American Democracy Minute

The American Democracy Minute Radio Report & Podcast for April 4, 2025 Secretaries of State, Pro-Voter Groups and Election Officials Submit Letters Opposing the SAVE Act, Likely to Disenfranchise Millions of Americans in Effort to Block Noncitizens With a vote on the SAVE Act imminent in the U.S. House, Secretaries of State, pro-voter groups and elections officials are voicing alarm at likely...

The American Democracy Minute Radio Report & Podcast for April 3, 2024 $76 Million was Spent in the Wisconsin Supreme Court Race.   Will All That Money Translate Into Fairer Congressional Voting Districts? In the 2025 Wisconsin Supreme Court race, an estimated $76 million dollars was spent - shattering a  U.S. record for judicial races.  But will it result in fairer Congressional voting distri...

The American Democracy Minute Radio Report & Podcast for April 2, 2025 Georgia Prepares to Purge a Half Million Voters - 6% of Its Voter Rolls.  Even if You Haven’t Moved, You Can Be Purged Just For Not Voting. Voter list maintenance is a part of our election system.  People die, change their names, or move out of state.   Local, state and county officials use sophisticated voter registration...

The American Democracy Minute Radio Report & Podcast for April 1, 2025 Roundup:  Trump 3rd Term, Musk WI Lottery Not Blocked, NC Supreme Court Candidate Urged to Drop Challenge, UT Gov Signs End to Universal Mail Ballots With the erosion of American democracy norms coming at a head spinning pace, we have a roundup today on Donald Trump not ruling out a third term, Elon Musk’s million-dollar lo...

The American Democracy Minute Radio Report & Podcast for March 31, 2025 Wisconsin AG Appeals to State Supreme Court to Block Elon Musk’s Million Dollar Lottery for WI GOP Voters - Oops – Make that ‘Spokesmen’ Shortly after our report on Elon Musk’s $100 dollar bounty for signing and referring others to a Wisconsin “activist judges” petition, he sweetened the deal Thursday, dangling a promise o...

The American Democracy Minute Radio Report & Podcast for March 28, 2025 New Trump Executive Order Attempts to Bypass Congress & States to Require Proof of Citizenship Documents & Mandate Election Deadlines President Donald Trump issued an executive order March 25th implementing portions of the likely doomed Safeguard American Voter Eligibility, or ‘SAVE’ Act.  Among its restrictive pro...

The American Democracy Minute Radio Report & Podcast for March 27, 2025 Brian is so sick with a cold today that he can barely talk! This story from January is a good follow up to our March 24 story on Monday's oral arguments for Louisiana v. Callais held in the U.S. Supreme Court. It's a reminder that Voting Rights Act Section 2 claims not only come from Black Americans, discriminated against...

The American Democracy Minute Radio Report & Podcast for March 26, 2025 Musk Data Collection Scheme Offers in Support of WI Supreme Court Candidate Offers $100 Bounty to Refer Petition Signers An Elon Musk Super PAC is offering a $100 bounty for Wisconsin petition signers in a data collection scheme just days before a state supreme court election.  While it’s illegal under federal and state la...

The American Democracy Minute Radio Report & Podcast for March 25, 2025 Iowa’s Secretary of State Challenged 2,176 Suspected Noncitizen Voters in 2024.  Only 35 Noncitizens Actually Voted. Prior to the  2024 election, President Donald Trump made baseless allegations of widespread noncitizen voting, spurring election officials in Iowa and other states to identify suspected noncitizens on their...

The American Democracy Minute Radio Report & Podcast for March 24, 2025 US Supreme Court Hears Oral Arguments March 24th in Louisiana v. Callais with Protections for Minority Voters Hanging in the Balance The U.S. Supreme Court hears oral arguments March 24th in Louisiana v. Callais, in one of the most important voting rights cases of the year.   Voting Rights Act rules allowing minority Ameri...

The American Democracy Minute Radio Report & Podcast for March 21, 2025 Washington State 2022 Audit of Rejected Mail Ballots Offers Valuable Insights for States Using Signature Verification A Washington State audit of rejected 2020 mail-in ballots offers insight on whose ballots are more likely to be rejected, and recommends actions to reduce that number - over 37,000 in 2024.    Some podcasti...

The American Democracy Minute Radio Report & Podcast for March 20, 2025 Washington Supreme Court Rules Signature Matching Can Be Used to Disqualify Ballots But Acknowledges It Impacts Too Many Voters Washington State implemented their universal vote-by-mail system in 2013, and built in signature-matching for identity verification.  A March ruling by the state supreme court upholds that rule as...

The American Democracy Minute Radio Report & Podcast for March 19, 2025 Utah Legislature Passes 2029 End to Its Popular Universal Mail-In Voting System,  Replacing it With an Opt-In List & More ID Utah adopted universal mail-in voting in 2013, with no widespread misuse in its 12 years.  March 6th, the GOP-dominated Utah legislature approved an amended bill to end it in 2029, despite 76% of...

The American Democracy Minute Radio Report & Podcast for March 18, 2025 How Quickly We Forget; If You Were an Irish Catholic Immigrant in the 1850s, the Xenophobic ‘Know Nothing’ Party Tried to Suppress Your Vote How quickly we forget.  If you were an Irish Catholic immigrant in the1840s through the 1920s, many of your Protestant fellow Americans, some of whom joined the xenophobic Know Nothin...

The American Democracy Minute Radio Report & Podcast for March 17, 2025 What Corruption? Trump Pardons Former KY State Senator for Campaign Finance Fraud, and May Be Preparing to Dismantle DOJ Public Integrity Section On the heels of dropped charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams under suspicious circumstances, President Donald Trump has pardoned a former Kentucky state senator serving...

The American Democracy Minute Radio Report & Podcast for March 14, 2025 DOGE Cuts 300 Experts From CISA’s Election Security Team and U.S. Government Cybersecurity Support; Funding for State Cybersecurity Also Suspended More Trump administration mass layoffs at CISA have experts raising concerns over U.S. readiness for cyber attacks on election infrastructure and federal agency networks.  An ad...

The American Democracy Minute Radio Report & Podcast for March 13, 2025 Wait, What?  Nevada Law Protecting Election Workers Challenged in Federal Appeals Court Nevada Senate Bill 403, made it a felony to harass or intimidate election workers.  In a federal appeals court March 7th, four right wing activists claimed that the law is too vague, and could allow THEM to be unfairly intimidated again...

The American Democracy Minute Radio Report & Podcast for March 12, 2025 Will Louisiana v. Callais Be the Latest Blow Against the Voting Rights Act of 1965 by SCOTUS? On the 60th anniversary of Bloody Sunday in Selma, Alabama, we’re examining how the landmark protections it moved forward in the Voting Rights Act of 1965 are now being dismantled by the U.S. Supreme Court’s far right majority.  L...

The American Democracy Minute Radio Report & Podcast for March 11, 2025 The Voting Rights Act of 1965, Born Out of ‘Bloody Sunday,’ Fights for Its Life in the Face of an Activist U.S. Supreme Court Majority Five months after peaceful voting rights marchers were viciously attacked by their own government in Selma, Alabama, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was signed by President Lyndon Johnson.  A...

The American Democracy Minute Radio Report & Podcast for March 10, 2025 They Marched for Voting Rights and Were Beaten by Their Government.   On the 60th Anniversary of ‘Bloody Sunday’ the Struggle Continues March 7th marked 60 years since Black Americans, demanding their right to vote, were brutally beaten and gassed by their government in Selma, Alabama.  The ‘Blood Sunday’ attack outraged m...

The American Democracy Minute Radio Report & Podcast for March 7, 2025 North Carolina: Former Election Directors Weigh In On Unresolved Supreme Court Race; Former Justice Argues Partisan Gerrymandering Akin to ‘Stuffing the Ballot Box’ In a brief to the North Carolina Court of Appeals, a bipartisan group of former county election directors urged the court to reject a claim that as many as 65,0...

Brian is away today, so we’re rebroadcasting a report from last July, which is particularly apt for the shattering of the norms of the presidency we’ve witnessed in the first weeks of the Trump second term. The American Democracy Minute Radio Report & Podcast for March 6, 2025 Would the Founding Fathers Have Embraced Having Unfettered Power for the Presidency?  Not Likely. Anti-authoritarian f...

The American Democracy Minute Radio Report & Podcast for March 5, 2025 The Deadline was Feb. 19th and the Trump Transition Team Still Hasn’t Disclosed Its Transition Donors We reported last year that the Trump transition team had been funding itself through unknown private donations, and refused to sign a General Services Administration transition support memo which limited private donations t...

The American Democracy Minute Radio Report & Podcast for March 4, 2025 Like the FEC, the FCC Could Fall Under the Control of Partisan Actors Under Executive Order 14215, Potentially Restricting Access to the Airwaves In our last report, we explained how Executive Order 14215 claims Presidential authority over the FEC and other independent agencies, putting fair elections at risk.  Manipulation...

The American Democracy Minute Radio Report & Podcast for March 3, 2025 Executive Order Asserting Presidential Authority Over Independent Agencies Could Put Federal Election Oversight Under Partisan Control On February 18th, President Donald Trump issued Executive Order #14215, entitled “Ensuring Accountability for All Agencies.”  It claims Presidential authority over historically independent a...