Weekly News Quiz for Students

A mob of President Trump’s supporters, encouraged by the president himself, stormed and occupied the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, January 6, disrupting the final count of electoral votes from the November election, as members of Congress evacuated and took shelter.

Rioters forced their way past Capitol police, injuring more than 50 officers, smashed windows, vandalized Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s office among others, looted art, and briefly took control of the Senate chamber. It was one of the most severe intrusions of the Capitol since the British set fire to it during the War of 1812.

But in a remarkable demonstration of fidelity to America’s democracy, members of the Senate and House of Representatives returned a few hours later, after police had cleared the Capitol of rioters, and confirmed President-elect Joe Biden’s victory.

“They tried to disrupt our democracy,” said Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican majority leader. “They failed.”

When a mob of President Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol building on Jan. 6, they forced an emergency recess in the congressional proceedings to officially certify the results of the 2020 presidential election. The disruption came shortly after some Republican lawmakers made the first of a planned series of objections to states’ election results. The chambers were separately debating an objection to Arizona’s results when proceedings were halted and the Capitol was locked down.

When the Senate reconvened at 8 p.m., and the House of Representatives an hour later, the proceedings—including the objection debates—continued, although some lawmakers who had previously planned to vote with the objectors stood down following the occupation of the Capitol. Plans to challenge a number of states after Arizona were scrapped, as well—but one other objection, to Pennsylvania’s results, also advanced to a vote.

Eight senators and 139 representatives, all Republicans, voted to sustain one or both objections.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her caucus sought to ratchet up pressure on the Vice President to intervene and push Trump to resign. Pence is said to be opposed to using the powers outlined in the Constitution to do so, and Republicans objected to a resolution calling on Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment. 

If Pence does not intervene “within 24 hours” and the president does not resign, Democrats said the House would move as early as Jan. 13 to consider the impeachment resolution on the floor. Already more than 210 Democrats have signed onto the charge. Several Republicans were said to be considering voting to impeach for the first time, though party leaders were opposed.

Ossoff, the 33-year-old head of a video production company, defeated David Perdue, a Republican who had just completed his first full term in office. Less than 12 hours earlier, the Rev. Raphael Warnock, the senior pastor at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, unseated Senator Kelly Loeffler, becoming the first Black Democrat elected to the Senate from the South.

The results of the Georgia Senate races will reshape the balance of power in government. Though the Democrats will have the thinnest of advantages in the House and the Senate, where Vice President-elect Kamala Harris will break the 50-50 tie, they will control the committees as well as the legislation and nominations brought to the floor. 

The fate of the plane, a Boeing 737-500, also carried the potential to ensnare the troubled American aviation giant in more bad publicity, even though the cause of the crash had yet to be determined.

The plane was bound for the city of Pontianak on the island of Borneo. It had 62 people aboard, according to the Transportation Ministry. Four minutes after taking off amid a heavy monsoon season rain, following a bad weather delay, the 26-year-old plane lost more than 10,000 feet in altitude in less than 60 seconds, according to Flightradar24, the flight-tracking service.

On Jan. 10, the Jakarta police said that body parts and some clothes from the passengers had been found in waters just northwest of the Indonesian capital. The Indonesian National Search and Rescue Agency also said it had found pieces of debris believed to be from the plane’s wreckage. The area where the remains and debris were discovered is known as the Thousand Islands.

This stripped-down college football season, played in subdued stadiums without bands, mascots, and much of the pageantry that make the sport so alluring, ended the way many others had before the pandemic—with Alabama as the winner. It was the school’s 13th national championship.

The mass arrests—which included figures who had called for aggressive confrontation with the authorities as well as those who had supported more moderate tactics—underscored Hong Kong officials’ efforts to weaken any meaningful opposition in the city’s political institutions. The police also visited the offices of at least one law firm and three news media organizations to demand documents.

The moves suggested that the authorities were casting a wide net for anyone who had played a prominent role in opposing the government. The national security law, which the Chinese government imposed in June, has been wielded as a powerful tool to crack down on the fierce anti-Beijing protests that upended the city for months. Since then, the Hong Kong authorities have detained pro-democracy leaders, raided news media offices, and ousted opposition lawmakers.