By Erica Irish and Taylor Wooten 

INDIANAPOLIS — Violent protestors supporting President Donald Trump breached the United States Capitol Wednesday, disrupting lawmakers as they prepared to certify the results of the 2020 election.

Thousands of people assembled near the Capitol earlier in the day for a “Save America Rally” led by the president. By 2:30 p.m., a mob broke past security and inside where Congress was meeting.

Republican lawmakers also set the stage for a challenge days before, when a coalition of senators—including Sen. Mike Braun of Indiana—said they planned to dispute some electoral college votes, calling for an emergency 10-day audit in some states. Experts expected the challenge to target five states that went to President-Elect Joe Biden and Democrats: Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Arizona and Georgia.

“These are matters worthy of the Congress, and entrusted to us to defense,” the legislators said in a joint statement. “We do not take this action lightly. We are acting not to thwart the democratic process, but rather to protect it.”

Wednesday’s breach left Congress on lockdown through the afternoon, delaying U.S. Senators from certifying the election and confirming Biden as president before he is inaugurated on Jan. 20.

Around 4 p.m., President Trump shared a pre-recorded video on Twitter asking supporters to go home while reiterating debunked claims of widespread election fraud.

“We had an election that was stolen from us. It was a landslide election, and everyone knows it, especially the other side,” Trump said. “But we have to go home now.”

But the protests persisted after sundown. Amid the chaos, a woman was shot in the chest.Police deployed to enforce a 6 p.m. curfew. And D.C. locals reacted with anxiety and awe to the scenes.

“I live a mile and half from what’s happening. I’m actually right off Pennsylvania,” said 42-year-old Indiana native Joey Sample, director of prospect management for the Smithsonian Institution. “So I am terrified.”

“The Capitol is right there in all of its glory. I am more than a little upset,” retired resident Joan Willis, 80, a Franklin College alumna, said. “The gentleman who is currently still our president is, I believe, mentally ill, and it’s tragic what’s happening in this nation.”

State leaders react 

Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb, who served as an honorary chair for the Trump campaign in Indiana, initially declined to comment further on the challenge to Biden’s victory after the Associated Press reported he doesn’t see the debate as his responsibility.

But as unrest at the Capitol unfolded during his weekly update on the COVID-19 pandemic, Holcomb called for peace as people voiced their opposition to the election results.

“We’ve been here before, and we’re gonna get through it,” Holcomb said. “But it’s going to require folks to step up and show there’s another way, and there’s a productive way, and that we need to stick to those principles that made this country great and unique and exceptional in the first place.”

Before the U.S. Capitol breach, Indiana’s other senator, Todd Young, said in a statement he planned to certify the election results. He was also captured on video rebuking Trump supporters who urged him to join the challenge.

“Our opinions don’t matter. The law matters,” Young said.

Other members of Indiana’s Congressional delegation, the majority Republicans, shared statements on Twitter condemning violence.

“Supporters of the @realDonaldTrump please stand down and leave the Capitol,” Republican Rep. Larry Bucshon, representing Indiana District 8, tweeted. “I do not condone any form of violence. A peaceful protest is your constitutional right but what is happening right now is not lawful. It is un-American.”

Rep. Jackie Walorski, representing Indiana’s Second District, said in a tweet, “Every American has the right to exercise their First Amendment rights, but violence and destruction are never the answer.”

Back in Indiana, the Statehouse remained open for business and to the public on day three of the 2021 legislative session. Earlier Wednesday, a separate pro-Trump group and the Proud Boys, described as a hate group by the Southen Poverty Law Center, rallied on the Statehouse grounds, according to The Indianapolis Star.

Rep. Robin Shackleford, D-Indianapolis, said a member of the Proud Boys came to her office in the Statehouse looking for her. Shackleford, who chairs the Indiana Black Legislative Caucus, said she’s unsure what the member wanted but said he intimidated her staff.

Shackleford also compared planned Black Lives Matter protests last summer—where police around the country responded to demonstrators with tear gas and rubber bullets—to what was initially a limited police presence as the protest unfolded in D.C.

“This was also a planned protest,” Shackleford said. “Yet they don’t take them seriously enough that there’s no police down there … So to let them just run amok at the Capitol and not be prepared is just unthinkable.”

House Minority Leader Phil GiaQuinta, D-Fort Wayne, called the day’s events “devastating.”

“This nation was founded on a peaceful transfer of power, and those who cannot accept this and storm the capitol building should be prosecuted for their dangerous and irresponsible behavior,” he said.

‘A Fire Erupts’

Marjorie Hershey, a political science professor at Indiana University Bloomington, said the breach is unprecedented in American history. But there’s little about the moment that should surprise the country, she said.

“Trump has his finger on the fears that have been generated for a lot of people by the demographic change that’s been occurring in the United States,” Hershey said.

Hershey said political scientists like herself are revisiting the question of how American democracy has survived for as long as it has while other attempts at democracy around the world have failed. She said political scientists often consider two explanations: the structure of the institutions leading American government, which have changed little since their creation, and the country’s political culture.

Increasingly, Hershey said, changes in political culture have been the main focus. She said possible explanations for a new, more violent and more desperate political culture include white Americans who fear the United States becoming a majority-minority country, as it’s expected to become by 2050, and the growing influence of conspiracy theories.

“When someone runs around carrying a lighted match and a big pile of gasoline, it should not come as a shock when a fire erupts,” Hershey said. “And the president of the United States and a number of his enablers in Congress have been carrying that gasoline and that match around for quite a long time.”

FOOTNOTE: Erica Irish and Taylor Wooten are reporters for TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students. The following students also contributed to this report: Alexa Shrake, Bekah Eaker, Carolina Puga Mendoza, Hope Shrum, Kyra Howard, Sydney Byerly and Tabby Fitzgerald.