📌This Week in the War on Women: 'outrageous acts & otherdays' rebellions...'

A Senate aide The 19th is not naming for safety reasons, was who organized staffers to secure the 18” by 10” vote boxes as rioters mobbed the Capitol building, sending senators, representatives, aides, interns and reporters to safe-rooms while offices were ransacked.“One of the staff members was very quick thinking and [got the votes here], so we have them with us and we will be able to proceed as long as Mitch McConnell calls us back into session,” Sen. Tammy Duckworth told CBS Evening News Wednesday afternoon.

Images of staffers carrying the boxes to the joint session of Congress went viral on social media but were from earlier in the day, Oregon Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkley’s office confirmed.

The boxes don’t hold the only certified electoral votes — other copies are held by state governors, the National Archives and the Federal Registrar, which has digital copies — but they are the physical copies of the certificates that allow counting to proceed on time and as planned.

Rejoining his colleagues to finalize certification of the election once the rioters were out of the building, Merkley spoke on the Senate floor to praise the unnamed woman, thanking her and the team for the rescue of the precious cargo.

 “Had they not done so, then the hooligans outside, disrespecting the Constitution, would have come in here and ... burned the ballots,” symbolically “destroying the voice of the people...”

^{Wik: 2021 storming of US Capitol—
intro edited for brevity}          

Following months of Drump’s crying voting fraud in Joe Biden's November 2020 election victory^[17][18][19]. echoed by various Repubs incl’g Sens. TCruz& JHawley trying to overturn that defeat, thousands believing their persistent false claims of the election being "stolen" joined a "Save America" rally^[21][22] funded by conspiracy theorist Alex Jones^[20]  in Wash DC on January 5 & 6, demanding VP Pence and Congress reject certifying the results. Among speakers there, Drump incited the crowd to "fight like hell" to "take back our country" and to march toward the U.S. Capitol,^[24][25], his lawyer Rudy Giuliani called for "trial by combat"^[26] and his son Drump Jr., threatened "we're coming for you."^[27] A mob then stormed the Capitol building, murdered a police officer,^[15] breached multiple police perimeters, damaged and occupied parts of the building for several hours,^[16] and disrupted the joint session of Congress met to formally count the electoral votes. Violence, injuries, evacuations and lockdowns of the Capitol building ensued, [with at least one more death] and discovery of threats made against Nancy Pelosi and others...