Joe Biden will be addressing electoral integrity, fighting foreign interference in elections and bolstering independent media at the end of his virtual summit for democracy today.
On the first day, Biden announced a plan for the US to spend up to $424 million to support independent media around the world, anti-corruption work, and other initiatives.
Here s more on what happened during the first day from the Guardians Julian Borger, Sam Levine and Shah Meer Baloch :
The US president said this is an urgent matter because the data we are seeing is largely pointing in the wrong direction, because of the video links with 80 world leaders arrayed on two oversize electronic panels. Biden cited studies that found that global freedom has been in retreat for 15 consecutive years and that more than half of all democracies have experienced a decline in the past decade. He acknowledged that one of the countries in democratic decline was his own. Since the November 2020 elections, the result is still not accepted by many supporters of the loser, Donald Trump's voting rights have been assaulted by Republicans on the state level, where gerrymandering is still rife, carried out by both Republicans and Democrats. Biden has been accused by American progressives of hosting a global summit while not doing enough to combat democratic backsliding at home. In New York, activists staged a funeral for democracy outside the United Nations in protest of US voter suppression laws.
Biden also spoke on the value of democracies as better vehicles for governance than autocracies, with ambassadors to the US from Russia and China releasing a joint statement condemning the Biden administration for adopting a divisive cold-war mentality. The president will be speaking at 1: 45 pm ET and will be speaking at the end of his remarks this afternoon.