• Invoking Martial Law to Reverse the 2020 Election Could be Criminal Sedition

    In his increasingly desperate bid to hang on to the White House, President Trump is reportedly contemplating invoking martial law to force the invalidation of the results of the election in four swing states, apparently inspired by remarks of the former and recently-pardoned National Security Advisor Michael Flynn. Law professors Claire O. Finkelstein and Richard W Painter write that “While we deem the chances that Trump will actually follow through with the attempt to spark a military coup between now and January 20th extremely low, Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen should be prepared for such a contingency and play out the legal and enforcement implications in advance. Shocking and unprecedented though it would be, Rosen should be ready to go so far as to order federal law enforcement officers to arrest anyone, including, if necessary, the president, who has conspired to carry out this illegal plan.”

  • Pandemic Consequences: The Acceleration of Confrontational Politics

    Soon after the coronavirus began spreading widely around the world, a dominant narrative emerged about its likely effect on global politics: the pandemic would reinforce autocratic governance. Thomas Carothers and Benjamin Press write in Just Security that, indeed, dozens of authoritarian or authoritarian-leaning leaders, from Cambodia to Hungary, quickly seized the moment to amass more power, undercut institutional checks and balances, and restrict citizen freedoms in ways that exceeded public-health necessity. But “almost a year in, another critical trend has become apparent: contrary to the hopes of some observers, the pandemic is also fueling the longer-term ascendancy of confrontational politics,” they write.

  • U.S. Supreme Court Allows 3 Muslim Men to Sue FBI Agents in “No Fly” Case

    The U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously Thursday that three Muslim men who were put on the U.S. government’s no-fly list for allegedly refusing to serve as FBI informants could sue FBI agents for monetary damages.

  • Coronavirus: Five Ways Some States Have Used the Pandemic to Curtail Human Rights and Democracy

    In the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak, at least 95 countries declared a national emergency, empowering governments to act in ways they would not normally to protect citizens. Such exceptional periods pose major risks for democracy and human rights, providing opportunities for leaders and states to consolidate power.

  • Barr: DOJ Has Found Nothing that Could Impact Election Result

    Attorney General Bill Barr has thrown cold water on the president’s false claims of massive voter fraud and a “stolen election.” Despite Department of Justice investigations turning up no evidence, and despite the fact that the president and his legal team have lost practically every legal challenge they filed — Trump and his allies are 1-39 in post-election litigation — Trump continues to spread falsehoods about the election, and continues to raise money — $170 million so far — based on these untrue claims.

  • Like Fire and Ice: Why Societies Are Increasingly Fragmenting

    Scientists at the Complexity Science Hub Vienna (CSH) show that the accelerating fragmentation of society - often referred to as filter bubbles - is a direct consequence of the growing number of social contacts. According to their model, societies can only be either cohesive or fragmented. And just as water becomes ice or gas at a certain temperature, a society abruptly changes from one state to the other at certain tipping points. If the basic sociological assumptions are correct, researchers see a huge problem that could endanger our democracies as well as the management of massive challenges such as the climate crisis or future pandemics.

  • Five Reasons Trump’s Challenge of the 2020 Election Will Not Lead to Civil War

    Some Americans fear that the deep political divisions in the country and President Donald Trump’s determination to challenge the results of the election will cause civil war. Those who object to Trump’s tactics argue that he behaves like an autocrat by delegitimizing sources of information that resist his narrative, demonizing political opponents, supporting political violence, and using courts as political tools Without a doubt, the president’s attempts to undermine faith in the integrity of the election are dangerous to democracy. Yet, for the moment, the system appears poised to hold together. The months ahead will be turbulent, but civil war is unlikely.

  • Trump Fires Security Chief Who Said 2020 Vote Was “Most Secure” in U.S. History

    Barely two weeks after the polls closed in an election he is now projected to lose, President Donald Trump took to Twitter to fire CISA’s director Christopher Krebs, the official responsible for spearheading efforts to secure the vote. Since the 3 November election, Trump, his campaign, and some of his supporters have issued a continuous stream of allegations about the integrity of the election, but evidence of massive voter fraud or other irregularities on a scale necessary to swing the election in Trump’s favor has not materialized. Late last Thursday, a coalition of federal and state officials, including CISA, further rejected the allegations as baseless. Krebs himself had also taken an active role in debunking rumors and unfounded allegations in the days and weeks following the election, taking to Twitter to dismiss some conspiracy theories as “nonsense.”

  • Cyberattacks and the Constitution

    The United States has one of the world’s strongest and most sophisticated capabilities to launch cyberattacks against adversaries. How does the U.S. Constitution allocate power to use that capability? And, Matthew Waxman asks, what does that allocation tell us about appropriate executive-legislative branch arrangements for setting and implementing cyber strategy?

  • The Leader Editorial: Let the Election Recount Process Play Out

    In 2000, Vice President Al Gore was losing the State of Florida - and thus the election. But rather than concede, Gore filed lawsuits and demanded selected recounts of counties more favorable to him. The Florida recounts took five weeks, and George Bush ultimately won. But no one begrudged Gore his right to review and contest the results. Donald Trump - and his volunteers and supporters - should be able to review the ballot count without being called sore losers or disrupters.

  • History Tells Us that a Contested Election Won’t Destroy American Democracy

    The United States has a long history of such contested elections. With one exception—the 1860 election, which happened in a unique context and which sparked the Civil War – theses challenges have not badly damaged the American political system. As a political scientist who studies elections, I believe that the fact that President Trump is contesting the results of the November election – and the same could have been said had Joe Biden been the one contesting the election results — American democracy will survive.

  • An Analytic Framework for Assessing Risks of U.S. Post-Election Violence

    Today and the days ahead are the most consequential period for the United States in at least a generation. Kyle Murphy writes that when he served as a senior analyst for the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, heI developed frameworks to evaluate the risk of election-related instability overseas. “As a National Security Council staff member at the White House, I relied on similar tools to help prepare for and organize U.S. government support for nine elections in West Africa.” He applied these tools to this year’s U.S. presidential election.

  • Easing Election-Related Tensions: Lessons for the U.S. from Elections Abroad

    Public officials and the news media have broken through the public consciousness with the message that the results of the election may not be known on the night of 3 November, potentially helping to ease tensions in the immediate aftermath. Rose Jackson writes that there has not, however, been sufficient messaging about what the voting and counting period will look like specifically in each state. “This lack of groundwork creates a dangerous potential for misunderstanding and malfeasance — and by extension, for dangerous disinformation.”

  • Preparing for Election Night: Counting and Reporting the Vote in Battleground States

    Disinformation surrounding election night reporting of vote counts poses a unique threat to public confidence in U.S. election results. Jack Caleb and colleagues note that election night reporting (ENR) refers to the real-time report of unofficial results that election officials share with the public after polls close. “This year, ENR may continue several days past Election Day due to the increased use of vote-by-mail and differing timelines among states for when mail-in ballots can be counted,” they write.

  • U.S. to Consider Overhauling Asylum System

    In an interview with the Associated Press last week, Stephen Miller, the architect of the Trump administration’s immigration policy, said that if Donald Trump wins a second term, the administration  would use agreements with Central American governments — the “Asylum Cooperative Agreements” — as models to get countries around the world, possibly in Africa and Asia, to field asylum claims from people seeking refuge in the United States. The two principles undergirding the projected asylum policy — the First Country of Asylum principle the Safe Third Country principle – form the basis for the Dublin Regulation which governs EU asylum policy.