Capitol Riot Fallout: Homeland Security Chief Resigns; Patriots’ Belichick Won’t Accept Medal of Freedom

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Chad Wolf has resigned as acting secretary for the Homeland Security Department.

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Chad F. Wolf did not address the deadly siege of the Capitol in his letter resigning as acting secretary of the Homeland Security Department.Credit...Pool photo by Greg Nash

Chad F. Wolf, the acting secretary for the Homeland Security Department, resigned on Monday, just nine days before he was expected to help coordinate the security of a presidential inauguration facing heightened threats of violence.

Mr. Wolf told employees of the Homeland Security Department he would be stepping down on Monday night in part because of court rulings that invalidated some of the Trump administration’s immigration policies, citing the likelihood that Mr. Wolf was unlawfully appointed to lead the agency.

“Unfortunately, this action is warranted by recent events, including the ongoing and meritless court rulings regarding the validity of my authority as Acting Secretary,” Mr. Wolf said in the letter obtained by The New York Times. “These events and concerns increasingly serve to divert attention and resources away from the important work of the Department in this critical time of a transition of power.”

Mr. Wolf did not address the deadly siege of the Capitol in his letter. Peter T. Gaynor, the administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, will replace Mr. Wolf as the acting secretary of the Homeland Security Department. He will now be tasked with helping ensure the security of the inauguration of President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. The Secret Service, which falls under the Homeland Security Department, is leading the security efforts for the event.

Mr. Wolf will remain with the department as an under secretary for policy, a position for which he was confirmed by the Senate, according to Chase Jennings, a homeland security spokesman.

President Trump has overseen a Homeland Security Department that has been riddled with vacancies, creating a revolving door of temporary leaders who faced repeated questions over the legality of their positions. A federal judge in September ruled that Mr. Wolf’s predecessor, Kevin K. McAleenan, likely violated the proper order of succession and he lacked the authority to install Mr. Wolf as acting secretary.

A federal judge in New York agreed in November that Mr. Wolf had not been legally appointed and as a result invalidated his suspension on protections for immigrants known as “Dreamers” brought to the United States as children.

Mr. Wolf emerged as one of Mr. Trump’s more loyal cabinet officials during his time leading the department, becoming the public face of the department’s deployment of federal agents to respond to unwieldy protests in Portland, Ore., around a federal courthouse. Last week, he issued a statement calling on Mr. Trump to condemn the riots at the Capitol.

Patriots’ Belichick won’t accept Presidential Medal of Freedom.

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Bill Belichick, the coach of the New England Patriots, publicly supported President Trump when he ran for office.Credit...Adam Glanzman/Getty Images

New England Patriots Coach Bill Belichick said in a statement Monday that he had turned down the opportunity to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Trump because of the “tragic events of last week,” a reference to the insurrection at the Capitol.

In a statement, Belichick said he was flattered to be nominated for the award, the highest civilian honor in the country, because of its past recipients. But he said he has great reverence for “our nation’s values,” represents his family and the Patriots, and has worked with players to combat social injustice.

“Continuing those efforts while remaining true to the people, team and country that I love outweigh the benefits of any individual award,” he wrote in a statement.

There had been calls for Belichick to decline the award, including on Monday from Representative Jim McGovern, Democrat from Massachusetts, who called accepting the award “disgraceful.”

“Bill Belichick should do the right thing and say, ‘No thanks,’” he told CNN.

Mr. Trump, who leaves office in less than two weeks, has been long been associated with the Patriots. Before he was elected in 2016, he regularly attended the team’s home games as a guest of Robert K. Kraft, the Patriots’ owner. Belichick publicly supported the president when he ran for office, and even wrote a letter to the president, who read it aloud at a campaign rally just before Election Day. The team’s former quarterback, Tom Brady, played golf with Trump and had a campaign cap in his locker.

But Trump’s divisiveness has repeatedly put the Patriots in an awkward position, particularly in 2017, when the president repeatedly criticized the N.F.L. and its owners for not firing players who knelt during the playing of the national anthem to protest social injustice and police brutality.

The team accepted an invitation to visit the White House in 2017 after winning the Super Bowl, but before the president attacked the league. Two years later, after the Patriots won another title and many players publicly opposed the president, they did not make the trip to Washington because of what they said were scheduling conflicts.

The team did not respond to a request seeking comment.

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Three police officers were dragged into violent mob during Capitol raid.

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A review of video footage shows how the violent scene unfolded.Credit...Jarrett Robertson/The New York Times

Rioters outside the U.S. Capitol dragged three police officers into a violent mob that assaulted them as they lay defenseless on a stairwell, a visual investigation by The Times found. One rioter was caught on video as he beat an officer with the American flag.

A review of video footage by The Times shows how the violent scene unfolded, and how the crowd responded as the officers were dragged from their post. It also shows that the officers involved in the incident were members of the Metropolitan Police Department, not the Capitol Police. Brian Sicknick, a Capitol Police officer, died after a rioter hit him in the head with a fire extinguisher.

The scene was one of the most intense and dangerous of the entire raid. It began just after 2 p.m., when hundreds of rioters reached a west-side doorway to the building that was guarded by Metropolitan Police officers.

Soon after the struggle began, video of the incident showed some of the rioters dragging one officer down the stairs. Others screamed, urging the mob not to hurt him.

Later, the crowd pushed forward again, assaulting the officers at the door with shields, hockey sticks and other improvised weapons. One officer was then grabbed by his helmet and dragged down the stairwell. To the chants of “USA! USA!,” he was beaten while on the ground. One man repeatedly struck him with an American flag.

The mob nabbed another officer shortly afterward, dragging him down the stairs by his leg. One man appeared to try and punch the officer after he was pulled away from the door.

It was not clear what happened to the three officers after they disappeared into the mob, but at least two of the rioters match images included on a Metropolitan Police list of “persons of interest” who could face federal charges.

The Justice Department is pursuing at least 150 suspects in attack on the Capitol.

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A billboard at a bus stop in Washington displays a message from the F.B.I. seeking information about the violence at the Capitol last week.Credit...Al Drago/Getty Images

The Justice Department and the F.B.I. have embarked on a nationwide manhunt to track down scores of people who attacked the Capitol last week, according to law enforcement officials, as they grapple with the fallout from the widespread government failure to protect the building.

Investigators are pursuing more than 150 suspects for prosecution, a total that is almost certain to grow, an official said. Analysts are also scouring intelligence to identify any role that domestic terrorist organizations or foreign adversaries may have played in radicalizing Americans who were among the rioters, according to a law enforcement official briefed on the investigations.

In the sprawling Justice Department criminal inquiry run out of the F.B.I.’s Washington field office, agents and support staff have established a nationwide dragnet to identify members of the mob. In particular, the F.B.I. is working closely with the Capitol Police and the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington to track down those whose attacked law enforcement.

The F.B.I. has moved quickly to ease some bureaucratic hurdles to making arrests, and it has received more than 70,000 photographic and video tips after asking for the public’s help in identifying suspects. Agents were also scrubbing airline passenger manifests and video of air travelers to and from Washington to find potential suspects.

The striking images from the attack demonstrated the spectrum of people involved in the violence. “Stop the steal” signs were prominent — visual evidence that Mr. Trump’s false claims of a fraudulent election had resonated with a broad coalition of conservatives, evangelicals, conspiracy theorists, militia groups, anti-Communist activists, neo-Nazis and other white supremacists.

Some images of the riot showed what seemed to be an organized effort among people in matching military gear moving as a unit through the crowds and into the Capitol, which has raised fears that some of those involved acted as part of a well-coordinated effort to storm the building.

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State capitols are confronting threats ahead of Biden’s inauguration.

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Protesters gathered outside the State Capitol in Olympia, Wash., on Sunday.Credit...Lindsey Wasson/Reuters

As the fallout from the riot at the Capitol spreads, state governments are confronting threats of similar violence closer to home and grappling with their own officials’ possible involvement in last week’s events.

Even as businesses and elected officials try to distance themselves from the violence and its perpetrators, supporters of President Trump are openly planning attacks in Washington and around the country in the days leading up to President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s inauguration on Jan. 20. The Federal Bureau of Investigation has sent information to local law enforcement about the potential for armed protests outside all 50 state capitols, which are being organized and promoted by far-right extremist groups like the Boogaloo movement.

In a video news conference on Monday, Gov. Gavin Newsom of California said that the National Guard would be sent in to help “as needed” at the State Capitol in Sacramento, and that the California Highway Patrol, which is in charge of protecting the Capitol, was planning ahead to address potential violence without infringing on free speech rights.

“I can assure you we have a heightened, heightened level of security,” Mr. Newsom said.

In Michigan, a commission that oversees the State Capitol voted on Monday to ban the open carry of firearms inside the Capitol, something Democratic lawmakers had been demanding for months. In Wisconsin, workers boarded up the windows of the State Capitol.

Democratic officials in Clark County, Nev., which includes Las Vegas, sent out a public safety alert on Sunday about potential violence across the state, writing, “Over the past 48 hours, the online activity on social media has escalated to the point that we must take these threats seriously.”

That alert came after a Republican leader in neighboring Nye County posted a letter on Friday that promoted wild, discredited conspiracy theories and likened protests of the election results to the American Revolution, declaring: “The next 12 days will be something to tell the grandchildren! It’s 1776 all over again!”

The letter — written by Chris Zimmerman, the chairman of the Nye County Republican Central Committee — prompted a rebuke over the weekend from Representative Steven Horsford, a Democrat who represents the county.

Meanwhile, the Republican Attorneys General Association has come under scrutiny for robocalls that its fund-raising arm — the Rule of Law Defense Fund — made last Tuesday, the day before the riot, urging supporters to participate in a march at the Capitol. The group’s executive director, Adam Piper, resigned on Monday amid the fallout.

Attorney General Steve Marshall of Alabama, the board chairman of the Rule of Law Defense Fund, confirmed Mr. Piper’s resignation in a statement that did not specifically address the robocalls.

“Every decision Adam made on behalf of R.L.D.F. was with the best of intentions and with the organization’s best interests in mind,” Mr. Marshall said.

Individual attorneys general are also facing criticism as a result of the robocalls. State Senator Megan Hunt of Omaha, Neb., filed a public records request on Sunday for any communications between the group and Nebraska’s attorney general, Doug Peterson, and asked whether public funds had been used to pay for Mr. Peterson’s membership in the group.

Suzanne Gage, a spokeswoman for Mr. Peterson, said that he had not been aware of the robocalls when they were being made and did not support them, and that “no public money is paid to RAGA.”

The Republican Attorneys General Association did not respond to a request for comment on Monday. It released a statement last week condemning the riot — as did Mr. Peterson — but did not acknowledge its own role in urging people to participate in the protest that turned into the violent storming of the Capitol, or in promoting the baseless claims of voter fraud that fueled it.

Jill Cowan, Adam Goldman and Kathleen Gray contributed reporting.

Capitol Police are investigating several officers and have suspended two for actions during riot.

The Capitol Police are investigating at least 10 officers for their conduct during last week’s deadly insurrection at the Capitol, a congressman told reporters on Monday, adding that the nature of the inquiries was unclear.

Two other Capitol Police officers — one seen standing for photographs with rioters and another spotted walking among the crowds wearing a hat emblazoned with President Trump’s Make America Great Again slogan — were suspended, said Representative Tim Ryan, Democrat of Ohio and chairman of the House subcommittee that has oversight of the force.

While Mr. Ryan said that he has no seen no sign that any Capitol Police officers helped coordinate the attack, he said that evidence has emerged that some assailants participated in more organized attacks. Reports on Wednesday afternoon about pipe bombs planted at the nearby headquarters of the Republican and Democratic parties drew some law enforcement attention away from the breach that was unfolding at the Capitol, Mr. Ryan said, suggesting “some level of coordination.”

Mr. Ryan said that he has been in frequent touch with Yogananda Pittman, the new acting chief of the Capitol Police, to better understand the security failures that led to the siege and to encourage her to be more transparent with the public about efforts to secure the Capitol in the days leading to the inauguration of President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. on Jan. 20.

Mr. Ryan said that the public needed to “re-establish trust with the United States Capitol Police” and that the country felt “betrayed, let down by what happened.”

Fencing that cannot be scaled has been put up around the Capitol and up to 15,000 National Guard troops will be deployed in Washington for the inauguration, Mr. Ryan said.

He also said that the House Appropriations Committee would likely provide more funding for security for the inauguration, but that the amount was not yet clear.

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A growing number of institutions and businesses are cutting ties with Trump.

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A discarded Trump campaign sign in the reflecting pool near the Lincoln Memorial last week.Credit...Anna Moneymaker for The New York Times

Fallout from the riot at the U.S. Capitol intensified on Monday as an increasing number of businesses and other prominent institutions sought to distance themselves from President Trump and the violent actions of some of his supporters.

As Mr. Trump faced the prospects of a second impeachment following the deadly rampage on Wednesday, major banks, e-commerce providers and schools issued statements saying they were disassociating themselves with his administration and that they would not tolerate actions that incited violence.

The political fallout was also swift. As federal and local authorities continued to track down and arrest scores of people, White House officials, including several members of the cabinet, resigned, saying they were deeply troubled by what had happened. Prominent Republicans also cut ties with the president — and, in the case of former Secretary of State Colin Powell, the party. Asked on CNN whether Republican Party members realized that “they encouraged, at least, this wildness to grow and grow,” Mr. Powell said, “They did and that’s why I can no longer call myself a fellow Republican.”

Schools stripped Mr. Trump of honorary degrees. E-commerce provider Shopify said it had terminated stores affiliated with the president. And big businesses, which typically contribute to Republicans and Democrats, said they had paused political contributions.

“We want you to be assured that we will not support candidates who do not respect the rule of law,” Candi Wolff, Citibank’s head of government affairs, wrote in an internal memo, saying Citibank had postponed all campaign contributions for a quarter.

Perhaps most consequential of all for Mr. Trump was Twitter’s decision on Friday to permanently suspend his account, after the company had spent years defending Mr. Trump’s presence on its platforms. A day earlier, Facebook banned the president at least through the end of his term. Facebook went further on Monday, saying it was halting political spending at least until March and is launching a review of its political spending practices.

In a blow to the president’s resort business, the P.G.A. of America said its board of directors had voted to terminate an agreement to play the P.G.A. Championship at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, N.J., in 2022.

“It has become clear that conducting the P.G.A. Championship at Trump Bedminster would be detrimental to the P.G.A. of America brand, and would put at risk the P.G.A.’s ability to deliver our many programs, and sustain the longevity of our mission,” Jim Richerson, the P.G.A. of America president, said in a video statement.

Marriott, the hotel giant, said it would pause donations from its PAC “to those who voted against certification of the election,” according to a spokeswoman. Amazon, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Boston Scientific and Commerce Bancshares took a similar, targeted approach to donation freezes.

A spokeswoman for Amazon called the vote an “unacceptable attempt to undermine a legitimate democratic process.”

The National Guard plans to deploy up to 15,000 troops for the inauguration.

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National Guard troops arriving at the Capitol on Monday morning.Credit...Anna Moneymaker for The New York Times

The National Guard plans to deploy up to 15,000 troops to Washington, D.C., for the inauguration to guard against any violent attempt by pro-Trump mobs to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power, the chief of the National Guard Bureau, Gen. Daniel Hokanson, said Monday.

Six thousand troops from six states have already arrived, General Hokanson said. By this weekend that number is expected to have grown to 10,000. Defense officials have not made a decision on whether the troops will be armed, but they indicated that even if they were initially unarmed, the troops would not be far away from their weaponry.

“We want our individuals to have the right to self-defense,” General Hokanson told a telephone news conference. “If senior leadership determines that that’s the right posture to be in, then that is something we will do.” All the troops coming to Washington, he said, are bringing their guns with them.

Mayor Muriel Bowser of Washington sent a letter dated on Saturday to the Department of Homeland Security requesting a disaster declaration, which would free federal funding for the inauguration. Mr. Trump granted the request on Monday night.

The strong military presence is in line with past inaugurations. In both 2013 and 2017, about 13,000 active duty and National Guard troops assisted with security, directing traffic, and crowd control. Many also played traditional ceremonial roles, marching in dress uniform and playing in bands. Military leaders want a strong show of force to avoid the lawlessness of the attack on the Capitol last week.

At the same time, Defense officials are grappling with a stark issue: President Trump remains popular in the ranks and some of the protesters who stormed the Capitol last Wednesday, Defense officials acknowledged, were former members of the military. The Defense Department has not announced a specific search to ferret out whether any National Guard troops who are being deployed to inauguration security have specific ties or sympathies with the pro-Trump mob, but officials said that they are reviewing photos and videos from the protests.

On Monday, Senator Tammy Duckworth called for a formal investigation into the rioters’ ties to the military. It is against military regulations to associate with extremist groups. General Hokanson said if any troops have violated that regulation, “they will be referred to their chain of command and the appropriate authorities.”

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Facebook will remove ‘Stop the Steal’ misinformation.

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“Stop the Steal” emerged as a slogan in the days following the election in November.Credit...Jim Urquhart/Reuters

Facebook announced on Monday that it plans to remove content centered around the “Stop the Steal” movement across its platform, as the social network prepares for a potentially quarrelsome presidential inauguration on January 20.

The company said it planned to take down any posts, photos or videos containing the phrase “Stop the Steal,” a term commonly associated with Trump supporters attempting to delegitimize the outcome of the 2020 Presidential Election, which was won by President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.

“We’ve been allowing robust conversations related to the election outcome and that will continue,” said Guy Rosen, vice president of Facebook’s Integrity division responsible for overseeing and moderating problematic and harmful content. “But with continued attempts to organize events against the outcome of the US presidential election that can lead to violence, and use of the term by those involved in Wednesday’s violence in DC, we’re taking this additional step in the lead up to the inauguration.”

The move, which comes just days after hundreds of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol building in Washington, goes beyond Facebook’s previous actions. Facebook took down the original “Stop the Steal” official Facebook group in November, on the grounds of incitement to violence. The company said it has also been proactively monitoring the platform for other types of harmful content.

Facebook also said it will include a new section in the Facebook News tab of its mobile app on Inauguration Day, providing users with updated, reliable information about the day’s events in the nation’s capitol. The company has refused to remove most types of misinformation from its network in the past, with Mark Zuckerberg arguing that he did not want Facebook to become “an arbiter of truth.”

And in the wake of last week’s storm on the capitol, Facebook also confirmed on Monday that it planned to pause all contributions to any Political Action Committees for at least through the first quarter of 2021, citing the need to review its policies. Other big tech companies, like Microsoft, Google and Airbnb, took similar action on Monday afternoon.

Two lawmakers test positive after being in lockdown in Capitol.

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Representative Bonnie Watson Coleman of New Jersey at a hearing on Capitol Hill in 2019.Credit...Anna Moneymaker/The New York Times

Two Democratic lawmakers have tested positive for the coronavirus, saying they believe their infections are linked to the time they spent in a secure location with colleagues who refused to wear masks during Wednesday’s siege of the U.S. Capitol.

Representative Bonnie Watson Coleman of New Jersey announced her positive test result on Monday, followed early Tuesday by Representative Pramila Jayapal of Washington.

“It angers me when they refuse to adhere to the directions about keeping their masks on,” Ms. Watson Coleman said in an interview. “It comes off to me as arrogance and defiance. And you can be both, but not at the expense of someone else.”

Ms. Jayapal said on Twitter that she had tested positive “after being locked down in a secured room at the Capitol where several Republicans not only cruelly refused to wear a mask but recklessly mocked colleagues and staff who offered them one.”

On Sunday, Representative Chuck Fleischmann, Republican of Tennessee, who was also in protective isolation at the Capitol, announced that he had tested positive for the virus after being exposed to his roommate, Gus Bilirakis of Florida, also a Republican.

Mr. Fleischmann told the local news station WRCB that he was notified Wednesday that Mr. Bilirakis had tested positive, but did not receive the notification because he was locked down in a secure location amid the riot. He said he did not know with how many other lawmakers he had come in contact.

Mr. Fleischmann and another Republican lawmaker who tested positive, Representative Jake LaTurner of Kansas, both were at the Capitol on Wednesday to object to the certification of the electoral vote.

It was not immediately clear whether Ms. Watson Coleman and Ms. Jayapal were sequestered with the Republicans who are now known to have been infected.

Ms. Jayapal, who said she had begun quarantining immediately after the siege on the Capitol last week, said she was isolating but would “continue to work to the best of my ability.” She said any member of Congress who refused to wear a mask should be removed from the floor by the sergeant-at-arms and fined.

“This is not a joke,” she said in a statement. “Our lives and our livelihoods are at risk, and anyone who refuses to wear a mask should be fully held accountable for endangering our lives because of their selfish idiocy.”

Since 2017, Ms. Jayapal has represented Washington’s Seventh Congressional District, which includes most of Seattle.

Ms. Watson Coleman said she and her husband, William Coleman, took a rapid antigen test on Monday. Her husband tested negative for the virus, she said. Ms. Watson Coleman is now isolating and awaiting the results of a more accurate laboratory P.C.R. test. She began to feel symptomatic within the past 24 hours, and is experiencing “mild, cold-like symptoms,” including a cough and a raspy sore throat.

Ms. Watson Coleman, a lung cancer survivor who will turn 76 next month, has represented the 12th Congressional District, a district north of Trenton that cuts across four central New Jersey counties, since 2015. She had gotten one dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine on Dec. 29.

“I want people to know that this is very serious and that our exposure is because of people who don’t care about anybody else and are ignoring science and acting out of an abundance of stupidity,” she said.

Illnesses identified before someone has completed their full Covid-19 vaccination schedule should not cause concern, experts said.

The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine has been authorized as a two-dose vaccine, with the second shot administered about three weeks after the first. While some protection appears to kick in after the first injection, it takes the body at least a week or two to develop a measurable immune response to the virus after its first exposure to the vaccine. The second shot clinches the protective process.

If Ms. Watson Coleman was indeed exposed to the virus just a week after her first injection, she was likely about as vulnerable to it as she was before the shot.

On Sunday, Congress’s Office of the Attending Physician said that House lawmakers may have been exposed to someone who was infected with the coronavirus while they were sheltering in a secure location as a mob of pro-Trump extremists stormed the Capitol last week.

In an email sent to lawmakers, Dr. Brian P. Monahan, the attending physician, said that while “the time in this room was several hours for some and briefer for others,” during that period, “individuals may have been exposed to another occupant with coronavirus infection.” He told lawmakers to obtain a P.C.R. test as a precaution and continue taking preventive steps against the spread of the virus.

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A majority of American voters blame Trump for the Capitol riot and support removing him, poll finds.

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Three in four voters surveyed by Quinnipiac said they feared for the future of democracy in the United States.Credit...Michael Reynolds/EPA, via Shutterstock

A majority of American voters hold President Trump responsible for the siege on the Capitol building last week, sending his approval rating to a historic low and driving support for the effort to remove him from office, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released Monday.

Less than a week after the president incited a riot at the Capitol, leading to renewed calls for his resignation and a fresh attempt by Democrats to impeach him, six in 10 voters said they disapproved of what the president was doing in office, the poll found.

Just 33 percent approved of his job performance — matching his lowest approval rating in four years of Quinnipiac polling.

A similar share of voters, 37 percent, believed the false claim, spread by Mr. Trump and his allies, that there was widespread voter fraud in the November election. Only 34 percent said Republicans in Congress had acted in the interests of democracy when they pushed to stop certification of the Electoral College vote, and 34 percent believed that Mr. Trump had tried to protect democracy through his actions.

Beyond this one-third of the electorate, there is broad agreement that the president and his most confrontational supporters pose a dire threat. Sixty percent of voters said that Mr. Trump had undermined democracy, while 56 percent said he was to blame for the storming of the Capitol.

There was near-consensus on the indefensible nature of the siege itself. Nine in 10 voters nationwide said the attackers should be held accountable, and 80 percent said they had undermined democracy.

A narrow majority of voters now believes that Mr. Trump should not be allowed to serve out the remainder of his term, according to the poll. Fifty-three percent said he should resign as president before Joseph R. Biden Jr. is inaugurated on Jan. 20, and 52 percent said he should be removed. (A national poll released last week by PBS NewsHour and Marist College found voters split, 49 percent to 48 percent, on the question of whether Mr. Trump should be removed from office early.)

Even as Mr. Trump’s standing is badly damaged among American voters at large, the vast majority of Republicans still support him. The Quinnipiac poll found that 71 percent still approved of Mr. Trump’s job performance, and 73 percent said there was widespread fraud in November’s election. Just 23 percent of Republicans bought the notion that members of Congress who sought to overturn the election results had been undermining democracy.

Broadly speaking, three in four voters surveyed by Quinnipiac said they feared for the future of democracy in the United States. Just 21 percent said it was alive and well.

Politicians face backlash from universities, including their own, after the Capitol riot.

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Donald Trump receiving an honorary degree in 2004 from Wagner College in Staten Island.Credit...Jin-Sup Lee/Staten Island Advance

A move by two colleges to rescind honorary degrees they had previously awarded to President Trump has emboldened students and professors at other universities seeking to distance their institutions from political figures who played a role in last week’s events at the Capitol, including Rudolph Giuliani, the president’s lawyer, and Senators Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley, who led efforts to deny certification of President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory in the Electoral College.

Lehigh University in Pennsylvania last week revoked the honorary degree it had awarded to Mr. Trump in 1988, as did Wagner College on Staten Island, which had given one to Mr. Trump in 2004.

On Sunday, the president of Middlebury College in Vermont said it was considering revoking the honorary degree that it had awarded in 2005 to Mr. Giuliani, citing his role in “fomenting the violent uprising against our nation’s Capitol building,” which the president, Laurie L. Patton, called “an insurrection against democracy itself.” Mr. Giuliani, the former New York City mayor, is also facing possible expulsion by the New York State bar association.

Thousands of lawyers and law students, including many associated with Harvard, which Mr. Cruz attended, and Yale, where Mr. Hawley earned his degree, have signed a petition similarly calling for the two Republican senators to be disbarred for “leading the efforts to undermine the peaceful transition of power after a free and fair election.”

The petition, started by Yale law students, said the senators had fomented “insurrection” by a mob that stormed the Capitol on Jan. It was posted on social media over the weekend and had more than 7,500 signatures by Monday afternoon, including more than 1,800 members of the Missouri, Texas and District of Columbia bars, where the senators are based.

“I think like many people across the country, we were horrified as we watched the Jan. 6 insurrection,” said Daniel Ki, a Yale law student and one of the authors of the petition. “We’ve really just been inspired and heartened by the response.”

Mr. Cruz also faces backlash at Princeton, his undergraduate school, where hundreds of students, alumni and faculty have urged the university’s president, Christopher Eisgruber, to publicly condemn his actions. Mr. Eisgruber wrote on his university blog that “every leader has a responsibility to oppose” the kind of events that happened at the Capitol, but he did not mention Mr. Cruz by name.

Elite universities often promote themselves by pointing to prominent leaders, including members of Congress or the Supreme Court, who graduated from them, but those connections have increasingly created strain in recent years as politicians and judges have been associated with Mr. Trump.

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The Washington Monument has been closed because of ‘credible threats.’

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Tours of the Washington Monument have been suspended until Jan. 24.Credit...Stefani Reynolds/Getty Images

The National Park Service has closed the Washington Monument, citing “credible threats to visitors and park resources” around the inauguration of President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.

Jeffrey P. Reinbold, the superintendent of the National Mall and Memorial Parks, said those involved in the riots at the Capitol continue to threaten the upcoming inauguration, including the setup and execution of events that occur in park areas.

As a result, the National Park Service has suspended tours of the Washington Monument beginning Monday until Jan. 24, several days after Inauguration Day, and may implement other temporary closures within the National Mall and Memorial Parks, Mr. Reinbold said.

The announcement adds to what will be a highly unusual presidential inauguration, a historically packed celebration that was already set to be stymied this year by the coronavirus pandemic. Far fewer tickets are available and Mayor Muriel E. Bowser of Washington has asked people to stay home and participate virtually.

In permanently suspending President Trump from its platform, Twitter also noted that plans for future protests, including a secondary attack on the Capitol building on Jan. 17, had already spread on and off the website.

The National Mall in Washington is among the city’s most iconic sites, stretching from the foot of the Capitol building — where Mr. Biden is set to be inaugurated — to the Potomac River behind the Lincoln Memorial.

Spectators have long descended on Washington to witness the presidential inauguration. The New York Times reported in 1861 that the city’s “streets were thronged with people” during the inauguration of President Abraham Lincoln.

The military is under scrutiny for some members’ involvement in the Capitol siege.

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Larry R. Brock, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel, was arrested after being photographed wearing tactical gear and holding flex-cuffs on the Senate floor.Credit...Getty Images

After news emerged that several of the people who stormed the Capitol last week had served in the military, Senator Tammy Duckworth of Illinois sent a letter to the Secretary of Defense on Monday demanding an investigation to determine the extent of current and former military members’ involvement in the attack.

The senator, a former Army helicopter pilot who was shot down in Iraq, wrote, “Upholding good order and discipline demands that the U.S. Armed Forces root out extremists that infiltrate the military and threaten our national security.” The authorities have identified a number of current and former military members as part of the mob.

Ashli Babbitt, 35, a woman shot dead by a Capitol Police officer on Wednesday, had served in the Air Force security forces for 14 years.

Larry R. Brock, 53, a Texas man arrested after being photographed wearing tactical gear and holding flex-cuffs on the Senate floor, is a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who graduated from the United States Air Force Academy.

And Emily Rainey, 30, who brought 100 people from North Carolina to the Capitol and posted video from the event, is an active duty Army captain.

Military regulations bar troops from participating in activities they know “involves an extremist cause.”

Captain Rainey, who is assigned to the 4th Psychological Operations Group at Fort Bragg, is now under investigation by the Army. She had submitted her resignation in October but was still serving on active duty.

“We are investigating her involvement,” said Maj. Daniel Lessard, a spokesman for 1st Special Forces Command. “We are trying to determine the facts and if she violated any laws or regulations.”

Captain Rainey told The Associated Press she was acting within her rights as a private citizen, and that her group did nothing illegal by attending the protest, adding they were peaceful citizens who were doing “nothing but demonstrating our First Amendment rights.” An Army spokesman said the Army was determining whether other Fort Bragg soldiers went with Captain Rainey to the Capitol.

Captain Rainey was reprimanded in the spring after she posted a video online of her pulling down caution tape at a playground that was closed because of Covid-19 restrictions. That video resulted in “administrative action,” Major Lessard said, though he would not be more specific. She was set to be fully separated from the military in April.

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The Capitol Police chief says his pleas for backup were ignored by the sergeants-at-arms and the Pentagon.

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“If we would have had the National Guard, we could have held them at bay longer,” Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund said.Credit...Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call, via Associated Press

The outgoing head of the Capitol Police requested that D.C. National Guard units be placed on standby in case his small force was overwhelmed by violent protesters last Wednesday, but he was rebuffed by House and Senate security officials and a top Pentagon commander, he said in an interview on Sunday.

Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund, who resigned under pressure last week, said he made the request two days before Wednesday’s riot after reviewing intelligence that indicated the demonstration would be larger and more violent that previously anticipated — and repeated his request as he watched the rioters attacking his officers.

“If we would have had the National Guard, we could have held them at bay longer, until more officers from our partner agencies could arrive,” Mr. Sund, who served in the top post for under a year, told The Washington Post.

In the end, the Capitol Police, outnumbered, was unable to hold back a mob several times its size, resulting in a violent invasion of the national legislature not seen since the War of 1812. Representative Tim Ryan, Democrat of Ohio, told reporters on Monday that two officers had been suspended: one who took selfies with rioters, and one who put on a “Make America Great Again” hat and directed rioters in the Capitol.

Five people, including a Capitol Police officer injured at the scene and another who died shortly after the attacks, died in the violence.

Earlier in the day, President Trump exhorted a crowd gathered near the White House to march on the Capitol “to show strength,” warning them, “You’ll never take back our country with weakness.”

Eventually, officers from federal agencies and Washington D.C.’s local police force intervened late Wednesday, clearing the complex shortly before nightfall.

In his first interview since the riot, Mr. Sund, a 25-year veteran of Washington’s Metropolitan Police Department, claimed that six calls for backup during the riot were rejected or delayed.

On a call at around 2 p.m., about the time the complex was breached, Mr. Sund and local officials in the district pleaded with Lt. Gen. Walter E. Piatt, director of the Army Staff, for help, only to have the general say that he could not recommend the deployment to his boss, Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy.

“I don’t like the visual of the National Guard standing in a police line with the Capitol in the background,” General Piatt said, according to Mr. Sund.

General Piatt pushed back in an interview, saying that he did not have the authority to send the troops, and that the city and the Capitol Police needed a plan for how the National Guard would be deployed.

“The last thing you want to do is throw forces at it where you have no idea where they’re going, and all of a sudden it gets a lot worse,” he said.

Mr. Sund also claimed that House Sergeant-at-Arms Paul Irving and Senate Sergeant-at-Arms Michael Stenger both had seemed to be reluctant to ramp up the uniformed presence around the Capitol in the days leading up to the riot, suggesting that they too were concerned about the optics.

Both Mr. Irving and Mr. Stenger have announced their resignations, under pressure from members of both parties.

Neither would comment on Mr. Sund’s allegations to The Post, and messages left at their offices were not immediately returned.

Mr. Sund added that he was worried about the possibility of a repeat of the violence at President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s inauguration on Jan. 20.

“My concern is if they don’t get their act together with physical security, it’s going to happen again,” he said.

These are the people who died in the Capitol riot.

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People paid their respects at a memorial for fallen Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick in Washington yesterday.Credit...Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

At least five people died during the protests and mob attack on the United States Capitol last week and in its immediate aftermath. Here is what we know about them.

Brian Sicknick

Officer Brian D. Sicknick, 42, died the day after he was overpowered and beaten by rioters who supported President Trump. Law enforcement officials said he had been “physically engaging with protesters” and was struck in the head with a fire extinguisher.

Officer Sicknick, 42, had dreamed of becoming a police officer and joined the Capitol force in 2008. He was hailed as a hero by his family and by politicians across the political spectrum.

Ashli Babbitt

Ashli Babbitt, 35, an Air Force veteran from Southern California, was shot and killed by a Capitol Police officer as she clambered through a broken window leading to the Speaker’s Lobby.

In her social media feeds, Ms. Babbitt had celebrated Mr. Trump and the QAnon conspiracy theory. Her killing instantly made her a martyr for far-right activists.

Kevin Greeson

Kevin D. Greeson, 55, of Athens, Ala., was standing in a throng of fellow Trump loyalists on the west side of the Capitol when he suffered a heart attack and fell to the sidewalk. He was on the phone with his wife at the time.

Kristi Greeson, his wife, said in an interview that Mr. Greeson had high blood pressure and she had not wanted him to travel to Washington. But she said Mr. Greeson believed the election had been stolen and saw the Jan. 6 rally as “a monumental event.”

Rosanne Boyland

Rosanne Boyland, 34, of Kennesaw, Ga., was a QAnon believer who posted fervently in support of Mr. Trump on social media and latched onto the president’s false claims that he had won the election, family members told The Associated Press.

How she died remained unclear on Monday. Family members and friends said they had heard reports that Ms. Boyland had been trampled inside the Capitol. But a sister told The A.P. that she had been told that Ms. Boyland had collapsed while standing in the Capitol Rotunda.

Benjamin Philips

Benjamin Philips, 50, the founder of a pro-Trump website called Trumparoo, drove a van of fellow Trump supporters from their home state of Pennsylvania to Washington. He told The Philadelphia Inquirer that it felt like “the first day of the rest of our lives.”

Mr. Philips died of a stroke, those who accompanied him to the Capitol told the newspaper. The exact circumstances of his death were unclear, and his family could not be reached for comment.

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A New Hampshire town was barraged with threats over a police chief who marched in D.C.

The town of Troy, N. H., shut its Town Hall in response to threats of violence on Sunday, after media outlets identified its police chief as a participant in last week’s Stop the Steal march in Washington.

The threats — some saying the town’s selectmen should face a “firing squad” for not firing the police chief — began on Friday, and eventually filled up the Town Hall’s voice mail, said Dick Thackston, the chair of the select board in Troy, a town in southwestern New Hampshire with a population of slightly more than 2,000.

“It’s unfortunate that we would even think we would have to take these measures, but you can’t tell anymore,” he said. “Is one crazed person going to drive down from Maine or up from Oklahoma to do this thing because they feel so entitled?”

The police chief, David Ellis, was quoted as a member of the crowd in New York magazine on Wednesday, and expressed disapproval of the violence. The break-in “was not going to solve a thing, and then to see the police get treated the way they were treated, it’s ridiculous,” he told the magazine.

On Sunday, Ray Buckley, the chairman of New Hampshire’s Democratic Party, called on him to step down and to donate a year’s salary to survivors of Brian Sicknick, the Capitol Police officer who was died after the riot. “You have brought shame on NH,” he wrote on Twitter.

But many in town have rallied to Mr. Ellis’s defense. Mr. Thackston said the Board of Selectmen has the power to petition a state court to remove a police chief, but had not done so, because there was no evidence Mr. Ellis had done anything illegal.

“If he was up there sitting at Nancy Pelosi’s desk and drinking Mitch McConnell’s Scotch, we would be before the Superior Court today, but that’s not what’s going to happen,” he said. He said the town offices would remain closed except for appointments “until the dust has blown over, and it seems safe to go back to normal.”

“Like many Americans, we are all waiting for normal to return,” he said.

Researchers rush to archive a live-streamed insurrection.

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Thousands of videos were made at the Capitol last week.Credit...Julio Cortez/Associated Press

Those who stormed the Capitol last week wanted the world to see them do it, thoroughly documenting the event on social media and streaming sites. Now researchers, journalists and others are rushing to preserve video and photos before participants delete them.

“It’s like a concert. Every other person was holding a phone in the air,” said Aric Toler, 32, the director of research at Bellingcat, a collaborative investigative site. “We’re trying to encourage people if they see a video that no one else has found, that has like 24 views, to scrape it.”

Bellingcat is maintaining a public Google spreadsheet with links to photos and videos that have been found on myriad sites, from the familiar — TikTok, YouTube, Facebook — to the lesser known, such as Parler, Dlive and Rumble. Hundreds of volunteers have helped in the effort, said Mr. Toler.

“We’re doing our best to get as much saved and preserved as possible before it gets taken down,” he said.

Parallel efforts are happening around the web, from Reddit’s DataHoarder community to a Czech Republic-based intelligence firm.

“As soon as I heard the Capitol had been breached, I thought, ‘I have to download this,’” said a Canadian man who uses the name Adam Lynch on the messaging forum Reddit. He asked not to be identified because he has received death threats.

He encouraged members of Reddit to help find documentation of the riot to download. He then uploaded the vast majority of what they found — more than 9,000 videos and files — to a public cloud-sharing site called Mega.

“As a data hoarder, I just want it for historical reasons,” he said. “How many times in history will the Capitol be breached?”

He also sent a link to his archive to the F.B.I.

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Big companies pause their political contributions.

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JPMorgan Chase is halting all political donations from its PAC for six months.Credit...Justin Lane/EPA, via Shutterstock

Big businesses often donate to both political parties and say their support is tied to narrow issues of specific interest to their industries. That practice became increasingly fraught last week, after a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol and some Republican lawmakers tried to overturn Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s win in the presidential election.

A flurry of companies have since reviewed political giving via their corporate political action committees:

  • Morgan Stanley is suspending all PAC contributions to members of Congress who did not vote to certify the results of the Electoral College, a spokesman said.

  • Marriott said it would pause donations from its PAC “to those who voted against certification of the election,” a spokeswoman told DealBook. She did not say how long the break would last or how the hotel chain would decide when to resume donations.

  • The chemicals giant Dow said it was suspending all PAC contributions “to any member of Congress who voted to object to the certification of the presidential election.” The suspension will last for one election cycle — two years for representatives and up to six years for senators.

  • AT&T, one of the biggest political campaign contributors in the United States, said in a statement on Monday that its political action committee had decided to suspend contributions to members of Congress who voted against the certification of Electoral College votes last week.

  • Hallmark requested the return of campaign contributions its PAC made to Senators Josh Hawley Missouri and Roger Marshall of Kansas, both of whom voted against certifying the presidential election results. “Hallmark believes the peaceful transition of power is part of the bedrock of our democratic system, and we abhor violence of any kind,” the company said in a statement. “The recent actions of Senators Josh Hawley and Roger Marshall do not reflect our company’s values.”

  • Airbnb condemned the violence in Washington, saying in a statement that it “will update its framework and withhold support from those who voted against the certification of the presidential election results.”

  • The Coca-Cola Company said in a statement that it would also suspend political giving: “These events will long be remembered and will factor into our future contribution decisions.”

Blue Cross Blue Shield, Boston Scientific and Commerce Bancshares are taking a similar, targeted approach to donation freezes. The newsletter Popular Information is tracking the responses of these and other companies that donated to lawmakers who challenged the election result.

Some big banks are pausing all political donations — to those who voted to uphold the election as well as to those who sought to overturn it — a tactic that is raising eyebrows. Goldman Sachs is freezing donations through its PAC and will conduct “a thorough assessment of how people acted during this period,” a spokesman, Jake Siewert, told DealBook. JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup also said they would postpone all campaign contributions.

Facebook will pause all of its contributions to political action committees representing either party for at least the remainder of the first quarter of 2021, the company confirmed in a statement on Monday, citing the need to review its policies. A spokesman for Microsoft confirmed that it would do the same.

Other companies, including Bank of America, FedEx and Wells Fargo, said they would review their corporate contribution strategy.

In other fallout, the P.G.A. of America said it would no longer hold its signature championship at the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, N.J.; the social app Parler, popular among conservatives as an alternative to Twitter, went dark this morning after Amazon cut it off from computing services; the payment processor Stripe banned the Trump campaign from using its services; YouTube blocked Steve Bannon’s podcast channel; and the debate continues over tech giants’ influence over public speech.

Kate Kelly, Jenny Gross and Mike Isaac contributed reporting.

A state senator referred Rudy Giuliani for disbarment.

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  Credit...Brendan Smialowski/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Citing his role in a “violent insurrectionist attack on the United States Capitol,” the chairman of the New York State Senate’s judiciary committee made a formal request on Monday to the state court system to begin the process of stripping President Trump’s lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, of his law license.

Senator Brad Hoylman, a Manhattan Democrat, said that Mr. Giuliani appeared to have committed several ethical violations in his efforts to support Mr. Trump’s baseless claims of fraud during the presidential election.

Those efforts culminated on Wednesday when Mr. Giuliani addressed a crowd of Mr. Trump’s supporters, repeating the president’s unproven claims of election fraud and seeming to urge people toward violence. After hearing Mr. Giuliani and the president speak, members of the crowd marched to the Capitol and an angry mob ransacked the building.

“If we’re wrong, we will be made fools of, but if we’re right a lot of them will go to jail,” Mr. Giuliani said. “Let’s have trial by combat.”

Mr. Hoylman, in a letter to the grievance committee of the First Department Appellate Division, said the assault on the Capitol was “the foreseeable culmination of increasingly outrageous lies and disinformation being peddled by Mr. Giuliani” and others.

“The codes of ethics we as attorneys swear to uphold are intended to safeguard both the public and the reputation of the profession itself,” he wrote. “A failure to hold a member of our ranks accountable for seditious acts and exhortations of violence is a failure to provide that safeguard.”

The call for Mr. Giuliani’s disbarment came only hours after the New York State Bar Association announced that it had launched a “historic” investigation into Mr. Giuliani, which could lead to his removal from the group.

In a prepared statement issued on Monday, Scott M. Karson, the association’s president, said that his decision to begin the inquiry was prompted by hundreds of complaints the group had received about Mr. Giuliani’s central role in Mr. Trump’s attempts to overthrow the results of the election.

The bar association has no power to strip Mr. Giuliani of his law license. But should the highly unusual investigation by his peers lead to his removal from the group, it would be a dark stain on a career that has spanned more than 40 years in the law. A spokeswoman for the group said that it had not removed someone who had not already been disbarred since 1904.

The association’s bylaws forbid members from, among other things, advocating “the overthrow of the government,” and in his statement Mr. Karson said that Mr. Giuliani’s words in Washington last week were “clearly intended to encourage Trump supporters unhappy with the election’s outcome to take matters into their own hands.”

“The subsequent attack on the Capitol was nothing short of an attempted coup,” Mr. Karson wrote, “intended to prevent the peaceful transition of power.”

Mr. Giuliani, who did not respond to requests for comment, addrssed the complaints against him on his radio show this afternoon.

“I was a prosecutor all my life — I’m not stupid,” he said. “I don’t want to get in trouble. And I have a high sense of ethics, personally. I hate it when people attack my integrity.”

The investigation was only the latest example of efforts to push back against lawyers who have supported Mr. Trump’s push to remain in power. Last week, for example, Dominion Voting Systems sued the president’s onetime lawyer, Sidney Powell, for defamation, claiming she had engaged in “a viral disinformation campaign” about the role its machines played in the election.

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Michigan Commission bans open carry at the State Capitol.

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A man brought a rifle to a rally in support of President Trump outside the state Capitol in Lansing, Mich., last Wednesday.Credit...Paul Sancya/Associated Press

The Michigan State Capitol Commission voted unanimously on Monday to ban the open carry of weapons in the state Capitol in Lansing. But gun owners with a concealed-weapons permit will still be able to carry concealed guns into the Capitol, and there will be restrictions on carrying guns on the Capitol grounds.

It’s a good first step, said state Representative Sarah Anthony, a Lansing Democrat who has called for a total ban on guns in the Capitol.

“The reality is that whether a gun is openly carried, or it’s concealed in a pocket or an oversized coat, it is still a deadly weapon,” she said. “And I am still unsure if the men and women who work in this building every day feel any safer because of this action. I am excited that there’s a little momentum, but the work is not done.”

The commission, a four-member body that sets rules and approves maintenance and improvement projects for the building, said they didn’t have the authority to set up the infrastructure for a total ban, which would carry a $1 million price tag, including installing metal detectors and working through the logistics of how those devices would delay access to and from the Capitol.

“It could cause hours of delays in terms of people getting into the building, so we made a determination that it’s pretty easy to see if somebody is visibly carrying,” said John Truscott, one of the commission members. “In terms of the research I’ve been able to do, there’s been no gun crimes committed by somebody with a concealed carry license.”

Michigan is an open carry state, so seeing people armed with guns wandering the halls of the state Capitol in Lansing is a common occurrence. After a protest in April when heavily armed men demanded entry into the House of Representatives’ chamber and loomed in the gallery above the Senate as elected officials conducted state business, the legislative leadership and Michigan Capitol Commission began debating whether it might be time to prohibit guns in the building.

While nothing has been done since that protest last spring, the insurrection in Washington last week — when a mob of supporters of President Trump rampaged through the United States Capitol trying to stop Congress from certifying the Electoral College results, which showed Joseph R. Biden Jr. as the winner of the Nov. 3 presidential election — was a catalyst.

“That was clearly a factor” in moving up the gun ban discussion, Mr. Truscott said. “We have the same concerns as everybody else.”

While Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey, a Clarklake Republican, supported the move to ban open carry of weapons in the Capitol, Speaker of the House Jason Wentworth, a Farwell Republican, said he doesn’t believe the Capitol Commission has the authority to make such a rule.

“In the meantime, the Michigan State Police will be enforcing the new ruling,” he said in a statement released after the commission vote. “In order to ensure there is no confusion in the Capitol, Speaker Wentworth asks everyone to respect the Michigan State Police and the rules they enforce.”

Melania Trump implores Americans to ‘stop the violence’ while also striking back at critics.

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Melania Trump, the first lady, who had not spoken publicly since sending well wishes on New Year’s Day, urged people to “listen to one another.”Credit...Anna Moneymaker for The New York Times

In her first public comments since rioters stormed the Capitol five days ago, Melania Trump, the first lady, said on Monday that she was “disappointed and disheartened with what happened last week” but did not address her husband’s role in encouraging the attack.

Mrs. Trump, who had not released a statement since wishing the public well on New Year’s Day, urged people to “listen to one another” and implored people to “stop the violence.” She said she was praying for the families of those killed on Wednesday or in its aftermath, starting with a list of four Trump supporters who died — including one who was shot during the attack inside the Capitol — before the officers defending it.

Though the tone was mostly reconciliatory, she first struck back at perceived critics.

“I find it shameful that surrounding these tragic events there has been salacious gossip, unwarranted personal attacks, and false misleading accusations on me — from people who are looking to be relevant and have an agenda,” she said. “This time is solely about healing our country and its citizens. It should not be used for personal gain.”

Last week, a former staff member for the first lady, Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, strongly criticized Mrs. Trump in The Daily Beast, writing that she had “blood on her hands.”

Mrs. Trump’s chief of staff, Stephanie Grisham, was among the White House officials to resign after the violence on Wednesday.

Mrs. Trump has mostly remained silent on her husband’s efforts to overturn the election. In her one public statement on the matter, on Nov. 8, she wrote on Twitter that “every legal — not illegal — vote should be counted.”

She has focused instead on nonpolitical matters, including holiday celebrations, a monument that pays tribute to women’s suffrage and the completion of a tennis court at the White House.

On Monday, she asked people to “focus on what unites us, and rise above what divides us.”

“It is inspiring to see that so many have found a passion and enthusiasm in participating in an election, but we must not allow that passion to turn to violence,” she said. “Our path forward is to come together, find our commonalities, and be the kind and strong people that I know we are.”

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The talk radio network that airs Dan Bongino and Mark Levin warned staff to stop ‘dog-whistle talk.’

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Mark Levin, a Trump-supporting radio host, has tweeted about a “massive fraud perpetrated against the president.”
Credit...Erik S Lesser/EPA, via Shutterstock

Cumulus Media, a talk radio company with a roster of popular right-wing personalities including Dan Bongino, Mark Levin and Ben Shapiro, has ordered its employees at 416 stations nationwide to steer clear of endorsing misinformation about election fraud or using language that promotes violent protest.

Brian Philips, an executive vice president of Cumulus, issued the directive in a stern memo on Wednesday after a pro-Trump mob breached the halls of Congress. Addressed to employees working in the company’s programming and talent divisions, including those at its syndication arm, Westwood One, the memo included an introduction in bold typeface, with many words capitalized for emphasis.

“We need to help induce national calm NOW,” it began.

“Cumulus and Westwood One will not tolerate any suggestion that the election has not ended,” the memo continued. “The election has resolved, there are no alternate acceptable ‘paths.’ Please inform your staffs that we have ZERO TOLERANCE for any suggestion otherwise. If you transgress this policy, you can expect to separate from the company immediately. There will be no dog-whistle talk about ‘stolen elections,’ ‘civil wars’ or any other language that infers violent public disobedience is warranted, ever.”

The memo, which was first reported by Inside Music Media, underlined a statement at the end of the paragraph: “Through all of our communication channels, including social, we will work to urge restoration of PEACE AND ORDER.”

Cumulus did not respond to requests for comment. The company owns and operates 416 radio stations across 86 markets, including WMAL in Washington, WNBM in New York and KABC in Los Angeles.

In 2020, right-wing radio was a hotbed of baseless election fraud speculation, with hosts spouting some of the same debunked arguments later repeated by the mob that stormed the Capitol and have been echoed by Trump supporters threatening armed protests outside state government buildings in the days to come.

Mr. Levin has tweeted about a “massive fraud perpetrated against the president” and promoted the Jan. 6 demonstration in the days leading up to it. On the Wednesday episode of his radio show, Mr. Levin, who also hosts a Fox News program on Sunday nights, criticized those who stormed the Capitol, but defended “people who are peacefully protesting” against “a stolen election” — a characterization that has been repeatedly debunked as false.

Mr. Bongino, a former Secret Service agent and a current Fox News contributor, was also an investor in Parler, a social media app popular with Trump supporters. In an appearance on Fox News on Monday, Mr. Bongino fulminated against the suspension of Parler by major technology companies, referring to “the communists at Apple and Amazon and Google.”

Mr. Bongino, who hosts a podcast and has a popular Facebook page, has raised questions about what he has called “irregularities” in the 2020 election. On an episode of his podcast in November, he said, referring to the election, “Ladies and gentlemen, these claims that there are no evidence of fraud are utterly absurd.” On the day after the storming of the Capitol, he said he would not let go of his belief that “we had an election with unbelievably suspect behavior, and we better damn well fix it.” On Monday’s episode of his radio show, Mr. Bongino said that “principles about what happened in the election, the constitutionality, are in dispute and should be.”

Efforts to contact Mr. Bongino and Mr. Levin were unsuccessful. Mr. Shapiro, who said in an email on Monday that he had neither heard from Cumulus executives nor received a memo about coverage of election results, declared in October that he planned to vote for Mr. Trump but has also repeatedly stressed that the president has not produced evidence of voting fraud.

Brian Rosenwald, the author of “Talk Radio’s America” and a scholar in residence at the University of Pennsylvania, noted that talk radio has been “a massive force on the right” since the late 1980s, when Rush Limbaugh, a backer of the president’s baseless election-fraud claims, was ascendant, and was a key to Mr. Trump’s political rise.

“Base voters wanted someone who sounded like their favorite hosts, and Trump was just using the talk radio playbook,” Mr. Rosenwald said. “A lot of the anger on the right that is channeled into Trump was something hosts were picking up in their audiences and voicing long before Trump came along.”

Ray Appleton, a talk radio host in Fresno, Calif., was suspended by the Cumulus-owned central California station KMJ after saying on his Thursday show that “certain news editors should be hanged, maybe,” The Fresno Bee reported.

The Cumulus memo is part of a wave of censure from corporate America, one that has included banks and blue-chip businesses distancing themselves from the president and his allies, and social media companies throwing agitators off their platforms.

“Cumulus has a big, broad set of interests — they have advertisers, sports contracts, nonconservative podcasts, dealings with the F.C.C. over station licensing,” Mr. Rosenwald said. “They understand that if you get involved in something that risks instigating violence, there’s a serious danger to the bottom line.”

Sarah Sobieraj, a sociology professor at Tufts University, said that recent events offered an opportunity to rethink how “hyper-ideological spaces” are used to spread information.

“We may have seen the business model that relied on making people feel angry and afraid to drive attention reach its breaking point,” she said. “Media folks far and wide are probably asking the same questions: Could we be alienating members of the audience, losing investors and advertisers? We can’t just keep amping up.”

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