The January 6 hearings aren’t acknowledging the elephant in the room | Thomas Zimmer

The attack on the US Capitol wasn't the isolated doing of Trump and a few loyalists. Nearly the entire Republican party is now united behind it - and the attack on democracy hasn't ended

The January 6 hearings have been more impressive and more forceful than anyone could have reasonably expected - definitely worthy of the nation's continued prime-time attention. Yet so far the hearings have been narrowly focused on Donald Trump and the past - rather than the continuing assault on the democratic system that the Republican party has fully embraced.

The committee's core task is to investigate the January 6 attack on the US Capitol and what led to it, of course. But everyone who believes in democracy needs to recognize that, in a very concrete sense, there is a continuing insurrection that far surpasses Trump.

Thomas Zimmer is a visiting professor at Georgetown University, focused on the history of democracy and its discontents in the United States, and a Guardian US contributing opinion writer