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LONDON The Group of 7 was created to help coordinate economic policy among the worlds top industrial powers. In the four decades since, it has acted to combat energy shortages, global poverty and financial crises.

But as Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken meets with fellow Group of 7 foreign ministers in London this week, a key item on the agenda will be what Mr. Blinken called, in remarks to the press on Monday, defending democratic values and open societies.

Implicitly, that defense is against China and, to a lesser extent, Russia. While the economic and public tasks of recovering from the coronavirus remain paramount, Mr. Blinken is also employing the Group of 7 composed of the United States, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, and Japan to coordinate with allies in an emerging global competition between democracy and the authoritarian visions of Moscow and Beijing.

One twist in the meeting this week is the presence of nations that are not formal Group of 7 members: India, South Korea, Australia and South Africa. Also in attendance is Brunei, the current chair of the Association of South East Asian Nations.

It is no coincidence that those guest nations are in the Indo-Pacific region, making them central to Western efforts to grapple with Beijings growing economic might and territorial ambition. China was the subject of a 90-minute opening session on Tuesday morning, and the schedule concluded with a group dinner on the Indo-Pacific.

The broader context for these meetings is China, and the authoritarian challenge that China presents to the democratic world, said Ash Jain, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council.

Mr. Jain noted the way the group is now emphasizing common values over shared economic interests. The G7 is being rebranded as a group of like-minded democracies, as opposed to a group of highly industrialized nations. Theyre changing the emphasis, he said.

Many of the countries represented at the meeting do big business with China and Russia, complicating efforts to align them against those nations. Chinas pattern of economic coercion was one specific topic of conversation on Tuesday, participants said.

But those efforts have been simplified by the departure of President Donald J. Trump, who repeatedly picked fights with Group of 7 allies and confounded them with calls to restore Russia, which was expelled in 2014 from what was then the Group of 8 after its annexation of Crimea from Ukraine.

Nor is it likely a coincidence that the expanded guest list matches, with the additions of South Africa and Brunei, a group of 10 countries and the European Union, collectively short-handed as the D-10 by proponents of organizing them in a new world body. Those proponents include Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain, the host of this weeks gathering and architect of its guest list.

Mr. Johnson has also invited India, Australia and South Korea to send their heads of state to this summers Group of 7 summit in Cornwall, citing his ambition to work with a group of like-minded democracies to advance shared interests and tackle common challenges.

President Biden has similarly suggested that the world is grouping into competing camps, divided by the openness of their political systems. In his address to Congress last week, Mr. Biden said that Americas adversaries, the autocrats of the world, are betting that the nations battered democracy cannot be restored.

As a candidate, Mr. Biden also committed to holding a Summit for Democracy during his first year in office, and officials say planning for such an event is underway. Asked in a Tuesday interview with The Financial Times which countries might be invited to such a summit, Mr. Blinken did not answer directly.

And Wednesdays agenda for the gathering includes a session on open societies, including issues of media freedom and disinformation. Other sessions over the two days include Syria, Russia and its neighbors Ukraine and Belarus, Myanmar, and Afghanistan.

Some Group of 7 nations are concerned about the creation of a new global body that might contribute to a Cold War-style polarization along ideological lines.

In a joint news conference on Monday, Mr. Blinken and his British counterpart, Dominic Raab, were cautious not to suggest that they were forming a new club.

Asked whether a new alliance of democracies might be emerging, Mr. Raab said he did not see things in such theological terms, but did see a growing need for agile clusters of like-minded countries that share the same values and want to protect the multilateral system.

Addressing the same question, Mr. Blinken was careful to insist that this weeks meetings did not amount to plotting against Beijing.

It is not our purpose to try to contain China, or to hold China down, Mr. Blinken said. What we are trying to do is to uphold the international rules-based order that our countries have invested so much in over so many decades, to the benefit, I would argue, not just of our own citizens, but of people around the world including, by the way, China. (The line is not just for public consumption. U.S. diplomats have relayed the same message privately, almost verbatim, to foreign counterparts.)

But in an interview with CBSs 60 Minutes broadcast the night before, Mr. Blinken made clear how the United States views Chinas rise.

I think that over time, China believes that it can be and should be and will be the dominant country in the world, Mr. Blinken said. China is challenging the international order, he said, adding that were going to stand up and defend it.

Jeremy Shapiro, a State Department official in the Obama administration who is now research director at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said that informally expanding the Group of 7 was far easier than constructing a new body.

It is always a pain, from a governmental perspective, to invent a new forum, because you need to have an endless discussion about whos in and whos out, and how it works, and its relationship to the U.N., Mr. Shapiro said.

He added that the Group of 7, whose mission had grown nebulous in recent years, might have acquired a new sense of purpose as it tries to organize a post-Trump democratic world in the face of Chinese and Russian threats.

You would be hard-pressed to look back the past five years or more since they kicked out Russia to name a single thing the G7 has done of interest, Mr. Shapiro said. It didnt have much to do.

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Blinken and G7 Allies Turn Their Focus to Democratic Values - The New York Times

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