Politics

President Joe Biden came to office seeing two sicknesses in his country. Neither has abated a year later. The coronavirus is rampaging like never before, though now from a different variant. The other malady he spoke about from the inaugural stage was one of disunity. It's only intensified since he implored Americans to “end this uncivil war.” He's found some of his lofty ambitions grounded by the unrelenting pandemic, a tough hand in Congress, a harrowing end to the Afghanistan war and rising fears for the future of democracy itself. Biden also has scored notable achievements. Among them is an enormous infrastructure plan to renew foundational elements of American life.

For more than a year, federal prosecutors have been investigating the Capitol riot, and at least 700 people have been charged, mostly with lower-level crimes. So it was stunning when prosecutors last week charged the leader of the far-right militia group known as the Oath Keepers, along with 10 other members or associates, with seditious conspiracy, a rarely-used Civil War-era statute reserved for only the most serious of political criminals. But court documents show how long in the making it was that Donald Trump’s most fervent and dangerous supporters mobilized to subvert the 2020 election results through force and violence, even though there was no widespread election fraud.