A daily compendium of helpful reporting and commentary surrounding the pivotal 2024 elections in the United States. You won't find horse race coverage here, or the standard "both sides" BS that passes so often for political journalism. What you will find are links, with brief commentary, to work that I believe advances the conversation we must be having about America's – and the world's – future. Remember: Everything is at stake this year. (Unfortunately, some of the work I point to is behind paywalls.)
"At the time the Constitution was written, the difference between a populous state like Virginia and the least populous state like Delaware was about nine to one. Today, the difference in population between Wyoming and California is 68 to one. In the last session of Congress, there were 50 Democrats and 50 Republicans, but the 50 Democratic Senators represented 40 million more people than the 50 Republican Senators. And the filibuster, which changed greatly and formed in the 1970s, makes it possible for a small minority of senators representing a small minority of the population to be able to block virtually any legislation." – Erwin Chemerinsky
Chemerinsky is the dean of the law school at UC Berkeley and the author of a new book called No Democracy Lasts Forever: How the Constitution Threatens the United States. In this interview with Vox, he casts a harsh light on the current condition of our democracy, and is pessimistic about whether we can repair it. But it's fair to say, by reading between the lines, that there is basically zero chance of saving America from dictatorship if the Republicans capture the White House and Congress. We're on the cliff edge of disaster now, but a vote for the anti-democracy party would be to jump.
The decision is the first in a wave of tech monopoly cases brought by the US government in recent years. While two decades passed between the Department of Justice’s antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft and its next tech anti-monopoly case against Google, filed in 2020, several more such cases quickly followed.
It's heartening to see that antitrust enforcement is picking up momentum, and that Big Tech is a key target for officials who see a collection of corporate bullies dodging accountability. But it's also important to remember that the recent spate of pro-competition activity reflects the Biden administration's decision, early on, to focus on it (though this particular case was filed in the waning days of the Trump adminstration). Big Tech faces at least four more such cases. But since Republicans in general don't like government "interference" with markets even to promote competition, it's an open question whether a new Trump era would reinforce the Biden approach or (I believe much more likely) neuter it. At least some state governments are likely to keep up the pressure even if the feds bail out, but policy really does matter in this arena.
The word “fascist” gets thrown around a lot in politics, but it’s hard to find a more apt one for “Unhumans,” which came out last month. The book argues that leftists don’t deserve the status of human beings — that they are, as the title says, unhumans — and that they are waging a shadow war against all that is good and decent, which will end in apocalyptic slaughter if they are not stopped. –
There's no conceivable excuse for Vance to have his name attached in any way to a book like this. A blurb is an endorsement, period, and Vance has been on a praise-for-dictators binge over the past few years. No doubt he'll renounce this vile endorsement, with some kind of feeble excuse, but let's not hide from what he has made clear again and again about dictators: He likes them, and hopes to be one of the leaders who creates a dictatorship here.
Heightened school safety protocols and sustained attacks on voting systems and the people who run them — largely by Trump and his supporters — have prompted school leaders across America in both red and blue states to close their doors to the democratic process, according to interviews with nearly 20 school district leaders, county officials, school safety officials and election experts. In at least 33 states, the law says public buildings, including schools, can or should be made available as polling locations. In many districts, administrators now cancel classes on Election Day.
The radical right, led by Trump and his vicious apparatchiks, has taken its war on democracy into our public schools – successfully intimidating educators and administrators into closing their doors to the most fundamental part of the democratic process. It's sad that the intimidation has worked, and infuriating. One result of this is likely to be longer lines at the polling places that do open in November. And remember, the intimidation targets are mostly in places where voters prefer Democrats. It's all part of the Republicans' vast voter suppression campaign.
Voting is just part of democracy, but it's the essential place to start. Make sure you're registered. Doublecheck in the fall, well before Election Day, because in some states Republican officials are removing people, mostly those who tend to vote for Democrats, from voting rolls.
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Sean Illing
David Shepardson
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