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To political scientists and many election experts and administrators, the wave of recently passed or proposed state laws sweeping the nation in the wake of former President Donald Trumps attempts to overturn his loss is deeply concerning.

Its not just the provisions in these bills that in some instances would make it harder to vote. Its that many of the bills also target election administration in ways that might make it easier for a losing candidate to jam a stick in the wheels of democratic processes.

One of the main lessons of the 2020 presidential election was that ordinary officials, partisans themselves, can be among American democracys most powerful protectors. Will new election laws prevent that from happening in the future?

It is a very scary moment to see this trend, says Adam Ambrogi, director of the Elections and Voting Program at Democracy Fund, a nonpartisan foundation that focuses on American democracys challenges.

Is it possible to defend against the risk of election interference or manipulation?

Last week, Democratic lawyer Bob Bauer and Republican lawyer Jack Goldsmith, who together headed the Presidential Commission on Election Administration, announced that they would organize the legal defense of any election official who may come under siege from the new laws.

The defense of the electoral process is not a partisan cause, even where there may be reasonable disagreements between the parties about specific voting rules and procedures, they wrote in The New York Times.

Its November 2024. The U.S. presidential election is over. The battle over who won is just beginning.

Ballot totals show the incumbent leading the national vote by a few percentage points. His margin in the Electoral College is smaller than in 2020, but seems clear.

Still, the challenger and his supporters are mounting a furious challenge to an election they say was close enough to have been tipped by fraud.

One of the main lessons of the 2020 presidential election was that ordinary officials, partisans themselves, can be among American democracys most powerful protectors. Will new election laws prevent that from happening in the future?

In Michigan, counting is in chaos. Local officials in conservative rural counties are refusing to certify vote totals. State legislators are suing the secretary of state, claiming she posted a link to an absentee ballot application on her website, which is illegal under a new law passed via a highly unusual voter petition procedure.

In Wisconsin, the challengers campaign is desperately trying to close the presidents 15,000-vote winning margin. The challengers lawyers are methodically combing the states nursing homes and residential care facilities, looking for instances where staff reminded residents to apply for absentee ballots, or helped fill them out. Both actions are now subject to criminal penalties.

Nationwide, an organized corps of partisan poll watchers, taking advantage of laws passed since 2020 that allow them greater access, have filed hundreds of affidavits claiming suspicious voter behavior. Georgia is an epicenter of this dispute. The State Election Board, with all members appointed by the Republican-controlled legislature, issues a statement saying populous Fulton County was rife with fraud.

Finally, Georgias new governor takes a momentous step. Given everything happening in the nation, he says, it seems clear that the challenger won a big victory. He asks state lawmakers to simply overturn the presidents narrow Georgia victory, sayinghes been assured that such a move is legal under the U.S. Constitution.

Is this scenario far-fetched? Maybe. It rests in part on both new 2021 laws and bills introduced that havent passed state legislatures yet, and the results of yet un-run governors races. It cherry-picks provisions to put together a worst-case scenario.

Crucially, it involves hypothetical decisions by dozens, if not hundreds of state officials who might swing either way. One of the main lessons of the 2020 presidential election was that ordinary officials, partisans themselves, can be among American democracys most powerful protectors.

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger announces an audit of presidential election results triggering a full hand recount Nov. 11, 2020. Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary Raffensperger won wide praise last fall for firmly rejecting then-President Donald Trumps false claims of voter fraud. The state then passed a raft of new voting laws, one of 14 so far to do so.

But to political scientists and many election experts and administrators, the wave of recently passed or proposed state laws sweeping the nation in the wake of former President Donald Trumps attempts to overturn his loss is deeply concerning.

Its not just the provisions in these bills that in some instances would make it harder to vote. Its that many of the bills also target election administration in ways that might make it easier for a losing candidate to jam a stick in the wheels of democratic processes.

Aspects of these laws may also implicitly reinforce the former presidents continued false claims that 2020 was stolen.

It is a very scary moment to see this trend, says Adam Ambrogi, director of the Elections and Voting Program at Democracy Fund, a nonpartisan foundation that focuses on American democracys challenges.

The spate of new laws also points out how unusual the American system of elections is.

Most advanced democracies run elections via a national-level, nonpartisan agency. Voting machines look the same everywhere, and so do ballots. The procedures for counting and certifying dont vary.

But in the United States, elections are decentralized all the way down to county and local levels. A U.S. presidential election is in essence 10,000 individual elections run at the same time.

One of the downsides of this dispersion of power and responsibility is that it opens up opportunities for litigation, partisan and otherwise. Since 2000, election litigation has nearly tripled compared with pre-2000 levels, according to Rick Hasen, a professor of law and political science at the University of California, Irvine. That year, the Supreme Court ended the Florida recount and the election when it decided Bush v. Gore in favor of President George W. Bush.

Enter Mr. Trump and his unprecedented attack on the election results. His false claims of fraud sufficient to overturn the vote have created pressure for litigation and new laws on two fronts, according to Professor Hasen. Ordinary Republican voters convinced the White House was stolen are clamoring for action from below. From above Mr. Trump and his allies continue to push state lawmakers for action.

Election auditors Harri Hursti (right) and Mark Lindeman catalog ballot boxes in Pembroke, New Hampshire, during a forensic audit of the 2020 New Hampshire legislative election May 11, 2021. Auditors have found no evidence of fraud or political bias.

So-called forensic audits are the latest item of contention. Republican state senators in Arizona subpoenaed ballots from Maricopa County and hired a little-known firm named Cyber Ninjas to examine the ballots in ways experienced election officials find unprofessional at best. The Department of Justice says it may also violate federal election law. The former president is now pressing for lawmakers in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and other states to take a similar step, reportedly seeing it as a possible path to return to the Oval Office within months. There is no provision in the U.S. Constitution that would make that possible.

As for new state election laws, Georgias sweeping legislation passed in April. Florida followed suit, enacting somewhat narrower new laws. Texas was set to pass an expansive bill late last month, but Democrats stalled the bill by walking out and denying the Republican majority a quorum. Texas GOP Gov. Greg Abbott has vowed to call a special session to reconsider election legislation later this summer.

Between Jan. 1 and May 14, at least 14 states enacted 22 new bills that restrict access to the vote, according to figures compiled by the Brennan Center for Justice. Sixty-one bills continue to progress through 18 other state legislatures.

Overall lawmakers have introduced almost 400 restrictive bills in virtually every state in the union, according to Brennan. One of the most unusual situations is in Michigan, where Republicans control the Legislature but Democrat Gretchen Whitmer is governor. To avoid a certain veto from Governor Whitmer, GOP lawmakers may use an obscure provision of the state constitution that prevents the governor from striking down laws begun as citizen petition drives.

Provisions of these bills that alter how elections are administered, or give legislatures more control over the appointment and removal of election officials, may have received less attention than moves that affect the act of voting. But they are just as important, if not more so, according to a States United Democracy Center summary of the current spate of election legislation.

These are substantial changes that, if enacted, could make elections unworkable, render results far more difficult to finalize, and in the worst-case scenario, allow state legislatures to substitute their preferred candidates for those chosen by the voters, says the report.

In Arizona, Missouri, and Nevada, for instance, bills would allow state legislatures to take charge of certifying election results giving them the opportunity to reverse results they dont like, according to the report.

In Georgia, the just-passed legislation strips the secretary of state of a role on the State Election Board. This could be a personal affront Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger stood up to then-President Trump in a phone call and declined to overturn the states election results.

In Iowa, election officials are now subject to fines of $10,000 and suspension for actions that disregard or hinder the object of the law, and could be hit with criminal penalties for trying to calm disruptive poll watcher activity.

Adam Ambrogi of the Democracy Fund says that many of the new bills seem aimed directly at Mr. Trumps electoral concerns.

There is a clear attempt to defend the big lie that the election was poorly run, he says.

They also appear designed to put pressure on election officials from the top of the ladder to the bottom rung.

Weve never seen this type of threat in the modern era, says Mr. Ambrogi.

Is it possible to defend against the risk of election interference or manipulation?

Last week, Democratic lawyer Bob Bauer and Republican lawyer Jack Goldsmith, who together headed the Presidential Commission on Election Administration in 2013-14, announced that they would organize the legal defense of any election official who may come under siege from the new laws.

The defense of the electoral process is not a partisan cause, even where there may be reasonable disagreements between the parties about specific voting rules and procedures, the pair wrote in The New York Times.

Professor Hasen suggests strengthening intermediaries that help with truth-telling as a means of building overall trust in elections and strengthening democracy. What is required is a kind of bipartisan cross-discipline strengthening of institutions that have been attacked and degraded during the Trump era, he says.

Im talking about things like courts, law enforcement, academia, political parties, the school system, and civics organizations, he emails in response to a reporter inquiry.

Get the Monitor Stories you care about delivered to your inbox.

Mr. Ambrogi suggests urging people and organizations that have generally stayed out of politics, such as corporations and business groups, to stand up and say enough is enough. Companies based in Georgia, such as Delta Air Lines and Coca-Cola, did this following the passage of the states election law earlier this year.

They need to say this is dangerous for our country, he says.

Original post:
Election laws, 2024, and the future of democracy - The Christian Science Monitor

As purple and red states pass voter suppression laws, Republicans grow more hostile to free and fair elections, and Congress remains unable to pass voting rights legislation, former President Barack Obama is sounding the alarm about the erosion of American democracy.

All of us, as citizens, have to recognize that the path towards an undemocratic America is not going to happen in just one bang. It happens in a series of steps, Obama told Anderson Cooper during an interview that aired on CNN on Monday evening.

Asked by Cooper if the January 6 insurrection and Republicans effort to delegitimize elections has led him to believe that our democracy is in crisis, Obama said hes concerned.

I think we have to worry when one of our major political parties is willing to embrace a way of thinking about our democracy that would be unrecognizable and unacceptable even five years ago or a decade ago, he said.

In an exchange with Cooper, Obama pointed out that democracy has fallen at the ballot box in other countries.

COOPER: Democracy does not always die in a military coup.

OBAMA: Yes.

COOPER: Democracy dies at the ballot box.

OBAMA: Thats exactly right.

And Vladimir Putin gets elected with a majority of Russian voters, but none of us would claim that thats the kind of democracy that we want.

These comments, coming from a former president, should serve as a wake-up call to anyone who thought Donald Trumps departure from the White House in January ended the existential threat to American democracy that crested with the January 6 insurrection.

Those threats remain: The 44th president is right that there are good reasons to worry, given that Republicans responded to Trumps defeat and the insurrection not with introspection, but by pushing an antidemocratic agenda aimed at making it even harder for them to lose elections in the future.

Obamas concerns come about a month after a FiveThirtyEight analysis of recent polling indicated that the GOPs big lies about the 2020 election namely, that a combination of election fraud and illegal changes to state voting laws resulted in Trump having the presidency stolen from him are having a corrosive impact, with 70 percent of Republicans wrongly believing President Joe Bidens victory over Trump was illegitimate.

And things arent likely to get better soon, as Trump is now back on the speech and cable news circuit pushing these lies at every opportunity.

And as Obama noted during his sit down with Cooper, state-level Republicans are responding to the big lie by writing legislation that warps the voting process, as Voxs Ian Millhiser recently explained:

Broadly speaking, there are two kinds of voter suppression laws. Many provisions currently being pushed by Republican state lawmakers make it harder to cast a ballot in a certain way such as by mailing in the ballot or placing it in a drop box. Or they place unnecessary procedural obstacles in the way of voters. These provisions often serve no purpose other than to make it more difficult to vote, but they also are not insurmountable obstacles.

Other provisions are more virulent. They might disqualify voters for no valid reason. Or allow partisan officials to refuse to certify an election, even if there are no legitimate questions about who won. Or make it so difficult for some voters, who are likely to vote for the party that is out of power, to cast their ballot that its nigh impossible for the incumbent party to lose.

Its that second type that appeared to worry Obama during his interview with Cooper.

When you look at some of the laws that are being passed at the state legislative level, where legislators are basically saying, were going to take away the certification of election processes from civil servants, you know, secretaries of state, people who are just counting ballots, and were going to put it in the hands of partisan legislatures, who may or may not decide that a states electoral votes should go to one person or another, and when thats all done against the backdrop of large numbers of Republicans having been convinced, wrongly, that there was something fishy about the last election, weve got a problem, he said.

In short, Obama is concerned that state-level Republicans are viewing election results as recommendations to be considered, not mandates from the people. And theyre using spurious claims of fraud and new laws to give themselves the ability to reject the will of the people next time it doesnt suit them.

Cooper mentioned Sarah Palins rise as a proto-Trump figure during the 2008 presidential campaign and asked Obama if he anticipated that spirits that have long been lurking on the edges of the Republican Party would ever get this dark.

Obama said he did not, then ticked through a brief history of how elected Republicans accommodated Trump at every turn and continue to do so even after he made a desperate attempt to overturn the result of an election he lost fair and square.

I thought that there were enough guardrails institutionally that even after Trump was elected that you would have the so-called Republican establishment who would say, Okay, you know, its a problem if the White House doesnt seem to be concerned about Russian meddling, or its a problem if we have a president who is saying that, you know, neo-Nazis marching in Charlottesville, there are good people on both sides. You know, thats a little bit beyond the pale.

... We did not see that Republican establishment say, Hold on, time out, thats not acceptable, thats not who we are, but rather be cowed into accepting it, and then finally culminating in January 6th, where what originally was, Oh, dont worry, this isnt going anywhere, were just letting Trump and others vent, and then suddenly you now have large portions of an elected Congress going along with the falsehood that there were problems with the election.

One could argue Obamas surprise at how dark the GOP has gotten is naive, especially considering Trumps rise within the party in 2011 and 12 was in large part the result of racist conspiracy theories he pushed about Obamas citizenship. And its long been the case that Republicans have used voter suppression laws for partisan advantage by making it harder for Democratic-leaning populations to vote.

But Obama suggested the difference these days is that very few elected Republicans have the courage to stand up to a Republican base poisoned by misinformation from right-wing media, and are more concerned about staying in office than they are standing up for democracy.

Suddenly, everybody was back in-line, Obama said, alluding to how some prominent Republicans such as House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy initially responded to the insurrection by speaking out against Trump before quickly circling the wagons around him. The reason for that is because the base believed [Trumps lies]. And the base believed it because this had been told to them not just by the president, but by the media that they watch.

While there may be no silver bullet solution to the corrosive polarization Obama described, he argued, as he often has, that trying to personally engage with people we disagree with can help reestablish a sense of shared national purpose.

It probably is not going to be done at the federal level. Its probably going to involve communities finding ways to rebuild that sense of neighborliness, working together, conversations, he said.

How does one build a sense of community with someone so deluded by right-wing propaganda that they buy evidence-free conspiracy theories about massive election fraud? Its a difficult question to deal with, but an urgent one especially given new federal voting rights legislation looks unlikely to pass before next years midterm elections.

Read the original here:
Barack Obama sounds the alarm about Americas democratic erosion in a CNN interview with Anderson Cooper - Vox.com

Five University of Notre Dame professors who specialize in different areas of democracy studies recently signed a strong statement of concern issued by the think tank New America warning of the serious threats to democracy in the U.S. Notre Dame is a longtime leader in research on democratization in comparative perspective through a number of campus institutes, and the American politics subfield that is part of the Department of Political Science emphasizes research on inclusion.

As demonstrated by the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) project, there has been a significant erosion of liberal democracy in the U.S. since 2016, Michael Coppedge, professor of political science and one of the V-Dem principal investigators, said. V-Dem has measured hundreds of attributes of democracy and governance for most countries going back to 1789. The 2021 V-Dem report on democracy, Autocratization Goes Viral, underscores the dramatic spikes in countries becoming more autocratic. In fact, V-Dem reports that, as of 2020, only 4 percent of the worlds population is living in democratizing nations. It also reports that no country in North America or Western and Eastern Europe has advanced in democracy in the last decade, while democracy in the U.S. (along with Hungary, Poland, Serbia and Slovenia) has declined substantially.

A decline is already underway. If recent and pending state-level legislation erects more and more barriers to voting and makes the translation of votes into seats and electors even more distorted than it already is, I am sure this trend will worsen, added Coppedge, who is also a faculty fellow at the Kellogg Institute for International Studies.

The U.S. has dropped in three out of six indices studied by V-Dem that measure everything from the quality of elections and individual rights to rule of law and whether political decisions are made in the interest of the common good. The 2021 report shows the U.S. declined substantially on the Liberal Democracy Index from 0.86 in 2010 to 0.73 in 2020. This is in part, the researchers write, a consequence of former President Donald Trumps repeated attacks on the media and opposition politicians, and the substantial weakening of the legislatures de facto checks and balances on executive power. The V-Dem team also reported significant negative changes in the U.S.s deliberation score, the component that captures the extent to which public speech, including counterarguments, and respect for political opponents is respected by political leaders. It moved from 0.91 in 2016 to 0.61 in 2020.

Although the V-Dem team saw an overall decline in pro-democracy mobilization worldwide, the U.S. had its highest number of protests in recent history. The June 6, 2020, protests with more than half a million people spurred by the murder of George Floyd and the months of protests that followed are seen as a condemnation of systemic oppression of people of color. Race was key in the fight for voting rights in 2020 in states like Georgia, where Black voters not only handed President Joe Biden a win, but also ensured victories for the states first Black senator and first Jewish senator over their Republican opponents. More recently, the Republican-led state legislature has been successful in changing voting laws in Georgia a move that has been criticized as an attempt to limit voting for people of color.

Marginalized and intersectional communities have been crucial leaders in the contemporary struggle to defend and secure voting rights. Black women in particular have turned their commitment to community into sophisticated voter mobilization organizations, said Christina Wolbrecht, professor of political science and director of the Rooney Center for the Study of American Democracy. Its important to emphasize, however, that resisting and overcoming discriminatory voting rules requires time, energy and attention that these communities do not have in abundance and that distract from other work that advances human flourishing.

Luis Fraga, the Joseph and Elizabeth Robbie Professor of Political Science, whose areas of expertise include Latino politics, politics of race and ethnicity, voting rights policy and immigration policy, emphasized that the contemporary fight for minority rights is nothing new.

We are a nation founded on the basis of slavery and its related racism, he said. We have culture wars and our racist historical past and its lingering contemporary effects and immigration particularly from Latin America is identified as a threat to American identity and elements of American ideals. Add to that people coming from Muslim countries, and this intensifies the culture wars. Weve seen the decline of the material status of some blue-collar workers in some parts of the country. All these things together have led to and research backs this up the importance of white identity. Working against this threatens the status of the Republican Party and spurs the gerrymandering/voting tricks. Their goal is to dehumanize the people who are the sources of that threat.

Echoing the V-Dem teams deliberation score for the U.S., Fraga said this rhetoric, combined with political leadership doubling down on misinformation with the intent of spreading it as widely as possible via likeminded news outlets, has caused extreme political polarization in the U.S. He added, Its not that the people who are influenced by that are in any way unsophisticated its things changing in the U.S. in a way that they are not comfortable with.

Fraga, who also serves as the Rev. Donald P. McNeill, C.S.C., Professor of Transformative Latino Leadership and the director of the Institute for Latino Studies, sees hope in proposed legislation. The goal of the John Lewis Voting Rights Act is to restore and strengthen parts of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the For the People Act aims to expand voting rights, change campaign finance laws to reduce the influence of money in politics, limit partisan gerrymandering and create new ethics rules for federal officeholders. Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin has announced that he will not support the For the People Act, as he believes any reforms in voting and election practices should be bipartisan. In a recent op-ed, he wrote, Partisan policymaking wont instill confidence in our democracy it will destroy it.

Fraga sees it differently, noting that many lawmakers see clearly that this is not America at its best, and that the proposed acts would be a way to prevent democratic backsliding.

The New America statement is supported by my research, teaching and values and is in the best traditions of Notre Dame, he continued. We were established to provide education to predominantly immigrant, working-class and marginalized Americans. This attack on voting rights one can understand as a threat to what Notre Dame stands for and what has brought it its greatness.

Professor of Political Science and Global Affairs Anbal Prez-Lin studies processes of democratization, political instability and the rule of law in new democracies, particularly in Latin America. He sees parallels in some Latin American countries to attempts by U.S. state Republican legislatures to restrict voting rules, thus securing long-term partisan control of their states.

This strategy only works if federal legislation fails to enforce voting rights nationally, said Perez-Lin, who holds a joint appointment at the Keough School of Global Affairs. Students of Latin American politics call this phenomenon boundary control. In Latin America, authoritarian governors are known to preserve power in their enclaves by fending off the influence of national governments.

The idea of eliminating the filibuster a Congressional tactic, meant to delay a vote on or kill a bill, that requires 60 percent of senators to overturn has been bandied about since the Biden administration began and Democrats gained control of both the White House and the Senate. Perez-Lin, who recently wrote an article for the Dignity & Development blog on the damage legislative supermajorities can do to democracy through altering the independence of courts, notes that the filibuster is an important maneuver that protects legislative minorities.

Paradoxically, however, some Republican senators are using this institution to disempower minorities in their own states, said Perez-Lin, who is also a faculty fellow at the Kellogg Institute. By blocking the adoption of federal legislation to defend voting rights, they sadly exercise boundary control to protect the adoption of restrictive voting laws.

Eugene and Helen Conley Professor of Political Science Scott Mainwaring agrees and stresses that the overt attempts to suppress minority votes, the partisan manipulation of electoral administration and the refusal to accept Trumps defeat are all harbingers of the demise of democracy.

These practices represent a movement toward competitive authoritarian regimes, and they are a deep threat to democracy, said Mainwaring, who is also a faculty fellow at the Kellogg Institute. As a student and scholar of democracy for more than 40 years, I am disheartened to see these practices.

Here is the original post:
Political science professors sign statement warning of threats to US democracy - ND Newswire

In Bidens view, the United States and other democracies are in a competition with China and other autocracies. This is being exacerbated by a period of rapid technological change that could give China an opportunity to leapfrog the United States in certain areas. Biden regularly invokes his many conversations with Xi Jinping to observe that the Chinese leader is deeply ideological in his personal commitment to authoritarianism. Bidens top Asia adviser, Kurt M. Campbell, has echoed that sentiment, saying that Xi has almost completely disassembled nearly 40 years of mechanisms designed for collective leadership, and that he is largely responsible for a more assertive Chinese foreign policy.

Beyond the rhetoric, the Biden administration is working with Congress to pass the Endless Frontier Act in order to counter Chinas economic and geopolitical ambition, especially in technology; it has prioritized relations with Asian allies over bilateral diplomacy with Beijing; and it has pressed Europe to do more to counter China.

Read: The U.S. and China finally get real with each other

This has been a bit of a journey for the president. Two years ago, he spoke about why he thought reports of Chinas strength were overstated, and made a remark that Republicans hammered him for during the 2020 campaign: China is going to eat our lunch? Come on, man. I mean, you know, theyre not bad folks, folks. But guess what? Theyre not competition for us.

Now he worries that they are competition for America, and not only thatthey might win. This belief underpins the Biden doctrine.

To many within the Democratic Party, the speed with which Biden has adopted this stance has been a surprise. Some in the partys foreign-policy establishment hope that his views on China are not yet settled, and that he will moderate his rhetoric and outlook over time, deemphasizing the contest between democracy and authoritarianism. They worry that the United States could find itself embroiled in an ideological struggle with China akin to the Cold War. Like Biden in 2019, they think that Chinas strengths are overstated, and that the U.S. can afford to be patient and restrained. They believe that while Washington must stand up for its interests, it also needs to quickly transition to a point of peaceful coexistence with Chinabasically a restoration of the Obama administrations approach.

A Biden-administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to candidly discuss government deliberations, told me that while the top foreign-policy officials are simpatico with the president, some in the government share the restorationists concerns, while others have yet to grasp the significance of the presidents statements.

Americas allies in Europe, especially Germany, are also nervous about the emphasis on facing off with China. It is perhaps no coincidence that Biden published an article on the eve of his trip to Europe in which he downplayed the competition with autocracies, emphasizing instead the general need to prove democracys effectiveness.

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Joe Biden Worries That China Might Win - The Atlantic

(S. Eudora Smith)

Washington, D.C.I wore two masks this past yearone to guard against Covid-19, another to hide my fear of the political violence that infected the nations capital.

Eleven thousand people died from the coronavirus in D.C. Nearly 50,000 were diagnosed with Covid out of a population of more than 710,000. And at the US Capitol, five people died when a white mob incited by then-President Donald Trump ransacked the building in an attack on democracy and the sanctity of the vote. As Washington reopens, its easy to celebrate survival, though its hard to claim real security from Covid and the other virus that has left American democracy on a ventilator. Even if the source of only one of those will be formally investigatedleaving prosecutions the only hope for answers about the unprecedented attack on the Capitol and capitalwhat happened mustnt be forgotten.

District residents endured what no other place in the country hasa lockdown for a public health crisis and a crisis of democracy. After January 6, tanks had rolled into town. Twenty-six thousand National Guard troops were amassed. Surrounding waterways were patrolled by federal marshals. Armed soldiers and military vehicles mingled with the monuments and symbols that tell the official story of America, the postcard version that visitors from across the country and the world take home with them. Shortly before the inauguration of Joe Biden, I wrote a friend: At the request of the Secret Service, the bridges leading to Virginia will be closed from the 19th-21st. (A main bridge has already been closed.) I immediately thought of John Carpenters Escape from New York. Manhattan is a penal colony, and all the bridges out are wired to explode if anyone tries to escape.

We got a taste of what its like to live in a state of siege. I had to go no further than the corner. My home was on the periphery of a sweeping secured zone that included the Capitol and the National Mall, which were cordoned off by a massive chain-link fence. To the south this zone included the offices of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which is bordered by a major interstate. I had imagined the nearby on-ramp to the interstate as my escape route if the capital descended into armed conflict, but National Guard tanks blocked the ramp.

Like other Washingtonians, I looked at the troops and worried, Will Trump leave without a fight? Will there be blood in the streets before its all over? And, as important, Should we even trust the Guard to oppose the insurrectionists? Might they turn on one another, and then on We the People?

The first night I drove home from the grocery store, two young Guard members stopped me as I tried to turn at the light to enter my complex. I live there, I said, pointing at the complex, ready to provide proof of address. After a brief pause, I was let through, though I didnt understand why I would be questioned in the first place. As a Black woman, I wasnt the reason the Guard has been deployed to the city.

Today the soldiers are gone. The last of them departed a few weeks ago. The metal fences that cordoned off the National Mall following the insurrection are gone too. I am leaving as well, for an ordinary reason, a different job. It strikes me, though, at this moment of reflection, that so much of what I love about D.C. has been eclipsed by memories of contagion and these multiple and still-uncertain efforts at containment.

Covid-19 cases have been reduced here. More than 42 percent of residents have been fully vaccinated. People talk of a return to normal, as if the crises we have experienced were just random interruptions in an otherwise predictable stream of events, not the movie trailer of disruptions to come. Health care experts anticipate a rise in cases in the fall and winter among unvaccinated people, and there are likely to be more variants, more pandemics in the future.

But for now, joggers leave puffs of dirt in their wake on the paths along the National Mall. Friends lounge on the bright green grass by the Washington Monument. Tourists pack the sidewalks on Independence and Pennsylvania avenues. People are out, masks off, while our democracy remains in critical condition.

Scenes From a Pandemic is a collaboration between The Nation and Kopkind, a living memorial to radical journalist Andrew Kopkind, who from 198294 was the magazines chief political writer and analyst. This series of dispatches from Kopkinds far-flung network of participants, advisers, guests, and friends is edited by Nation contributor and Kopkind program director JoAnn Wypijewski, and appears weekly on thenation.com and kopkind.org.

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Democracy on a Ventilator - The Nation