A former aide testified that Donald Trump tried to loosen security before the riot.
They are not here to hurt me. Donald Trump demanded to join the mob as he approached the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, even though the riot was underway, a former White House aide testified yesterday to the House committee investigating the attack. Trump aided Mark Meadows, who said he wanted security protections lifted, because he knew the crowd he wasassed in Washington on January 6, 2021, was armed and could turn violent, but he wanted security protections lifted, said Cassidy Hutchinson, an aide to Mark Meadows, Trump's final chief of staff. Hutchinson defended the former president's objections to the presence of magnetometers to detect weapons: "You know, I don't f-ing care that they have weapons." Take the f-ing mags away. Take the f-ing mags away. After the riot, Meadows and Rudy Giuliani sought pardons from Trump, Hutchinson testified. After learning his attorney general had publicly shot down his false allegations of a stolen election, Trump threw dishes and splattered ketchup on the wall. Analysis: This is the smoking gun, said one expert who told The Times that today s hearing established a case for Trump's criminal culpability on seditious conspiracy charges. Cancer biologists use the CRISPR gene-editing technology to discover hidden vulnerabilities of tumor cells. Botanists use CRISPR to grow more nutritious tomatoes. Evolutionary biologists use the tool to study Neanderthal brains and how our ape ancestors lost their tails. Its impact is no doubt: CRISPR, one of the most celebrated inventions in modern biology, earned the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 2020. There are profound ethical questions about altering human DNA that have been raised by the decade-old technology. In 2018, the implications became real when a Chinese biophysicist edited a gene in human embryos to confer resistance to H.I. The next year he was sentenced to prison for illegal medical practices. The three embryos are now toddlers, and little is known about their health. Scientists don't know if anyone else has followed his example, but many believe that it is only a matter of time.