Trust in US Institutions has ‘never been lower’–here’s why that matters.Guardian Madeleine Aggeler  June 11,2024 Americans don’t have much faith in America right now. Or at least not in its institutions.In 2022, a Gallup poll found that Americans had experienced “significant declines” in trust in 11 of 16 major US institutions. The supreme court and the persidency saw the largest drops in public confidence – by 11% and 15%, respectively. Trust also fell in the medical system, banks, police, public schools and newspapers. Things didn’t improve in 2023: a follow-up poll found that levels of trust remained low, with none of the scores ``worsening or improving meaningfully”. Public confidence waxes and wanes, but these numbers are notably bleak. Trust in institutions has “never been lower”, confirms Jeffrey Jones, a senior editor of the Gallup poll and the author of the 2022 report. This mistrust is not a one-time blip, a rough patch in an otherwise happy relationship between a country and its people. According to polling experts, it is partly the result of a decades-long effort by political leaders to erode public confidence in institutions such as science, media and government. And the consequences are serious. Not trusting the forces that govern their lives is detrimental to the health and wellbeing of individuals and communities, and makes the country less prepared to face a major crisis. “Trust is the grease that oils the gears and makes things work,” says Dr Marc Hetherington, professor of political science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “Without it, everything is more difficult.”  But how did we lose this trust in the first place? And is there a way to get it back?  

With the exception of a couple of surges, the US “has been in a really low-trust environment since the 1970s”, says Hetherington. At that point, public confidence in institutions started to fall. Part of this was a natural leveling out. After the second world war, trust levels had been “extraordinarily high”, Hetherington says. “Probably anomalously so.”And part of it was due to the simple fact that – after the civil unrest of the 1960s and the energy crisis followed by stagflation of the 1970s – many Americans felt the government just wasn’t performing very well. But there was another force at play. Around this time, the Republican party became “the anti-government party”, Hetherington says. “There was a lot of political hay to be made from actively saying negative things about institutions, and it helped win elections.” By 1984, the Republican party’s official platform condemned government overreach. “Not every problem cries out for a federal solution,” it read.Over the next few decades, there were spikes of trust – usually during sunny economic times, like in the middle of the Reagan administration or at the end of the Clinton presidency. There were also spikes that arose from crises, like the months following 9/11. But overall, trust trended downwards. “For the last 20 years, confidence has been depressed,” Jones says. He notes two major drops. The first during the second term of the George W Bush administration, when average confidence dropped 10%, and the second from 2019 to now, when average confidence dropped another 10% (save a brief spike during the early days of Covid).

Numbers can feel abstract. “As individuals, we rely on institutions to sustain various aspects of our lives, whether we realize it or not,” says Keanu Jackson, a licensed social worker and therapist in New York City. Trust gets undermined when people feel like the institutions they rely on are not concerned with their wellbeing, he says, adding that when it happens, it can lead to “feelings of disillusionment, increased anxiety and stress, identity confusion, and a decreased sense of stability”.Constantly questioning the organizations that govern our lives is exhausting. “Having institutions that we trust is an easier lift for us cognitively,” says Dr Lynn Bufka, deputy chief of professional practice at the American Psychological Association. If someone feels that they have to double-check government guidance, news reports and medical directives, it wears on them and leads to a greater sense of uncertainty and anxiety. Low public confidence can also suggest “a lower collective sense of who we are”, Bufka notes. If Americans don’t have a shared understanding of how institutions represent them and what they can depend on, that may lead to greater splintering between groups. “That can potentially lead to anticipation of more general conflict, which at minimum would put you on edge,” she says. On a larger scale, the effects can be even more devastating. And perhaps they already have been, Hetherington says. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2024/jun/11/trust-us-institutions

Was Donald Trump a king as president? The US supreme court thinks so.  In ruling that Trump enjoys ‘absolute immunity’ for ‘official acts’ as president, the court has set a disturbing precedent   Guardian Moira Donegan  Mon 1 Jul 2024   Is the president a king? The US supreme court thinks so. On Monday, in its very last ruling of the term, the chief justice, John Roberts, writing for the court’s six conservatives, held in Trump v United States that Donald Trump has “absolute immunity” from criminal prosecution for all acts that can be interpreted as part of the official course of his “core” duties, and “presumptive” immunity for all other official acts.

The move dramatically extends executive authority, insulates past and future presidents from prosecution for illegal or even treasonous actions they carry out while in office and renders the former president largely criminally immune for his role in the January 6 insurrection. The court said that Trump cannot be charged for some of his “official” actions in the lead-up to the insurrection, including his attempts to pressure Mike Pence and his efforts to weaponize the justice department to force some states to reverse their election results. Much of Jack Smith’s criminal case against Trump has thereby been voided. What remains of the January 6 prosecution will now be remanded to a lower court, which will be tasked with determining which charges, if any, can proceed against Trump under the court’s new, unprecedented vision of executive immunity. That trial, if it ever happens, will not take place until long after this November’s elections, and will now likely not be able to address most of Trump’s efforts to assist in either the judicial or violent coup attempts.

Richard Nixon’s status as a criminal and crook was once summarized by recounting his ominous declaration: “Well, when the president does it, that means it’s not illegal.” The court has now taken that vulgar absurdity and made it law. It is difficult to overstate the blow this decision will have to the integrity of our democratic system of government, or the depth of its insult to the principles of the separation of powers and the rule of law. In a ruling issued on stark partisan lines, the court’s conservatives elevated the president to a position that no person can hold in a republic: one with a sweeping entitlement to commit criminal acts for the sake of his own vulgar self-interest, without any fear of criminal legal repercussions. Criminal law no longer applies to the president; so long as he occupies the office, he exists in a permanent state of The Purge-like immunity, the ordinary rules of social and civic life suspended for him, able to use the trappings of power to flatter his vanity, reward his friends and punish his enemies as it suits him.

This is one of the most consequential and frightening supreme court decisions of our lives. On the verge of an election in which Trump may well be restored to presidential power, the court has officially declared that he cannot be held accountable for abuses of that power in a criminal court. In its holding, the court’s majority made a flimsy distinction between the immunity they are granting to presidents for “core powers” and “official” acts – terms whose precise meanings they don’t define – and the criminal liability that Trump and other presidents still have for “unofficial” acts. But these distinctions are likely to collapse if any prosecutor, be it Smith or someone else, actually attempts to use them. That’s because the scope of the presidential office and its powers are so broad that its “core” powers are difficult to tell from its extraneous ones, and “official” and “unofficial” acts by the president are likely to prove ambiguous. The court also declares, needlessly, that conduct undertaken in the pursuit of “official” powers cannot be used in prosecutions of “unofficial” acts – another protection for presidential conduct that will hamstring future prosecutions. The president, meanwhile, also retains the pardon power – meaning that he is entitled not only to commit crimes, but to secure impunity for his accomplices.

In practice, Trump – and any subsequent president, should we ever get to have one – is now unaccountable to either legislative checks or criminal law. It is a development that has radically changed the nature of the office. The president is now less like a democratically accountable official than like a little emperor, endowed by the court with an all-encompassing right to wield power as he sees fit, much like the way that divine right used to bless the actions of kings. There is virtually nothing that he is not allowed to do. The president is now less like a democratically accountable official than like a little emperor, endowed by the court with an all-encompassing right to wield power as he sees fit, much like the way that divine right used to bless the actions of kings. There is virtually nothing that he is not allowed to do......unbelievable and disturbing- read on     https://www.theguardian.com/global/commentisfree/article/2024/jul/01/trump-president-immunity-supreme-                                                          .....AND......    Could Kamala Harris be a winner for the Democrats if Biden steps aside? The vice-president would be a logical choice if Biden does opt out, but some are already looking to other contenders. In the unlikely scenario Biden decides not to run, the most obvious choice to replace him would be his 59-year-old vice president and running mate, Kamala Harris. But it would not be automatic – and other candidates would likely challenge Harris, who has suffered her own low approval ratings, for the nomination......read on   https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jun/29/kamala-harris-joe-biden-trump?utm_term=66813aba59d98aae4cd6501ba9f62fe7&utm_campaign=GuardianTodayUS&utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&CMP=GTUS_email

If Democracy Dies, So What? Whether we like it or not, the 2024 election is a referendum on Joe Biden only insofar as he represents the alternative to authoritarian rule. Common Dreams ROBERT IVIE May 23, 2024  Robert Ivie is Professor Emeritus in English (Rhetoric) and American Studies at Indiana University, Bloomington. His latest book, with Oscar Giner, is After Empire: Myth, Rhetoric, and Democratic Revival (2024). Other books include: Hunt the Devil: A Demonology of U.S. War Culture (2015), with Oscar Giner; Dissent from War (2007); and Democracy and America’s War on Terror (2005). For additional information and blog posts see his website and blog.   Maybe the situation is not quite so bad? The March Reuters/Ipsos poll indicates, for instance, that 23% of the American public consider political extremism or threats to democracy the most important problem facing the US (36% of Democrats, 25% of independents, and 11% of Republicans). Of course, incompatible definitions of democracy, extremism, and threats held by voters of different political persuasions would reduce even further these relatively small numbers of voters who might support Biden to defend democracy from autocracy. If the candidate for democracy wins, the politics of persuasion in a pluralistic polity and governance by checks and balances continue; if he loses, rule by demagoguery and coercion begins. Let’s say the number of voters sufficiently troubled by the threat to democracy stands now somewhere between 2% and 23%. Maybe even as many as a third of Democrats plus half of Independents (together amounting to about 25% of voters) currently agree that the Republican Party’s presumptive candidate is a grave enough threat to democracy to vote for Biden despite concerns related to his age, inflation, interest rates, immigration, police reform, the Israel-Gaza war, and more. 

That is not enough to win the election, unless something changes between now and November to increase the number of voters seriously worried about an authoritarian victory and/or convinced on economic or other grounds to support Biden. At least among Democratic voters and the subset of independents who tend to vote for Democratic candidates, it should be obvious that Donald Trump’s intentions for a second term are decidedly antidemocratic, that there is good reason to worry his authoritarian rule would not be restrained by democratic norms or institutions, and that a peaceful return to democracy would be unlikely after he takes power. Reminders regularly appear in the news. Time magazine’s Eric Cortellessa, for instance, recently interviewed Trump to find out what he would do in a second term. The answer, in broad outline, is an imperial presidency that would reshape the country. He would deport millions of people, build migrant detention camps, and deploy the US military both at the border and in the country’s interior. He would allow red states to monitor and prosecute women who seek abortions. He would dictate to the Department of Justice and fire any US Attorney who defies his orders. He would pardon his supporters who attacked the US Capitol and punish his enemies. He would replace existing federal civil servants with political supporters. In short, Cortellessa reports......

Europe unprepared for rapidly growing climate risks, report finds. Dangers of wildfires, extreme weather and other factors outgrowing preparedness, European Environment Agency says. Guardian Adjit Niranjan Sun 10 Mar 2024 Europe is not prepared for the rapidly growing climate risks it faces, the European Environment Agency (EEA) has said in its first risk assessment. From wildfires burning down homes to violent weather straining public finances, the report says more action is needed to address half of the 36 significant climate risks with potentially severe consequences that it identifies for Europe. Five more risks need urgent action, the report says. “Our new analysis shows that Europe faces urgent climate risks that are growing faster than our societal preparedness,” said Leena Ylä-Mononen, the EEA’s executive director.The report looks at how severe the climate threats are and how well prepared Europe is to deal with them. It says the most pressing risks – which are growing worse as fossil fuel pollution heats the planet – are heat stress, flash floods and river floods, the health of coastal and marine ecosystems, and the need for solidarity funds to recover from disasters.   When the researchers reassessed six of the risks for southern Europe, which they described as a “hotspot” region, they found urgent action was also needed to keep crops safe and to protect people, buildings and nature from wildfires.

There is increasing evidence of adaptation but “it’s certainly not enough”, said Robbert Biesbroek, a report author from Wageningen University, who also co-led the chapter on Europe in the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report on adaptation. “It’s not going quickly enough and it’s not reaching the ones that need it most,” he said. “It’s quite scary in that sense.”  The report also warns of “cascading and compounding” risks, which it says current stress tests in the financial sector are likely to underestimate. Hot weather will dry out southern Europe, for instance, killing crops and shrinking water supplies, but will also harden soils, making flash floods more likely, and dry out vegetation, meaning wildfires can spread faster. Governments trying to respond to several crises will be more stretched for resources, as will communities that fail to prepare. “The risks are simply outpacing the developments of policies,” said Blaž Kurnik, the head of the EEA impacts and adaptation group.Europe has heated up more than any other continent since the Industrial Revolution. It has heated about twice as fast as the global average as carbon dioxide has clogged the atmosphere and trapped sunlight.The researchers looked at two possible scenarios of low and high warming over the century. They did not consider potential tipping points in the climate system, arguing that the effects of such dramatic changes would unfold over longer time periods and so did not change the urgency of action in the short term. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/mar/10/europe-unprepared-for-climate-risks-eea-report