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Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post Writer's Group

Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post Writer's Group

WASHINGTON - "Some of the Fake News Media likes to say that I am not totally engaged in healthcare," President Donald Trump tweeted on Wednesday. "Wrong, I know the subject well & want victory for U.S."

Fine, Mr. President, there's an easy way to prove your asserted knowledge: Have a news conference. Answer questions that aren't softballs tossed by your friends at Fox News.

In the age of Trump, some of the president's deviations from democratic and political norms slap you in the face. Attacks on federal judges for decisions that don't go his way. Attacks on news organizations for stories that portray him in a bad light. Misstatement piled on misstatement. Nepotism run amok. Transparency abandoned, from disclosure of tax returns to release of White House visitor records.

But other shifts, equally audacious and equally troubling, take a more subtle form. They unfold slowly until, perhaps too late, the change becomes blindingly apparent. So it is with Trump's dealings with the media, and the effective disappearance of public accountability. Authoritarianism does not announce itself. It creeps up on you.

The president has had a single formal news conference - in February, 168 days after his previous such encounter with the media. At this point in their presidencies, Barack Obama had held seven; George W. Bush three; Bill Clinton seven; George H.W. Bush 15.

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Like his predecessors, Trump has also answered a few questions at joint news conferences with foreign leaders - although Trump has had a smaller number of such events than his predecessors and, unlike them, has made a habit of directing questions to friendly conservative news outlets. Until, that is, Monday's joint appearance with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, at which the leaders of the world's two largest democracies took zero questions.

And so, all the fuss over whether the regular White House press briefing will be televised misses the more fundamental point of presidential inaccessibility. The practice of live on-camera briefings is far better, but it's not as if this practice is chiseled in stone; it didn't start until the Clinton administration.

The medium is not the message - the message is. What's more important than video is having spokesmen capable of speaking with authority on the president's positions - not the relentless incuriosity of Trump's flacks, who seem never to have gathered his thoughts on topics from Russian hacking to climate change.

What's more important is having spokesmen who use the briefing as more than a platform for irresponsible media-bashing, such as Sarah Huckabee Sanders' magnificently ironic complaint about "the constant barrage of fake news directed at this president," followed by approvingly citing ("whether it's accurate or not, I don't know") an anti-CNN video by fake news huckster James O'Keefe.

And what's most important is the opportunity to question the president himself. A president automatically commands airtime; this president, through his Twitter feed, automatically commands attention. But publicity without accountability is the antithesis of democracy. Reporters questioning elected officials serve in this sense as surrogates for the public.

Remember back when Trump and his campaign were busy blasting Hillary Clinton for failing to hold a news conference.

As for other ways in which Trump has made himself accessible, or not? Well, he went 41 days between interviews - from May 13 with Fox News' Jeanine Pirro ("Your agenda is not getting out, because people are caught up on the (James) Comey issue, and ridiculous stuff") to June 23 with Fox News' Ainsley Earhardt (on Trump's bogus suggestion there might be tapes of Comey, she said, "It was a smart way to make sure he stayed honest in those hearings").

But Pirro and Earhardt looked like Woodward and Bernstein compared to "Fox and Friends'" Pete Hegseth, who pummeled Trump on June 25 with questions like "Who's been your biggest opponent? Has it been Democrats resisting, has it been fake-news media, has it been deep-state leaks?"

Wow. Who's a snowflake now?

This isn't journalism - it's a pillow fight. And the beauty of submitting to this faux-interviewing is its perfect circularity: Trump gets to make his remarks, coddled by Fox. Then White House press secretary Sean Spicer, with the cameras not rolling, gets to cite them as a shield against providing further information: "I believe that the president's remarks on 'Fox and Friends' this morning reflect the president's position."

Is this what our democracy has been reduced to? We in the media can't make Trump take our questions. But supinely accepting his silence threatens to normalize the distinctly abnormal.

Marcus' email address is ruthmarcus@washpost.com.

See more here:
Marcus: A healthy democracy demands transparency - Houston Chronicle

This week Sandy and our two dogs will put on red, white, and blue and walk in our Castle Heights annual Fourth of July parade. My mom who lives down the street, and is disabled, will sit on her front porch swing to watch the 300 or so of our neighbors pass by her flag-lined yard. It makes our hearts sing to celebrate America with friends of all political stripe Libertarians, Republicans, Independents, Democrats and Green Party folks.

For one brief moment we will be reminded of our shared destiny while together we eat hot dogs and homemade ice cream at the Castle Heights Circle.

Ive noticed over the years at these important moments that speakers will often give thanks and appreciation to our men and women in uniform across the country and the world. This is certainly appropriate. But Ive also wondered why we rarely mention other patriots who are serving in non-military roles. They too protect our freedom, advance democracy and contribute essential to the development of our country.

Consider the role that school teachers, judges, city council members, police officers, fire-fighters, Peace Corp workers, foreign service officers and others play in preserving our freedom and advancing democracy. Occasionally, there will be a nod to one group of these dedicated public servants who are necessary to the health and well-being of our civil society. But rarely, if ever, have I heard thanks given to our journalists for the paramount role they play.

Wait, did I just write journalists? Do journalists have as important a role in our democracy as that of soldiers? Are journalists patriots? Are they just as important as our elected representatives? A recent Pew survey poll (March 13-27) suggests that some Americans would find an affirmative answer to these questions to be preposterous. The study indicates that Democrats and Republicans, who already tend to place their trust in different news sources and rely on different outlets for political news, now disagree more than ever on a fundamental issue of the news medias role in society: whether news organizations criticism of political leaders primarily keeps them from doing things they shouldnt or keeps them from doing their job.

Anyone want to guess which side of the issue which party is on? The survey reveals that 9 in 10 Democrats believe that the news media keeps politicians in line by serving a watchdog role. Only 4 in 10 Republicans can affirm this. While there are likely multiple reasons why Americans are divided on this issue, I would suggest that history is on the side of those who see journalists having an essential role in our democratic process.

Let me offer 5 key responsibilities of journalists that probably cannot be done by anyone else.

While there is much to be discouraged today in regards to media empires that seem to have profit or political influence as their focus, on this Fourth of July, perhaps more than any in recent memory, we should we must remember the contributions by the great journalists of our day Bob Woodward, James Baldwin, Christiane Amanpour, Walter Cronkite, Margaret Bourke-White, Dan Rather, Carl Bernstein, Ed Bradley, Bill Moyers and Anna Quindlen who protect our freedom. And remember and be grateful for our local journalists who served Central Texas through the print, television and radio forums.

Thomas Jefferson felt so strongly about the role of journalists that he made the following well-known pronouncement: If it were left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. God bless America and God bless our journalists.

Blake Burleson is an ordained Baptist minister and a faculty member in the Department of Religion at Baylor University. The fifth-generation Texan enjoys carpentry, painting, backpacking and travel. This column marks his first as a member of the Trib Board of Contributors.

Read more:
Blake Burleson, Board of Contributors: Journalism necessary part of American democracy - Waco Tribune-Herald

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President Trump and Vice-President Pences election integrity commission is unequivocally declaring war on voters. Photograph: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images

The most important aspect of any democratic election is participation. A democracy gains its legitimacy through elections only so far as those elections represent the will of the people. Limit voter participation, and there is a direct correlation between the legitimacy of an election and the democratic system. President Trump and Vice-President Pences election integrity commission is unequivocally declaring war on voters our democratic legitimacy be damned.

The commission recently sent a letter to all 50 states asking that they provide all the names and associated birthdays, last four digits of social security numbers, addresses, political parties, and voting histories since 2006 of people on their voter rolls. This letter is helping to lay the groundwork for nationalized voter suppression.

The commission is requesting the same information that Republican state governments have used to create hyper-partisan gerrymandering and enact restrictive voter ID laws. Such measures have been disturbingly successful at suppressing voting of minority and low-income citizens, groups that tend to vote with Democrats. This assault on voters might seem farfetched, except that weve seen this strategy too many times before to claim ignorance now.

After slavery ended, white elites invented felony disenfranchisement as a means to delegitimize black citizens and prevent them from gaining influence. We saw Jim Crow gut-punch our democracy in yet another attempt to disenfranchise minorities. We are witnessing history repeating itself.

Nationally, the Democratic party is gaining support as the countrys demographics become increasingly diverse. The majority of black, Native American, Hispanic and Asian voters vote as Democrats. The Republican party has known for several years now that its best tactic to cling to power is not to build a party worth supporting, but to deny participation in the political process to Democratic party voters.

Making matters worse, the Department of Justices Civil Rights Office, long heralded as the ultimate guarantor of civil rights, including voting rights, might unknowingly be supporting the commissions efforts. The Civil Rights Office sent out a letter on Wednesday, the same day as the commission sent its letter, seeking information from states on how they maintain their voter rolls. The office charged with upholding the 1965 Voting Rights Act must resist playing a leading role in further dismantling this most fundamental democratic right.

I would expect these actions from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, or any of the other authoritarian regimes we have sanctioned around the world regimes that stay in power by suppressing their people and manipulating election results. We must not lie to ourselves when we see the warning signs here at home. This commission is a harbinger of a top-down, White House-endorsed assault on voters, specifically Democratic voters: the same voters who denied Trump the popular vote.

State leaders have a moral and constitutional obligation to our democracy and to their citizens to refuse to cooperate with this commission.

States should refuse to hand over any of the requested voter information, as California, Virginia, Rhode Island and Kentucky have refused to do at this writing. The Connecticut, Oklahoma and North Carolina secretaries of state, on the other hand, have agreed to send publicly available information to the commission. This is a mistake.

Our democracy cannot afford to turn over any information now and ask questions later. States turning over any information, including publicly available information, legitimize the commission and betray the trust and privacy of voters. Having publicly available information for in-state use is different from providing information for a national voter database that will be placed at the hands of nefarious actors. States must take a stand to protect their voters most fundamental democratic right.

Additionally, Democrats must refuse to participate in the commission. The secretaries of state for New Hampshire and Maine should step down from the commission immediately. Participation risks granting legitimacy where there can be none. Two lone Democrats on this commission will stand no chance of preventing the pre-cooked outcomes. Instead, they and their states are being used to cloak the commission in the guise of bipartisanship. If Democrats refuse to participate, the commission will be left with no clothes on.

The litany of research on voting in recent years has failed to come up with but a handful of voter fraud cases. On the other hand, voter suppression techniques, such as those employed by the Republican party, effectively disenfranchise scores of voters across the country. If the real goal of the administration is election integrity, the stated objective from day one should have been to maximize voter participation.

Rather than target minority voters with a modern gloss on McCarthyism, we should be prioritizing a 21st-century Voting Rights Act to protect voting rights and increase access to the ballot box.

Rather than voter ID laws that disenfranchise certain demographics, a new Voting Rights Act could set a national ID standard, granting maximum flexibility to voters. It could also ban felony disenfranchisement in national elections and require publication of new electoral changes to help educate voters.

The options are there to strengthen our democracy and truly protect one person, one vote. Instead, this commission appears intent on nationalizing the Republican partys strategy of one Anglo-Saxon, financially successful person, one vote.

Continued here:
Trump's next attack on democracy: mass voter suppression - The Guardian

For President Xi Jinping, the 20th anniversary of Hong Kongs return to China is a moment to toast the reunification of a nation and hail its unstoppable rise. But for activists such as Eddie Chu, one of the leading lights of a new generation of pro-democracy politicians, it has become an occasion for something quite different.

Boot-licking. Unprecedented boot-licking! he says, a smile breaking across his face as he reflects on how many members of the local elite have chosen to mark two decades of Chinese rule by plastering their homes and businesses with patriotic slogans and red flags in the hope, he suspects, of currying economic favour.

That is quite the opposite of what Hong Kong people wanted to see in 1997. We wanted to see democracy. Democracy is not boot-licking.

On Saturday morning, Chinas authoritarian ruler, who is making a rare three-day tour of the former British colony, will lead celebrations of two decades of Chinese control alongside Hong Kongs incoming chief executive, Carrie Lam.

At a flag-raising ceremony just down the road from where the umbrella revolution happened an unprecedented eruption of dissent in the autumn of 2014 the pair will remember the moment this city of 7.3 million residents returned to China after 156 years of colonial rule. A flypast and a sea parade will follow. By night, the skies over Victoria harbour, from where the royal yacht Britannia departed on 1 July 1997, will be illuminated by a spectacular 23-minute blaze of fireworks.

The moving occasion of Hong Kongs return to the motherland like a long-separated child coming back to the warm embrace of his mother, is still vivid in our memory, Xi told a dinner on Friday night.

But for members of Hong Kongs democracy movement, the anniversary is accompanied by a profound sense of uncertainty and trepidation.

Twenty years after Britains departure thrust this hyperactive lair of capitalism into the hands of a Leninist dictatorship, campaigners such as Chu fear Beijing is preparing to up the ante in its battle for control.

Ten pro-democracy legislators, of which he is one, are at risk of losing their jobs as a result of government-backed legal challenges against them. There are fears that under Hong Kongs new leader, who was elected by a tightly controlled selection committee, there will be a renewed push to enact controversial anti-subversion legislation.

And while Xi has sought to strike an upbeat tone during his visit, recent comments by another senior Communist party figure who vowed to consolidate Chinas control of the former colony has put activists on edge.

The relationship between the central government and Hong Kong is that of delegation of power, not power-sharing, Zhang Dejiang, Chinas number three official, said, adding that Hong Kong could only be governed by those who posed no threat to [its] prosperity and stability.

Feeding into activists sense of foreboding is the feeling that many western governments have now cut them loose for fear of damaging their economic relationships with the worlds second largest economy.

The foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, issued a carefully worded statement about the anniversary on Thursday, saying it was vital that Hong Kongs autonomy be preserved. But Johnson made no direct mention of growing fears about the erosion of Hong Kongs freedoms, or even of Beijings alleged abduction of a local bookseller who held a British passport.

The British government is just awful. Im afraid I cannot find any kind words to say about that, says Martin Lee, a 79-year-old barrister who is the elder statesman of Hong Kongs democracy movement.

Like many, Lee is convinced that China is gradually stripping away the freedoms promised to Hong Kongs citizens under the one country, two systems formula and that Britain has done nothing to intervene.

On Friday, a spokesperson for Chinas foreign ministry appeared to confirm those fears, telling reporters that the joint declaration, a deal negotiated by London and Beijing guaranteeing Hong Kongs way of life for 50 years, was a historical document that no longer had any practical significance.

Suzanne Pepper, a veteran chronicler of the citys quest for democracy, says campaigners can no longer count on London or Washington for support: As long as there is not blood in the streets, they dont care.

Not everybody is lamenting Saturdays landmark anniversary, however. The streets around Xis waterfront hotel are dotted with clusters of pro-government supporters and decorated with banners that read I love Hong Kong and One country, two systems has the strong vitality. Lilac posters hanging from bridges and lampposts carry the celebrations official catchline: Together. Progress. Opportunity. Skyscrapers have been decked out in bright red banners and neon displays that read: Warmly celebrate the 20th anniversary of Hong Kongs return to China.

Amid the omnipresent propaganda, there is also genuine patriotic fervour. Hong Kong people should be proud of the achievements of the motherland and all the progress our country has made, enthused Li Li, a guide at a government-sponsored exhibit about Chinas space programme that has been erected in Victoria Park to coincide with this weeks party.

Many more have greeted the anniversary and the presidential visit with nonchalance.

Chu estimated that about a third of the population was split between pro-democracy and pro-government supporters. The rest couldnt care less about the anniversary, and were most worried about the traffic jams caused by the massive security operation to protect Xi.

Swaths of the citys waterfront are sealed off with towering white and blue barricades, with agents patrolling the streets with assault rifles in their hands. Too many police! jokes one of hundreds of officers patrolling the area, sweat beading on his neck.

Lee says the lack of interest many young people are showing in Xis visit underline how disconnected they feel from mainland China and how Beijings policies have lost their hearts and souls.

Oh, this is the ruler of a neighbouring country thats what they feel, he says, pointing to a recent poll suggesting that only 3% of 18-to-29-year-olds consider themselves Chinese, the lowest rate since 1997. The young people want democracy. They dont want to be brainwashed.

For all the indifference and uncertainty, Hong Kongs protest movement appears in buoyant mood. Tens of thousands are expected to turn out on Saturday afternoon for an annual march marking the return to China. Their rallying cry will be Twenty years of lies. [It] was going to be Communist party officials, get out of Hong Kong, but they decided that was a bit too provocative, says Pepper.

Last September, a record number of young anti-Beijing activists were elected to Hong Kongs legislative council, or Legco, in what one victor called a democratic miracle. However, many of them could now be forced from office, mostly because of government legal challenges over protests the activists took part in while being sworn in last year.

If two to three of them lose their seats, then the whole political balance will change totally, and then Beijing will have absolute control of this legislature, warns Chu, who was to shout Democracy and self-determination and Tyranny must die while taking his oath.

Pepper said she was not optimistic that Beijing would offer concessions to activists, even though Hong Kongs incoming leader has pledged to heal the divide and build bridges. This is a bridge between democracy and dictatorship, said Pepper. How she is going to bridge that, I dont know.

Chris Patten, Hong Kongs last governor, has offered a more upbeat appraisal of the city he once ran, saying he was encouraged by the really profound sense of citizenship of its young activists. Above all, I think I am pleased about the way in which Hong Kong people themselves are the reason for it still being a cause of optimism rather than pessimism.

Lee, who is famed for an impassioned defence of democracy that he gave after Britains withdrawal, says he is an eternal optimist about his movements chances under a new, young leadership. These young people are our hope for the future. Im very proud of them.

Sitting in his chambers between a bust of Winston Churchill and a statuette of the Goddess of Democracy, the symbol of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, Lee remembers strolling through the umbrella movements main camp, a sprawl of tents and political debate, three days before police finally cleared it, in December 2015.

There were two little birds singing on the ground. [It was as if they were saying:] I wish I were free, you know? The air was fresh, he reminisces. I miss those days.

Additional reporting by Benjamin Haas and Wang Zhen.

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'We wanted democracy': is Hong Kong's two-systems experiment over? - The Guardian