I’m sure you all remember where you were. It’s one of those days:
Approaching the fifth anniversary of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, the official plaque honoring the police who defended democracy that day is nowhere to be found.
It’s not on display at the Capitol, as is required by law. Its whereabouts aren’t publicly known, though it’s believed to be in storage.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, has yet to formally unveil the plaque. And the Trump administration’s Department of Justice is seeking to dismiss a police officers’ lawsuit asking that it be displayed as intended. The Architect of the Capitol, which was responsible for obtaining and displaying the plaque, said in light of the federal litigation, it cannot comment.
Determined to preserve the nation’s history, some 100 members of Congress, mostly Democrats, have taken it upon themselves to memorialize the moment. For months, they’ve mounted poster board-style replicas of the Jan. 6 plaque outside their office doors, resulting in a Capitol complex awash with makeshift remembrances.
“On behalf of a grateful Congress, this plaque honors the extraordinary individuals who bravely protected and defended this symbol of democracy on Jan. 6, 2021,” reads the faux bronze stand-in for the real thing. “Their heroism will never be forgotten.”
What small people these Republicans are. I think many of them know how petty this is. In a way that makes them even worse than the true MAGA sociopaths. They’re just worthless empty shells.
Trump will meet privately with House Republicans at the Kennedy Center, which the president has rebranded to carry his own name, for a policy forum. Democrats will hold a hearing with witnesses to the violence and later gather on the Capitol steps to mark the memory of what happened.
And the former leader of the militant Proud Boys, Enrique Tarrio, is staging a midday march retracing the rioters’ steps from the White House to the Capitol to honor Trump supporter Ashli Babbitt and others who died in the Jan. 6 siege and its aftermath.
The Democrats are convening a hearing:
The Democratic leadership is reconvening the now defunct Jan. 6 committee to hear from police, elected officials and Americans about what they experienced that day…
Republican Rep. Barry Loudermilk of Georgia, who has been tapped by House Speaker Mike Johnson to lead a new committee to probe other theories about what happened on Jan. 6, rejected Tuesday’s session as a “partisan exercise” designed to hurt Trump and his allies.
“Other theories about what happened on January 6th?” Good luck with that.
On Jan. 6, 2021, 140 police officers were injured defending the U.S. Capitol from a violent mob of Trump supporters. Five years later, many still live with the physical and psychological damage from that day. NPR Investigations correspondent Tom Dreisbach sat down with two officers who defended the Capitol — Michael Fanone and Daniel Hodges — to watch their police body camera footage from Jan. 6.
Both were subjected to some of the most brutal violence of the day, inside a tunnel where police were outnumbered by rioters armed with flagpoles, stun guns, crutches, stolen police shields and chemical sprays.
Fanone, Hodges and other officers say that Trump’s mass pardon of Jan. 6 rioters has exacerbated the trauma of that day. Both Fanone and Hodges have received death threats, and been called “crisis actors.” But the footage from their body-cams shows the reality of what they experienced. B
oth videos come from NPR’s Jan. 6 archive, part of a long-term effort to preserve the historical record — a public database tracking every arrest, charge, verdict, and sentence related to the attack. In Dec. 2025, the archive expanded to include police bodycam, surveillance video and other courtroom evidence, making this material available for anyone to examine firsthand.
It’s hard to watch but it’s important to do it if you can. They cannot erase what they did.
