“We could hear the mob behind us. We heard gunshots,” Jacobs said. “I remember thinking to myself that I don’t even know how to get out of the gallery in the best of times. It’s my fourth day—how am I going to evacuate?” She had a fleeting, morbid thought that maybe, if members of Congress were killed, “people would finally recognize the depth and danger of white supremacy in this country.” Before she ran for Congress, Jacobs, 32, did stints at the United Nations and the State Department, where she specialized in conflict areas and post-coup settings. In the gallery, as she waited to see if she’d be able to escape, “I was thinking of articles I could send my team of how other countries were able to recover and rebuild from similar incidents, and what I wanted my final message to the country to be,” Jacobs said.
Instead of returning to California for the weekend after the riot, Jacobs stayed in D.C., in part to give herself time to process the attack. She’s talked to her therapist and says she’s feeling “resilient,” but has been experiencing more anxiety than usual, including “a couple moments of really, I would say, feeling the magnitude of what we’re going through.”
