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President Donald Trump's approach to democracy, conflicted at best, is settling into a familiar groove. Attacks on the news media, the scapegoating of vulnerable minorities and periodic assaults on the concept of truth, as well as on specific facts, have become hallmarks of his administration.

At the same time, democracy has gotten a few licks in as well. Trump obediently retreated from his Muslim ban at the direction of the courts, and his White House has been leaky, a boon to the free flow of information.

But it remains unclear whether the Republican Congress and other key U.S. institutions have the resiliency and will to repel Trump's attacks, including the continuing stonewalling on we-don't-know-what-exactly regarding Russia. (Trump's sudden aura of competence after his speech to Congress was undermined a day later by a well-timed leak on how Attorney General Jeff Sessions appeared to mislead the Senate under oath about his Russia contacts.)

The effect of Trump on societies with weaker democratic institutions is also unknown. But the very existence of a would-be authoritarian thrashing around the American government, forever threatening to break free of institutional constraints, sends a jarring message around the world.

The New York Times published a story on Wednesday about "anti-Soros" forces in Europe being emboldened by Trump's election. Substitute the word "democracy" for the name of the financier and open-society enthusiast George Soros, and the story still holds.

In Soros's native Hungary, the Trumpian prime minister, Viktor Orban, has for years been undermining democratic norms and institutions, badgering opponents and bludgeoning the independence of the news media. He is using this hour of authoritarian ascendance to step up his attacks on groups such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch as "foreign agents financed by foreign money."

Last week in Hungary, an Amnesty spokesman told EUObserver, "The government accused Amnesty of producing fake reports and of inciting migrants to break laws."

"Fake" reports and law-breaking immigrants. There's something vaguely familiar about those themes, isn't there? In a speech earlier this week, Orban said Hungary's economic success depends on the nation's "ethnic homogeneity."

Hungary's tide of "illiberal democracy" long preceded Trump's election. Orban's most recent reign atop Hungarian politics -- he's been there before -- began in 2010. "What we've seen is a weakening of democratic institutions around that part of the world for maybe a decade now," said Jan Surotchak, Europe director of the International Republican Institute, a Washington-based NGO that promotes democracy worldwide.

Kenneth Wollack, president of the National Democratic Institute, a kind of Washington doppelganger of Surotchak's IRI, has been in the business of promoting democracy worldwide for more than three decades. He isn't convinced that this U.S. president represents a democratic departure. "I think it's way too early for people to be making judgments," Wollack said in a telephone interview.

Wollack points out that concerns about President George W. Bush's commitment to global democracy movements -- as a candidate Bush had disparaged "nation-building" -- were quickly rendered moot after Bush launched full-scale wars under the banner of democracy.

Trump's evolution could similarly surprise. Democracy promotion, Wollack said, is now deeply woven into the fabric of international relations, especially for the U.S. "Every U.S. embassy around the world has democracy as part of its agenda," he said.

Incubating and sustaining democratic institutions is a tough task, however. Democracy doesn't always take. And it doesn't always thrive even when it does take. Hungary is one of many examples of democratic backsliding. Certainly the regime of Russia's Vladimir Putin qualifies.

Nowhere is democracy so firmly rooted as in the U.S., which has been a wellspring for democratic impulses around the world. Perhaps the confidence of Wollack and others is well-founded. But Trump represents a concussive break from a democratic pattern that has not only flourished in the U.S. but reverberated, to the benefit of Americans and others, around the world.

U.S. commitment to foreign engagement can vary with the demands and resources of the era. But questions about the U.S.'s commitment to its own democracy are something strange and new. Democrats around the world can't help but take note that the pillar of democracy has gone wobbly. Aspiring dictators have no doubt noticed, too.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

To contact the author of this story: Francis Wilkinson at fwilkinson1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Katy Roberts at kroberts29@bloomberg.net

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Trump Could Undermine Democracy Outside the US - Bloomberg

Once the U.S. intelligence community came to the conclusion that Russian state actors had interfered in aspects of the 2016 presidential election, a question immediately arose as to whether the Kremlin sought to tilt the scale decisively in Donald Trumps favor or the highest ambition of its alleged hacking and disinformation campaigns during the run-up to the U.S. vote was merely a marginal diminution of faith in Western-style democracy. Consensus seemed to form around the notion that the latter came closer to truth.

Surveying the postelection status quo, an Obama administration official quoted in the much-discussed New Yorker story Trump, Putin, and the New Cold War, frames an alternate, and ultimately more hopeful, question:

The triple-bylined story, spanning 15 pages of the weekly magazine, examines, among numerous other facets, the shaping of the post-1989 (and post-1991) Putin worldview; how the Clintons, and President Obama, became Putin nemeses; when and how Kremlin-aligned entities evolved into global leaders in cyberwarfare tactics, particularly given that Putin himself rarely uses a computer; how alleged Russian efforts in the U.S. culminating last fall could become a template for similar interference in coming European elections; and why the Obama administration was so unwilling to raise the alarm when presented evidence in mid-2016 that Russia had insinuated itself in the central act of American democracy.

Dont miss: Russians alone predicted Donald Trumps victory in November, boasts Putin

Also see: Democrats lighting their hair on fire over Sessions-Russia story, Ryan says

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Russian election hack might also expose a strength of American democracy - MarketWatch

by Debora Hyemin Han | 3/3/17 2:05am

Last week, government professors John Carey and Brendan Nyhan, University of Rochester political science professor Gretchen Helmke, Yale University political science professor Susan Stokes and market research company partner Mitch Sanders released data from the first survey conducted by Bright Line Watch a project that seeks to use scholarly expertise to monitor democratic practices and call attention to threats to American democracy, according to its website. BLW gave The New York Times early access to the results, which were reported in the Upshot section on Feb. 23.

For its first survey, BLW aimed to understand what qualities were most essential to democracy and use those characteristics to assess the current state of democracy in the U.S. Of the approximately 10,000 political scientists who were invited to participate in the survey, over 1,500 responded, according to Sanders, who is BLWs director of survey research. He said that the survey connects the perspective of political scientists to the questions that people are asking about democracy and political institutions. The survey was based on 19 statements related to characteristics of democracy, from fraud-free elections to limits on executive power to equal-impact voting. Respondents were asked to evaluate the statements on their relevancy and how well the U.S government meets those standards.

The survey found that an overwhelming majority of the experts believe the U.S. meets democratic standards of fraud-free elections, freedom of speech and judicial limits of executive power. Fewer than two-thirds of respondents said the U.S. meets standards of the majority showing restraint and reciprocity and noncriticism of opponents patriotism.

According to Carey, the idea for BLW originated from emails and Facebook messages between himself, Helmke and Stokes prior to the November election. They shared new polls and articles about the election with one another and had conversations about the way American democracy was being spoken about in the media. Most take stability and performance of U.S. democracy for granted, according to Carey, and despite how much people complain about democracy, they usually do not talk about it in existential terms. After the election, the group began to speak about the project in more concrete terms, and by November, the name Bright Line Watch had been established and the method of surveying was beginning to be discussed, Carey added.

The name is a metaphor for the bright line between liberal democracy and other forms of government, according to Nyhan. Because it is often unclear when political regimes cross this line, BLW aims to bring scholarly expertise to the conversation, Nyhan added.

Political scientists have a more nuanced view of what constitutes democracy, and thats what we wanted to capture, Nyhan said.

Sanders said that a survey does well aggregating many opinions based on a robust sample, calling it a good snapshot of what political scientists are thinking.

According to Nyhan, BLW hopes to catalyze a conversation among political scientists about current issues as they occur, adding that it is important for scholars to show their expertise as events unfold.

Ultimately, were counting on expert judgment to ... re-aggregate that information and give you some kind of summary judgment on how the U.S. is performing in those areas, he said.

Both Carey and Nyhan, while emphasizing the non-partisan nature of the project, agreed that the political climate leading up to the election and during the election was a big factor in creating the project. However, Nyhan said that BLW also has elements that originated before President Donald Trumps era.

Its very much inspired [by] current events, but it draws on a vast scholarly literature that long predates Donald Trump or anything having to do with his political relevance, he said.

Furthermore, Nyhan said that it does not seem that the political scientists who participated in the study used the survey as a Trump-bashing vehicle, noting that some responses had very favorable views on certain aspects of the current state of democracy and that the political scientists are answering the question as scholars more so than as individual citizens.

Going forward, Carey said that the project aims to not only aid the American public in understanding the current state of democracy, but also contribute to research and scholarship. Because anyone is able to download the data, do their own analysis and publish their findings, he said he looks forward to seeing how the data can be utilized and incorporated. He added that the resource will become more and more valuable as the group continues to survey and add more waves of data.

In addition, Carey said he sees potential for the group to inform local governments about the current state of democracy. The survey sample could expand to include local officials, rather than just focusing on government at the national level, he said.

We designed the survey in a way that we hope will be interesting to people, to newspaper readers, but actually also to civic leaders, to people working in government at all levels or people who are working in advocacy, Carey said.

Carey and Nyhan say there is also a possibility for BLW to explore a comparative aspect, asking scholars to evaluate the state of American democracy in comparison to democracies of other nations around the world. Carey, Helmke and Stokes all focus on comparative government in their research. Carey said the team has already noticed parallels between the current state of American democracy and the democracies of other nations that they have studied.

[The survey results] were echoing the same themes that weve been debating throughout our whole professional careers you know, how democracy erodes, declines, in some cases, or is extinguished all together, he said.

Carey said that as the project is still new, a year from now, [the group will] have a much better idea of the data the survey is generating.

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Bright Line Watch examines US democracy - The Dartmouth

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: We end todays show by remembering renown Honduran environmental activist Berta Cceres, who was assassinated a year ago in her home in La Esperanza, Honduras, just before midnight, March 2, 2016. Berta Cceres was the co-founder of COPINH, the Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras. In 2015, she won the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize for her decade-long fight against the Agua Zarca Dam, a project planned along a river sacred to the indigenous Lenca people. On Thursday, hundreds rallied outside the Honduran Supreme Court building to demand justice for Berta Cceres and for the license of the company behind the Agua Zarca Dam to be revoked. Eight men have been arrested as suspects in Bertas killing, including one active army major and two retired military members. Two of the suspects reportedly received military training in the United States. Also Thursday here in Washington, D.C., Georgia Congressman Hank Johnson reintroduced the "Berta Cceres Human Rights in Honduras Act," which seeks to withhold U.S. military aid to Honduras until the Honduran government addresses human rights violations by its police and security forces. Were turning now to a new investigation that reveals further ties between Berta Cceress killing, Honduran military intelligence, and the United States. Joining us from London is Nina Lakhani, a freelance journalist who has been based in Mexico and Central America for the last four years. Her piece in The Guardian is headlined, "Berta Cceress Court Papers Show Murder Suspects Links to U.S.-trained Elite Troops." Nina, welcome to Democracy Now! What are those links?

NINA LAKHANI: The U.S., over the last decade or so, has really focused a lot of its military training in Central America on special forces. We know that over a period, I think, of five years, 2008-2014, the U.S. went 21 times to Honduras to train their special forces. Two of the military men who have been charged with her murder and the attempted murder of Gustavo Castro was special forces. So Major Mariano Diaz who was a veteran special forces officer, at least seven years according to his military records. And also Henry Hernandez, Sergeant Henry Hernandez, who had left the military in 2013, but he was special forces for three years and worked under the direct command of Major Diaz.

AMY GOODMAN: And what about Douglas Giovanni Bustillo?

NINA LAKHANI: Bustillo, he did receive some training as a cadet, I believe, just before he finished his initial military training. Both him and Diaz, who went into the military together, both went to the U.S. to receive training courses. Bustillo did some early training in the School of Americas I think back in 1997.

AMY GOODMAN: So talk about the evidence that youve seen, from text messages to phone calls. And if you can re-create for us what you think took place.

NINA LAKHANI: The evidence really points to I think a very well-planned military operation that took place that night. What we know from witnesses is that there is a police and military checkpoint as you come into Esperanza. And that night, many witnesses have told me and other investigators that there was no one there that night. There was none at the base that night. We know from phone records and from testimony that Hernandez and Bustillo, who knew each other from working a private security, in the months leading up to Bertas assassination, have working together in private security. We know that they were in La Esperanza at least three times in the weeks leading up to her murder. And so at least four people were there that night. Hernandez admits to being there. And at least three other civilians who have been accused of murder were placed at her house because of telephone analysis. They went in. They knew what they were doing. They knew where they were going. All of the evidence points to the house. Inside and out had been under surveillance. Theyd been there several times. And her house was set back from the main gate. It was a guarded community. There was a guard there that night whoits very likely they had communication with him. I met with him before because they came in. It was very dark. Its an isolated place. They knew were the door was. They knew where she would be sleeping. So the evidence points to her house and the area surrounding it had been surveyed, had been studied beforehand. All of that points to really like a military-type operation. Hernandez is the one military person that was placed there that night. Like I say, he was special forces. He worked under Diaz. He was a highlyhed been a decorated sniper. Its not clear whether he pulled the trigger that night, but it would appear that he was in charge of the operation on the night.

AMY GOODMAN: And why would they want

NINA LAKHANI: He was a low-level military officer and rose to the rank of sergeant.

AMY GOODMAN: Nina, why would they want Berta Cceres dead, in this last minuet we have?

NINA LAKHANI: I dont think the people under arrest probably did. The context of her Bertas death: she was the most well-known activist, not only in Honduras, but probably in America, at the time of her murder. None of the individuals who were under arrest, none of the eight, had anything personal to gain from her being killed. And the idea that someone as celebrated as her could be murdered without at least the implicit knowledge of people higher up in the Armed Forces or even the government and the company, I think is highly improbable. None of the eight who were under arrest had anything personal to gain.

AMY GOODMAN: But the government? And has the U.S. been held accountable?

NINA LAKHANI: I think the U.S.I dont think the U.S. governmentthey would not admit to bearing any responsibility to Bertas assassination. I think its important to remember I interviewed her around 2013 just around the elections and she was publicly denouncing the fact she had been told and had been made aware that her name appeared at the top of a military hit-list in which I think there were 16. She was one of 16 activists. She was telling people, you know

AMY GOODMAN: Were going to continue this conversation after the broadcast and post it online. Nina Lakhani, thanks so much for joining us.

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Revealed: Environmental Activist Berta Cceres' Suspected Killers Received US Military Training - Democracy Now!

Attorney General Jeff Sessions said Thursday he will recuse himself from any investigation into last years presidential campaign, following reports he met twice with Russias ambassador to the U.S. while serving as a campaign surrogate for Donald Trump. The revelation directly contradicts Sessions sworn testimony to Congress in January that he did not meet with any Russian officials in the run-up to Novembers election. In a hastily assembled news conference Thursday, Sessions called charges he lied under oath "totally false" and said he failed to mention the meetings with Ambassador Sergey Kislyak because the two did not discuss the campaign.

Jeff Sessions: I was taken aback a little bit about this brand new information, this allegation that surrogates and I have been, I had been called a surrogate for Donald Trump, had been meeting continuously with Russian officials. And thats what struck me very hard and thats what I focused my answer on. In retrospect, I should have slowed down and said, 'But I did meet one Russian official a couple of times, that would be the ambassador.' Thank you all, take care." Sessionss decision to recuse himself came just hours after President Trump said calls for Sessions to resign amounted to a total witch hunt." Trump was questioned by reporters while touring a naval warship Thursday.

Reporter: Mr. President, do you still have confidence in the Attorney General, sir?

President Donald Trump: Total."

Reporter: Should Sessions recuse himself from investigations into your campaign and Russia?"

President Donald Trump: "I dont think so at all. I dont think so" [crosstalk]

Reporter: When did you first learn Sessions spoke to the Russian ambassador? Did you know during the campaign?"

President Donald Trump: "I dont think he should do that at all."

Reporter: When were you aware that he spoke to the Russian ambassador?"

President Donald Trump: "I wasnt aware at all."

Meanwhile, ABC News reported Thursday that Sessions used political funds from his senatorial re-election account to meet with Ambassador Kislyak on the sidelines of the Republican National Convention in July. There were growing calls Thursday for Sessions to resign and even to face prosecution. The ACLU demanded an investigation into whether Sessions committed perjury. And President George W. Bushs former ethics lawyer, Richard Painter, said, Misleading the Senate in sworn testimony about [ones] own contacts with the Russians is a good way to go to jail. On Capitol Hill, a chorus of Democratic lawmakers called for Sessions to step down, while demands grew for a special prosecutor to investigate allegations that Russia interfered in the 2016 election on behalf of Donald Trump.

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Leaked DHS Memo Shows Most Foreign-Born Terrorists Radicalized in US - Democracy Now!