- Two yrs just after January 6, the Residence is now on its fourth working day of striving to elect a speaker.
- Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries arranged a bipartisan commemoration of the Capitol assault.
- But it overlapped with a GOP convention connect with, and just one Republican appeared to exhibit up.
On Friday morning, lawmakers collected on the East front techniques of the US Capitol to honor the law enforcement officers who died or were wounded for the duration of the Capitol riot two decades ago to the day.
Just one Republican appeared to exhibit up to the ceremony: Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania.
“I wished to be right here,” Fitzpatrick advised Insider right after the ceremony, saying he didn’t know if he was the only member of his bash on the actions. All members-elect were being invited.
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The 10 am ceremony seemed to overlap with a scheduled 10:15 am conference simply call for Republicans to go over the newest spherical of negotiations in Republican leader Kevin McCarthy’s quest to turn out to be speaker of the Residence. Having said that, the ceremony had mainly concluded by 10:18am.
Fitzpatrick pointed to the simply call as the cause other Republicans, which include management, were being not in attendance. “I could not even see who was there, but I do know there was a connect with relating to this whole speakership detail,” he informed reporters.
Voting has been ongoing given that Tuesday, and as of Friday morning, McCarthy experienced dropped 11 consecutive ballots.
—bryan metzger (@metzgov) January 6, 2023
Through the ceremony, members of Congress honored the 4 officers who lost their lives as the final result of the riot: Capitol Police Officers Brian Sicknick and Howard Leibengood, and DC Metropolitan Police Officers Gunther Hashida, Kyle DeFreytag, and Jeffrey Smith, ringing a bell each time their names had been termed. Sicknick endured violent assaults during the riot, while the four other officers died by suicide in the days and months afterward.
The lawmakers then noticed a 140-second member of silence to commemorate 140 other officers who ended up very seriously injured in the course of the riot.
“Several far more will permanently be scarred by the bloodthirsty violence of the insurrectionist mob,” said Jeffries during the ceremony. “We stand in this article these days with our democracy intact for the reason that of those people officers.”
Fitzpatrick also explained to reporters that the day has a unique resonance for him. On January 6, 2020 — a yr right before the assault — he misplaced his brother, former Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick, to cancer.
“I shed my brother on this working day the calendar year just before. The insurrection happened on the 1 year anniversary,” he explained. “There is just a great deal, a lot of thoughts. It is really a terrible day that we can under no circumstances enable occur once again.”
