Becvar is co-publisher of The Fulcrum and executive director of the Bridge Alliance Education Fund.
In another pivotal moment, the Supreme Court decided Wednesday to take up former president Donald Trump’s claim of immunity from prosecution for his efforts to subvert the 2020 election. This development, arriving as we edge closer to the 2024 presidential election, fuels further delays and injects a new level of uncertainty, casting a shadow over the electoral landscape. It’s increasingly perceived as a strategic maneuver by Trump to entangle legal proceedings with the electoral timeline, complicating the discourse and deepening the national polarization ahead of a critical election. The scenario is one glimpse into the broader threat of Trump’s 2024 candidacy.
On Monday, Just Security published The American Autocracy Threat Tracker, a new public resource that meticulously catalogs the plans, promises and propositions being developed by Trump and his circle. The tracker amalgamates data from media outlets, resources such as Protect Democracy’s The Authoritarian Playbook, and direct information from the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025. Noteworthy is its inclusion of data from Trump’s campaign website and Truth Social – as well as an always-updating searchable data set of all of Trump’s Truth Social posts.
This tracker is more than a repository; it’s a call for critical engagement, starting with its initial chapters that paint a vision of the beginning of Trump’s potential second term, marked by authoritarian pledges to serve as a “ dictator on day one ” to enforce his plans to “close the borders” and “drill, drill, drill.” It equips citizens and organizations with a unified framework for dissecting the realities of the Republican frontrunner’s campaign narratives, fostering a necessary national dialogue.
Amidst this backdrop, a January 2024 survey conducted by the University of Massachusetts Amherst and YouGov produced a startling finding: a significant portion of respondents showed a perplexing openness to Trump’s authoritarian undertones. This result contrasted sharply with a broader aversion to dictatorship revealed in a separate Economist and YouGov poll from December 2023, potentially indicating a nuanced, though troubling, interpretation of “temporary autocracy.” Such findings continually underscore an alarming dissonance in public sentiment towards the foundational principles of American democracy.
The discourse on democracy’s relevance in contemporary America is reaching an inflection point. Recent polls, including a longitudinal survey by The Democracy Fund, indicate a waning commitment to democratic norms among Americans, a sentiment further corroborated by Danielle Allen’s insights published last week in The Washington Post. Allen’s analysis reveals a generational divergence in the valuation of democracy, posing a stark challenge: The sustainability of democracy hinges on the people’s desire for it.
In my tenure with the Bridge Alliance Education Fund, my underlying quest has been to identify a unifying thread that could weave together the diverse strands of the healthy democracy ecosystem. Our mission is to enhance and amplify the work of those working in civic education, engagement, electoral reform, social cohesion and trusted information. It is intuitive that these spheres of practice enhance one another and are all vital to a healthy society and the institutions that serve it.
However, the collective insight and power of the ecosystem can only coalesce into a movement with at least one specific, shared goal. We must continue focusing on a wide range of work areas to repair our country's social and political infrastructure. Still, it's also essential that we consider our work aligned with the goal of a constitutional democracy supermajority. That means a supermajority of citizens agreeing, as Allen puts it, on “the basic rules of the game.” Inside the bounds of those rules we will disagree, but hopefully we can disagree better within the stability of those boundaries.
The path forward demands more than passive endorsement; it calls for active defense and promotion of core democratic values, including “constitutionalism, the rule of law, inclusivity, nonviolence, and respect for the electoral process”. It is not just possible but imperative for us to rise to this challenge, fostering a culture of dialogue and advocacy that strengthens, rather than erodes, the bedrock of our democratic republic.
photo courtesy of Michael Varga.
An Independent Voter's Perspective on Current Political Divides
In the column, "Is Donald Trump Right?", Fulcrum Executive Editor, Hugo Balta, wrote:
For millions of Americans, President Trump’s second term isn’t a threat to democracy—it’s the fulfillment of a promise they believe was long overdue.
Is Donald Trump right?
Should the presidency serve as a force for disruption or a safeguard of preservation?
Balta invited readers to share their thoughts at newsroom@fulcrum.us.
David Levine from Portland, Oregon, shared these thoughts...
I am an independent voter who voted for Kamala Harris in the last election.
I pay very close attention to the events going on, and I try and avoid taking other people's opinions as fact, so the following writing should be looked at with that in mind:
Is Trump right? On some things, absolutely.
As to DEI, there is a strong feeling that you cannot fight racism with more racism or sexism with more sexism. Standards have to be the same across the board, and the idea that only white people can be racist is one that I think a lot of us find delusional on its face. The question is not whether we want equality in the workplace, but whether these systems are the mechanism to achieve it, despite their claims to virtue, and many of us feel they are not.
I think if the Democrats want to take back immigration as an issue then every single illegal alien no matter how they are discovered needs to be processed and sanctuary cities need to end, every single illegal alien needs to be found at that point Democrats could argue for an amnesty for those who have shown they have been Good actors for a period of time but the dynamic of simply ignoring those who break the law by coming here illegally is I think a losing issue for the Democrats, they need to bend the knee and make a deal.
I think you have to quit calling the man Hitler or a fascist because an actual fascist would simply shoot the protesters, the journalists, and anyone else who challenges him. And while he definitely has authoritarian tendencies, the Democrats are overplaying their hand using those words, and it makes them look foolish.
Most of us understand that the tariffs are a game of economic chicken, and whether it is successful or not depends on who blinks before the midterms. Still, the Democrats' continuous attacks on the man make them look disloyal to the country, not to Trump.
Referring to any group of people as marginalized is to many of us the same as referring to them as lesser, and it seems racist and insulting.
We invite you to read the opinions of other Fulrum Readers:
Trump's Policies: A Threat to Farmers and American Values
The Trump Era: A Bitter Pill for American Renewal
Federal Hill's Warning: A Baltimorean's Reflection on Leadership
Also, check out "Is Donald Trump Right?" and consider accepting Hugo's invitation to share your thoughts at newsroom@fulcrum.us.
The Fulcrum will select a range of submissions to share with readers as part of our ongoing civic dialogue.
We offer this platform for discussion and debate.