The Maine House of Representatives passed Tuesday a Democratic proposal to designate the U.S. Capitol riots of Jan. 6, 2021, as a “day to remember,” following floor speeches that included a Republican defending her presence in Washington that day.
The bill from Rep. Rafael Macias, D-Topsham, would direct Maine’s governor to issue an annual proclamation “honoring the resilience of democracy” during that day and encourage Mainers to use the day to reflect on the “values of democracy, civic responsibility and the importance of protecting constitutional governance.”
The House passed the bill 74-65 in a party-line vote Tuesday, with the measure facing further votes in each chamber. Floor speeches laid bare the partisan divides that continue to exist over the Jan. 6 riots in which a mob of President Donald Trump’s supporters breached the U.S. Capitol, assaulted law enforcement officers and disrupted Congress as it tried to certify former President Joe Biden’s victory over Trump in the 2020 election.
Macias, a Navy veteran, said he has always been afforded a level of safety as a service member, but Jan. 6 “was my moment of disillusionment with America and who we deem to be safe and sound.”
“I remember feeling an unfamiliar buzz through my body: dread,” Macias said.
Assistant House Minority Leader Katrina Smith, R-Palermo, said “hundreds of thousands of good American patriots” gathered in Washington, D.C., that day, echoing Trump’s language to say rioter Ashli Babbitt was “murdered” by a police officer who shot her while she attempted to climb through a broken window in the Capitol. Two investigations cleared the officer.
Smith continued on to say that more than 1,500 people were charged in connection with the riot in a “witch hunt led by the Biden administration and a corrupt FBI.” After returning to office this past January, Trump pardoned virtually all of the Capitol riot defendants and commuted their prison sentences, including for violent offenders.
Rep. Barbara Bagshaw, R-Windham, attended Trump’s speech at the Ellipse before rioters breached the Capitol, with the Maine Democratic Party highlighting that as she ran for reelection last year. Bagshaw said the proposal was not needed unless it also memorializes people who “were imprisoned without due process” before Trump pardoned them.
“Facts matter. I was hearing a speech,” Bagshaw said. “I was making my voice heard.”
The proposal would also encourage public libraries, civic groups and schools to observe the day with discussions and programs on the importance of “civic engagement and the rule of law.”
An amendment took out an initial part of the bill that would have also tasked Maine’s archivist with collecting and sharing firsthand accounts of Jan. 6, 2021, from those who witnessed the riots, law enforcement officers, the congressional delegation and others.
