The Jan. 6 assault on Congress came from what @TimothyDSnyder has called The Big Lie--the lie that Trump actually won the election. He did not. What makes Jan. 6 an insurrection?

1. It was an attempt to subvert the Constitution. To stop what we might call Constitutional Time.+

2. The Constitution and Congress set the schedule for the timing of elections and the transfer of power. Repetitive and cyclical

Constitutional Time is utterly unambiguous. Every administration must anticipate its own ending. +

3. Think of the Constitution as a watch, sturdy but as things go relatively fragile, precisely designed to keep time for an infinite cycle of elections. +

4. When a mob of insurrectionaries incited by the President invaded the Capitol, drove a duly assembled Congress from its halls, and prevented Congress from carrying out its constitutional mandate, they tried to break Constitutional Time.+

5. And subvert among other of the Constitution's provisions, that the term of the President "shall end at noon on the 20th day of January." +

6. Any deviation from Constitutional Time is, in effect, unconstitutional. And insurrectionary. It is the clearest danger to the republic. +

7. The desecration of the Capitol building was shameful and shocking, offensive and alarming. But the targeting of Congress itself and brazen assault on the Constitution that makes this an insurrection. +

8. And Congress must respond.