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By Kathy Roberts Forde, Associate Professor, Journalism Department, University of Massachusetts Amherst; and Kristin Gustafson, Associate Teaching Professor in Media and Communication, University of Washington, Bothell While the attempted coup by Trump fanatics on January 6 was unsuccessful in its goal to topple the government and remove American democracy, the 1898 coup in Wilmington, North Carolina highlights the tragic consequences that could have befallen our nation. These two events, separated by 122 years, share critical features. Each was organized and planned. Each was an effort to steal an election and disfranchise voters. Each was animated by white racist fears....

By mid-February 2021, American deaths from COVID-19 may well surpass the country’s 405,400 deaths during the Second World War. By around mid-May, more Americans will have died from the virus than during the Civil War, which killed 655,000, and the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918, when 675,000 are estimated to have perished. Yet America’s largely self-inflicted COVID-19 disaster may be eclipsed by the country’s political unraveling, which has proceeded with warp speed in the last few weeks, with the once celebrated American way of succession in power via the ballot box dealt a body blow by a large sector...

The U.S. Capitol building was assaulted and occupied on January 6 by an angry and violent insurrectionary mob incited by Donald Trump and his closest family members and cronies. Was it a “coup?” Republican House member Adam Kinzinger said so. Many have called it that. Republican Senator Mitt Romney called it an “insurrection.” Many have used this term as well. We can argue about which terms best apply and how, and also about the moral and legal implications of applying such terms. What is beyond argument is a fact: there was a violent takeover of Congress – the representative...

Wisconsin’s Congressional delegation split along party lines on January 13 for the bipartisan vote to impeach President Donald Trump over his role in inciting the deadly January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. In statements, press conferences and speeches on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives, House members weighed in on the historic second impeachment of a sitting president. The vote on January 13 came one week after a mob of violent Trump supporters stormed the Capitol in an effort to disrupt the counting of Electoral College votes — and less than one week before the inauguration...

By Lee Bebout, Professor of English, Arizona State University Despite failed lawsuits, recounts and formal confirmation that President-elect Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election, President Donald Trump and his supporters continue to maintain that the election was rigged and that he and the American people are victims of massive voter fraud. This politicization of victimhood is nothing new to the Trump presidency. It was there from the beginning. When Trump descended the escalator in Trump Tower to announce his presidential campaign in 2015, he stoked fears of Mexican rapists and drug traffickers attacking U.S. citizens. The claims of...

The far-right siege on the U.S. Capitol has been called “unbelievable,” “shocking,” and “beyond imagination.” And let’s not forget the attacks on statehouses around the nation and all the symbols hate deployed – guillotine, hangman’s noose, confederate and Nazi iconography, though they received far less coverage. I admit I felt shocked, glued to the coverage, waiting for some sort of intervention. It never materialized, five people died, dozens were injured, hundreds feared for their lives for hours under lockdown, and millions across the country were terrorized. Senator Chuck Schumer said January 6, 2021 is a new “day that will...