House approves Jan. 6 commission. Every Republican from Kansas, Missouri votes no.
Every House Republican from Kansas and Missouri opposed legislation Wednesday to establish a bipartisan commission to investigate the Jan. 6 Capitol attack.
The U.S. House passed the resolution 252 to 175, with 35 Republicans joining Democrats in support. The measure now heads to the evenly divided U.S. Senate, where its future is uncertain in the face of opposition from GOP leadership.
“What we saw on the 6th was obviously devastating and traumatic in a lot of different ways and I think it’s necessary for us to make sure nothing like that happens again,” said Kansas Democratic Rep. Sharice Davids, the lone member of the Kansas delegation to support the resolution.
“I think it’s really important for us to have a commission, particularly a bipartisan commission, that’s going to be able to evaluate what went wrong and how we avoid ever getting to this place again,” said Davids, who has recounted how she and two colleagues barricaded themselves in an office during the attack.
The proposed commission, modeled on the panel that reviewed the Sept. 11 attack two decades ago, will investigate the “factors that contributed to the domestic terrorist attack on the Capitol and how technology, including online platforms, financing, and malign foreign influence operations and campaigns may have factored into the motivation, organization, and execution.”
The commission will also delve into the law enforcement response and issue recommendations to Congress and President Joe Biden on how to improve the security at the Capitol complex.
The House Thursday approved a bill mostly party lines that will provide $1.9 billion to upgrade security. Missouri Democratic Rep. Cori Bush supported the commission the previous day, but was one of just three Democrats to oppose the security bill.
In a joint statement with Minnesota Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar and Massachusetts Democratic Rep. Ayanna Pressley, Bush said in a statement that the security bill pours money into “increased police surveillance and force without addressing the underlying threats of organized and violent white supremacy, radicalization, and disinformation that led to this attack.”
Republicans uniformly opposed the security bill.
The number of House Republicans who supported the commission Wednesday was higher than anticipated after House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy came out against the legislation. None of the GOP members to buck McCarthy came from the Kansas City region.
Kansas Republican Rep. Ron Estes said he supports the concept of a commission, but opposed the resolution because he thinks its language slants the panel toward Democrats.
The two parties will have an equal number of appointees to the 10-member commission, but House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer will appoint the chair who will control the hiring of staff.
“That doesn’t look bipartisan when in reality it’s weighted toward the speaker and the Democrats’ staff,” said Estes, who voted to block Arizona and Pennsylvania’s electors hours after the attack.
Estes, who represents the Wichita area, also suggested broadening the scope of the panel beyond the Jan. 6 attack.
“If you really want to go back to talking about how poisoned the election environment is nowadays, you can go back to the baseball shooting in 2017, which obviously was a politically-motivated event,” said Estes, referring to when a gunman shot Louisiana Republican Rep. Steve Scalise during a practice for the annual congressional baseball game.
Missouri Republican Rep. Vicky Hartzler similarly said the commission’s scope should expand to include unrest in cities last summer.
“Given the limited scope of the proposed January 6th commission, this attempt at an investigation fails to address the pressing issues facing our nation. Forming a commission to narrowly look at only one incident — while ignoring violent clashes that left cities in ruins — underscores the political motivation behind this push by Democrats, and only seeks to further divide and alienate Americans,” Hartzler said in a statement explaining her no vote.
Hartzler, who is weighing a run for U.S. Senate, was one of eight House members from Missouri and Kansas to support overturning the election.
Another of those members, freshman Kansas Republican Rep. Jake LaTurner, co-sponsored legislation in January to establish a panel and had touted it in an interview as recently as last week.
However, LaTurner voted Wednesday against the bipartisan commission plan, which was drafted by Mississippi Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson and New York Republican Rep. John Katko. LaTurner’s office did not respond to multiple inquiries about his rationale for opposing the proposal, which is similar to the Republican plan he had supported earlier this year.
The Jan. 6 attack took place after weeks of conspiracy mongering by then-President Donald Trump, who still refuses to accept his electoral loss to Biden and has decried the proposed commission as a “Democrat trap.”
In recent weeks, several Republican lawmakers have made comments minimizing the attack on the Capitol.
Georgia Republican Rep. Andrew Clyde claimed last week that the footage resembled a “normal tourist visit” despite the fact that Clyde had been photographed helping barricade the doors of the U.S. House during the riot.
Missouri Democratic Rep. Emanuel Cleaver called the January riot an attack on American democracy and said the establishment of a commission was crucial to ensure the prevention of future attacks.
“As stewards of this democracy, for which millions of Americans have fought, marched, and died, it is absolutely critical that Congress allow an independent bipartisan commission to investigate the insurrection that put the Vice President, Members of Congress, Capitol Police, congressional staffers, and our democracy in grave danger,” Cleaver said in a statement.
“What happened on that day will reverberate in history for future generations to study, and we must ensure that they have the information necessary to understand the circumstances and causes to help prevent any such attack from occurring once again.”
The resolution to establish the commission may run afoul of the Senate’s 60-vote threshold for most legislation after Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, announced his opposition Wednesday.
Missouri Republican Sen. Roy Blunt, a member of McConnell’s leadership team, has repeatedly panned the proposed commission.
Blunt, the top Republican on the Senate Rules Committee, has argued that the multiple committees investigating the attack are already sufficient and that a commission will hamper Congress’ ability to pass needed security reforms quickly.
“I think a commission will actually slow down us doing the things we know we need to do,” Blunt told reporters Tuesday.
Blunt is partnering with Senate Rules Chair Amy Klobuchar, a Minnesota Democrat, and Senate Homeland Security Chair Gary Peters, a Michigan Democrat, on a report about the Jan. 6 attack that will be issued in the near future.
He rejected the notion that Republican opposition stems from political concerns that the inquiry would likely highlight the role of Trump and many GOP lawmakers in promoting conspiracy theories about the 2020 election in the lead-up to the attack.
“Since I’m working on a report with Sen. Klobuchar and Sen. Peters, I think it would be pretty hard to say that’s what I’m doing,” said Blunt, who is not running for re-election in 2022.
Blunt’s Missouri colleague, Republican Sen. Josh Hawley, could face scrutiny from the commission as the first senator to announce an objection to the Electoral College results, a move his critics say contributed to the combustible atmosphere that led to the riot.
“I just think there’s no need to be part of a partisan game on this,” Hawley said, contending the current Senate investigations are sufficient and that the proposed commission will be overly political.
“They want to prolong it,” Hawley said. “What we should be doing is focusing on is what are the facts, what were the security failings before the day, on the day and what do we need to do to change that.”
Bush, the freshman Missouri Democrat who has called for the expulsion of lawmakers who voted to overturn the election, said in a statement that the commission is urgently needed to document the lies that fueled the attack.
“This bipartisan commission will ask the necessary questions to ensure our democracy is safe, and if my Republican colleagues would prefer those questions not be asked, my only question would be: Why not?” Bush said.
This story was originally published May 19, 2021 at 7:14 PM with the headline "House approves Jan. 6 commission. Every Republican from Kansas, Missouri votes no.."
