OurTupelo

HATTIESBURG — Mike Bianco and a couple of his star players were holding court Sunday in the postgame press conference after Ole Miss finished its 10-0, 5-0 blitzkrieg of Southern Miss in the Hattiesburg Super Regional.

Most questions were directed to Bianco, the 22-year Rebel head coach, and most questions were about what the team’s resurgence has meant to him in a season when he faced unprecedented criticism from his own fans.

At one point, Bianco clearly wanted the line of questioning to go another direction.

“It’s not about me, I mean that,” Bianco said. “I didn’t throw, catch or hit a ball out there. It’s about these guys …”

He’s right. This is college baseball. It should be about the players. It should be all about the spectacular Sunday pitching performance of 19-year-old Tupelo left-hander Hunter Elliott, who pitched like a 29-year-old Major League veteran. It should be about Tim Elko, the still-playing Ole Miss baseball legend, who came back for his senior year because he wanted to go to Omaha — and now he will. It should be about Justin Bench, another senior and the Rebels’ best defender at any number of positions who pounded out three hits against superb Southern Miss pitching.

But today, especially today, the story is Bianco, the winningest coach in Ole Miss history — and a class act — who was roundly criticized on social media, fan websites and from the grandstands. This wasn’t a vocal minority. This was the majority of a fan base.

Bianco says he doesn’t read what he calls “the noise.”

“I’ve learned a long time ago I can’t live in that world,” Bianco said. “I know it’s out there but I try to stay away from it, and I think I do a good job of it.”

Most everybody else reads it and hears it. And all that negativism filtered all the way down to Hattiesburg where Scott Berry, the Southern Miss coach, heard it and was dumbfounded by it.

“Whenever (Bianco) decides it’s time to go, they ought to build a statue at that stadium for all he has achieved,” Berry said. “He’s one of the best around, and he always does it with class.”

This was a bitter defeat for Berry, mind you. His team won 47 games, set attendance records, hosted a regional and then a super regional. But still, he was genuinely happy for Bianco.

“Obviously, we wanted to be the ones going to Omaha,” said Berry, another coach who oozes class. “But if it couldn’t be us, I’m glad it is them. That’s a classy program. I’ll be pulling for them to win the whole thing.”

Bianco and his staff do deserve much of the credit for keeping the Ole Miss ship afloat when a team ranked No. 1 in the nation early in the season fell to 7-14 in the SEC at one point. The question wasn’t whether Ole Miss would make the NCAA Tournament. That seemed utterly impossible. The question was whether they could even win enough games to make the SEC Tournament field and whether they would even finish with a winning record.

Bianco deflected any praise for the turn-around to his senior leaders, to his staff, to the starting pitching prowess of the one-two punch of Dylan Delucia and Elliott and to his coaching staff. He even mentioned a talk former Rebel and Major Leaguer Chris Coughlan gave to his team prior to the Missouri series in May.

Coughlan’s message, said Bianco: “He challenged the guys not to listen to the noise. He said don’t you dare let what people are saying on social media take your mind off your goals. Your job is to win the national championship.”

That remains a distinct possibility, truly incredible when you think back to May 1 when the Rebels had dropped to 24-19 overall and 7-14 in the league.

Here’s the deal: College baseball, as has been written countless times, is all about getting hot at the right time. That time is now, and Ole Miss is a red-hot team. The Rebels have won five straight games against top-shelf opposition. They beat two future professional pitchers here, two guys who have been invited to try out for the U.S. National collegiate team Bianco will coach later this summer.

The Rebels are hitting well, pitching well, fielding well. They appear to have genuinely good team chemistry. Now that Tennessee has been vanquished, the College World Series is wide open.

Stranger things have happened. Heck, stranger things already have. Maybe they’ll start on that Bianco statue later this summer.

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When I was a kid, cartoons taught me to be afraid of quicksand. Now that I’m older, I have discovered it is more dangerous as a metaphor.

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If the state chapter of the NAACP and U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson had gotten their way, little known Naval pilot Michael Cassidy of Meridian could be the Republican nominee for the 3rd District U.S. House seat right now — or at least much closer to being the nominee.

Cassidy won more votes in the three-candidate field during last week’s Republican primary election than did incumbent 3rd District U.S. Rep. Michael Guest, but did not garner the majority of the vote needed to avoid a runoff. The runoff will be June 28.

While Cassidy won the most votes districtwide, Guest, a resident of Rankin County, defeated Cassidy in the metro Jackson counties of Hinds, Madison and Rankin. During congressional redistricting earlier this year, Thompson, the lone Democratic member of the state’s congressional delegation, and the state chapter of the NAACP proposed the portion of Hinds County in the 3rd District and some of south Madison County in the 3rd District be moved to Thompson’s 2nd District.

The Legislature must redraw congressional districts every 10 years based on the U.S. Census to ensure the population of each district is evenly distributed. If state lawmakers had accepted the proposal of Thompson and the NAACP, it would have placed Guest perilously close to losing outright to Cassidy in last week’s Republican primary.

Of course, if Hinds and a portion of Madison County had been removed from the 3rd District, additional people would have had to be added from other areas to make up for the population loss. So it is difficult to say with certainty what the final impact on the election results would have been if all of Hinds and a portion of Madison had been moved from the 3rd District to the 2nd District.

Most likely, the reconfiguration of the 3rd District under the NAACP/Thompson plan still would have resulted in a runoff, but Cassidy would have been closer to avoiding a runoff and would have made life even more uncomfortable for Guest.

At any rate, Guest finds himself in the unenviable position of being an incumbent facing a runoff election. Conventional wisdom is that if an incumbent cannot capture a majority vote in the first election, it will be difficult to do so in a runoff. But the 2014 Senate election in Mississippi proves that it is not an impossible task for an incumbent.

In the 2014 campaign for the U.S. Senate seat in Mississippi, little known state Sen. Chris McDaniel garnered 49.5% of the vote and was less than 3,500 votes short of capturing a majority and upending longtime incumbent Sen. Thad Cochran in the Republican primary.

After that near upset, much of the Republican establishment went to work in support of Cochran, who was considered an icon in Mississippi politics. In addition, many believed Cochran’s seniority in Washington was too valuable for the state to lose.

Normally in runoff elections, the total number of people voting is significantly less than in the first election. But in the Cochran/McDaniel runoff, almost 65,000 more people voted than in the first election. With the large number of additional people coming to the polls, Cochran retained the seat with 51% of the vote.

At the time, McDaniel complained and even filed a lawsuit, claiming people who normally vote Democratic came to the polls to cast a ballot for Cochran in the runoff. Many of these people, he said, were from the city of Jackson or most likely African Americans who normally vote Democratic.

Indeed, anecdotal evidence did indicate that many Black Mississippians, who normally do vote Democratic, weighed all options and decided that they would prefer Cochran over McDaniel, a conservative firebrand, so they went to the polls to vote for the incumbent in the runoff.

McDaniel complained that such a practice is not fair. But in reality, under Mississippi law, people who did not vote in the first primary election can cast a ballot in the runoff.

This past Tuesday, about 50,000 people voted in the 3rd District Republican primary. In the 2018 Republican primary when Guest first was elected, 65,207 people voted.

For the June 28 runoff, Guest and much of the Republican establishment will be looking to find some of those people who voted in 2018 but did not in 2022 to come out and vote for Guest.

In the 2014 Senate runoff, Cochran and his forces found many of those new voters for the runoff in metro Jackson. More than likely, Guest also will be looking hard in metro Jackson for new voters.

But if Thompson and the NAACP had prevailed with their redistricting plan, there would be fewer votes for Guest to pick up in metro Jackson.

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HATTIESBURG — The Ole Miss Rebels won only seven of their first 21 SEC games. They were one and done in the SEC Tournament. They dropped from No. 1 in the nation early in the season to far out of the various college baseball polls.

Many Ole Miss fans were openly calling for Coach Mike Bianco’s dismissal, saying the game had passed him by. Most bracket experts thought the Rebels had little hope, if any, of receiving an at large bid to the NCAA Tournament.

And now, Bianco’s Rebels stand one victory away from the College World Series at Omaha, and that victory could come Sunday.

The Bible had Lazarus. College baseball has Ole Miss.

The Rebels dispatched the Southern Miss Golden Eagles, the No. 11 seed in the tournament and winners of 47 games, 10-0 on Saturday to win the first game of the Hattiesburg Super Regional. The two teams square off again today in the oven Pete Taylor Park becomes this time of the year. Simply put, if Ole Miss wins, Ole Miss goes to Omaha. If Southern Miss wins, they’ll play again Monday at a time to be determined.

The announced attendance was 5,474, of which more than 4,500 were Southern Miss fans. Those gold-clad fans, loud to begin with, were drowned out in the end by the Ole Miss cheering section down the first baseline. The Hotty Toddies had plenty to cheer.

Ole Miss had only one anxious moment. The Rebels led 3-0 when Southern Miss loaded the bases with two outs in the bottom of the fifth. Reece Ewing yanked a Dylan DeLucia pitch down the right field line that cleared the fence right at the foul pole. Foul or fair? Grand slam or loud foul?

Ewing clearly thought it was fair. DeLucia? “Honestly, I didn’t know if it was foul or fair,” DeLucia said. “Sure am glad it was foul.”

It was so close plate umpire Linus Baker called for a video review. After a long delay, the call on the field was upheld. DeLucia, who was only splendid for the Rebels, fanned Ewing with a wicked slider on the next pitch — by far the biggest pitch of the game.

And then Ole Miss scored seven runs in the sixth, and what what looked for a moment like it might be a 4-3 game with Southern Miss leading became a 10-0 Rebel runaway.

Best evidence that the umpires got it right? This: There wasn’t a full-scale riot in the Right Field Roost where hundreds of the most rabid of Southern Miss fans sit, cheer, eat barbecue and have been known to consume more than a few adult beverages.

Your dutiful reporter went right to the source for conclusive evidence. Said a gold-clad fan, between gulps of a Miller Lite, “It was a foul ball — dammit.”

Ole Miss proceeded to do what LSU couldn’t do last weekend. The Rebels beat Southern Miss right-hander Hurston Waldrep, who Bianco said “is going to be a Big Leaguer. He’s terrific.”

Waldrep struck out 12 Rebels in just five innings. But Ole Miss was patient enough at the plate to draw four walks and opportunistic enough to touch Waldrep up for six hits. The Ole Miss legend, also known as Tim Elko, produced two of the hits and knocked in three of the runs.

Meanwhile, DeLucia did what he has been doing since mid-April, which is string zeroes across the scoreboard. Said Bianco of DeLucia, “He not only gives a good chance to win, he gives us a great chance to win. He has pretty much saved our season.”

Said Southern Miss coach Scott Berry, “We had our chances, but that young man really stepped up for them. He pitched really well.”

DeLucia went 5.2 innings, throwing 108 pitches and allowing only four hits. Jack Dougherty then pitched 3.1 innings of hitless relief. This was a Super Regional billed by many as Ole Miss’ superb hitting against Southern Miss’ exceptional pitching. DeLucia and Dougherty, at least for one game, have rewritten that script. Ole Miss can pitch it, too.

We’ve come to expect such heroics from the likes of Elko and DeLucia. But to win at this time of the year in college baseball, a team needs help from where you don’t necessarily expect it. Enter little-used third baseman Garrett Wood, who hit a run-scoring double, scored a run himself and walked three times. Not bad for a guy known as a defensive replacement.

Of Wood, Bianco said, “It’s really cool. … Good things happen to good people and that is certainly the case here. He’s one of the most popular guys on our team. Everybody loves him. He’s always upbeat, always a smile on his face.”

Anybody who believes this Super Regional is a done deal now hasn’t been paying attention. Southern Miss was in a worse situation last weekend in the Hattiesburg Regional when, after a Saturday night loss to LSU, the Golden Eagles had to come back and win three games in two days and beat LSU twice in the process.

“We’ve had our backs against the wall before,” Berry said. ”We’re not ready to be done with this season. We have the pitching to still win this thing. We’ve just got to start hitting.”

Somebody asked Bianco if his Rebels might be looking ahead to Omaha. Bianco smiled as if break into laughter.

“Really,” he answered. “I don’t think they are looking ahead to anything. They know what they are playing for. You don’t have to remind them.”

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A telehealth company focused on providing affordable access to birth control is expanding into Mississippi next week. 

Twentyeight Health is based in New York and currently works in 33 states. Mississippi will bring that number to 34.

According to co-founder Amy Fan, over 200,000 women in Mississippi are living in contraceptive deserts, or counties where the number of health care providers offering the full range of birth control methods is not enough to meet the needs of the women eligible for publicly funded contraception. 

To use Twentyeight Health, patients first fill out a medical questionnaire online that recommends birth control options. They are then connected with an out-of-state physician who is licensed to practice in Mississippi. The physician writes the prescription, and their birth control is then mailed to them discreetly. 

The patient can message the physician who wrote their prescription or schedule a phone consultation at any point at no additional cost to answer any questions they might have. 

“That’s actually something really important to our users, whether they’re living with roommates, or live in a multi-generational household, that they’re still able to engage with clinicians remotely, but in a way that feels private and discreet for them,” said Fan. 

Fan said it’s important for women to have access to doctors who look like them. All of Twentyeight’s doctors are women, and 75% are women of color. Nearly half speak Spanish. 

The company charges an annual $20 doctor evaluation fee to use its service. The birth control itself typically costs nothing if the patient has insurance, including Medicaid, but there is a low-cost out-of-pocket option for uninsured patients. 

In Mississippi, Twentyeight’s services will only be available to patients ages 18 and up. 

Fan said that they’ve wanted to bring the company to Mississippi for awhile, but it has taken time to get the licenses needed to operate in the state. 

Mississippi law requires all health insurance and employee benefit plans to cover telemedicine services to the same extent they would an in-person visit. 

Fan said Mississippi has the potential to be a high-impact service area for the company due to the lack of health care access, including sexual and reproductive health care. 

“Unfortunately, Mississippi has one of the highest rates of unintended pregnancies,” Fan said. “And if we’re able to provide birth control more in a more readily accessible way, hopefully individuals who do not want to either start or grow their family at this moment are able to have control over their own timelines.”

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WINONA – It has been 59 years since Euvester Simpson returned to the city where police arrested and beat her and five voting rights activists in the former county jail.

The then-17-year-old remembers seeing Fannie Lou Hamer after the beating and how black and blue the woman’s hands were. Simpson tended to Hamer’s injuries by applying a cold rag to parts of her body. 

On Thursday, a multiracial group gathered to unveil a historical marker from the Mississippi Department of Archives and History at the former Montgomery County jail site at the corner of Oak Drive and Sterling Avenue. Over 100 people watched Simpson and Hamer’s daughter Jacqueline Hamer Flakes pull a covering off of the marker.

“Being here today, she accomplished what she was here to do,” Hamer Flakes said about the commemoration and historical marker, which are part of her mother’s legacy. 

The unveiling kicked off four days of events called Bridging Winona, which are meant to remember the violence at the jail and commemorate Hamer and the voting rights activists.

“The bridging of Winona can be a model for other towns not just in Mississippi, but all across this country,” said Simpson, who is now 75. 

Bridging Winona organizer Vickie Roberts-Ratliff, whose family has lived in Winona for six generations, was one of about 10 people who worked with city officials to get the historical marker and organize the commemorative events. 

“It goes back to knowing what your history is,” she said. “It can be difficult to peel it back, but it can be healing.”

Roberts-Ratliff was an infant when Hamer and other activists were beaten at the jail, and she didn’t learn about what happened in Winona until later in life.

She tried previously to get a historical marker for Hamer at the former jail site, but those efforts were not successful. 

During last year’s city elections, a new mayor, Aaron Dees, and members of the Board of Aldermen were elected. She approached Dees, who agreed to work with her. 

He agreed that the city was missing the mark by not acknowledging what happened to Hamer and the activists. Dees said a historical marker should have already been installed. 

“This is a time to bring the whole community together – every racial background, every ethnic background,” he said. “Hopefully we can take this and move forward with this.” 

The marker now stands as a reminder of the infamous violent events that occurred here nearly 60 years ago. In 1963, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee organizers Hamer, Simpson, Annell Ponder, June Johnson, James West and Rosemary Freeman were returning by bus to Greenwood from a voter education workshop in South Carolina. Members of the group got off the bus when it stopped in Winona and went to a lunch counter where they were refused service. The bus terminal area was segregated and they attempted to integrate it.

A Mississippi Highway Patrol trooper tried to get the activists to leave. Local police came and arrested them. Hamer got off the bus to see what was happening to her colleagues, and was arrested too. 

Hamer Flakes, the youngest and only living daughter of Hamer, said at the jail, her mother heard screaming and crying from 15-year-old activist Annelle Ponder, who refused to address the officers as ‘sir.’ She was beaten until her dress was soaked with blood, according to SNCC. 

SNCC leader Lawrence Guyot, who came to the jail to post bail for the group, was also beaten.

A sheriff’s deputy beat Hamer with a billy club and then ordered two inmates at the jail to beat her with the club until they were too tired, Hamer Flakes said. The deputy also beat Hamer in the head, her daughter said. 

Hamer sustained injuries to her kidney and eye from the violence that were with her for the rest of her life, her daughter said. 

“It’s amazing how she went through that beating but came out stronger than ever,” Hamer Flakes said. 

The U.S. Department of Justice tried five Montgomery County law enforcement officers. They were acquitted by an all-male, all-white jury in December 1963, according to SNCC. 

Hamer was born in 1917 in Montgomery County and lived in Ruleville in Sunflower County. She was the daughter of sharecroppers and a former plantation worker who began organizing in her 40s. 

In 1962, Hamer and a group traveled to the Indianola courthouse to register to vote and were given literary tests. The day later she was fired from her plantation job. 

Hamer joined SNCC and helped organize voter registration drives, including during the 1964 Freedom Summer. 

She stepped into other forms of organizing, including through politics when she helped found the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. Hamer and activists traveled to the 1964 Democratic National Convention and delivered a speech asking the party to be recognized. In her speech to the DNC, Hamer shared her experience of violence in Winona. 

In Ruleville, she founded the Freedom Farm Cooperative to help Black farmers grow produce to be financially self-sufficient. 

Hamer, who died in 1977, has been commemorated in Ruleville, including through a sign marker along the Mississippi Freedom Trail and a statue of her and a memorial garden where she and her husband Perry are buried. There is also the Fannie Lou Hamer Civil Rights Museum in Belzoni. 

Oxford-based nonprofit Land Literary and Legacy, which Roberts-Ratliff is a member of, was part of organizing the Bridging Winona events. The group’s goal is to create awareness about the importance of local and national history through education and building community. 

In April, Dees signed a proclamation designating June 9 as Fannie Lou Hamer Day – the same day she and the activists were beaten at the jail. 

The goal is not to forget what happened in Winona, but to bring closure and use lessons from the past in the future, Dees said.

He hopes to see a day declared for Hamer at the state and national level. Hamer Flakes said she would like to see an annual Fannie Lou Hamer day in Ruleville. 

On Thursday after the marker unveiling, the community celebrated at the Winona Community House with live music, food and children’s activities. There were also oral history interviews conducted and people were able to register to vote. 

A Friday morning event at Winona Baptist Church focused on land ownership. Representatives from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the National Park Service talked about sustainable agriculture, forestry, economic development and other issues.

Other commemoration events planned for the weekend are:

• Saturday 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.: Fannie Lou Hamer legacy historical bus tour across the Delta. The cost is $95 and lunch is provided. Register on Eventbrite. 
• Sunday 4 p.m.: Fannie Lou Hamer community health service at Winona Baptist Church. This is a free event and registration is suggested on Eventbrite.

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The eyes of the world were on Rep. Bennie Thompson, the longtime congressman from Mississippi, on Thursday night as the special House committee he chairs held a prime-time hearing regarding the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Thompson’s bipartisan committee began laying out a seven-point case Thursday night they say will show former President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn his defeat and keep himself in office.

“Donald Trump was at the center of that conspiracy,” Thompson said. “And ultimately, Donald Trump — the president of the United States — spurred a mob of domestic enemies of the Constitution to march down the Capitol and subvert American democracy.”

The committee showed dramatic video of how the Proud Boys, a right-wing extremist group, led the attack on the Capitol. They also heard the emotional testimony of a U.S. Capitol Police officer who suffered a brain injury during the attack.

“What I saw was a war scene,” said Caroline Edwards, one of the more than 150 officers injured in the rampage. “I saw officers on the ground. They were bleeding. They were throwing up … I was slipping in people’s blood … it was carnage, it was chaos.”

Before the hearing — broadcast live on nearly every major American network with the exception of Fox News — began, Thompson convened the meeting with a powerful speech.

Below is a transcript of his remarks.

“Thanks to everyone watching tonight for sharing part of your evening, to learn about the facts and causes of the events leading up to and including the violent attack on January 6th, 2021 — on our democracy, electoral system, and country. 

I am Bennie Thompson, chairman of the January 6, 2021, Committee. I was born, raised and still live in Bolton, Mississippi, a town with a population of 521, which is midway between Jackson and Vicksburg, Mississippi, and the Mississippi River. 

I am from a part of the country where people justified the actions of slavery, the Ku Klux Klan and lynching. I’m reminded of that dark history as I hear voices today try and justify the actions of the insurrectionists on January 6, 2021. 

Over the next few weeks, hopefully you will get to know the other members, my colleagues up here, and me. We represent a diversity of communities from all over the United States — rural areas and cities — east coast, west coast, and the heartland. 

All of us have one thing in common: We swore the same oath. The same oath that all members of Congress take upon taking office and afterward every two years if they are reelected. We swore an oath to defend the Constitution against all enemies — foreign and domestic. 

The words of the current oath taken by all of us — that nearly every United States government employee takes — have their roots in the Civil War. Throughout our history, the United States has fought against foreign enemies to preserve our democracy, electoral system, and country. 

When the United States Capitol was stormed and burned in 1814, foreign enemies were responsible. Afterward, in 1862, when American citizens had taken up arms against this country, Congress adopted a new oath to help make sure no person who had supported the rebellion could hold a position of public trust. Therefore, congresspersons and U.S. federal government employees were required for the first time to swear an oath to defend the Constitution against all enemies — foreign and domestic. 

That oath was put to the test on January 6, 2021. 

The police officers who held the line that day honored their oaths. Many came out of that day bloodied and broken. They still bear those wounds, visible and invisible. They did their duty. They repelled the mob and ended the occupation of the Capitol. They defended the Constitution against domestic enemies so that Congress could return, uphold our own oaths, and count your votes to ensure the transfer of power — just as we’ve done for hundreds of years. 

But unlike in 1814, it was domestic enemies of the Constitution who stormed and occupied the Capitol, who sought to thwart the will of the people, to stop the transfer of power. And they did so at the encouragement of the president of the United States. The president of the United States, trying to stop the transfer of power — a precedent that had stood for 220 years, even as our democracy has faced its most difficult tests. 

Thinking back again to the Civil War, in the summer of 1864, the president of the United States was staring down what he believed would be a doomed bid for reelection. He believed his opponent, General George McClellan, would wave the white flag when it came to preserving the Union. 

But even with that grim fate hanging in the balance, President Lincoln was ready to accept the will of the voters, come what may. He made a quiet pledge. He wrote down the words, “This morning, as for some days past, it seems exceedingly probable that this Administration will not be re-elected. Then it will be my duty to so cooperate with the president elect….” It will be my duty. 

Lincoln sealed that memo and asked his cabinet secretaries to sign it, sight unseen. He asked them to make the same commitment he did: to accept defeat if indeed defeat was the will of the people. To uphold the rule of law. To do what every other president who came before him did, and what every president who followed him would do. 

Until Donald Trump. 

Donald Trump lost the presidential election in 2020. The American people voted him out of office. It was not because of a rigged system. It was not because of voter fraud. Don’t believe me? Hear what his former attorney general had to say about it, and I’ll warn those watching that this contains strong language. 

Bill Barr. On Election Day 2020, he was attorney general of the United States — the top law enforcement official in the country, telling the president exactly what he thought about claims of a stolen election.

Donald Trump had his days in court to challenge the results. He was within his rights to seek those judgments. In the United States, law-abiding citizens have those tools for pursuing justice. He lost in the courts just as he did at the ballot box. And in this country, that’s the end of the line. 

But for Donald Trump, that was only the beginning of what became a sprawling, multi-step conspiracy aimed at overturning the presidential election, aimed at throwing out the votes of millions of Americans — your votes, your voice in our democracy — and replacing the will of the American people with his will to remain in power after his term ended. 

Donald Trump was at the center of that conspiracy. And ultimately, Donald Trump — the president of the United States — spurred a mob of domestic enemies of the Constitution to march down the Capitol and subvert American democracy. 

Any legal jargon you hear about “seditious conspiracy,” “obstruction of an official proceeding,” “conspiracy to defraud the United States” boils down to this: January 6 was the culmination of an attempted coup. A brazen attempt, as one rioter put it shortly after January 6, “to overthrow the government.” 

The violence was no accident. It represented Trump’s last, most desperate chance to halt the transfer of power. 

Now, you may hear those words and think, “This is just another political attack on Donald Trump by people who don’t like him.” That’s not the case. My colleagues and I all wanted an outside, independent commission to investigate January 6, similar to what we had after 9/11. 

But after first agreeing to the idea, Donald Trump’s allies in Congress put a stop to it. Apparently, they don’t want January 6 investigated at all. 

And, in the last 17 months, many of those same people have tried to whitewash what happened on January 6 — to rewrite history, call it a tourist visit, label it “legitimate political discourse.” 

Donald Trump and his followers have adopted the words of the songwriter: “Do you believe me or your lying eyes?”

We can’t sweep what happened under the rug. The American people deserve answers. 

So I come before you this evening not as a Democrat, but as an American who swore an oath to defend the Constitution. The Constitution doesn’t protect just Democrats or just Republicans. It protects all of us. “We the People.” 

And this scheme was an attempt to undermine the will of the people.”

READ MORE: Rep. Bennie Thompson, leading the public Jan. 6 hearings, has long worked to protect democracy

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