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U.N. officials continue to sound the alarm over the humanitarian crisis in Sudan, which theyve described as one of the worst in recent history. The U.N. Security Council met Wednesday to discuss the conflict as it nears the one-year mark since fighting broke out between the Sudanese military and rival Rapid Support Forces. Edem Wosornu, the director of operations for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, warned Sudan is possibly on course to becoming the worlds worst hunger crisis.

Edem Wosornu: Malnutrition is soaring to alarming levels and is already claiming childrens lives. A recent MSF report revealed that one child is dying every two hours in Zamzam camp in El Fasher, North Darfur. Our humanitarian partners estimate that in the coming weeks and months somewhere in the region of around 222,000 children could die from malnutrition. And with the estimated WHO estimates that more than 70% of health facilities are not functional.

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Sudan Could Soon Become the World's Worst Hunger Crisis - Democracy Now!

In the run-up to this years election, President Joe Biden has warned that American democracy is at stake. But when it comes to the democratic process of an entire nation, might the solution be local?

In an age of declining print media, losses of local newspapers and journalists are creating news deserts: areas bereft of a local paper. But does this matter, or is local news just a collection of obituaries and classifieds? Especially when rolling news coverage can be found online?

This week, Joan Greve speaks to the journalist and local news campaigner Steven Waldman, who argues that in an election year of increasing polarisation, we need local news more than ever. They will discuss why local journalism is a fundamental part of building communication, scrutiny and trust and what can be done to save it

How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know

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America's 'news deserts' and what it means for democracy podcast - The Guardian

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said on March 14, 2024, The Netanyahu coalition no longer fits the needs of Israel. It was an extraordinary public criticism of a longtime ally, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, by an American government official.

Against the background of imminent famine in Gaza, Schumer, the top Democrat in Congress and the highest-ranking Jewish elected official in the U.S., said Netanyahu was an obstacle to peace and called for new elections in Israel.

Leading Democratic senators praised Schumers speech, while the GOP panned it. President Joe Biden said it was a good speech that raised concerns shared not only by him but by many Americans.

The Conversations senior politics and democracy editor, Naomi Schalit, interviewed scholar Dov Waxman about Schumers speech. Waxman, an expert on both Israeli politics and the American Jewish communitys relationship with Israel, described the speech as a watershed moment in the U.S.-Israel relationship.

Netanyahus response to Schumer was, The people of Israel will choose when they will have elections, and who theyll elect. What does Schumers speech mean for Netanyahu, both in the U.S. and in Israel?

I dont think most Israelis are paying much attention to what Schumer said. Theyre focused on the war and especially on the current negotiations to secure a cease-fire and hostage agreement.

But Schumer is right that the vast majority of Israelis have completely lost confidence in Netanyahu and his government and want him to be replaced as prime minister. Yet there isnt majority support for immediate elections. A plurality of Israelis want early elections to take place after the war ends. At the same time, I think the positions Schumer was putting forward particularly about the need to create a Palestinian state are not ones that are widely shared by most Israelis.

Schumers speech matters more for American politics than for Israeli politics. It marks the culmination of a process thats been underway for some time, whereby the Democratic Party has increasingly turned against Netanyahu. This is not just the progressive wing of the Democratic Party but also the moderate wing and the most pro-Israel Democrats. Schumer is one of the most pro-Israel senators in American history. Hes had a long relationship with Netanyahu and was considered a friend of Netanyahu. So, the break between Democrats and Netanyahu is now complete. Netanyahu has clearly become persona non grata for the Democrats.

What was Schumers strategy in giving the speech?

What Schumer, and to some extent the Biden administration, are doing is trying to position the Democratic Party as anti-Netanyahu but not anti-Israel. They want to make a distinction that it is possible and indeed necessary to take issue with Netanyahus policies, but that doesnt mean that youre not supporting Israel.

Thats an attempt to triangulate between the different political pressures that the Democrats are under and the political risks that Democrats now face. President Bidens strong support for the war in Gaza has become a domestic political liability for him and for the Democratic Party as a whole. On the one hand, they need to try to win back support among progressives, younger Democrats and especially among the Arab American voters who are outraged over the Biden administrations support for the war. But they need to do that without alienating Jewish American voters and moderate Democrats who support the war and, broadly speaking, support Israel.

This is an attempt to find that balance without incurring major domestic political costs.

Schumer can say what he wants, Biden can say what he wants, and Netanyahu keeps doing what he wants. If what Schumer and Biden say doesnt affect the behavior of the Israeli government, can it be effective domestically in the U.S.?

Buried in the speech is a real political bombshell. Schumer said that if Netanyahu and his coalition remain in power and continue to pursue dangerous and inflammatory policies that test existing U.S. standards for assistance, then the U.S. will be forced to play a more active role in shaping Israeli policy by using our leverage to change the present course.

Its not the first time that a U.S. senator or policymaker is raising the threat of potentially conditioning U.S. military aid. But Schumer doing so sends a message to Israeli policymakers that mainstream, pro-Israel Democrats are now willing to consider something that was previously politically taboo, namely conditioning U.S. aid to Israel. That could induce changes in Israeli policy.

What kind of changes?

Specifically, the provision of humanitarian aid to Gaza, which has become a major public dispute between the U.S. and Israel. But whatever changes it does bring about in Israeli policy toward Gaza and the Palestinians, I dont think its going to be nearly enough to satisfy the left or progressives and others who oppose the Biden administrations policy.

But theres a moderate middle, particularly many American Jews, who dont want the Biden administration to stop supporting Israel but dislike Netanyahu and his right-wing policies. What Schumer is saying is that the Democratic Party is the party for them, that it is a place for people who, while supporting Israel, have deep concerns about the Israeli militarys conduct in Gaza, and are frustrated with the Israeli governments refusal to present a real plan for the day after, and its stonewalling on any prospect for a Palestinian state.

Schumer is expressing the sentiments of those voters, who we often dont hear about because its often those on the left and the right whose voices drown out that silent majority in the middle.

Are Schumer and Biden ahead of American public opinion or behind it?

I think they are, as is typical of politicians, behind public opinion. The distinction between supporting Israel while criticizing its government has already been largely accepted for some time now among Jewish Americans. But it hasnt always been reflected among politicians, who felt that when they supported Israel, they had to uncritically support the Israeli government.

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Pro-Israel but anti-Netanyahu: Democratic Party leaders try to find the middle ground - The Conversation Indonesia

The Biden administrations escalating spat with Israel over its war with Hamas in Gaza, now joined by Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), has included media leaks, pointed intelligence assessments and diplomatic dressing-downs. But perhaps the most telling piece was Vice President Harriss admonition last week not to conflate the Israeli government with the Israeli people.

As the Israeli journalist Amit Segal observes, There is a significant disparity between Israels leadership and its citizens but its the opposite of what people in Washington assume. The policies of Israels war cabinet are restrained relative to public opinion. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahus foreign-policy instincts are moderate by Israeli standards. If the Israeli people somehow controlled the war in Gaza directly, it might be even more devastating.

So Harriss remark reflects a misapprehension of Israeli democracy. But more than that, it highlights how promoting democracy is a weak foundation for U.S. foreign policy in the first place.

Biden has made a global contest between democracy and autocracy central to his presidency. That pitch has failed to keep Congress united in support of aiding Ukraine against Russias invasion. The main deficiency is obvious: Many Americans wonder what the form of government in a faraway country has to do with their own lives.

Republicans are responsible for holding up aid to Ukraine. But Biden has accelerated partisan polarization over the war by casting it as an extension of U.S. domestic politics, with Ukraines fight against Russia parallel to the Democrats fight against former president Donald Trumps GOP. Portraying Republicans as part of the authoritarian menace you want to defeat abroad is obviously not a formula for winning their support on a foreign policy priority.

An overemphasis on democracy can be self-undermining, as the political philosopher Emily B. Finley argued in her 2022 book, The Ideology of Democratism. When democracy yields a controversial outcome, there can be a tendency to assume that democracy itself was corrupted that the problem is not a difference of opinion among citizens, but that nefarious forces prevented the true will of the people from emerging. One classic example is the liberal attribution of Trumps 2016 election victory to disinformation or foreign interference.

Harriss Israel statement betrayed a similar tendency. The Biden administration is displeased with the behavior of Israels leadership, so it signaled that Israels elected leadership is not actually a democratic reflection of its people. But if Segal is right about Israels warlike public opinion, thats misdirection. The Israeli conduct that angers the Biden administration is democratically representative.

Theres nothing wrong with trying to change a democratic countrys behavior. One benefit of American alliances is that they enable Washington to influence democratic allies to comport with U.S. interests. The Biden administration can lean on Israel as it wishes. But if it has to construct the fiction that it is leaning only on Israels leaders, not trying to overrule its people because the latter would violate the sanctity of democracy it is bound to miscalculate about what it can achieve.

Blocking a countrys collective democratic will takes more political muscle than persuading a single unrepresentative leader to change course. Bidens remark that an Israeli invasion of Rafah is a red line, for example, will go unheeded if as it appears the Israeli public overwhelmingly wants its military to finish the job against Hamas. Biden could end up diminishing U.S. authority and his own political standing by appearing to resist an Israeli action that happens anyway.

Other than Israel, of course, Americas Mideast allies are autocracies. It might have been more accurate for Harris to warn against conflating the governments of countries such as Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia with their people. Yet far from trying to open the gap between those governments and their populations, as Harris did with Israel, U.S. policy is to shore up moderate Arab regimes to check Iran and Islamist radicalism.

Indeed, a Saudi-Israel diplomatic agreement seems to be the linchpin of the Biden administrations ideal Middle East settlement after the Israel-Gaza war. That rapprochement would be driven by the monarchy in Riyadh, not democratic forces in the Arab street.

Its hardly a new discovery that popular opinion can, under certain circumstances, radicalize rather than moderate a states foreign policy. One politician in revolutionary France warned that democratizing foreign policy could lead France to be at war with every nation that we consider unjust, or which will not accept our system.

That brings us back to Hamas, the entity that started this war with its Oct. 7 massacre of Israelis. The Biden administration made headlines after Harriss remarks by releasing an intelligence assessment saying that Netanyahus leadership may be in jeopardy. But the striking line in the assessment was not the assertion that Netanyahus popularity is eroding among Israelis but that Hamas enjoys broad popular support among Palestinians. Hamas won a Palestinian election in 2006 and, if the American spies are right, can still claim a kind of democratic legitimacy even after bringing ruin on its people.

Democracy is an attractive theme with a long tradition in U.S. foreign policy. But appeals to democracy wont arrest the GOPs turn toward noninvolvement when it comes to Ukraine, and they offer no framework for mitigating Middle East violence. Hardheaded statecraft has to come first to protect the United States global interests.

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Opinion | Biden-Netanyahu clash reveals limits of U.S. democracy rhetoric - The Washington Post - The Washington Post

Elections are the bedrock of democracy, essential for choosing representatives and holding them accountable.

The U.S. is a flawed democracy. The Electoral College and the Senate make voters in less populous states far more influential than those in the more populous: Wyoming residents have almost four times the voting power of Californians.

Ever since the Civil War, however, reforms have sought to remedy other flaws, ensuring that citizenships full benefits, including the right to vote, were provided to formerly enslaved people, women and Native Americans; establishing the constitutional standard of one person, one vote; and eliminating barriers to voting through the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

But the Supreme Court has, in recent years, narrowly construed the Voting Rights Act and limited courts ability to redress gerrymandering, the drawing of voting districts to ensure one party wins.

The 2020 election revealed even more disturbing threats to democracy. As I explain in my book, How Autocrats Seek Power, Donald Trump lost his reelection bid in 2020 but refused to accept the results. He tried every trick in the book and then some to alter the outcome of this bedrock exercise in democracy.

A recent New York Times story reports that when it comes to Trumps time in office and his attempt to overturn the 2020 election, voters often have a hazy recall of one of the most tumultuous periods in modern politics. This, then, is a refresher about Trumps handling of the election, both before and after Nov. 3, 2020.

Trump began with a classic autocrats strategy casting doubt on elections in advance to lay the groundwork for challenging an unfavorable outcome.

Despite his efforts, Trump was unable to control or change the election results. And that was because of the work of others to stop him.

Here are four things Trump tried to do to flip the election in his favor and examples of how he was stopped, both by individuals and democratic institutions.

Anticipating defeat

Expecting to lose in November 2020, in part because of his disastrous handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, Trump proclaimed that all over the country, especially in California, voter fraud is rampant. He called mail ballots a very dangerous thing. Jared Kushner, his son-in-law and aide, declined to commit one way or the other about whether the election would be held in November, because of the COVID pandemic. No efforts to postpone the election ensued.

Trump warned that Russia and China would be able to forge ballots, a myth echoed by Attorney General William Barr. Trump illegally threatened to have law enforcement officers at polling places. He falsely asserted that Kamala Harris doesnt meet the requirements for serving as vice president because her parents were immigrants. Asked if he would agree to a transition if he lost, he responded: There wont be a transfer, frankly. Therell be a continuation.

Threatening litigation

Aware that polls showed Biden ahead by 8 percentage points, Trump declared, As soon as that election is over, were going in with our lawyers, and they did just that. Adviser Steve Bannon correctly predicted that on Election Night, Trumps gonna walk into the Oval (Office), tweet out, Im the winner. Game over, suck on that.

Trump followed the script, asserting at 2:30 am: we did win this election. This is a major fraud in our nation, though the actual results werent clear until days later, when, on Nov. 7, the networks declared Biden had won.

Although many advisers said he had lost, Trump kept claiming fraud, repeating Rudy Giulianis false allegation that Dominion election machines had switched votes a lie for which Fox News agreed to pay $787 million to settle the defamation case brought by Dominion.

Taking direct action

Trump allies pressured state legislators to create false, alternative slates of electors as a key strategy for overturning the election. Trump contemplated declaring an emergency, ordering the military to seize voting machines and replacing the attorney general with a yes-man who would pressure state legislatures to change their electoral votes.

Encouraging violence

Trump summoned supporters to protest the Jan. 6 certification by Congress, boasted it would be wild, and encouraged them to march on the Capitol and fight like hell, promising to accompany them. Once they had attacked the Capitol, he delayed for four hours before asking them to stop.

Yet Trumps efforts to overturn the election failed.

Trump claimed that voting by mail produced rampant fraud, but state legislatures let voters vote by mail or in drop boxes because of the pandemic. Postal Service workers delivered those ballots despite actions taken by Trumps postmaster general, Louis DeJoy, that made processing and delivery more difficult.

DeJoy denied any sabotage in testimony before Congress.

Most state election officials, regardless of party, loyally did their jobs, resisting Trumps pressure to falsify the outcome. Courts rejected all but one of Trumps 62 lawsuits aimed at overturning the election. Government lawyers refused to invoke the Insurrection Act and authorize the military to seize voting machines. The military remained scrupulously apolitical. And Vice President Mike Pence presided over the certification, in which 43 Republican senators and 75 Republican representatives joined all the Democrats to declare Biden the winner.

That experience contains invaluable lessons about what to expect in 2024 and how to defend the integrity of elections.

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Trump nearly derailed democracy once here's what to watch out for in reelection campaign - The Conversation Indonesia