By LISA MASCARO, Associated Press Congressional Correspondent

WASHINGTON (AP) — Approaching the fifth anniversary of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, the official plaque honoring the police who defended democracy that day is nowhere to be found.

It’s not on display at the Capitol, as is required by law. Its whereabouts aren’t publicly known, though it’s believed to be in storage.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, has yet to formally unveil the plaque. And the Trump administration’s Department of Justice is seeking to dismiss a police officers’ lawsuit asking that it be displayed as intended. The Architect of the Capitol, which was responsible for obtaining and displaying the plaque, said in light of the federal litigation, it cannot comment.

A replica plaque commemorating the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riot hangs outside the office of Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., Tuesday, Dec. 30, 2025, at the Longworth House Office Building on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

Determined to preserve the nation’s history, some 100 members of Congress, mostly Democrats, have taken it upon themselves to memorialize the moment. For months, they’ve mounted poster board-style replicas of the Jan. 6 plaque outside their office doors, resulting in a Capitol complex awash with makeshift remembrances.

“On behalf of a grateful Congress, this plaque honors the extraordinary individuals who bravely protected and defended this symbol of democracy on Jan. 6, 2021,” reads the faux bronze stand-in for the real thing. “Their heroism will never be forgotten.”

Jan. 6 void in the Capitol

In Washington, a capital city lined with monuments to the nation’s history, the plaque was intended to become a simple but permanent marker, situated near the Capitol’s west front, where some of the most violent fighting took place as rioters breached the building.

But in its absence, the missing plaque makes way for something else entirely — a culture of forgetting.

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Visitors can pass through the Capitol without any formal reminder of what happened that day, when a mob of President Donald Trump’s supporters stormed the building trying to overturn the Republican’s 2020 reelection defeat to Democrat Joe Biden. With memory left unchecked, it allows new narratives to swirl and revised histories to take hold.

Five years ago, the jarring scene watched the world over was declared an “insurrection” by the then-GOP leader of the Senate, while the House GOP leader at the time called it his “saddest day” in Congress. But those condemnations have faded.

Trump calls it a “day of love.” And Johnson, who was among those lawmakers challenging the 2020 election results, is now the House speaker.

“The question of January 6 remains – democracy was on the guillotine — how important is that event in the overall sweep of 21st century U.S. history,” said Douglas Brinkley, a professor of history at Rice University and noted scholar.

“Will January 6 be seen as the seminal moment when democracy was in peril?” he asked. Or will it be remembered as “kind of a weird one-off?”

“There’s not as much consensus on that as one would have thought on the fifth anniversary,” he said.

Memories shift, but violent legacy lingers

At least five people died in the riot and its aftermath, including Trump supporter Ashli Babbitt, who was fatally shot by police while trying to climb through a window toward the House chamber. More than 140 law enforcement officers were wounded, some gravely, and several died later, some by suicide.

All told, some 1,500 people were charged in the Capitol attack, among the largest federal prosecutions in the nation’s history. When Trump returned to power in January 2025, he pardoned all of them within hours of taking office.

Unlike the twin light beams that commemorated the Sept. 11, 2001, attack or the stand-alone chairs at the Oklahoma City bombing site memorial, the failure to recognize Jan. 6 has left a gap not only in memory but in helping to stitch the country back together.

“That’s why you put up a plaque,” said Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon, D-Pa. “You respect the memory and the service of the people involved.”

Police sue over Jan. 6 plaque, DOJ seeks to dismiss

The speaker’s office over the years has suggested it was working on installing the plaque, but it declined to respond to a request for further comment.

Lawmakers approved the plaque in March 2022 as part of a broader government funding package. The resolution said the U.S. “owes its deepest gratitude to those officers,” and it set out instructions for an honorific plaque listing the names of officers “who responded to the violence that occurred.” It gave a one-year deadline for installation at the Capitol.

This summer, two officers who fought the mob that day sued over the delay.

“By refusing to follow the law and honor officers as it is required to do, Congress encourages this rewriting of history,” said the claim by officers Harry Dunn and Daniel Hodges. “It suggests that the officers are not worthy of being recognized, because Congress refuses to recognize them.”

The Justice Department is seeking to have the case dismissed. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro and others argued Congress “already has publicly recognized the service of law enforcement personnel” by approving the plaque and displaying it wouldn’t alleviate the problems they claim to face from their work.

“It is implausible,” the Justice Department attorneys wrote, to suggest installation of the plaque “would stop the alleged death threats they claim to have been receiving.”

The department also said the plaque is required to include the names of “all law enforcement officers” involved in the response that day — some 3,600 people.

Makeshift memorials emerge

Lawmakers who’ve installed replicas of the plaque outside their offices said it’s important for the public to know what happened.

A replica plaque commemorating the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riot hangs outside the office of Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., Tuesday, Dec. 30, 2025, at the Longworth House Office Building on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

“There are new generations of people who are just growing up now who don’t understand how close we came to losing our democracy on Jan 6, 2021,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., a member of the Jan. 6 committee, which was opposed by GOP leadership but nevertheless issued a nearly 1,000-page report investigating the run-up to the attack and the attempt to overturn the 2020 election.

Raskin envisions the Capitol one day holding tours around what happened. “People need to study that as an essential part of American history,” he said.

“Think about the dates in American history that we know only by the dates: There’s the 4th of July. There’s December 7th. There’s 9/11. And there’s January 6th,” said Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-calif., who also served on the committee and has a plaque outside her office.

“They really saved my life, and they saved the democracy and they deserve to be thanked for it,” she said.

But as time passes, there are no longer bipartisan memorial services for Jan. 6. On Tuesday, the Democrats will reconvene members from the Jan. 6 committee for a hearing to “examine ongoing threats to free and fair elections,” House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York announced. It’s unlikely Republicans will participate.

The Republicans under Johnson have tapped Rep. Barry Loudermilk of Georgia to stand up their own special committee to uncover what the speaker calls the “full truth” of what happened. They’re planning a hearing this month.

A replica plaque commemorating the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riot stands outside the office of House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y, Tuesday, Dec. 30, 2025, at the U.S. Capitol in Washington. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

“We should stop this silliness of trying to whitewash history — it’s not going to happen,” said Rep. Joe Morelle, D-N.Y., who helped lead the effort to display the replica plaques.

“I was here that day so I’ll never forget,” he said. “I think that Americans will not forget what happened.”

The number of makeshift plaques that fill the halls is a testimony to that remembrance, he said.

Instead of one plaque, he said, they’ve “now got 100.”

By MICHAEL R. SISAK, LARRY NEUMEISTER and JOHN HANNA, Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — Deposed Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro is set to make his first appearance Monday in an American courtroom on the narco-terrorism charges the Trump administration used to justify capturing him and bringing him to New York.

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Maduro and his wife are expected to appear at noon before a judge for a brief, but required, legal proceeding that will likely kick off a prolonged legal fight over whether he can be put on trial in the U.S.

The couple will be brought from a Brooklyn jail to a Manhattan courthouse just around the corner from the one where President Donald Trump was convicted in 2024 of falsifying business records.

As a criminal defendant in the U.S. legal system, Maduro will have the same rights as any other person accused of a crime — including the right to a trial by a jury of regular New Yorkers. But he’ll also be nearly — but not quite — unique.

Maduro’s lawyers are expected to contest the legality of his arrest, arguing that he is immune from prosecution as a sovereign head of state.

Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriegaunsuccessfully tried the same defense after the U.S. captured him in a similar military invasion in 1990. But the U.S. doesn’t recognize Maduro as Venezuela’s legitimate head of state — particularly after a much-disputed 2024 reelection.

Venezuela’s new interim president, Delcy Rodríguez, has demanded that the U.S. return Maduro, who long denied any involvement in drug trafficking — although late Sunday she also struck a more conciliatory tone in a social media post, inviting collaboration with Trump and “respectful relations” with the U.S.

Before his capture, Maduro and his allies claimed U.S. hostility was motivated by lust for Venezuela’s rich oil and mineral resources.

The U.S. seized Maduro and his wife in a military operation Saturday, capturing them in their home on a military base. Trump said the U.S. would “run” Venezuela temporarily, but Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Sunday that it would not govern the country day-to-day other than enforcing an existing ” oil quarantine.”

Trump suggested Sunday that he wants to extend American power further in the western hemisphere.

Speaking aboard Air Force One, he called Colombia’s president, Gustavo Petro, “a sick man who likes making cocaine and selling it to the United States. And he’s not going to be doing it very long.”

He called on Venezuela’s Rodriguez to provide “total access” to her country, or else face consequences.

A 25-page indictment made public Saturday accuses Maduro and others of working with drug cartels to facilitate the shipment of thousands of tons of cocaine into the U.S. They could face life in prison if convicted.

It wasn’t clear as of Sunday whether Maduro had hired a U.S. lawyer yet.

He and his wife, Cilia Flores, have been under U.S. sanctions for years, making it illegal for any American to take money from them without first securing a license from the Treasury Department.

While the indictment against Maduro says Venezuelan officials worked directly with the Tren de Aragua gang, a U.S. intelligence assessment published in April, drawing on input from the intelligence community’s 18 agencies, found no coordination between Tren de Aragua and the Venezuelan government.

Maduro, his wife and his son — who remains free — are charged along with Venezuela’s interior and justice minister, a former interior and justice minister and Hector Rusthenford Guerrero Flores, an alleged Tren de Aragua leader who has been criminally charged in another case and remains at large.

Among other things, the indictment accuses Maduro and his wife of ordering kidnappings, beatings and murders of those who owed them drug money or undermined their drug trafficking operation. That included a local drug boss’ killing in Caracas, the indictment said.

Maduro’s wife is also accused of accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes in 2007 to arrange a meeting between “a large-scale drug trafficker” and the director of Venezuela’s National Anti-Drug Office, resulting in additional monthly bribes, with some of the money going to Maduro’s wife, according to the indictment.

Hanna reported from Topeka, Kansas. Associated Press writers Eric Tucker in Washington, Darlene Superville aboard Air Force One and Joshua Goodman in Miami contributed to this report.

The fact that the Vikings technically didn’t have anything to play for on Sunday afternoon at U.S. Bank Stadium didn’t stop them from creating a lasting memory for the fans that decided to show up.

Even if people might not remember some of the minor details from the Vikings earning a 16-3 win over the Green Bay Packers, they will almost certainly remember veteran safety Harrison Smith and veteran fullback C.J. Ham being honored in different ways before they contemplate retirement.

That was undoubtedly the highlight from a win that helped the Vikings finish this season with a 9-8 record.

Minnesota Vikings safety Harrison Smith (22) salutes the fans as he receives a standing ovation after coming off the field for the last time late in the fourth quarter of an NFL game against the Green Bay Packers at U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis on Sunday, Jan 4, 2026. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

Here are some takeaways from the game:

Harrison Smith got his moment

In the final minutes of the game, head coach Kevin O’Connell called a timeout to ensure Smith got a standing ovation he very much deserved. As he slowly walked off the field for perhaps the last time, Smith looked around and gave a wave to the home crowd.

The deafening roar that followed was befitting of a living legend.

Though he hasn’t yet made an official announcement, Smith has acknowledged that he’ll at least contemplate retirement. He’s given everything he has to the Vikings since being selected in the first round of the 2012 NFL Draft.

If this is really it for Smith, he’s worthy of a spot in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

C.J. Ham also received recognition

There hasn’t been nearly as much hype surrounding Ham and his plans for the future. He’s going to consider retirement playing nearly a decade in the NFL, however, and the Vikings made sure he felt special in what could be the final game of his career.

There were a few anecdotes from the game that Ham won’t soon forget. He was the lone captain standing at midfield for the coin toss, scored a rushing touchdown near the goal line, and got a curtain call while sitting on the sideline late in the game.

As he chatted with reporters after the game, Ham noted that he’ll take some time before he makes a decision about hanging up the cleats for good.

J.J. McCarthy left the door open

This was supposed to be a chance for quarterback J.J. McCarthy to build some momentum that he could use as a launching pad moving forward. Instead, he pulled himself from the game due to a hairline fracture in his right hand, leaving the door open for the Vikings to make a change.

That’s not an overreaction.

Not only has McCarthy rode the roller coaster far too often, he’s also had a hard time staying on the field. He’s missed a number of games due to a host of different injuries, which, in turn, has severely stunted his development.

It seems likely the Vikings will bring in somebody to compete for the starting role. It will be on McCarthy to win that competition if he wants to keep his job.

Justin Jefferson reached 1,000 yards

It was clear from the onset that the Vikings were going to do everything in their power to get superstar receiver Justin Jefferson over 1,000 yards. He caught a trio of passes on the opening drive to set the tone.

Not long after that, Jefferson hauled reception over the middle reach the milestone, letting out an exhale once he knew he had it in the bag. He wasn’t shy about how much he wanted to reach 1,000 yards.

It hasn’t been the most satisfying campaign for Jefferson as his numbers have been impacted by McCarthy’s struggles under center. That explains why getting him over 1,000 yards was so important to the Vikings.

Dallas Turner finished on a high note

Never mind that most of his reps came against backup on the offensive line. The performance edge rusher Dallas Turner put together was something he can build on as he tries to establish himself as a household name.

The speed move on the outside helped Turner racked up a pair of sacks in the game. He finished this season with 8 sacks in total, making his presence felt down the stretch while filling in for injured edge rusher Jonathan Greenard.

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The Falcons weren’t going to bow down to anyone: Not on this stage. Not with these stakes. Not with where they came from.

North Central was 45-1 over its previous 46 games entering Sunday’s Division-III national championship game in Canton, Ohio. Wisconsin-River Falls coach Matt Walker surmised the bulk of those 45 games were won before a snap was played, as opponents melted at the mere site of the NC logo plastered to the side of the Cardinals’ helmets.

That’s not really the Falcons’ style.

Sunday was. In a battle of wills, it was North Central who eventually relented, with the dynastic Cardinals jarred loose from their typically steady stance atop the nation’s highest perch.

Wisconsin-River Falls coach Matt Walker receives a bath from his players at the end of the Falcons’ 24-14 win over North Central in the Division-III football national championship game in Canton, Ohio on Sunday, Jan. 4, 2026 (Courtesy of Josh Padilla)

After stumbling out of the gates, the Falcons out-scored North Central 21-0 over the game’s final 35 minutes en route to a 24-14 victory that secured the program’s first national title and completed a remarkable turnaround.

The night, Walker said, reflected the journey.

“It wasn’t going our way early. It wasn’t easy early,” he said, “and this group just sort of hung in there.”

Wisconsin-River Falls was born in the mud, in more ways than one. Prior to this season, the Falcons hadn’t been to the playoffs since the mid-1990s. They were 23-67 over Walker’s first nine seasons at the helm.

It wasn’t until the coach vowed to up his aggression to levels not previously seen in 2020 that Wisconsin-River Falls finally elevated itself out of a lethargic state of losing.

“I stopped caring what everyone thought. We were just going to do it our way,” Walker said. “It’s an easy thing to say. It’s a cool thing to say. It gets clicks and it’s trendy and awesome, but a lot of people still get conservative, and you do think about what other people think, what other coaches think and what dads will think. I finally said, ‘I just do not care.’”

Walker got bold. He moved his offensive coordinator Jake Wissing to defensive coordinator, a side of the ball completely new to him. Joe Matheson, who was just 28 years old at the start of the 2021 campaign, was elevated to offensive coordinator.

The Falcons would deploy the fastest offense in football, which snapped the ball at a rate not approached by any other team in the nation. They’d go for it on fourth down as frequently as possible.

Ever since then, it’s been full go for the Falcons – 100 miles per hour, right at the throats of their opponents, through success and failure. He doubled down in the middle of the 2025 season.

After Wisconsin-River Falls dropped its WIAC opener – a 21-17 loss to Wisconsin-Oshkosh in early October – the head coach reiterated aggression. All week, he vowed that on the Falcons’ first play from scrimmage the following game against Wisconsin-Platteville, they would “throw it as far as we can to Blake Rohrer.”

It resulted in an 80-yard touchdown pass.

“We were off and running from that point,” Walker said.

Win or lose, you would play their brand of football.

There would be no compromise on the approach, not even under the brightest lights of a nationally-televised title tilt.

You won’t knock out a heavyweight from a flat-footed posture.

Walker’s mantra leading into Sunday’s affair against the best team in the country was the Falcons would be “unapologetically aggressive in all phases of the game.”

“Whether we got beat 100-0, or won the football game,” he said. “It looked foolish at times, but we never wavered from that approach. We were aggressive as heck. And even when we didn’t convert it a lot in some of the aggressive plays, we stayed true to that plan.”

Indeed, the Falcons went 0 for 3 on fourth down attempts on Sunday, all of which came inside the North Central red zone.

Wisconsin-River Falls had the ball at the North Central 18-yard line with a 10-point advantage and fewer than four minutes to play. Rather than drain clock, the Falcons went pass, pass, pass, with three straight incompletions resulting in a turnover on downs.

The play calls drew criticism from the broadcast.

But the results didn’t matter. The consistent message did – circumstance would not dictate decisions. The Falcons were in all-out attack mode from start to finish.

“We told the guys today … we were never going to flinch,” Walker said. “If we miss a pressure and they score – don’t care, no flinching. If you miss the first 15 throws of the game – don’t care, no flinch. If we do the fake punt, fake field goal we had cooked up and didn’t use today and don’t get it – don’t care, weren’t going to flinch.”

It was clear, from the second quarter on, that Wisconsin-River Falls would be the aggressor who dictated the game’s terms. And fortune usually favors the bold.

“That’s the best football team we played, but they still were uncomfortable,” Walker said, “because no one plays them like that.”

On either side of the ball.

Donovan McNeal housed a 48-yard run on the fourth play from scrimmage to give North Central an early 7-0 lead. Cardinals quarterback Garret Wilson was perfect through the air for much of the first half.

A pair of turnovers – a fumble recovery by Gage Timm and an interception on the final play of the half by safety Taylor Sussner – inside the Falcons’ 10 yard line were required to keep Wisconsin-River Falls within four at the break against an offense that was moving the ball fluidly.

But the script was flipped over the final two frames, as Wissing ramped up the pressure via heavy-blitz packages that knocked North Central entirely out of its offensive rhythm.

“We were bringing a little more exotic pressures late, some more internal pressures with (Gage), and he was walking up to the edge,” Walker said. “We were trying it all, because we weren’t early in the football game, and we went fully into the rolodex in the second half.”

Unapologetic aggression.

The play of the game came early in the fourth quarter, with the Falcons leading by three and North Central possessing the ball at its own 37 yard line. Wilson dropped back to pass, but his attempt was knocked out of the sky by defensive lineman Jack Olson, who corralled the loose ball for an interception he returned to the Cardinals’ 12 yard line.

While Wisconsin-River Falls’ record-breaking offense captured the headlines all season, it was the defense that shined brightest on the game’s biggest stage. North Central entered the game with the nation’s highest-scoring offense (49.4 points per game). The Falcons shut the Cardinals out over the game’s final 41 minutes.

“When they were running the football on us a little bit early, I’m sure everyone in the crowd, everyone with a Falcon logo on was a little bit worried,” Walker said. “And all these guys did was get tough and nasty and made plays. And every time we needed a big turnover, they got it.”

Wisconsin-River Falls quarterback Kaleb Blaha runs in one of his two touchdowns during the Falcons’ 24-14 win over North Central in the Division-III football national championship game in Canton, Ohio on Sunday, Jan. 4, 2026 (Courtesy of Josh Padilla)

On the very next play following Olson’s interception, Wisconsin-River Falls quarterback Kaleb Blaha rumbled in for his second rushing touchdown of the affair.

The Division-III Player of the Year ran for 128 yards on the ground, while also throwing for 291 and another score, a 16-yard, first-half scoring strike to Blake Rohrer. Blaha, who arrived in River Falls as primarily a running quarterback, finished his senior year with 6,189 total yards of offense, breaking Joe Burrow’s single-season record across all NCAA levels.

“When I finally saw it on the scoreboard,” Blaha said, “I was like, ‘Yeah, that’s pretty cool.’”

But that’s not why he came back to Wisconsin-River Falls for one final run this fall after receiving a medical redshirt. He did so to win a national championship, something his head coach convinced him was possible years ago.

“I did have a vision of it,” Walker said, “but it is sort of still a surreal feeling to know we accomplished it.”

And they did it their way.

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