| Due to a technical error, The 5-Minute Fix didn't send on Tuesday, Jan. 4. Here's today's newsletter, which covers most of what I wanted to talk about. As we near the first anniversary of the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol, it has me thinking about the misinformation campaign that led to such an attack. And that has me thinking about QAnon. Specifically, Q. The person who mysteriously and anonymously makes hyperbolic, outlandish claims about Democrats and the U.S. government, spawning a conspiracy theory movement that is closely linked with former president Donald Trump, has been offline.  (AP Photo/Matt Rourke) | Pretty much since Trump left office, Q has been gone. (And, no, people don't think Trump was Q.) The Post's Drew Harwell writes that QAnon supporters — and the people who make money off peddling these lies — are rudderless now that they're leaderless. Which conspiracy theory to believe? Harwell writes: "Without Q's cryptic messages, influencers who once hung on Q's every 'drop' have started fighting to 'grab the throne to become the new point person for the movement,' said Sara Aniano, a Monmouth University graduate student of communication studying far-right rhetoric and conspiracy theories on social media. 'In the absence of a president like Trump and in the absence of a figure like Q, there's this void where nobody knows who to follow,' Aniano said. 'At one point it seemed like Q was gospel. Now there's a million different bibles, and no one knows which one is most accurate.'" Was Facebook partially responsible for Jan. 6? The QAnon media factory is not the only spreader of misinformation. The most popular social media platform ever is, too. The Washington Post just partnered with ProPublica to review what went on Facebook in the days after Trump lost in November, leading up to the Jan. 6 attack. They found 10,000 election-attacks a day in Facebook groups. It was a lot of stuff like this: "WE ARE AMERICANS!!! WE FOUGHT AND DIED TO START OUR COUNTRY! WE ARE GOING TO FIGHT … FIGHT LIKE HELL. WE WILL SAVE HER THEN WERE GOING TO SHOOT THE TRAITORS!!!!!!!!!!!" The consensus is that Facebook took its pedals off the gas of policing misinformation after the election, and that led to the creation of one of the biggest misinformation campaigns of all time, which helped lead to one of the biggest attacks on Congress of all time. As Facebook considers stepping up enforcement, the debate over censorship and free speech has the potential to get really muddy really quickly. It has suspended prominent politicians like Trump and, just this week, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.). Facebook used to be much more lenient to politicians, and it's cracking down as politicians are considering ways to regulate Facebook's role in misinformation, like allowing users to to control their own algorithm of what they see. Omicron: Where are the tests?  Long lines for coronavirus tests Tuesday in Minnesota. (Nicole Neri/Bloomberg) | Do you or someone you know have covid-19? Or are you sick and trying to figure out if you have covid and should isolate? That's the situation facing many Americans right now — including the editor of this newsletter. Before Christmas, President Biden said he plans to get half a billion free tests out to Americans soon. On Tuesday, he urged Americans to get vaccinated and hang in there on the testing front. "I know this is frustrating," he said. "Believe me, it's frustrating to me." Meanwhile, Chicago's public schools have canceled classes this week as the teacher's union votes to go virtual in part because of a lack of tests for staff. For a growing number of parents, that means the start of this new year is feeling a little bit too much like the start of the pandemic — when schools were shut down, no one knew who was sick, and the virus spread rapidly. What to expect on the anniversary of Jan. 6 Well, half of Congress won't even be in session tomorrow. CNN says law enforcement has warned of vague "threats" on that day, like potential one-off repeat actors. I was on a call with Democratic attorneys general today, and they said they aren't aware of imminent threats in their states.
Democrats will hold a ceremony on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers will pray and share their memories of that day. Few top Republicans plan to attend. In fact, the only major Republican appearance on that day is shaping up to be by election-deniers and Trump acolytes Greene and Matt Gaetz (Fla.), who will speak at the Capitol. Trump cancelled a planned speech in Florida. Mostly, it seems, we'll hear from Biden. He'll deliver a speech where he plans to lay what happened directly at the feet of Trump in uncharacteristically bold language. "He will forcibly pushed back on the lies spread by the former president in an attempt to mislead the American people and his own supporters," White House press secretary Jen Psaki said. | 
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