With Pennsylvania a crucial state in this year's presidential election, political scholars gathered in Philadelphia last night to share their insights into the fragility of democracy and the increasing authoritarian challenges.

Harvard University Government Professor Daniel Ziblatt said he believes rising polarization is causing people to view political opponents as enemies, and is fueled by economic stagnation and inequality.

He added that there are other factors behind the emerging global threats to democracy.

"For example, social media, the new rise of new technologies," said Ziblatt, "makes it harder and harder for people to kind of figure out what's true, what isn't true, the rise of misinformation."

Ziblatt said immigration-driven diversity is another factor, and has significantly reshaped Western Europe and the United States.

He said it has sparked a backlash, creating an environment that demagogues can exploit to undermine democracy. Conservative critics of immigration say they fear the impact on the nation's culture and fear vote fraud.

Harvard University Government Professor Steven Levitsky highlighted the ongoing threat to global democracy posed by historical patterns - like extreme polarization and authoritarianism.

While 20th-century authoritarian takeovers often involved military coups, he said today's democratic backsliding is more insidious, relying on tactics like undermining democratic institutions and electoral manipulation.

"Today in the 21st century, is for democracy to die a much slower, more gradual death, often at the hands of elected leaders themselves," said Levitsky. "Elected presidents and elected Prime Ministers who use the very institutions of democracy to subvert it. This is Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. It's Viktor Orban in Hungary, Erdogan in Turkey."

Ziblatt and Levitsky said these threats have risen during former President Donald Trump's political ascent. Both have written books on democratic decay in the U.S. and have proposed various solutions.

A series of events on the topic will take place in battleground states. The group democracyFIRST is highlighting the questions.

By Ilana Newman for The Daily Yonder.
Broadcast version by Eric Galatas for Colorado News Connection for the Public News Service/Daily Yonder Collaboration

With rural newsrooms nationwide struggling, a push to fund local news infrastructure comes from Press Forward, a coalition of national funders, including foundations like the MacArthur Foundation and the Knight Foundation, coming together to fund journalism through a coordinated effort.

Beyond its nationwide pursuits, Press Forward also supports local chapters aiming to bring together smaller foundations to continue to fund local news.

Announced in 2023, Press Forward pledged more than half a billion dollars to support local newsrooms across the country. Local news is vital for government accountability, fighting misinformation, civic engagement, and strengthening social ties.

According to the State of Local News Report for 2024, three-quarters of news deserts are located in USDA-characterized rural communities. Rural communities also are underserved by publications other than print, despite rising print costs. In the past year, more than 30 publications dropped their print publication entirely, going fully digital.

In the San Luis Valley, in rural southern Colorado, Chris Lopez saw a space for an alternative digital news source, despite the majority of digital-only news sources being housed in urban environments.

Lopez grew up in Alamosa, Colorado -population 9,833- but spent 30 years working for several newspapers, before returning to Alamosa in 2015. Lopez and his wife, MaryAnne Talbott started the Alamosa Citizen - a digital publication with original reporting and feature stories - in 2021, as an experiment.

"We felt that there was an opportunity in the market for something more regular, more robust, and told a different type of story than police blotters and things like that," Lopez said.

The Alamosa Citizen was one of nine Colorado newsrooms, six of which were in rural communities, to receive $100,000 over two years in the first open call for national Press Forward funding in October. While many publications are discontinuing the print side of publication due to increasing costs and fewer printers, Lopez founded the Alamosa Citizen as an online only publication intentionally.

Print publications have continually cut their coverage due to a lack of resources, said Lopez, causing frustration in readers who want real news, not a thin newspaper full of ads. Lopez said that the Alamosa Citizen reaches a wider audience than the local print newspaper because of geographic availability. He also hopes to reach a younger audience and instill a lifelong news habit in young readers.

"We're converting older people to the platforms. Our young audience of 18 to 35 will blow you away in terms of their engagement and activity," Lopez said.

Infrastructure Funding

Press Forward is accepting grant applications to support local news infrastructure until January 15th, 2025. These grants will support audience development, operations, revenue generation, and staff.

Sam Moody, associate director of Colorado Media Project, sees Rocky Mountain Community Radio (RMCR), a coalition of non-commercial radio stations around Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, and New Mexico, as a perfect example of the infrastructure-building work that will support rural news in the Mountain West.

"Our real benefit of our increasingly digital age is the way that information can and often needs to be shared across communities, especially rural communities," said Moody in a Daily Yonder interview.

RMCR strengthens the capabilities of each local radio station member, some of which have newsrooms without full-time reporters, or share staff with other outlets. It provides resources, stories, and support, said managing editor Maeve Conran. Conran shares content created by each station for distribution by the entire coalition. RMCR also facilitates collaborative reporting and idea sharing.

"We have an opportunity as a coalition to really leverage infrastructure money because we can share resources and infrastructure resources across an entire coalition. It doesn't just have to go to one station," Conran said.

Conran sees Press Forward funding as valuable because it is general operating funding instead of project-specific funding - something that a small rural radio station doesn't have the capacity to pursue. Rocky Mountain Community Radio plans to apply for infrastructure funding during this round of Press Forward funding.

Press Forward's local chapters offer another opportunity for rural news organizations to get funding. In February 2024, Colorado became one of what is now 31 local Press Forward chapters, including other rural regions like Central Appalachia. Colorado Media Project is the home of the Colorado chapter and is in the process of hiring a director for the program, according to Moody.

Corey Hutchins is a professor of journalism at Colorado College and writes a newsletter called "Inside the News in Colorado". Hutchins said that news in Colorado used to be siloed until organizations like Colorado Media Project (which he advises) came to be.

"It's created a statewide local journalism scene that is collaborative, where partnerships are easily formed, and a place where people involved in local journalism have support in a way I don't think they had in the past," Hutchins said.

With rural newspapers closing all the time, like Flagler News in eastern Colorado closing just before the new year, there is even more need for sustainable funding for local news.

Lopez is confident that the Press Forward funding will get the Alamosa Citizen to their five-year mark, but what happens after that is still unclear. "We have to keep building if we're going to stick around," said Lopez.


Ilana Newman wrote this article for The Daily Yonder.


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The nation's highest court has declined to hear a case about Montana voting laws which would have disproportionately affected Native people.

Last year, Montana's Supreme Court decided two laws passed in 2021 to ban same-day voter registration and paid absentee ballot collection were unconstitutional.

Alex Rate, deputy director and legal director of the ACLU of Montana, said people who face too many costs to voting often do not. For those who already face barriers like long distances to elections offices or no residential mail delivery, the laws could have tipped the scales. Rate argued it was the intention of the bill's backers.

"That's what we saw with these laws, was a very deliberate attempt to make it so difficult for people to vote that they would stay home," Rate asserted.

Montana Secretary of State Christi Jacobsen brought the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, which last week opted not to hear it. Rate noted the high court does not have jurisdiction to pick up a case on state voting laws.

According to the Brennan Center for Justice, states passed almost 80 restrictive voting laws between 2021 and 2024, nearly three times the number passed in the previous few years. So far in Montana's 2025 legislative session, a half-dozen voting-related bills have been introduced by lawmakers, all Republicans.

"We have repeatedly seen Montana courts strike down bills that the Legislature has passed as unconstitutional," Rate pointed out. "And yet they continue to advance things that are patently unlawful."

Rate described the citizens' rights written in the Montana Constitution as "ironclad," including the right to vote.


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The saga over votes in a North Carolina Supreme Court election continues, with potentially damaging effects for the state's democracy.

While the race is still uncertified, the current loser of the November election - Republican Judge Jefferson Griffin - wants more than 60,000 ballots thrown out.

He's challenging most of the votes from voters he says incorrectly filled out registration forms.

But Jennifer Rubin, president of the League of Women Voters of North Carolina, said this is an attempt to invalidate votes after an election.

"Which is really unprecedented," said Rubin, "and there is no real valid reason for these votes to be discounted after an election, after they've been legitimately, legally cast."

The League of Women Voters of North Carolina filed a friend of the court brief in defense of voters in the case.

Griffin is currently behind Democratic Supreme Court Justice Allison Riggs by a little more than 700 votes. The case is in both federal and state courts.

The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals is hearing oral arguments today to decide whether to send the case back to the state.

Rubin said regardless of the outcome, the current fight over the race impacts how people see elections.

"These kinds of actions sow distrust in people's minds in the election process," said Rubin, "and it also should be a real alarm for North Carolina voters that something like this could happen."

Rubin noted that unfortunately, this could be a playbook used in future elections too.

"We're concerned beyond this race," said Rubin, "that this is a trend that could potentially continue as an attempt to invalidate voters."