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Few in the audience applauding Joe Biden could have questioned the sincerity of his warning about a momentous threat to American democracy.

But they may have walked away with lingering doubts about his ability to meet the moment or answer fears that even the office of the presidency will be found politically impotent in the face of the challenge.

Were facing the most significant test of our democracy since the civil war, Biden said in a speech on Tuesday in Philadelphia, recalling the mid-19th-century conflict that left more than 600,000 people dead. The Confederates back then never breached the Capitol as insurrectionists did on January the 6th.

The president added pointedly: Im not saying this to alarm you; Im saying this because you should be alarmed.

Yet while Biden was praised by voting rights activists for correctly diagnosing the sickness, albeit somewhat belatedly, he was criticised for failing to offer a cure. He concluded his 24-minute speech with the exhortation Weve got to act! but did not provide a battle plan.

At stake are the basic principles of democracy: who gets to vote, how they exercise that right and who gets to decide what vote counts. Since Bidens victory over Donald Trump last November a result that Trump and many Republicans refuse to accept, citing bogus claims of fraud that right has been under a coordinated, relentless assault as never before in modern times.

This year 17 states have enacted 28 new laws to make it harder for people to vote. There have been nearly 400 voter suppression bills introduced in 48 states, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.

Some measures aim to reverse the vote-by-mail expansion that was put in place in the 2020 election due to the coronavirus pandemic. Others try to strengthen voter identification requirements, curtail hours and locations for early voting and ballot drop-offs or increase the risk that voters could be intimidated by poll watchers.

Campaigners say that people of color, young people and poor people would be the biggest losers. These groups are generally more likely to vote Democratic than Republican. Civil rights leaders met Biden at the White House earlier this month and appear to have convinced him that the 21st-century Jim Crow assault is real, as he put it on Tuesday.

The speech in Philadelphia, the birthplace of American democracy, was a good first step, according to Chris Scott, chief political officer of the group Democracy for America. I think thats what a lot of us, especially in the progressive movement, have been calling for, he said.

The part that really stuck with me was invoking Congressman John Lewis in saying, Freedom is not a state; it is an act. And so thats why I say the speech is the first part but we are asking him to take action on this.

Never once in his remarks did Biden mention Washington DCs version of the F-word: filibuster. This arcane procedural rule in the Senate enables the minority to block debate on legislation. Last month Republicans used the filibuster to stall the For the People Act, which would create national standards for voting that could prevent some of the restrictions imposed by red states.

Former president Barack Obama has called the filibuster a Jim Crow relic, a reference to its long history of thwarting civil rights legislation. Biden, who served in the Senate for 36 years, could push for its abolition or reform from his bully pulpit and by privately making the case to sceptical Democratic senators such as Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona.

Scott continued: We cannot get any meaningful reforms passed as long as we still have this filibuster in place and so one of the greater problems is seeing him be able to have the ability of some of his predecessors. I think of Lyndon B Johnson and how he was able to leverage his experience in the United States Senate to get his own party members to fall in line.

When we have members like Joe Manchin, like Kyrsten Sinema, we have to have them actually fall in line because what were seeing is Mitch McConnell do what he does best. Whether or not hes majority leader or minority leader, he always finds a way to handcuff whatever progress we actually want to get done.

Fears were expressed during the Democratic primary campaign that Biden is a boxer, not a fighter, whose faith in an age of political chivalry and bipartisanship is ill-suited to the bloodsport of the Trump era. On Tuesday he urged the passage of both the For the People Act a national imperative and John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act but both appear doomed under current Senate rules.

In an interview with the Reuters news agency following the speech, the civil rights leader Al Sharpton pointed out that Biden did not mention the filibuster, adding that he had just spoken to the president. And he said to me just now, Al, were still working through where we are going to be on that. Hes not committed yet.

Bidens passivity on the issue was thrown into sharp relief by more than 50 Democratic legislators who abruptly flew out of Texas in an attempt to derail Republican efforts to pass voting restrictions in the state. The group came to Washington, gave impassioned speeches outside the US Capitol and met Kamala Harris, the vice-president who is leading White House efforts on voting rights.

Leah Greenberg, co-executive director of the progressive grassroots movement Indivisible, said: Its inspiring, its exactly what should be happening. Everybody in the country should be looking at what they are doing and asking themselves, how do I fight just as hard for the right to vote as these Texas Democrats are doing?

One, theyre holding up the legislative process, but two theyre making a stand and actually bringing that fight to Washington and seeking help from the federal government and now its on all of us to rally to that cry.

Greenberg also urged Democrats to be similarly aggressive regarding the filibuster. Both Manchin and Sinema, while theyre clear that they will not abolish the filibuster, have in the past both entertained discussions around reforming it to try to return it to its real purpose, from the talking filibuster to things like having quorum limits go down over time.

These are the kinds of things that the Democratic caucus should be talking about, because the idea that we are going to fundamentally leave our democracy unprotected because of this legislative loophole from the late 1700s is just absurd.

She added: Fundamentally, President Biden could say that out loud. He hasnt yet even called for reform so for him to say, Im doing everything I can when he literally hasnt even made the call for legislative reform that would be necessary to pass the For the People Act just doesnt pass the smell test.

Some Democrats are seeking creative ways to break the stalemate. James Clyburn, the House majority whip, has suggested creating a carve-out to the filibuster for legislation applicable to election law or other constitutional changes, which would give Democrats a way to pass their voting rights bills with a simple majority, rather than 60 votes.

Clyburn, who arguably did more than anyone to secure Bidens victory in the Democratic primary, told reporters on Wednesday: I think President Biden should weigh in. All I want him to do is express support for it.

Biden has also argued that legislation is not the only tool, noting that the justice department will challenge the onslaught of voting rights restrictions and focus on dismantling racially discriminatory laws. One such intervention is already under way in Georgia.

But the issue continues to threaten Democratic unity and shine a light on the limits of the presidency or the man who currently holds that office. Adam Jentleson, executive director of the pressure group Battle Born Collective, said in a statement: On voting rights, President Joe Biden is failing to meet the moment.

There is a wide gap between his rhetoric and his leadership. In his speech, he described the conservative assault on our democracy as an existential threat, yet he refused to endorse the obvious solution, which is to pass voting rights legislation and reform the filibuster to do so, if necessary.

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US democracy faces a momentous threat, says Joe Biden but is he up for the fight? - The Guardian

Democrats need to start showing up in Scott County. As of this writing, there is no Democratic county chair. They need to start listening to people and admitting that our standard 10-point plans too often leave out how to create meaningful change for these places and many who live there. This Other America is key to a Democratic future. Any candidate who doesnt devote time and energy to these places is making a strategic blunder.

A tailored, place-based economic message is crucial. While pro-democracy Republicans may create the opportunity, Democrats will need to drive a message that focuses on the economic recovery and the benefits of the Rescue Plan, the Jobs Plan, and the Families Plan. In different districts, different elements of the recovery will resonate. They key is identifying how the recovery is benefiting real people.

Finally, in every district, the 2022 election needs to start today. In too many red districts, there is an issue and media echo chamber. The only voices on national policy are locally elected Republicans. For voters who rely on local news, it is a one-sided conversation.

It does not cost a lot of time or effort to change that conversation. As important as our issue forums were as an organizing tool, they were even more important as a means of taking the debate to the Republicans representing East Tennessee. The issue forums generated a front-page story, a lead business story, and an editorial in the largest local newspaper in the district, as well as a top story on local news one night. The issue forums forced Fleischmann into responding that he was vehemently opposed to the American Jobs Plan, only to go on Fox News a few weeks later suggesting a bipartisan alternativewhich he then voted against.

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Democrats Can Win House in 2022 by Courting Pro-Democracy Republicans - The New Republic

Sitting in my eighth-grade classroom, I stealthily check my email, hoping for news updates from The New York Times or CNN about the heightened COVID-19 crisis in India, my country of origin.

Before I can even read a word on the page, a boy in my class asks, Why are you reading the news?

Yeah, my friend adds. Shreyas a boomer.

The whole class erupts into laughter and my face heats as I slowly close my email tab.

If you dont know what a boomer is, Ill keep it simple: I was called the equivalent of a grandma simply because I read the news.

Although this memory feels distant during these summer months, I cant help but wonder what this simple statement says about Generation Z (people between the ages of 6 and 24).

Much to my astonishment, only 5% of U.S. citizens aged 9-24 are regular consumers of news from newspapers or digital publications. Meanwhile, 54% of Generation Z members get their daily news from social media sites such as TikTok, Instagram, and the like.

For informed young readers, this means that it has become even harder to get our perspectives and opinions to be taken seriously.

With the spike of social media usage, the average attention span has dropped from 12 seconds in 2000 to eight seconds in 2013. This is a result of social media sites condensing and simplifying information into bite-sized videos that are usually less than three minutes.

How can we be sure that teenagers are grasping whats going on in the news if their only news intake is a short video that can be made by anyone, not even a qualified reporter or journalist?

Moreover, there have been numerous reported false rumors circulating on sites like TikTok in recent months, like those suggesting that certain celebrities are involved in sex-trafficking. This affects not just the reputation of the celebrities but also taints public perception on the credibility of all news shared and discussed on social media platforms.

One of the bigger issues clouding this topic is whether Gen Z is getting a sufficient amount of knowledge about current events if the majority of them are scrolling through posts that can be biased or leave out certain information. This is especially important when it comes to the impact that young voters can have on election outcomes when they show up at the ballot box and the repercussions that follow.

As the journal Foreign Policy put it, Donald Trump always enjoyed massive support from uneducated, low-information white people.

The emphasis here should be on low-information, because without education and a factual understanding of current events, voters can elect unqualified candidates into office.

Gen Z-ers must recognize that voting is a highly important right that many other nations dont have. We must take it seriously.

Older members of Gen Z will have an opportunity to vote in upcoming elections, but with this freedom comes responsibility; they must ensure that they will make an informed choice by consistently reading the news from unbiased, factual sources.

Although social media is a great tool in itself, when it becomes the primary vehicle of informing the general public, many of the stories circulating must be taken with a grain of salt.

Reading the news on social media is not enough. So, please, pick up the paper.

Shreya Prabhu will be a freshman this fall at Greenwich High School,Connecticut. This column was produced for The Progressive magazine.

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Can democracy survive a generation that doesn't care to be informed? - theday.com

When Justice Louis Brandeis referred to the states as laboratories of democracy almost a century ago, he was looking at the way reforms can be tested in individual states, and the effective ones can spread throughout the country state-by-state. Unfortunately, when bad ideas spread in this fashion, they can be used to undercut democracy itself.

Take, for example, the so-called election audit in Maricopa County, Arizona. While this partisan review of election results drags on, the effort to unearth nonexistent evidence of widespread voter fraud is spreading to other parts of the country. Under the guise of ensuring election integrity, Republican activists doggedly pursue new evidence that the 2020 election was stolen. They continue to contort science and logic on the taxpayers dime, even as we approach the Biden administrations seventh month in office. This is madness. And it must stop.

Yet recently, Pennsylvania state Sen. Doug Mastriano (R) announced plans to conduct a Maricopa-style election review of his states 2020 election results, requesting access to ballots and election equipment from three counties, including Philadelphia. In fact, this would be the Senators second such partisan review this year. Just after the election, Mastriano hired Wake TSI, a company with no verifiable elections auditing experience, to review the ballots of Fulton County, Pennsylvania. Rather than proving election fraud, the investigation funded by a group led by notorious Trump-affiliate Sidney Powell found that the election was well run. Further, the so-called auditors mishandled the election equipment and taxpayers may now need to pay for new voting machines.

Similar efforts are underway in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Georgia. As the report weve just released with Protect Democracy details, these attempts are each at different stages, but they have a common origin: all are the handiwork of people who claim that Donald TrumpDonald TrumpOn The Money: Schumer pressured from all sides on spending strategy | GOP hammers HUD chief over sluggish rental aid | Democrat proposes taxes on commercial space flights Overnight Health Care: Fauci clashes with Paul - again | New York reaches .1B settlement with opioid distributors | Delta variant accounts for 83 percent of US COVID-19 cases Overnight Defense: Military justice overhaul included in defense bill | Pentagon watchdog to review security of 'nuclear football' | Pentagon carries out first air strike in Somalia under Biden MORE won the 2020 election.

In Wisconsin, the state assembly has tapped Michael Gableman a former state Supreme Court justice and Trump supporter who has falsely claimed errors in the presidential election process may have affected the final results to lead its partisan investigation of the 2020 election results.

In Michigan, a firm called Allied Security Operations Group, which has a history of spreading false claims about the election, was given access to Antrim County voting machines. The resulting report was riddled with inaccuracies and falsehoods.

And in Georgia, VoterGA Founder Garland Favorito is seeking access to all mail ballots in Fulton County. He is proposing to have them inspected under the same premise and using the same untested methods deployed in Maricopa County, which purports to detect fraud by examining folds in the ballots under ultraviolet light. Dubbed kinematic artifact detection technology and invented by self-proclaimed treasure hunter Jovan Pulitzer, this practice not only has no scientific support, but the ultraviolet light can damage paper and any markings on it.

These politically motivated fiascos mark a radical departure from legitimate election validation and auditing procedures routinely used by election officials to count votes and check results.

During every election cycle, election officials use processes designed to be transparent, objective, and secure with safeguards in place to guard against human error and bias. In the instances when an external process audit is warranted, generally accepted auditing guidelines provide clear standards for ensuring objectivity and avoiding conflicts of interest.

The efforts being undertaken in these states fail to meet these basic standards. They are not designed to maintain ballot or equipment security or obtain accurate results. They are designed to stoke mistrust in the 2020 election and in elections to come.

Election administration experts have declared the 2020 election the most secure in American history. The facts overwhelmingly show that the results were fair and legitimate. Our democracy can only survive so long as the voters whose candidate didnt win can trust our elections. These sham audits are meant to destroy that trust.

Matthew Germer and Gowri Ramachandran coauthored the report, Partisan Review Efforts in Five States, along with other election administration experts at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law, the R Street Institute, and Protect Democracy. Germer is an elections fellow at the R Street Institute, and Ramachandran is counsel in the Brennan Centers Election Reform Program.

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Bad-faith election audits are sabotaging democracy across the nation | TheHill - The Hill

From widespread protests in Cuba to the assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Mose, recent unrest across Latin America has brought new attention to political and economic issues in the region and created diplomatic challenges for the Biden administration. To discuss how the United States should engage with Latin America, David Dollar is joined by Santiago Levy, a nonresident senior fellow in the Global Economy and Development program at Brookings and senior advisor to the United Nations Development Program.

Levy describes the negative effects of U.S. policy toward Cuba, his concerns about sovereign debt in the region, and how the U.S. could work with Latin American governments to rethink development strategies in order to achieve socially inclusive growth. Then, the conversation turns to Progresa-Oportunidades, a conditional cash transfer program Levy helped design during his career in public service in Mexico, and what lessons it could provide for similar economic programs proposed by the Biden administration.

Read more:

Poverty in Latin America: Where do we come from, where are we going?

How should the G-7 respond to Chinas BRI?

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How can the US support democracy and development in Latin America? - Brookings Institution