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A slow-simmering conflict among Republicans has burst into open hostilities at a perilous time for the party, as it seeks unity heading into Tuesdays crucial Senate election in Georgia and prepares to confront a new Democratic president.

As President Trump has refused to admit defeat in the November presidential election, his resistance to moving offstage has driven a wedge between his staunchest loyalists and many Republican party leaders.

The tensions are growing in the aftermath of legislative battles that pitted much of the GOP against Trump on key policies, last week producing the first veto override of his presidency, on a defense bill, and a blunt rejection of his 11th-hour demand for increased COVID-19 relief payments.

The through-line on those battles leads to the question of how Trump-dominated the Republican Party will remain after he leaves the White House. Two momentous political events this week Georgias special election for its two Senate seats and Wednesdays debate in Congress over ratifying President-elect Joe Bidens electoral college victory will be early tests of the strengths of the opposing GOP factions and will help define the partys future path.

If the Democrats win the Senate seats, which started out as Republicans to lose, Trump will surely get much of the blame for sowing division within the party, in part with his extraordinary call over the weekend pressuring Georgias secretary of State, a Republican, to overthrow Bidens win in the state. Democratic victories in Tuesdays election would produce a 50-50 Senate, making Vice President-elect Kamala Harris the tiebreaker and giving Democrats control of both houses of Congress and the White House.

If Republicans narrowly lose the GA Senate run-off elections to give Democrats unified control of the federal government, it will be the greatest self-own in politics in modern history, Michael McDonald, a nonpartisan election expert at the University of Florida, said on Twitter.

Conversely, if Georgias incumbent Republican Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler win, after going to extraordinary lengths to stay in the presidents good graces, it will likely strengthen Trumps hand as a continuing force to be reckoned with in the party.

The battle between Trump and the party establishment raged intensely during his first campaign, went mostly underground during his presidency and has once again burst to the surface.

The presidents allies believe the establishment is clinging to an outdated view of a Republican electorate that has been transformed by Trump to include more blue-collar workers.

Are there tensions? Yeah. But Trump has realigned the Republican party, said Ken Blackwell, a conservative activist and Trump supporter in Ohio. If the party wants to remain the majority party, they have to accept that the party is realigned. These are growing pains.

But many other Republicans, including some who have largely supported the president, say he risks tarnishing his legacy with extreme measures to overturn an election result that has been certified by a bipartisan array of state and local officials, after courts all the way to the conservative-dominated Supreme Court rejected dozens of Trumps lawsuits alleging fraud and other irregularities.

The recording of Trump demanding that Georgias secretary of State find additional votes to overturn Bidens victory was the most blunt measure to become public.

The tape was a real threshold, and Trump crossed it, said Scott Reed, a GOP strategist. It moved a lot of people into the Enough! category. They just had enough.

Key members of the political establishment rallied against the electoral challenge Monday. The Business Roundtable, which represents major U.S. corporations, issued a statement saying that the peaceful transition of power is a hallmark of our democracy and should proceed unimpeded and that efforts to impede the transition threaten the economic recovery. The Republican-friendly U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Assn. of Manufacturers issued similar pronouncements.

While the current fight focuses on loyalty to Trump, it has deeper roots, going back at least to the populist anti-establishment forces of the Tea Party movement, which formed in opposition to the Obama presidency, then turned its energy to making the GOP into a more conservative, confrontational party.

The divisions were seeing now reflect those in the period of 2010 to 2016 between Tea Party conservatives and governing conservatives, said Republican pollster Whit Ayres. Donald Trump tapped into the populist elements of the Tea Party movement and expanded and exacerbated the division.

Its a split that has been hard for any Republican leader to straddle, Ayres said, because the populist wing doesnt necessarily want a specific policy agenda so much as it wants a party that visibly fights perceived enemies.

Thats what they got with the pugnacious Trump, who has commanded more loyalty than the party: An October Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll found that among Republican voters, 54% considered themselves to be more a supporter of Trump than of the GOP; just 38% said they were supporters of the party more than of Trump.

The Republican electorate is not what the establishment thought it was, said John J. Pitney, a former Republican Party official who is a professor of politics at Claremont McKenna College.

Trump in some ways is an unlikely heir to the Tea Party, because he did not embrace the fiscal conservatism that was the movements original animating issue. But he built on its belief that the GOP establishment was complacent.

We dont love all his policies, but hes been willing to go to war for what he believes in, said Mark Meckler, a co-founder of Tea Party Patriots. Candidates who are starting to jockey for 2024 its going to take someone who has some serious fight in them to win in 2024.

Thats why many observers read 2024 politics into the spectacle of Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, a potential presidential candidate, last week becoming the first Republican senator to announce that he would challenge the certification of the electoral college vote. Hawley openly defied a plea from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to refrain from a challenge, which would delay but not prevent certification of Bidens victory.

McConnell, who spent much of the last decade trying to tame the Tea Party, wanted to avoid the roll-call vote on Trumps electoral fate that Hawleys challenge would require. The vote or multiple ones, if Republicans challenge more than one states slate of electors will force Republicans to vote up or down on Trumps false claims of election fraud.

That will be especially difficult for Republican senators facing tough reelection fights in 2022, forcing them to anger significant numbers of voters whichever way they go. It will amount to a referendum on one of the most controversial tenets of Trumpism: his willingness to break democratic norms and disrespect national political institutions in order to maintain power.

The prospect has split leading conservatives. Hawley got support from Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, a conservative with Tea Party roots who is also considering a 2024 bid. But another possible presidential contender, Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, criticized the effort.

Other opponents include a veritable reunion of Reagan Republicans, including former Vice President Dick Cheney and his daughter Liz, a member of Congress from Wyoming and of the House GOP leadership; former House Speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin; and former Sen. John Danforth of Missouri, a longtime home-state booster of Hawley.

The challenges are directly at odds with the Constitutions clear text and our core beliefs as Republicans, Liz Cheney wrote in a lengthy memo to fellow Republicans in the House, arguing that for Congress to second-guess state decisions on electors would be a power grab at states expense.

Democrats have long attempted, unconstitutionally, to federalize every element of our nation including elections, she wrote. Republicans should not embrace Democrats unconstitutional position on these issues.

On Monday, in the aftermath of Trumps call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, the list of Republican senators refusing to join the challenge to the electoral college grew, joined by Sens. Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia and Kevin Cramer of North Dakota. Capito, fresh off a reelection victory in a state where Trump is wildly popular, said in a statement, The 2020 presidential election is over. Our country should unite.

Whatever happens in Georgia and in Congress, Trump is on track to keep one important part of the Republican Party machinery in his corner. The Republican National Committee is slated later this week to reelect his ally, Ronna McDaniel, as party chair defying the longstanding tradition of a party shaking up its leadership after a presidential loss.

Still, Trumps postelection campaign against members of his own party could undercut his efforts to continue to lead it.

If he had played this right and talked about his legacy and the good of the country, he could have been in a stronger position to lead the party post-White House or run again and win, said a Republican official who asked not to be named. But his exaggerated tales of election fraud are a bridge too far for many Republicans.

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Republicans splinter as they balance Trump's loyalty test - Los Angeles Times

ALBANY A new year is about to dawn, and the first big event for kids in 2021 will be at the Albany Museum of Art. The second annual American Girl Winter Tea Party is scheduled for 2-4 p.m. on Jan. 16 at the AMA.

The event is called American Girl, but it is for girls and boys and their best friends. The best friend can be any type of doll, stuffed animal or action figure that the child wants to bring. Because of health guidelines, the guest list will be limited to 12 kids, but each child also may bring a parent.

Brighten up your chilly new year with a cozy cup of tea and make new friends with us, AMA Director of Education and Public Programming Annie Vanoteghem said. This is a great opportunity to share your doll with friends and their dolls.

The first tea party in January 2020 was the kid social event of the season, and Vanoteghem says this one will be, too. Kids arent required to dress up for the occasion, but they are welcome to do so.

I always loved to dress up my doll and myself for a special tea party with friends; this will be a safe and fun afternoon for all, she said.

Tea will be served, as well as tasty treats. Party-goers will be able to play games and engage in three creative activities. Each also will take home a special gift for that best friend.

You will make special creations for you and your doll, enjoy a warm cup of tea and goodies, and play with old friends and new, Vanoteghem said.

The cost to attend is $20 for AMA members and $25 for non-members.

Of course, its free for the doll and the parent, Vanoteghem said.

On the Wall, murals by David Hale, Shanequa Gay, Amanda Jane Burk and Chris Johnson, and paintings by Sarah Emerson, is in the Haley Gallery through Feb. 20;

Midlands, works by Courtney McClellan, is in the East Gallery through Feb. 20;

Escape Plan, works by Elinor Saragoussi, is in the West Gallery through Feb. 20;

Georgia Artists Guild of Albanys 27th annual exhibition is in the McCormack Gallery.

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Albany Museum of Art announces Winter Tea Party - The Albany Herald

In her 2016 book, Strangers in Their Own Land, Hochschild went to the Deep South to study an emerging conservative identity and came away with something like a Rosetta stone for the rise of Donald Trump. She offered a psychological allegory for the right-wing worldview, which she called the deep story.

Read: The lines that divide America

The deep story went like this: You are an older white man without a college degree standing in the middle of a line with hundreds of millions of Americans. The queue leads up a hill, toward a haven just over the ridge, which is the American dream. Behind you in line, you can see a train of woeful soulsmany poor, mostly nonwhite, born in America and abroad, young and old. Its scary to look back, Hochschild writes. There are so many behind you, and in principle you wish them well. Still, youve waited a long time. Now youre stuck in line, because the economy isnt working. And worse than stuck, youre stigmatized; liberals in the media say every traditional thing you believe is racist and sexist. And whats this? People are cutting in line in front of you! Something is wrong. The old line wasnt perfect, but at least it was a promise. There is order in the fact of a line. And if that order is coming apart, then so is America.

Hochschild tested this allegory with her Republican sources and heard that it struck a chord. Yes, they said, this captures how I feel. In the past few years, shes kept in touch with several of her connections from the Deep South and keenly tracked their philosophical evolution. Shes watched the locus of their anxiety move from budgets (They never talk about deficits anymore, she told me) to the entrenched and swampy political class. She also witnessed the Trumpification of everything. There used to be a Tea Party, she said. Now its all Trumpism.

If we want to understand this movement, Hochschild told me, we have to understand what happened in the past five years to the people in the line. I now see that the line metaphor in my book was only Chapter 1 of the deep story, she said. What Im seeing now is there are more chapters.

If Chapter 1 was The Line, Chapter 2 was The Arrival. When Trump appeared to the members of the broken line, Hochschild saw that he embodied the most ineffable aspects of the deep story. Trump might be a lifelong bullshitter, but one thing he has never had to bullshit is his grievance toward liberal elites and his antipathy for the groups whom Tea Party Republicans already knew they hated. He animated their distrust toward Barack Obama with his birtherism claims. He gave shape to their hatred for Hillary Clinton by leading Lock her up! chants. From his first rallies, Trumps basic message has always been I love you, and you love me, and we all hate the same people, Hochschild said.

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The Deep Story of Trumpism - The Atlantic

Kim Cook, Associated Press Published 11:54 a.m. ET Dec. 29, 2020 | Updated 12:10 p.m. ET Dec. 30, 2020

Coronavirus topped the list of things people want to leave behind in 2020 and not take into the new year at the annual Good Riddance Day paper shredder event in Times Square. (Dec. 28) AP Domestic

Dont want to stay up till midnight on the last day of the year? Families, early sleepers and those wanting to social distance due to the coronavirus pandemicmight consider a midday celebration for Dec.31.

Its easy to bring the festive feeling of a nighttime soiree into the daylight hours at home.

First, and most importantly, keep your circle small, according to COVID-19 health guidelines. The safest way to celebrate the new year is to celebrate at home with the people who live with you or virtually with friends and family, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Health advises.

One way to combine a glittery New Years Eve vibe with a daytime feel is by holding a British-style high tea party, suggests Maria Lucia, a designer and stylist with the online serviceDecorist.Ask everyone, including those online, to wear fun hats, tiaras or crowns, and consider getting personalized face masks.

Deck the halls with a mix of silver and gold patterns and solids, Lucia says. The blend of whimsical with traditional will give the party a unique look thats appropriate for all ages.

Decorations might include safe, LED flameless candles; confetti; string lights, hanging or in glass containers; and plates and balloons with an iridescent or mirror-ball disco vibe.

Or take a more sunlit approach. Martha Stewart Livings home editor, Lorna Aragon, suggests forsaking the glitter and glam of midnight revelry.

Start the day in a fresh, ready-for-the-new-year way, she says. A colorful tablecloth, runner and fresh flowers are a lovely choice. Choose different shades of one color (she likes green for renewal) for flowers, linens and candles.

Sarah Wentworth ofIvy Paige Partiesin Meridian, Idaho, has a downloadable template for a Noon Years Brunch place or buffet card.

If youre holding your small celebration outside, have plenty of blankets and pillows on hand.

Depending on your timing, you can still ring in the new year with noisemakers as the clock strikes 12 in other countries around the world.

New York wedding and events planner Marcy Blum suggests collecting New Years resolutions from everyone on pieces of paper, putting them in a bowland then reading them one by one, guessing whose is whose. Online guests could send resolutions in advance, or enter them in a chat.

You might also ask everyone to suggest or offer one thing that would go in a group time capsule.

A daytime NYE party should still feel special and festive, says Greg Lofts, deputy food editor for Martha Stewart Living. For beverages, bubbles are a must, even if alcohol is not, to set a celebratory mood. Make a mocktail as the featured drink.

For a quick and easy idea, he says, brew and chill hibiscus tea, then combine over ice with a squeeze of lime and high quality ginger beer.

Blum suggests Bloody Marys for a noon fete, in Mason-style jars.

Later, she says, you can swap out the booze for hot chocolate by laying out pre-packaged mixes, wrapped chocolate spoons and festive mugs.

For Lucias high tea, consider mini sandwiches, dessert bites on tiered platters, iced teas or hot teas.

Fondue is an entertaining way to feed the younger family members, says interior and event designer Kate Spiro of New York.

Try toasting with champagne flutes filled with milk, paired with homemade cookies, she adds. Acrylic or stemless glasses might be safer for little hands.

Spiro also suggests fruit smoothies or non-alcoholic sparkling cider.

Lofts says his years of catering experience for kids and adults alike taught me that the most precious, fancy and labor-intensive hors doeuvres will never be as popular as pigs in a blanket with ketchup and mustard for dunking."

Make a dip or two, like a sour cream ranch and herby green goddess, and serve with a giant platter of kid-friendly crudits (think carrot and celery sticks and mini sweet peppers) and crackers, he says.

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Want to ring in 2021 early? Celebrate the new year before midnight with 'Noon Year's Eve.' - USA TODAY

WASHINGTON In this universe, Joe Biden has been declared the winner of the election many times and in many different ways. Biden won the popular vote by more than 7 million ballots. President Donald Trumps flurry of legal challenges failed, culminating in the Supreme Courts rejection on December 11 of a Texas lawsuit challenging the results in several states. On Monday, in what is nearly the final step in certifying the winner of the presidential election, 306 electors cast their votes for Biden in keeping with their states results, ensuring that it will be the former vice president who is inaugurated as the 46th president on Jan. 20.

But thats just this universe. In a parallel universe, the idea that Biden won is not only false but impossible, and the notion that he will be sworn in next month still very much in doubt if not outright laughable. Trumps lawyers are not bumblers engaged in a hapless quest but heroes fighting to save the republic. The election was stolen in a grand conspiracy involving everyone from the Fox News election desk to the solidly conservative governor of Georgia. Even the Electoral College vote is itself a sham, and Trumps alternate electors should be counted instead.

In the parallel universe where Trump won, the passage of time and the accumulation of facts indicating the opposite result have done nothing to change his most steadfast supporters minds. Instead, many seem even more resolute, and their rhetoric is growing more extreme.

Thousands of people from all over the country flooded downtown Washington, DC, on Saturday for demonstrations against the election results, gatherings that made headlines mostly for violence that broke out at night as hundreds of Proud Boys, a far-right group, roamed the streets looking to fight anti-Trump opponents. But the Proud Boys were a minority of attendees. Most of the folks who came out on Saturday to support their president skewed older, and their most dangerous physical act was not wearing a mask in the middle of the pandemic. But even this demographic has begun to expound radical ideas.

Walking down Pennsylvania Avenue, I caught up with Robin Bonner, 62, from Kansas, as she made her way down the street near a rally in Freedom Plaza hosted by the group Women for America First, one of several protests in the city that day. Bonner held a pro-police thin blue line flag. I asked Bonner how she felt about Biden being sworn in in January. He wont be. Im sure about that, she responded without hesitation. How can it be prevented? We will dismantle the government, she said. I asked if she meant civil conflict. If it has to be, she said, though she hoped not. Instead, she said shed prefer a peaceful secession.

Maybe we can go to the Supreme Court and get the blue states disconnected from the red states and have our own president, Bonner suggested. I don't know why we can't just kick out the blue states. They don't want President Trump, they don't want the Constitution, and they don't want our freedoms. So why shouldn't we just let them go? And then we'll have all the red states.

The idea of a secession has indeed circulated in the right-wing ecosystem in recent weeks. Allen West, chair of the Texas Republican Party, responded to the Supreme Court decision with a statement suggesting that perhaps law-abiding states should bond together and form a Union of states that will abide by the constitution. Rush Limbaugh floated the idea of a secession on his radio show last week, though he later said he was merely discussing an existing sentiment, not advocating for it.

I think we're gonna have to have a war; we're gonna have to secede, said Crystal R., 40, who declined to give her last name. However, she didnt think it was likely. The best thing that could happen is a war, but its not gonna happen. Her friend Janie Yates, who declined to give her age beyond saying she collects Social Security benefits, had come from Tennessee for Saturdays protests; they had also attended last months Million MAGA March in DC. Yates told me I wasnt asking the right questions. What I should have been asking was about how the coronavirus vaccine will implant people with the biblical mark of the beast from the Book of Revelation and allow them to be taken over by Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates. This moment is a battle between powerful forces of good and evil.

This is why, Yates said, it was so key to back Trump, who stands in the breach. Donald Trump is standing against them, she said. I've never voted in my life, because I don't believe in the system, but I voted this year because hes the only one standing between us and that. Trump had, just the night before, triumphantly announced the FDAs approval of Pfizers vaccine.

The women asked me what I thought of a potential civil war. I told them I am against violence. They scoffed. How do you think America was born? Yates asked.

Crystal boiled it down for me: She supports Jesus Christ and the Bible, and nobody's gonna take that away from me, or we can fight.

I'm not prepared to die for this country, she added, but I would sure kill somebody if they were gonna try to take the freedom of my God away.

Supporters of President Donald Trump take part in a rally to protest the results of the election, in Washington, DC, Dec. 12, 2020.

That its come to this otherwise normal, nonthreatening people comfortable with the idea of a bloody uprising against their fellow citizens might seem surprising. But its a logical consequence of Trumps refusal to accept his loss, and of Republican leaders and conservative media outlets amplification of his claims. Its hard to know how many people feel this way; Saturdays march showcased the most committed devotees. But since the election, some trends have become clear: Trump supporters have turned in large numbers to outlets that reaffirm their beliefs, and many have insulated themselves even from mainstream social media platforms, flocking to alternatives like Parler. They are actively shutting themselves off from any information that could challenge their conclusions, and misinformation is circulating unchecked.

Given the gravity of the alleged fraud, compromise is impossible, a dynamic that Richard Hofstadter described in 1964 in his essay The Paranoid Style in American Politics the conspiracy theorists conflict between absolute good and absolute evil that necessitates total triumph.

This, Hofstadter wrote, leads to the formulation of hopelessly unrealistic goals, and since these goals are not even remotely attainable, failure constantly heightens the paranoids sense of frustration. This is the cycle in which the right has trapped itself after the election yoked to an impossible outcome (Trump staying in the White House) that, after each blow to its credibility, only further catalyzes its adherents passion and outrage. Hofstadter was writing about Barry Goldwaters conservative movement and the conspiratorial fringes that helped it gain traction, like the John Birch Society and Sen. Joe McCarthys anti-communist crusade. But his observations apply today as they did then, and the paranoid style has become, if anything, more mainstream and acceptable in Republican politics. The targets may have shifted, but the basic preoccupations are the same: a devious global cabal of elites who have schemed to oppress the common man. Yesterdays communist boogeymen have become todays shadowy adrenochrome-drinking child sex abusers.

Populist politics rely on a synthesis between the leader and their followers Trump often tells his supporters, I am your voice and this helps explain why some of the president's base has taken the election loss as a crushing defeat personally and as a group, not just for him. Years of conservative media that place the viewer or reader in an active role in its coverage have also primed the right for this episode. Fox News helped pioneer it we report, you decide. Andrew Breitbart used to tell people in his speeches to hold up their phones and tell them that they were now a part of the new media. Nowadays, this audience has more opportunities than ever before to pick and choose the news it wants to know about, and social media has helped accelerate the spread of conspiracies. In the 1950s and 1960s, the John Birch Society had to send letters in the mail. Today, people can simply log on.

The likes of Newsmax and One America News Network have taken this to an extreme in the postelection crisis. Newsmax CEO Chris Ruddy essentially admitted to the New York Times that his network was refusing to acknowledge Bidens win because it was good business. Newsmax has closely covered every twist and turn in the flailing attempts from Trump and the GOP to remain in power, treating each development with equal seriousness. Trump loyalists in Congress, like Reps. Mo Brooks and Jim Jordan, appear on a regular basis to fill viewers in on the newest scheme to block Bidens presidency. The efforts of Trumps legal team have been an important theme of the coverage. On Tuesday night, two of Newsmaxs primetime hosts floated the notion that even at this late stage, the fact that Vice Presidentelect Kamala Harris has not yet resigned her Senate seat could be an indication that Trump still has a shot.

Even when the most fervent Trump loyalists realize all hope has been lost, it doesnt seem likely that they will ever accept the legitimacy of Bidens presidency. Its a combustible situation as much or more so than the conditions that led to the 2010 tea party wave but it isnt clear where this collective rage will go.

If somehow Joe Biden were to take the office, I think what we would see come out of it would make the tea party look tiny, said Dustin Stockton, a former Breitbart writer and tea party activist who is one of the lead organizers of the March for Trump, an initiative to contest the election results run by Women for America First, a group helmed by former Tea Party Express leader Amy Kremer and her daughter Kylie Jane Kremer. In an interview on Monday, Stockton still insisted that Trump could win another term, though he acknowledged that it wasnt looking likely given the string of losses. He predicted that a new tea party would focus less on intraparty politics and more on civil disobedience and challenging the system.

Theyre not going to overturn the election, obviously not, Mike Cernovich, the men's rights activist turned pro-Trump media personality, told me. Joe Bidens going to be the president on Jan. 20. That doesnt mean you cant pressure politicians for concessions. It doesnt mean that you cant form an organic social network in real life.

Its difficult to tell how many people will remain in the hard core of the election-denying camp, though surveys have shown that large numbers of Republicans dont believe the results which can range from believing there were some irregularities to believing a coup is taking place. And its hard to know how much the most intense believers could influence the more ambivalent Republican, particularly as time goes on.

But if this were not an important segment of the party, Republican leaders wouldnt behave the way they have. Nor would a channel like Newsmax have been able to attract a significant audience. The incentives to keep this going are obvious; supply is meeting demand.

From left: Ali Alexander, an organizer for Stop the Steal, along with conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, and Vernon Jones, Democratic Party member of the Georgia House of Representatives, at a Stop the Steal rally at the Georgia Capitol Building in Atlanta, Nov. 18, 2020.

What would the goals of such a tea party 2.0 be? Republicans in Washington by and large played along with Trump; more than 100 members of the House Republican Caucus signed an amicus brief asking the Supreme Court to take up Texass lawsuit. Unlike during the 2010 tea party movement, when the midterms provided the focus of ejecting RINOs from Congress, there is no obvious goal this uprising could pursue after Jan. 20. What we may see is a kind of ersatz tea party, rooted not in a future objective but in settling scores from the past, an expression of anger for angers sake, locked in a vicious cycle of extreme rhetoric. Whatever it becomes, history shows there would likely be ample funding for it. The tea party era was a boom time for conservative groups and media outlets, and the Biden administration could usher in the same. Older conservative voters are reliable small donors. And conservative email lists are churning out appeals for donations to help stop the steal from one group or another. Ali Alexander, the leader of the Stop the Steal group that hosted a rally on the National Mall on Saturday, was initially asking for donations for his efforts through his personal website. Stockton told me that his groups event cost around $250,000 to stage, not including the weeks-long bus tour that preceded it. Trump raised over $200 million in the post-election period.

President Trumps supporters gather with placards and banners in Freedom Plaza in Washington, DC, Dec. 12, 2020.

Saturday saw the streets of DC filled with the familiar iconography of the Trump movement: the red hats, flags with the thin blue line and Punisher skull, Gadsden flags, and a multitude of other symbols. A man in a Trump That Bitch T-shirt sold pretzels from a cart. At Freedom Plaza, a booming sound system and several large screens broadcast the faces of the speakers, who included Trump world favorites like Sebastian Gorka, Boris Epshteyn, and the recently pardoned former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who told the audience that on a scale of 1 to 10, he had the odds of Trump retaking the White House at a 10. (Later that week, Flynn suggested on Newsmax that Trump could use military capabilities to force swing states to hold their elections again.) The gathering might have felt festive if not for the darkness of the conspiracy alleged by the speakers, the notable presence of Proud Boys and far-right groypers, and the strident rhetoric coming from many attendees themselves.

I think the media should be punished, said Roxana Lawson, 66, of Florida. I think that Facebook and Twitter also fed misinformation to the Americans. That should be illegal. You cannot slander somebody and get away with it.

A man from Cleveland, Brad Lynnet, 64, carried a Wake the Fuck Up! sign and wore a plastic construction helmet with Trump written on it. Lynnet said he didnt believe the Supreme Court case was the end. It wasnt a matter of hoping Trump will prevail, he said; I know its going to happen. Lynnet came all the way to DC from Ohio to protest one thing: treason. He had, he said, a multitude of sources who were keeping him informed, though he declined to name them.

It's not clear if Republicans who have deferred to Trump's desperate effort realize that what has been set in motion won't be easily stopped.

After the Electoral College vote, some top Republicans finally admitted that it was over. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell acknowledged that Biden is now the president-elect. Potentially of more significance, Newsmax announced on Tuesday that it too would now call Biden the president-elect, though one of its star hosts, Greg Kelly, had said the night before that while some outlets might call the race for the former vice president, he personally feels theyre wrong. Kelly tried to move the focus to a new date of truth: Jan. 6, when the electoral votes are brought to Congress.

Trump himself has still not publicly accepted the loss, and he likely never will. White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany refused to acknowledge it during her press briefing Tuesday, instead pointing out that Trump was still pursuing legal avenues. Trump may run for president again, a proposition that would give some focus to the movement that is searching for answers in the wake of his loss.

Trumps defeat despite the extraordinary loyalty he commands among his followers has created a surplus of energy and emotion with nowhere to go. The lie of the stolen election has a momentum of its own. It is calcifying into an article of faith, an ideological litmus test that will divide enemies and friends. The two sides are already too far apart for any hope of a resolution.

Depending on where you get your information from, you have two different divergent realities, Stockton said. [Its] really dangerous when you have basically half the country and the other half of the country who believe that two dramatically different things happen. And so the most important thing is that we reach some kind of conclusion that can kind of bridge that divergence, he said. Otherwise, what comes next is scary. Its hard to wrap your head around how the country can go on when people believe two such dramatically different things.

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The Next Tea Party Is Lurking Inside Trumps Election Results Denial - BuzzFeed News