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Authorities are still working to determine the identities of the insurrectionists who attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6, many of whom were apparently motivated by false conspiracy theories that former President Donald Trump won the 2020 election but was cheated out of his victory due to widespread election fraud.
Conspiracy theories often rely on seeing things sharply in terms of right and wrong, and that can drive people to do things they might never have contemplated before, says Peter Ditto, a professor of psychological science at the University of California, Irvine.
“Moralizing things mobilizes people to action,” he says. “If I believed that the American election had been stolen from the rightful winner, I’d probably storm the Capitol, too. It makes perfect sense if that really happened. The problem is, that didn t happen.”
U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Monday that Congress will establish an independent, Sept. 11-style commission to look into the deadly insurrection that took place at the U.S. Capitol.
While U.S. President Joe Biden has taken some major steps in his first weeks in office to reverse Trump s hardline immigration policies, his administration hasn t lifted some of the most significant barriers to asylum-seekers.
The 100 senators 50 Republicans and 50 Democrats hearing the impeachment case against the single-term president are in a unique position: many of them were witnesses themselves to the chaos of January 6 as they fled the Senate chamber for their own safety.