Laura Thornton on the Summit for Democracy and the State of U.S. Democracy on Background Briefing

We begin with the two-day White House Summit for Democracy beginning on Thursday at which 111 nations will meet virtually to discuss the health of democratic governance and the need to bolster global democracies under attack from authoritarian and kleptocratic encroachment. Joining us is Laura Thornton, director and senior fellow at the Alliance for Securing Democracy at the German Marshall Fund who previously was director of global programs at the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, where she managed multiple teams across Europe focused on constitution-building, parliamentary process, elections, gender and inclusion, political parties, and democracy assessment and analysis. We discuss her op-ed at the Washington Post, “Why international election observers would give Wisconsin a failing grade” and the need for the United States to get its own democratic house in order as massive and multi-layered voter suppression by Trump’s GOP casts doubt on whether Republicans believe in democracy anymore opening up the possibility that 240 years of American democracy could end just like the Soviet Union did.