Watchdog Organizations Sound the Alarm on American Democracy - Horowitz

Watchdog Organizations Sound the Alarm on American Democracy - Horowitz

Three respected international democracy and human rights organizations are sounding the alarm on the state of democracy right here on the home front as we move fully into the second year of Trump’s new term.  In their new reports on the state of democracy and human rights around the world, Freedom House, Human Rights Watch, and V-Dem Institute highlight similar findings of authoritarian gains and democratic backsliding in the United States.

 

“The U.S. democracy is currently in a much faster deterioration process than any other democracy in modern times, V-Dem Institute wrote. “Within only one year, the USA’s score on the V-Dem Liberal Democracy index has declined by 24 percent, while its world rank dropped from 20th to 51st place out of 179 nations.”  Similarly, Freedom House finds that “among countries rated Free, the United States, Bulgaria, and Italy have experienced the year’s largest declines.”

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Human Rights Watch spells it out this way: “The administration’s racial and ethnic scapegoating, domestic deployment of national guard forces in pretextual power grabs, repeated acts of retaliation against perceived political enemies and former officials now critical of him, as well as attempts to expand the coercive powers of the executive and neuter democratic checks and balances, underpin a decided shift toward authoritarianism in the US.”

 

One way of looking at our situation is to think that in less than 3 years we will have a new president, so “this too will pass.”  The risk, however, is Mr. Trump is shifting the Overton Window and building at least some mainstream acceptance for the next occupants of the White House to order the prosecutions of their political enemies,  to hold up or greenlight mergers based on whether a media corporation will provide better coverage, to use the power of the state against law firms and colleges that he or she believes are not sufficiently politically compliant, and to line their own pockets.  Given the daily velocity of Mr. Trump’s authoritarian-tinged actions and pronouncements, the glaring misuse of prosecutorial power and self-dealing that would make Buddy Cianci or Bob Menendez blush are beginning to seem like just another day at the office.

 

That is why the mounting pushback to Mr. Trump’s authoritarian assertions of executive power is so encouraging and important.  In case after case, ranging from his administration’s arbitrary stopping of previously approved and nearly completed offshore wind projects to the failure to provide due process for immigrant detainees, to prosecutions of political opponents without real evidence of crimes, federal judges are ruling against the president.   Also, the courageous law firms and universities who refused to cave in to the administration’s threats, bullying and arbitrary withdrawal of research funding are not only surviving; they are mainly thriving.

 

Most importantly, the overwhelming majority of Americans rejected Mr. Trump’s use of the National Guard on the streets of American cities, as well as flooding some of those same cities with poorly trained ICE and border control agents to conduct broad round-ups rather than focused and targeted enforcement that prioritizes removing violent criminals. This groundswell of opposition from coast to coast was in part a result of residents of Minneapolis exercising their 1st Amendment right to protest and draw attention to the often lawless actions of ICE on their city streets.  The videos shared by regular citizens focused news coverage and moved the American public, forcing the administration to change course.

 

The demonstrations of democratic resilience in our institutions and among the American public at large are a counter to the authoritarian threat accurately outlined in these new reports. Mr. Trump’s broad unpopularity also serves to limit his authoritarian ambitions.   Only 42% of Americans approve of his job performance, while 56% disapprove, according to the RealClearPolitics average of national polls.

 

With the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence only a few short months away, let it serve as a reminder of our founding ideals and our nation’s hard-won, occasionally fitful, and continuing struggle to bring those ideals to full fruition and to “form a more perfect union.”

 

In words that ring as true today as when George Washington wrote them in his first inaugural, our model of freedom and self-governance is “staked on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people.”  In the final analysis, it is up to us, “we the people,” to beat back today’s authoritarian threat and, in doing so, revitalize and strengthen our democracy.