New York Assemblyman Chuck Lavine, a Democrat first elected to state office in 2005, has become one of a handful of unlikely leaders of state efforts to preserve the history of the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol insurrection.
Sitting in front of a bookshelf in his home office in Glen Cove, New York, a historic community just south of the Long Island Sound, Lavine, 78, has a pile of work on his desk — a proposal to establish a deer management program in his county, and material on organizing a youth reading program and promoting a food drive. And while the Jan. 6 riot might have taken place outside his district, Lavine is working to ensure his constituents are fully informed of what happened that day.
He has proposed legislation in New York to require all public school children to receive instruction about the insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021.
In the wake of President Trump’s reelection and his claims that Jan. 6 rioters were “hostages” and the victims of political persecutions, Lavine’s legislation seeks to reclaim the history of the Capitol siege.
“The idea is to require New York students to be instructed about what happened on Jan. 6 and its aftermath,” Lavine told CBS News. “We can’t sweep history under the rug. If we don’t teach our students about the truth of history, we are doing them a grave disservice. And we’d be doing a disservice to our nation as well.”
His legislation must be passed by December 2026 to become law. It’s one of a series of state and local proposals across America to provide public education or acknowledge the Capitol riot, amid concerns that the history of Jan. 6 is being erased or rewritten.
“This is part of civic responsibility,” Lavine said. “People are entitled to their own political beliefs, but they are not entitled to change facts.”
“Anyone of good faith who watched what happened on that day recognizes the threat to democracy represented by what occurred on that day,” Lavine said. “The old line is, ‘Those who ignore history are condemned to repeat its mistake.'”
In Washington, House leaders have declined to implement a federal law passed in 2023 requiring the hanging of a plaque listing the names of all of the officers of the United States Capitol Police, the Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia, and other Federal, State, and local law enforcement agencies and protective entities who responded to the violence that occurred at the United States Capitol
This past Jan. 6, which marked four years since the attack, leaders in the House and Senate held no vigil or ceremony to pay tribute to the victims.
Rafael Macias, a military veteran and father who won a seat in the Maine Legislature in 2024, introduced a Jan. 6-inspired bill as his first ever piece of legislation. It was promptly passed and signed into law by Maine Gov. Janet Mills, a Democrat.
Macias’ law requires Maine to formally “remember and preserve the accounts of the witnesses to the events of Jan. 6, 2021.”
He said he decided to run for office because he was “getting very frustrated at home watching our democracy slip away.”
Speaking by phone between stops in Maine, Macias told CBS News he’s concerned about the rewriting of the history of Jan. 6 and wanted to codify a formal recognition of the attack.
“There are people who still defend it, even calling it ‘not a riot,’ ‘not an insurrection,'” he said. “Some people even blame Nancy Pelosi for it.”
“We’re seeing something even more troubling — when history itself becomes one of those spoils. Government websites quietly remove images and documents,” Macias said in a a floor speech about his legislation. “Stories of heroism, brutality, courage, and failure — erased or rewritten to match the language or politics of the moment.”
The Justice Department deleted its web pages and online catalogue of the Jan. 6 prosecutions, the largest prosecution in U.S. history, shortly after Mr. Trump’s inauguration.
In Nevada, a group of state legislators passed a formal resolution to condemn Mr. Trump’s pardons of the approximately 1,500 Capitol rioters who were convicted or facing charges. The legislation also formally condemns the Capitol attack itself.
State Assemblymember Steve Yeager, one of the bill’s sponsors, told CBS News, “People were outraged not just about Jan. 6, but about the pardons.”
Yeager, a former public defender experienced in handling criminal cases, told CBS News, “The narrative that this was somehow a ‘peaceful protest’ took hold here in Nevada, too. There has been a whitewashing of this event. It’s important to bring light to this issue in a public way. It’s important to dispel misinformation about Jan. 6.”
Yeager was able to get his resolution passed in a state that supported Trump in the 2024 election, but he said he was not able to secure any Republican support for the initiative, including from legislators who were former law enforcement officers: “It was surprising to me, because politics aside, police were attacked.”
Harry Dunn, a former U.S. Capitol Police officer who responded to stop the rioting mob on Jan. 6, testified in support of Yeager’s bill in Carson City, Nevada, earlier this year. Dunn told CBS News, “I applaud these states and encourage more to take these efforts and combat Trump’s efforts to completely erase what happened on Jan. 6.” He added that he was grateful for the state efforts “in light of the U.S. Congress failing to follow their own law and install the Jan. 6 plaque.”
Mr. Trump’s pardons of the Capitol riot defendants included hundreds who admitted — or were convicted of — assaulting police officers, some with weapons and bear spray. In issuing his pardons, Mr. Trump said the Jan. 6 prosecutions were “a grave national injustice that has been perpetrated upon the American people over the last four years.”
Yeager’s resolution has no legal impact, but it represents an official statement of the position of the Nevada Legislature, indicating its disapproval of the pardons. A copy has been sent to the Nevada congressional delegation and to the White House by the Nevada legislative clerk.
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