I'm Brian Lehrer. This is my daily politics podcast from WNYC Studios. It's Wednesday, January 5th.

So here we are one day shy of a year since the January 6th Capitol riot that left five people dead,

15 police officers hospitalized, that one gets forgotten, and conservative America's

commitment to democracy in doubt. And now comes new reporting that rather than being

chastened by the tragic fruits of what they did and pull back from their extreme views and

activities, the militia members

and white supremacists so central to the insurrection have used the past year to try and build on

January 6th to increase the power of their movements by getting more involved in local politics

in communities around the country. Let's find out more, including how much they're succeeding or being rejected, from Brandeis-A-Drosny,

senior reporter for NBC News, who covers misinformation, extremism, and the Internet.

She's also a fellow at Harvard-Schorenstein Center.

Her story out this week is called From the Capitol to the City Council,

how extremism in the U.S. shifted after January 6th. Brandy, thanks for taking some time

away from the network to come back on the show. Welcome back to WNYC.

Thank you so much. It's great to be here.

Your article begins with the story of a militia member named Denise Aguilar, who is there on

January 6th, praised the quote, patriots who broke open the doors, but you find her at a school board

meeting near Sacramento. Tell us a little bit of the Denise Aguilar story, if you would.

Sure. So Denise Aguilar is a California mom. She has been pretty active in the anti-vaccine

movement before this, starting in California when they were trying to pass some laws getting

way of religious exemptions for childhood vaccinations. So she's been sort of a low-key activist for a while, but 2020 came and like many like her,

people who had never dabbled in politics or thought about activism slowly became mass radicalized,

...