A year ago this month, President Donald Trump granted clemency to nearly 1,600 people involved in the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Robert Pape, a University of Chicago professor who studies political violence, says he immediately feared it would be the most dangerous decision of Trump’s second term.
While Trump’s presidency has been marked by norm-shattering policies and legal challenges, Pape argues that freeing January 6 defendants—including hundreds convicted of assaulting police—may have the greatest long-term consequences. Political violence, he warns, is the fastest way democratic backsliding becomes irreversible.
Pape links rising extremist violence since 2016 to the mainstreaming of fringe ideologies and racial backlash amid demographic change. He notes that most January 6 defendants said they acted because Trump told them to—and pardoning them, he argues, rewards violence and encourages others to fight for him.