#democracy

#democracy

According to Oxfam International's "Resisting the Rule of the Rich: Protecting Freedom from Billionaire Power" report this week, a billionaire boom has coincided with the rise of the richest exerting political influence, with billionaires 4,000 times more likely to hold office than less wealthy people globally. And if those billionaires aren't running for office, they're pouring money into campaigns. Per Oxfam, one in six dollars spent by all U.S. candidates, parties, and committees in the 2024 elections came from 100 billionaire families.

"Protecting the climate and protecting our democracy are inextricably linked," veteran climate reporter and activist Bill McKibben said last week at a Covering Climate Now press briefing on covering the climate story in 2026. President Donald Trump "is in many ways operating as a political arm of the oil industry," McKibben added, "and coming to grips with his authoritarian impulse is going to be crucial to ever getting any climate action."

As wealth inequality widens and billionaires become increasingly enmeshed with politics, the public is growing more and more disillusioned with the ultra-wealthy, and the role they play in society. It's not just those with low or median incomes who feel that way. A majority of millionaires now say that extreme wealth is a threat to democracy; that the ultra-rich buy political influence; and that political leaders should do more to tackle extreme wealth, like increasing taxes.

For two artists from NYC, the occasion means it is time to, once again, whip out their paintbrushes. Lesley Friedman Rosenthal and Brigitte Bentele of the Upper West Side in Manhattan mark the anniversary of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection in Washington, DC, with powerful and somewhat unsettling works of art. Their hope is to document a pivotal moment in American history and spark necessary conversations around politics and democracy.

The internet has turned fringe belief into mainstream politics and policy from authoritarianism to vaccines. With democracy itself threatened, is it time to go back to a previous world of landlines, letters and face-to-face-contact, audiotapes and Ansaphones? What would we miss about the online world that is worth the risk to liberal culture and basic freedoms? Should we turn the internet off?

At the BKA conference, she was discussing democracy in Germany. "At dinners with perfectly ordinary colleagues and friends who love their country, I often hear them say after the second glass of wine, that they're considering whether they should leave the country," Buyx said. "Should leave," meaning they don't want to. Buyx didn't name the particular threat. But every police officer in the room knows who she's talking about: the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.

"What prepares men for totalitarian domination in the non-totalitarian world is the fact that loneliness, once a borderline experience usually suffered in certain marginal social conditions like old age, has become an everyday experience," wrote Hannah Arendt in her 1951 book, The Origins of Totalitarianism. I was born and raised in Chicagoland. Even during stints of travel and education, I have always considered myself a Chicagoan.

Discussions of race are everywhere and nowhere in 2025. On one hand, President Donald Trump is openly insulting Somali immigrants, describing entire nations as "shithole" countries, and insisting that the most persecuted class of humans are white South Africans. On the other, none of this is actually registering as anything other than Trump being Trump, and so when the Supreme Court agrees to revisit a foundational doctrine like birthright citizenship, too many of us shrug it off.

While, as Benjamin Franklin quipped, it may be that nothing is certain but death and taxes, only the former can be considered the great equalizer. Death comes for us all, regardless of our social or economic status. Taxes, on the other hand, have always been far more complicated. Vanessa S. Williamson's new book, The Price of Democracy: The Revolutionary Power of Taxation in American History, takes us on a fascinating journey through the history of taxation from colonization to the present day.

AI will help us navigate the immense amounts of information and data created every day in the modern world, but it will also make it easier for bad actors to swamp the infosphere with disinformation. AI can enable real-time translations to spread ideas seamlessly across language barriers, but it may also make the marketplace of ideas less pluralistic by concentrating power in a few individuals.

This is a scandalous attempt to subvert democracy by a Labour government whose credibility and popularity are already in tatters. The Conservatives firmly oppose this decision to delay the mayoral elections, especially when candidates have been selected and campaigning is well underway. Democracy is being denied yet again after the council elections cancelled by Labour this year. There is no credible justification for this move. The Labour Government must reverse it immediately.

The government is set to postpone elections for newly created mayors in some parts of Southern England. Local government sources say two out of four areas expected to vote in May 2026 - Essex and the combined counties of Norfolk and Suffolk - will now do so at a later date. Opposition parties are calling for the elections to go ahead as planned, with shadow local government secretary James Cleverly accusing Labour of "subverting democracy".

On Saturday, October 18, more than 7 million people took to the streets in thousands of events across the country, proudly declaring that we have no kings in America. Aerial camera shots of throngs of people marching down the streets of Chicago, New York, Boston, and Atlanta gave me chills. But similar pictures coming out of Billings, Montana; Boise, Idaho; and Hammond, Louisiana (where Trump won in 2024), as well as Richmond, Kentucky (where he won the last three elections), gave me hope.

Britain's public broadcaster once defined trust and fairness. Now it stands as a cautionary tale for every democracy

Kenyan President William Ruto talks to Al Jazeera about the nationwide protests that left dozens dead, accusations of police brutality and enforced disappearances, and whether he's betrayed the hustler generation that helped elect him.

The world of social media is flashy and fast-paced: those who stand out rise to the top with their ballrooms, space rockets, and chainsaws, dominating the headlines. The researchers for Germany's "Mitte Studie" ("Center Study"), however, turn their attention away from the dazzling personalities and the fringes, to examine those who form the backbone of a democratic and open society, looking at their attitudes toward right-wing extremism, xenophobia and antisemitism.

Many of them are people I have known to be cautious, sober, and not prone to hyperbole. Yet they used words like nightmare and warned that Americans need to be ready for 'really wild stuff.' They described a system under attack and reaching a breaking point. They enumerated a long list of concerns about next year's midterms, but they largely declined to make predictions about the 2028 presidential election.

It's beautiful to see so many people all over the country standing up for democracy and against authoritarianism. This is no time for factions or political infighting; we face an existential emergency, and we all need to unite against that threat. I see signs all over supporting so many causes, and I love them all. But I want to take a moment to talk about why we are here.

We stand here on Boston Common, where 60 years ago, a different kind of king, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. led 20,000 people for Roxbury down Columbus Ave to call for equal rights for all our neighbors. And we stand here today to tell the Trump Administration when it comes to our freedoms, when it comes to our families, Boston

Early Wednesday morning, a 3,000-pound ice sculpture spelling the word "DEMOCRACY" was transported from a New York studio to the National Mall by artists Nora Ligorano and Marshall Reese, known as LigoranoReese. To deliver the metaphor, the artists had partnered with Up In Arms, an organization started by Ben & Jerry's co-founder Ben Cohen, who is known as much for his activism as his ice cream.

Americans in France, as well as other nationalities who want to express their solidarity, are invited to join the demonstration on Saturday afternoon - timed to coincide with thousands of events in the US and worldwide. The No Kings movement denounces Trump's government shutdown, plus his "demolition of Medicare and Medicaid, his attacks on workers and public services in favour of billionaire tax cuts, and his systematic violations of US and international law".

We are in a time of distress. We are in a time of total degradation of democracy. Orwell wrote that the degradation of language is the condition for the degradation.

Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado has been awarded the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize, recognized for what the Norwegian Nobel Committee called her "tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela." But for many in the Bitcoin community, the win carries another layer of meaning - because Machado isn't just a democracy activist. She's also one of few (but growing) global political figures who has openly embraced Bitcoin as a tool of resistance against authoritarianism.

People have to understand our democracy is being taken away from us, and we only have about a year, Reiner said. He then told Velshi that he and many other pundits are doing a great job of covering Trump. But make no mistake, we have a year before this country becomes a full on autocracy and democracy completely leaves us, Reiner said.

No president has ever sent troops into the Democratic cities across the country saying full force. No president, as far as I know, has tried to control the Federal Reserve, the central bank. He is amassing power in a way that will destroy our democracy. And so were going to stand up. Were creatives. Were storytellers. We can do it creatively. We can have a good time while we do it.

Czech President and former chief of the General Staff of the Czech Armed Forces Petr Pavel is a level-headed man with strong nerves. Yet even though he almost never gets emotional in his capacity as head of state, he has seemed for quite some time to be deeply concerned about the state of democracy in the Czech Republic. On Tuesday evening, less than three days before the polls open in Czechia's parliamentary election, he spoke to the nation.

We live in an era where reasoned, thoughtful, rational, respectful discourse has been replaced by antagonistic, confrontational conversation, Kennedy, who was appointed to the supreme court during Ronald Reagan's presidency, remarked. It seems to me the idea of partisanship is becoming much more prevalent and more bitter. And my concern is that the court in its own opinions has to be asked to moderate and become much more respectful.