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Donald Trump incited a riot in order to overturn an election he lost. Hes responsible for hundreds of thousands of COVID-19 deaths, as well.

Trump was never popular. He never came close to winning the popular vote in 2016 or 2020. But if voter suppression laws recently passed by Republican state legislatures stand, he could become even more unpopular and still capture the presidency again.

The Republicans motivations are clear. They believe that if you wont vote for them, you shouldnt vote at all. They are threatened by the multi-racial majority in this country. When they suppress the votes of my Black and Brown sisters and brothers, they harm us all. We cant let that happen.

Saving our democracy is much easier than people think. But our senators must hear from us.

Step 1: Get rid of the filibuster

Step 2: Pass the voting rights legislation known as the For the People Act.

All it will take is 50 votes in the Senate to get it done. Call Sen. Dick Durbin and Sen. Tammy Duckworth. Demand that they stand up for people of color and our democracy.

Neal Waltmire, Berwyn

SEND LETTERS TO: letters@suntimes.com. Please include your neighborhood or hometown and a phone number for verification purposes. Letters should be approximately 350 words or less.

Firearm Owners Identification cards popularly called FOID cards do not prevent any law-abiding citizen from owning a firearm. The ID acts only as a barrier to people who should not own a firearm from owning one. And the cards $10 fee impedes firearm ownership no more than the price of a gun charged by a firearms dealer.

Yet the Illinois Supreme Court is now being asked to decide whether FOID cards are a violation of the U.S. Constitution.

The Second Amendment was penned in the 18th century. No one can seriously argue that the Founding Fathers were so wise they could predict the advances that would be made in the science of firearms more than 200 years into the future. The Second Amendment needs an update, not revocation.

Warren Rodgers, Jr., Matteson

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End filibuster to save democracy from Republican schemes to suppress the vote | Letters - Chicago Sun-Times

On April 14th, hundreds of U.S. CEOs added their names to a public statement of protest against a new law in Georgia that tightens access to the ballot box. The action was announced in a two-page spread in the New York Times under the headline, We Stand for Democracy. Seventy-five Black executives were the first to sign on; the signatories view the new measure as a form of voter suppression, especially aimed at Black voters in Georgia and around the country where similar measures are under consideration.

The business press had a field day with the story. Reporters called out both individual CEOs who had signed on and those missing and also a number who signed personally without invoking the name of their corporation. Communications staffs are earning their keep trying to keep it all straight: the need to manage the preferences of their leaders, and the expectations of employees who are keen to have their interests and values represented in critical debates in the public square.

The concern for the employees reaction is so acute that Doug McMillan of Walmart issued a statement to his workforce explaining his commitment to democratic principles although he had not signed on.

Not every executive is willing to harness their brand to highly divisive social issues outside of their control, but in more recent years, chief executives have issued statements or engaged in networks aimed at a host of issues with only the most indirect ties to business goals, including guns, immigration, and human rights. It seems like a new chapter in how business uses its voice, for several reasons.

One is the sheer scale of business engagement. Business leaders and groups are becoming more vocal in two key areas: climate change and racial equity.

After more than a decade of silence on a warming climate, Business Roundtable, the voice of big business in America, released a comprehensive policy statement in 2020 calling for Congress to price carbon and invest in alternatives to fossil fuels. In the wake of the killing of George Floyd last year, Business Roundtable formed a special committee of its board to identify meaningful action, including legislation to reform policing. Before this, Business Roundtable had largely stayed out of areas like climate change and avoided taking positions on social issues.

A telling moment came after the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, when scores of corporations announced they were hitting the pause button on political spending altogether. It is not yet clear where this will lead, but at a minimum, greater transparency on political spending will become the norm.

Yet while business commitments on climate change and racial equity matter, cynicism pervades. Many citizens and activists view the call to action by business to save democracy as a form of greenwashing that in reality will not add up to much.

For this time to be truly different, CEOs will need to take these steps:

1. To be viewed as trustworthy and authentic leaders, executives must keep their promises: To overcome cynicism requires a fresh look at operating decisions and protocols, from the boardroom to the supply chain. It especially requires a willingness to explore blind spots and unexamined practices that directly impact the health of the commons and that must come out into the open to assure that the countrys economic and political systems serve the many, not just the 1%.

2. When it comes to racial inequity and creating quality jobs, business has many levers to pull: The C-suite and board control everything from who is hired or trained and the structure of jobs to the allocation of wages, benefits, and profits.

One of the third-rail issues is heavy reliance on contract and outsourced labor. Another is the design of executive compensation, which is still anchored in shareholder primacy and defies definitions of fairness. One blind spot concerns norms that return the lions share (90%+) of profits of public companies to investors and traders through share dividends and buybacks, while further enriching senior executives and squeezing meaningful investment in the workforce.

In the U.S., the growth in contract labor is a significant contributor to poverty. Board directors who aim to build trust in their companys brand will question the impetus for converting jobs to contract labor with few rights and no financial security or upward mobility. Boards should also question the purpose of share buybacks, which until 1982 were deemed illegal as stock manipulation.

Boards also should reconsider the practices and assumptions under which CEO pay continues to ratchet out of control. They must ask, What are we paying the CEO to do? and test if executive incentives and metrics support, or undermine, the creation of good jobs.

Another blind spot is about tax avoidance deploying tax advisory services to mine the loopholes such as transfer pricing. Is a company is paying for vital public services and supporting the rule of law that business leaders equate with a healthy democracy?

This is where business leaders and boards have real agency. Today, activists trying to assess the seriousness of promises made on racial equity are subject to whiplash between commitments and reality.

3. When the system itself is at risk, collaboration and new operating protocols across industries are also needed: The commitments of individual companies are worthy, even critical, but suboptimal. For example, sufficient progress on climate change will require a fundamental reset and repricing nationally and globally to send signals to both consumers and producers well beyond the net-zero goals already proclaimed by scores of companies.

For the executive working to keep his or her promises, collective action requires scrubbing the governmental relations function to assure that the policy signals, lobbyists, and membership fees, are well aligned with public commitments.

We need the support of business to modify and repeal laws that undermine worker voices and suppress the collective power once held by unions. We need business to revisit its aversion to an alternative minimum tax to support infrastructure and the safety net and education and skill building, and we need business to do everything in its power to price carbon emissions, pollution and waste efficiently, and effectively.

As citizens and as consumers we all hold business to account, but the real allies are a companys employees. Employees have a close view of the actions of their company and wield power in the complex dance between public will and private action.

It was employees, after all, who called out the hypocrisy of corporate contributions to politicians who undermined election results. On April 14th when CEOs released the We Stand For Democracy call to action, employees with a keen interest in social justice looked to see if their own leader was on the list. They call on executives to be authentic to their promises.These workers are not likely to stand down when political contributions begin anew.

Judy Samuelson is executive director of the Aspen Institute Business & Society Program and author of The Six New Rules of Business: Creating Real Value in a Changing World (Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2021).

Also read: Bidens tax reform should rely on the Buffett Rule to make the rich pay their fair share

More: With trickle-down economics a failure, Biden sees an opening to invest in the American people

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CEOs speaking up for democracy is good business but employees and shareholders need to keep the pressure on - MarketWatch

Dear Editor,

Every American should be alarmed at the efforts to restrict access to free, fair and accessible voting that are gaining momentum across the country.

According to the Brennan Center for Justice (https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/voting-laws-roundup-march-2021) 361 bills have been introduced in 47 states, all designed to restrict access, increase voting requirements, or introduce mechanisms that give undue control to the party in power within a states government. Limiting absentee voting, expanding voter roll purges, and reducing early voting and voting hours are just a few of the provisions being advanced in these bills, with Georgia, Florida, Texas and Arizona among the states moving most rapidly to pass such legislation.

It is too easy to shake our heads and think there is nothing we can do about it. After all, our own Senators and Representatives are not supporting such anti-democracy actions. But in fact there are actions we can take. And if we care about the future of our democracy, we cannot sit on the sidelines. We can contact voters in states where state legislators are acting to suppress the vote, to share information about these suppression efforts and what they can to about it. And we can advocate for national bills now in Congress to protect voters rights and assure fair representation across the country.

To help connect our community with national efforts to support and strengthen our democracy and fight voter suppression, SOMA Action has formed a new committee, the Democracy Action Committee. The committee will kick-off its work this Saturday, May 8th, noon to 2 pm, as we join with hundreds of other groups around the country to celebrate the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Action Day. We will set up information tables at two locations in our towns: on Sloan Street by the South Orange train station and at the Open Air Retail Market at Yale St. and Springfield Ave. All community members are urged to drop by, with masks on, to learn more and to get information on how each of us can take action.

It is up to us all of us to make good on Benjamin Franklins warning about American democracy: We have ourselves a Republic, if we can keep it.

Valyrie Laedlein, Member of the Democracy Action Committee of SOMA Action

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LETTER: Join the Nationwide Effort to Fight Voter Suppression and Defend Democracy, May 8 - The Village Green

Chairman Yarmuth, Ranking Member Smith, and members of the Committee, my name is Molly Reynolds [1] and I am a Senior Fellow in the Governance Studies Program at the Brookings Institution.

I appreciate the opportunity to testify today on how Congress can better fulfill its constitutional obligation to provide for, and effectively oversee, the executive branch. My research has explored a range of topics related to congressional rules and procedures, including changes in the congressional budget process since the adoption of the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act. My goal today is to provide context for why and how Congress requires additional tools to effectively monitor the executive branchs execution of congressional decisions.

In this context, I want to make four main points today.

1. The structure of the U.S. constitutional system and the incentives facing members of Congress mean that Congress needs procedures in place to ensure that that the executive branch is complying with congressional intent.

Because the Constitution separates legislative functions from executive ones, and because Congress must rely on the executive to implement its policy choices, divergence between Congresss intent and policy outcomes is inevitable; the individuals charged with executing federal programs on a daily basisfrom agency heads down to career civil servantswill always encounter situations in which the language of the law does not provide sufficient guidance.[2]

Indeed, it is because of this inevitability that Congress must design and, periodically, re-design mechanisms to monitor, as effectively as possible, the activities of the executive branch in response to congressional decisions.

It is not only this constitutional division of labor that creates the need for effective oversight mechanisms. It is also the fact that, as the branch charged with implementing policy, the executive branch has types of expertise that make it better equipped to make certain detailed decisions. As the policy problems facing the nation have become more complex and numerous, Congress has frequently found itself incapable of writing statutes that set forth all of these specific choices.

In addition, as a political matter, Congress often prefers to leave detailed decisions to the executive branch. In some cases, this is due to shared preferences between the congressional majority enacting a policy and the president charged with implementing it. But in other situations, it is because Congress prefers to leave the most politically challenging issues to another branch to resolve.

Together, these circumstances mean that Congress must design ways to monitor this inevitable potential for slippagedivergence that can and does occur regardless of whether the branches are controlled by the same political party. Even in an era of high partisan polarization, it is vital to remember that the need for monitoring and oversight tools is structural and fundamental to the constitutional system.

Continue reading the full testimony here. Watch the full video of Reynoldss testimony (starting around the 43:00 mark) and the rest of the hearing below.

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Protecting our Democracy: Reasserting Congress Power of the Purse - Brookings Institution

The recent spate of military coups in Africa, which were intended to be transitional, might instead be a risk for democracy in the long term. There might be a short term need to maintain security. But the military may not necessarily be a credible partner to build democratic governance. Military intervention could mean that people might continue to be in a state of stagnant democracy.

Chad is the most recent example of this. Soon after the death of President Idriss Deby, the military swiftly took over power. They immediately installed his 37-year-old son Mahamat, a military commander, as interim president. He will now lead an 18-month Transitional Military Council. Parliament and the government have been dissolved and the constitution suspended.

Upon the death of the president, the constitution stipulates that his duties should be provisionally exercised by the president of the National Assembly. The military has ignored these arrangement. By suspending the constitution it has effectively overseen an unconstitutional change of government.

The military has stated that the dissolution of Parliament and suspension of the constitution are provisional. It claims that these measures are intended to maintain stability. And to ensure a peaceful and democratic transition of power. These arguments are not particularly convincing.

First, the military government has already created an atmosphere of fear. It has banned demonstrations and dispersed protesters using disproportionate and repressive force. Second, it has refused calls for a ceasefire and dialogue with the Front for Change and Concord in Chad, the rebel group alleged to be responsible for Derbys death. This goes against the tenets of a peaceful transition to civilian government, which should rightly consider an inclusive dialogue with all stakeholders.

Third, the military junta has appointed a civilian prime minister, Albert Padacke. The new prime minister was the runner up during the April 11 presidential elections. He is seen as a Deby ally and is, therefore, not a credible civilian stakeholder.

But Chad isnt the first African country to go down this path. Recent examples of military coups include Mali in August 2020, Sudan in April 2019, Zimbabwe in 2017, and Egypt in February 2011 and July 2013. In these cases, transitional military councils were established to oversee smooth and peaceful democratic transitions.

They took over under the guise of restoring democratic governance by maintaining order and temporarily overseeing political transitions. But early signs are not particularly promising.

In Mali, after pressure from regional bodies like the Economic Community of West African States, the transitional military council was dissolved and a civilian-led transitional government was put in place.

But the countrys civilian vice president, Assimi Goita, is the military commander who led the coup. Other cabinet ministers are also military commanders. So, the military still wields significant influence over a so-called transitional civilian government.

Sudan also presents a particularly tenuous case. Since the ouster of former president Omar al-Bashir, some progress has been made to appoint a more inclusive cabinet. But the countrys transitional agreement also secures the militarys dominant role in political and economic life for the foreseeable future.

Egypt and Zimbabwe which have completed their transitions from popular uprisings to civilian leadership, have already shown how much influence the military can wield over democratically elected governments. In both cases, the military stepped in under the guise of restoring democratic governance following popular uprisings. Zimbabwe managed to transition from military to civilian rule. However, the military is embedded in government. Egypt remains a military state.

Even with these examples, the risks of Africa returning to the widespread military rule of the late 60s to early 80s is low. Nevertheless, there is a potential risk of sliding into a culture of military siege on democratic governance.

The danger here is that democratically elected governments can become dependent on the military. Civilian governments, which are installed by a military process, may seek to please the military in order to remain in power. In the process, the military can become the key determinant of civilian governments legitimacy.

Eventually, they may become more and more autonomous and less accountable to oversight from government. And may begin to make demands on the government, such as demands for increased wages, better housing, expensive military equipment. They could also demand that governments divert resources to the military to consolidate its power. Because these governments depend on the military for their legitimacy, they would be hard-pressed to resist these demands.

Eventually, governments that are propped up by the military can easily become authoritarian. With the support of the armed forces, they can crack down on political opposition or any form of anti-government protest. This undermines democracy because political freedoms are suppressed. The political space becomes increasingly restricted, which can lead to a replication of the same conditions which precipitated the military take-over.

Military interventions may be deemed necessary in the short term to maintain peace and security. But, they are inherently unconstitutional. No doubt, Chad is still in its initial stages of a military led transition, but it may yet become another example of how democratic progress can be subverted by the military. What eventually happens will be significant not only for the Chadian democracy, but for what can become an uncomfortable path to democratic governance in Africa.

The task of democratic development and entrenchment in Africa is enormous. There are no quick fixes. The current wave of military interventions or covert coups can be viewed as a movement to protect and support democracy in Africa. But it remains to be seen whether the military is a credible partner to achieve this objective.

Continued here:
Chads covert coup and the implications for democratic governance in Africa - The Conversation CA