I drove across the entire state of Wisconsin.

Eau Claire. Green Bay. Milwaukee. I went everywhere they asked me to go and I talked to as many people as I could find. And here’s what I kept hearing.

People are tired.

Not fired up angry, not energized, not ready to march. Just tired. Tired of leaders who don’t act like leaders. Tired of watching the bar for basic decency keep getting lowered. Tired of being told to pick between two sides when one of the sides has completely lost the plot.

That’s what Tom Tiffany has done to Wisconsin.

Tom Tiffany is running for governor. He’s an election denier. He’s one of the people who voted against certifying the 2020 election and has spent years casting doubt on a system that works. He is now asking the people of Wisconsin to make him their governor. the person responsible for overseeing elections in their state. Think about that for a second.

David Crowley is running against him. Milwaukee County Executive. A man who actually believes in democracy and has said so clearly. He has said he will protect people’s ability to cast their ballots. He believes in free and fair elections. He will say it at the mountaintops, as he put it.

That should not be a controversial position for a candidate for governor. It used to not be.

And then there’s Derek Van Orden in Wisconsin’s 3rd District. Another one. Another person who showed up at the Capitol on January 6th, who has been on the wrong side of history, and who goes back to his district and acts like nothing happened.

I want to tell you something about character. I think about John McCain. A woman at one of his town halls called Barack Obama a terrorist, a Muslim, tried to stoke fear about who he was. McCain shut it down immediately. Barack Obama is a good, decent man. A family man. I don’t agree with him on the issues, but that is who he is.

Donald Trump would have turned that woman into a rally chant. And he cleared the way for people like Tom Tiffany and Derek Van Orden to run for office without character being any part of the conversation.

I went to Wisconsin because the people there deserve better than that. Not better policy. Better people. Leaders who tell the truth about elections. Leaders who don’t point mobs at government buildings and then pretend it never happened.

The people I met in Eau Claire and Green Bay and Milwaukee. they’re good people. They live in communities that are diverse and complicated and real. Their kids go to school with kids whose parents vote completely differently. They want to live affordable lives. They want to be treated with dignity.

They deserve representatives who believe the same thing.

Wisconsin matters. Tiffany needs to lose. Van Orden needs to lose. I went to make the case in person and I’ll keep making it.

-Harry

Andy Biggs is running for governor of Arizona.

Let me tell you what Andy Biggs did.

On January 6th, 2021, while a mob was attacking my colleagues and me at the United States Capitol. Andy Biggs was one of the members of Congress who had spent weeks telling his constituents that the election was stolen. That their government was being taken from them. That what they were feeling. the rage, the urgency, the sense that something had to be done. was justified.

He fed that lie. Over and over. And then the people who believed him showed up.

I was there. I know what happened when they showed up. I held the line while they came at us with flagpoles and bear spray and their bare hands. I watched my colleagues get hurt. I watched people I worked alongside every day of my career take beatings for doing their jobs.

And Andy Biggs never had to answer for his part in it.

So I went to Arizona.

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Trump came to Arizona too. Showed up on October 14th to rally for Biggs, repeating the same lies about stolen elections that he’s been telling since 2020. Still claiming Katie Hobbs rigged the 2022 governor’s race. Six years later and they cannot let it go. Six years later and they are still telling the same story that got people killed and got people hurt and got my colleagues traumatized in ways they will carry for the rest of their lives.

Andy Biggs challenged the electoral results on January 6th. He voted against certifying a free and fair election. He helped build the lie and he has never walked it back. And now he wants to be the governor of Arizona. He wants to control how elections are run in one of the most contested states in the country.

That cannot happen.

I went to Arizona because accountability looks different now than it did five years ago. The people who physically attacked us got pardons. The Supreme Court gave the president immunity. The DOJ is running interference. The courts keep telling me I have no standing.

But I can show up. I can knock doors. I can look people in Arizona in the eye and say: I was there on January 6th. I know what this man helped cause. And I need you to vote him out.

Katie Hobbs is fighting for her second term against one of the architects of the biggest lie in American political history. That’s not a policy debate. That’s not Republicans versus Democrats. That’s about whether we let the people who attacked our democracy get rewarded for it.

I’m not letting that happen without a fight.

I went to Arizona. I’ll go back if I have to.

-Harry

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I have been all over this country over the past few weeks.

Arizona. West Virginia. New Orleans. Nebraska. Wisconsin. New York. Maryland. Anywhere I’ve been called, I showed up. Because that’s what this moment requires.

But I want to talk about something I’ve had to sit with and wrestle with through all of it. Something that had me ready to quit and say the hell with it all.

What does accountability look like now?

When I started this fight, the answer was clear. Hold accountable the people who attacked us on January 6th. My coworkers. My fellow officers. The people who bled that day. The people who are still living with what happened to them. That’s where my political awakening began. That’s where I stepped out from behind the badge and said I’m going to fight this.

But accountability has had to evolve. Because the goalposts keep moving. Not because I moved them. But because our institutions have failed us, have failed me.

The people who attacked us got pardons.

The Supreme Court basically declared Donald Trump a king with immunity.

The DOJ is now running his agenda for retribution instead of investigating him.

So you throw your hands up, right? You say I give up on accountability. We lost.

No.

I went and campaigned against him for the presidency. That didn’t work. He won. Okay. Now what?

You shift. You find where accountability is still possible and you go there.

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Right now that means going after the people who spread the lies that made January 6th possible. The people who told their constituents the election was stolen. Who stood in front of crowds and pointed them toward Washington and said your government is being taken from you. Go take it back.

Andy Biggs. That’s why I went to Arizona. I hold Andy Biggs directly responsible for what happened at the Capitol. The people who attacked us believed what Andy Biggs told them. Seeing him lose is accountability. That’s what it looks like now.

Tom Tiffany. Derek Van Orden. That’s why I went to Wisconsin. Eau Claire. Green Bay. Milwaukee. Across the whole state. Election deniers. People with no character. And character is what this election is about.

I keep hearing people say let’s talk about the issues. I agree. Healthcare. Energy costs. What it actually costs to live in this country right now. I want to have those conversations. Let’s go.

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But you don’t get to have legitimate conversations about policy with people who don’t accept the legitimacy of elections. You don’t debate the issues with people who pointed a mob at the Capitol and then called it a normal tourist visit. Character is not a policy position you can negotiate around. It’s the foundation everything else sits on.

When we stopped demanding it, we got Donald Trump. And Donald Trump cleared the way for people across this country to get elected by dehumanizing whoever they disagree with.

I think about John McCain. The woman at that town hall who said Obama was a terrorist, a Muslim, whatever it was. McCain shut it down immediately. Barack Obama is a good, decent man. A family man. He didn’t agree with him on anything. But he said it.

Donald Trump would have turned that woman into a rally chant. That’s what we lost.

Nebraska showed me something. I was in Lincoln, in Omaha, in Hastings. Middle America. Thousands of miles from Washington and the Beltway and all the noise. Those people just want life to be affordable. They want their kids in good schools. They want to work without scratching for every dollar. They’re not asking for much. They’re asking for what every American deserves.

We can give them that. But first we need the right people in office.

Louisiana showed me the same thing. The community down there is doing great work. People are fired up and ready to get rid of Steve Scalise and Mike Johnson, to elect Jamie Davis and Lauren Jewett. The people of Louisiana deserve better. So do the people of every state where we’re fighting right now.

Early voting is already underway. Make a plan. Drop your ballot at a secure drop box if you can. Do not trust the mail. Donald Trump has made it very clear he wants to end mail-in voting. Get out in person. Get out early. And do not be intimidated. He said he wants federal agents around polling places. You know why? Because your vote matters that much. If it didn’t, they wouldn’t be fighting this hard to take it from you.

We are almost through this. The only way we get through it is to keep showing up.

Subscribe to Standing Our Ground if you want to keep doing this with me.

-Harry

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That’s how long we’ve been fighting to get a plaque installed on the West Front of the Capitol. A plaque honoring the Capitol Police and DC Police officers who held the line on January 6th. Congress passed the law. President Biden signed it. The Architect of the Capitol has refused to comply.

So Daniel Hodges and I sued.

Last Wednesday, a federal judge dismissed our lawsuit. She ruled we have no standing.

Let that sink in for a second. The officers whose names are supposed to appear on the plaque have no standing to sue over the plaque.

If we don’t have standing, who does?

Become a paid subscriber to read the rest of the post and see the video.

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Jack Smith didn’t have to show up yesterday.

Let me say that again. He did not have to be there. He’s a private citizen. He’s already been threatened with prosecution by the same administration he investigated. He could have fought the subpoena. He could have lawyered up and stayed home. A lot of people in his position would have.

He showed up anyway. He sat in that chair for four hours. He told the truth. Under oath. In that building. In front of the people who have been lying about him for years.

That’s good trouble. That’s what standing your ground looks like.

And what did Republicans bring to meet him?

Basketball.

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Senator Eric Schmitt of Missouri stood up and accused Jack Smith of perjury. He said Smith had lied under oath about attending an Atlanta Hawks game in 2024. He was ready. He had his moment. He had his clip.

There was one problem. The game wasn’t an Atlanta Hawks game. It was an Iowa Hawkeyes women’s basketball game. Different team. Different sport. Different city. Different everything.

A United States senator tried to catch a former federal prosecutor in a perjury trap and couldn’t tell the Hawks from the Hawkeyes. And when this was pointed out, Schmitt said he made no mistake.

This is who these people are. This is what they’ve got.

I watched Jack Smith sit in that room and I felt something I haven’t felt in a while. I felt proud. Because I know what it costs to walk into that building and tell the truth when powerful people want you to shut up. I’ve done it. I testified before Congress about what I saw on January 6th while members of that same Congress tried to make me the story. I know what it feels like to sit in that chair while people who were on the wrong side of history look you in the eye and call you a liar.

Jack Smith looked back at every single one of them and didn’t move an inch.

He said he wouldn’t be silenced by threats of prosecution. He said his team proved beyond reasonable doubt that Donald Trump engaged in serious crimes. He said the strongest witnesses in his case, the people who were the difference between the rule of law holding and not, were Republicans.

He said that. In the Capitol. In their faces. Yesterday.

And Chuck Grassley, who has spent two years telling anyone who would listen that the investigation was politically motivated, sat there and accused Smith of partisanship. This is the same Chuck Grassley whose party voted against certifying a free and fair election. The same party that called the people who attacked us “hostages” and “patriots” and fought to pardon every single one of them. These people have the nerve to sit across from Jack Smith and lecture him about partisanship.

I’m done pretending this is a normal political disagreement. It is not. These are people who watched January 6th happen, some of them helped make it happen, and they have spent five years trying to rewrite it. They pardoned the people who beat my colleagues. They shut down the investigations. They dismissed the cases. They threatened the prosecutors. And when the last person willing to tell the truth showed up and sat down in that chair, the best they could do was accuse him of lying about a basketball game and get the teams wrong.

Jack Smith said something in that hearing I’ve been sitting with. He said he wishes he had spoken up more. He came from a school of prosecution where you let the work speak. You stay quiet. You don’t respond to attacks. You trust the record.

He said that was a mistake.

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“There are things being put out daily that are patently untrue, and you know they’re untrue,” he said. “People can unfairly malign your team and your case in a way that you really can’t respond to.”

He’s right. I learned that too. Silence gives liars room to fill. And these liars have been filling that room for five years.

The pardons happened. The dismissed cases are real. The DOJ that is now running interference for Trump instead of investigating him is real. Nothing yesterday undoes any of that.

But Jack Smith showed up anyway. He told the truth anyway. On the record. Under oath. In that building.

I was in that building on January 6th. I held the line that day so that building could keep working. Yesterday Jack Smith walked back in and did his part.

That’s the kind of American hero we don’t make enough noise about. Not the ones who do the easy thing. The ones who show up when it’s hard, when there’s nothing left to win, when the people across the table are lying to your face, and they tell the truth anyway.

Subscribe to Standing Our Ground. This fight isn’t over and I’m not going anywhere.

-Harry

I’m going to anyway.

A Democratic candidate for governor of Texas just released a campaign ad featuring a woman who attended the January 6th rally. The rally that sent a mob to the Capitol. The rally that sent people into that building to beat police officers with flagpoles and fire extinguishers. The rally where I held the line.

Her name is Gina Hinojosa. The woman in the ad is Lynn Davenport. Davenport describes herself as a “staunch conservative” who attended the January 6th rally but didn’t go into the Capitol. Hinojosa’s campaign is featuring her as a crossover voter — proof that even conservatives are done with Greg Abbott.

I understand the political logic. I do. Texas is hard. Abbott is entrenched. You show crossover appeal wherever you can find it.

But this isn’t just any crossover voter. This is someone who was at that rally. The rally where people were whipped into a frenzy and sent to destroy our democracy. The rally where my brothers and sisters in uniform were brutalized. The rally where over 140 officers were assaulted — some of whom never came back to work. Some of whom took their own lives afterward.

Michael Fanone said it better than I can. Mike was beaten and electroshocked on his neck with a Taser that day. He had a heart attack. He lost consciousness. He said: “They would rather campaign alongside an insurrectionist than campaign alongside an officer that fought to defend the Capitol on January 6th. That is disgusting.”

He’s right.

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I’ve spent the last five years fighting the whitewashing of January 6th. I’ve fought the pardons. I’ve fought the denialism. I’ve fought the people who want to rewrite what happened that day into something it wasn’t. And now I have to fight a Democrat who thinks featuring someone from that rally is a good campaign strategy.

There’s a version of this argument that says: she didn’t storm the Capitol, she just attended the rally, it’s not fair to lump everyone together. I’ve heard it. I don’t buy it.

The rally was the mechanism. It was the match. You don’t get to say “I was just at the match” and walk away clean. Not from this.

I’m not telling Texans not to vote for Hinojosa. Greg Abbott is a disaster and I want him out. But Democrats cannot keep making the calculation that accountability for January 6th is something we can trade away for political convenience. Every time we do that, we tell the officers who bled that day that their sacrifice was worth less than a polling advantage.

It wasn’t. It isn’t.

I held that line. Mike Fanone held that line. Hundreds of officers held that line.

The least the Democratic Party can do is not feature the people who were on the other side of it in their campaign ads.

That’s not too much to ask.

-Harry

Adrian Boafo is 32.

In Part 3 of our conversation last week, we talk about what it means to follow somebody like Steny. Here’s what Adrian said that I keep coming back to: the seat doesn’t belong to Steny Hoyer. It doesn’t belong to him. It doesn’t belong to me. It belongs to the people. Your job when you get there is to fight for them. Not to maintain someone else’s legacy.

We get into redistricting, what Question 3 means for Maryland, and why getting Andy Harris out of Congress matters to me personally. Andy Harris bused January 6th rioters to the Capitol. He called for pardons for people who beat police officers. People who beat my brothers and sisters in uniform. That’s not ancient history. That’s a man who’s been in Congress this whole time.

And then I found out Adrian is a DJ.

Not was. Is. He’ll say he’s retired, then catch himself. DJing saved his life during the pandemic. He was 25, just elected vice mayor of Bowie, trying to keep seniors alive through COVID, and music was the thing that kept him standing. He says a DJ booth is one of the last places in America where Democrats, Republicans, Black, White, it doesn’t matter. Everybody’s in the same room, happy, together.

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I worked at the Capitol for 15 years. I always said that building needed elevator music. The vibe in there was wrong from jump. I tell you, if there was music playing in the Capitol, I think it would be a much happier place.

This is the last part of our conversation. Thank you for being here for all three. If you’ve been reading but haven’t subscribed yet, now’s the time. This is the work I’m doing and I want you with me for it.

November is six weeks away. Let’s go.

-Harry

It’s the right question. And in Part 2 of our conversation last week, Adrian Boafo gives an answer I think people need to listen to.

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Short version: oversight alone isn’t enough. We have to pass things.

Yes, oversight. Yes, investigations. Yes, hold people accountable. But if we get the gavels back and we don’t pass minimum wage, don’t fix housing, don’t touch healthcare, the people who showed up for us are going to ask what the point was. They’ll be right to ask. Adrian put it plain: we get the majority and do nothing for people, we’re going to have a real problem in 2028. Not a messaging problem. A trust problem.

He also gets into AI. Not the usual “let’s commission a study” move Congress always makes when it doesn’t want to act. He’s saying regulate it now. Because we already lived the internet story, we didn’t act then, and here we are. The founder of Anthropic said humanity could be gone by end of decade. That’s not a fringe position anymore. Congress is still scheduling hearings.

On crypto: 65 million Americans hold crypto assets. The President made $4 billion off a meme coin. His family. Money from people who want to undo everything we built. You think that doesn’t need oversight? I don’t know what to tell you.

Part 3 drops tomorrow. Subscribe below so you don’t miss it. It’s the best one.

-Harry

They shouldn’t be surprised.

We’re both from Prince George’s County. We both got in this race for the same reason. We stood at the same forums in southern Maryland for six months and said basically the same things. The tactics were different. The goals weren’t.

What made our race ugly wasn’t us. It was $12 million in outside dark money. AIPAC, AI and Crypto super PACs. Flooding a Democratic primary to elevate who they wanted in that seat. While squashing voices of people who were loud about wanting to end the system that put that money there. And here’s the thing I keep coming back to: they didn’t oppose us on policy. They didn’t even know where we stood on policy. They came after us because we were loud about wanting to keep them out of elections forever.

Adrian won. I called him. We talked. That was it.

I wanted to sit down with him because this conversation matters more than who won. Two guys from Prince George’s County who went through the same fire. The vitriol, the nasty messages, the hate. We had the same views on a lot of things: the economy is broken for regular people, the outside money is out of control, and the people yelling on the internet are not indicative of how an election is going to turn out.

Something I said in this conversation that I continue to think about: if the election was held online, I think I’d have won by 60 points. But it wasn’t held online. The mother in Charles County who wakes up, gets her kids to school, goes to work, tries to figure out how to feed her family with these expensive grocery prices. She doesn’t have time for the comments on social media, because she’s too busy trying to make it.

That’s Part 1. Parts 2 and 3 drop later this week.

If you’re not subscribed yet, do it. This is the kind of conversation I plan to keep having, and I don’t want you to miss what’s coming.

-Harry

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I spent this weekend in Arizona, spent a lot of time in Maricopa County. I did a TV interview, spoke at events, and talked to a lot of people who are working hard to make sure Democrats win up and down the ballot in November.

The interview was for Sunday Square Off on 12News. They asked me why I won’t move on from January 6th.

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Check out this story and other in this week’s Standing Our Ground for paid subscribers only.

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Check out this story and other in this week’s Standing Our Ground for paid subscribers only.

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Check out this story and other in this week’s Standing Our Ground for paid subscribers only.

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Sixty days to the midterms.

A…

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He had his hands up.

An Arkansas police officer punched him in the face twice. Then the police report said the officer felt threatened because Tedrick “postured himself as if he was going to strike him.”

That’s not what’s in the video.…

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I wish this wasn’t the story. But it is.

Officer Franz Fulcher. Officer Peter Sheldon. Their names are on the January 6th plaque. They were in that building when the mob came through. They defended the Capitol, defended the members of Congress inside it, and they took the same oath I took.

Now they along with four other officers are charged with stealing …

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Jared Kushner requested the meeting. I want to start there because people keep missing that detail.

He reached out. Not Hakeem Jeffries. Jared Kushner picked up the phone and asked for a sit-down with the man who is likely going to be the next Speaker of the House. That tells you exactly what the internal polling inside the Trump world looks like. The wr…

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