About The Standing

The Standing is maintained by a small, volunteer collective of archivists and civics nerds who care, frankly, a great deal about American democracy. We don't put our names on the work — the record is meant to stand on its sourcing, not on who assembled it. What matters is that every entry can be checked.

Our mission

The Standing is a non-partisan daily record of U.S. democratic norms — and the events that erode them. We document authoritarianism, anti-democratic behavior, and abuses of power and public office, applied to all actors regardless of party. We hold that no anti-democratic action is too small to record: small erosions, left unmarked, are how norms quietly disappear. Our job is to mark them — clearly, soberly, and with receipts — so the record exists.

Our values

• Non-partisan. We measure conduct against democratic norms, not against parties or personalities. The same standard applies to everyone.
• Evidence over assertion. Every entry rests on primary sources and independent corroboration. If we can't source it, we don't publish it.
• Transparent by default. The archive, its taxonomy, and our editorial standards are all public; the record is kept in an open repository anyone can inspect.
• Proportion, not panic. We document what happened in neutral language — recording events, not editorializing about them.
• Accountable. When we get something wrong, we correct it in the open.

Our standards

Each entry is built to a consistent editorial standard: a dated, specific event; the actors who took the action; the democratic norm or abuse it implicates; and verifiable sources — primary reporting or documents preferred, with a two-source floor for corroboration. Entries are written plainly and are revised or retracted when the underlying facts change.

You can read the full, working editorial standards on the Standards page, see how we handle errors on the Corrections page, and browse the framework of democratic ideals we measure against under Ideals.

Reuse and license

The Standing's original content — entry text, the taxonomy, and the compilation itself — is published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license (CC BY 4.0). You're welcome to share, quote, and build on it, including commercially, as long as you credit The Standing and link back. Quoted passages and the source material we cite remain the property of their original owners.

Disclaimer

The Standing is offered in good faith and "as is." We work hard to be accurate and to source every claim, but errors happen; when they do, we fix them in the open — see Corrections, or write to editor@thestanding.us. Entries describe events and the democratic norms they implicate; they are a record, not legal conclusions or legal advice.

Get involved

The Standing hasn't officially launched — we're sharing it early because we want feedback. Spot an error, or an event we've missed? Send a tip to tips@thestanding.us or a correction to editor@thestanding.us.