Ashli

Unlike the women who descended on Washington in 2017 to protest the inauguration of President Trump, the women of January 6 did not come as women. They came as Americans, as patriots, as defenders of the republic. They did not wear pink hats. They wore MAGA hats. Their issues were indistinguishable from those of the men in their lives—the rule of law, free and fair elections, and the preservation of constitutional rights. They brought no laundry list of special needs like, say, “reproductive rights,” because they understood that no one was challenging their right to reproduce. In fact, many had reproduced abundantly. There was not a single celebrity in their midst—no Ashley Judds, no Gloria Steinems, no Madonnas threatening to “blow up the White House.” These were Hillary’s “deplorables” in the flesh, a whole heaping basket of them, “irredeemable” to the last woman. On January 6, the very presence of these intrepid women at the Capitol so offended the natural order of things that many would be gassed and beaten. Two would never return home. If resistance to government oppression has a face, it is that of Air Force veteran Ashli Babbitt, a determined patriot and an enduring martyr. This is her story, and that of the other gallant women of January 6.