"Democracy is a team sport, we are all in the starting lineup, & every day is game day." ~ Indivisible
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• Justices rule Trump has some immunity from prosecution (Amy Howe, SCOTUS blog, 7-1-24) "In a historic decision, a divided Supreme Court on Monday ruled that former presidents can never be prosecuted for actions relating to the core powers of their office, and that there is at least a presumption that they have immunity for their official acts more broadly.
"The decision left open the possibility that the charges brought against former President Donald Trump by Special Counsel Jack Smith – alleging that Trump conspired to overturn the results of the 2020 election – can still go forward to the extent that the charges are based on his private conduct, rather than his official acts.
"The case now returns to the lower courts for them to determine whether the conduct at the center of the charges against Trump was official or unofficial – an inquiry that, even if it leads to the conclusion that the charges can proceed, will almost certainly further delay any trial in the case, which had originally been scheduled to begin on March 4, 2024 but is currently on hold."
• Trump lost the election, but he won the online disinformation war (Peter Geoghegan, openDemocracy, 11-9-2020) "Social media platforms have allowed US conservatives to delegitimise the election and sow mistrust of democracy. Posts by far-right news site Breitbart had been shared three times as often as posts from the official pages of every Democratic member of the US senate combined in the previous 30 days....As Tuesday night moved into Wednesday morning, Trump held the Sunshine State comfortably, mainly thanks to Latino voters in the state's most populous county, Miami-Dade, shifting in huge numbers from Clinton in 2016 to Trump this time around. Why? One reason is the months of YouTube videos and Facebook posts that led many in Miami to believe that Biden was a stalking horse for socialism, anathema to the city's large Cuban ex-pat population. These conspiracy theories were shared widely and then repeated incessantly on Spanish-language radio."
• Letters from an American (Heather Cox Richardson,12-7-24) In the 2024 election, the Democratic Party under Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota governor Tim Walz very deliberately moved away from so-called identity politics: the idea that a person builds their political orientation around their pre-existing social identity. During the campaign, Harris rarely referred to the fact that if elected, she would be the first woman, as well as the first woman of color, to hold the presidency...
"Since the rise of Donald Trump, the MAGA party has been the one championing identity politics, rejecting American pluralism in favor of centering whiteness, a certain kind of individualist masculinity, Christianity, and misogyny. Making common cause with Republicans, even non-MAGA Republicans, in the face of such politics seems to the left and progressive Democrats self-defeating...“...too often, focusing on our differences leads to this notion of fixed victims and fixed villains.”
"Then Obama addressed the political crisis of this moment, the one the anti-Federalists feared: “What happens when the other side has repeatedly and abundantly made clear they’re not interested in playing by the rules?”...“it’s important to look for allies in unlikely places,” he said, noting that “people on the other side…may share our beliefs in sticking to the rules, observing norms,” and that supporting them might help them “to exert influence on people they’ve got relationships with within the other party.”
• Special Counsel Asks Supreme Court to Decide If Trump Is Immune From Prosecution (Adam Liptak and Alan Feuer, NY Times, 12-11-23) Jack Smith, the special counsel prosecuting former President Donald J. Trump on charges of plotting to overturn the 2020 election, asked the Supreme Court on Monday to rule on Mr. Trump’s argument that he is immune from prosecution. The justices quickly agreed to fast-track the first phase of the case.
“This case presents a fundamental question at the heart of our democracy: whether a former president is absolutely immune from federal prosecution for crimes committed while in office or is constitutionally protected from federal prosecution when he has been impeached but not convicted before the criminal proceedings begin,” Mr. Smith wrote.
The trial judge, Tanya S. Chutkan, rejected Mr. Trump’s sweeping claims that he enjoyed “absolute immunity” from the election interference indictment because it was based on actions he took while in office. In her ruling two weeks ago, she condemned his attempts to “usurp the reins of government” and said there was nothing in the Constitution or American history supporting the proposition that a former president should not be bound by the federal criminal law.
---Does the president have immunity from prosecution? ~"The President is not above the law. But under our system of separated powers, the President may not be prosecuted for exercising his core constitutional powers, and he is entitled to at least presumptive immunity from prosecution for his official acts."
"A sitting president of the United States has both civil and criminal immunity for their official acts. Neither civil nor criminal immunity is explicitly granted in the Constitution or any federal statute."
---TRUMP v. UNITED STATES (U.S.Supreme Court decision, July 1, 2024)
---Are Former Presidents Immune From Criminal Prosecution? We’re Still Not Sure (Anna Bower, Quinta Jurecic, Lee Kovarsky, Natalie K. Orpett, Roger Parloff, Benjamin Wittes, Lawfare, 7-2-24) On the very last day of the Supreme Court’s 2023 term, the Court handed down its ruling in Trump v. United States, concerning the former president’s potential immunity from prosecution over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Rather than resolving the issue clearly, a 6-3 conservative majority found that presidents enjoy some immunity from criminal prosecution in some circumstances—a ruling that will likely create significant problems for the case against Trump. Scroll down on that site for further articles:
---A Decision of Surpassing Recklessness in Dangerous Times (Quinta Jurecic, Benjamin Wittes, Lawfare, 7-2-24) The Supreme Court’s decision in Trump v. United States would have been wrong and dangerous at any time. It’s uncommonly so with Trump poised to retake power.
---Broad Reflections on Trump v. United States (Jack Goldsmith, Lawfare, 7-2-24) As Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s dissent emphasized, the decision could give an unscrupulous president wide scope for corrupt behavior. The dissent exaggerates when it says that the Court’s decision makes the president “a king above the law” and “empower[s]” the president “to violate federal criminal law.”
---A Rule for the Ages, or a Rule for Trump? ( Trevor W. Morrison, Lawfare, 7-8-24) The majority opinion in Trump v. United States badly misstates principles of separation of powers to immunize hypothetical future presidents—in service of immunity for Trump himself. 'As Justice Sonia Sotomayor put it in her dissenting opinion in the case (which Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson joined), the indictment against Trump “paints a stark portrait of a President desperate to stay in power.” Do read this article.
• People Power: Revisiting the origins of American democracy. (Jill Lepore, New Yorker, 10-24-2005) Both an essay on what democracy is (how it is defined) and a review of The Rise of American Democracy by Sean Wilentz
"Sean Wilentz traces a historical arc from the earliest days of the republic to the opening shots of the Civil War....Wilentz brings to life the era after the American Revolution, when the idea of democracy remained contentious, and Jeffersonians and Federalists clashed over the role of ordinary citizens in government of, by, and for the people. The triumph of Andrew Jackson soon defined this role on the national level, while city democrats, Anti-Masons, fugitive slaves, and a host of others hewed their own local definitions. In these definitions Wilentz recovers the beginnings of a discontent: two starkly opposed democracies, one in the North and another in the South -- and the wary balance that lasted until the election of Abraham Lincoln sparked its bloody resolution."
• A User’s Guide to Democracy (ProPublica) Congress Works For You. Here’s How to Be a Better Boss. Short guides to understanding political ads, seeing what your representatives are actually doing (or not doing), etc. Sign up for personalized emails from ProPublica, which specializes in investigative reporting.
• How to Follow Your Congressional and Local Elections in 2022 (Karim Doumar and Cynthia Gordy Giwa, ProPublica, 10-23-22) From competitiveness ratings to campaign contributions, there’s a lot to follow in local and down-ballot elections. Learn how to decipher election coverage in this edition of the User’s Guide to Democracy.
--- A User's Guide to Democracy: How America Works by Nick Capodice and Hannah McCarthy with illustrator Tom Toro
• What if a U.S, presidential candidate refuses to concede after an election? (Van Jones, TED Talk about how to stop a coup, October 2020) You can read transcript as you listen. "The president’s litigation strategy is unlikely to succeed, but it’s doing great harm in the meantime." Explaining why the customary concession speech is one of the most important safeguards for democracy, Jones exposes shocking legal loopholes that could enable a candidate to grab power even if they lose both the popular vote and the electoral college.
Did you know "that under our constitution a presidential candidate could actually lose the popular vote, fail to get a majority in the electoral college, refuse to concede, manipulate hidden mechanisms in our government and still get sworn in as the president of the United States of America? Everyone essentially ignores the elite electoral process...". A concession speech is "the one speech no presidential candidate ever wants to give, and yet, it is that public address that is most important for the health and the well-being of our nation....The best way to stop a coup is to update and strengthen our democratic system as soon as this election is over. Maybe we need to rethink, reimagine or just get rid of this whole electoral college, extra inning thing in the first place.
"Get informed. A number of progressive organizations are already working hard to warn Americans about this growing threat to our democracy. Some organizations you could look into and research for yourself: choosedemocracy.us, electiontaskforce.org, protectdemocracy.org, mobilize.us, allamericans.org, civicalliance.com and the Fight Back table at demos.org. All these groups are working on this. Now, on the right, if that's your cup of tea, you could also check out The Heritage Foundation or the Government Accountability Institute."
"Some existing organizations, powerful groups, like the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, the ACLU, NAACP, Legal Defense Fund, Indivisible, ColorOfChange.org, these groups are going to be fighting in the courts, fighting in Congress, to try to make sure that we have a fair outcome. Those groups could use your help and your donations."
---How Trump and His Enablers Are Laying the Groundwork For a Coup d'État (Anita Bartholomew, A Pointed View, blog 11-10-2020)
---The dangerous anti-democracy coalition (Robert Reich, 5-28-24) American oligarchs are joining Trump and his faux working-class MAGA movement. Elon Musk and entrepreneur and investor David Sacks reportedly held a secret billionaire dinner party in Hollywood last month. Its purpose: to defeat Joe Biden and reinstall Donald Trump in the White House.
• American Democracy Was Never Designed to Be Democratic (Louis Menand,New Yorker, 8-22-22) The partisan redistricting tactics of cracking and packing aren’t merely flaws in the system—they are the system.
• Democracy: A Journal of Ideas
---The Most Dangerous Law in America (Joseph Nunn, Democracy Summer 2024, No. 73) The Insurrection Act is a nuclear bomb hidden in the United States code, giving presidents unimaginable emergency power. No President has abused it. Yet.
• The consequences of ‘horse race’ reporting: What the research says (Denise-Marie Ordway, Journalist's Resource, 9-10-19) One of the most common ways reporters cover elections — with a focus on who’s in the lead and who’s behind instead of on policy issues — hurts the public and the news industry. Studies show it is linked to:
---Distrust in politicians
---Distrust of news outlets
---An uninformed electorate
---Inaccurate reporting of opinion poll data.
• Democracy: For Helping Voters Who Can’t Read, She’s Been Criminally Charged — Twice. That Hasn’t Stopped Her. (Mauricio Rodríguez Pons, Aliyya Swaby and Annie Waldman, ProPublica, 9-14-22) Olivia Coley-Pearson offered help to Georgia voters who struggle to read. For taking on one of America’s oldest forms of voter suppression, she got threats, a trip to jail and a reminder of the nation’s long legacy of weaponizing literacy. A ProPublica investigation found that the efforts to block people who have difficulty reading from casting a ballot continue, especially in the South. In fact, today's election system remains a modern-day literacy test. To learn more, check out ProPublica’s investigation of Coley-Pearson’s fight and the persistent suppression of low-literacy voters, read our story about successful voting reforms, and see our guide on how to get help with voting.
• Can Our Ballots Be Both Secret and Secure? (Sue Halpern, NY Times, 7-7-2020) A mathematician’s quest to make American elections more trustworthy. “We’ve decided in this country that private venders will play a central role in running our elections and counting our votes."
• How the U.S. election looks to pro-democracy activists around the world (Miriam Berger, Washington Post, 11-3-2020) Anxiety over the state of democracy in the United States is running high as the presidential election unfolds. And beyond America’s borders, pro-democracy activists around the world, already accustomed to following U.S. politics because of its global impact, see echoes of and implications for their own struggles.
• Coup d'État Project (CDP) (University of Illinois’ Cline Center for Advanced Social Research) A dataset detailing more than 900 coups, attempted coups, and coup conspiracies from 1945 to 2019. Each entry indicates the country and date, plus the “type of actor who initiated the coup (i.e. military, palace, rebel, etc.) as well as the fate of the deposed executive (killed, injured, exiled, etc.).” See glossary.
• Congressional Record searchable, at Library of Congress online.
"Democracy is the government of the people, by the people, for the people." ~Abraham Lincoln
Elections belong to the people. It's their decision. If they decide to turn their back on the fire and burn their behinds, then they will just have to sit on their blisters." ~Abraham Lincoln
Democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."