Voter suppression

By Toby James, University of East Anglia; and Holly Ann Garnett, Royal Military College of Canada | – Defending democracy has suddenly become one of the central challenges of our age. The land war in Ukraine is widely considered a front line between autocratic rule and democratic freedom. The United States continues to absorb the […]

Democracy

GOP’s Voter Suppression Laws are a Five-Alarm Emergency for Democracy

OtherWords

By Robert P. Alvarez | – ( Otherwords.org ) – “Voter suppression” is a divisive and highly politicized term. But for the slate of bills Republicans are pushing across the country, it’s the only correct one. They’re introducing these bills in virtually every state, but three — Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin — are especially worrisome. […]

Authoritarianism

Have Sinema and Manchin Tolled the death Knell of Free and Fair Elections for a Decade?

H. Scott Prosterman

Oakland, CA (Special to Informed Comment) – In this Brave New World of evolving lexicons, “gerrymandering,” a dirty word to begin with; has become a euphemism for “vote-rigging.” Lessons learned in high school Civics classes about the electoral and re-districting processes are now quaintly outdated, as Republican-dominated state houses do all they can to ensure […]

Inequality

Two Sides, Same Coin: Suppressing Votes, Cutting Rich People’s Taxes

Sam Pizzigati

( Inequality.org) – America’s national media typically pay little attention to the moves the nation’s state lawmakers make. Not this year. State legislative battles have emerged over recent months as a top-tier national story. And deservedly so. The battling at the state level — on a tidal wave of proposed new voter-suppression laws — could […]

African-Americans

Why MLK would have Launched Nonviolent Disobedience to pass the Freedom to Vote Act

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Everything that the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., struggled for is at risk in today’s America, where one of the two major parties has succumbed to the deadly disease of Trumpism, which is built on white grievance. As the Republican Party has become more and more inflected by white nationalism, […]

National Security State

Generations of Struggle: Lessons on Defending Democracy

Liz Theoharis

By Liz Theoharis | – ( Tomdispatch.com ) – My father, Athan G. Theoharis, passed away on July 3rd. A leading expert on the FBI, he was responsible for exposing the bureau’s widespread abuses of power. He was a loyal husband, dedicated father, scholar, civil libertarian, and voting-rights advocate with an indefatigable commitment to defending […]

Authoritarianism

Tunisia’s President just made the kind of Coup Trump and US Republicans plotted (and are plotting) Against President Biden

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Al Jazeera reports that Tunisian President Kais Saied dismissed the prime minister, prorogued parliament for 30 days, stripped parliamentarians of their immunity and appointed himself the country’s attorney general in what the opposition branded a coup. Opposition leaders pointed out that the Tunisian constitution does not grant the president the […]

Authoritarianism

Shaken by Trump’s ‘Fuhrer Moment,’ Gen. Milley had to Blockade Washington, D.C., on Inauguration Day ‘to Keep the Nazis out’

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Jamie Gangel, Jeremy Herb, Marshall Cohen, Elizabeth Stuart and Barbara Starr at CNN reported the juicy tidbits from the forthcoming book of Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker, I Alone Can Fix It: Donald J. Trump’s Catastrophic Final Year. The protagonist of the story as told is Gen. Mark Milley, chairman […]

African-Americans

When You Lift from the Bottom, Everyone Rises: Have We Entered America’s Third Era of Reconstruction?

Liz Theoharis

( Tomdispatch.com) – West Virginia, a state first established in defiance of slavery, has recently become ground zero in the fight for voting rights. In an early June op-ed in the Charleston Gazette-Mail, Democratic Senator Joe Manchin vowed to maintain the Senate filibuster, while opposing the For the People Act, a bill to expand voting […]