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Who lost what, exactly, when Naomi Osaka announced she wouldnt participate in news conferences at the French Open last week, citing her mental health?

The fans lost a few minutes of potentially vulnerable but generally formal interviews with Ms. Osaka. Ms. Osaka was unburdened of what she felt was an irrelevant obligation, but also burdened with potentially tens of thousands of dollars in fines.

The French Tennis Federation lost control over a tradition, and the public narrative. (On Twitter, an account for the French Open posted and then deleted photos of tennis stars engaging with the media, with a withering caption: They understood the assignment.)

The press, however, stood to lose the most, and not just a scheduled chance to ask a few questions. As Jonathan Liew, writing for The Guardian, put it: The great conceit of the press conference is that it is basically a direct line from the athlete to the public at large.

But hard as it is to believe, Ms. Osakas function as an entertainer and corporate billboard is contingent on her playing tennis at an appointed hour, rather than being forced to sit in a windowless room explaining herself to a roomful of middle-aged men, he wrote.

That particular practice of access journalism, Mr. Liew suggested, hadnt produced much in the way of illuminating results for a while. Ms. Osaka, in a statement posted to social media, described the experience as being subjected to people who doubt me and recalled seeing numerous other athletes breaking down in the midst of a scheduled spectacle. I dont understand the reasoning behind it, she said.

And it was that, combined with Ms. Osakas decision to leave the tournament entirely, that revealed a much broader, and largely already complete, loss of stature and relevance.

A profession full of practiced questioners was thwarted by a singular subject with a question of her own, and plenty of other places to ask it: Whats the idea here, exactly?

Its no longer a requirement of the job of being famous to trust other people to construct your public persona, which is surely, in some obvious ways, a relief. (To Ms. Osaka, an athlete born in 1997, the notion may seem absurd in the first place.) This obligation, however, has been replaced by one thats easy to underestimate, and even harder to avoid: Once a celebrity has taken control of her story, its up to her to keep telling it. The demand remains unyielding. Its just coming directly from the public.

In professional tennis, a conspicuously tradition-bound sport where even small breaks with superficial norms are assigned suffocating meaning, the presss post-match ritual wasnt just a relic it had been actively protected through regulations. (Tennis, to be sure, is not the only sport where athletes are expected to face the news media postgame.)

The rules for appearing at news conferences, which are set up by the tournaments and the mens and womens tours, are considered part of the deal for getting paid to be in the tournament. Ms. Osaka recast this as an irrelevant distraction, a source of anxiety and as damaging to the well-being of athletes.

Some critics have paid particular attention to the language Ms. Osaka used in her explanations, in which she invoked the need to protect her mental health, identified as an introvert and described coping with her depression. Where fans saw a rare example of honestly and candor, some critics saw the use of therapeutic language as a conversation-ending shield, or an example of weakness incompatible with the demands of the jobof being an athlete, of being famous or of greatness in general.

This is less an argument about the conditions of being famous Ms. Osakas detractors and supporters seem to agree that its an enormous psychological burden than it is a suggestion that these conditions are an unavoidable and necessary cost, either to be handled cheerfully or understood, miserably, as a fair exchange for wealth and celebrity. (Celebrities of many types have talked openly about mental health in recent years, many on their own social media channels.)

Some retired tennis greats weighed in to agree. While its important that everyone has the right to speak their truth, I have always believed that as professional athletes we have a responsibility to make ourselves available to the media, Billie Jean King posted on Twitter.

Once you become a professional athlete, you decide to play by certain rules of the game, Patrick McEnroe said in an interview on Good Morning America.

This discussion can sound like a disagreement over a job description. The pay is great. It might destroy your brain, as decades of celebrity wreckage can attest, but youll be adored by millions, who will have sympathy for you but perhaps not empathy. A surprisingly high number of strangers will revile you. Everyone else will feel the need to have an opinion about you.

Its not unreasonable to suspect powerful people of hiding behind carefully chosen words, of course. (Its probably unreasonable, however, to believe that a post-match Q. and A. is the tool for piercing the veil of secrecy.) But the sudden rise of therapeutic concepts and language in celebrity communication can also be understood as a predictable result of the new demands of the job.

Consider how famous people told their own stories before social media. They could flatter, manipulate or go to war with the press on a regular basis, participating in a storytelling process over which they had real but ultimately limited control.

Under duress, they might have submitted to tell-all interviews. To construct images, they could have granted access to friendly press in hopes of a gauzy portrait. Mutated forms of celebrities, like politicians, had their own native ways of appearing to go direct, such as speeches. If people cared about you long enough, you might have been able to cap your career with a score-settling memoir.

Now, however, everyone can just post online. And so thats what they do. This transition has been extensively described by the press as a loss of its power to hold public figures accountable a zero-sum trade-off that has mostly been liberating for the people who need liberation the least.

There is some truth to this. (See: electoral politics!) Posting on social media, however, is never just posting. You have to tell a story, and you have to figure out how to tell it. Celebrities who are said to be famous for being famous have always, in truth, been people who are preternaturally good at telling their own stories. Some people who are famous for other things have this talent as well. And whether it comes naturally or not, its always work.

Previously, this part of the job was largely about presenting yourself in media-centric contexts: being a good interview; giving a good quotation; being charming, or game, or otherwise compelling when you were asked to participate in, for example, a post-match news conference.

Instagram, on the other hand, provides an open if not yawning prompt for a famous person. There, people have not stopped asking you things. Millions of people have millions of questions. They also have critiques, expectations, and their own small demands of you once distant and mediated, now much more nearby.

You have more control over how and when youd like to engage, but its still a condition of fame that you engage somehow. Pointed interviews have been replaced with a general prompt: explain yourself.

Put another way, reporters were once tasked with humanizing celebrities through the media, and now celebrities have to humanize themselves through social media. In both situations, however, the storyteller begins from the natural state of celebrity: near-total dehumanization.

So, how is a famous person particularly one who did not become famous though careful cross-platform narrative construction, but rather by being one of the most talented tennis players ever to live supposed to address this near infinite demand that she explain herself or tell her story?

You lend support to things that you care about, that you see as bigger than your sport; you try, and maybe fail, to ignore the things that bother you. You get sponsorships. (And Ms. Osaka has done plenty of that.) You talk to the press when you want to, with lots of conditions.

Most of all, you figure out how to post. Either enthusiastically or out of necessity, you end up running a media empire of your own, large and consuming enough that the outside media is recast perhaps healthily, for them! as interrupters and interlopers.

Some celebrities may relish the opportunity to construct narratives on social media day in and day out, but even the most devoted posters end up talking about it like its a burden. Some take breaks from certain social platforms or become obsessed with their critics. Many others experience it as a form of obligation that, like conventional press engagements, is something that theyve been told they cant not do.

Absent a contrived persona or deliberate plan, modern celebrities are left to process their fame in public, and to attempt to assert boundaries where there are none. Its no wonder they sound like theyre in treatment.

Naomi Osaka did not, in declining to submit to a particular form of media interaction that was waning in relevance before she was born, opt for actual privacy. Thats rarely a choice for a celebrity, and besides, she ultimately did share her intimate thoughts, or something that sounded like them, on Instagram for public consumption, celebration and ridicule. Nor did she demand sympathy.

What Ms. Osaka really did was, from her peculiar vantage point, and in the best way she knew how, explain what her job really is, updating its description to bring it in line with her actual peers: the other most famous people on earth, who, regardless of how they got there, spend their lives in a new sort of press room that theyre not allowed to leave.

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Naomi Osaka and the Language of Fame - The New York Times

By Lloyd Waters| Columnist

McCleary Hill

U.S. Rep. David Trone and Hagerstown Housing Authority Executive Director Sean Griffith discuss the McCleary Hill residential community.

Alexis Fitzpatrick, The Herald-Mail

Have you ever sat down and pondered the future?

What will things be like tomorrow?

As I was growing up, life seemed kind of simple.

Going to a big city was, for sure, the cats meow for some Dargan kid.

An occasional trip to Hagerstown was special.

Those visits to Newberrys, Rosens, McCrorys, Peoplesand the Majestic Restaurant, with those tasty burgers and hotdogs, were something of an adventure.

And a movie house and theater were there, too. If I only had some money.

Previous columns: Lloyd 'Pete' Waters: Holy Mother, hear my prayer speaks to search for solace

More: The fickle American voter

And then I sort of graduated from small-town visitsto bigger places, like Chicago, Portland, New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, Baltimore, D.C. and even Sidney, Australia;and Saigon, Vietnam.

Big cities offered a different view of the world. Museums, history, art, the theater, libation houses, sports events, concerts, libraries, mass transportation, hospitals, collegesand all sorts of things to do.

And then there were those increasing negatives of poverty, crime, riots, looting, homelessness, burnings, illiteracy, unemploymentand social unrest.

Technology would arrive. Shopping centers would soon beckon consumers to malls beyond the city.

Amazon ordering would make store visits less necessary.

Working at home would become a new routine for many.

Hagerstown, like most, has a desire to keep its city alive.

Lets build a baseball stadium to attract the population downtown.

Did you ever imagine the Herald-Mail building being sold and, possibly, a baseball stadium replacing it?

More: Building is going up for sale, but Herald-Mail Media is not going anywhere

Will a new stadium prosper there? History holds the answer.

Gov. Larry Hogan recently announced a plan to relocate 3,300 state employees from 12 state agencies to the downtown Baltimore central business district.

The state is committing $50 million to pay for the relocation. It comes at a time when the city is experiencing a nearly 24% vacancy rate.

A shot in the arm for Baltimore is how Hogan explainedhis decision.

A "bad aim" might be another opinion.

As economics change, turmoil increases, and many other factors begin to arrive at the big citys doorsteps, will these measures be enough to prevent the exodus of people from Baltimore's downtown?

Today, there seems a diminishing desire to live in places like Seattle, Chicago, Portland, New York, Baltimore, San Francisco, D.C. and many others.

Even the city lights of Hagerstown have dimmed a little. However, a Maryland Theater show is nice; a cool libation at Bennys Pub is refreshing; and a hot honey and clover elixir on the front porch of Pura Vida with friends is pleasurable.

Other local venues are beckoning customersto come back downtown, but that decay seen in some larger American cities seems underway, too.

Consider some of those large cities mentioned above.

Cops are retiring in greater numbers; recruitment is difficult. Some major city streets are plagued with homeless tents, feces, increased crime and drug paraphernalia.

People are showing up at some city libraries, but not to read.

Answers and responses to these problems have been elusive for unprepared political leaders.

Can you imagine business owners attempting to operate in many of todays volatile cities? What would you do if you owned a business in downtown Portland these days?

And lawlessness was in the daily forecast while social activists cried, Defund the police."

Politics, too, plays an important role. Cities with effective leadership, planning, crime reduction, promising education centers, might continue to prosper and expand growing populations.

But others will not be so fortunate.

As many large metropolitan areas become less equipped to solve bigger problems, the exodus of city residents will continue.

Baltimore will be no exception.

As businesses leave, crime and other social problems will then rule. Perhaps newly arriving immigrants will be assigned to vacant apartment buildings in many downtowns.

As these cities become economically bankrupted, socially defunct, and poorly managed, what then?

Will the exodus increase?

Will citizens prefer to watch ballgames on TV?

City homelessness will remain an unsolved problem. Beggars will be found on more street corners.

People will prefer to shop over a computer.

Working at home next to the kitchen with some iced tea wont seem so bad after all.

You think you have the future figured out?

Some well-managed cities will likely prosper, while others will evolve slowly toward decay and bankruptcy.

Hope you end up in the right one to live.

Lloyd Pete Waters is a Sharpsburg resident who writes for The Herald-Mail.

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What will the future look like for America's cities? Here's one take - Herald-Mail Media

COLLEVILLE-SUR-MER, France (AP) When the sun rises over Omaha Beach, revealing vast stretches of wet sand extending toward distant cliffs, one starts to grasp the immensity of the task faced by Allied soldiers on June 6, 1944, landing on the Nazi-occupied Normandy shore.

Several ceremonies were being held Sunday to commemorate the 77th anniversary of the decisive assault that led to the liberation of France and western Europe from Nazi control, and honor those who fell.

These are the men who enabled liberty to regain a foothold on the European continent, and who in the days and weeks that followed lifted the shackles of tyranny, hedgerow by Normandy hedgerow, mile by bloody mile, Britains ambassador to France, Lord Edward Llewelyn, said at the inauguration of a new British monument to D-Days heroes.

On D-Day, more than 150,000 Allied troops landed on the beaches code-named Omaha, Utah, Juno, Sword and Gold, carried by 7,000 boats. This year on June 6, the beaches stood vast and nearly empty as the sun emerged, exactly 77 years since the dawn invasion.

For the second year in a row, anniversary commemorations are marked by virus travel restrictions that prevented veterans or families of fallen soldiers from the U.S., Britain, Canada and other Allied countries from making the trip to France. Only a few officials were allowed exceptions.

At the U.K. ceremony near the village of Ver-sur-Mer, bagpipes played memorial tunes and warplanes zipped overhead trailing red-white-and-blue smoke. Socially distanced participants stood in awe at the solemnity and serenity of the site, providing a spectacular and poignant view over Gold Beach and the English Channel.

The new monument pays tribute to those under British command who died on D-Day and during the Battle of Normandy. Visitors stood to salute the more than 22,000 men and women, mostly British soldiers, whose names are etched on its stone columns. Giant screens showed D-Day veterans gathered simultaneously at Britains National Memorial Aboretum to watch the Normandy event remotely. Prince Charles, speaking via video link, expressed regret that he couldnt attend in person.

On June 6, 1944, In the heart of the mist that enveloped the Normandy Coast ... was a lightning bolt of freedom, French Defense Minister Florence Parly told the ceremony. France does not forget. France is forever grateful.

Charles Shay, a Penobscot Native American who landed as an U.S. army medic in 1944 and now calls Normandy home, was the only surviving D-Day veteran at the Ver-sur-Mer ceremony. He was also expected to be the only veteran taking part in a commemoration at the American memorial cemetery later in the day.

Most public events have been canceled, and the official ceremonies are limited to a small number of selected guests and dignitaries.

Denis van den Brink, a WWII expert working for the town of Carentan, site of a strategic battle near Utah Beach, acknowledged the big loss, the big absence is all the veterans who couldnt travel.

That really hurts us very much because they are all around 95, 100 years old, and we hope theyre going to last forever. But, you know... he said.

At least we remain in a certain spirit of commemoration, which is the most important, he told The Associated Press.

Over the anniversary weekend, many local residents have come out to visit the monuments marking the key moments of the fight and show their gratitude to the soldiers. French World War II history enthusiasts, and a few travelers from neighboring European countries, could also be seen in jeeps and military vehicles on the small roads of Normandy.

Some reenactors came to Omaha Beach in the early hours of the day to pay tribute to those who fell that day, bringing flowers and American flags.

On D-Day, 4,414 Allied troops lost their lives, 2,501 of them Americans. More than 5,000 were wounded. On the German side, several thousand were killed or wounded.

Later on Sunday, another ceremony will take place at the American cemetery in Colleville-sur-Mer, on a bluff overseeing Omaha Beach, to be broadcast on social media.

The cemetery contains 9,380 graves, most of them for servicemen who lost their lives in the D-Day landings and ensuing operations. Another 1,557 names are inscribed on the Walls of the Missing.

Normandy has more than 20 military cemeteries holding mostly Americans, Germans, French, British, Canadians and Polish troops who took part in the historic battle.

Dignitaries stressed the importance of keeping D-Days legacy alive for future generations.

In the face of the threats of today, we should act together and show unity, Parly said, so that the peace and freedom last.

___

By Sylvie Corbet. Nicolas Garriga contributed.

Read more:
Remembering D-Day: Small crowds, big heart on 77th anniversary - AL.com

Earlier this year, when the start-up where Danielle works decided to reopen its Philadelphia office, the project manager was so anxious at the prospect that she sought the help of a therapist for the first time.

I started to get really nervous and unsure, said Danielle, 39, who lives in the city and asked that her last name not be used over worries that it could impact her career. Ive been remote this whole year. . I just have this fear what if we reopen and we become the next India? referring to the devastating outbreak there.

Even though an end to the pandemic seems to be in sight as vaccinations increase and restrictions ease, many workers are anxious about returning to the office and in-person interactions after more than a year away. And that anxiety might be short-circuiting the brains ability to cope.

Weve seen one another as threats for a year, said Michelle Pearce, a clinical psychologist and director of the Integrative Health and Wellness Certificate Program at the University of Maryland. That doesnt disappear overnight, even after you get a shot in the arm. We need to retrain our brains.

A survey released last month of 500 U.S. human resource managers found that they think employees are struggling with returning to work, with 37% of managers saying that most of their workers felt stressed about reopening and 31% saying employees were anxious about it, according to Koa Health, a digital mental health-care provider.

Many workers, of course, have had little choice but to hold the front lines of hospitals, grocery stores, and other essential industries, stress or no stress. But for remote-laboring professionals, all this angst may well be in their heads. That is, literally, the result of potential pandemic-induced changes to brains, neuroscientists said.

Normally, the amygdala, the region that processes emotions, signals when a potential threat is present. Usually, the signal is tied to a negative emotion such as fear or anger, explained Crystal Reeck, an assistant professor at Temple Universitys Fox School of Business who specializes in the psychology and neurology of decision making. That triggers a fight-or-flight response. Think about it as an alarm system, she said. It helps draw your attention to a threat in the environment.

Meanwhile, the prefrontal cortex, which is involved in decision making and social behavior, assesses the threat for example, delivering a speech in public and turns down the alarm bell, Reeck said, by reminding you that you are prepared.

Research has shown that anxious people tend to have a more active amygdala and less well-developed prefrontal cortex, hindering the regulation of the threat signal, Reeck said. During anxiety, that loop is disrupted, she said.

What does this have to do with workplace worries? Over the last year-plus, Reeck said, the amygdala may well have gotten rewired to learn new threats, such as someone coughing, or standing closer than six feet, or not wearing a mask. Thats helped keep us safe when we were supposed to quarantine and maintain a social distance, she said.

But now, as offices reopen and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says those who are fully vaccinated no longer need to wear masks, it may take some time to reset, Reeck said.

Consider the aftermath of the 1918 flu pandemic. According to Miami-area psychiatrist Arthur Bregman, who has researched the topic, many who lived through the earlier outbreak feared leaving their homes. They had what Bregman dubbed the Cave Syndrome, where people hunker down and are reluctant to leave home.

Most people had chronic PTSD, he said. Bregman anticipates the same kind of reaction this time around, as well. Already, he has anxious patients asking him to write notes excusing them from returning to the office, he said. Its not so easy to be isolated like we were and then go back to work. Its not like an off or on switch.

The American Psychological Associations 2021 Stress in America online poll of 2,076 U.S. adults found that prolonged stress persists at elevated levels for many Americans, with 47% feeling anxiety in the previous two weeks.

When Danielles company decided to reopen one day a week in April, with plans to go four days a week by summer, the introvert deep down said her anxiety that racing heart, those sweaty palms rose each time she walked through the office doors, as if it were the first day of school. A lot of it was fear of the unknown.

For help, she turned to hypnotherapist Alexandra Janelli, who has a Philadelphia branch of Theta Spring Hypnosis. Over three sessions, totaling about $800, Janelli suggested, while Danielle was in a hypnotic state, ways to handle specific fears, such as coworkers who forget to pull up their masks. Janelli reminded her that she was fully vaccinated and that she could step back from the person. Through hypnosis, she said, I help them build confidence and find their own solutions.

Said Danielle: I felt a huge difference. Everything Alexandra was saying was speaking to me. When she starts to feel anxious, she said, she focuses on what she can control. The anxiety goes down. Its such a relief and help.

Like many employers, Philadelphia law firm Hangley Aronchick Segal Pudlin & Schiller is studying reopening options. The firm is looking to balance the needs of the company and the concerns of individual employees, said real estate attorney David M. Scolnic, a shareholder and board member.

Based on a survey last year of its 100 employees, Hangley found that the top issue was getting to work, including the use of public transportation and the elevators to reach its offices on the 27th and 28th floors of One Logan Square. In conversations with employees, Scolnic said, that concern is still there.

The firm is also wrestling with whether to require vaccinations, how many days to ask employees to return to the office, when to reopen and so on. Its complicated, Scolnic said. You want to make sure employees are comfortable. Right now, were trying to listen very hard to what their concerns are.

As employees emerge, they may experience low energy, low motivation, irritability, and difficulty concentrating, said Pearce, at the University of Maryland. A lot of us are grieving, she said. Weve all lost something, collectively and individually.

According to David Rock, the CEO and cofounder of the global consultancy NeuroLeadership Institute, companies should take these mental health concerns seriously, creating not only physical protection but also psychological safety. Without the latter, he said, employees might get mired in anxiety and depression, hindering creativity or out-of-the-box thinking.

A companys strongest lever, Rock added, is giving workers a sense of control, and that starts with choices about returning to offices. Fundamentally, a lot of people are very anxious about going back into a world where 40% to 50% of people are not vaccinated, he said. What offsets that type of anxiety is a greater sense of control over work, of being treated fairly.

When speech therapist Abby Stern went from fully remote to spending half her time at the preschool in Media where she works, she was extremely worried. Before the pandemic, Stern suffered from panic attacks caused by a fear of getting sick. The pandemic only exacerbated her anxiety, and the prospect of in-person encounters was one more stressor, causing her stomach to hurt and heart to race.

I have kids sitting in my lap, said Stern, who returned full time in February. In the beginning, I was very nervous. My nightmare scenario was that the first day I get back, all the kids are going to be coughing, and two weeks later, half the staff will be sick.

But Stern is working through it. Her supervisor, for instance, was OK with her initially wearing two masks all the time and eating lunch in her car. She also struggled a little with how much distance to maintain while making small talk with colleagues, but that, too, eased over time, especially after she got vaccinated.

Still, Stern said, it always baffles me when people are not anxious. How can you not be worried about this?

The Future of Work is produced with support from the William Penn Foundation and the Lenfest Institute for Journalism. Editorial content is created independently of the projects donors.

More:
Returning to the office stirs anxiety among workers - The Philadelphia Inquirer

Academics rarely agree about the big issues, and generally hesitate to enter the political fray by signing collective public statements. Yet a few days ago, more than 100 leading scholars of democracy endorsed a remarkable Statement of Concern, which I also signed, warning about grave threats to American democracy and the deterioration of US elections.

We urge members of Congress to do whatever is necessary including suspending the filibuster in order to pass national voting and election administration standards that both guarantee the vote to all Americans equally, and prevent state legislatures from manipulating the rules in order to manufacture the result they want. Our democracy is fundamentally at stake. History will judge what we do at this moment.

Why the alarm? Is this warranted?

On 14 December 2020, after courts litigated challenges and all 50 states certified the count, the electoral college formally declared the defeat of Donald Trump. Most assumed that the peaceful and orderly transition in power would follow, following historical traditions for over 200 years. Instead, the world was shocked to witness the violent Capitol insurrection on 6 January, triggering five deaths, 140 people injured and more than 400 arrests.

But even this unprecedented attack on Congress was not the end of the assault on the unwritten norms and practices of American democracy and the legitimacy of Joe Bidens win.

For months, the big lie claiming a stolen election has continued to be spread relentlessly by the former president, his close advisers, Republican lawmakers and rightwing sympathizers on cable news and social media. According to many polls, two-thirds of Republicans continue to believe that Bidens victory was fraudulent. In Arizona, the Republican party hired a private firm to conduct an audit of the certified vote count.

It is reported that Trump is obsessed about the use of audits to overturn results in other close states like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan, believing that he will be returned to office in August. In state houses, Republicans have long expressed concern about the risks of electoral fraud and the need to tighten registration procedures and balloting facilities. The Brennan Center reports that since January this year, 22 new laws restricting voting rights have been enacted in 14 states. For the 2021 legislative session, almost 400 bills restricting voting rights have been tabled in 48 states.

Challenges to democracy are increasing worldwide. The long spread of third-wave democracies across the globe from the mid-1970s stalled around 2005 since when scholars have noted accumulating indicators of democratic backsliding and rising authoritarianism in many countries.

Contrary to popular commentary, signs of democratic deterioration in America were on the wall well before Trump became president such as persistent gridlock in US Congress, deepening cultural polarization and the corrupting role of dark money in politics. The backsliding has accelerated during the last four years, with attacks on the news media, risks to the impartiality of the courts, and the weakening role of Congress as an effective check and balance on executive power.

The US electoral system has also long been problematic, notably extreme partisan gerrymandering, the composition of the electoral college, rural over-representation in the Senate, lack of electoral standards as the supreme court rolled back federal oversight of state elections established by the 1965 Voting Rights Act, low turnout and the expansion of misinformation in the media. Since Bush v Gore in 2000, serious challenges to electoral legitimacy, and growing party polarization over the rules of the game, have gradually deepened. The Electoral Integrity Project has used expert surveys to evaluate the quality of national elections around the world since 2012 and found that US elections have persistently been graded poorly by EIP experts, scoring next to last among the worlds liberal democracies, and ranking about 45th out of 166 nations worldwide.

Unfortunately, Republican federal and state lawmakers have no rational incentives to abandon Trump and the big lie about electoral fraud, even if they recognize the falsehood. Most incumbents are nominated through party primaries and hold safe districts due to partisan gerrymandering, so Republican chances of re-election depend on throwing red meat to the Maga base, not building a broader coalition among moderate independents.

What is to be done?

To fix the system, two steps are essential. Both need to be enacted before the November 2022 midterm elections, when the Democrats are likely to lose control of the Senate, if history is any guide.

First, the Senate filibuster has to go as a relic of a bygone era. Worldwide, about 41 national legislatures have some supermajority rules but in nearly all cases these are only used, quite sensibly, for constitutional amendments, not for routine legislation (like establishing the 6 January commission). The rule benefits the opposition party seeking gridlock in DC and stymies effective electoral reform.

The Senate rules are not fixed in stone and they can be amended by their own members through various procedural initiatives. The benefits of the filibuster rule for non-constitutional amendments are doubtful and the harm for gridlock has never been more serious. The Senate needs to act urgently to change its procedural rules to protect American democracy.

Second, the US Senate needs to pass the HR1 For the People Act. This offers a comprehensive package of moderate reforms designed to protect voting rights in US elections, reduce partisan gerrymandering, make campaign spending more transparent and tighten ethics in public life. Getting rid of extreme partisan gerrymandering and ultra-safe districts is vital to incentivize House candidates to appeal broadly to all citizens well beyond their base. The Senate also needs to pass HR4, the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, restoring provisions of the 1965 Voting Rights Act requiring certain states to pre-clear changes to their voting laws with the federal government, which had been struck down earlier by the US supreme court in Shelby County v Holder.

A series of other reforms are highly desirable in the long term but impractical right now.

One is adopting non-partisan blanket primaries, as in Washington and California, where the two candidates with the highest vote share get to run in the general election, irrespective of their party affiliation. This increases the incentive for all candidates to reach out to a broader constituency than the party base, so it is likely to encourage the election of more moderate lawmakers in Congress.

Another is designed to break the stranglehold on two-party winner-take-all competition, ideally by implementing a mixed-member proportional electoral system for the US House, like Germany and New Zealand, with an enlarged number of members, or ranked-choice voting in multimember districts.

Yet another reform is adopting a compulsory retirement age for members of Congress, like the minimum age requirement, to increase incumbency turnover, limit gerontocracy and expand representation for the younger generation of leaders, women and minorities.

These are all worthy matters for future debate about long-term constitutional and legal reforms to American elections, a generational project. But, in the short term, the most urgent and practical priorities right now facing the Senate majority leader, Senator Chuck Schumer, means wrangling the US Senate to abolish the filibuster rule and then to pass some version of HR 1 and HR 4. The laws would still face major challenges through the courts. But if they dont get enacted, American democracy is at risk.

The sixth of Januarywas the warning bell. The stress test of the 2022 midterm elections is fast approaching. Other countries have seen democratic breakdown. This is not alarmism. Alas, its real.

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American democracy is at risk from Trump and the Republicans. What can be done? - The Guardian