Video Thread: This morning, activists with @ShutDown_DC and @sunrisemvmt used strobe lights, instruments and chants to "wake up @LindseyGrahamSC" outside his house in Washington DC to demand he not confirm a replacement for #RBG on the Supreme Court until after the inauguration.
Some of the activists tried to enter Senator Graham's front yard and knock on the door
Police formed a line preventing most from doing so, and forced one protester who got through off the yard.
They did not make arrests.
To briefly address something happenin on Twitter: Infowars reporter @Millie__Weaver is claiming to have had an infiltrator inside @sunrisemvmt who tipped off police and the senator.
The protest was publicly announced, with precise instructions posted online last night.
"He said, 'Use my words against me!'" chanted the activists outside Lindsey Graham's house, referencing Graham's allusion to a situation like this when he was defending not confirming Merrick Garland in 2016.
The @sunrisemvmt and @ShutDown_DC held a banner reading "We Can't Sleep So Neither Should Lindsey" while loudly playing back a recording of his own words from 2016.
Inspector Robert Glover of MPD's Special Operation Division told an organizer that the protest outside Senator Graham's house was in violation of DC's "Residential Tranquility Act" and that they'd begin arresting if they didn't leave.
He specifically mentioned he'd arrest media.
"We're using your words agains you," wrote an activist in sidewalk chalk in front of Senator @LindseyGrahamSC's house.
Lieutenant Jason Bagshaw used an amplifier in Inspector Glover's call to issue a first warning to the protesters threatening arrest.
"We will not compromise with a simple-minded racist" an activist replied.
After Lieutenant Bagshaw issued a second arrest warning and ordered protesters to leave southbound, they briefly marched north toward the police, but then turned around leaving the way police told them to.
"You can't stop the revolution!" they chanted. "No justice, no peace!"
"We need a new court," an organizer said as the group marched to the Supreme Court. "We need a court that actually has term limits.
"Expand the court! Expand the court!" the group chanted.
Before wrapping, organizers read out the home address of Kansas Senator Pat Roberts in Alexandria, Virginia, and suggested that he or Colorado Senator Cory Gardner should be the next target of a wakeup event.
They added that this could be done in their home states too.
Here is my HD footage summary of the protest in front of #LindseyGraham's DC home this morning. As always, all footage is available for license.
NY Post confirms Senator Graham was not at his DC home when protesters gathered outside it this morning.
VIDEO THREAD: Activists dressed as contractors took down a banner outside the National Archives in Washington DC this morning and replaced it with their own demanding Biden publish the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) into the Constitution before leaving office.
The activists brought two additional banners which they had also planned to put up in the place of existing ones, but police arrived and confiscated them before the group could get those two up.
2) Kamala Lopez, founder and president of Equal Means Equal, explained that the ERA has already been ratified by 38 states, so she insists that Biden can be a "hero" by publishing it into the Constitution to be enforced.
Without doing this, she calls Biden a "zero."
3) Responding officers told the activists to sit down on the sidewalk and disputed whether their truck had been legally parked.
Additional activists arrived dressed as women from the science-fiction Dune series to advocate for the Equal Rights Amendment.
VIDEO THREAD: Craig Sicknick, brother of Brian Sicknick who died of a stroke the day after fighting on January 6, 2021, spoke at a rally demanding Congress refuse to certify Trump's electoral victory on January 6, 2025.
"I came here today to urge Congress to do its job and block Mr Trump from taking office just a few short weeks from now," Sicknick said.
"They can do this by upholding their oath of office and acting under Article III of the 13th Amendment which clearly states that no person who was involved in trying to overthrow our government can hold any office, state or federal."
2) @JessicaDenson07, a 2017 campaign staffer for Trump who ultimately sued him, is an organizer of this weekend's rallies demanding Congress block him from retaking the White House.
"Donald Trump is an adjudicated insurrectionist disqualified and the only mechanism to remove that disability is by a 2/3 vote of both houses. That's it. We don't need new legislation," she said.
"It only takes 1/5 of both houses of congress... to raise an objection and a simple majority to sustain it!"
She says there was "mixed" reception as she and others lobbies for this idea to members of Congress.
3) "Congresspeople, keep us safe, Hallelujah!" sang protesters demanding Congress block Trump from the White House on January 6.
"Do your duty to the states, Hallelujah!"
"Insurrectionists can't be president!" they chanted. "Call your representatives!"
Now: Anti-Trump protesters gather at the Lincoln Memorial to demand Congress block Trump’s January 6, 2025 certification for being an “Insurrectionist” over his actions on January 6, 2021.
“Insurrectionists can’t be president, call your representatives!” chant protesters on the National Mall.
BIG THREAD: Today, I attended the preliminary/detention hearing for Brad Spafford, charged with possessing a short barrel rifle.
Federal prosecutors say more charges are coming and that his arrest yielded the "largest seizure of finished explosive devices in FBI history."
2) I first reported the case December 19 following Spafford's arrest by the feds, who used a Confidential Human Source (CHS) for two years to get the warrant to arrest Spafford for the alleged Short Barrel Rifle.
3) Rachelann Cardwell, a Suffolk Detective assigned as an officer on the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force, took the stand today.
She testified that the investigation into Spafford began in January 2023 when the CHS reported Spafford disfiguring his hand with a homemade explosive.
THREAD: On Tuesday, Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) officers with the Norfolk FBI and assistance from the ATF arrested Virginia man Brad Spafford for possessing an unregistered short barrel rifle (SBR).
The arrest was the result of a multi-year Confidential Human Source (CHS).
2) A Confidential Human Source (CHS, commonly known as "informant" or colloquially as "snitch") reported in January 2023 that Spafford lost fingers on Independence Day 2021 "while working with a homemade explosive device."
He says Spafford and friends were making ammunition for "something that Spafford would not be able to do alone."
The informant reportedly saw Spafford's hands "before and after the event" which is confusingly worded; if he saw them in person, then the informant has been around the defendant for more than three years.
If he saw them pre- disfigurement some other way, like a photo, then he still has been around him for at least nearly two years.
3) In May 2023, the informant and Spafford went to a gun range together, each with "their own weapons."
The informant brought his own Short Barrel Rifle, but it was registered.
The now-defendant allegedly brought what the informant believed was also an SBR.
Just now: Attendees of Vice President Kamala Harris’s rally at the Ellipse resort to climbing over the “scale proof” fences surrounding the event after exit gates were closed, apparently due to pro-Palestine protesters on the other side.
2) "Push it down!"
During some of the confusion as police wouldn't allow people to leave the Harris Ellipse speech, some pushed over a small plastic fence that divided them from other people also trying to exit.
It didn't make a difference.
3) "You say it's open but where's it open?" crowds frustrated attempted to confront police as they had difficulty leaving the Harris rally.
"No! No! No!" a cop said as a man jumped, leaving a woman with him behind, who would have had to find a not-closed gate.
Meanwhile, police attempted to confine the pro-Palestine protests outside.