| Among the biggest questions the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack is trying to answer is this: How much involvement, if any, did members of Congress have in the assault on the Capitol? It's a serious, sensitive question, and we don't have any clear answers yet. But there are some lawmakers whose names keep popping up. A Rolling Stone article published Sunday alleges that seven Republican lawmakers did help plan at least the rally immediately before the insurrection, which was held by far-right organizers. Here are some of them: Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) speaks at the Jan. 6 rally. He's wearing body armor underneath his windbreaker. | Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.): He's a firebrand Republican who led the charge in Congress to deny Joe Biden's 2020 election win. Brooks spoke at the rally on Jan. 6 and was wearing body armor that day. He's also running for Senate. On Monday, he said that he didn't help plan the rally but that if his staff did, "quite frankly, I'd be proud of them." (There's a narrow but important distinction, The Post's Philip Bump points out, between the rally on the National Mall where Trump spoke and the insurrection that immediately followed it.) Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo): She's a new member of Congress who had expressed interest in the QAnon extremist ideology, which is based on false claims. She accepted an invitation to speak at the rally but ultimately didn't. And this week, she had to (again) deny that she gave "a reconnaissance tour" of the Capitol to rally organizers the days before, saying she gave the tour to her family. Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.): He's a die-hard Trump supporter who was named by a rally organizer as another lawmaker who helped them put it all together. Rolling Stone accuses Gosar of offering organizers "blanket pardons" over other potential criminal investigations. He hasn't denied involvement. The Post's Aaron Blake has a more detailed rundown of the lawmakers alleged to be involved. Did Trump do everything he could to save lives during the pandemic? "No." That's the answer Deborah Birx, a doctor on Trump's White House coronavirus task force, gave when she privately testified to Congress earlier this month. Her testimony became public today. Deborah Birx, then-White House coronavirus response coordinator, listen to Donald Trump speak in April 2020. | Birx went on to say that she felt the White House was too focused on Trump's reelection. "Distracted" and "complacent" are words she used, reports The Post's Dan Diamond. She estimated that more than 130,000 American lives could have been saved had the White House placed higher priority on stopping the spread of the virus. Why does this matter now, a whole year after Trump lost? Well, he lost in large part because of his handling of the pandemic. That was one of the top issues for voters; Biden won voters who thought it was more important to contain the coronavirus than rebuild the economy, according to exit polls. And he won the election. Congress opens TikTok for the first time ever, basically Officials for TikTok testify Tuesday before the Senate. | Did you know you can buy drugs on Snapchat or TikTok pretty easily? Or that teen girls reported that Instagram makes their body-image issues worse? Or that YouTube had to settle allegations that it illegally collected data on kids watching its videos? If you're a parent of a teen or preteen, the danger — sometimes literally — of social media probably isn't new to you. But it's relatively new to Congress. Today, executives of TikTok and Snapchat testified to Congress for the first time ever, alongside a YouTube official, report The Post's Rachel Lerman and Cristiano Lima. The takeaway? Lawmakers are starting to think seriously about how to regulate social media to make it safer — or at least less damaging — for kids. And expect social media companies to resist that as much as they can. As for what kind of regulations Congress might impose, that is too far down the line to ascertain. Some lawmakers want to expand federal protections for kids' privacy or make it easier to sue these companies. |