image taken from video provided by the FBI shows a person of interest in the investigation of the shooting that occurred at Brown University, in Providence, R.I., Saturday, Dec. 13, 2025. (FBI via AP)
