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White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer holds the daily press briefing in the James Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House, January 23, 2017 in Washington, DC. ( Chip Somodevilla / GETTY IMAGES )

By Robin V. Sears

Sun., Jan. 29, 2017

Tyrants always respect and fear an independent media, often more than journalisms ordinary readers. They understand its power to reveal their agendas, to mock their follies, and to delegitimize them. Thats why they do their best to demonize and marginalize journalists. From Mussolini to Chavez to Putin and Erdogan, it is a tactic proven successful at least in the short term for tyrants everywhere. Trump has clearly been a student.

His bullying and legal threats to serious journalists did cast a chill on many news organizations. Combined with the huge audiences he delivered to them, in straightened economic times, it made being relentless about a congenital liar difficult.

But the media are one of the three essential guardians of a modern democracy, the others being the judiciary and the military. When the executive branch has control of the legislature and twists it away from democratic practice, judges have often stepped in. This seems a dim hope with this paralyzed conservative Supreme Court.

Military intervention is a nuclear option in a democracy, usually ending in tears. When the revered Israeli military leadership are now quietly discussing moving against the increasingly erratic and unstable Bibi Netanyahu as Israeli media report they have been doing you know that democracy is at risk. One hopes the mere threat of their intervention will impose some discipline on that increasingly isolated and nasty government.

That leaves the media as the sole practical guardians of American democracy. It is a role that many have demonstrated considerable public angst about playing. News organizations from right to left have conducted endless public hand wringing about balance, partisanship and their reputations.

The boundaries between that noble role and bias is surely a very bright line.

If as a journalist you have evidence of misconduct, of bald-faced lying, of policies inimical to agreed American self-interest, you report it. You ensure your sources are bullet-proof, you seek out respected endorsers for your findings. But you report it even if the Trump regime gets advertisers, subscribers and viewers to threaten to walk. A tactic you may be sure they will use.

Tyranny sometimes arrives on quieter feet than burning down the Reichstag. But it always requires threatening and bullying an independent media into submission. Sometimes it is brutal in its repression, but often it succeeds by changing the channel constantly. Introducing irrelevant news stories in response to attack, or staging corny photo ops. Tyrants always use a compliant media to denigrate opponents with phony stories. Like Pravda, in Putins good old days, house organs like Fox and Breitbart have used those tactics with devastating effect.

The institutions of American democracy are marvelously resilient as they have demonstrated for two centuries. They successfully resist attempts to undermine them from the pushback on FDRs attempt to pack the Supreme Court, to Senators successful denunciation of Joe McCarthys witchhunt, to Watergate. Court-packing, witchhunts and genuine abuses of power may soon be back. Key to defeating them is a fearless press not one diverted into nonsense, or bullied into silence.

It is a foolish clich to cite the unpopularity of the media. Lawyers, cops and politicians dont rank much higher. Yet few of us do not cheer when any of them successfully defend justice and defeat the bad guys. When tyrants try to drive the medias reputation down even further its important not to dismiss it, or worse quietly snicker. Failing to smack back at Trumps media taunts is at some point to fail to defend the republic.

If 20-plus million American are suddenly flung out of the health-care system, it will be powerful stories in the New York Times long, expensively produced, eloquently written stories - that will reveal the pain and suffering, forensically documenting this regimes fundamental incompetence to govern. If a witchhunt is launched against opponents, former candidates, and minority communities it will be CNN cameras that will capture the defiance of activists surrounded by SWAT teams, and the night-time raids on immigrant families.

It is not yet clear whether Americans are heading toward a devastating assault on their democracy. Trump is after all a phony whose views flip like a weathervane. If the republic is successfully steered away from that ditch, it will be the best of American journalism in the drivers seat.

For as the courageous former president of Poland, and the current European President, Donald Tusk says, those who cannot see the echoes of a European politics of nearly a century ago in todays political climate are simply being willfully blind. Those tyrannies, whose success was the tragedy of the last century, could not have succeeded without first crushing an independent media.

Robin V. Sears, a principal at Earnscliffe Strategy Group and a Broadbent Institute leadership fellow, was an NDP strategist for 20 years.

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Journalists are the last guardians of our democracy: Sears - Toronto Star

Protesters have gathered at airports in New York, Washington D.C., Chicago, Dallas and other cities as immigration authorities begin to block entry to all refugees and immigrants from seven Muslim-majority nations.

Thousands of protesters gathered Saturday at JFK International Airport. The New York Taxi Workers Alliance joined the protest by calling on its members not to pick up passengers between 6 and 7 p.m. tonight.

The American Civil Liberties Union and other legal organizations filed an emergency lawsuit Saturday on behalf of plaintiffs who have been detained and threatened with deportation even though they have valid visas to enter the United States.

President Trumps war on equality is already taking a terrible human toll," said Omar Jadwat, director of the ACLUs Immigrants Rights Project. "This ban cannot be allowed to continue.

"Families are being ripped apart without warning and with no assurance of when they will be reunited," said the National Iranian American Council in a statement. "Students traveling abroad at the time of the ban are horrified that they might not be able to return to continue their studies. Children are being detained along with their parents when they were just seeking to return home. This is a dark day in the history of this country."

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Protests Erupt at US Airports As Trump Order Targeting Refugees & Muslim Immigrants Takes Effect - Democracy Now!

A game-changing federal-court ruling orders Wisconsin to redraw legislative district lines that unfairly and unconstitutionally favor Republicans.

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, September 21, 2015. (AP Photo / Morry Gash)

Democracy has taken very hard hits in the first days of the Trump interregnum, as Donald Trump and the mandarins of his alternative-fact administration have spun fantasies about voter fraud that clearly does not exist; obsessed about the dubious legitimacy of a president who lost the popular voteanddrew a disappointing crowd for his inauguration; and attacked the free and skeptical press that provides and essential underpinning for the open discourse that sustains popular sovereignty.

But sometimes democracy wins outin a way that could transform our politics and our governance.

Nothing has so sustained and advanced Republican dominance of the states (and of the US House of Representatives) as the gerrymandering of legislative and congressional district lines by Republican politicians who have used their overarching control of state-based redistricting processes to warp electoral competition in their favor. And few states have seen such radical gerrymandering as Scott Walkers Wisconsin, where the governor and his allies skewed district lines so seriously that clearly contested state legislative races have become a rarity in much of a state that national elections suggest is evenly divided.

Wisconsins gerrymandering was so extreme that, two months ago, a federal-court panel struck down Wisconsin legislative maps as unconstitutional. Walkers Republican state attorney general appealed immediately, setting up a fight that will eventually be resolved by a US Supreme Court that legal experts say may finally be prepared to rule on behalf of competitive elections.

In our democracy, people have the right to hold their government accountable in fair, competitive elections. Senator Mark Miller

Walker and his Republican allies, desperate to maintain their unfair advantage, asked the three-judge federal panel to delay implementation of its ruling as the appeals process goes forward.

But on Friday the judges refused to delay democracy any longer.

In a decision that was hailed as a significant victory for democracy in Wisconsin and nationally, the federal panel enjoined Wisconsin officials from using existing maps in all future elections. At the same time, the judges ordered Walker and the state legislature to draw new legislative-district maps by November 1, 2017.

The new maps are to be used in November 2018, when Walker, the entire state assembly, and half of the state senate will be up for election.

The decision by the federal court to require new redistricting maps by November 1, 2017 is great news for Wisconsin. Voters should always pick their elected officials instead of elected officials picking them. I hope that legislative Republicans are more competent with their second chance,said Democratic State Senator Mark Miller, the former majority leader of the Wisconsin Senate. In our democracy, people have the right to hold their government accountable in fair, competitive electionsI am pleased that power should finally be returned to the people of Wisconsin.

Miller is right. While there will still be plenty of wrangling over the drawing of district lines, and while Walker and his Republican allies will keep trying to delay that process, the notion that voters have a right to cast their ballots in genuinely competitive elections is gaining traction.

This case is an actual game-changer when it comes to undoing GOP gerrymandering nationwide. Carolyn Fiddler

Thats a big deal for Wisconsin. But it is also a big deal for the rest of a country where numerous states face legal battles over gerrymandering of legislative and congressional district lines. Walker acknowledges that lawmakers and governors around the country are interested in this case regardless of party, while Carolyn Fiddler of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee says that this order presents a real chance for Wisconsin Democrats voices to be fairly represented in their state government. Additionally, this case is an actual game-changer when it comes to undoing GOP gerrymandering nationwide and preventing Republicans from artificially inflating their majorities via redistricting for the decade to come.

Fiddlers point gets to the heart of the matter. Discussions about gerrymandering involve a lot more than maps. They are about electoral competition and the makeup of legislative chambers. Fair competition, in Wisconsin and nationally, could produce dramatic change in politics and governing. For instance: In 2012 voting for state assembly seats in Wisconsin, Democrats won 174,000 more votes than Republicans. Yet, because of the gerrymandering of the assembly maps by Walker and his allies, Republicans won a 60-39 majority in the chamber.

The stakes are higher now than ever. Get The Nation in your inbox.

Bill Whitford, the veteran University of Wisconsin law professor who was the lead plaintiff in the gerrymandering case brought by the Fair Elections Project, hailed the court ruling as a victory in the struggle for a renewal of representative democracy.

Today is a good day for Wisconsin voters, and another step in the journey of ensuring that our voices are heard, explained Whitford. Now, we will be keeping a watchful eye on the state legislature as they draw the new maps and I ask them, for the sake of our democracy, to put partisan politics aside and the interests of all voters first.

If the Republicans fail to put aside partisanship, they are all but certain to face another intervention by the courts in what is by any measure a high-stakes struggle.

Republicans in Wisconsin and nationally know that if Democrats were to gain a stronger foothold in the Wisconsin Assembly and Senate following a fair fight in 2018, that could position them to draw more competitive congressional-district lines following the 2020 Census. And if the US Supreme Court were to accept the premise that voters have a right to cast ballots in competitive electionrather than to waste them in districts that are drawn to give one party a permanent advantagethe American political landscape could be radically altered.

As former president Barack Obama, who has pledged to make the battle against gerrymandering a focus of his post-presidential activism, has said: If we want a better politics, its not enough to just change a congressman or a senator or even a president. We have to change the system to reflect our better selves.

The way to get that better politics is by upending gerrymandering practices that allow politicians to pick their voters, and to give the voters the power that extends from genuinely competitive elections.

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Democracy Wins One as a Federal Court Strikes a Big Blow Against Gerrymandering - The Nation.

And the problem is a lot bigger than Donald Trump.

A woman exits the voting booth after filling out her ballot for the US presidential election at the James Weldon Johnson Community Center in East Harlem, on November 8, 2016. (Reuters / Andrew Kelly)

The United States is no longer a full democracy, according to the highly regarded Economist Intelligence Unit, which each year compiles a Democracy Index that provides a snapshot of the state of democracy worldwide for 165 independent states and two territories.

The US, a standard-bearer of democracy for the world, has become a flawed democracy, as popular confidence in the functioning of public institutions has declined, explains the introduction to the freshly released Democracy Index.

That would be a troubling announcement in any week.

But coming in the first week of the presidency of Donald Trump, a man who has claimed that election systems are rigged, who lies about supposed voter fraud and who attacks the media outlets who call him out for those lies, the announcement is all the more unsettling.

For those of us who have for many years worried about the vulnerable state of democracy in America, the news is even more troubling because the Democracy Index analysis reminds us that this is about a lot more than Donald Trump.

Popular trust in government, elected representatives and political parties has fallen to extremely low levels in the US. This has been a long-term trend and one that preceded the election of Mr Trump as US president in November 2016, explains the analysis. By tapping a deep strain of political disaffection with the functioning of democracy, Mr Trump became a beneficiary of the low esteem in which US voters hold their government, elected representatives and political parties, but he was not responsible for a problem that has had a long gestation. The US has been teetering on the brink of becoming a flawed democracy for several years, and even if there had been no presidential election in 2016, its score would have slipped below 8.00.

A country must maintain an 8.00 rating (on measures of the electoral process and pluralism, civil liberties, the functioning of government, political participation and political culture). The US rating was 8.05 last year. It is now 7.98; and index ranking for the US has fallen to number 21just behind Japan, just ahead of the Republic of Cabo Verde. The United States is not ranked with the worlds authoritarian states; its in the company of Bulgaria, France, India, and Mongolia. But the US is no longer ranked in the full democracy category with Australia, Canada, Germany, and the United Kingdom. And it is ranked well below social democracies such as Norway (#1 on the 2016 Democracy Index), Iceland (#2), and Sweden (#3).

For small-d democrats who are worried about Trump and Trumpism, the latest Democracy Index provides vital perspective. The new president is a bad player. He disrespects and disregards democratic values, encourages distrust of democratic infrastructure, and expresses disdain for the essential source of information in a democracy: a free and skeptical and questioning press that is willing to speak truth to power.

But even before Trump entered the presidential race, the crisis was real, and it was metastasizing.

Robert W. McChesney and I made this point in our 2013 book Dollarocracy: How the Money and Media Election Complex is Destroying America and our 2016 book People Get Ready: The Fight Against a Jobless Economy and a Citizenless Democracy (both Nation Books). We used the Democracy Index and other measures to warn that the combination of big-money politics; lobbying abuses that tip the balance of power to corporate interests; underfunded and dysfunctional media; assaults on labor rights; the gutting of voting rights; and the manipulation of election systems by partisans was undermining the infrastructure of democracy.

Undermining the infrastructure of democracy necessarily undermines confidence in democracywhich we suggested would create a crisis for the United States, a country that already has embarrassingly low levels of voter participation when compared with fully functional democracies. The 2016 Democracy Index provides a fresh measure of that crisis, noting that

The decline in the US democracy score reflects an erosion of confidence in government and public institutions over many years. According to the Pew Research Centre, public trust in government has been on a steady downward trend since shortly after the September 11th attacks in 2001. Donald Trump won the November 2016 presidential election by exploiting this trust deficit and tapping into Americans anger and frustration with the functioning of their democratic institutions and representatives. He positioned himself as the insurgent candidate, a political outsider taking on a rigged system who would drain the swamp in Washington, DC. However, his candidacy was not the cause of the deterioration in trust but rather a consequence of it.

Its fair to quibble with that last line; at the very least, Trumps rhetoric reinforces and extends the deterioration in faith in democracy. And there should be no doubt that Trumps presidency will make things worsejust five days into his term, he was promising a major inquiry into voter fraud that even Republicans acknowledge does not exist. But that does not change the fact that Trumps political rise can be seen as symptom of a broader democracy crisis.

These realities call for a multi-tiered response to Trump and Trumpism.

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It begins with resistance to the most dangerous of Trumps policies and proposals, and with the requirement of solidarity with those who are most threatened by those policies and proposals. But it also can and must address the democracy crisis.

It is more necessary than ever to embrace movements to get big money out of politics and to restore ethics to government, to defend voting rights and to make it easier to cast ballots, to reform our media and to sustain a truly free press. Groups such as Common Cause and Public Citizen, Free Speech for People and Move to Amend, FairVote and Free Press are working in these areas. They have track records of success, even in the most difficult of circumstances, and they recognize the importance of state and local initiatives.

The resistance to Trump and Trumpism begins with opposition to immediate threats to civil rights and civil liberties, and to the dismantling of safety-net policies, programs, and protections. But it must also address the threat posed by an ongoing decay of democracy that has as its consequence the empowerment of a Donald Trump and the rise of Trumpism.

(John Nichols is a co-founder, with Robert W. McChesney, of the media-reform network Free Press.)

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'The Economist' Just Downgraded the US From a 'Full Democracy' to a 'Flawed Democracy' - The Nation.

A new elections program in the city is already seeing some irregularities. In some cases, "democracy vouchers" are going to people who moved out of Seattle years ago. (Photo: KOMO News)

SEATTLE - As President Donald Trump decries voter fraud, a new elections program in the city is already seeing some irregularities. In some cases, "democracy vouchers" are going to people who moved out of Seattle years ago.

Seattle is the first city in the nation to offer democracy vouchers as a way to fund certain political campaigns. However, when the vouchers showed up in a mail box in North Carolina, a former Seattle resident started scratching his head.

I got to thinking, if I received these things in the email, maybe I was still registered to vote in two states, said Tim Gerla, who now lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

Voters approved the taxpayer-funded vouchers in 2015 as a way to get big money out of local politics. Voters receive four $25 vouchers to put towards candidates who agree to spending limits.

However, sending them to people who moved away years ago raises the concern that potential election irregularities could be triggered. The Seattle Ethics and Elections Committee said there are some challenges.

That is something we're looking into, said Wayne Barnett, the executive director of the commission.

According to Barnett, the commission had its mail vendor send the vouchers to half a million registered voters, including those who are categorized as inactive because they did not participate in recent elections. In some instances the vouchers were mailed to forwarding addresses, including Tim Gerla's.

It would be a huge ordeal for me to try to vote in two states, Gerla said. And of course, the thought never crossed my mind."

Barnett thinks the potential for abuse is limited. He said the commission must also accommodate out-of-state students and those serving in the military to use vouchers if they still consider Seattle to be their home.

We have to look at ways we can keep those people in the system while making sure those who are not returning to Seattle aren't," Barnett said.

Because of the questions raised by KOMO News, Barnett wrote in an email that going forward, the commission will verify that people who use the vouchers are Seattle residents by having them sign and return a form.

For now the voucher program is limited to candidates for city attorney and the two at-large council seats. Depending on its success there, it could expand to other races in the future.

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Seattle "democracy vouchers" show up out-of-state - KOMO News