Archive for the ‘Democracy’ Category

We Have to Prove Democracy Still Works – The New York Times

michael barbaro

From The New York Times, Im Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily.

Today, during his first address to Congress, President Biden makes the case for vastly expanding the role of government and taxing the countrys wealthiest to pay for it. We watched with our colleague, White House reporter, Jim Tankersley.

Its Thursday, April 29.

So, Jim, I want to start this conversation by getting something very important out of the way immediately. Was this technically a State of the Union address, or was this not a State of the Union address? And can we just call it the State of the Union even if its not?

No, I believe we are prohibited by the Constitution from calling it a State of the Union. This was an address to a joint session of Congress, but not an official State of the Union, as is typically the case in a presidents first year in office.

So the first one not State of the Union, instead, just big important speech to Congress.

Yeah, Joe Bidens been president for almost 100 days. But what hes doing here is less of a report to the country on how the country is doing and more of a report to the country on how things are going in that very young administration of his.

Got it. So lets talk about what this speech looked like and felt like in the room. I know neither of us were there. But it feels like these speeches are always defined by the moment in which they are delivered. And this one had the context of the pandemic. This was the first joint address from the president to Congress since the pandemic really began to radically alter all of our lives in the U.S. So how present did that all feel?

It was kind of weird.

You know, the seats were not full because of Covid restrictions. There were only 200 people, instead of the normal 1,600 for a speech like this. They were all spaced out at distance. And there werent as many cabinet members. There werent as many Supreme Court justices.

Madame Speaker, the President of the United States.

A Congress that is normally sort of jockeying for position to greet the president as he walks down the aisle, looked sparse, like the crowd at the N.B.A. Finals bubble last year when there really were very few people around. And it made for some weird moments, you know? Biden was walking down, and hes sort of fist bumping people, not shaking hands like politicians expect, certainly like I would think that Joe Biden had not imagined in his mind all those years hes been envisioning himself president.

Right.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

And then punctuating all that, there was certainly not a normal backdrop for him as he took the lectern flanked for the first time ever by two women.

Right, which he went out of his way to memorialize.

He did.

Anyway, thank you all, Madame Speaker, Madame Vice President.

He seemed really fired up by that particular line that kicked off the speech.

No president has ever said those words from this podium. No president has ever said those words. And its about time.

Then he settles into the actual thing that presidents always do at the start of a speech to Congress, which is to tell them how things are going in the country, really. And usually, thats very positive.

Now, after just 100 days, I can report to the nation, America is on the move again.

And in sort of quick and staccato phrases that will sort of mark this speech throughout the evening, he says

Crisis to opportunity, setbacks in the strength we all know life can knock us down. But in America, we never, ever, ever stay down.

The president tried to do a delicate two-step, which is to both acknowledge the gravity of the moment that America is still in. I mean, theres still a deadly pandemic raging around us.

Theres still more work to do to beat this virus. We cant let our guard down.

While also trying to claim credit for putting the worst of that pandemic hopefully, behind us.

Our progress these past 100 days against one of the worst pandemics in history has been one of the greatest logistical achievements logistical achievements this countrys ever seen.

And, Jim, while the president touched on a variety of items in this speech, foreign and domestic restrictions on guns that he would like to get passed, immigration reform he would like to get done, his determination to stand up to authoritarian regimes overseas it very much like the real focus of this address and what I want to talk to you about was President Bidens vision for the role of American government. And its a very expansive vision. And thats what he really seemed to be up to in this speech.

Yes, absolutely. This was an economic policy speech. But more than a policy speech, it was selling America on the idea that, hey, the government is back. Big government spending initiatives are back. And bigger government even than we have now is on the way. And its going to be really great for you personally. And he does this sort of looking backwards and forwards.

Throughout our history, if you think about it, public investment and infrastructure has literally transformed America.

He ticks through the great achievements of the federal government in American history.

The transcontinental railroad, interstate highways, united two oceans and brought a totally new age of progress to the United States of America.

Whether its World War II or railroads or you know, the space race.

These are investments we made together as one country, and investments that only the government was in a position to make. Time and again, they propel us into the future. Thats why I propose the American Jobs Plan, a once-in-a-generation investment in America itself.

Then he goes on to spend the bulk of the speech really, laying out his vision for Americas economic future, which is really two proposals that total $4 trillion in cost to taxpayers and form the Biden Economic Agenda.

Right. And, Jim, you have talked to us on the show about the first part of that plan, the American Jobs Plan, this very progressive version of what we might think of as traditional infrastructure rebuilding bridges, roads, pipes, railroads, housing in a way that seeks in Bidens words to fight climate change and achieve racial justice. So how does he talk about this not yet passed component of his agenda?

I was really struck actually by his focus in talking about that part and his just repeated use of the word jobs.

This is the largest jobs plan since World War II.

Jobs, jobs, jobs.

It creates jobs to upgrade our transportation infrastructure. Jobs, modernizing our roads, bridges, highways. Jobs, building ports

He is talking about every single piece of that physical infrastructure agenda as a job creator, the biggest job creator since World War II.

For too long we failed to use the most important word when it comes to meeting the climate crisis jobs.

And not just any jobs, blue collar jobs.

So many of you so many of the folks I grew up with feel left behind, forgotten, in an economy that so rapidly changing its frightening.

And he is really trying to speak to voters without college degrees whove been left behind by the economy, who he says he can create better paying, good jobs for.

The American Jobs Plan is a blue collar blueprint to build America. Thats what it is.

Right, windmills should be built in Pittsburgh, not Beijing.

There is simply no reason why the blades for wind turbines cant be built in Pittsburgh instead of Beijing. No reason.

Right, you know, this is Biden trying to take that progressive vision of a low-carbon future, but say it in sort of you know, Joe from Scranton terms.

And all the investments in the American Jobs Plan will be guided by one principle, buy America. Buy American.

Right, his message being, especially to Republicans, how could you not support a jobs plan? I mean, Republicans might look at this plan and say actually, we think its a climate plan and a social justice plan. But what Biden is saying is, no, Im telling you that its a jobs plan and asking how you could possibly not support it.

Right, thats exactly what hes doing. And yes, Republicans are protesting that there are studies out there showing that it wont create many jobs or any at all. But Biden is just blowing right past all that criticism and saying, millions of jobs, good paying jobs, thats what this proposal is all about. And Congress needs to pass it now.

And so whats the truth? Will this bill create jobs?

It really depends on which study you look at. There are some studies that say itll create millions of jobs. Theres one pretty notable one that says it wont. And so, the experts disagree.

Got it. And then Biden turns to the second part of this grand infrastructure spending plan, which we had not really gotten much of a glimpse of until this speech.

To win that competition for the future, in my view, we also need to make a once-in-a-generation investment in our families and our children. Thats why Ive introduced the American Families Plan tonight.

So this is what the White House calls the American Families Plan, which is a different sort of infrastructure. Its human infrastructure and a structure about people. And it breaks down into several categories. Its $1.8 trillion split between spending and tax incentives.

First, is access to good education.

So theres an education component which includes free universal preschool for three and four year-olds across the country, but also two years of free community college for anybody.

American Families Plan will provide access to quality affordable child care.

It includes help for child care, so to reduce the cost of child care, particularly for low-income workers, but also paid family and medical leave so that workers who get sick or need to take care of a loved one whos sick can do so, but not lose their jobs or their income. And thats paid by the government.

In March, we expanded tax credit for every child in the family.

And then, it extends a bunch of tax credits that are meant to fight poverty, including an expansion of the child tax credit that the White House estimates will cut the child poverty rate in half.

We can afford it.

And as he has often done in selling his physical infrastructure plan, Biden casts this families plan in competitiveness terms.

When this nation made 12 years of public education universal in the last century, it made us the best-educated, best-prepared nation in the world. Its, I believe, the overwhelming reason that propelled us to where we got in the 21st in the 20th century. But the worlds caught up, or catching up. Theyre not waiting.

Basically saying, look, if we dont invest in our families, our children, our workers just like we invest in our roads, bridges, pipes, charging stations, whatever, were not going to keep up with China and our other big competitors on a global scale right now to win the economic future of the world.

I wonder if you can put the scale of all this education spending, the child care spending, the paid leave spending, the child tax credit spending into context for us.

I think the best context to put it in is that its unprecedented at this moment in the nations economy for a president to do this. We do not have the same economy that we had when we did the space race, or when we built the railroads, or won World War II. We have an economy that depends to a much larger degree on women working, on workers of color, and in particular, on service workers who need knowledge and skills to do their jobs better. This is a far bigger spending agenda than Barack Obama ever proposed. Certainly much bigger than the Democrat president before him Bill Clinton proposed. And so what you have is for the first time, the meeting of the moment of what Democrats think is a renewed interest in big government with the heightened struggles of a 21st-century economy.

Well be right back.

So

How does President Biden in his speech, talk about financing all of this?

He does not shy from that either.

How do we pay for my Jobs and Family Plan? I made it clear we could do without increasing the deficit.

Theres been a long time in America where this idea was you couldnt really talk about increasing taxes. It would be political suicide. But he goes right at it.

I will not impose any tax increase on people making less than $400,000. But its time for corporate America, and the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans to just begin to pay their fair share.

And basically says were going to raise taxes on very high earners people making more than $400,000 a year, which is just a small sliver at the top of Americans by income earning and corporations. And were going to get $4 trillion out of those two places.

A lot of companies also evade taxes through tax havens in Switzerland and Bermuda and the Cayman Islands. And they benefit from tax loopholes and deductions for offshoring jobs and shifting profits overseas.

And then he ticks through a whole list of both tax increases and increased enforcement from the I.R.S.

And the I.R.S. is going to crack down on millionaires and billionaires who cheat on their taxes. Its estimated to be billions of dollars.

to force people who had been cheating on their taxes to stop.

I believe what I propose is fair. Fiscally responsible

You know, Republicans are very much opposed to these tax increases and to the scope of the spending he wants to do. Theyre arguing that its going to be wasteful, that its not going to solve the problems that he says, that the government is not well-positioned to tackle these issues, and that the tax increases are going to hurt the economy. But Biden goes right at that argument in the speech, basically saying

Trickle down trickle-down economics has never worked. And its time to grow the economy from the bottom and the middle out.

Hey, the dominant Republican philosophy for more than a generation now trickle-down economics, cutting taxes at the top and everybody will benefit has not worked.

The pandemic has only made things worse. 20 million Americans lost their job in the pandemic working and middle-class Americans. At the same time, roughly 650 billionaires in America saw their net worth increase by more than $1 trillion in the same exact period.

What he is saying is we have huge, long-running problems in our economy. The pandemic showed us those problems. They showed us the people who were hit unequally. You know, some people at the top amassed huge amounts of wealth, while everybody else feared for job loss. And its governments job now to start solving those problems, or helping to solve those problems, not just in a short-term way, but in a long-term durable way. And someone needs to pay for that. And that someone is the people who have been winning at this economy for a long time, the rich and big companies. And so its this economic argument, which he calls middle out, where the people who are the big successes in the economy can afford to supply the money to help everybody else have a shot at success too.

Jim, it was interesting that Biden didnt really talk about inequality. He didnt use that word. He didnt render that judgment say that whats wrong in the United States is inequality. But the policies hes talking about are very clearly intended to fix inequality in a system.

He does more of a show, dont tell on that. He talks about the 600-plus very wealthy people who amassed huge wealth during the crisis. And then he talks about people who lost their jobs. He talks about all of this sort of like inequalities you might say, without really saying the word. And its a way to sort of try to connect with people where they are in their homes. Like, inequality as a concept. But your job, what you observe around you in the economy thats real. And I think thats what hes trying to do here is speak about inequality in much more personal terms, as opposed to theoretical or even just broad macroeconomic terms.

But I wonder if this is also a way to appeal to Republicans who have not been very supportive of Bidens spending plans.

I dont think theres very much that the president did in the speech to try to appeal to Republicans in Congress. But I do think hes trying to appeal to Republicans across the country. Hes trying to speak in the language of blue collar, often conservative America, even if he doesnt expect that thats going to translate into any votes from Republicans in the Senate or in the House. But by trying to appeal to Republican voters, hes giving some cover to moderate Democratic senators to join him. If youre Joe Manchin, if youre Mark Kelly of Arizona or Krysten Sinema of Arizona, and you need some Republicans to reelect you, heres Joe Biden speaking to those voters for you and giving you some permission to go along with him.

So in trying to appeal to Republican voters, hes actually just trying to keep the 50 Democrats in the Senate the Democratic caucus together and supporting both of these major infrastructure bills?

Yes. What Biden needs for any bill of this type to pass, including one that eventually might get bipartisan support is for all Democrats to hang together. And that I think, was a big part of the mission of the speech here was to hold his very, very narrow margins in the House and the Senate kind of in line while he seeks to push the agenda through.

Jim, watching Biden outline these proposals and how to pay for them, I kept thinking back to the election and to this sense that in choosing Biden, the country chose what Biden himself advertised as the return to normalcy in the conduct and in the disposition of the president. And as a kind of safe ideological choice, Biden sold himself as a moderate Democrat with pretty middle-of-the-road views.

But as we have seen at a few key junctures with Biden since the election, it feels like this speech marked the emergence of a distinctly progressive president, a president that is seeking to really expand the role of government as a leveler of the field, as an equalizer, as a fixer of social wrongs. And thats not exactly who we necessarily thought we were going to be getting.

Well, heres the sort of wild thing. Almost every policy proposal on the economy that Joe Biden laid out in the speech he campaigned on. This is not new. Some of it dates back to 2019. Some of the stuff he was talking about when nobody really gave much of a shot to the Democratic nominee. It got kind of buried, because so many of his rivals almost all of them, really were much more progressive than he was. They were pushing even bigger tax increases, even bigger spending increases. In that field, Joe Biden really was moderate. In the context of American history, Joe Biden is pushing a very progressive agenda.

But its all on brand for him, because hes been talking about it all along. And the way he talks about it is different than the way that other politicians talk about it who are progressive. And so I think all that has come together so that both things are true. It is both true that this is seems to a lot of people, and particularly to Republicans like, whoa, not the Joe Biden we thought we were getting. We thought hed govern in a different way. But for anybody who was reading the details of his plans, hes very consistent.

Are you telling me I wasnt reading the plans?

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We Have to Prove Democracy Still Works - The New York Times

UK unites G7 to take action against democratic threats – GOV.UK

Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab will today (Tuesday 4 May) bring together some of the worlds leading democracies for talks and decisive action on the most critical global issues at the G7 Foreign and Development Ministers Meeting in London.

In the first major in-person diplomatic gathering since the pandemic began and the first gathering of G7 Foreign Ministers since 2019, Dominic Raab will lead discussions on pressing geopolitical issues that threaten to undermine democracy, freedoms and human rights. This includes relations with Russia, China, and Iran, as well as the crisis in Myanmar, the violence in Ethiopia, and the ongoing war in Syria.

The G7 includes the UK, US, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the EU. Following talks through the day, the foreign ministers will hold a dinner discussion with guest nations Australia, India, the Republic of Korea, South Africa, and Brunei as the current ASEAN Chair.

The Foreign Secretary will use the evening to outline his vision for cooperation between the G7 and the nations of the Indo-Pacific region to develop stronger trade ties, ensure stability and tackle climate change.

Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said:

The UKs presidency of the G7 is an opportunity to bring together open, democratic societies and demonstrate unity at a time when it is much needed to tackle shared challenges and rising threats.

The addition of our friends from Australia, India, the Republic of Korea and South Africa, as well as the chair of ASEAN reflects the growing significance of the Indo-Pacific region for the G7.

The discussions in the morning will cover the coup in Myanmar. The Foreign Secretary will urge G7 nations to take stronger action against the military junta. This includes expanding targeted sanctions against individuals and entities connected to the junta; support for arms embargoes, and increased humanitarian assistance for the most vulnerable in the country.

The discussions will then turn to the situation in Libya, and the ongoing war in Syria. The afternoon session will cover the situation in Ethiopia, as well as Somalia, the Sahel, and Western Balkans. The foreign ministers will also discuss Russias ongoing malign activity including through the build-up of troops on the border with Ukraine, and its imprisonment of opposition figure Alexei Navalny and the situation in Belarus.

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UK unites G7 to take action against democratic threats - GOV.UK

Higher ed must play a role in creating antiracist and just democracies (opinion) – Inside Higher Ed

The ongoing racial injustice, pandemic and associated disruption of 2020 -- along with the attack by violent insurrectionists on the U.S. Capitol building -- have taught us many things about our societies, not only in the United States but also around the globe. Among those lessons is that higher education is deeply implicated in the impoverished and fragile state of democracies. Some academic and student leaders are calling for postsecondary institutions to make the creation of antiracist, inclusive, socially just democracies throughout the world priority No.1. Such an undertaking requires disruptive change in higher education values, use of resources and its privileged place in many of our societies. Is higher education ready for such change?

At the 2020 Association for the Study of Higher Education conference, we shared research and practice from universities in South Africa, the United States and the International Association of Universities. We concluded that postsecondary institutions -- notable contributions during the pandemic notwithstanding -- have too often been complicit in systems that create or reproduce savage health and economic inequities, public disregard of science, and individuals who feel alienated and forgotten. Examples include the scarcity of locally situated university clinics and the lack of educational opportunities that perpetuates the exclusion of marginalized groups and working-class students. Indeed, COVID-19 has revealed the extreme poverty, persistent deprivation and pernicious racism that fester in the shadows of some of the nation's foremost institutions of higher learning. This disconnectedness from local community needs has promoted a sense of disenfranchisement by communities of color and increased the distrust society has of academics.

The widespread assumption that universities are progressive, multicultural, antiracist places has insulated many of us who work and live in higher education from reckoning with the lived experiences of marginalized communities all over the world. Indeed colleges and universities are gendered and racialized, and many institutions perpetuate systemic racism, colonialism and sexism through gatekeeping, educational discrimination and not sharing vital resources with local communities.

It is crucial to embrace these multiple realities simultaneously: that higher education is deeply implicated in reproducing systemic discrimination and racism in the United States and around the world and, as we imagine what could be next, higher education is distinctly positioned to help build and develop the infrastructure, resources, values and education systems necessary for diverse, inclusive, antiracist democracies. And there are examples of students, faculty and staff engaged in that work.

In this moment of disruption, postsecondary leaders, students, faculty and staff might humbly consider four steps to advance antiracist, diverse and just democracies locally and globally.

No. 1: Redesign universities to focus on the development of students who help create antiracist democracies around the world. Although postsecondary institutions will always play a vital role in social mobility, the pandemic has made it clear that the most important thing K-12 and higher education can do is to educate ethical, engaged citizens for antiracist, diverse and socially just democracies. That means galvanizing students' growth as organic intellectuals, collaborative problem solvers and agents of social change.

For example, the University of Costa Rica requires 800 hours of community work for each student who matriculates. In 2017, a total of 4,631 students did 1,038,150 hours of community work, in 164 projects in all areas of knowledge. Of significance, the former rector describes the purpose of this effort as to raise awareness and promote social and critical awareness among students and the university community; and to collaborate with communities in identifying their problems in order to develop their own solutions, within horizontal relationships conducive to mutual learning.

To better translate its strategic plan into action, the university has repositioned some of its buildings in the most underserved parts of the country, opening the doors to all people not attending yet interested to engage. Education for democratic citizenship through active engagement and collaborative problem solving with the local community should become a core purpose and pedagogical principle of higher education.

No. 2: Reimagine the knowledge project. The future we are imagining requires researchers from various fields and disciplines to take on the problems of our democracies and focus on issues of human benefit and local/global significance. To make that happen, universities need to incentivize and reward student, faculty and staff efforts to take on those issues in interdisciplinary ways, listening to and in partnership with local communities. That will not only help democracies thrive but also make for better scholarship, as knowledge is powerfully advanced when research is conducted through partnerships between academics and nonacademics. Higher education institutions have been rightly critiqued by various members of society -- including families, students, policy makers and community leaders -- as gatekeepers, distancing the credentialed knowers from the uncredentialed receivers of knowledge.

The ongoing dialectic in South Africa between government, universities, social movements (like the Treatment Action Campaign) and industry produced a swift repurposing of university-based research and innovation platforms created to address the ongoing HIV/AIDS pandemic. This resulted in the participation of scientists in the global effort to identify new variants of the virus as well as to develop COVID-19 vaccines and treatments. In addition, engineering schools in the country have turned their attention to using 3-D printing to manufacture PPE and noninvasive ventilators.

More universities should play a key role in linking expertise from those within the academy and those on the ground, creating a community of experts and diverse voices to solve our worlds most serious problems, such as poverty, unequal schooling and health care, and environmental degradation. We need to foster inclusive, expansive notions of expertise.

For instance, social scientists and educators can conduct participatory action research and develop methodological approaches that center community members voice and place-based knowledge to more effectively solve locally manifested universal problems. Only then will the knowledge imperative be seen as relevant to the well-being of the many as opposed to the private gain of the few.

No. 3: Change ownership of the university. For too long, citizens have viewed their universities like privately held companies that have little relationship to their own lives. Yes, people have local pride when sports teams win, but that is not the same thing as postsecondary education being relevant and tied to the destiny of local citizens. That must change. A case in point: in Thailand, Siam University has decided to revitalize the unsafe university surroundings to provide for better living conditions and well-being for Thai people who have never before set foot in a university.

On the other side of that world, University College Dublin has developed a wide range of initiatives to facilitate and enhance community engagement opportunities and build strong bridges between its campus and the neighboring communities. Universities must commit to serving as vital bridges between societies -- and as multilateral organizations using their vast resources (especially their human and academic resources) and positions of privilege to advance social justice.

No. 4: Get the values right. The values that universities should hold dear are open inquiry, diversity and inclusion, democracy, equity, and justice. Equity and justice require inclusive representation among students and academics -- including more people who are first-generation, from marginalized and working-class communities, and women. That would entail intentional recruitment within high schools situated in historically minoritized and working-class neighborhoods, as well as actively recruiting recently minted Ph.D.s from BIPOC groups to fill the ranks of the professoriate.

It would also involve universities working in serious, sustained, comprehensive partnerships with public schools in their locality to diversify and enrich the educational pipeline. Universities should also reallocate funding to support the hiring and retention of women and people of color within the faculty and administrative ranks of the institution, as well as provide more scholarships to first-generation students.

To realize the values cited above requires a reorganization of resources to infuse democracy across all aspects of higher education. If such values were in place, we would use technologies in ways that do not exacerbate inequalities but strengthen their impact on human well-being and development. For example, the pandemic made clear that institutions have the capacity to provide more online education. For students who may not have the financial resources to attend universities face-to-face, online education can remove financial barriers that may otherwise hinder access.

Strengthening internationalization of higher education and global engagement and collaboration is crucial for these efforts. We need a global movement -- one that leads to a global commons of engaged scholars and their community partners, scholarship and knowledge. To accomplish this, we need to incentivize scholars so they are rewarded for engaging in community-based projects. Many faculty members, particularly early-career ones, are dissuaded to devote any time that takes them away from the dominant discipline-based publication process. Thus, tenure and promotion should place more value on publications and other scholarly products that focus on work with and contributions to communities.

Scholars also need to earn trust from communities. Community members have long complained that faculty come and mine places for data and leave without ever helping support the communities from which they collected those data. Universities and faculty need to help amplify the voice of the community and illuminate their needs to policy makers. These kinds of institutional changes will require lots of sharing and learning from colleagues across the globe, as occurs through both the International Association of Universities and the International Consortium for Higher Education, Civic Responsibility and Democracy.

In the United States, people have criticized elected officials like Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz for inciting violence at the U.S. Capitol because, having attended selective universities like Stanford, Princeton and Yale, they should have known better. Putting aside the elitist and rankist assumption that such institutions would have the monopoly on knowing better, we must recognize that, in fact, higher education has too often failed to effectively educate active citizens dedicated to creating and maintaining antiracist, inclusive and socially just democratic societies.

Just as many colleges and universities are reckoning with their own institutional histories of exclusion, higher education as a field must recognize where it has failed and come up short. Only then can it come honestly to tables with communities, governments and citizens to build inclusive, antiracist democracies together.

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Higher ed must play a role in creating antiracist and just democracies (opinion) - Inside Higher Ed

electionlawblog.org

Trumps Legal Farce is Having Tragic Results, N.Y. Times, Nov. 23, 2020

Trump Needs Three Consecutive Hail Mary Passes, The Atlantic, Nov. 11, 2020

What Happens If Trump Wont Concede?, Slate, Nov. 8, 2020

New Lawsuit to Halt Ballot Cures in Pennsylvania Could Preview Trumps Postelection Strategy, Slate, Nov. 3, 2020

Trump Cant Just Declare Victory, Slate, Nov. 1, 2020

Our Biggest Election Day Concern, CNN Opinion, Nov. 1, 2020 (with Richard H. Pildes)

Kavanaugh has wild ideas about voting. They likely wont matter on Election Day, Washington Post, Oct. 27, 2020

In a 4-4 Split, the Supreme Court Lets Pennsylvania Make Voting EasierFor Now, Slate, Oct. 19, 2020

Were Living in the Shadows of Bush v. Gore 2.0, Slate, Oct. 19, 2020 (with Dahlia Lithwick)

What If Theres No Winner on November 4?, CNN Opinion, Oct. 19, 2020

A Key Fix for an Unthinkable Election Disaster, CNN Opinion, Oct. 5, 2020

This Will Be a Crucial Week for Pandemic Voting Cases at the Supreme Court, Slate, Oct. 5, 2020

Trumps New Supreme Court Is Coming for the Next Dozen Elections, N.Y. Mag, Oct. 5, 2020

Electoral Chaos Might Ensue if Biden or Trump Were Forced Out of the Race, Slate, Oct. 2, 2020

Dont fall for claims of voter fraud, L.A. Times, Sept. 25, 2020

Ive Never Been More Worried About American Democracy Than I Am Right Now, Slate, Sept. 23, 2020

Can Congress Salvage RBGs Legacy?, Slate, Sept. 21, 2020

Barrs Undermining of the Election is Downright Dangerous, CNN Opinion, Sept. 17, 2020

Democrats May Not Trust the Election Results if Trump Wins, Wash. Post, Sept. 10, 2020

Donald Trumps Encouragement to Vote Twice Could Cause Election Day Chaos, Slate, Sept. 3, 2020

Trumps Relentless Attacks on Mail-In Voting Are Part of a Larger Strategy, N.Y. Times, Aug. 19, 2020

California's Ballot Harvesting Law: A Crop of Trouble?, L.A. Lawyer, July/Aug. 2020

Bring on the 28th Amendment, N.Y. Times Sunday Review, June 29, 2020

Texas Voters Face Malicious Prosecutions After COVID-19 Absentee Ballot Ruling, Slate, May 27, 2020

The Right-Wing Legal Network is Now Openly Pushing Conspiracy Theories, Slate, May 27, 2020 (with Dahlia Lithwick)

Trumps bogus attacks on mail-in voting could hurt his supporters, too; The president is undermining democracy. He could also be undermining his own campaign, Wash. Post, May 20, 2020

GOP War on Mail-in Ballots May Backfire, NY Daily News, Apr. 20, 2020

We Cannot Hold an Election Without a Functional Post Office, Slate, Apr. 14, 2020

Trump is Wrong About the Dangers of Absentee Ballots, Wash. Post, Apr. 9, 2020

How Republicans are Using the Pandemic to Suppress the Vote, LA Times, Apr. 4, 2020

What Happens in November if One Side Doesnt Accept the Election Results? How coronavirus could contribute to a 2020 election meltdown, Slate, Mar. 30, 2020

How to Protect the 2020 Election from Coronavirus, Slate, Mar. 13, 2020

Why Trump and the RNC are spending $10 million to fight Democrats voting rights lawsuits, Slate, Mar. 5, 2020

Can't Call the Super Tuesday Vote? Be Patient, LA Times, Mar. 3, 2020

If Democrats Fight Right-Wing 'Fake News' Fire with Fire, We All Lose, Salon, Feb. 24, 2020

How to Prevent the Next Election Meltdown, Wall St. Journal, Feb. 7, 2020 (Saturday Essay)

What the Impeachment Ordeal Can Tell Us About the 2020 Election, CNN Opinion, Feb. 5, 2020

Trump's Jokes About Defying Election Results Could Create Chaos, Slate, Feb. 4, 2020

The Alarming Prospect of the Supreme Court Deciding the 2020 Election, The Atlantic, Feb. 3, 2020

The loser of Novembers election may not concede. Their voters wont, either, Wash. Post, Jan. 24, 2020 (Sunday Outlook)

Read more opeds from 2006-2009, these from 2010-2011, these from 2012-2013, these from 2014, these from 2015 and 2016, these from 2017, these from 2018. and these from 2019.

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electionlawblog.org

Democracy on the Ropes Eugene Weekly – Eugene Weekly

The events of Jan. 6 are fresh in our minds, as is the refusal of the Senate to hold the chief insurrectionist accountable for the armed attack on our Capitol. The anti-democracy faction, as always, is in Big Lie mode, as if middle school code messaging can claim the battlefield.

The People are to swallow the poison elixir to wit, the rejected presidents inflammatory speech was not at all meant to incite the violence that immediately followed, but was mere metaphoric poetry designed to evoke peaceful participation in the mechanics of democratic government. But the People are not drinking the elixir. Those of us with at least half a wit and a dose of our parents old-fashioned common sense, who watched, listened and now recall the context of this historical episode of a defeated candidates attempt to overthrow an election and remain in power, had no problem navigating the thicket of lies to arrive at the sobering truth America came perilously close to totalitarianism.

And we are still far from being out of the woods.

Let me put the evidence in the record for the readers. First, a little background. I was a federal prosecutor for 21 years of my 45 years of government service in the criminal justice system. During that part of my career, half of which was spent in the very busy Southern District of California, I tried hundreds of jury cases, many of which involved complex fraud crimes where the intent of the defendant was a critical element of the offense e.g., intent to deceive as well as cases involving violent crimes, likewise involving proof of specific intent e.g., premeditated intent to kill.

Intent is rarely susceptible to direct proof without a confession from the defendant. Lacking such proof, the evidence must be supplied through indirect, or circumstantial, proof such as similar acts showing a pattern of deceit or violence. Keep these concepts in mind as I endeavor to articulate just some of the actions and statements of Donald Trump which put the activity and speech of Jan. 6 in context.

I begin with his first campaign for president. In August 2016, he gave a speech at a rally of his supporters in which he told them that if Hillary Clinton won she would abolish the Second Amendment and there was nothing you can do folks although the Second Amendment people maybe there is, I dont know The term Second Amendment solutions is a euphemism associated with political assassination, and has been regularly employed by right-wing militias to legitimize the supposed right to engage in armed insurrection against the government. Of course, Trump would later deny any such connotation.

Forwarding to March 2019, when talk of impeachment was in the air, Trump boasted in an interview with Breitbart that if he were to be removed from office (through impeachment), I have the support of the police, the support of the military, the support of the Bikers for Trump I have the tough people it would be very bad.

On Sept. 30, 2019, Trump tweeted that if the Democrats are successful in removing the President from office it will cause a Civil War fracture in the Nation from which our Country will never heal.

In September 2020, during the first presidential debate, Trump was asked by the moderator whether he condemned the violence of white supremacy extremists, and he not only failed to do so, he exhorted the Proud Boys (a violent and extremist white supremacy gang) to stand by a slogan that the Proud Boys subsequently stitched to their clothing.

On April 17, 2020, Trump tweeted Liberate Michigan in a series of tweets critical of Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer for her COVID-19 shutdown measures in the state. Then in early October 2020, the FBI and Michigan State Police foiled an imminent plot by 13 members of a paramilitary group, the Michigan Watchmen, to kidnap and murder Whitmer and other state officials. After being fully briefed by federal law enforcement about the plot, Trump tweeted, I do not tolerate ANY extreme violence and added, Governor Whitmer open up your state

Months before the November 2020 election, Trump began broadcasting that he could only lose the election if it was rigged and there was fraud. To put these remarks in context, the readers need to keep in mind that Trumps advisers had long been informing him that the Democratic candidate most likely to beat him was Joe Biden, which had fueled his pressuring the Ukraine president to announce a criminal investigation of Biden (to no avail).

What followed was the foreseen catalyst to the Jan. 6 insurrection Trump lost the election by a large margin and initiated his claim of fraud, filing and losing some 60 lawsuits because his lawyers could not prove fraud despite the numerous opportunities to do so. That spurred his attempt to pressure election officials to change the vote tally to appear as if he had been the winner (e.g. the notorious recorded call to the Georgia secretary of state in which he demanded that 11,000 votes be switched from Biden to him).

Trump engaged in serial attacks on election officials in swing states, who endured death threats from his supporters for validating the election results as accurate after numerous recounts. Finally, Trump was left with one desperate move preventing the ceremonial opening of the Electoral College ballots officially confirming Biden as the 46th president of the U.S. by the vice president before Congress on Jan. 6.

That was the setting for the summoning of his tough people for a rally that very day of the very certification of the votes of the People which would terminate his term and install Biden in the White House. The attendees, not coincidentally, included Proud Boys, militia members, police, military officers and other such supporters he previously bragged would make it very bad.

This is some of the totality of context in which to judge the intent of the main orator at the Jan. 6 rally, moments before the crowd attempted to overthrow our government. The crowd got the message many of them have since affirmed they believed they were following the then-presidents orders. In the aftermath of the sedition, America is hardly out of danger in the threat against our Constitution and Democracy.

Had Trump succeeded in overturning the election results, we would soon be like all totalitarian governments with pretext elections that count only for show and must always favor the dictator to be considered legitimate. Our Senate has now encouraged armed conflict and sedition in election cycles by passing on any meaningful response to the Jan. 6 events, the attack on the very seat of our government, and thus feeding the evolving narrative that such may become the new normal of politics in America.

Look around America the so-called fraud at the heart of the Trump stolen election narrative is at its core the African American vote. The Trump Party has embraced fully the white supremacy/nationalist agenda, which has never acknowledged the legitimacy of the African American vote.

Research our nations history for decades after the Reconstruction Era following the Civil War, white supremacists employed voting suppression tactics and violence to prevent and deny the Constitutional right to vote to African Americans. A recent USA Today article on challenges to Black voting references the concerted efforts of that era to suppress the African American vote. I am afraid MAGA is a call to return to that terribly unjust and discriminatory period of Jim Crow laws.

The John Lewis Voting Rights Act must be enacted. Voting must be facilitated, not impeded. Gerrymandering must be prohibited, not allowed through specious pretexts which disavow its true purpose and motive racial discrimination.

A former federal prosecutor, Judge Thomas Coffin was a U.S. magistrate for the District of Oregon until his retirement in 2017.

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Democracy on the Ropes Eugene Weekly - Eugene Weekly