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n the afternoon of January 6, 2021, as election deniers armed with Tasers and tomahawks overran the US Capitol, Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) handed his colleague and close friend Eric Swalwell a pen. Here, he said to the California Democrat. Stick this in their neck if they get close to you.

The Marine veteran, whod seen combat in Iraq, leaped on a table and began issuing instructions to other panicked lawmakers, showing them how to don the gas masks secured under their chairs: Tear gas will not kill you. But its important to remain calm. If you hyperventilate, you may pass out. If necessary, Gallego told himself, he could use his own pen as a weapon to take a more lethal one from a rioter.

Three years later, the battle for American democracy continues, and Gallego, locked in one of the most pivotal contests of the 2024 election, is again attempting to hold the line. Along with close matchups in Ohio and Montana, his Senate race in Arizona for the seat Kyrsten Sinema is vacating could be one of a handful that decide control of the upper chamber and, with it, the future of our republic. Donald Trump, facing 88 criminal counts, has promised to usher in MAGA on steroids if reelected, including mass deportation and sweeping bans on gender-affirming care. A Democratic-led Senate would be one of the last fortifications against his agenda.

As if to further underscore the stakes, Gallegos opponent is the former TV news anchor turned Trump sycophant Kari Lake. A prolific purveyor of conspiracy theories, Lake claims not only that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump but also that she was robbed of the Arizona governorship in her 2022 race. If Trumpism is akin to a religion, Lake views herself as one of its martyrs. You can call us extremists. You can call us domestic terrorists, she declared during one campaign event in 2022. You know who else was called a lot of names his whole life? Jesus.

Lakes loss two years ago is just one indicator that Arizona is turning away from Trump-style conservatism. Though Trump won the state by 3.6 percent in 2016, he lost it in 2020 by about half of a percent. In 2022, all of the major statewide candidates Trump endorsed were defeated. But the state is certainly not a Democratic stronghold, either. Of roughly 4.1 million registered voters, there are some 236,000 more Republicans and 197,000 more independents than there are Democrats. To win, Gallego has to appeal to a cross section of voters, says former Arizona Democratic Party Chair Jim Pederson, particularly moderate Republicans.

Doing so will require Gallego to walk a nuanced line on the border crisis; the crisis raises drug and crime concerns for many Republican voters, but migrants also fuel the states economy. The high-profile race will also force Gallego to confront controversies from his past. The same wartime experiences that prepared him for January 6 left him with PTSD that has led to angry outbursts and the collapse of his first marriage while his then-wife was pregnant with their child.

Gallegos mental health struggles may be good fodder for his opponent to leverage against him, but his allies counter that his history of hardships is not a liabilityit may even be an asset.

I was on the floor with him on January 6. I was sitting right next to him, Swalwell says. And I saw, actually, not somebody with a temper, but somebody very much in control.

Gallego never had it easy. Both of his parents immigrated to the United States as teens, his father from Mexico and his mom from Colombia. His parents divorced around the time Gallego was in junior high. His now-estranged dad, who worked in construction, would eventually be convicted on felony drug charges. His mom raised Gallego and his three sisters in a small apartment outside of Chicago, where Gallego slept on the living room floor and helped the family make ends meet through odd jobs as a line cook, a janitor, and a cashier. From his makeshift bedroom, he plotted an escape route out of poverty by way of a college education. His dream school, Harvard, ultimately offered him a scholarship.

In Cambridge, Gallego had a dorm room with a bedsomething he hadnt had in six years. He majored in international relations, thinking he might work for the State Department one day, and experienced some culture shock. We both were finding our way in this new environment, says Shailesh Sahay, Gallegos fraternity brother and future best man, who is also the son of immigrants. We both went to public high schools and kind of socialized in a normal public school way. To contrast that, there were kids like Jared Kushner in school with us. His budget for going out on Saturday night was significantly higher than our budget was.

But Gallego could hobnob with anyone, friends say. Was he absolutely the coolest kid in class? No, but he definitely knew a lot of people, says Jean-Pierre Jacquet, another Harvard classmate and fraternity brother in Sigma Chi. He had a lot of self-confidence, which is, you know, not unusual in Cambridge.

During his sophomore year Gallegos college career was nearly derailed after his grades declined and he broke some campus rules. (Underage drinking was involved, he told the Boston Globe.) Harvard administrators kicked him out of school, saying he could reapply in a year. A few months later, Gallego enlisted as a Marine reservist and completed basic training in South Carolina. He was readmitted to Harvard for the winter 2001 semester.

That fall, Gallego watched on a laptop screen as two hijacked planes hit the World Trade Center towers, changing the countrys futureand his.

In 2003, during what would have been Gallegos final semester at Harvard, his unit was sent to Okinawa, Japan, for an uneventful deployment. But the next one wouldnt be. After graduating from Harvard in 2004, Gallego followed his college girlfriend, Kate Widland, to New Mexico. He did fieldwork for John Kerrys presidential bid until he was called up again, this time to Iraq with a battalion that would send home 48 flag-draped caskets, more than any other since 1983s Beirut bombing.

After six bloody months in Iraq, Gallego settled in Phoenix, where Kate had moved to work in Democratic politics. Coming back to normal life was disorienting. The goals were nebulous, the relationships far less intense, and therefore less meaningful, he writes in his 2021 memoir, They Called Us Lucky.

Not long after his homecoming, Gallego landed a job at a public relations firm, and work became a soothing distraction. I was immediately impressed, especially when I heard his story, says Joe Yuhas, the firms managing partner who remembers meeting Gallego while in line for the bar at a charity event. Hes energetic and tenacious and he listens. Those were important features in the work that we did.

One of Gallegos first projects was battling a state ballot proposition banning gay marriage. During this campaign, Gallego clashed with one of the local politicians leading it, thenstate Rep. Sinema.

Gallegos role included recruiting volunteers, many of them members of the same LGBTQ community as Sinema, who is bisexual. Even so, she considered it a mistake to place queer people at the center of the campaignshe wanted to focus on how the proposition would also make it more difficult for straight and unmarried couples to access insurance and legal protections. After Gallego argued she was alienating their most effective advocates, Sinema eventually requested his removal from the campaign. Yuhas chalks it up to a personality conflict, adding that neither one of them lacks in personality.

Sinemas strategy was necessarythey won by a 4-point margingiven the states conservative politics at the time, Yuhas says. And he notes that Gallego thrived working on other projects, including the successful campaign of Phoenix City Council Member Michael Nowakowski, who poached Gallego as his chief of staff.

Nowakowski and Gallego had an odd-couple relationshipNowakowski a soft-spoken manager of a Spanish-language radio station who once dreamed of becoming a priest, and Gallego a hard-charging war veteran. I want to throw down some hail and brimstone, and this guys like, Its not how I operate, Gallego told the Arizona Republic in 2008.

Gallegos fiery temperament caused a local scandal the following year when he sharply upbraided a council intern, yelling and pounding his desk, according to the Republic. Less than an hour after the incident, Gallego emailed two city council staffers: When you have a chance I would like to talk to you about [the aide], he wrote. Her time as an intern is up.

The intern claimed Gallego was aggressive towards me and filed two complaints with the city. She was let go shortly after. The city ultimately cleared Gallego of the harassment accusations and noted that the intern was previously slated to be dismissed due to budget cuts. Gallego touches on the episode in his memoir, attributing his behavior to trauma from his military service. Id never lost my cool before the war, he writes. Now I did, snapping and yelling at people for little reason.

Gallego resigned from Nowakowskis office in late 2009 to run for a state House seat representing a liberal portion of Phoenix. In this new role, he prioritized legislation that benefited fellow military service members, specifically a bipartisan bill granting veterans in-state tuition in Arizona. But soon he was looking for his next break, and after the US House member who represented his district announced his retirement, Gallego jumped into the race. After a competitive primary, Gallego handily won the general election.

Gallegos demons persisted as he climbed the political ladder in DC. I still drank more than I should. Smoked more than I should. Lost my temper more than I should, he writes in his book. I had nightmares. I thought about my dead friends. I wondered why I was alive. I couldnt seem to find anything to cheer me up.

The Department of Veterans Affairs lists many of these symptoms in its criteria for PTSD, a diagnosis Gallego received after three years of medical evaluations. Yet by then, his relationship with Kate, whom he married in 2010, had unraveled; they announced their separation in 2016 when she was in the third trimester of her pregnancy with their son. Now the mayor of Phoenix, she and Gallego co-parent their 7-year-old, who often joins his dad on the campaign trail. Kate also endorsed her ex-husbands Senate bid in December, though Gallegos critics have seized on the timing of their split. (Kate Gallego declined an interview with Mother Jones.) The Washington Free Beacon has filed a motion to unseal Gallegos divorce records, and Lake has attacked him over the issue. Referring to Gallegos pro-choice views, she said she would not be lectured on motherhood by someone who left his wife when she was nine months pregnant.

Gallegos mental health struggles have also bled into his congressional life. A former Arizona state lawmaker describes a meeting, not long after Gallego first came to Capitol Hill, in which a veteran who had been injured by an IED lobbied Gallego to oppose the Iran nuclear deal. When this guy came in and told Ruben, If you dont vote against the bill, youre gonna have the blood of American servicemen and women on your hands, [Gallego] blew up and he started screaming, the former lawmaker, who was present, recalls. (A congressional aide who was also in the room disputes that Gallego yelled.) He took a stern tone, says the aide, who adds Gallegos frustration was in response to how aggressive and confrontational the veteran was.

Gallegos sometimes-salty disposition, the former lawmaker points out, might contrast sharply with the camera-ready persona of his opponent, especially if they square off in a debate. Lake has had 30 years of television experience and can be very poised, the former lawmaker says. And he could come off as an angry short man yelling at the woman who might be saying outrageous and insane things but is looking composed.

With Lake, political disinformation and deceit are masked by a perfect pixie cut and gleaming white smile. With Gallego, his allies say, what you see is what you get. Sometimes Im out with him, and hell meet somebody new. And I expect politician Ruben to come out. And it doesnt, says Swalwell. Ive seen people tell him theyre in Washington working on whatever issue. And hell say, Well, thats a bad idea. Hes not afraid to tell people how he feelsnot in a rude way. But if youre expecting a polished politician, thats not Ruben, and thats refreshing.

In mid-December, Gallegos forthright nature is on display during a visit to Yuma County to judge Somertons 16th annual Tamale Festival.

Good spice, he writes on a blue scorecard next to a four-star entry.

Entry number 24 is too dry, but the tamale from contestant 25 is amazing.

I dont know about this, yall, Gallego says as he bites into a spinach one. No, no, no, no. He shakes his head as he pushes the green mush to the side of his plate.

He jokes that after sampling two dozen contenders, he may have to cross the border to sample something else: Ozempic.

As we walk by various food vendors, Gallego is approached by at least a dozen festival attendees, including a squad of young cheerleaders seeking a group picture and a woman from the Cocopah Indian Tribe, who has Gallegos ear on and off throughout the day. Youll never see Sinema or Kari Lake doing any of this, like talking to people, trying to actually understand whats going on with their lives, he says.

In addition to festivals, parades, and ralliesthe meat-and-potatoes campaign schedule for any conventional candidateGallego is also on a mission to visit all 22 federally recognized Native tribes in Arizona. Part of this is personal. Gallego says two of his closest friends are Navajo brothers with whom he served in Iraq. And one of the few bills hes successfully navigated to passage in the House provides resources to Native tribes to help them prevent and investigate child abuse. Gallegos strategy is also politically astute. The massive turnout of Native people, who make up roughly 5 percent of the state population, proved critical for Democrats in 2020, when Biden won the state by fewer than 12,000 votes.

While Lake already boasts national name recognition, experts say Gallegos go-everywhere-talk-to-everyone approach is critical to broadening his appeal outside of Phoenix. If the Republicans or Democrats were winning by a huge landslide, then maybe its not necessarily going to make much of a difference to try to engage with all these low-population counties, says Samara Klar, a political science professor at the University of Arizona and an expert on independent voters. But thats not the way in Arizona. We have extremely razor-thin margins of victory.

The thin margins have something to do with the unique politics of Arizona, where a third of registered voters claim no political party. One of the states most revered politicians was the late John McCain, the Republican elder statesman of the Senate known as a partisanship-bucking maverick. A year before his death, McCain famously gave a forceful thumbs-down as he cast the deciding vote against a GOP-led attempt to repeal part of the Affordable Care Act. Sinema, who was elected to the Senate shortly after McCains death, also rejected a pivotal measure with the same hand gesture. In her case, she was one of a handful of Democrats blocking an increase of the federal minimum wage.

Sinemas obstructionism, especially her refusal in 2022 to support reforming the filibuster to pass the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act by a simple majority, convinced Gallego to run for her seat. The filibuster isnt a tool to encourage sophisticated debate, its a tool to kill legislation that the vast majority of Americans support, Gallego said at the time. Later that year, Sinema became an independent and filed initial paperwork to run for reelection as such. Gallegos announcement that he would challenge Sinema from the left both elated and alarmed liberals who worried they would divide the moderate-to-liberal vote and tip the scales toward a Lake victoryand perhaps a GOP-led Senate.

Sinemas March announcement that she would instead retire at the end of her term relieved Democrats, taking a messy three-way race off the table. Arizona Democrats won big in 2022, electing a Democratic governor, secretary of state, and attorney general. But if the results suggest a repudiation of Trumpism, mounting concerns over immigration could hamper Gallegos chances. An October survey of registered Arizona voters, for example, found they trusted Trump more than Biden on immigration by a margin of 54 to 41 percent.

The issue is personal to Gallego. His parents immigrated through family reunification and worker visas, he says. He supports increasing funding for both humanitarian aid and Border Patrol personnel. But he also argues that todays crisis stems largely from the dismantling of the pathways his parents took to enter the country legally.

Its not simply that migrants need us, he argues, but that we need them. Just 12 miles from Somerton is the Mexican border, which tens of thousands of migrants cross during peak season to work the Yuma County fields that produce about 90 percent of the countrys lettuce every winter. Throngs more opt for less safe and less legalbut more permanentsolutions.

They are doing all these illegal or abusive things because they want to get here and were not making it easier, he says, and we do need people to come work.

Two months after the tamale festival, I catch up with Gallego on Capitol Hill. While he waits to vote on some procedural measures, we take brisk laps between the entrance to the House chamber and Statuary Hall. These days, this is how Gallego gets in his steps, as he juggles legislative and child-rearing duties. Last summer, Gallego and his second wife, Sydney, a Democratic lobbyist whom he met at the 2018 annual congressional baseball game, welcomed a baby girl. A member of the Congressional Dads Caucus, Gallego took a few weeks of parental leave over the summer.

On our walk, we talk about television shows (he is hooked on Netflixs Griselda), Mexican food (dont make him pick a favorite dish), and which chores he contributes to his household. (The real answer is I dont do enough, he admits.)

We also discuss the days legislative agendanamely, what wasnt on it. Earlier that week, Democrats and Republicans seemed close to consensus on a border bill. The deal, initially backed by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, would have barred migrants with criminal histories from applying for asylum, quickened hearing timelines, and more. Then Trump weighed in. Only a fool, or a Radical Left Democrat, would vote for this horrendous Border Bill, he posted to Truth Social. Dont be STUPID!!!

That was that. The bill was dead.

Republicans really had nothing else to run on, and it was going to be taken away, and thats when Donald Trump and his minions called it in and sunk it, says Gallego. It was one of the most cynical political moves Ive seen since Ive been in Washington, DC.

There is some competition for that distinction of coursenotably Trumps effort to overturn the election, which culminated in the insurrection that sent Gallego into combat mode three years earlier not far from where we stand. That Gallego is now facing Lake, one of the biggest promoters of the Big Lie, in this pivotal Senate race is oddly fitting, and its outcome will say much about where the nation may be headed.

One candidate amplified the election lies that motivated thousands of Trump zealots to ransack the citadel of American democracy. The other prepared to repel this onslaughtand preserve the sanctity of the democratic processwith a ballpoint pen. In November, democracy is again on the line. And Gallego is up for the fight.

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Ruben Gallego's Battle Against Kari Lake Could Decide the Fate of the SenateAnd Our Democracy Mother Jones - Mother Jones

At the Third Summit for Democracy in Seoul, hosted by the South Korean government, an event was held during the civil society and youth segment on March 19th to discuss the appointment of a UN Special Rapporteur on Democracy (UNRoD).

According to assessments presented by V-Dem and International IDEA, among others, democracy continues to be threatened and authoritarianism is on the rise in many countries. At the side event, participants agreed that the proposed new UN mandate, to be set up by the Human Rights Council in Geneva, is timely and can help protect and strengthen democracy.

The events moderator David Tran, Coordinator of the Alliance for Vietnams Democracy, highlighted that the new proposal for the creation of a UNRoD mandate already enjoys international civil society support. He referred to an international statement, published last November, that by now has been endorsed by more than 150 civil society organizations, networks, think tanks and institutions, as well as over 400 individuals from across the world. The statement was presented on the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on December 10, 2023 and is still open for signature.

According to the statement, a UNRoD in particular would undertake an institutional and structural analysis of the state of democratic rights, make recommendations for improvements, and identify best practices.

Bringing together supporters of the UNRoD proposal to discuss details and implementation, panelists included Thomas Garrett, Secretary-General of the Community of Democracies; Annika Silva-Leander, UN Representative in New York of International IDEA;Ichal Supriadi, Secretary-General of the Asia Democracy Network; Kourtney Pompi, Senior Director of the Governance Practice Area of Counterpart International;and Hong Yoo-Jung, Coordinator at the International Affairs Department of The May 18 Memorial Foundation.

In the opening remarks, Annika Silva-Leander noted that in light of the challenges faced by democracy the world over, the establishment of a UN Special Rapporteur on Democracy emerges as a pressing necessity, as such a mandate would provide a dedicated mechanism within the UN system to monitor, evaluate, and report on the state of democracy worldwide, thereby bolstering international efforts to safeguard and promote democratic values.

She added, however, that the current geopolitical landscape presents real challenges, as some UN Human Rights Council member states are not aligned with democratic values. She concluded that the necessity for this mandate has never been greater but the likelihood of its realization has probably never been more uncertain.

In response, Thomas Garrett pointed out that while the goal clearly is to get the mandate established, even pushing for it in itself is already worthwhile. He explained that in UN resolutions reaffirming democratic principles, the word democracy often was not used. This was in the belief it was more prudent to employ diplomatic wording in order to gather the needed numbers of supporters, he said. But even diplomatic words of avoidance were opposed by those States working against the fundamentals of democratic order, he added, so a new strategy is necessary.

The panelists concurred that democracy is a human right

A UN Special Rapporteur on Democracy, assisted by an independent advisory board, could prove to be a useful mechanism to direct spotlight into various situations around the world that require attention, Garrett noted.

The session also focused on lessons that can be drawn from the existing 58 Special Rapporteurs, 45 thematic and 13 country specific, as well as how a UNRoD could complement existing mechanisms for promoting democracy and human rights at the national, regional, and international levels.

Ichal Supriadi underscored the importance of the new mandate to potentially synchronize democracy promotion efforts with human rights mechanisms and consolidate related issues such as freedom of speech, association, transparency, and government accountability.

As part of the discussion, the panelists concurred that democracy is a human right and identified a need for it to be better included in the UNs human rights frameworks. The UNRoD could be a mechanism for this, it was said. References were made to Article 21 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Article 25 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. As a dedicated mechanism, the UNRoD mandate was conceived as a way to address some of the UNs current shortcomings in promoting democracy.

Hong Yoo-Jung suggested that consideration should be given as to how a UNRoD mandate could contribute to making democratic rights more robust, going beyond the possibility of merely making recommendations.

Kourtney Pompi emphasized that Special Rapporteurs offer a unique opportunity to serve as a politically neutral voice, in an organization that is otherwise full of competing political interests. The Special Rapporteur role can aggregate voices, provide access and ask the tough questions that UN actors may otherwise be unable to do due to geopolitical and competing interests.

Panelists discussed how civil society organizations can leverage the establishment of a UNRoD to mobilize support for pro-democracy efforts. It was believed that civil society organizations should contribute to shaping the mandate and priorities of a UNRoD to help advance their advocacy for democracy.

The third Summit for Democracy, building on the momentum of the previous editions, gathered over 800 government officials, representatives from international organizations, academia, and civil society to discuss policy enhancements and strategic pathways under the theme of democracy for future generations. The conference offered a platform for dialogue on collaboration and collective action to safeguard democratic values, strengthen institutions, and empower citizens.

Among the topics addressed during the Summit stand out the imperative to further examine the relationship between democracy and recent technological advancements, combat corruption and disinformation, safeguard the rule of law, uphold election integrity and freedom of expression, and foster youth engagement, civic involvement, gender equality, and partnerships among democratic states.

The civil society and youth segment of the Summit featured dozens of side events facilitated by the Global Democracy Coalition. The event on the UN Special Rapporteur, hosted by Democracy Without Borders, concluded with closing remarks from moderator David Tran, whose organization Alliance for Vietnams Democracy backs the UNRoD proposal as well. He extended thanks to the attendees and called for collective effort to propel the initiative forward.

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Appointment of UN Rapporteur discussed at Democracy Summit in Seoul - Democracy Without Borders

Danielle Allen delivers her BYU forum address on Tuesday, March 26. She spoke to BYU students and faculty about becoming confident pluralists. (Megan Sibley)

Harvard professor and democracy advocate Danielle Allen taught students at the BYU forum on Tuesday, March 26 how to become confident pluralists in a world full of contentious beliefs.

Allen credited fellow academic John D. Inazu with coining the term confident pluralism, which he defined as the idea that our shared existence is not only possible, but necessary.

Allen shared her intimate exposure to a prevalence of discordant political opinions, recalling a time in her life when both her dad and her aunt were running for public office in 1992. Her dad was a Reagan Republican running for U.S. Senate in Southern California and her aunt was on the ballot as a member of the far left Peace and Freedom Party in the Bay Area. Allen said she remembers many heated discussions between the two over their familys dinner table, but she also never saw them attack each other during this intellectual sparring.

They never broke the bonds of love, Allen said.

She also realized that, despite their varied proposals for how to achieve it, they both shared a common goal: human flourishing. Allen presented her audience with a five step program which outlines how anyone can overcome differences of opinion and become a confident pluralist.

The first of the five steps is reflection. Allen asked the audience to hearken back to Socrates fundamental question: how should we live? Its through this bottom-up moral inventory that we assess the motivations for our convictions, she said.

Following that is commitment to negotiations and institutions as opposed to resorting to violence. Allen lamented violence breaking out across the country.

Theyre forgetting that the project of free self-government requires seeing that institutions are the instruments that we use for negotiating our conflicts and our differences, she said.

The third step is the commitment to compromise, which Allen emphasized doesnt mean the abandonment of core principles.

She pointed to the Declaration of Independences second sentence as a profound example of compromise, highlighting John Adams advocacy for using the pursuit of happiness instead of life, liberty, and property to address contemporary concerns about the word property and its association with slavery. This strategic language choice contributed to ending slavery in Massachusetts.

Allen then distinguished between good and bad compromises. Good compromises involve hearing the voices of those affected, as seen in Adams example, while bad compromises neglect those voices, as illustrated in a passage criticizing King George written around the same time which was edited by Congress to cut out a statement that positively affirmed the rights of people in Africa.

She underscored the importance of inclusive decision-making for confident pluralism, ensuring all affected parties have a say.

The penultimate step in her process is the commitment to listening and mirroring your counterparts message back to them before responding. Allen joked this advice could be doled out by any given marriage therapist, but reiterated the importance of understanding the opposing argument completely before you engage in debate about it, saving everyone unnecessary squabbling over misinterpretations of one another.

Allens final prescription is to never allow yourself or anyone else to hold human dignity hostage. To illustrate her point, she told of one of many instances where she received an angry, hateful email from someone, shaming her for being associated with an institution that supports antisemitism and terrorism and calling her a despicable human being.

She responded to the email with a kind direction to some writings she had published on the subject in question and suggested the sender of the harsh email read it in order to better understand her position. The hate-mailers response carried an entirely different tune, apologizing to her for lashing out and praising Allens kind response, saying, If only everyone could do the same thing, wed live in a better world.

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How to become a confident pluralist: Harvard professor and democracy advocate spills - The Daily Universe - Universe.byu.edu

The official death toll in Gaza is nearing 32,500 as Israel continues its assault in defiance of a U.N. Security Council resolution calling for a Ramadan ceasefire. On Monday, an Israeli airstrike killed Saher Akram Rayan, a longtime correspondent for the Palestinian news agency Wafa. His son was also killed in the attack. By one count, 136 journalists have been killed so far in Gaza.

On the humanitarian front, UNICEFs James Elder says the hunger crisis in Gaza is worsening as Palestinian families struggle to find food to eat.

James Elder: A week ago, I was in Kamal Adwan Hospital, where weve had those reports of 20-plus children dying of malnutrition and dehydration. When I was there, I saw a room full of mothers and carers not always mothers, some mothers have been killed carers shuddering over children who are paper thin, absolutely paper thin, incubators full of babies who are born prematurely because of the stress on mothers, also malnourished.

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UNICEF: Paper Thin Children Dying in Gaza of Malnutrition and Dehydration - Democracy Now!

President Joe Biden argues that democracy is on the ballot in the 2024 election.

We believe there are potential threats to U.S. democracy posed by the choices voters make in this election. But the benefits of American democracy have for centuries been unequally available, and any discussion of the current threats needs to happen against that background.

One of us is a political scientist who focuses on civic engagement; the other is a former voting rights lawyer. At Tufts Universitys Tisch College of Civic Life, we both lead nonpartisan efforts to educate college students and other people about their roles in democracy.

For us, Bidens talk of democracy is a useful starting point for a broader conversation about U.S. democracy and the 2024 election.

On Jan. 5, 2024, the president delivered a speech in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania, titled Defending the Sacred Cause of American Democracy.

As a candidate for reelection at the early stages of a political campaign, the president argued that he and his fellow Democratic candidates are in favor of democracy. Former President Donald Trump and his supporters in the U.S. Congress, said Biden, are against it.

In this speech and other statements, Biden makes the following case: Trump supported or even incited the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, and he refuses to denounce political violence. Trump floats ideas for his second presidential term that include invoking the Insurrection Act, which authorizes the president to deploy the military inside the United States.

In contrast, Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris argue that they respect the Constitution, recognize their limited power and limited importance as leaders within a constitutional order and support freedom of speech. They maintain, in Bidens words, that political violence is never, ever acceptable in the United States.

The basic facts in Bidens speech appear accurate: Trumps own statements support some of Bidens claims.

If elected again, Trump is reportedly considering deploying the Insurrection Act against civilian protests. He has expressed open admiration for foreign authoritarian leaders, most recently Hungarys Viktor Orban. He encouraged his supporters to guard the vote and to watch those votes in certain cities, which some interpret as threatening and potentially intimidating to election workers.

Trump has threatened to prosecute his political opponents, claiming in October 2023 that since he was being prosecuted during the Biden administration, that provided justification for him to do the same.

This is third-world-country stuff, arrest your opponent, Trump said during a New Hampshire campaign visit. And that means I can do that, too.

Bidens own record, however, undermines some of his claims to be fully committed to democracy.

The Biden-Harris administration has been accused by human rights advocates and even Democratic senators of a double standard: championing democracy while maintaining close ties with authoritarian leaders, including the Saudis.

At the very least, Biden has continued a historic pattern of U.S. engagement across the globe that prioritizes security over human rights and liberal democracy. His administration is widely criticized for its support of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahus conduct of the war in Gaza and its disastrous humanitarian consequences.

At home, despite a major expansion of the governments role in the economy, the Biden administration has not done anything significant to make federal policymaking more democratic or participatory.

Its helpful to step back from the daily campaign and its heightened rhetoric and consider how Bidens assertion holds up in light of general research and evidence about democracy in the U.S. That analysis reveals a more complex picture of threats to democracy, some of which are specific to the upcoming election. Others have existed for some time.

In their 2020 book Four Threats: The Recurring Crises of American Democracy, political scientists Suzanne Mettler and Robert C. Lieberman argue that democracies in general suffer when any of four trends occur: intense partisan polarization, efforts to exclude some people from the electorate, economic inequality and unilateral exercises of power by the executive branch.

Mettler and Lieberman show that each of these trends has been rising in the U.S. for several decades. Applying their framework, wed note that both Biden and Trump used a comparable number of executive orders 127 and 137, respectively in their first three years to bypass a reluctant Congress and enact policies unilaterally. The Biden administration has been credibly accused of stretching executive power in areas such as student loan forgiveness.

These long-term trends mean that neither Trump nor Biden is mainly responsible for causing them. Biden criticized all four of these threats in his Jan. 5 speech, however, whereas Trump often endorses political polarization and limitless executive power and has challenged the validity of votes cast in urban and suburban areas with significant minority populations. This difference lends support to Bidens argument.

Notable in Bidens campaign rhetoric about democracy is his alarm about political violence. In any democracy, violence is a threat because, among other things, it intimidates people and makes participation dangerous. In the U.S., political violence has always been associated with attempts to deny democratic rights. It is often racialized and targeted at the most vulnerable communities.

By its very nature, the system of slavery required extreme violence, political repression and the denial of democratic rights to enslaved black people. Though rarely recognized as such in history books, it could be characterized as a racially targeted police state coexisting within a liberal democracy for whites only.

Governance under slavery included organized vigilante violence, repression of dissent, violent clashes and rebellions, harsh suppression, broad prosecution of dissidents, and systematic passage of restrictive laws or renewed enforcement of existing measures when resistance emerged.

Desmond S. King and Rogers M. Smith in Still a House Divided catalog some of these patterns. Even after slavery and the post-Civil War period known as Reconstruction, political violence frequently in response to Black political mobilization or the exercise of basic rights helped maintain what was known as Jim Crow rule.

Two major instances among many stand out: the 1898 Wilmington coup, when white supremacists overthrew the democratically elected biracial city government, and the destruction of a citys vibrant Black business district and community in the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921.

Violence as a threat to democracy is by no means new, but the U.S. may be entering a new violent chapter.

While we do not have extensive historical data, the rate of political violence seems high now, and there are indications of dangerous trends. For example, in 2023, the U.S. Capitol Police investigated more than 8,000 threats against members of Congress, a substantial increase over 2022. The number of serious threats against federal judges has increased each year since 2019 and is 2.5 times higher now than five years ago.

Citing data collected by Nathan P. Kalmoe, Lilliana Mason and Bright Line Watch, democracy scholar Rachel Kleinfeld shows that the percentage of both Democrats and Republicans who believe that violence is sometimes justified to achieve their political goals has more than doubled since 2017, although this remains a minority view in both parties.

From 2020 to 2023, the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project cataloged 1,080 demonstrations in the United States that the organization labels violent along with more than 50 times as many nonviolent demonstrations plus 157 cases of excessive force against demonstrators and 22 armed clashes. This data establishes a baseline for tracking the phenomenon in the near future.

From our perspective, nonviolent protests are expressions of a vibrant democracy that deserve protection. There may be room to debate some of the protests labeled violent. However, the sheer number of demonstrations that the project labels violent more than 1,000 in four years is concerning to us.

The Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol may prove to be an example of a period of political unrest. Trump is deeply implicated in the violence. Biden is decrying it but not necessarily proposing any response other than to vote against Trump.

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