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DEMOCRACY UNDER SIEGE

LETTERS
Without subpoena push, Jan. 6 investigation is going nowhere fast
Congress must use its subpoena powers and the courts to the full extent to enforce its constitutional authority to investigate the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection.

RENÉE GRAHAM
Democracy’s other threat: Book bans and purges
Limiting access to literature, especially by authors of color, is yet another authoritarian tool polluting political discourse.

EDITORIAL
MLK’s legacy, today’s voting rights challenge
Those who fear the will of voters use bills instead of billy clubs, but the impact remains the same.

Kimberly Atkins Stohr
When it comes to subpoenas, Congress must use its power or lose it
Jan. 6 committee chairman Bennie Thompson must create real consequences for those who flout congressional authority. He can start inside his own chamber by compelling the testimony of minority leader Kevin McCarthy.

Deval Patrick
Voting is sacred
Whether the right to vote remains sacred depends now on members of the US Senate. The people have expressed their support. The House, along partisan lines, has voted its approval. Now democracy waits.

RENÉE GRAHAM
To save ‘America’s soul,’ Biden must fight harder for voting rights
Time is running out for the president to be the man who saved democracy instead someone who failed to stop its demise on his watch.

Laurence H. Tribe and Dennis Aftergut
Clock is ticking on what Garland needs to do about Trump’s bid to overturn 2020 election
The plotters’ initial seditious efforts could easily have succeeded. The fact that they failed cannot justify avoiding a robust investigation of those efforts as part of an apparent conspiracy that landed, with vengeance, in the House and Senate chambers.

LETTERS
It isn’t nitpicking — what Trump attempted was a self-coup, not a coup
Self-coups tend to leave a more lasting negative political legacy than ordinary coups. We are very fortunate former president Donald Trump’s plot failed.

IDEAS | Miles Rapoport and Alex Keyssar
How to boost voter turnout to nearly 100 percent
Saving democracy might require mandatory voting — and Massachusetts can lead the way.

LETTERS
A still-smoldering injustice at the Capitol
With one exception, not one Republican member of Congress had the courage to attend the ceremonies at the Capitol, which honored the police who not only defended them but also, in some cases, gave their lives for them.