Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, said on Thursday that the House had acted “appropriately” in impeaching President Trump, signaling possible support for convicting him at a Senate trial in a statement that called his actions “unlawful” and said that they warranted consequences.
Ms. Murkowski said the second impeachment of Mr. Trump stood “in stark contrast” to the first, which she and virtually every other Republican opposed. She said Mr. Trump had perpetuated “false rhetoric that the election was stolen and rigged” and launched a “pressure campaign against his own vice president, urging him to take actions that he had no authority to do.”
And though Ms. Murkowski did not commit to finding the president guilty, saying she would listen carefully to the arguments on both sides, she strongly suggested that she was inclined to do so.
“On the day of the riots, President Trump’s words incited violence, which led to the injury and deaths of Americans — including a Capitol Police officer — the desecration of the Capitol, and briefly interfered with the government’s ability to ensure a peaceful transfer of power,” Ms. Murkowski said.
Her remarks came the day after the House — with support from 10 Republicans — impeached the president on a single charge of “incitement of insurrection,” and as Republicans faced the prospect of a trial that could begin as soon as next week.
Republicans were racing to gauge the political dynamics of a vote to convict Mr. Trump, which would open the door to disqualifying him from holding office in the future. Most of them kept their powder dry publicly, but were privately struggling to reconcile their own disdain for the leader they supported loyally for years and their fear of a backlash from a political base more devoted to Mr. Trump than any other party figure.
Though few Republicans had gone on record in such stinging terms, Ms. Murkowski was not alone in breaking from the president. Senators Mitt Romney of Utah, Ben Sasse of Nebraska, Patrick J. Toomey of Pennsylvania and Susan Collins of Maine had spoken out harshly against Mr. Trump, leaving colleagues to speculate that they could vote to convict him and bar him from ever holding office again.
Even Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, indicated to colleagues that he was undecided about whether to convict Mr. Trump, and privately told advisers he approved of the impeachment drive and believed it could help the party purge Mr. Trump.
Others in the party, led by Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, were pushing back hard against a conviction, warning it would harm the party and the country, as federal authorities cautioned about continued violent threats from pro-Trump extremists.
With Mr. McConnell sending mixed signals about where he would come down, Republican strategists and seniors aides on Capitol Hill believed he could ultimately swing the result one way or another. If all senators voted, it would take 17 Republicans joining all Democrats to convict Mr. Trump. If they did, it would only take a vote by a simple majority of senators to disqualify Mr. Trump from ever holding office again.
President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. on Thursday proposed a $1.9 trillion rescue package to combat the economic downturn and the Covid-19 crisis, outlining the type of sweeping aid that Democrats have demanded for months and signaling the shift in the federal government’s pandemic response as Mr. Biden prepares to take office next week.
The package includes more than $400 billion to combat the pandemic directly, including money to accelerate vaccine deployment and to safely reopen most schools within 100 days. Another $350 billion would help state and local governments bridge budget shortfalls, while the plan would also include $1,400 direct payments to individuals, more generous unemployment benefits, federally mandated paid leave for workers and large subsidies for child care costs.
“During this pandemic, millions of Americans, through no fault of their own, have lost the dignity and respect that comes with a job and a paycheck,” Mr. Biden said in a speech to the nation on Tuesday evening. “There is real pain overwhelming the real economy.”
He acknowledged the high price tag but said the nation could not afford to do anything less. “The very health of our nation is at stake,” Mr. Biden said, speaking from Delaware. “We have to act and we have to act now.”
Here are some of the highlights of Mr. Biden’s so-called American Rescue Plan:
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The “rescue” proposal would be financed entirely through increased federal borrowing, and flows from the idea that the virus and the recovery are intertwined.
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The $20 billion “national vaccine program” he announced envisions nationwide community vaccination centers.
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He also called for a “public health jobs program” that would address his goals of bolstering the economy and the Covid-19 response while also rebuilding the nation’s public health infrastructure. The proposal would fund 100,000 public health workers to engage in vaccine outreach and contact tracing.
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To address the racial disparities in health exposed by the coronavirus pandemic, which has disproportionately claimed the lives of people of color, he pledged to increase funding for community health centers, and also intends to fund efforts to mitigate the pandemic in prisons and jails, where African-Americans and Latinos are overrepresented.
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Mr. Biden proposed a wide range of efforts to help those who have suffered the most under the economic shutdowns, including emergency paid leave to 106 million Americans, regardless of the size of their employer, and extending tax credits to many families to offset up to $8,000 in annual child care costs.
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The plan gives billions of dollars in aid to renters struggling to keep up with mounting unpaid liabilities to landlords, and it would give grants to millions of the hardest-hit small businesses.
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The proposal would temporarily increase the size of two tax credits in a manner that would effectively provide more cash from the government to low-income workers and families.
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Mr. Biden called on Congress to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour, and he proposed extending expanded unemployment benefits through the end of September, with an extra $400 weekly supplement.
Several people on a terrorist watch list were in Washington last week for pro-Trump events that ultimately devolved into the assault on the Capitol, according to a government official briefed on the Justice Department investigation into the riot.
Most are suspected white supremacists, according to The Washington Post, which first reported on their status on the list. It was not clear how many people on the watch list were part of the mob that stormed the Capitol.
But their presence in Washington last week adds to the urgent questions about security preparations for the events of Jan. 6, ahead of which thousands of supporters of President Trump had vowed to travel to Washington to disrupt, even violently, the congressional certification of the Electoral College results of President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s win.
The people were listed on the government’s main terrorism watch list, the Terrorism Screening Database, one of several databases of people that law enforcement and intelligence officials have deemed to be “known or suspected terrorists.” The tool has undergone explosive growth in the era following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
As the lists were rapidly growing over a decade ago, the F.B.I. distributed guidance to its field offices that says agents may nominate someone to be considered a “known or suspected terrorist” if they have particular negative information to support their suspicions, like an allegation that the suspect has terrorism ties that is corroborated by at least one other source. But mere guesses or hunches, the bureau said at the time, are not enough.
The Terrorism Screening Database is maintained by the F.B.I.’s Terrorist Screening Center. Some of the data used by the Terrorist Screening Center comes from a larger database maintained by the National Counterterrorism Center, an interagency clearinghouse for intelligence about potential terrorist threats.
Being on the watch list can restrict people from entering the country, deny them government benefits or contracts, and subject them to greater scrutiny at airports and by the police. A subset of the people on the watch list are also placed on the so-called no-fly list, which bars them from being aboard planes in American airspace.
The vast majority of people included in the database are foreigners abroad, but some are American citizens or lawful permanent residents. Court records suggest that in 2017, the F.B.I.’s Terrorism Screening Database had about 1.2 million people in it, including about 4,600 such American or green-card holders. The government has said a broader database of terrorism suspects called the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment had about 1.6 million names in it, of which about 16,000 were Americans.
A man seen holding a Confederate battle flag, a person identified as striking a police officer with a flagpole and a retired firefighter identified as having thrown a fire extinguisher at officers were among those arrested Thursday for their role in the riot at the U.S. Capitol last week.
The arrests come as the F.B.I. has received more than 126,000 photographic and video tips and as agents have scrubbed airline passenger manifests and video of air travelers to and from Washington to find potential suspects. The top federal prosecutor in Washington said this week that he expected the number of people charged with crimes tied to the Capitol riot to rise into the hundreds.
The man who was photographed holding a Confederate battle flag inside the U.S. Capitol during the riot was arrested in Delaware, two law enforcement officials said. The man, Kevin Seefried, was wanted by the F.B.I., which had sought help from the public to identify him and had widely circulated a dispatch plastered with images of him.
In a bulletin, the agency said that it was looking for assistance to identify individuals “who made unlawful entry” into the Capitol, including Mr. Seefried.
According to court documents, Mr. Seefried and his son, Hunter Seefried, were identified after the F.B.I. received a report from a co-worker of Hunter Seefried that said the man had bragged about being in the Capitol with his father on January 6.Mr. Seefried’s son was also charged.
A retired firefighter from Chester, Pa., was also arrested on Thursday after he was identified as the man seen in a video throwing a fire extinguisher at police officers during the riot. The man, Robert Sanford, is charged with assaulting a law enforcement officer engaged in the performance of official duties and civil disorder among other crimes.
Mr. Sanford went to the Capitol following “the president’s instructions,” a complaining witness told the F.B.I.
Another man was charged on Thursday after law enforcement officials identified him as the person seen repeatedly striking an officer with a flagpole on the stairs of the Capitol in a video posted on Twitter. That man, Peter Stager of Arkansas, was charged with obstructing law enforcement, according to the criminal complaint.
The complaint also identified Mr. Stager as saying in another video posted on Twitter that everyone in the Capitol “is a treasonous traitor” and that “death is the only remedy for what’s in that building.”
Also on Thursday, an employee with Cleveland public schools was charged with entering and committing unlawful activities on the grounds of the Capitol. The woman, Christine Priola, was traced through an anonymous tip to the F.B.I. after she was recognized in photographs posted to Twitter, according to court documents.
Photos from last Wednesday showed Ms. Priola inside the Capitol and holding a sign that read, “The children cry out for justice,” which law enforcement later recovered from her home. She resigned from her position as an occupational therapist the next day, according to a copy of her resignation letter that was obtained by Cleveland’s Fox 8 News, in which she espoused a number of conspiracy theories.
Federal investigators working to apprehend and charge the hundreds of people connected to last week’s assault on the Capitol are focusing on any military and law enforcement personnel who may have been involved in the attack, according to a law enforcement official.
Investigators also have yet to find any evidence that any member of Congress helped coordinate the siege, as one prominent leader of a pro-Trump group has claimed, but are scrutinizing those leads. The official cautioned that the investigation is sprawling and that all leads need to be carefully vetted.
The F.B.I. and Justice Department have already arrested several suspects who were captured in photographs inside the Capitol, including Kevin Seefried, a man who was photographed holding a Confederate battle flag; Jake Angeli, a well-known QAnon conspiracy theorist who was seen carrying a spear and wearing a fur headdress with horns; and Robert Keith Packer, who was photographed wearing a “Camp Auschwitz” sweatshirt.
Other insurrectionists moved through the chaos inside the building in tight military formation, using hand signals and wearing tactical gear, and investigators are seeking to determine whether they were working together or whether any had ties to law enforcement or the military.
But the law enforcement official said that it was too soon to expect a raft of conspiracy charges. Such cases can be tough to prove in court, and investigators would need to seek additional evidence of coordination, such as financial ties, planning around logistics and travel or messages between any alleged group members.
On Thursday, the Justice Department charged two off-duty police officers from Rocky Mount, Va., Jacob Fracker and Thomas Robertson, with unlawful entry and disorderly conduct in connection with the riots.
Mr. Robertson said on social media that the media and the left were upset because “we actually attacked the government who is the problem and not some random small business,” according to the criminal complaint. “Keep poking us,” Mr. Robertson warned.
In a nod to concerns that members of the military might have been involved in or supported the Capitol riots, the military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff issued an unusual message to all military personnel this week, reminding them that President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. would soon be their commander-in-chief and that they must continue to defend the Constitution.
The Defense Department declined on Thursday to directly address whether members of the military were involved in attacking the Capitol. “We in the Department of Defense are doing everything we can to eliminate extremism,” said Garry Reid, the Pentagon’s director for defense intelligence. He said that all members of the military, including members of the National Guard, go through extensive screening for participation in hate groups and militias.
Federal authorities are investigating several Bitcoin donations made to right-wing figures ahead of the assault on the Capitol last week, according to a person briefed on the investigation who was not authorized to speak publicly about it.
A single donor from France appears to have sent around $500,000 in Bitcoin in early December to several figures involved in far right activist circles, according to an investigation published Thursday by the cryptocurrency data firm Chainalysis.
Authorities are looking into whether the donations were linked to the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol. The existence of the investigation was first reported by Yahoo News.
The single largest donation that Chainalysis found, which was worth around $250,000 at the time, went to a Bitcoin wallet owned by Nick Fuentes, a white supremacist who was at the Capital building on Jan. 6 and who called for violence before the event.
Mr. Fuentes has previously mocked journalists on Twitter who asked him about his involvement in the event.
Other donations went to the right-wing social media network Gab and the neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer, Chainalysis said. By Jan. 6, the value of the donations had grown because of the soaring price of Bitcoin.
The donor appears to have been a French programmer with clear right-wing sympathies, Chainalysis found.
The technology behind Bitcoin makes it possible to hold and send money in ways that governments are unable to regulate or stop. This has made it popular with rogue governments and terrorist groups, along with many right-wing activists who have been blocked from using traditional payment networks.
Fallout roundup
With less than a week to go before the presidential inauguration, the police force charged with protecting the grounds of the Capitol is in crisis, as law enforcement agencies across the city brace for more potentially violent gatherings, based on intelligence reviewed in recent days.
The chief of the Capitol Police and two other top security officials resigned after an angry mob of Trump loyalists stormed the Capitol last week.
Three officers have been suspended, and 17 more are under investigation, according to a senior Congressional aide, including an officer who took selfies with people in the crowd and another who wore a “Make America Great Again” Trump hat and directed rioters into the Capitol. And lawmakers have demanded a full investigation into what some have referred to as a “severe systemic failure.”
Currently, the Capitol complex, which is usually a bevy of activity, is cut off from its surroundings by National Guard troops and an imposing backdrop of seven-foot-tall, unscalable fencing.
Here are other developments in the fallout from the Capitol siege:
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A bipartisan group of lawmakers introduced a bill in the House on Thursday to award Eugene Goodman, a Capitol Police officer, the Congressional Gold Medal because of his efforts to keep the violent mob of Trump supporters from accessing the Senate last week. Mr. Goodman was captured on video running up the stairs in the Capitol.
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The F.B.I. has warned police departments across the country to be on high alert for extremist activity and violence in their communities ahead of the inauguration next week. It also cautioned law enforcement agencies to look for armed militias and extremists who want to trigger a race war.
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The Government Accountability Office, a nonpartisan federal watchdog agency, signaled that it would look into what role, if any, members of Congress may have played in inciting the mob of Trump supporters who breached metal barricades and shattered windows on Jan. 6, seeking to overturn the results of the election.
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The Girl Scouts of Greater New York announced this week that they were trying to get out of a 15-year lease in a Manhattan building owned by the Trump Organization. Meridith Maskara, chief executive of the Girl Scouts chapter, said it was “a matter of very high priority.”
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A member of the Arizona House of Representatives filed a formal ethics complaint against another member who participated in the protest last Wednesday. Representative César Chávez, a Democrat, called on the House Ethics Committee to investigate Representative Mark Finchem, a Republican, and to recommend Mr. Finchem’s expulsion “should it find that he supported the violent overthrow of our government.”
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PepsiCo announced on Thursday that it was suspending all donations from its corporate political action committee, adding to the list of dozens of companies that have come out with some sort of halt on political giving since last week’s violence at the Capitol.
A group of President Trump’s most strident allies in the House is calling on Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the No. 3 Republican, to resign from her leadership post after she voted to impeach Mr. Trump, dramatizing the bitter rifts within the party and setting up a messy internal feud that could define its future.
Members of the ultraconservative Freedom Caucus, including the chairman, Representative Andy Biggs of Arizona, as well as Representatives Jim Jordan of Ohio and Matt Gaetz of Florida, are circulating a petition calling on Ms. Cheney to step down from her role as chairwoman of the House Republican Conference, arguing that her vote to impeach Mr. Trump had “brought the conference into disrepute and produced discord.”
Ms. Cheney was one of 10 Republicans to break with the party on Wednesday and vote to charge the president with “incitement of insurrection” for his role in urging on a mob that stormed the Capitol.
“One of those 10 cannot be our leader,” Mr. Gaetz said in an interview on Fox News’s “Hannity” on Wednesday evening. “It is untenable, unsustainable, and we need to make a leadership change.”
Ms. Cheney has brushed aside calls to step down, saying that she was “not going anywhere” and calling her break with Mr. Trump “a vote of conscience.” Several Republicans, including some members of the Freedom Caucus, have begun to circle the wagons around her.
“The entire party would be wise to heed the words of Ronald Reagan: ‘The person who agrees with you 80 percent of the time is a friend and an ally, not a 20 percent traitor,’” said Representative Michael Burgess, Republican of Texas. “Yesterday, Republicans jumped on the calls for unity and healing no matter how they decided to vote. Removing Liz from her leadership position would be divisive and a distraction we cannot afford.”
Representative Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, who also voted to impeach Mr. Trump, said that Ms. Cheney in the last week had “gained immeasurable respect,” and suggested that it was Republicans like Mr. Jordan who should be shoved aside in the wake of the siege and the impeachment it prompted.
“Since the discussion is opened, though, we may have to also have a discussion about who in our party fomented this, and their roles as ranking members,” he said.
The debate over Ms. Cheney’s leadership post reflects the deep fractures in the Republican Party over Mr. Trump, who has demanded total loyalty from his party and, up until recently, largely received it.
While prominent figures have recoiled from Mr. Trump’s incendiary brand of politics in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 riot, worrying that it could spell ruin for their party, a large minority faction — many of them in the House — remains unwilling to abandon him. Republicans are scrambling to determine the political consequences of doing so, and whether they would pay a steeper political price for breaking with the president or for failing to.
Senate Republicans are facing just such a dilemma as they contemplate how to vote in an impeachment trial that could start as early as next week.
Both Representatives Kevin McCarthy of California, the minority leader, and Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the minority whip, voted against impeaching Mr. Trump, though Mr. McCarthy said the president bore responsibility for the siege and deserved a censure.
Ms. Cheney, by contrast, had issued a scathing statement the day before the impeachment vote in which she said: “There has never been a greater betrayal by a president of the United States of his office and his oath to the Constitution.”
But she chose not to speak during debate on the House floor. Many Democrats — who have long reviled her and her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney — quoted her approvingly in their own speeches.
Minutes after the House voted to impeach President Trump a second time, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, threw cold water on the prospect of the Senate beginning an impeachment trial before Mr. Biden’s inauguration next Wednesday. He endorsed a later start to the proceedings and in effect handed responsibility for the process to Democrats, who will soon control the chamber.
“Given the rules, procedures, and Senate precedents that govern presidential impeachment trials, there is simply no chance that a fair or serious trial could conclude before President-elect Biden is sworn in next week,” Mr. McConnell said. “In light of this reality, I believe it will best serve our nation if Congress and the executive branch spend the next seven days completely focused on facilitating a safe inauguration and an orderly transfer of power to the incoming Biden administration.”
Here’s what we know about what happens next.
How does the impeachment process work?
After the House has impeached the president — the equivalent of an indictment in a criminal case — members of the Senate consider whether to remove him, holding a trial in which senators act as the jury. The test, as set by the Constitution, is whether the president has committed “treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors.”
How can the Senate hold a trial if Trump is out of office?
There is no precedent for the Senate holding an impeachment trial after a president has left office, but it has done so for other government officials.
Democrats who control the House can choose when to send their article of impeachment to the Senate, at which point that chamber would have to immediately move to begin the trial. But even if the House transmitted the charge to the other side of the Capitol right away, an agreement between Republican and Democratic leaders in the Senate would be needed to take it up before Jan. 19, a day before Mr. Biden is inaugurated.
Since Mr. McConnell said on Wednesday that he would not agree, the trial cannot start until after Mr. Biden is president. That could clog the Senate floor in the early days of Mr. Biden’s administration, at a time when he will be eager to have the chamber confirm members of his cabinet.
Would impeaching Trump disqualify him from holding office again?
Conviction in an impeachment trial would not automatically disqualify Mr. Trump from future public office.
But if the Senate were to convict him, the Constitution allows a subsequent vote to bar an official from holding “any office of honor, trust or profit under the United States.” That vote would require only a simple majority of senators.
There is no precedent, however, for disqualifying a president from future office, and the issue could end up before the Supreme Court.
A low-profile deputy defense secretary will be the lone Trump holdover running the Pentagon until President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s defense secretary pick is confirmed, according to transition officials. Mr. Biden is also planning to install John F. Kirby — the former spokesman for John Kerry when he was secretary of state, Chuck Hagel when he was defense secretary and Mike Mullen when he was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff — as the next Pentagon press secretary.
David L. Norquist, who is now the No. 2 civilian at the Pentagon, will be Mr. Biden’s first acting defense secretary — if only for a few days — transition officials said Wednesday. The transition team has been pushing to get Mr. Biden’s choice for the top post, a retired Army four-star general, Lloyd J. Austin III, confirmed as soon as possible. But unlike the other top national security nominees on the Biden team, Mr. Austin will have to jump through three Congressional hoops before he is confirmed. The Senate and House must approve a waiver for him to serve at the helm of the Pentagon since he has not been retired from military service at least seven years, and then he must be confirmed by the Senate.
Mr. Biden has decided that instead of bypassing Mr. Norquist and plucking Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy to run the Pentagon until there is a confirmed defense secretary, he will adhere to standard tradition. Under federal law, a confirmed deputy secretary automatically assumes the duties of the secretary during an absence. The decision to keep Mr. Norquist until a defense secretary is confirmed was first reported by Politico.
Mr. Kirby, for his part, is a veteran government public affairs officer and a respected figure at the Pentagon. A retired Navy rear admiral, Mr. Kirby made a jump from the Pentagon to the State Department in 2015, and worked closely with Mr. Kerry during the Iran nuclear negotiations and for the last two years of the Obama administration.
Mr. Kirby worked with Mr. Austin when they were both on the Joint Staff under Admiral Mullen, during the height of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
He also spent a year as the Pentagon spokesman under Mr. Hagel, and has been the spokesman for the Navy as well as for retired Admiral Mullen when he was chairman.
Inauguration security
In a briefing with Vice President Mike Pence on Thursday, federal law enforcement officials sought to assure the public that the inauguration of President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. on Jan. 20 would be safe after the widely publicized security failures that allowed supporters of President Trump to violently storm the Capitol last week.
Christopher Wray, the director of the F.B.I., acknowledged that the bureau was “seeing an extensive amount of concerning online chatter” surrounding the inauguration — including plans for armed protests both in Washington and at state capitol buildings around the country — and said agents were trying to distinguish real threats from “aspirational” plotting.
Mr. Wray added that the F.B.I. had arrested more than 100 people and identified more than 200 suspects since the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, and said, “Anyone who plots or attempts violence in the coming week should count on a visit.”
James Murray, the director of the Secret Service, said he had been asked how Americans could be confident in inauguration security given the violence last Wednesday, which led to several deaths.
“I would point very keenly to the level of planning and coordination we’ve been carrying out for more than nine months,” Mr. Murray said, adding that he believed the security measures the Secret Service had planned for the inauguration would have prevented the Capitol attack had they been in place at the time.
The Secret Service, which is leading the effort to secure the presidential inauguration, said on Thursday that it would establish a “green zone” in downtown Washington this weekend, shutting down traffic and train lines as National Guard troops continue to flood into the increasingly militarized city. Most of the streets around the Lincoln Memorial and the scene of the deadly siege of the Capitol would be shut down from Saturday morning until the day after the inauguration.
A “green zone” will also be established in the downtown area, with National Guard troops in place to verify entering residents or business owners. The Memorial bridge connecting Washington to Arlington, Va., will also be closed and multiple train stations in downtown Washington will be temporarily inaccessible, according to the statement.
The area around the National Mall on Thursday resembled a city under siege, with multiple military vehicles stationed at intersections and steel fencing erected along streets near the Potomac River.
As of Thursday afternoon, there were about 7,000 National Guard members deployed from D.C. and 13 states. About 20,000 overall were expected to be in Washington for the inauguration.
Beyond the official preparations, a group of Washington community organizations, including the city’s Black Lives Matter chapter, called on area hotels to close in the lead-up to the inauguration to signal to Trump supporters that “white supremacists are NOT WELCOME in D.C.!”
And after some of the rioters last week targeted reporters and photographers in the Capitol, the Committee to Protect Journalists advised anyone covering the inauguration to avoid wearing press lanyards and to carry as little equipment as possible.
Since the attack on the Capitol, Mr. Trump has begrudgingly and inconsistently pledged a peaceful remainder of the transition period — something he refused to commit to for more than two months after he lost the election. Mr. Pence tried to assure Americans more explicitly.
“We are going to ensure that we have a safe inauguration, and President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris are sworn in as the president and vice president of the United States in a manner consistent with our history and traditions,” he said.
President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. has canceled plans to ride Amtrak to Washington for his inauguration next week, a reflection of intense security concerns around the event following last week’s riot at the Capitol.
As a senator, Mr. Biden commuted by Amtrak train from his home state of Delaware for decades, and became a public champion of the government-subsidized rail service. He kicked off his 1988 presidential campaign from the back of an Amtrak train and rode one home on his final day as vice president in 2017.
He had hoped to recreate the everyman journey one more time for his swearing in. But after a briefing from F.B.I. and Secret Service officials on inauguration security concerns, Mr. Biden’s team agreed that the 90-minute train ride should be called off, according to a person familiar with the decision.
“The nation has continued to learn more about the threat to our democracy and about the potential for additional violence in the coming days, both in the National Capital Region and in cities across the country,” the transition team said in a statement after the briefing on Wednesday. “This is a challenge that the president-elect and his team take incredibly seriously.”
On Thursday, Amtrak’s chief executive officer said the rail agency will make changes to its service in advance of the inauguration to ensure the safety of rail passengers in the wake of the Capitol siege last week.
The chief, William J. Flynn, said that Amtrak will limit the number of tickets sold, and require masks to be worn on trains at all times. He also said that Amtrak will deploy additional police officers onboard their trains and in rail stations to ensure the safety of its passengers and their compliance with the rules.
Mr. Flynn urged federal authorities to extend T.S.A.’s “No Fly” list to rail passengers and make assaults on rail workers a federal crime.
Federal and local officials have warned of the prospect of extremist activity in Washington and around the country in the coming days. Mr. Biden had already been planning a muted inaugural given the public health risk of mass gatherings amid the coronavirus pandemic. Many of the traditional gatherings and festivities will occur digitally during the day, and a prime-time special will air on television stream online Wednesday night.
Mr. Biden still plans to take the oath of office outside the Capitol. Earlier this week he said that he was “not afraid” to do so.
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