Due to the possible threat, from militant groups, Thursday’s congressional hearing on the murder of a black man was canceled and was postponed to Wednesday evening. Bringing the legislation to the floor Wednesday night and canceling votes Thursday amid revelations of new threats to the Capitol, House Democrats will accelerate the passage of a sweeping police reform bill.
In Policing Act of 2021 democrats had initially intended a Thursday vote on the George Floyd Justice They altered the schedule Wednesday, prompted by fears from lawmakers that their physical safety was at risk from conservative militia groups threatening violence at the Capitol on Thursday, according to four Democratic sources familiar with the change.
“[There’s] growing concern about threats to the Capitol and Democratic lawmakers, in particular, tomorrow,” one Democratic lawmaker texted.
Tensions were already high in Washington following the deadly attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, when hundreds of supporters of former President Trump stormed the building in a failed effort to reverse Trump’s election defeat.
Those anxieties spiraled last week when Yogananda Pittman, the acting chief of the Capitol Police, warned lawmakers that certain militia groups that participated in the Jan. 6 rampage were intent on attacking the Capitol again on a date when President Joe Biden would be addressing Congress.
[They] have stated their desires that they want to blow up the Capitol and kill as many members as possible with a direct nexus to the State of the Union,” Pittman told lawmakers.
More recently, law enforcers have identified March 4, as the occasion of an intended attack by right-wing conspiracy theorists who believe Trump will somehow return to the office that day. March 4 is symbolic because it was the date of presidential inaugurations as recently as the 1930s.
The Jan. 6 attack sparked an extraordinary expansion of security measures around Capitol Hill, including an imposing fence — coiled in razor wire — wrapping the entire complex and thousands of National Guard troops who remain on patrol around the grounds. But that hasn’t alleviated the anxieties of many of the lawmakers who were targeted on Jan 6, and remain shaken by the experience.
