ponderthescriptures.com just reporting american democracy and culture (legislation, budget priorities, voting laws & Suppression, corruption) r. scott burton “This is the Republicans’ back-up plan in case they can’t suppress enough votes,” Fred Hiatt, washingtonpost “‘The commitment of many state legislatures to attacking the foundations of our democracy appears to have deepened,’ says the report from Protect Democracy, States United Democracy Center and Law Forward. ‘The trend toward threatening election administrators with criminal penalties is more pronounced and aggressive, and attempts by legislatures to perform core elections functions has grown more brazen’... “Potentially most dangerous, legislatures are giving themselves the right to interfere in vote-counting and election disputes while tying the hands of secretaries of state to rule impartially or even in some cases to seek legal advice... “But bills giving legislators more oversight of elections, allowing them to interfere in the running of elections and otherwise injecting partisanship into the process, already have passed in Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Montana, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Texas, according to the report. These could dramatically alter the outcome when a fraudster such as Trump comes calling... “It’s bad enough that most Republicans continue to defend Trump’s slander on American democracy and use it as a pretext to suppress the vote, instead of looking for ways to appeal to more voters. “It’s even scarier that they are trying to write themselves an insurance policy so that, if their vote suppression strategy fails in 2024, they can nonetheless reclaim power. “That should be unacceptable to every patriotic American.” “I Can’t Just Forgive Trump Supporters,” Jonathan Rigsby, medium “Every time I stop in traffic and see a Trump sticker on the car in front of me, I’m not struck by a sense that we have a disagreement over the details of policies. This isn’t a question of whether the top tax rate should be 38.4% or 41.2%. Instead, I’m consumed by a feeling that this person would be indifferent to my violent death. “Right now, there is a large-scale effort to obscure responsibility for all of this, what author A. R. Moxon calls ‘the Great American Forgetting Project.’ As the pandemic recedes, we will all be told that it is time to get back to normal, to shrug our shoulders and move on from all that craziness. “I am not willing to do that. I am not willing to offer forgiveness without contrition and repentance. The people who spent years cheering for cruelty must take the first steps, because I will not move a single inch towards them in compromise until they can show me that they are worthy of respect.” “American democracy is at risk from Trump and the Republicans. What can be done?” Pippa Norris, theguardian Page 1 of 91 “Challenges to democracy are increasing worldwide. The long spread of ‘third-wave’ democracies across the globe from the mid-1970s stalled around 2005 – since when scholars have noted accumulating indicators of democratic backsliding and rising authoritarianism in many countries…. “The US electoral system has also long been problematic, notably extreme partisan gerrymandering, the composition of the electoral college, rural over-representation in the Senate, lack of electoral standards as the supreme court rolled back federal oversight of state elections established by the 1965 Voting Rights Act, low turnout and the expansion of misinformation in the media. Since Bush v Gore in 2000, serious challenges to electoral legitimacy, and growing party polarization over the rules of the game, have gradually deepened. The Election Integrity Project has used expert surveys to evaluate the quality of national elections around the world since 2012 and found that US elections have persistently been graded poorly by EIP experts, scoring next to last among the world’s liberal democracies, and ranking about 45th out of 166 nations worldwide.” “‘A new inauguration date is set’: Inside the latest QAnon conspiracy theory to ‘reinstate’ Trump,” Jon Skolnik, salon “According to a Tuesday tweet from the New York Times' Maggie Haberman, the former President has been telling a number of people he's in contact with that he expects he will get reinstated by August. Trump's reported thinking echoes that of his former lawyer's, Sidney Powell. On Saturday, Powell told attendees to the QAnon conference that Trump ‘can simply be reinstated.’ “‘A new inauguration date is set, and Biden is told to move out of the White House, and President Trump should be moved back in,’ she explained… “Powell was not the only speaker at this past weekend's event who spoke directly about the possibility Trump could reclaim his throne soon. “Michael Flynn, apparently looking to encourage another election coup, asking the crowd why ‘what happened in Myanmar’ can't happen in the U.S? “‘No reason,’ Flynn answered. ‘I mean, it should happen here.’” “New Texas Bill Reduces Polling Locations in Blue and Nonwhite Districts,” Montinique Monroe, truthout “A voter suppression bill currently being considered by the Texas legislature would decrease the number of polling locations in districts that are traditionally Democratic and nonwhite while increasing the locations in Republican and predominantly white districts. “The state experienced high turnout for the 2020 election, especially in more heavily populated areas like Houston. Now, Republicans are targeting those very places in an elections bill, SB 7, applying a formula to redistribute polling locations in the state’s five most populous counties that the Texas Tribune has found would disproportionately affect voters in Democratic communities. “In Harris county, which houses Houston, all but two of the area’s 15 Democratic districts would see a decrease in polling locations thanks to the new formula. District 141, which is also home to the largest portion of nonwhite people of voting age of any other district in the county — white people make up only 10.6 percent of the population of voting age there — would be hit the hardest, losing 11 polling places… “Meanwhile, every district represented by a Republican would either not see a change or would gain polling locations. All of those districts have white voting age populations of 45 percent or more, according to census data.” Page 2 of 91 “The new mask guidance relies on an honor system. Do we trust each other enough to make it work?” Marisa Lati, Washington Post “In an intensely polarized nation, many people have little faith that their maskless fellow Americans have actually been vaccinated. That lack of trust, fueled by the ongoing politicization of the pandemic, tears at the fabric of a public-health strategy built on the assumption that other people will do the right thing. “Just more than 1 in 3 people in the United States are fully inoculated, leaving most of the population among those instructed to keep their face coverings securely over their noses when indoors. But with federal officials repeatedly rejecting the possibility of vaccine passports, enforcement relies on an honor system. “Asked Thursday how people will know if others had been vaccinated, Anthony S. Fauci, President Biden’s chief medical adviser, said they wouldn’t. “‘You’re gonna be depending on people being honest enough to say whether they are vaccinated or not,’ he told CNN. “As a result, the public’s lack of confidence in each other foments ‘a sort of existential crisis,’ said Richard Carpiano.... He said trust functions as a social glue to hold together society.” “The Death of Democracy Looks Nearer Than Ever,” Elayne Clift, truthout.org “The fact is, the real and growing possibility of living through the destruction of American democracy is not going away. It is growing. Donald Trump is now viewed as the head of the Republican Party as he holds the feet of elected officials to the fire with his fierce, alarming grip on their futures. A significant number of regular Republicans continue to embrace the lies, mantras and inconceivable theories spewed out daily by Fox News. Insurrectionists crawl out from under their rocks in droves. The Supreme Court is now a quasi-political body with a 6-3 conservative majority. “All this is terrifying in its implications. Like many others, I grow more and more anxious by the day...I know that what happened in countries like Turkey, Egypt, Poland, Hungary and others can happen here. “We are not immune from autocrats and dictatorship and we are not protected by our Constitution if it no longer holds meaning for those in power. Our future is riding on the midterm elections next year, and the 2024 presidential election. “If you think I am needlessly hyperventilating, consider this: In 1923 Hitler mounted a failed coup. When he failed, his effort was treated leniently. A decade later he was Germany’s dictator. In 2021 Donald Trump inspired a failed coup. It too has been treated leniently by those who say we “need to move on.” Will he, or his appointed alter ego, be our dictator in less than a decade?” “We must end the post-truth society,” Jennifer Rubin, washingtonpost “The storming of the Capitol building on Jan. 6 was the culmination of a series of actions and events taken or instigated by Trump so he could retain the presidency that together amount to an attempt at a self-coup. “It does not matter that the seditious attack failed. Nor does it matter that Trump failed in his attempts to cajole — and even threaten — Vice President Pence, Congress and state election officials into overthrowing the election results. The coup took place in an environment that must change. As Hill argues: Page 3 of 91 “Unless the Big Lie is thoroughly refuted, we can expect more attempts to subvert the constitutional order from Trump’s supporters—and we still have to get through the January 20 Inauguration.