Dan Balz in WaPo:

The Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol, as shocking as it was when it happened, might have seemed at the time like a last, desperate and ultimately unsuccessful attempt by loyalists to then-President Donald Trump to disrupt the final certification of President Biden’s election.

Instead, it marked the blossoming of a Republican Party with a majority that remain in denial about what happened in the 2020 election and aspects of what took place at the Capitol that day. On the anniversary of an event that shook the country and ushered in a year of new threats to democracy itself, questions about the strength of the electoral system have rarely been more urgent.

Though debate and discord have long been part of the American experience, the founders likely did not anticipate the conditions that exist today: a major political party in which most followers embrace falsehoods, and some traffic in conspiracy theories; a former president unrelenting in his efforts to sow division and spread misinformation; and a largely broken Congress that struggles to function collectively to protect democracy itself, or lacks the will to do so.