Paul Waldman, Washington Post: “When the House select committee exploring the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol begins its investigation Tuesday, it will have to do more than just gather and synthesize information about the insurrection. It will also have to fight every day to defend the investigation itself, against a party determined to discredit it, to spread disinformation and to prevent any real accounting. It will be reminiscent of both of Donald Trump’s impeachments: an effort to investigate and understand an assault on the American system of government conducted while Republicans wave their arms and shout that we shouldn’t be talking about this at all. But the fact that it will make Trump look bad is only the surface reason Republicans oppose this investigation. At a deeper level, they don’t want to draw attention to what it will highlight about them and their supporters.”

“I’m not talking about whether there will be new revelations, alarming pieces of information that had been hidden before now. We might or might not get anything like that. What Republicans really don’t want to see illuminated is not just what happened that awful day, but the forces that produced it – the same forces that still threaten the stability of our democracy. That’s because they see those forces – the anger and hatred, the rejection of the American system of resolving differences, the celebration of violence as a means of achieving political ends, the way social media has become such a potent instrument to spread and organize extremism – not as problems to be solved but as resources for achieving their own political goals.”