Illiterate Republicans Have Reignited a January 6 Conspiracy Theory

Republicans have revived an old conspiracy theory that the so-called Deep State staged the January 6 insurrection, after failing to correctly read and understand a batch of documents.

The GOP-led House Select Subcommittee on January 6 announced on X Friday that the Federal Bureau of Investigation had “finally” revealed that it had deployed 276 agents to the Capitol on January 6, 2021.

A closer look at the document revealed that the agents were responding to the rioters, not inciting them. “This number includes agents that responded to the Capitol grounds as well as inside the Capitol, the pipe bombs, and the red truck that was believed to contain explosive devices as well as CDCs/ADCs.”

Crucially, Republicans have still provided no evidence that those working with law enforcement were involved in planning the deadly riot, or instigating violence that day.

Not only is this not a bombshell—it’s not even new. The Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General already reported in December 2024 that the FBI had deployed agents to the Capitol as part of a review of its handling of the incident.

“After the Capitol had been breached on January 6 by rioters, and in response to a request from the USCP, the FBI deployed several hundred Special Agents and employees to the U.S. Capitol and the surrounding area,” the report said.

Still, Just The News, a conservative blog, reported that plainclothes agents had been “secretly” deployed, though the after-action report the it referenced said absolutely nothing about what they were wearing. President Donald Trump shared the article on Truth Social, writing “Wow: A Radical Left Democrat Scam!” And failed Arizona Republican Kari Lake shared Trump’s post on X saying “They staged a riot on January 6 to frame patriotic Americans and cover-up a stolen election. Justice is coming.”

But Republicans have never needed any proof to fuel this particular conspiracy theory. In July 2023, Trump shared a meme on Truth Social claiming “JANUARY 6 WILL GO DOWN IN HISTORY AS THE DAY THE GOVERNMENT STAGED A RIOT TO COVER UP THE FACT THAT THEY CERTIFIED A FRAUDULENT ELECTION.”

Superintendent Ian Roberts of Des Moines Public Schools was detained Friday by federal agents. The reason for his detention was not clear, according to the school district.

In an email issued Friday afternoon by DMPS board president Jackie Norris announced that associate superintendent Matt Smith would take over Roberts’ role effective “immediately” and “until further notice.”

“This action follows Dr. Ian Roberts being detained by Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents this morning,” Norris wrote in an email obtained by Iowa Public Radio. “We have no confirmed information as to why Dr. Roberts is being detained or the next potential steps.”

Roberts’ whereabouts are also, alarmingly, unclear. A list of detainees on ICE’s website lists the educational administrator in the Pottawattamie County Jail in Council Bluffs, but an employee at the jail told Iowa Public Radio that Roberts was “not located there.”

The ICE website claims that Roberts was born in Guyana. Roberts’ district profile states that the educator’s parents were immigrants from Guyana, and that he grew up in Brooklyn, New York.

Roberts has been responsible for the largest public school district in Iowa since 2023. At the time of his hiring, Roberts’ “focus on creating equitable experience for students” was openly celebrated by then-school board Chair Teree Caldwell-Johnson. He was named a top 100 education influencer by a K-12 magazine, District Administration, earlier this summer for his Reimagining Education program, a plan to modernize the district’s classrooms as requested by local residents.

It’s not the first instance that federal immigration officers have thrown their weight around to neutralize their dissenter’s influence. In June, masked ICE agents detained New York City Comptroller Brad Lander after he tried to escort a defendant out of immigration court.

Justice Clarence Thomas cast doubt on the Supreme Court’s commitment to following legal precedent Thursday, as the high court gears up to revisit major rulings holding back Donald Trump’s sweeping policy agenda.

Speaking at Catholic University’s Columbus School of Law in Washington, D.C. Thursday evening, Thomas said it was time to rethink a commitment to “stare decisis,” a legal principle that the court should stand by things decided previously.

“It’s not some sort of talismanic deal where you can just say ‘stare decisis’ and not think, turn off the brain, right?” Thomas said.

“We never go to the front, see who’s driving the train, where is it going. And you could go up there in the engine room, find it’s an orangutan driving the train, but you want to follow that just because it’s a train,” Thomas said, ostensibly comparing decades of previous decisions by justices sitting in his very same position to the attitudes of apes.

“I don’t think that I have the gospel,” Thomas said, “that any of these cases that have been decided are the gospel, and I do give perspective to the precedent. But ... the precedent should be respectful of our legal tradition, and our country, and our laws, and be based on something, not just something somebody dreamt up and others went along with.”

If Thomas’s remarks are anything to go by, the conservative majority is set to flip major precedents during the upcoming session.

In December, the Supreme Court is expected to weigh the 1935 case Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, in which the court rejected Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s attempt to fire a conservative commissioner appointed by President Herbert Hoover overseeing his New Deal policies.

Earlier this week, Justice Elena Kagan slammed the Supreme Court’s conservative majority for approving Trump’s emergency request to remove Rebecca Slaughter, a Democratic commissioner on the Federal Trade Commission, and had previously allowed Trump to oust Gwynne Wilcox at the National Labor Relations Board and Cathy Harris at the Merit Systems Protection Board—whose terms weren’t due to expire until 2029—as well as three Democratic appointees on the Consumer Product Safety Commission. Breaking with precedent on Humphrey will allow Trump to continue his unfettered firing campaign against Democratic appointees.

The Supreme Court is also set to consider whether to roll back anti-gerrymandering rules established by the 1986 case Thornburg v. Gingles, as part of Louisiana’s suit challenging the use of race in redistricting efforts. Trump’s Department of Justice filed an amicus brief Wednesday arguing that the VRA does not provide “a compelling interest that can justify race-predominant districting” and urging the Court to lay waste to the landmark decision.

Pete Hegseth’s big, urgent military summit will just be a “pep rally” for what he calls the “warrior ethos.”

Earlier this week, the defense secretary ordered a mass gathering of every senior military offier—a group of admirals and generals that could total well over 1,000—in Quantico, Virginia. Rumors swirled about what the reason could be. Some said a mass firing, others said a fitness test. But the meeting, which is set to take place next week, will actually just be an opportunity for Hegseth to do some pompous grandstanding about the “warrior ethos” he’s been so obsessed with for years, CNN reported Friday.

“It’s about getting the horses into the stable and whipping them into shape,” an anonymous defense official told the outlet. “And the guys with the stars on their shoulders make for a better audience from an optics standpoint. This is a showcase for Hegseth to tell them: Get on board, or potentially have your career shortened.”

The meeting announcement was sudden and ambiguous, and will pull these senior military leaders away from their previous assignments.

Hegesth’s “warrior ethos” hinges on his belief that the military is too woke. He is expected to use Tuesday’s meeting to go over new fitness and grooming standards for officers.

“Yes, totally worth the cost and time and effort to pull hundreds of people away from their commands to listen to Hegseth and his deep thoughts about being a warrior,” Tom Nichols wrote.

Hegseth plans to have his speech recorded and later released.

An ICE agent has been “relieved of his duties” after he was caught on camera assaulting a woman in a Manhattan immigration court Thursday, the Department of Homeland Security announced Friday.

The woman, identified by ProPublica as Monica Moreta-Galarza, was pleading with officers at 26 Federal Plaza to release her detained husband when the masked agent picked her up, shoved her into the wall, and pushed her to the ground. Moreta-Galarza was taken to the hospital for a head injury and discharged shortly afterward, reported the investigative outlet.

The federal officer who attacked Moreta-Galarza was put on leave pending an investigation, according to Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin. In a statement, McLaughlin condemned the officer’s actions as “unacceptable and beneath the men and women of ICE.” She refused to elaborate, however, as to whether the unidentified agent had been suspended or fired over his violent actions.

Videos taken right before the attack depict Moreta-Galarza shouting at ICE agents in Spanish as they pried her husband away from his children.

“You guys don’t care about anything!” she shouted, to which an agent responded, “Adios, adios.”

Moreta-Galarza told ProPublica that her family had experienced similar violence in Ecuador before they came to America.

“I didn’t think I’d come here to the United States and the same thing would happen to me,” Moreta-Galarza said.

ICE agents across the country have taken to wearing masks in an attempt to shield their identities from public scrutiny as they ransack American communities. DHS has provided federal support to their anonymizing decision, openly acknowledging that officers would continue to violate agency-specific mask bans put in place by state governments.

But the agent who attacked Moreta-Galarza had his full face on display, allowing NPR to identify him as the same officer involved in the arrest of a court observer last month.

“The agent, who was unmasked and had been sitting in the waiting area earlier, yelled at NPR: ‘Stop fucking following me! Why are you fucking following me?’ before turning and yelling the same thing at the court observer,” the radio outlet reported.

The court reporter was then taken into an enclosed elevator bay, taken into federal custody, and ultimately received two citations, according to NPR—trespassing in a secure area and failing to follow lawful commands from an officer.

An Arizona state legislator called for the execution of Democratic U.S. Representative Pramila Jayapal for her statements advocating for peaceful protest, which were clipped out of context.

Republican state Representative John Gillette wrote of Jayapal on Wednesday: “Until people like this, that advocate for the overthrow of the American government are tried convicted and hanged … it will continue.” (“It” seemingly referring to political violence.)

Gillette’s threat came in response to an X account with the name “Patriot Oasis,” which shared a video notably cut to mischaracterize Jayapal’s statements in a March Zoom session, during which the congresswoman spoke about organizing peaceful protests against the MAGA agenda.

In context, Jayapal said:

We want to help you seed, participate, and coordinate these nonviolent resistance actions that are going to make a difference over the next coming months. If we were in the labor movement—and shout out to any of our union members that are on this call—we might call this getting strike ready. I think of it as getting us strike ready, or street ready, and part of that is understanding our own strength.

The “Patriot Oasis” version starts with Jayapal saying, “We might call this getting strike ready. I think of it as getting us strike ready, or street ready, and part of that is understanding our own strength.” The user tagged FBI Director Kash Patel and posted an inflammatory caption: “BREAKING: Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D) calls on Democrats to be ‘strike ready’ and ‘street ready.’ This is a CLEAR call to violence!”

The contextless clip has circulated widely in right-wing corners of social media since the spring, as users attempt to advance the baseless notion of Democratic lawmakers inspiring violence with their rhetoric. It has reemerged as Republicans have sought to advance that narrative in the wake of the fatal shooting of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.

In this instance, the only elected official guilty of calling for political violence was Gillette.

Sinclair Broadcast Group on Friday announced the end to its embargo on Jimmy Kimmel Live!

The company had previously refused to air Kimmel’s show on its nearly 40 ABC affiliates over a joke the late-night host had made about MAGA and President Trump’s reaction to the death of slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk—even as ABC reversed its decision to cancel it.

Sinclair had gone so far as to demand Kimmel “issue a direct apology to the Kirk family” and “make a meaningful personal donation” to Kirk’s family and organization.

In a statement Friday, Sinclair said that “it will end its preemption of Jimmy Kimmel Live! and the show will return this evening on Sinclair’s ABC affiliates.”

“Over the last week, we have received thoughtful feedback from viewers, advertisers, and community leaders representing a wide range of perspectives,” the statement said, and also mentioned a shooting at an ABC affiliate in Sacramento last week. “These events underscore why responsible broadcasting matters and why respectful dialogue between differing voices remains so important.”

It also mentioned “ongoing and constructive discussions with ABC,” in which Sinclair offered proposals “to strengthen accountability, viewer feedback, and community dialogue” that ABC and Disney have not adopted.

The statement lashed out against the obvious conclusion that many drew from the incident—that the company’s censorship of Kimmel stemmed from threats made publicly by Trump’s Federal Communications Commission chairman, Brendan Carr.

Sinclair insists its actions were “independent of any government interaction or influence,” and included in the statement a prickly response to those who saw Sinclair’s move after Carr’s threat as a violation of Kimmel’s free speech: “It is simply inconsistent to champion free speech while demanding that broadcasters air specific content.”

It looks like Elon Musk was once expected to visit Jeffrey Epstein’s island, according to a new batch of documents from the estate of the alleged sex trafficker.

Democrats on the House Oversight and Reform Committee released excerpts of flight logs and daily schedules Friday showing that Epstein had vacation plans with Elon Musk, held meetings with Peter Thiel and Steve Bannon, and flew around with Prince Andrew.

The documents included three pages that appeared to be from Epstein’s daily schedule, with mentions of powerful right-wing figures.

One entry dated December 6, 2014, included a reminder: “Elon Musk to island Dec. 6 (is this still happening?)”

It’s unclear whether Musk traveled to Epstein’s home in the Virgin Islands, where one survivor of Epstein’s abuse testified that guests used girls for “instant sexual entertainment.” Musk himself had become an outspoken critic of the government’s refusal to release the Epstein files, and pointed the finger at those in power, specifically President Donald Trump.

Peter Thiel, the apocalyptic prophet and defense contractor with ties to the Trump administration, was scheduled to meet with Epstein for lunch in Palm Beach on November 27, 2017.

Bannon, the architect behind the MAGA movement, was scheduled for a 7 a.m. breakfast on February 16, 2019, before leaving New York. Five months later, Epstein was arrested on federal sex-trafficking charges.

Bannon’s connection to Epstein isn’t totally surprising, either. In 2023, Epstein’s brother Mark said that he’d seen an unaired interview between Epstein and Bannon, in which the disgraced financier claimed he’d “stopped hanging out with Trump when he realized Trump was a crook.”

Epstein’s general ledger revealed that he had paid $200 each for two massages for “Andrew” in the year 2000, once on February 11 and again on May 16. A flight log showed that Prince Andrew flew with Epstein, and his convicted co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell, from New Jersey to Palm Beach on May 12, 2000.

Virgina Giuffre previously alleged that she had been sexually exploited by Prince Andrew and Epstein’s other “adult male peers, including royalty, politicians, academicians, businessmen, and/or other professional and personal acquaintances.” The Duke of York denied the accusation, and the suit was settled in 2022.

The Cuban Foreign Ministry reported Friday that the legendary writer, activist, and political prisoner Assata Shakur has died of natural causes in Havana. She was 78. 

“On September 25, 2025, American citizen Joanne Deborah Byron, ‘Assata Shakur,’ passed away in Havana, Cuba, due to health conditions and advanced age,” the ministry said in the press release. 

Her daughter Kakuya Shakur confirmed the news on Facebook. “At approximately 1:15 PM on September 25th, my mother, Assata Shakur, took her last earthly breath. Words cannot describe the depth of loss that I am feeling at this time,” she wrote. “I want to thank you for your loving prayers that continue to anchor me in the strength that I need in this moment. My spirit is overflowing in unison with all of you who are grieving with me at this time.” 

Shakur was born Joanne Deborah Byron in Flushing, Queens, in 1947, and grew up in Wilmington, North Carolina. She graduated from CUNY and joined the Black Panther Party in Oakland, California, shortly after. There she witnessed FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover’s COINTELPRO initiative infiltrate the BPP and other organizations, as the government deliberately sowed chaos and misinformation within Black leftist groups fighting for basic human rights in the 1960s and ’70s. 

Shakur briefly led the Harlem BPP’s Free Breakfast for Children program before joining the Black Liberation Army, a group that engaged in militant guerilla tactics to “take up arms for the liberation and self-determination of Black people in the United States.” This included allegedly robbing banks, bombing buildings, and murdering police officers. 

Shortly after joining, Shakur rejected her born name, recognizing it as a name forced upon her enslaved ancestors when they were brought from West Africa to the United States. “It sounded so strange when people called me JoAnne. It really had nothing to do with me. I didn’t feel like no JoAnne, or no Negro, or no amerikan. I felt like an African woman,” she wrote in her autobiography. Assata means “she who struggles.” 

On May 2, 1973, Shakur was involved in a shootout with police on the New Jersey Turnpike after she and two Black men were pulled over by two officers for a broken taillight. One of the men was killed, as was an officer. Shakur was shot twice and later detained at Middlesex County Jail, chained to her hospital bed bleeding out while federal officers questioned her. 

Shakur was then moved to Rikers Island, where she spent nearly two years in solitary confinement. 

Shakur argued that the police fired first, and she herself was shot with her hands up—a key part of the trial. Yet she was eventually convicted by an all-white jury of first- and second-degree murder, among other charges. She was in various prisons from 1973 to 1979, and maintained her innocence until the day she died. 

“It had been and is in my view that it was the racism in Middlesex County, fueled by biased inflammatory publicity in the local press before and throughout the trial, fanned by the documented government lawlessness, that made it possible for the white jury to convict Assata on the uncorroborated, contradictory, and generally incredible testimony of trooper Harper, the only other witness to the events on the Turnpike,” Shakur’s lawyer Lennex Hinds wrote in 1998. 

In 1979, Shakur was broken out of the Clinton Correctional Facility for Women in New Jersey by fellow BLA members in an elaborate plot involving hostages, a stick of dynamite, and a stolen van. No one was injured.  

Shakur briefly lived as a fugitive in the U.S., as police monitored her daughter and friends and performed massive, armed sweeps of Black neighborhoods in New York City in search of her. She made it to Cuba in 1984, where she was granted political asylum. There she wrote books and essays, including her immensely popular Assata: An Autobiography. In 2013, she became the first woman ever added to the FBI’s “Most Wanted” list.  

“People get used to anything. The less you think about your oppression, the more your tolerance for it grows,” she wrote, in the later chapters of her autobiography. “After a while, people just think oppression is the normal state of things. But to become free, you have to be acutely aware of being a slave.” 

Shakur was a poor Black woman in segregated America who was fed up, weary of this society’s constant denial of her humanity. Her life, words, and actions are a poignant example of the wide spectrum of responses—from peaceful protest to militance—that Black Americans have always had to their violent experiences as racialized others in this country. 

One of Shakur’s latest essays, from 2013, was a message to the media. It’s one that rings particularly true today, as President Trump continues to call for its muzzling.   

“Like most poor and oppressed people in the United States, I do not have a voice. Black people, poor people in the U.S. have no real freedom of speech, no real freedom of expression and very little freedom of the press,” she wrote. “I am only one woman. I own no TV stations or radio stations or newspapers. But I feel that people need to be educated as to what is going on and to understand the connection between the news media and the instruments of repression in Amerika. All I have is my voice, my spirit and the will to tell the truth. But I sincerely ask those of you in the Black media, those of you in the progressive media … to let people know what is happening. We have no voice, so you must be the voice of the voiceless.” 

Political prosecutions won’t be an anomaly for the remainder of the Trump administration if the president has his way.

Donald Trump broke a 50-year presidential tradition this week by directly involving himself in the prosecution of former FBI Director James Comey, whom he has framed as “corrupt” and “crooked” since Comey rejected the president’s demand for personal loyalty in 2017.

Speaking with CNN Friday morning, Trump made it clear that there were would be “others” who would need to pay for daring to oppose his political ascendancy.

“Now that James Comey has been indicted, who is the next person on your list in this retribution?” asked CNN’s Kevin Liptak.

“It’s not a list, but I think there will be others,” Trump said outside the White House.

“I mean, they’re corrupt. These were corrupt, radical left Democrats. Because Comey essentially was a Demo–, he’s worse than a Democrat,” Trump continued. Comey identified as a Republican for “most of [his] adult life,” according to his congressional testimony.

“No, there will be others. That’s my opinion,” he added. “They weaponized the Justice Department like nobody in history. What they’ve done is terrible, I hope, frankly, there are others because you can’t let this happen to a country.”

In a Truth Social missive directed at Attorney General Pam Bondi earlier this week, Trump ordered the top cop to not only focus her attention on Comey but also pursue leads on California Senator Adam Schiff and New York Attorney General Letitia James.