A man reacts to the acquittal of Kyle Rittenhouse outside the Kenosha County Courthouse on Friday, Nov. 19 in Wisconsin. (Joshua Lott/The Washington Post)
“Ever since the early-morning hours that day in August 2020, when video footage of a teenager opening fire on the streets of Kenosha first started to circulate, Kyle Rittenhouse has been a human canvas onto which the nation’s political divisions were mapped.
To many on the right — including gun-rights groups, Trump loyalists and white supremacists — he was a folk hero, a vigilante for justice who had stood up to a rampaging mob.
Americans on the left, including racial-justice activists, gun-control advocates and police reformers, saw something quite different: a trigger-happy youth who had recklessly used his AR-15 to escalate an already-chaotic situation into the realm of deadly violence.
Rittenhouse’s defenders saw justice at work. His critics recorded one more count against a fundamentally unfair legal system.
Within seconds of the verdict, far-right forums were ablaze with celebratory messages and memes depicting Rittenhouse as a hero. In the Proud Boys public channel on Telegram, supporters mocked how upset ‘the left’ would be once authorities release the gun used in the shootings, as is customary after an acquittal.
‘NOT GUILTY!!!!!!!’ tweeted Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), who had suggested earlier in the week he would offer Rittenhouse a congressional internship if he was acquitted.
‘May Kyle and his family now live in peace,’ added Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), who urged her followers to donate to Rittenhouse’s legal defense. ‘Those who help, protect, and defend are the good guys.’
Those irreconcilable depictions played out vividly as news of Rittenhouse’s acquittal Friday on all counts in a Wisconsin courtroom ricocheted from coast to coast. Although the question before the jury had been relatively narrow — was Rittenhouse acting in self-defense, or not? — the jury’s decision was imbued with far greater resonance on both sides.
Among racial justice advocates, there was a diametrically different response: a fear that people like Rittenhouse will be emboldened, making life more dangerous for protesters and activists.
The Rev. Al Sharpton and his National Action Network called the decision ‘an obvious signal that encourages and notifies ‘vigilantes’ that they can continue to use violence to assert their power, and more importantly that they are above the criminal justice system when they do.’
The pro-gun control group March for Our Lives said Rittenhouse ‘embodies the very danger posed by a toxic mix of a white supremacist culture that values property over human life, and wide proliferation of high-powered guns with fewer limits than a driver’s license.’
Amid the competing narratives, there also were appeals for calm and for the jury’s decision to be respected.
‘I hope everyone can accept the verdict, remain peaceful, and let the community of Kenosha heal and rebuild,’ tweeted Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson (R).
‘The jury system works, and we have to abide by it,’ President Biden said from the White House.
Vice President Harris said the verdict ‘speaks for itself.’
‘As many of you know I’ve spent a majority of my career working to make the criminal justice system more equitable and clearly there is a lot more work to do,’ she said.
The Rittenhouse case was an offshoot of the racial justice protests and wider reckoning on white supremacy that followed the murder of George Floyd by a White police officer in Minneapolis in 2020. Kenosha, a city of 100,000 on the shore of Lake Michigan, was drawn into the turmoil after a White police officer shot Jacob Blake, a Black man, paralyzing him from the waist down.
The dramatic way in which Rittenhouse has come to symbolize the nation’s polarization comes despite the fact that many of the facts in the case failed to neatly align with America’s divisions.
All three of the men Rittenhouse shot — two fatally — were White. The first, Joseph Rosenbaum, had not attended previous protests, and his fiancee has said she does not know why he was there.
And while some of those who came to Kenosha armed with semiautomatic rifles amid widespread rioting were members of militias or far-right groups, Rittenhouse himself was not.
When he pulled the trigger of his AR-15 on the night of Aug. 25, 2020, Rittenhouse was a nobody in the world of right-wing militants.
Rittenhouse, 17 at the time, had no known ties to organized extremist movements beyond a general affinity for guns and for pro-police campaigns that rose in opposition to Black Lives Matter, according to researchers of political violence.
Instantly, however, the killings turned him into a right-wing cause celebre — and his acquittal Friday on all charges ensures that his political utility will endure beyond the trial.
People react to the verdict in the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse outside the Kenosha County Courthouse in Wisconsin on Friday, Nov. 19. (Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters)
In Rittenhouse, analysts say, a variety of right-wing factions have found the perfect avatar for their racial and political grievances.
His record was clean, and the facts of that night messy, creating a case that could galvanize a broad cross-section of the right, including former president Donald Trump, MAGA loyalists, conservatives in Congress, white nationalists and self-styled militia groups. Members of the Proud Boys, photographed with Rittenhouse after his release on bail, also have latched onto the cause….
It was perhaps inevitable that Rittenhouse’s case became a political litmus test and his image a commodity. Segments of the right raced to outdo one another in their devotion, fundraising $2 million for his bail. A family-run campaign, the Kyle Rittenhouse Defense Fund, sells branded merchandise to raise money for his legal fees. Supporters print Rittenhouse’s face on T-shirts and spray-paint it on murals, sometimes calling him, ‘Saint Kyle.’
For much of the MAGA world, Rittenhouse embodies the self-proclaimed Republican ideal of law and order, a patriot standing up to an out-of-control left. The anti-government militia movement broadly supports that militancy and also views the case as a flash point for Second Amendment issues. White supremacist groups, meanwhile, used the trial as a chance to push their overt hate into the mainstream, ‘a friendlier face for the race war,’ as Jipson, the professor, put it.
As conservatives coalesced around the idea of Rittenhouse as a blameless defender of law and order, many on the left just as quickly cast him as the embodiment of the far-right threat. Despite a lack of evidence, hundreds of social media posts immediately pinned Rittenhouse with extremist labels: white supremacist, self-styled militia member, a ‘boogaloo boy’ seeking violent revolution, or part of the misogynistic ‘incel’ movement.
Soon after the shootings, then-candidate Joe Biden told CNN’s Anderson Cooper that Rittenhouse was allegedly part of a militia group in Illinois. In the next sentence, Biden segued to criticism of Trump and hate groups: ‘Have you ever heard this president say one negative thing about white supremacists?’
Since the killing of George Floyd in May 2020, there have been around 886 ‘vigilante incidents’ in which right-wing activists intimidated or assaulted racial justice protesters, according to a tally by Alexander Reid Ross, a Portland State University professor who tracks right-wing movements.
Although those numbers have declined this year, ‘the Rittenhouse trial shows that these currents remain powerful in the U.S. and could erupt with even greater force than before,’ Ross said.” Read more at Washington Post
“House Democrats on Friday approved the multi-trillion-dollar package of social benefits and climate programs at the heart of President Biden’s domestic agenda, advancing the bill to the Senate in hopes it reaches the president’s desk before Christmas.
The vote marked a huge victory for Biden and the Democrats, who have struggled all year to unite behind the president’s economic vision and leverage their control of government into adoption of the massive package of health care, education and family benefits.
As Congress heads into the long Thanksgiving recess — and each party is banking that the Build Back Better Act will prove a political boon in next year’s midterms — here are five takeaways from Friday’s historic vote.
The moderates fall in line
Several moderate House Democrats voted against portions of the bill in committee and blocked passage earlier this month. But nearly all of them ended up voting for the bill on Friday.
The change of heart came after party leaders whittled the price tag down from $3.5 trillion over 10 years — the figure in the initial House proposal — to roughly $2 trillion.
In the weeks leading up to the vote, negotiators also adjusted certain provisions to get moderates on board, such as one that would allow Medicare to negotiate the price of certain prescription drugs on behalf of seniors.
Five moderates — Reps. Ed Case (D-Hawaii), Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.), Stephanie Murphy (D-Fla.), Kathleen Rice (D-N.Y.) and Kurt Schrader (D-Ore.) — struck a deal with progressives earlier this month under which the moderates agreed to vote for the bill after receiving information about the bill’s cost from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).
The five lawmakers all ultimately voted for the bill, even though the CBO essentially found that the bill would add about $160 billion to the deficit over 10 years.
The administration argued that a provision to boost IRS enforcement would raise significantly more money than CBO estimated. And the moderates — after meeting with some of Biden’s top economic advisors on Thursday — agreed with the administration that the bill was fiscally responsible.
‘I have confidence in that estimate,’ Murphy, a co-chair of the centrist Blue Dogs, said of the IRS figure.
Only one Democrat, Rep. Jared Golden (Maine), voted against passage on the House floor. Golden, who represents a district former President Trump carried in 2020, cited a tax cut in the package that will effectively benefit a significant number of wealthy taxpayers in high-cost regions of the country — a dynamic Republicans are taking pains to highlight.
Changes are ahead in the Senate
House passage is just the first step of a longer process — ‘the end of the beginning,’ in the words of Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.).
The bill now heads to the Senate, where it is expected to undergo a number of changes in order to advance the legislation. In a chamber split 50 to 50, Democratic leaders will need every member of the party — plus the two Independents who caucus with them — to support the bill in order for it to pass.
To do so, they will need to balance the interests of moderates, who want to reduce some of the benefits in the House bill, with those of progressives who want to preserve or even expand those provisions.
A House provision providing four weeks of paid family leave, for instance, may need to be cut in order to satisfy Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), a key moderate who has also balked at House language designed to rein in methane emissions. On the other hand, progressive Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said in a statement on Friday that he wants to see the bill ‘strengthened in a number of ways,’ in areas such as prescription drugs, Medicare and climate.
The Senate is also expected to make changes to a House provision that rolls back the $10,000 cap on the state and local tax deduction. Senate Democrats, joining some in the House, argue that the House provision is too generous to the wealthiest taxpayers — the same gripe aired by Golden.
Additionally, the Senate may need to make additional changes to the House bill in order to ensure that the measure complies with rules governing the budget-reconciliation process that Democrats are using to elude a Republican filibuster.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Friday downplayed the significance of the divisions remaining between the House and Senate, saying more than 90 percent of the bill ‘was written together’ and predicting Congress will get it to Biden's desk without much trouble.
‘I have absolutely no doubt,’ she said. ‘The biggest hurdle was to get the bill there.’” Read more at The Hill
“Democrats corralled their slim majority today to approve a package calling for universal prekindergarten, curbs on child-care costs and prescription-drug prices along with expanded tax credits for reducing carbon emissions, among other programs. One popular tax-saving strategy has been eliminated: the mega ‘backdoor’ Roth conversion, a provision Democrats are targeting as part of an effort to prevent the wealthiest Americans from shielding multimillion-dollar retirement accounts from taxes. House lawmakers also dropped a proposed ban on holding unregistered securities, including private equity, in IRAs. Surprise winners in the bill include tobacco companies, banks and private-equity firms, although the package still includes higher levies on businesses. Wall Street firms defeated efforts to impose a new tax on financial transactions, arguing it would hurt the economic recovery. Democrats now need to move the bill through the evenly divided Senate, where some provisions are expected to be pared back or changed.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“The social spending bill approved by the House Friday in a 220-213 vote includes the most extensive immigration reform package reviewed by Congress in 35 years, albeit in a much reduced version from what proponents originally sought.
If the provision is approved by the Senate as-is, the immigration measure in the bill would allow undocumented people present in the U.S. since before 2011 up to 10 years of work authorization, falling short of an initial goal to offer them a pathway to citizenship.
The provision approved by the House offers a sort of waiver to immigration laws, using a process known as parole to allow people to stay in the country for five years with the option to extend for another five years thereafter.
About 6.5 million people would stand to benefit from the measure directly, according to an analysis by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).
According to that analysis, about 3 million of those people would become eligible to springboard from the parole status to legal permanent residency, the first step toward citizenship.” Read more at The Hill
“Federal and state investigators are examining an attempt to breach an Ohio county’s election network that bears striking similarities to an incident in Colorado earlier this year, when government officials helped an outsider gain access to the county voting system in an effort to find fraud.
Data obtained in both instances were distributed at an August ‘cyber symposium’ on election fraud hosted by MyPillow executive Mike Lindell, an ally of former president Donald Trump who has spent millions of dollars promoting false claims that the 2020 election was rigged.
The attempted breach in Ohio occurred on May 4 inside the county office of John Hamercheck (R), chairman of the Lake County Board of Commissioners, according to two individuals with knowledge of the incident, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the ongoing investigations. State and county officials said no sensitive data were obtained, but they determined that a private laptop was plugged into the county network in Hamercheck’s office, and that the routine network traffic captured by the computer was circulated at the same Lindell conference as the data from the Colorado breach.
Together, the incidents in Ohio and Colorado point to an escalation in attacks on the nation’s voting systems by those who have embraced Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was riddled with fraud. Now, some Trump loyalists pushing for legal challenges and partisan audits are also targeting local officials in a bid to gain access to election systems — moves that themselves could undermine election security.
An FBI spokeswoman confirmed Thursday that the bureau is investigating the incident in Lake County but declined to comment further. Investigators are trying to determine whether someone on the fifth floor of the Lake County government building improperly accessed the computer network and whether any laws were violated.
Investigators with the office of Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose (R) believe a government official appears to have facilitated the attempted breach of the election network in Lake County, a spokesman for LaRose said.
Ahead of the incidents in Ohio and Colorado, county officials in both places — including Hamercheck — discussed claims of election fraud with Douglas Frank, an Ohio-based scientist who has done work for Lindell, according to people familiar with Frank’s role, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private discussions.
Frank, who has claimed to have discovered secret algorithms used to rig the 2020 election, has been traveling the country trying to convince election officials that the vote was riddled with fraud — and that they should join the effort to uncover it, he told The Washington Post in a series of interviews.
Frank has told The Post in recent months that he has visited ‘over 30 states’ and has met with about 100 election administrators. He would not say how many local election administrators he has persuaded to join his cause. ‘I deliberately protect my clerks. I don’t want anybody to know who they are,’ Frank said.
In an interview Friday with The Post, Lindell said that although he has hired Frank for some projects, he does not fund Frank’s speaking engagements across the country and knew nothing about what happened in the election offices in Mesa County or Lake County. ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about,’ he said.” Read more at Washington Post
“One man's life spared: Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt on Thursday granted clemency to high-profile death row inmate Julius Jones, reducing the inmate's sentence to life in prison without the possibility of parole.” Read more at USA Today
“The anti-workplace harassment advocacy group Time’s Up will lay off nearly all of its 25 remaining employees and restructure, after an internal report prompted by the group’s involvement with then-New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo identified significant internal failures.” Read more at Washington Post
“SAN JOSE — Elizabeth Holmes, the charismatic and infamous Theranos founder, unexpectedly took the stand to defend herself at her fraud trial on Friday, a move that allowed the jury to hear from her directly for the first time.
Earlier in the day, the prosecution rested its case in the 11th week of trial, after calling nearly 30 witnesses.
Holmes’s attorney Kevin Downey took her through her background as an entrepreneur, including her first patent application and her decision to drop out of Stanford in 2004. Holmes seemed relaxed and smiled regularly on the stand while talking about the early days of Theranos….
It was the first time the jurors heard directly from Holmes, though they have previously listened to recordings of a 2013 meeting Holmes held with investors and seen TV clips of her talking about the company.
It had been uncertain if Holmes would testify on her own behalf. It could be a risky move, outside lawyers say, but might be worth it to help the defense support its case. The government must show that Holmes had the intent to defraud, but defense lawyers have argued that she made mistakes but acted in good faith.
Holmes is on trial for 11 counts of wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud for allegedly misleading investors and patients over the capability of her company’s blood-testing technology. She has pleaded not guilty.
The judge dismissed a 12th charge against Holmes on Friday, at the government’s request, because the court earlier ruled that the patient could not testify.” Read more at Washington Post
“The city government of Aurora, Colo., will pay $15 million to settle a lawsuit filed by the family of Elijah McClain, an unarmed 23-year-old Black man who died after law enforcement officers put him in a chokehold while he was on his way home in 2019.
Aurora officials said the settlement was the largest ever paid by the municipal government, while a lawyer for McClain’s father told the Associated Press it was the biggest in Colorado’s history for a civil rights case. The agreement to drop the civil suit filed against the city last year was approved after a mediation hearing at a federal court.” Read more at Washington Post
“After taking a hard line and refusing to negotiate with Democrats during the last standoff over the debt limit, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is quietly looking for a way to get the issue resolved without another high-profile battle.
McConnell has a number of reasons to find a way out.
He doesn’t want another battle over the debt limit that would draw the attention and ire of former President Trump, according to Republican senators.
He also fears the threat of a national default could convince Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) to support a exception to the filibuster rule to let Democrats raise the debt limit without any GOP votes.
McConnell met with Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) in Schumer’s Capitol office on Thursday afternoon to discuss the expiring debt limit and other issues. It was the first time the two leaders held a sit-down meeting in the Capitol since January 2021, when they met for a half-hour in McConnell's office to negotiate a power-sharing agreement to organize the 50-50 Senate.
They previously hadn't met since March 2020, when Schumer walked over to McConnell’s office to negotiate the CARES Act.” Read more at The Hill
“Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel on Thursday acknowledged President Biden's electoral victory over former President Trump, marking the first time she has explicitly said Biden won the contest a year ago.” Read more at The Hill
“Republicans in Wisconsin are engaged in an all-out assault on the state’s election system, building off their attempts to challenge the results of the 2020 presidential race by pressing to give themselves full control over voting in the state.
The Republican effort — broader and more forceful than that in any other state where allies of former President Donald J. Trump are trying to overhaul elections — takes direct aim at the bipartisan Wisconsin Elections Commission, an agency Republicans created half a decade ago that has been under attack since the chaotic aftermath of last year’s election.
The onslaught picked up late last month after a long-awaited report on the 2020 results that was ordered by Republican state legislators found no evidence of fraud but made dozens of suggestions for the election commission and the G.O.P.-led Legislature, fueling Republican demands for more control of elections.
Then the Trump-aligned sheriff of Racine County, the state’s fifth most populous county, recommended felony charges against five of the six members of the election commission for guidance they had given to municipal clerks early in the pandemic. The Republican majority leader of the State Senate later seemed to give a green light to that proposal, saying that ‘prosecutors around the state’ should determine whether to bring charges.” Read more at New York Times
“NEW DELHI — Narendra Modi has dominated politics in India for seven years. With broad public support and big majorities in Parliament, the prime minister has pushed through dramatic and sometimes damaging policies. His government has fiercely advocated a Hindu-focused nationalist agenda and used increasingly heavy-handed tactics to silence critics, with little effective opposition.
On Friday, with a rare retreat, Mr. Modi suddenly doesn’t look quite as dominant.
Mr. Modi said that his government would repeal three farm laws aimed at fixing the country’s struggling agricultural sector, in a surprise concession to yearlong protests by farmers worried that the overhauls would ruin their livelihoods.” Read more at New York Times