the judge handed down her ruling tonight in the form of what s called a minute order, which means it s short. and in this case, it s short like poetry is short, it s short like i think i might commit this to memory and sing it to myself in the shower one day. here it is in its entirety. as to defend anthony robert williams, denying defend s motion for permission to travel. defend, while on pretrial release and facing charges including a serious felony offense, stemming from his alleged actions on january 6, 2021, wished to leave the michigan winter to spend 10 days in the warmer climes of jamaica to meet the family of a woman with whom defend has been in a committed relationship for, quote, more than a year. then the foot note in the minute order indicates that that more than a year is a quote from what he said about himself in his motion where he asked for permission to travel to jamaica. more than a year. the judge continues, quote, although such a meeting pay be an importa
The next election and one after that and members of congress today invade against that. president biden gave a fierce, intense speech today, in which he said the capitol attack a year ago was a dagger at the throat of democracy. it was also a bit of a collective shudder across the country late today when politico.com was first to report at the time an operable, viable pipe bomb was found just outside democratic headquarters on january 6 last year, vice-president elect kamala harris was inside the building when they found the bomb there. that is something we did not know before today. so in ways good, in ways bad, and uplifting and sombre and prayerful and angry and scared today and all these ways today, there was kind of a unified earth-1 response, boy, what happened a year ago today on
Then democracy is an absurdity, it can t work. and what are we seeing right now but the minority who lost the election is claiming it wasn t loss, having state legislatures now with the possibility to overturn the will of the people, having partisan people counting the votes instead of the nonpartisan volunteers. i think if lincoln were here now he would say if that s true, democracy is absurdity, so we go to voting rights, have to protect it, the fight, i think is the most important fight in my life. when i was involved in a young girl on the march on washington when i sat and listened to lyndon johnson s speech where he said voting is not a partisan issue, not a northern or southern issue, to get the voting rights of 65, it s not had a moral challenge because it s undeniably wrong to deny
Voting, that was met with violence. even now, since january 6, the threats on the violent threats on officials in our country, for federal judges has gone up three-fold, for members of congress, threats gone up two-fold. for independent election officials, reuters documents hundreds and hundreds of violent threats. take a guy like al shmidt republican from pennsylvania who dared to say the election was just and fair, threatened, his children, threatened to murderer them, so we have to understand we are actually a unique, amazing country, but we see across the planet from europe to south america, authoritarian forces pushing back on democracy, undermining democracy, and democracy on the retreat from hungary to turkey, the demagogic forces we saw pushish back on democracy. so the positive, rachel, is
From now on the second anniversary of the january 6 attack that we cannot have now? what sort of progress do you think we can make as a country? in the year ahead, given what has happened to us in the year behind. let me first just really push the point that if we just see this as an isolated incident, one day we mark every year and forget this is a stream of our nation s history, where violence forces seeking to stop democracy with authoritarian events have been a long part of our country s history. in fact, every step we ve tried to take forward has been met with violence. remember, we talk about the suffragettes and their marches but they were beaten and tortured. we talk about the efforts for voting rights, john lewis, you can go through the number of people that were beaten and those early elected officials, the first senator in the united states senate that was black was during reconstruction when whites had unfettered access to