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There is a new incumbent in the White House, a new Congress has been sworn in, and scientists around the country are nervous as hell.

Were nervous because there seems to be a seismic shift going on in Washington, D.C., and its relationship with facts, scientific reality and objective truth has never been more strained.

Already, in the opening days of his administration, Donald Trumps press secretary, Sean Spicer, willfully ignored clear, empirical evidence about the size of the inauguration crowds, and bristled at the suggestion experts said they were smaller than in years past. He seemed almost paranoid and insinuated that a media conspiracy rather than simple arithmetic was trying to embarrass his boss. And the Trump administration continues to claim, without any evidence, that widespread voter fraud cost Trump the popular vote, even though this has been thoroughly debunked by numerous, bipartisan sources including his own lawyers.

Even more bizarrely, Kellyanne Conway, a senior advisor to Trump, has offered up the notion that alternative facts, rather than actual truth, were in play now. I dont know what alternative facts are, but I think my parents generation would have called them falsehoods or even lies.

But its not just absence of facts thats troubling, it is the apparent effort to derail science and the pursuit of facts themselves.

Already, we have learned that multiple agencies, including the USDA and the EPA, have ordered their scientists to stop speaking to the public about their research. The CDC suddenly cancelled a long-planned, international conference on the health impacts of climate change. And when the Badlands National Park started using its Twitter account to discuss the issue of climate change as any nature center, park or science museum might do the tweets were immediately deleted. Most disturbingly, the EPA has immediately suspended all of their grants and contracts, and ordered the review of all scientific work by political appointees, including efforts to collect data, conduct research and share information with the broader public a public, we should remember, that paid for the work in the first place.

And its only been a week since Trump took office.

A disturbing pattern seems to be emerging. Facts, and the pursuit of facts, dont seem to matter to this White House. Or, worse yet, they matter a lot and are being suppressed.

Fact checking the Trump campaign was always a surreal exercise, but we all knew that he came from the world of entertainment, and that shoot-from-the-hip, I-say-what-I-think style was part of his charm, part of his brand. People fed up with regular politicians loved his brash style. It was refreshing to many.

But now that Trump is in power, this is no longer about ratings and entertaining television. Its about ensuring the fundamental legitimacy and credibility of the worlds most powerful office. If we cant trust the facts being discussed in the White House, what can we trust?

Ultimately, a healthy democracy depends on science. The pursuit of truth, having an informed citizenry, and the free and open exchange of ideas are all cornerstones of our democracy. Thats one thing that always made America truly great: The fact that, when all is said and done, evidence and the truth would always win the day in America. Without that, we join the league of ordinary nations.

And even if you arent worried about factual evidence, the veracity of our leaders or the independence of science from political interference, I would urge you to look a little farther down the slippery slope. If facts dont matter to the White House, especially when theyre inconvenient, whats next? Laws?

Let me be clear: This isnt a partisan thing. Scientists arent and shouldnt be worried about which political party is in power. It rarely mattered: There has always been a long tradition of bipartisan support for science and a fact-based world view. In fact, the Union of Concerned Scientists has ranked both Republican and Democratic presidents as being exceptional supporters of science, ranging from Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush.

Wise leaders of both parties have always recognized the value of independent science to our democracy.

But theres something different about this administration. Something troubling. And scientists need to stand up and call it out. While we generally avoid political conversations, scientists should always stand up for facts, objectivity and the independence of science itself. Not doing so would be almost unethical.

So, to Trump, I would say this:

If this is all just a series of missteps, caused by over-zealous mid-level managers during a confusing presidential transition, so be it. Say so. Fix it. Get out on the public stage and affirm your commitment to facts, to truth and to the independent pursuit of science without political interference. The vast majority of your fellow Americans would applaud you for this. It would be brave. It would be wise. And it would show some class.

But if this is actually part of your governing philosophy, I would give you a warning on behalf of my fellow scientists: Do not mess with us. Do not try to bury the truth. Do not interfere with the free and open pursuit of science. You do so at your peril.

Americans dont look kindly on bullies, people who try to suppress the truth or people who try to intimidate scientists and the press. In the long run, this always backfires. The dustbin of history is full of people who have tried, and failed. You will too.

The next time you visit the CIA headquarters, I hope you will take a moment to notice their unofficial motto, etched in the walls of the lobby. It says, And ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free. (John VIII-XXXII.)

It does. And scientists like me, and Americans of all backgrounds, will always fight for it.

Read more here:
The war on facts is a war on democracy: Scientific community has a warning for President Trump - Salon

West Africa - from dictators' club to upholder of democracy BBC News Former Gambian leader Yahya Jammeh failed to appreciate that democracy had taken root in West Africa. It left him on a hiding to nothing once he lost elections, writes Elizabeth Ohene. If proof were needed that the political atmosphere had changed in ... and more »

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West Africa - from dictators' club to upholder of democracy - BBC News

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.