The Democracy Initiative is a coalition of organizations working toward a bright future in which all Americans participate fully and freely in the democratic process. Our partner organizations pursue a diverse range of progressive goals, including civil rights, workers' rights, women's rights, and climate justice, but we know that success in any of these areas depends on reforming our democracy. United by a shared vision for a political process that counts every voice and every vote equally, we are mobilizing members of Democracy Initiative organizations to ensure that all Americans can vote, diminish the influence of corporate and special interests, and halt the obstruction that has thrown our Congress out of balance.
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Becky Pepper-Jackson and her mother, Heather Jackson, stand in front of the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C.
Courtesy of Lambda Legal
The trans athletes at the center of Supreme Court cases don’t fit conservative stereotypes
Jan 30, 2026
Conservatives have increasingly argued that transgender women and girls have an unfair advantage in sports, that their hormone levels make them stronger and faster. And for that reason, they say, trans women should be banned from competition.
But Lindsay Hecox wasn’t faster. She tried out for her track and field team at Boise State University and didn’t make the cut. A 2020 Idaho bill banned her from a club team, anyway.
Becky Pepper-Jackson wasn’t necessarily hormonally different from other girls. The 15-year-old West Virginia student transitioned before ever undergoing male puberty. A state ban on transgender athletes is keeping her from playing on her high school’s track team.
Both cases — Little v. Hecox and West Virginia v. B.P.J — will be in the spotlight Tuesday, when the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and Lambda Legal will argue to the Supreme Court that the states violated the girls’ rights by banning them from competition.
“It just shows the breadth of these laws,” said Sruti Swaminathan, who is representing Hecox as a senior staff attorney at the ACLU. “It’s not just about trophies and competitions. It’s even just the mere presence of trans girls on girls teams that’s bothering these states and these advocates on the other side.”
It’s possible that the cases will have big implications for transgender athletes and trans people more broadly — but the ruling may well be limited to the two athletes. Their lawyers will argue that trans athletes in general don’t have an unfair advantage in sports, they said. But they plan to really focus on just Pepper-Jackson and Hecox, whose cases so clearly fall outside conservative stereotypes about transgender athletes.
“We’re not conceding that somebody that has gone through puberty shouldn’t be able to participate,” said Sasha Buchert, who is representing Pepper-Jackson as a senior attorney at Lambda Legal. “We’re just saying, in this particular case involving this particular athlete, the only athlete in West Virginia that’s a transgender girl … that there isn’t an adequate justification for it.”
The realities of trans women in sports
It’s unknown how many trans athletes are competing in grade schools, college or even professional sports, but advocates insist that the numbers represent a tiny fraction of competitors. NCAA President Charlie Baker in 2024 stated that of the 500,000 college athletes in the country, openly trans people accounted for “less than 10” athletes total.
Transgender women have competed in sports for decades, although their numbers are small. Scientific research on trans participation in sports is also limited, but studies thus far have not shown any overall physical advantage for trans women over their cisgender peers after medical transition.
Four recent studies measured physical differences between athletes including hand grip strength and countermovement jump, which measures lower body strength, and found that trans and cisgender women athletes performed similarly. A 2021 study published in the Journal Sports Medicine found no basis in existing research for banning trans women from sports. A 2024 study funded by the International Olympic Committee published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine concluded that transgender women likely had several physical disadvantages compared with their cisgender peers.
But transgender advocates have also argued that fixating on overall physical differences between transgender and cisgender women misses the point. All athletes are born with advantages, they argue, including class, geography, natural strength and other variables. The obsession with bodies denies transgender women their humanity and defaults to cisgender viewpoints, say advocates.
The legal implications of a loss
The question in front of the Supreme Court is whether the state bans on trans athletes violate Title IX or the equal protection clause of the Constitution.
Because both laws touch on other areas of life, advocates have fretted that a ruling against Hecox and Pepper-Jackson could set a precedent with potential serious consequences for LGBTQ+ freedoms beyond sports.
“The goal of this [anti-trans sports] campaign is not only dividing us against one another, it’s to secure a sweeping legal precedent that endangers transgender people (and other people, including gay, lesbian and bisexual people, and all women) across our lives, not just in sports,” said the ACLU in an explainer. “Depending on the precise language of the court’s ruling, it could likewise implicate our fight for equality in those contexts and potentially many more, like our access to health care and our safety while incarcerated.”
But Ezra Ishmael Young, a lawyer and constitutional law professor in New York, said such a devastating outcome for queer people is highly unlikely given the scope of the legal questions in the case.
“Even if trans people lost this case, it would only really be a loss in those two narrow contexts. It wouldn’t have any bearing on, for instance, what the International Olympic Committee does, or what the WNBA does, or what the NBA does,” Young said.
Young said trans rights will continue to default to state law because the question before the court focuses on those, not a national ban.
“The states that were pro-trans are still pro-trans,” he said. “The states that are not pro -trans, are not pro-trans.”
In other words, a loss might look like the scenario the country currently has, with many states banning trans athletes from competing in their lived genders, while others welcome them. Young believes that the handful of trans athletes attending college would opt for friendly states, if possible.
‘Think about like during the era of segregation, Jackie Robinson went to UCLA because they weren’t segregated,” Young said. “That’s how athletes have always navigated this nonsense.”
In the event of a draw
Even with a 6-3 conservative majority Supreme Court, a loss for Hecox and Pepper-Jackson is not guaranteed, according to experts. It’s not just that the girls have unique stories that set the cases apart. Lawyers for both sides have signaled that the cases may not have all the makings of a blockbuster Supreme Court case because they are limited in scope and foundationally weak.
Young points out that Idaho’s sports ban was passed in 2020 at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic when other state houses were shuttering. The virus would kill more than 5,400 people in the state.
“That’s what even President Trump was directing, this is an extreme emergency, we have to take precautions,” said Young. Idaho called a special session to deal with a health emergency.
“The health emergency was trans women and girls playing sports hypothetically, not an actual global pandemic that had already been declared,” Young said. “The context matters. … It’s based upon untruths.”
Young thinks that premise weakens the states’ legal arguments.
Further, the state of Idaho added new evidence to its Supreme Court briefs that was not heard in lower courts, something generally forbidden by the Supreme Court. The move could prove problematic for Idaho and West Virginia, Young said.
“It’s also confusing, because these cases only apply to two individual students,” Swaminathan said. “The relief sought is only on these individual students’ behalf. It’s not statewide relief.”
The ACLU and Lambda Legal sued on behalf of Hecox and Pepper-Jackson alone, not all transgender people throughout the state or even the nation. Further, Hecox became so distressed by the media attention from the case that she asked the court to drop her case altogether. Hecox said she would no longer play sports.
Young said it is possible that the court will find the cases moot or no longer relevant as the plaintiffs age out of the respective group sports.
Hope for a win
Still Lambda Legal and the ACLU say they have a strong case to make before the nation. Lawyers say that once the public is introduced to the women through oral arguments, transgender athletes will have a face. It will be harder to discriminate against them.
“I would like to think that the American public will get a chance to meet Becky,” Buchert said, adding that she recently met Pepper-Jackson and her mom for the first time and watched her throw the discus. Buchert saw the joy it brought her young client. She feels that if other people learn that through court testimony and media interviews, it will be harder to demonize her.
“She’s just such a wonderful kid, just an absolute champ, has gotten so much out of sports — and it’s been so good for her — and is turning into this wonderful adult.”
The trans athletes at the center of Supreme Court cases don’t fit conservative stereotypes was originally published by The 19th and is republished with permission.
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Jason Witmer, Policy Strategist, ACLU of Nebraska
Jason Witmer: Shaping Statewide Civil Rights Policy
Jan 29, 2026
Jason Witmer is a policy strategist whose lived experience, legislative expertise, and community‑rooted advocacy have made him one of Nebraska’s most compelling voices on civil rights, criminal legal reform, and voting access.
Witmer's work as a Policy Strategist at the ACLU of Nebraska reflects the organization’s broader mission to defend civil liberties and expand democratic participation statewide.
The Fulcrum spoke with Witmer on a recent episode of The Fulcrum Democracy Forum.
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At the ACLU of Nebraska, Witmer has become a respected presence in the state legislature, frequently testifying before the Judiciary Committee on issues ranging from restrictive housing to voting rights. His testimony on solitary confinement draws from both research and personal experience, offering lawmakers a rare combination of policy analysis and lived insight.
Witmer's contributions to civic life were highlighted in The 50: Voices of a Nation, where he discussed the landscape of voting rights and civic engagement in Nebraska and the importance of ensuring that every community has a meaningful voice in the democratic process.
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Before entering policy work, Witmer earned an associate degree in human services from Southeast Community College and spent years supporting Nebraskans in crisis as a peer specialist and later as a program coordinator at a peer respite house. That work, along with his public education efforts on the impacts of the criminal legal system, gave him a close view of how state policies shape people’s lives long before they reach a courtroom or a cell.
His leadership in democracy work has also been recognized beyond the Capitol. In 2025, Civic Nebraska honored him with the Jan Gradwohl Defender of Democracy Award for his efforts to restore voting rights and strengthen civic participation among justice‑impacted Nebraskans.
Witmer’s work reflects the mission of the ACLU of Nebraska, a statewide organization dedicated to defending and advancing civil liberties through litigation, policy advocacy, and community engagement. The organization focuses on protecting voting rights, challenging discriminatory practices in the criminal legal system, defending LGBTQ+ equality, safeguarding reproductive freedom, and ensuring due process for immigrant communities. Across these issue areas, the ACLU of Nebraska works to uphold constitutional protections for all Nebraskans, especially those whose rights are most vulnerable to erosion.
Within that mission, Witmer plays a key role in connecting policy debates to the people most affected by them. Whether he is analyzing legislation, meeting with community members, or testifying before lawmakers, his work underscores the idea that civil liberties are not abstract principles but daily realities that determine who gets to participate fully in society.
Witmer's trajectory—from peer support to statewide policy strategist—illustrates how lived experience can inform and strengthen civil rights advocacy, and why Nebraska’s civic landscape is richer for the voices he helps elevate.
Hugo Balta is the executive editor of The Fulcrum and the publisher of the Latino News Network, and twice president of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists.
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In Donald Trump's interview with Reuters on Jan. 24, he portrayed himself as an "I don't care" president, an attitude that is not compatible with leadership in a constitutional democracy.
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Donald Trump’s “I Don’t Care” Philosophy Undermines Democracy
Jan 29, 2026
On January 14, President Trump sat down for a thirty-minute interview with Reuters, the latest in a series of interviews with major news outlets. The interview covered a wide range of subjects, from Ukraine and Iran to inflation at home and dissent within his own party.
As is often the case with the president, he didn’t hold back. He offered many opinions without substantiating any of them and, talking about the 2026 congressional elections, said, “When you think of it, we shouldn’t even have an election.”
However, what caught my attention was something else. It was not so much about Trump’s policy positions as his attitude and conception of his role.
To put it simply, Trump portrayed himself as an “I don’t care” president. No other American president has ever embraced that view as their governing philosophy, and no one has ever been so ready to let everyone know.
That attitude is not compatible with leadership in a constitutional democracy. The Founders made clear that “the president, as the only official elected by the people as a whole, had not only the constitutional but the moral responsibility to act on their behalf—in the interest of the salus populi.”
In addition, someone who does not care is unreachable. Indifference is itself a kind of power, but it is hard to reconcile such a disposition with the requirements of leadership in a constitutional democracy.
Any president’s disposition or conception of leadership is consequential because, as the political scientist James David Barber explains, “The presidency is a peculiar office. The founding fathers left it extraordinarily loose in definition, partly because they trusted George Washington to invent a tradition as he went along.”
“It is,” Barber says, “an institution made a piece at a time by successive men in the White House….(E)very President’s mind and demeanor has left its mark on a heritage still in lively development.” Their mind and demeanor “interact… with the power situation he faces and the national ‘climate of expectations’ dominant at the time he serves. The tuning, the resonance—or lack of it—between these external factors and his personality sets in motion the dynamics of his presidency.”
Another word, Barber argues, that describes a president’s mind and demeanor is “character.” Character is the way “the president orients himself toward life – not for the moment, but enduringly. Character is the person’s stance as he confronts experience.“
The president’s character and his “I don’t care” attitude were made clear throughout his Reuters interview. For example, when he was asked about a poll showing that the American public opposes taking over Greenland, he dismissed the results as “fake.”
He seemed resigned to the fact that, as he put it, “A lot of times, you can't convince a voter….” The president said. “You have to just do what's right. And then a lot of the things I did were not really politically popular. They turned out to be when it worked out so well.”
The famous English political philosopher, Edmund Burke, identified two conceptions of representation in democratic systems. In one, the representative simply channels the views of the people.
The other kind of representation involves acting as a “trustee.” A trustee exercises his own judgment and does not worry about how their constituents feel about each particular issue.
As Burke put it, “Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion.” And over the course of American history, some presidents have acted as “delegates,” others as “trustees.”
But Burke did not anticipate someone like Trump, who is so dismissive of others' views.
That dismissiveness was evident throughout the Reuters interview. When he was asked about concerns expressed by Republicans in the Senate about the Justice Department’s investigation of Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, the president said, “I don't care. There's nothing to say. They should be loyal.”
After being told what JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon said about the potentially catastrophic impact of that investigation, Trump responded, "I don't care what he says."
A week before the Reuters interview, Trump again showed his “I don’t care” attitude in an interview with four New York Times reporters. This time, in the context of a discussion of his role on the world stage.
The Times reporters asked him if “there were any limits on his global powers.” The president’s response was shocking.
“Yeah,” he told them, “there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
This “I don’t care about anything but me” response is a symptom of what the journalist and historian John MacArthur says is the president’s “only point of reference… himself.” That is why, MacArthur explains, “he makes no attempt even at faking interest in other people, since he can’t really see them from his self-centered position.”
That is why Trump is unembarrassed to put his "I don’t care" attitude on display and to cast aside unfavorable poll results or what other members of his political party say. Nothing matters to Trump but Trump.
As he explained in the Times interview, “I don’t need international law,” and whether international law could ever constrain him, “depends on what your definition of international law is.” At a later point, when he was pressed to explain why he wanted to take over Greenland, he again made clear that his needs and desires define his approach to the world.
Taking over Greenland was important, the president suggested: “Because that’s what I feel is psychologically needed for success. I think that ownership gives you a thing that you can’t do, whether you’re talking about a lease or a treaty. Ownership gives you things and elements that you can’t get from just signing a document.”
Trump’s “I don’t care” approach to governance fits a presidential style that Professor Barber called “Active-negative.” Such a style is marked by constant “power-seeking,” and life is defined as a “hard struggle to achieve and hold power.”
Such a president, Barber suggests, as if describing Trump, “has a persistent problem in managing his aggressive feelings.”
And Barber argues, an active/negative type president “is, in the first place, much taken up with self-concern. His attention keeps returning to himself, his problems, how is he doing, as if he were forever watching himself. The character of that attention is primarily evaluative with respect to power. Am I winning or losing, gaining or falling?”
Again, that seems to fit Trump to a tee.
This president or any president can’t do their job well if they don’t care about anything but themselves. And in the case of President Trump, the American people seem to be noticing.
Only 37% of Americans today say that the phrase “cares about the needs of ordinary people” describes Trump well. Sadly, Donald Trump likely doesn’t care about that either.
Democracy is not endangered by disagreements about policy, but it cannot survive if its leaders do not put the public’s health and well-being first.
Austin Sarat is the William Nelson Cromwell professor of jurisprudence and political science at Amherst College.
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Nazi troops arrest civilians in Warsaw, Poland, 1943.
The Danger Isn’t History Repeating—It’s Us Ignoring the Echoes
Jan 29, 2026
The instinct to look away is one of the most enduring patterns in democratic backsliding. History rarely announces itself with a single rupture; it accumulates through a series of choices—some deliberate, many passive—that allow state power to harden against the people it is meant to serve.
As federal immigration enforcement escalates across American cities today, historians are warning that the public reactions we are witnessing bear uncomfortable similarities to the way many Germans responded to Adolf Hitler’s early rise in the 1930s. The comparison is not about equating leaders or eras. It is about recognizing how societies normalize state violence when it is directed at those deemed “other.”
In Germany, the pattern is well documented. Adolf Hitler’s ascent was not inevitable; it was enabled by political elites who believed they could contain him and by a public conditioned to overlook the early targeting of Jews and other minorities. Historian Timothy Ryback, who has written extensively about Hitler’s early political development, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that Hitler’s rise was facilitated by rivals and allies who “underestimated him or thought they could ‘tame’ him once in power.” Ryback is explicit that “Trump is not Hitler, by any means,” but he adds that “there are modalities that are very similar,” particularly in how institutions and the public respond to escalating abuses. The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum notes that Hitler’s worldview took shape in an environment where “antisemitism and ethnic nationalism flourished,” creating a social climate in which discriminatory policies could be introduced with little resistance. Facing History & Ourselves, an organization that studies the period, puts it more bluntly: “Choices made by individuals and groups contributed to the rise of the Nazi Party,” including the choice to ignore or excuse early acts of state violence.
The United States is not Weimar Germany, but the dynamics of public response deserve scrutiny. Nationwide, residents have documented aggressive ICE operations that include warrantless home entries, detentions of U.S. citizens, chemical agents deployed near schools, and masked federal agents questioning people in parking lots and outside gas stations. Local officials have raised alarms about the scale of the federal presence and the absence of oversight. Amnesty International USA recently warned of “rising authoritarian practices and erosion of human rights in the United States,” with Executive Director Paul O’Brien stating, “We are witnessing a dangerous trajectory under President Trump that has already led to a human rights emergency.” DHS maintains that operations target “the worst criminals,” yet federal data shows that 73 percent of people detained nationally have no criminal convictions, and only 5 percent have violent convictions. The gap between rhetoric and reality is widening, and the public response is following a familiar pattern: some protest, many look away, and others rationalize the abuses as necessary for security.
What historians find most striking is not the presence of state power—that exists in every nation—but the willingness of ordinary people to normalize its excesses. In early‑1930s Germany, many citizens viewed the targeting of Jews as a distant issue, something that affected “others.” Today, civil rights groups report a similar distancing in the United States, where many Americans see ICE actions as justified or irrelevant to their own lives, even when U.S. citizens are detained or when local governments warn of legal violations. Political incentives reinforce this passivity. During the Weimar Republic’s collapse, parties across the spectrum tolerated Hitler for short‑term gain. In the U.S., some lawmakers have expressed concern about ICE operations but stopped short of challenging the administration directly, citing political risk.
Historians caution that democratic erosion rarely begins with dramatic gestures. It begins with the public learning to tolerate the intolerable. Frank McDonough, a leading historian of Nazi Germany, has said that dictators often rise because “people didn’t take them seriously enough.” Ryback echoes this point, noting that “there are lessons learned—and ignored—from Hitler’s rise to power.” The lesson is not that history repeats itself in identical form. It is that democracies falter when citizens and institutions decide that the suffering of targeted groups is an acceptable cost of political order.
The question facing the United States today is not whether it is 1933. It is whether we recognize the warning signs that historians have spent decades documenting. When federal agents operate with minimal oversight, when marginalized communities are treated as expendable, and when the public grows accustomed to scenes that would once have been unthinkable, the issue is not only the actions of the state. It is the silence that meets them.
Democracies are not only defended at the ballot box or in the courts. They are defended in the everyday choices people make about what they are willing to see, to question, and to refuse. The danger is not that America will repeat Germany’s past. The danger is that we will ignore the echoes long enough to discover that the guardrails we assumed would hold have already been worn down by our own indifference.
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