--:-- Aisha Roscoe: I'm Aisha Roscoe, and this is a Sunday story from Up First. Every Sunday, we do something special, going beyond the news of the day to bring you one big story. Tomorrow marks four years since the attack on the U.S. Capitol as Congress attempted to certify President Joe Biden's win in the 2020 election.
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--:-- Aisha Roscoe: On January 6, 2021, then-President Donald Trump, now President-elect once again, held a rally to dispute the election results. And then thousands of people charged into the Capitol. Many were chanting, "stop the steal." Some broke windows and damaged property. Others called for the hanging of public officials like then-Vice President Mike Pence and then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.
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--:-- Aisha Roscoe: When all was said and done, four people died. 140 law enforcement officers were wounded, and there was nearly $3 million worth of damage. And the FBI soon opened what would become its biggest criminal investigation in history. And as the arrest began, something became clear. There were a lot of people with military ties in the Capitol that day.
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--:-- Aisha Roscoe: It's a fact that continues to have a ripple effect for the Pentagon, especially now, on the eve of another transfer of presidential power, and as Trump continues to set up the cabinet for his second administration. Trump recently said that he might pardon some people who were convicted for crimes on January 6th, on his first day in office.
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--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Today on the show, we want to dig into the continued legacy of January 6th, 2021. Does the military have a problem with political extremism in the ranks? And what does that mean with Trump returning as commander-in-chief? NPR's Pentagon correspondent Tom Bowman and producer Lauren Hodges have been asking themselves those questions.
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--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Late last year, they released a new investigation with NPR's embedded podcast called "A Good Guy," about an active-duty Marine who participated in the Capitol riot. My conversation about extremism in the military with Tom and Lauren after the break.
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--:-- Aisha Roscoe: [After the break] Welcome back to the show. Tom and Lauren, welcome to the podcast. Thank you.
--:-- Tom Bowman: Hey there.
--:-- Lauren Hodges: Hey there.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: So, you know, I have a lot of questions about this investigation and about the military during the new Trump administration, the upcoming Trump administration. But, you know, I want to go back to January 6, 2021. I think most of us watched the attack on the Capitol live on TV. I was in the dentist and started seeing reports that the barriers were being broken. And then after I got out of the dentist appointment, I realized, oh, shoot, like this is of another level.
--:-- Lauren Hodges: Yeah, I was at the Capitol when that huge crowd that Trump sent over started to arrive and, you know, pressing in from all sides. It was thousands of people. I watched them eventually break through police barriers and rush up the Capitol steps.
--:-- Tom Bowman: I asked one man in the crowd nearby, what do you want to see happen if you get in? The people in this house who stole this election from us, hanging from a gallows out here in this lawn for the whole world to see so it never happens again. That's what needs to happen.
--:-- Lauren Hodges: So there were clearly people committing violence or wanting to see violence, and there were hundreds encouraging it, pushing it forward. While hundreds more, you know, they were just kind of watching this all take place. So there were people of all sorts of motivations.
--:-- Tom Bowman: And we should say not everyone destroyed property or was physically violent. But most of them had one thing in common, Aisha. They believed Donald Trump's lie that the election was stolen.
--:-- Lauren Hodges: And another thing that a couple hundred of them had in common was military ties, both veteran and active duty.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Wow. I mean, hearing that tape about hanging them from gallows, I think some of that seems to be kind of like memory white, like the violent rhetoric at that time. But then also that some of these people had military ties.
--:-- Tom Bowman: You know, it really wasn't much of a surprise. I know that militias and far-right groups like the Oath Keepers or Proud Boys, they often target veterans for recruitment, in large part because of their military training.
--:-- Lauren Hodges: Earlier in the day, as I was walking through the crowds, I noticed there were a number of people with law enforcement or military ties. I saw some flags with the Marine insignia in a ball cap or a sweatshirt with the Marines eagle globe and anchor emblem.
--:-- Tom Bowman: Yeah, I saw a lot of that, too. And, you know, afterwards, after this day, Tom and I started following the FBI's arrest announcements to see if there really were as many military folks out there that we remember seeing.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: An NPR analysis found that of the 1,500 arrested, some 200 had military experience. That is roughly 13 percent, about double what you would see with the general population.
--:-- Lauren Hodges: And we wanted to know more, so we reached out to Michael Jensen. He's a researcher at the University of Maryland, and he studies domestic terrorism. And he found that nearly every branch of the military was represented at the Capitol that day.
--:-- Tom Bowman: It is so shocking when somebody that's taken an oath to protect the country is doing something to harm it.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: So most of the people with military ties that day were veterans. And one of them you may have heard of, who Republican politicians have talked about a lot, and it's Ashley Babbitt. She was shot and killed by a Capitol police officer as she lunged through a shattered window near the House floor.
--:-- Lauren Hodges: Babbitt was an Air Force veteran.
--:-- Tom Bowman: So some of these people were veterans, right?
--:-- Lauren Hodges: Right. But were there any active duty military members there on January 6th?
--:-- Tom Bowman: Yeah. So according to Jensen at least 24 of them were active duty across the various branches and the reserves. And the branch with the biggest number of participants in relation to its size was the Marine Corps. The Marines.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Do we know why they were so represented or overrepresented on January 6th?
--:-- Tom Bowman: You know, it's hard to say. We asked a lot of people that question. You know, some Marines told us there's a sense the Marines tend to be pretty traditional, more physically aggressive, lean more politically conservative than maybe some of the other branches.
--:-- Lauren Hodges: So you mentioned you talked to that researcher. What did he think about all this?
--:-- Tom Bowman: The researcher, Michael Jensen, wasn't that surprised. He's been tracking instances of political violence in the military going back 35 years to 1990.
--:-- Lauren Hodges: In fact, there's been more than 700 documented cases, stuff like starting physical altercations at protests, plotting violence against public figures. And those cases have been rising year after year leading up to January 6th.
--:-- Tom Bowman: And as for the Marines, the Marine Corps has the second most cases of former or current members who are extremists, second only to the Army, which is the largest branch.
--:-- Lauren Hodges: This despite the Marines being the smallest fighting force.
--:-- Tom Bowman: And Jensen told us, historically, the Marines don't open very many investigations into these cases. So they have a disproportionately large problem with extremism, but they're doing the least amount of investigations.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: In your podcast series, "A Good Guy," that you did with NPR's Embedded, you look at the case of one active-duty Marine who was stationed at Quantico at the time. And I guess he was there on January 6th?
--:-- Lauren Hodges: Yep. His name is Joshua Bates, Sergeant Joshua Bates. He's a third-generation Marine and really a high-achieving one. And he was promoted to sergeant early. He has a Navy commendation medal and he got an internship offer from the National Security Agency to do intelligence work.
--:-- Tom Bowman: And on January 6th, 2021, he is 20 years old when he says a couple of other active-duty Marines at Quantico base invite him to the Stop the Steal rally. And they see this crowd surging toward the Capitol and decide to join it.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: I asked Josh why. So you thought it was okay to be in the building?
--:-- Lauren Hodges: Well, yeah, because we walked right in. We didn't see any signs that, you know, said, do not enter, no trespassing.
--:-- Tom Bowman: And as soon as we walked to the door of the Capitol building, there were two police officers standing right across from the door. I figured if we weren't supposed to be there, they would have told us to get out.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Of course, we know from being there that the scene wasn't as calm as Josh just described.
--:-- Lauren Hodges: No, not at all.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: So we combed through some security footage of Josh and his friends in the Capitol. They're in there for about an hour altogether, and they are definitely participating in some rowdy crowds.
--:-- Tom Bowman: You can see them taking turns holding a Don't Tread on Me flag. Josh is chanting what looks like "Stop the Steal." And most notably, the three of them helped someone else put a MAGA hat on a statue of Martin Luther King Jr. in the Capitol Rotunda, and they take a picture of it.
--:-- Lauren Hodges: You know, I kind of don't know what to say about that. I mean, because Martin Luther King very famously died from political violence.
--:-- Tom Bowman: So that was, you know, what a scene to partake in. But Josh and his friends, they're actually active-duty Marines. So they take an oath to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: How would you characterize what they were doing at the Capitol that day? Like, how does this factor into the idea of political extremism? Is Josh and what he was doing extremist activity?
--:-- Lauren Hodges: You know, it's a really hard question to answer. We spoke with Josh for hours on two occasions, and he cops up to the statue thing. But really downplays or even sometimes denies everything else he did that day.
--:-- Tom Bowman: And we asked him that same question. How do you see yourself? Were you a protester or an extremist?
--:-- Lauren Hodges: I would say the line that crosses you from just a peaceful protester, kind of just looking around, walking around, and extremist is insinuating violence, being associated with one of the extremist groups. Once you compromise your integrity far enough to hurt someone or hurt, you know, the history behind the building.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: It seems like this guy is trying to carve out this neat little box for himself as a peaceful protester.
--:-- Lauren Hodges: It felt like that's why he wanted to talk to us that day. And, you know, maybe that's true. After all, he wasn't beating up cops or breaking off table legs like some of the other people who were there.
--:-- Tom Bowman: The main issue for Josh here is that what he told us did not match what we saw on the cameras.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: And we were wondering, even if he didn't directly hit anyone or break something, did he still engage in extremist activity? After all, this whole day was an act of violence.
--:-- Lauren Hodges: And that question is what a lot of other people were wrestling with, too. People all the way up to the highest levels of the Pentagon.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: We'll find out more about that after the break.
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--:-- Aisha Roscoe: [After the break] Welcome back to the show. So, Tom and Lauren, you've been looking at political extremism in the military since January 6th. You're seeing all these announcements of arrests, and there were, you know, people with military ties among the people being arrested.
--:-- Tom Bowman: I would imagine that military leadership is also seeing this in the news. What is their response or what are they thinking seeing some of the people in their ranks being arrested?
--:-- Lauren Hodges: Well, you know, it didn't take long at all for the military to recognize a potential problem in the ranks. President Biden's pick for Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin was sworn in just a couple of weeks after January 6th.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Yeah, let's let us play you an excerpt from our two-part podcast series, "A Good Guy," about what happened next. It really helps color it all in.
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--:-- Aisha Roscoe: At Austin's confirmation hearing, he didn't mention the assault on the Capitol directly, but he said he was really concerned about internal threats.
--:-- Tom Bowman: The job of the Department of Defense is to keep America safe from our enemies. But we can't do that if some of those enemies lie within our own ranks.
--:-- Lauren Hodges: And one of the first things he did was to remind everyone in uniform about their oath.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: So Austin came up with a plan. It started with something called a stand down and a stand down in military speak is, OK, we're going to stop what we're doing. We're just going to have a training day to remind service members about what they can't do while on active duty.
--:-- Tom Bowman: Dissident activities, overtly political activities, extremist activities. The reactions coming out of these training sessions and from senior officials, they were kind of mixed.
--:-- Lauren Hodges: What we were hearing on the ground from units was that a lot of there was just a lot of confusion. Many service members didn't understand what extremism even means.
--:-- Tom Bowman: Well, you know, what is extremism? My extremism may not be your extremism.
--:-- Lauren Hodges: That's Bishop Garrison, a West Point grad, an Iraq Army vet, and a lawyer. Austin tapped him to answer this huge question for the military. How do you define extremism?
--:-- Tom Bowman: I love to actually get your personal opinion or definition of extremism. You, me, and all of the Joint Chiefs would love to have a clean definition of it.
--:-- Lauren Hodges: And the problem is the definition is it depends. It's one of those things where you kind of know it when you see it.
--:-- Tom Bowman: Garrison quickly became the guy that the Defense Secretary was counting on to figure out just how big of a problem extremism in the ranks really is.
--:-- Lauren Hodges: Garrison worked a really long time to come up with a definition. And as complicated as the work was, it ultimately led him to a pretty simple two-part test.
--:-- Tom Bowman: It almost has to be like a rubric. You can't make for every instance of what may or may not be extremist activity. It really depends on the situation and the individual.
--:-- Lauren Hodges: One, does the person advocate for extremist ideology? It couldn't just be that you went and read a thing because you could be a historian. You're reading Mein Kampf because you want to know more about World War II and Hitler.
--:-- Tom Bowman: Two, did they act upon that ideology? You have an activity that may not in and of itself be prohibited or be criminal, but it leans in that direction. It gives the commander an opportunity to say, wait, wait, wait, what is this about?
--:-- Lauren Hodges: So this isn't about your political views. It's all about your actions. It's inciting violence. It's taking part in violence. Unlawful stuff, discriminatory stuff. Raising money for groups that are anti-immigrant, racist, misogynist.
--:-- Tom Bowman: We're not here to be thought police in any way, shape, or form.
--:-- Lauren Hodges: And Garrison thought, all right, we nailed this. Extremist activity, active participation, two things go together.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: He was up in the crowd chanting, the police were pushing him back, and he was refusing to move. The last two things you mentioned would both be activities. That is something that is prohibited.
--:-- Tom Bowman: I would even argue it's always been prohibited.
--:-- Lauren Hodges: Garrison's goal was to give Secretary Austin a report with recommendations on countering extremism in the ranks.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: He knew from the beginning that anything related to extremism could get politicized real quick.
--:-- Tom Bowman: And the trouble actually began before he even got to put out his report.
--:-- Lauren Hodges: Back when Garrison was hired to do this work, he was given a title. Senior advisor to the Secretary of Defense, for Human Capital and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. Also known as DEI.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: And that title was typed out in a memo, a memo which the Pentagon released in the spring of 2021.
--:-- Tom Bowman: It's standard stuff, three pages long, announcing that Garrison was forming this team to counter extremism in the ranks.
--:-- Lauren Hodges: Then... May 6th, I'll never forget the day. His phone started lighting up.
--:-- Tom Bowman: He's becoming a target of tax by the right wing.
--:-- Lauren Hodges: We uncovered the ideological veteran chief for the United States military, and that's Bishop Garrison.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Suddenly his name was all over Fox News, The Daily Caller, Steve Bannon's podcast.
--:-- Tom Bowman: So who is the Pentagon's newly minted MAGA purge man?
--:-- Lauren Hodges: Just spend five minutes Googling Bishop Garrison.
--:-- Tom Bowman: This is an extremist Black Lives Matter sympathizer type guy.
--:-- Lauren Hodges: They're calling him the Pentagon's hatchet man. A man who believes all, all Trump supporters are racist and extremists.
--:-- Tom Bowman: Because his job is to purge patriots from the ranks.
--:-- Lauren Hodges: They're using January 6th as the ultimate justification.
--:-- Tom Bowman: He's a lunatic. Pay attention to this guy. Keep your head on a swivel. I don't think he's up to any good.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: In Garrison, he starts getting these messages on social media. And that included everything from threats against my career, my livelihood, to threats of personal violence.
--:-- Lauren Hodges: And he was really worried about his wife and baby back home.
--:-- Tom Bowman: My wife truly was afraid of, like, someone is going to show up on our doorstep with a long gun.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Garrison, you know, he started to feel pretty alone.
--:-- Lauren Hodges: That's because he says the military was shrugging off these attacks against him.
--:-- Tom Bowman: As one very senior official relayed to me, you know, these types of things are like quicksand. You say, like, he's a good guy, next question.
--:-- Laisha Roscoe: And that will go away because if you fight against it, fight against it, you're going to get pulled more into it.
--:-- Tom Bowman: I think not pushing back harder and not fighting for it, just let it breathe more and let it breathe longer.
--:-- Lauren Hodges: And that's what we're even, I think, to some degree today still seeing the remnants of that.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: So Bishop Garrison he comes up with this definition of political extremism but he starts getting attacked by the right you know called uh you know a critical race theorist and all this stuff which you know um definitely he he was at the center of this kind of firestorm
--:-- Lauren Hodges: What happened to the report that he was supposed to file to Secretary Austin and to his recommendations? Like, what did the military do with that report?
--:-- Tom Bowman: Well, Bishop Garrison's report had all kinds of recommendations, like conducting an insider threat study, developing trainings.
--:-- Lauren Hodges: Garrison also emphasized in his report that the military really needed to track cases of political extremism.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: But Ayesha, those recommendations sat on a shelf for a really long time.
--:-- Tom Bowman: It took a really long time for anybody to talk with us about this too.
--:-- Lauren Hodges: Believe me, we tried.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Eventually, I got to sit down with the top Marine officer, General Eric Smith.
--:-- Tom Bowman: He told me he doesn't think the Corps has a problem with extremism either.
--:-- Lauren Hodges: This is something I've heard over and over across the military, that they don't believe there's an extremism problem in the ranks.
--:-- Tom Bowman: But to this day, they've never collected data to back that up.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: So it's really hard to say.
--:-- Lauren Hodges: Yeah, well, the researcher, Michael Jensen, we talked to would disagree that they don't have a problem.
--:-- Tom Bowman: And when we talked to Bishop Garrison, he was really disappointed that the department didn't really take his work as seriously as he wanted them to.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: My biggest fear is that it's going to take some type of major or massive incident in which people get hurt, if not worse, for the department to actually stop and take action on this.
--:-- Lauren Hodges: But even still, the military has taken some measures, mostly just this past year.
--:-- Tom Bowman: The Army and the Navy posted new guidelines about participating in political rallies or fundraising for extremist groups, you know, even, you know, liking extremist posts on social media.
--:-- Lauren Hodges: So they did put out, you know, some guidelines.
--:-- Tom Bowman: And the Marines outlined some new reporting instructions, how people can tell the military that something's going on.
--:-- Lauren Hodges: If a Marine suspects a fellow Marine of extremist activity, they have to report it within one to three days to a senior officer, and that might trigger an investigation.
--:-- Tom Bowman: And they're also beginning the process of gathering data to determine how prevalent extremism really is.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Why did it take so long for the military to address political extremism?
--:-- Lauren Hodges: Well, to answer that question, I want to go back to Josh Abate's story for a sec, because it offers a big clue.
--:-- Tom Bowman: Josh, of course, is the Marine sergeant whose case we followed and the one who wound up in the rotunda putting that MAGA hat on the statue of MLK.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: So the FBI eventually arrested Josh almost two years later, connecting him to some social media posts that one of his friends had made, one of the two guys that he was with in the Capitol.
--:-- Lauren Hodges: And in court, Josh gets off with a slap on the wrist, just a couple hundred hours of community service.
--:-- Tom Bowman: And his military record clearly helped him out.
--:-- Lauren Hodges: The judge was especially impressed by character letters that described Josh as an exceptional Marine.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Right. And then after his criminal sentencing, Josh faces a retention hearing in the Marine Corps, which is sort of like military HR.
--:-- Tom Bowman: It's a panel of other Marines randomly drawn, and they decide whether to keep him in the Corps or to discharge him.
--:-- Lauren Hodges: And if they kick him out, they then have to decide if the discharge will be honorable or other than honorable.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: And that second one is a huge red mark. No one wants that on their record.
--:-- Tom Bowman: And, you know, there's a moment in that hearing that just completely shocked us.
--:-- Lauren Hodges: Is your portrayal of the events of January 6th positive, negative, or are you indifferent about it?
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: So at the beginning of the hearing, Joshua's civilian lawyer asked all three of the Marines deciding this case, how do you feel about January 6th?
--:-- Tom Bowman: One panelist said he had a negative perception of what transpired, but here's what the other two had to say.
--:-- Lauren Hodges: So I wasn't there. I can't say I know exactly what happened there.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: I indifferent about what happened that day.
--:-- Tom Bowman: Depending on what news sources look at you get a different narrative.
--:-- Lauren Hodges: At this point to be honest I tired of hearing that three years later.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: I mean it sounds kind of like a microcosm of you know the U population at this point.
--:-- Tom Bowman: But you have two of these three panelists who were deciding Sergeant Joshua Bates' future in the Marine Corps. They're pretty indifferent to January 6th.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: So, I mean, ultimately, what did the panel decide?
--:-- Lauren Hodges: Well, they voted to keep him in the Marine Corps.
--:-- Tom Bowman: As you said, it seems like the perception of January 6th at the time of this hearing, which is almost three years later, had gotten much more lukewarm.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: But that's not the end for Josh. The secretary of the Navy, who also oversees the Marine Corps, has to either endorse the panel's decision to keep Josh or he can decide to kick Josh out.
--:-- Lauren Hodges: But it's been more than a year since the retention hearing, and as far as we know, the secretary still hasn't made a decision.
--:-- Tom Bowman: And a new secretary will take over when Trump enters office in a couple of weeks.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Trump's nominated John Phelan, a businessman with no military experience, for that job.
--:-- Lauren Hodges: And the decision about whether to keep Josh might just fall to him.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: So for now, Josh, he's kind of in marine purgatory doing some standard office work while he awaits his fate.
--:-- Tom Bowman: That internship offer from the NSA. Of course, that got scrapped.
--:-- Lauren Hodges: And he's the only one of his friends left.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Even though the Marine panels decided to keep those two other Marines he was in the Capitol with, a top general didn't agree.
--:-- Tom Bowman: He later kicked out one of them for his actions.
--:-- Lauren Hodges: The other one, he just ran out as enlistment.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: So basically the clock ran out on his time in the military.
--:-- Tom Bowman: Like, is that what you expect to happen with Josh, that he'll eventually just get discharged?
--:-- Lauren Hodges: Well, we'll have to see.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Josh declined further interviews with us.
--:-- Tom Bowman: Yeah, this was after we told his lawyer that we'd found footage of Josh in the Capitol and it didn't match his story.
--:-- Lauren Hodges: So he was done chatting with us.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Trump said throughout his campaign that he'd be open to pardoning people convicted of crimes for January 6th if they're quote unquote innocent.
--:-- Tom Bowman: In fact, many of the people convicted of January 6th related crimes celebrated from the D.C. jail cell they call the Patriots Wing after the election results were announced.
--:-- Lauren Hodges: Now that Trump's been elected to a second term, it's possible that Josh's criminal sentence, as late as it already is, could be totally wiped away.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: And as far as his military career, it's possible that he gets to stay in the Marine Corps.
--:-- Tom Bowman: Trump has had complicated, often controversial feelings about the military and veterans.
--:-- Lauren Hodges: From my reporting, one thing that becomes really clear is that Trump doesn't see the military service members as apolitical, and they're supposed to be apolitical.
--:-- Tom Bowman: He sees them as tools to serve the president, loyalists.
--:-- Lauren Hodges: Since the election, Trump has been stacking his cabinet with those loyalists, people who are highly sympathetic to him and his supporters.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Some of them, you know, they're unexpected, like Pete Hegseth, a Fox News host and veteran who Trump tapped as defense secretary.
--:-- Tom Bowman: You actually heard Hegseth's voice in the montage of attacks against Bishop Garrison earlier.
--:-- Lauren Hodges: He's the one who call Garrison the MAGA purge man.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: So if Hegseth becomes the next defense secretary, he said he's going to eliminate DEI programs like the one Bishop Garrison was part of and maybe get rid of these anti-extremist efforts as well.
--:-- Tom Bowman: But we'll have to see if Hegseth and Trump's other nominations survive a confirmation hearing.
--:-- Lauren Hodges: With Republicans' control in both the House and Senate, they very Yeah, and if that's the case, it's really unclear how the military's efforts to root out extremism are going to fare.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Like we mentioned earlier, in the years since January 6th, military officials came up with a strong definition of extremism and what actions are prohibited.
--:-- Tom Bowman: And just this year, they said, we're going to start collecting data on such incidents.
--:-- Lauren Hodges: This might all go away under Trump.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Hegseth has made clear in his public statements that his focus will be on undoing some of the changes the military has made in recent years.
--:-- Lauren Hodges: We're also left wondering if the military missed its chance to hold people accountable for what happened that day.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: These are things that Lauren and I will be keeping an eye on over the next months and years of the Trump administration.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: So, I mean, it sounds like if the military does have an extremism problem, we may not know officially, at least not in the next four years, you know, tomorrow is January 6th and Congress will once again gather to certify the votes.
--:-- Lauren Hodges: Like, what can we expect this time, four years after that other fateful day?
--:-- Tom Bowman: What can we expect for the peaceful transfer of power?
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Well, from everything I'm hearing, the certification of the 2024 election happening tomorrow will be very safe.
--:-- Lauren Hodges: It's now considered a national security event.
--:-- Tom Bowman: The current director of Homeland Security has said it will have Super Bowl level security.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: But that probably won't be necessary because it was Trump supporters who stormed the Capitol during the last certification when the election didn't go their way.
--:-- Lauren Hodges: This time it did.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Lauren and Tom, thank you so much for sharing your reporting today, especially about an event that now there's so many different accounts and views on it.
--:-- Tom Bowman: But you were there personally. And so you saw it for yourself.
--:-- Lauren Hodges: Right. Well, thank you for having us. Thank you.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: NHPR's Document Podcast. It follows a Capitol Police officer as she deals with the aftermath of January 6, 2021, a day that still lives in her brain and in her body.
--:-- Lauren Hodges: Civil dispute calls, you know, just people not getting along with each other, neighbors not getting along with each other.
--:-- Tom Bowman: And just that confrontation of them fighting and yelling at each other that just brings the flashbacks of this guy yelling at me.
--:-- Lauren Hodges: We want those f***ing traitors!
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: And that just kind of those emotions and that confrontation of people and, you know, those heated arguments are what kind of bring back those images for me.
--:-- Lauren Hodges: From the document team at New Hampshire Public Radio, a story of survival and resilience in the wake of January 6th, The episode is called Amelia's Thing, and you can find it by searching NHPR document wherever you get your podcasts.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: This episode was produced by Adelina Lansianese and Andrew Mamba.
--:-- Lauren Hodges: It was edited by Liana Simstrom and Irene Noguchi with help from Luis Treas and Andrew Sussman.
--:-- Tom Bowman: The rest of the Sunday Story team includes Justine Yan and Jenny Schmidt. fact checking by Will Chase engineering by Kwaesi Lee and Gilly Moon
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: I'm Aisha Roscoe and this is a Sunday story from Up First. We'll be back tomorrow with all the news you need to start your week until then have a great rest of your weekend.
--:-- Lauren Hodges: This message comes from NPR sponsor Rosetta Stone an expert in language learning for 30 years.
--:-- Tom Bowman: Right now, NPR listeners can get Rosetta Stone's lifetime membership to 25 different languages for 50% off.
--:-- Lauren Hodges: Learn more at rosettastone.com slash NPR.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: This message comes from the Hartford.
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--:-- Tom Bowman: They understand the challenges businesses face today and are ready to anticipate the risks of tomorrow.
--:-- Lauren Hodges: Their teams know the ins and outs of specific industries, so The Hartford can help provide insurance solutions for midsize and large businesses.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: If a business needs it, chances are they've got it and get it.
--:-- Lauren Hodges: Connect with your underwriter at The Hartford or visit thehartford.com.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: This message comes from Lisa.
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