Tag: political parties
What Has Happened to the Rule of Law in India?
On December 11, India’s supreme court upheld ending the constitutional privileges of the Indian-controlled province of Kashmir, a disputed region claimed by both India and Pakistan. The decision was a sobering example of the Indian judiciary’s creeping servility in the era of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Just as India’s vibrant, secular democracy is transforming into an authoritarian, ethnonationalist state, the supreme court, once vaunted for its fierce independence, is failing to stand up for the rule of law.
The Kashmir
In Arizona, No Labels Is Attracting Potential Candidates It Doesn’t Want
Richard Grayson has an unusual hobby: he likes to run for political office. The first time, in 1979, it was a stunt to draw attention to the publication of a book of short stories he had written. Since then, the Brooklyn native, a former college instructor who divides his time between New York, Arizona, and St. Maarten (where he plans to move if Donald Trump wins next November), has run at least nineteen times. Undeterred by losing, he’s been a
How Financial Strength Weakened American Feminism
By the time the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year, many Americans had already opened their wallets to protest. In the approximately 24 hours after the Court’s opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization leaked early, the Democratic fundraising platform ActBlue raised $12 million, and Reproductive Freedom for All’s donations increased by 1,400 percent. According to one researcher, more than 300 crowdfunded GoFundMe campaigns drew in nearly $3.2 million in the seven months between the
Is Ben Wikler the Most Important Democrat in America?
The man who has been hailed as “the best state chair in the country” is not a national household name. He’s not even a household name in his own state. But on a recent afternoon in the small village of Grafton, Wisconsin, Ben Wikler might as well have been Bono.
Two dozen middle-aged and retired volunteers stood in line to clutch the hand of the chair of the Wisconsin Democrats. “Thank you for everything you do,” they said, beaming
Why Beijing Wants Jimmy Lai Locked Up
HONG KONG—When Beijing imposed the national-security law on Hong Kong in 2020, its goal was not simply to stifle free expression and lock up dissenters. The idea was to subordinate every institution in the city, leaving the “one country, two systems” framework that granted autonomy to the Chinese territory an empty slogan. Henceforth Beijing would no longer tolerate criticism from Hong Kong, or protests on its streets.
With the prodemocracy movement of 2019–20 effectively crushed, the Hong Kong government and
Is Gmail Silencing Republicans? – The Atlantic
It started as strange conflicts sometimes do: with a couple of older people telling their son that something is wrong with their shared email account. “My parents, who have a Gmail account, aren’t getting my campaign emails,” Representative Greg Steube of Florida told Google CEO Sundar Pichai in July 2020, during a congressional hearing that was ostensibly about antitrust law. “My question is, why is this only happening to Republicans?”
Though this exchange was widely regarded as goofy and kind
How Hitler’s Enablers Undid Democracy in Germany
The short-lived Weimar Republic—which spanned the years after Germany’s defeat in World War I until 1933, when Hitler came to power—has become a paradigmatic example of democratic collapse. That has brought it renewed attention at this moment in America, when democracy is under threat from illiberal, would-be-authoritarian forces. We should rightly be suspicious of facile comparisons, especially the casual use of fascism as an imprecise epithet, yet Weimar’s fate provides us with some instructive parallels and important warning signals.
Russia’s Invasion Is Making Ukraine More Democratic
On a recent trip to a village near Ukraine’s border with Russia, during a break between the seemingly constant explosions and skirmishes taking place nearby, a teenage Ukrainian soldier told me of how he did not want to live under a leader like Vladimir Putin, someone “who believes he may tell others what they should do.” Another volunteer fighter, a former Thai-boxing coach, chimed in that whereas Russia offered only “stagnation,” Ukraine was “a place where things are developing
How Manchin and Sinema Completed a Conservative Vision
The decision by Senators Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin to block their fellow Democrats from passing new federal voting-rights legislation clears the path for years of tightening ballot restrictions in Republican-controlled states. It also marks a resounding triumph for Chief Justice John Roberts in his four-decade quest to roll back the federal government’s role in protecting voter rights.
Roberts as much as anyone set in motion the events that have led to this week’s climactic Senate confrontation over voting legislation.