r/democrats

Observation:

We cannot simply ignore what has happened during this administration and restore the system that existed before it. We should use what we have learned to make American democracy substantially more tamper-resistant. As we argued in The Consent of the Governed Requires Understanding What Is Being Authorized, American governmental authority derives from the consent of the governed, and meaningful consent requires understanding what is being authorized (Defenders of Democracy, 2026). That principle points toward concrete safeguards: elections that are understandable and independently verifiable; protection against the intentional concealment of major governing agendas, which becomes fraud-like when governmental authority is obtained through material deception of voters; protection of reliable governmental, scientific, and statistical information; enforceable limits on executive abuse and self-dealing; reconsideration of Citizens United and the ability of concentrated wealth to dominate the political information environment; and electoral reforms such as ranked-choice voting that allow voters to express their preferences more accurately. The objective should be to make democratic government harder to tamper with, by any President, party, corporation, billionaire, or public official.

https://defendersofdemocracy.substack.com/p/the-consent-of-the-governed-requires?r=104a16&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=post%20viewer

Excerpt:

We can make Roosevelt’s promise a reality through a comprehensive program I’ve called the American Security Guarantee, a set of ambitious goals that would eliminate the precarity defining Americans’ lives and ensure that everyone enjoys the economic security that right now feels out of reach. We start by guaranteeing every American access to affordable health care, through their choice of a government or private plan. To fulfill Roosevelt’s vision of a lifelong system of social insurance, we pursue a new economic security agenda. It includes a new federal wage insurance program to help workers maintain their salary levels if they are forced to take positions that pay less, a community-focused job assistance program and a one-stop-shop portal where Americans can check their eligibility across all benefit programs. The goal is to show Americans what they are getting from their government in return for their hard work — and to get higher wages and concrete benefits in the hands of working people, to ensure that in the richest country in the world, nobody falls through the cracks.

archive link:

https://archive.is/bjRnJ

Excerpts:

He hadn’t set foot outside the United States since he was 12, when he arrived on a fishing boat as part of the 1980 Mariel boatlift from Cuba with his mother, a sister and her infant daughter. As a teenager, he joined a Miami gang, and in his 20s, he took a plea deal after being charged with attempted murder for shooting a rival gangster in the leg. That would have been grounds to deport him had he been from almost any other country. But Cuba wasn’t cooperating with the United States on deportations, so Mosquera was allowed to stay, provided he checked in with the authorities each year. He built a new life for himself, becoming a specialty plumber and a born-again Christian; he married and had four daughters.

Then one day in June of last year, Mosquera, who is 59, went to renew his work permit at an immigration office. The appointment was usually short; Mosquera had borrowed the company truck so that he could head to a job when he was done. But it didn’t turn out that way. An immigration official told him that his time in America was up. With President Trump now back in office, Mosquera knew these were not empty words. But if the United States couldn’t send him to Cuba, where would he go?

They were transferred to a military cargo plane at a U.S. air base in the East African nation Djibouti, and more than a day later, the five men landed in Eswatini. Before they could make sense of the situation, they were forced inside a metal cage that was fitted onto a transport truck and driven to the Matsapha Correctional Complex, Eswatini’s maximum-security prison. In a post on X, the Department of Homeland Security had called Mosquera and the four other men “depraved monsters” who were “so uniquely barbaric their home countries refuse to take them back.” Now they were met by dozens of guards wielding large sticks.

That was more than a year ago. Mosquera still sits in that same maximum-security prison with nowhere to go. No charges against him. No way to appeal his predicament. No sign that he will ever be freed. Cuba has not signaled any willingness to take him, and Mosquera says he has no desire to go there. Eswatini will not release him from prison, even though he served his time in the United States and committed no crime in Africa.

Mosquera is one of a growing number of people whom the Trump administration has put into a global administrative limbo. For more than a year, it has been offering millions of dollars — often without disclosing the payments — to foreign governments to take immigrants the United States was having trouble deporting to their countries of origin. This includes not only people with criminal pasts like Mosquera but also deportees who were under court protections not to be returned to their homelands because they faced threats there.

Joint military exercises underway between the United States and South Korea are being cut short, both countries said, after President Donald Trump, citing his “very good” relationship with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, ordered that they be reduced.

The annual U.S.-South Korea drills, known as Ulchi Freedom Shield, will end Aug. 21 rather than Aug. 27 as originally scheduled, a Defense Department official said.

“Associated live-training events have been reduced, with certain events canceled or converted to simulations,” the official said, adding that the adjustments “preserve essential readiness.”

“There will be no degradation to U.S. training objectives,” the official said.

The South Korean National Defense Ministry also said the two countries “have agreed, at the request of the U.S. side, to make some adjustments to the duration and scale of the exercise.”

Some of the combined field training exercises will be conducted on a reduced scale, the ministry said in a statement, adding that the U.S. and South Korea “are currently consulting on the specific details.”

“Going forward, the ROK and the United States will discuss and implement various measures to achieve the objectives of the UFS exercise and maintain a robust combined defense posture,” the ministry said, using an abbreviation for South Korea’s formal name, the Republic of Korea.

The ministry declined to comment on a reported meeting Tuesday between Gen. Xavier Brunson, the commander of U.S. Forces Korea, and South Korean Defense Minister Ahn Gyu-back.

The surprise comments by Trump, which he made on social media hours before the exercises began Monday, have unsettled South Korea, which relies heavily on the U.S. for its security, as well as other U.S. allies in the region facing a growing threat from nuclear-armed North Korea.

South Korean Foreign Affairs Minister Cho Hyun said Ahn had been “in close consultation with the U.S. side” since Trump’s social media post. He told lawmakers Wednesday that “neither our government nor officials in the U.S. government had any prior knowledge” of Trump’s order to scale back the drills.

According to U.S. Forces Korea, the Ulchi Freedom Shield exercise with South Korea, which hosts 28,000 American troops, aims to build understanding between the two militaries to ensure their “ability to fortify the combined defense posture” and enhance their response to “a spectrum of security threats.”

Foremost among those threats is North Korea, which in recent years has advanced its missile and nuclear capabilities and developed a close security relationship with Russia.

Though the U.S. and South Korea say their drills are defensive in nature, North Korea routinely criticizes them as a rehearsal for invasion and often test-fires weapons in protest.

In his post Sunday, Trump said the exercises sent a “totally inappropriate and hostile” message to North Korea, which he said had been “unthreatening and respectful” during his time in office.

He also expressed anger over South Korea’s level of involvement in the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran and said he had ordered Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to “substantially reduce” the exercises.

Trump, who met with Kim three times during his first term as president, has repeatedly expressed interest in resuming talks after their earlier round of diplomacy collapsed in 2019. But Kim, whose position has strengthened considerably since then, has rebuffed overtures from Trump, as well as South Korean President Lee Jae Myung, saying he will not come to the table unless they drop their demands for North Korea to denuclearize first.

Trump told reporters Monday that he was not sacrificing the security of U.S. allies to curry favor with North Korea and that he was “actually making it much safer.”

He said Kim had responded to his outreach, without providing details. “I understand him; he understands me,” Trump said.

North Korea has not publicly responded to Trump’s call to curtail the exercises. A commentary published Wednesday by the state-run news agency KCNA reiterated the regime’s criticism of the drills, saying Pyongyang’s “exercise of its right to self-defense will continue to completely neutralize the enemies’ military threat.”