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--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Good morning. It's Tuesday, January 12th. I'm Duarte Giraldino. And I'm Shamita Basu. This is Apple News Today.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Each morning, hear about some of the most fascinating stories in the news and how the world's best journalists are covering them.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: At least two Capitol Police officers were suspended for what they are alleged to have done when a pro-Trump mob took over the Capitol. You've likely seen pictures of some of these officers on social media.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Political reports, one suspended officer was seen taking a selfie with a rioter. The other wore a Make America Great Again hat.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: A congressman who oversees funding for the Capitol Police says 10 to 15 other incidents involving the police force are also under investigation.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Congressman Tim Ryan says they're looking at anyone who could have potentially facilitated the riot in big or small ways. To be clear, this number represents only a handful of officers. The Capitol Police on the front lines, they were outnumbered, and they were in a very dangerous situation. Several were hurt. One died from his injuries the day after.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: According to Politico, Democrats are worried some officers may have helped the rioters. Videos show a small number of officers pulling down barricades. And as investigators look into last week's events, the FBI is warning armed protests are being planned for D.C. and every state capital in America in the days leading up to Joe Biden's inauguration on January 20th.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Over the weekend former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger issued a very personal response to last week's deadly insurrection. He draws comparisons between what happened in our nation's capital with the rise of Nazis in Germany. He likened the assault on the capital to Kristallnacht.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: I grew up in Austria. I'm very aware of Kristallnacht, or the Night of Broken Glass. It was a night of rampage against the Jews carried out in 1938 by the Nazi equivalent of the Proud Boys. Wednesday was the day of broken glass right here in the United States. It's a comparison others are making.
--:-- Shamita Basu: An opinion piece in the Los Angeles Times looks at the past four years from a German-American perspective. The writer of the op-ed, Martin Puchner, immigrated from Germany in the 1980s. He's now a Harvard professor.
--:-- Martin Puchner: And he says you can see parallels between Germany's history and present-day America. He talks about how in the 1920s, Germany became deeply divided, which led to the erosion of democratic institutions. In the 1930s, trust in elections dropped. In the 1980s, Germany began confronting the horrors of its own history by teaching about the Third Reich in schools.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Just like here in the U.S., we're now grappling with our history of slavery by renaming buildings and tearing down statues. Puchner's op-ed focuses on the enablers, the seemingly everyday people who were complicit in fascism's rise, one of whom was his own grandfather.
--:-- Martin Puchner: Regular people getting caught up in extremism, little by little. Puchner found out about his grandfather's involvement with the Nazis after his death when he searched for his name in his college library archives. He says he can't tell whether his grandfather was truly a Nazi, an opportunist, or simply lost.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Democrats in the House are moving forward with impeaching President Trump for a second time if Mike Pence invokes the 25th Amendment. A vote could come as soon as Wednesday on an article of impeachment for incitement of insurrection.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Now, whether you support a second impeachment or not, you might be wondering, why would Democrats do this when Donald Trump only has a week left in office? What's the point when he's already on his way out the door?
--:-- Shamita Basu: Democrats say the point is to hold Trump accountable for his actions. They say that's our job to make it clear that a president cannot encourage an insurrection and an attack on the Capitol. There's even a growing list of Republicans and one-time Trump supporters who agree, like former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie.
--:-- Chris Christie: What we had was an incitement to riot at the United States Capitol. We had people killed. And to me, there's not a whole lot of question here.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: OK, so that's the why. Here's the how. The Washington Post explains. The first time the House voted to impeach President Trump, the process took months. There was an investigation. Articles were written. Then those articles were voted on in committee. And only then did House lawmakers vote on them.
--:-- Shamita Basu: As the Post reports, this time we're likely to see the articles get sent directly to the House floor for an immediate vote. And by the way, moving this fast isn't totally unheard of. In 1868, the House impeached President Andrew Johnson before any articles of impeachment had even been written.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Now, if the House votes to impeach, and it looks like the votes are there, the action moves to the Senate for a trial. Two-thirds of senators have to vote yes in order to convict President Trump and remove him from office. But with only a few days left in Trump's term, it's unlikely the Senate could hold a trial and vote to convict him and remove him from office before January 20th.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Which means the Senate trial would have to happen after Trump leaves office. And Democrats say that's still worth pursuing because if they could get a conviction, the Senate could also vote to disqualify Trump from running for any public office in the future.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: The bar is lower for that decision. It would only need a simple majority of senators, which Democrats could win with a tie-breaking vote from Kamala Harris.
--:-- Shamita Basu: You know how before the holidays we were telling you about all the oddball things that got tied up in the COVID relief and spending bills? There were things like funding for museums or decriminalizing the misuse of the Smokey the Bear logo.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Well, here's another one. U.S. intelligence agencies now have a little less than six months to tell Congress what they know about UFOs. Yeah, this is a real thing. Apparently, this provision was tucked into the 2021 spending bill, and it says that Congress should get a detailed report outlining exactly what the government knows about UFOs. And this report needs to be unclassified.
--:-- Shamita Basu: According to CNN, Members of Congress have always wanted to be looped into what the government may or may not know about extraterrestrial activity. And there's a growing body of evidence from the Pentagon and other government agencies that suggests we're probably not alone.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Now, in just a matter of months, we can finally have some answers.
--:-- Shamita Basu: You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app. And while you're there, check out some of the audio stories. We'll talk with you again tomorrow. Thank you.
