Very early on Thursday and Friday morning, the government conducted exercises focused on preventing aircraft attacks against the Jan. 20 inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden.

Led by the Secret Service, the government’s security preparations have taken on added importance in light of the chaos that enveloped the Capitol on Jan. 6. Complicating matters, the traditional inauguration threat actors of foreign terrorist organizations and lone wolf plotters are now joined by fanatics who believe Biden is a tyrant-in-waiting rather than the elected president. I understand that there are no credible plots to attack the inauguration but that there is aspirational “chatter” on the part of far-right extremists. A pivotal, symbolic, and formative national event, inaugural security is not something the Secret Service can leave to chance.