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U.S. President Joe Biden, joined by Representative James Clyburn (D-SC), Representative Terri Sewell (D-AL), Reverend Al Sharpton, and fellow activists, pray after crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, on March 5, 2023, to mark the 58th anniversary of Bloody Sunday. Credit - Mandel NganAFP/Getty Images

The 2023 Summit for Democracy, beginning on March 28, is a genuine personal commitment from President Biden. And rightly sofor democracy is under assault around the world. Only 20% of the worlds population live in countries that non-profit group Freedom House judge to be fully free. But the great danger is not just that democracy is under attack, but that the rule of law and systems of accountability are being eroded in all areas of life.

Impunity, in other words, is the rising global instinct of choice. The notion that rules are for suckers is on the march, and everyone is paying the pricefrom civilians in conflict zones to future generations staring down the long-term effects of the climate crisis. As I wrote during the first Summit for Democracy in 2021, framing the defense of democracy within the wider battle for accountability would sharpen the Summits agenda, and build greater buy-in from many of the Global South countries for whom the framing of democracy versus autocracy has not been convincing.

The recently released Atlas of Impunity, published by the Eurasia Group and the Chicago Council for Global Affairs, highlights how widespread impunity has become. The Atlas, which is based on more than 65 independent, credible global data sources, scores 197 countries and territories across five areas of impunity: abuse of human rights, unaccountable governance, conflict and violence, economic exploitation, and environmental degradation. Each of these sites of impunity reflect the concentration and abuse of power.

By using impunity rather than democracy as the prism through which to understand global challenges, the Atlas captures the multidimensional nature of global challenges. This approach also highlights the work required from all countries, whether they are democracies or not. The great powers, especially the United States, are a case in point: the U.S. ranks 118th out of 163 countries in the Atlas, putting the U.S. closer to countries in the Global South like Argentina or South Africa than to countries like Germany or Japan. Although most residents in the U.S. enjoy full civil liberties and low levels of mass conflict or violence, the U.S. has a higher level of impunity than many of its high-income peers due to middling scores on discrimination, inequality, and democratic access. The countrys arms exports are an even bigger negative factor.

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An impunity framing also acknowledges that while accountability is essential to democracy, a democratic system of government alone is insufficient to guarantee an accountable society. It should be a strong point of emphasis in the Summit for Democracy that democratic countries like the U.S., India, Israel, and Malaysia all perform more poorly on human rights indicators than on governance measures. Similarly, while many liberal democracies like Canada perform well on most indicators of impunity, its poor performance on environmental degradation highlights the spaces impunity continues to thrive even within otherwise accountable societies.

As the Atlas of Impunity highlights, impunity is the driving force behind many of the worlds greatest shared challenges. But the Biden administration will miss an important opportunity to achieve its goal of uniting countries around a common global agenda if it fails to link its defense of democracy with promotion of the rule of law. As the international reaction to the war in Ukraine has shown, critical swing voters in the international system have not been swayed by arguments from the West about the vital need to defend Ukraine.

Two-thirds of the worlds population live in countries that are officially neutral or supportive of Russia, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit, and these countries do not fit into a convenient axis of autocracy. They include South Africa, India, Indonesia, and Brazil to name four democratic countries, as well as plenty of the undemocratic world, and many in between. Instead, the Biden administration should use the Summit for Democracy to situate the defense of democracy within the wider global battle for accountability, which would widen the coalition and speak more directly to the concerns of these swing voters.

With this impunity framework in hand, here are three things the Summit for Democracy could do to launch a global accountability agenda and fight back against rising impunity around the world:

First, attendees at the summit should commit to holding their own governments and militaries accountable for abuses. The U.S. Department of Defense has taken an important step in this direction through the recently released Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response Action Plan, which puts protection of civilians at the core of military missions, creates conditionality for U.S. security partners and establishes better pathways for accountability when civilians are killed.

Second, participants should pledge to support accountability mechanisms in the international system. The measures here range from the technocraticlike support for the now defunct Group of Eminent Experts investigating the war in Yemento the more political, including support for the International Criminal Court. Then there are even more ambitious proposals, like the idea of France and Mexico to suspend the U.N. Security Council veto in cases of mass atrocities.

Finally, acts of impunity will not be deterred through acts of accountability alone. That will require systems and cultures of accountability to counter systems and cultures of impunity. Summit participants build countervailing power against impunity by partnering with private sector and civil society groups to develop a global counterculture of accountability, starting with transparency over state and non-state actors violating the global rule of law.

The Summit for Democracy is an important and rare moment to bring a large swath of the world together to unite for a common global agenda. It is critical not to misuse this moment or leave behind potential coalition partners. By using the fight against impunity as its rallying cry, the Biden administration can build a truly global coalition, establish a clear agenda not only on democratic governance but on a range of shared challenges, and start the fight back against impunity in a world overrun by it.

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How Biden Can Fight Abuses of Power to Save Democracy - Yahoo News

Elected officials are condemning racist comments targeted at Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg as he continues an investigation that could result in the arrest of former President Donald Trump. On Thursday, Trump referred to Bragg, Manhattans first Black district attorney, as an animal in a since-deleted post on his social media app, Truth Social.

Bragg "came into office and said I am going to engage in the law in an impartial and fair way, said Nick E. Smith, the citys first deputy public advocate, at a press conference on Monday. And no president, no king, no prime minister can stop our district attorney from doing his job.

On the same social media app, the former president also referred to Bragg as a degenerate psychopath and warned of his death and destruction should he be arrested. Trump also reportedly shared an image of himself holding a baseball bat next to a photo of Bragg. The following day, an envelope containing white powder, which authorities later deemed not to be hazardous, also arrived at the district attorneys office.

These recent actions aimed at the district attorney are another indication of increased tension as the nation awaits Trumps potential arrest for allegedly falsifying business records related to hush money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels before the 2016 presidential election. The NYPD is also tightening security should there be protests following the unprecedented arrest of a U.S. president.

Other officials, including Rep. Adriano Espaillat and district leaders Hilda Solomon and Maria Luna, gathered outside the Adam Clayton Powell Jr. State Office Building in Harlem to condemn Trumps comments. During the conference, Iesha Sekou, from Street Corner Resources, Inc. led the crowd into repeated chants of We stand strong!

Trump knows this is racism. Making Black people wrong for doing the right thing, calling it adversarial and everything else, Sekou said. We will not have it. We stand strong with Alvin Bragg.

In addition to Mondays press conference, several civil rights leaders, including NAACP NYS President Hazel Dukes and Rev. Al Sharpton, told POLITICOs Playbook newsletter in a joint statement on Friday that Trumps comments were a bullhorn of incendiary racist and anti-semitic bile, spewed out for the sole purpose of intimidating and sabotaging a lawful, legitimate, fact-based investigation.

These ugly, hateful and anti-American attacks on our judicial system must be universally condemned without equivocation or hesitation, the statement continued.

The joint statement came a day before Sharpton held a rally in support of Bragg at the National Action Headquarters.

In addition to Bragg, Trump criticized other Black elected officials on Truth Social, including Georgias Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and New York Attorney General Letitia James. They are both, like Bragg, the first Black people elected to their respective positions. Trump also made comments aimed at philanthropist George Soros, who is Jewish.

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'We stand strong': Officials denounce incendiary comments toward ... - Gothamist

After another resounding defeat his second in four months and the eighth of his career, Todd Caliguire announced today that he would accept the will of the majority and not challenge Assemblyman Bob Auth (R-Oradell) and Saddle River Councilman John Azzariti in the Republican primary.

At Tuesdays 39th district Bergen GOP mini-convention, Azzariti defeated Caliguire by 50 votes, 159 to 109, for the open seat of DeAnne DeFuccio (R-Upper Saddle River). Auth was the top vote-getter with 216 votes. DeFuccio, elected in 2021, is not seeking re-election.

I ran for State Assembly simply because I am concerned about the kind of country and state in which our children and grandchildren will live, Caliguire said in a statement. At this critical moment in history, we must fight with everything we have to restore government to the values and principles which made our nation great. There can be no compromise on this.

This could be the end of the road for Caliguire, who turns 68 in May and hasnt won an election since his second term as a Berge County Freeholder in 1995. In a bid for Bergen County Executive in 2022, Democrat James Tedesco beat him by more than eleven percentage points.

A Sears catalog fashion model-turned-lawyer, Caliguire worked for Gov. Tom Kean and Attorney General Cary Edwards in the 1980s. He wanted to challenge freshman Rep. Bob Torricelli (D-Englewood) in 1984 and run for county executive in 1986, but Bergen County Republicans went in different directions each time. Hes also lost to races for State Senate and finished last in the 2005 Republican gubernatorial primary with 2.47% of the vote.

Caliguire remains haunted by his 2007 Senate primary against then-Assemblyman Kevin OToole (R-Cedar Grove), where Caliguire sent out a xenophobic mailer that ran side-by-side photos of OToole, who was the states first Asian American legislator, and Rev. Al Sharpton, alleging that OToole was the Republican Al Sharpton.

Democrats like Al Sharpton have divided America with their fixation on race and affirmative action, the mailer stated. Now Kevin OToole is guilty of the same thing.

OToole referenced the mailer in acolumn on Asian hate he wrote for the New Jersey Globe in March 2021.

The not-so-silent hand of racism would rear its ugliness when my opponent, in a blatant effort to stir racial waves, sent a mailer of me and Reverend Al Sharpton, referring to us as Affirmative Action babies, he said.

Caliguires campaign manager, Kevin Collins, defended their messaging in an interview with The (Bergen) Record.

We could have altered the photo. We did not, Collins told The Record. We could have made a more jaundiced look to his skin. We did not.

The Republican State Chairman at the time, Tom Wilson, smacked Caliguire for race-baiting.

This mail piece and tactics like it have no place in a Republican primary, he said to The Record. This kind of mail is frankly despicable and seeks to create division where none should exist.

OToole, then a six-term assemblyman, beat Caliguire by 13 points, even carrying the Bergen County portion of the 40th legislative district while running off-the-line in a race for an open State Senate seat. It remains one of the few times the Bergen GOP organization line didnt hold.

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Ending another campaign in defeat, Caliguire drops out of Assembly race - New Jersey Globe | New Jersey Politics

Good afternoon! I spent the weekend watching the nephews. My husband and I got a bunch of Nerf guns, left them outside with a sign saying choose your weapons and then went mano a mano with the boys. Heres what you need to know today.

The surprise destruction of Meigs Field holds a special place in Chicagos lore, an astonishing moment that symbolized the citys bare-knuckled politics and then-Mayor Richard M. Daleys iron grip on power at City Hall.

Daley made it clear who ran the city when he ordered the destruction of Meigs Field on Northerly Island without alerting the City Council, the statehouse or the Federal Aviation Administration, writes my colleague Courtney Kueppers.

While the demolition of Meigs Field may be fading from the citys collective memory, historians and political experts say it should be a reminder of the need to have checks and balances on mayoral power.

It was seen as a dictatorial ploy by the mayor to get his way, said Dick Simpson, a former alderman who is a political science professor emeritus at the University of Illinois Chicago. This was the first big move of simply doing what he wanted to do. [WBEZ]

We are just days away from the April 4 election, and the race between Paul Vallas and Brandon Johnson to become the citys next mayor appears to be close.

Both candidates on Thursday will appear at a forum hosted by WBEZ, the Chicago Sun-Times and the University of Chicago Institute of Politics.

The forum, which will be moderated by Reset host Sasha-Ann Simons, is free and will begin at 6 p.m. at the Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts at UChicago. If you cant attend in person, the forum will be streamed online. [WBEZ]

Meanwhile, Sen. Dick Durbin endorsed Vallas over the weekend, saying the former schools chief will be a bridge to uniting the good people in this city. [Chicago Sun-Times]

And the Rev. Al Sharpton appeared with Johnson at an election rally in West Garfield Park. [Chicago Sun-Times]

City officials have long argued that getting guns off the street will help solve Chicagos stubbornly high level of violence, resulting in authorities focusing on possession crimes.

But these tactics have not substantially reduced shootings in Chicago, reports The Marshall Project. In fact, as possession arrests skyrocketed, shootings increased, but the percentage of shooting victims where someone was arrested in their case declined.

The nonprofit newsroom reviewed nearly 300 arrest reports to understand the tactics police use to find guns.

Among their findings is that police made more than 38,000 arrests for illegal gun possession between 2010 to 2022, with Black men paying the price for this failed war on gun violence. [WBEZ]

It feels like every spring comes with at least one tornado in the Chicago area.

And thats been on my mind a lot lately with the news coming out of the South, where at least 25 people were killed after a powerful tornado tore through parts of Mississippi and Alabama.

While years of research has shown climate change intensifies rain storms, heat waves and hurricanes, the same cant be said for tornadoes, NPR reports.

Scientists know that warm weather is a key ingredient in tornadoes and that climate change is altering the environment in which these kinds of storms form, the station reports.

But they cant directly connect those dots, as the research into the link between climate and tornadoes still lags behind that of other extreme weather events such as hurricanes and wildfire. [NPR]

At age 40, Im past the midway point of the U.S. life expectancy of 76 years old. What a great time to be alive.

The nations falling life expectancy is getting more attention as research shows the maternal mortality reached a new high in 2021 and mortality rates are rising among U.S. children and adolescents, reports NPR.

So whats behind this troubling dynamic? Are we just not eating well or is there something about the U.S. thats bad for your health?

As NPR reports: Yes, Americans eat more calories and lack universal access to health care. But theres also higher child poverty, racial segregation, social isolation, and more. Even the way cities are designed makes access to good food more difficult. [NPR]

I am wearing my camo Crocs in the newsroom as I read that sales of the slip-on shoes are up nearly 200% since 2019, reports The New York Times.

I roll into the gym with my Crocs on and everything, and people ask, Arent you going to change shoes? one recent convert told the newspaper. No, this is how Im going to live life for now.

Crocs saw a surge in popularity during the pandemic that hasnt faded, with its stock soaring 167% since January 2020. [New York Times]

The road construction season is upon us, as you can tell from the traffic on the Kennedy. How do you cope with traffic headaches? Do you turn to podcasts and, if so, which ones?

Feel free to email me. And let me know if youd like to be included in an upcoming report on how people are handling recent traffic disruptions.

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The Rundown: The most Chicago thing happened 20 years ago - WBEZ Chicago

Joe Tacopina, the lawyer representing former President Donald Trump in his Stormy Daniels hush money case, got into it with an NBC News host over the weekend.

Tacopina was a guest on Meet the Press with NBC host Chuck Todd on Sunday morning, and while the two were discussing the former presidents case, the lawyer told the host he was being petty while they went back and forth about his clients legal troubles.

Trump and his lawyers have maintained that he was not aware of any payments being made to Daniels during his 2016 presidential campaign.

The case came to a boiling point last weekend when Trump took to his social media platform and announced he was going to be arrested and indicted in connection to the hush money case. Since then, Trump has repeatedly levied attacks against the lead prosecutor in the case, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.

During his appearance, Tacopina expressed that he isnt a supporter of Trumps decision to blast the district attorney on social media. One post showed Trump holding a baseball bat alongside an image of Bragg.

Im not his social media consultant, Tacopina said. I think that was an ill-advised post that one of his social media people put up, and he quickly took down when he realized the rhetoric and the folder that was attached to it.

On Sunday, Tacopina also spoke with Rev. Al Sharpton on MSNBC about the post, doubling down that the Trump took it down and that someone on his team had posted it.

Sharpton responded with a quick whip, asking if it would be okay if he stabbed him in the back, as long as he took the knife out.

Bragg and his office have been probing how the payments made by the Trump Organization were documented on the companys books. Todd asked Tacopina about this, suggesting that Trump wasnt honest in his personal ledger, when it comes to payments marked legal fees that he said were instead reimbursement to Cohen for paying Daniels the hush money.

The lawyer appeared to be upset with the line of questioning, starting a back-and-forth between the two men.

But what was he supposed to put in his personal ledger? Tacopina threw back at Todd, following his question. Seriously? What would he put in his personal ledger? Uh, payment for hush money to, um, quiet, uh, an affair I claim I never had so my family doesnt get embarrassed. Is that what he should put in his ledger? Theres nothing wrong with

How about the truth? Todd said, cutting Tacopina off. You keep saying, what should be in the ledger? Should it be the truth?

The lawyer responded by saying, Chuck, would you ever put a four-paragraph sentence to a ledger?

Youre being a little bit petty when youre looking at this now because there is no filing obligation, he continued. You can put whatever you want in your personal ledger.

Tacopina continued with Todd, insisting the payments Trump made to his former lawyer were not tracked incorrectly on his part.

It was legal fees that was invoiced by Michael Cohen, who arranged this on his own, with his own money, initially, Tacopina said. Took out a loan, literally, resolved this without the president knowing, came back, and then sent a bill in for four times the amount over the course of a year it was paid off.

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Trump's lawyer spars with NBC host over hush money case - KMOX