In another pivotal decision, The Supreme Court decided yesterday to take up former president Donald Trump’s claim of immunity from prosecution for his efforts to subvert the 2020 election. This development, arriving as we edge closer to the 2024 presidential election, fuels further delays and injects a new level of uncertainty, casting a shadow over the electoral landscape. It’s increasingly perceived as a strategic maneuver by Trump to entangle legal proceedings with the electoral timeline, complicating the discourse and deepening the national polarization ahead of a critical election. The scenario is one glimpse into the broader threat of Trump’s 2024 candidacy.

On Monday, Just Security published The American Autocracy Threat Tracker, a new public resource that meticulously catalogs the plans, promises, and propositions of Donald Trump and his circle. The tracker amalgamates data from media outlets, resources such as Protect Democracy’s The Authoritarian Playbook, and direct information from Project 2025 by the Heritage Foundation. Noteworthy is its inclusion of data from Trump’s campaign website and Truth Social - as well as an always-updating searchable data set of all of Trump’s Truth Social posts. 

This tracker is more than a repository; it’s a call for critical engagement, starting with its initial chapters that paint a vision of the beginning of Trump’s potential second term, marked by authoritarian pledges to serve as a ‘dictator on day one’ to enforce his plans to “close the borders” and “drill, drill, drill.” It equips citizens and organizations with a unified framework for dissecting the realities of the Republican frontrunner’s campaign narratives, fostering a necessary national dialogue.

Amidst this backdrop, a January 2024 survey conducted by the University of Massachusetts Amherst and YouGov recently published a startling finding: a significant portion of respondents showed a perplexing openness to Trump’s authoritarian undertones. This result contrasted sharply with a broader aversion to dictatorship revealed in a separate Economist and YouGov poll from December 2023, potentially indicating a nuanced, though troubling, interpretation of “temporary autocracy.” Such findings continually underscore an alarming dissonance in public sentiment towards the foundational principles of American democracy.

The discourse on democracy’s relevance in contemporary America is reaching an inflection point. Recent polls, including a longitudinal survey by The Democracy Fund, indicate a waning commitment to democratic norms among Americans, a sentiment further corroborated by Danielle Allen’s insights published last week in The Washington Post. Allen’s analysis reveals a generational divergence in the valuation of democracy, posing a stark challenge: the sustainability of democracy hinges on the people’s desire for it.

In my tenure with the Bridge Alliance Education Fund, my underlying quest has been to identify a unifying thread that could weave together the diverse strands of the healthy democracy ecosystem. Our mission is to enhance and amplify the work of those working in civic education, engagement, electoral reform, social cohesion, and trusted information. It is intuitive that these spheres of practice enhance one another and are all vital to a healthy society and the institutions that serve it. However, the collective insight and power of the ecosystem can only coalesce into a movement with at least one specific, shared goal. We must continue focusing on a wide range of work areas to repair our country's social and political infrastructure. Still, it's also essential that we consider our work aligned with the goal of a constitutional democracy supermajority. That means a supermajority of citizens agreeing, as Allen puts it, on “the basic rules of the game.” Inside the bounds of those rules we will disagree, but hopefully we can #disagreebetter within the stability of those boundaries.

The path forward demands more than passive endorsement; it calls for active defense and promotion of core democratic values, including “constitutionalism, the rule of law, inclusivity, nonviolence, and respect for the electoral process”. It is not just possible but imperative for us to rise to this challenge, fostering a culture of dialogue and advocacy that strengthens, rather than erodes, the bedrock of our democratic republic. 

Featured Content

AllSides (Article) February 23rd: Americans' Hidden Common Ground on Energy Policy

American Values Coalition (Blog) February 22nd: Covid Hucksters Made a Killing

BillTrack50 (Blog) February 15th: IssueVoter Bill of the Month (February 2024): Protecting Health Care for All Patients Act

Civity (Blog) February 7th: Climate Change Conversations & Collaborations

Divided We Fall (Article) February 21st: Finding a Bipartisan Balance on Campus

Election Reformers Network (Announcement) February 23rd: ERN and Civic Leader Partners Commend New Ethics Guidelines for Election Officials

Independent Voter News (Article) February 27th: LetUsVote: New Campaign Launches to End Discrimination Against Independent Voters

Issue One (Analysis) February 22nd: Nonprofit headed by former Gen. Michael Flynn spends large sums on Flynn family, promoting election-related lies, new documents show

Unite America (Report) February 26th: Nick Troiano on Morning Joe to discuss "The Primary Solution"

Podcasts

Civity (This is Civity) February 26th: Monica Guzman on the importance of curiosity to build relationships that bridge divides

Living Room Conversations (Respect. Relate. Connect. Podcast.) February 23rd: Traditionalism or Progressivism: What are AMERICAN Values?

New America, R Street Institute (Politics in Question) February 23rd: Is The House Broken?

The Democracy Group (Future Hindsight) February 28th: Patriotism vs. Extremism: Ken Harbaugh

Veterans for All Voters (Fluent Knowledge) February 14th: Systems Level Failure? Veterans for All Voters Takes on Polarizing Elections

Citizen Connect Featured Events

Rank the Vote (March 7th @ 8:00 pm EST) Rank the Vote’s Pitch Training 

Living Room Conversations (March 8th @ 9:00 am PST) Women, Politics, and Peace 

Unify America (March 13th @ 2:00 pm EDT) Unify Challenge

Fix Democracy First (March 13th @ 5:00 pm PST) Democracy Happy Hour

The News Literacy Project (March 14th @ 12 pm CDT) Election 2024: Are you informed or influenced?

Mediators Beyond Borders International (March 14th @ 12 pm EDT) Listening: Emergent Strategy for Transforming Conflict

Featured Fulcrum Articles

David L. Nevins, February 29th: What happened to the worst gerrymandered districts?

James McHugh, February 29th: Alabama, religious freedom and frozen embryos

F. Willis Johnson, March 1st: Women’s History Month: An observance with significance

Steven Rosenfeld, March 4th: 20 years of data shows no link between mailed ballots and illegal voting

Nicole Norman, March 6th: Principles First offers center-right alternative to CPAC

Members In The News

Issue One (The Hill) February 14th: Gaps in AI robocall ban boost pressure on Congress, election officials

Mormon Women for Ethical Government (Deseret News) February 20th: What the heck is a presidential preference poll? And other questions, answered

ActiVote (Android Headlines) March 4th: Vote smart: SmartNews shares tech tips for Super Tuesday and beyond

American Values Coalition (Christianity Today) March 6th: Evangelical Trump Supporters and Critics on Repeat for 2024

Convergence (NPR) March 6th: Should the government do more to help children? This bipartisan group thinks so