Following the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization Supreme Court decision, reproductive rights are heading to ballots in states across the country this fall. Are states the right venue for this and other issues?
This episode’s guest, U.S. Appellate Court Judge Jeffrey S. Sutton says yes, and makes the case that state courts and constitutions are more democratic than their counterparts at the federal level.
After moving to Orlando alone, a young leader helped plan the city’s first Good Neighbor Week and learned why knowing your neighbors builds real citizenship.
To expand community, trust, and freedom in our democracy, the Democracy Architects Council is helping everyday Americans build a more hopeful future for democracy by 2030. The Democracy Architects Council is a partnership between Bridge Alliance and Civics Unplugged, bringing together young leaders from diverse sectors with demonstrated impact and commitment to a bold future for democracy.
In May of 2025, I moved 800 miles away from home to a city where I knew nobody. This September, my new home issued a proclamation celebrating Orlando’s first-ever Good Neighbor Week.
Like many new transplants, I missed the feeling of home. For four years, college had been a place where I almost overdosed on in-person interaction. I hung out with students on my floor, took long walks to visit friends in other dorms, and spent warm days joining picnic blankets on the lawn.
So I felt eerily alone as I moved to a new city. My old friends were far away, and it was hard to find and build new friendships around busy schedules, work demands, and burgeoning responsibilities of being a real adult.
And it’s not just me. There is higher reported loneliness among Gen Z and Millennials, with busyness and living far away from friends being the biggest barriers to connecting.
Jimmy Carter proclaimed Good Neighbor Day (September 28th) a holiday in 1978. The point is simple: get to know and celebrate the people around us because good neighborhoods make communities safer and healthier. Becky Mattson, who created the holiday, observed that while technology let us connect with people around the world, we seemed less likely to connect with our next-door neighbors. Robert Putnam’s research in Bowling Alone supports this with a staggering decline in social interaction beginning around the introduction of TVs, a trend that has only worsened with social media. Our new media environment makes it easier to avoid the awkwardness, small talk, and inconvenience of spending time with other people.
So I was thrilled when I met Megan on a Zoom call and learned she was from Orlando. When we grabbed coffee a few days later, she started my journey of calling Orlando home by asking me to help her plan the city’s first-ever Good Neighbor Week.
At first, I hesitated. Who was I, as a new resident, to help plan a celebration for a city and its people whom I didn’t know?
But then I remembered how I wanted living in Orlando to feel. Last Thanksgiving, I visited my godparents who had just moved to Syracuse and somehow were already enmeshed in their new home. Walking through downtown, I was amazed at how many people they knew by name: the liquor store owner, the pizza store employees, and everyone in the local hot chocolate spot. My godmother moved through the city with ease. And I wanted to feel that in my new city.
So I said yes, mostly because I knew I could make up for my lack of familiarity with Orlando by running our social media and website. But also because I wanted to move through Orlando with ease, like it was home.
For months, we planned. We hosted Neighbor Meeting Zones, where we sat in the park with a dog or lemonade and talked to anyone who wanted to meet a neighbor. I took my phone and a tripod to feature third spaces around Orlando. We secured some funding to help neighborhoods host Front Yard Fridays to encourage neighbors to spend time together. And we worked with our local government to officially proclaim September 28 through October 4 as Good Neighbor Week.
Megan started every meeting with our guiding principle: “Good enough for now and safe enough to try.” We didn't wait to be official, and we didn't need high attendance. The goal was to do what we could to bring neighbors together, and that was enough. This mantra gave us an exhale. It was okay if our Good Neighbor Week wasn’t the “best” in the country, engaged millions of people, or got a profile in a national newspaper, because that wasn't the goal. We were practicing being good neighbors and helping other Orlandoans do the same.
As we planned Good Neighbor Week, being a good neighbor started to feel natural. On my runs, I waved hello to the same two older men who took their daily walks at the same time and chatted with the park groundskeeper. I got to know the barista in my building’s coffee shop, and she told me which of the new seasonal drinks had milk in them. When my friends and family visited, I knew exactly where to take them to show them how big and beautiful Orlando was outside of the theme parks. Orlando felt like home.
The city’s proclamation said, “When neighbors know one another, they participate more in their community, care more and help build a more engaged and connected city.” And it’s right. I started feeling a responsibility to Orlando that I had not felt before. I kept a closer eye on local news and watched the mayoral debates. I became the go-to source for my new friends on the city’s new initiatives and ways to get involved. I realized I had begun choosing to make Orlando home instead of passively living there.
At its core, being a good neighbor is about taking responsibility for where you live. In her book Talking to Strangers, Danielle Allen evokes the image of a president moving through crowds without fear, shaking hands and kissing babies. “The more fearful we citizens are of speaking to strangers, the more we are docile children and not prospective presidents; the greater the distance between the president and us, the more we are subjects, not citizens.” Fear looks like avoidance and turning inwards. I felt it, thinking it wasn't my place to bring Orlandoans together. Good Neighbor Week isn't just an excuse to say hi to the people we share space with; it's a reminder of our responsibility to ourselves and our communities: to choose to belong and assert our power as citizens instead of giving it away.
If this story resonates with you, consider it a push to create the neighborhood you want to live in. Check out National Good Neighbor Day's resources for how to get involved locally, and if you want to support hosting events to build the future of your community, reach out here.
While our culture of consumerism has benefited corporate America, it has harmed our citizens, hurt our economy, and weakened our nation. It has been particularly harmful to the American blue-collar worker, sacrificed to the holy grail of maximizing profit and globalization by America's multinational corporations. America's welfare depends on a thriving middle class, on prosperous blue-collar workers.
How has our consumer economy hurt America? Let me count the ways.
Psychologically, mass marketing images have created a nation of individuals who are constantly dissatisfied with their lives … whether it’s how they look, the job they have, how much money they make, the home they live in, etc. No aspect of our lives escapes this need to project success or power/popularity, mostly through acquiring material things. And we always want more; it’s never enough.
You won’t find evidence of this in satisfaction polls, because our culture places a premium on feeling good and being happy. And since people feel that they’re supposed to feel good and be happy—that state is valued by our culture—people put on that façade … not knowingly but in an act of self-deception. So while satisfaction polls show that the vast majority of people are satisfied now with their lives, studies of depression show that a large percentage of Americans are depressed with their lives, especially youth.
While I know of no studies that document what I am about to posit, I believe that the large increase in the extent of depression in this country, especially among youth and young adults, stems not from more awareness of life’s problems, as has often been stated, but from this constant dissatisfaction that people feel about themselves, together with the alienating impact of technology. Indeed, when people feel down, it's not uncommon to get a “fix” by going out to buy something or going to their screens.
Our economy has also become addicted to consumerism. 68% of our GDP is derived from consumer spending. But consumerism is a very unproductive use of the nation’s wealth. It does not move our country forward.
And since much of what we consume is no longer produced here but overseas, increased demand for consumer goods doesn’t help employment like it used to—just the opposite. Because corporations can now produce the goods they sell almost anywhere in the world to take advantage of cheaper production costs, the combination of lost jobs and the cudgel of competition of low-cost overseas workers has resulted in the wages of the American blue-collar worker stagnating since the 70s while the cost of living and corporate profits have soared,
Meanwhile, the United States is falling behind other countries on various measures and entering a dangerous period because we cannot afford to do what it takes to keep this country strong … and I don’t mean military spending. I mean spending on infrastructure, both maintenance and new. I mean spending on education and health care. I mean spending on housing. I mean spending on cutting-edge research and development, investment in new industries that will drive our economy in the future.
To stop this focus on consumerism and find the money to invest in our country’s wellbeing, we must shift our economy from one based primarily on consumerism to one based primarily on building our country. This involves changing the components of our GDP without reducing it or our growth. On the contrary, because it would mostly involve projects that must, by their very nature, be accomplished within the United States, it would create millions of jobs for American blue-collar workers instead of jobs outsourced overseas. Jobs for American workers in industry and construction would increase significantly.
To shift from a consumer economy to a nation-building economy, we will need to wean ourselves off the need to constantly buy things to be happy. American industry will have to change much of what it produces, but it proved it could do just that in WWII. Instead of using discretionary income for self-gratification, we will need to get comfortable with that money going to the government in the form of taxes, to fund projects that benefit the nation, and thus ultimately ourselves. This will be a difficult, complicated process and require a commitment over many years.
Many will howl at the suggestion of higher taxes, but we must remember that the United States has by far the lowest tax rate of any developed country. Yet, and this bears repeating, people in those countries, despite the high taxes, not only prosper but also have a higher level of wellbeing … whether in health, education, or other measures … than Americans do.
Making such a change in our culture will take principled leadership and preferably a united political front. We must approach this like a war used to be … all hands on deck and united. And everyone must be prepared to sacrifice.
At this point in our history, that concept … a united political front … as well as group sacrifice seem impossible to imagine. Yet we must strive toward that end if America is to regain its global strength and provide all its citizens—not just the well-off or rich—with a secure, comfortable standard of living and a sense of well-being.
The saying used to be, "What's good for General Motors is good for America." That thought was thoroughly debunked many years ago, and as shown again in this article, what is good for corporate America is often not good for the country. But the truth that I present in the title, "What's good for the blue collar worker is good for America," is unassailable because it is in the welfare of the average American that the health and vitality of our country is dependent.
Ronald L. Hirsch is a teacher, legal aid lawyer, survey researcher, nonprofit executive, consultant, composer, author, and volunteer. He is a graduate of Brown University and the University of Chicago Law School and the author of We Still Hold These Truths. Read more of his writing at www.PreservingAmericanValues.com
After the AfD’s historic wins in Saxony-Anhalt and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, an analyst links climate migration to democratic decline and a possible fix.
On September 6, the far-right German party Alternative for Germany (AfD) made a historic breakthrough. 100 years after Hitler’s official reorganization of the Nazi Party, a group that has openly strategized and worked with neo-Nazis won a plurality of the vote in the state of Saxony-Anhalt and is on the precipice of forming a government there. 14 days later, they won a plurality again in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. This is the AfD's strongest electoral result yet, and the closest a far-right party has come to a majority in postwar Germany.
In a country with numerous safeguards against right-wing co-option – from a 5% minimum threshold to enter the Bundestag to bans for undemocratic parties – this democratic victory of a far-right movement shook the country to its core. Whether AfD is able to make up the handful of seats it needs in coalition agreements to form governments in both states isn’t the point; AfD’s stock is on the rise, and at this rate, they will likely continue to win at both the state and federal level. Even if Chancellor Merz’s coalition government can start delivering for the increasingly underemployed and isolated German people, by all signs, far-right support will only continue to increase.
AfD has its roots, similar to the American Tea Party, in fiscal responsibility. Its origin is traced back to the German bailout of Greece’s economy in 2010, but similar to its American counterpart, its driving philosophy quickly evolved into nativism. Syria’s civil war began the year after the bailout, and in the decade that followed, 1.2 million refugees arrived in Germany. At the time, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s policy of welcoming immigrants was known as Wir Schaffen Das, or We Can Do This, but politically, they could not. The correlation is stark: AfD’s public support has increased every year Germany’s foreign-born population has, except for one.
While Syria’s civil war might have ended in 2024, the age of mass migration has just begun. Even if the rate of immigration continues to slow incrementally, there were still 235,000 more people who moved to Germany than left last year, and in part because of that, further AfD victories at the state level look increasingly likely. If the rate of immigration from the Middle East once again shot up, recent polls and electoral history suggest they would win a plurality, and then likely a majority, in the Bundestag.
For years, climate-worsened extreme weather has led to increased migration around the world, from the Dry Corridor of Central America to Southeast Asia to the Middle East. Southern Iraq, specifically, is becoming the new forefront of drought-caused displacement. The worst drought in a century there has caused decreased river flow, irrigation-induced salinization issues, and agricultural failure. This is resulting in unprecedented internal displacement, but as this worsening drought-to-displacement pipeline pops up across the region, in addition to increasing political instability in Iran and Palestine, there will be fewer places for migrants to flee to internally and region-wide. As climate drought worsens, which it is every year, political and natural forces will direct waves of displaced persons into Europe. Meteorological data, recent migration patterns, and the impacts of worsening El Niños reinforce the likelihood that another wave of mass migration is coming soon, this time prompted by the worsening climate crisis.
The scariest part is that there is almost nothing we can do about it. Even if we halted 100% of the carbon emitted into the atmosphere today, this warming, and its corresponding drought and aridification, is already baked into our climate system for years to come. While robust climate mitigation and its corresponding cooling could prevent an even worse hundred-million-person wave of immigration and democratic decline next century, there are few things that can prevent this in the short term.
Methane and carbon removal technically could limit impacts on a shorter time scale, but the industry isn’t even a fraction of the way to necessary scale. Climate interventions are currently being researched to limit immediate warming, specifically to prevent climate tipping points and feedback loops that would result in an increasingly rapid decay of our climate system. Speculative proposals to pump seawater onto glaciers to stop West Antarctic ice shelf collapse are one of many being studied. The most impactful thing humans could do right now, however, for short term harm-reduction, is to temporarily increase the Earth’s reflectivity.
From the 1950s to 2020, sulfate aerosols from ship fuel reflected a small portion of the sun’s incoming solar radiation when it got to the atmosphere. This had the unintended effect of cooling the Earth, at the exact same time carbon emissions began seriously warming it. Over the last six years, in an effort to mitigate sulfur dioxide’s contribution to air pollution, international treaties began to phase sulfur out of ship fuel, helping fight pollution, but unmasking warming that was already happening. Earth’s decreased reflectivity has increased Earth’s energy imbalance by 0.7%; that has the equivalent impact of the warming caused by all carbon emissions released by humankind.
If we could restore the Earth’s reflectivity to what it was a decade ago, without emitting harmful aerosols, we could reduce warming in the short term, saving not just millions of lives and tens of trillions of dollars, but keeping hundreds of millions of people in their homes. Research on climate intervention and increasing the atmosphere’s reflectivity should be immediately and thoroughly studied by the world’s democracies, with governance and human welfare at the forefront. If democracies in heavily refugee-receiving regions wait too long to take action, or rely exclusively on traditional mitigation methods that take too long to be felt, they might cease to be democracies. Then who will be taking action on the climate crisis? It sure won’t be the AfD.
Jake Schwartz is a climate advocate and policy expert. He has served as the Climate Voters Engagement Director for the Harris-Walz campaign and on the International Elections team at the National Democratic Institute.
I used to believe that learning the law meant learning the architecture of protection.
I believed statutes existed because someone, somewhere, had anticipated injustice and decided certain lines should never be crossed. I believed due process meant power could not simply declare itself correct. I believed whistleblower protections, grievance procedures, public-records laws, administrative review and courts formed a structure designed to restrain institutional misconduct.
What I did not understand was that there is an enormous difference between possessing a right and possessing the power to enforce it.
Institutions enter disputes with advantages individuals rarely possess. They have records, lawyers, investigators, procedures, institutional credibility and the ability to establish an official narrative before the person affected fully understands what has happened. Most importantly, they have time.
An individual has a life expectancy. An institution does not.
That asymmetry matters because time is not neutral when power is unequal. Delay can become leverage. Procedure can become attrition. Complexity can become deterrence. A process designed to determine who is right can become, in practice, a contest over who can afford to remain in the fight.
We teach people the promises of law. We speak of freedom of speech, due process, anti-retaliation protections, transparency and the right to petition government. But every right carries an operational question: Can the person invoking it preserve the evidence, find the correct forum, meet every deadline, obtain representation, withstand procedural defenses and survive long enough to receive a remedy?
The right may be written in one sentence. Invoking it can require a war.
None of this requires believing that every public institution is corrupt or that every official acts in bad faith. Institutional self-protection can emerge without a conspiracy. A supervisor may resist admitting error because admission creates liability. A lawyer raises the strongest procedural defense because that is the lawyer's job. An investigator may begin with records produced by the organization being examined. A coworker may stay silent after watching what happened to the last person who spoke.
The incentives can produce the outcome.
That is how formal protections can coexist with powerful pressures toward silence. Policy tells employees what they are permitted to do; culture teaches them what may happen if they actually do it. If reporting misconduct threatens a career, silence becomes rational. If proving retaliation takes years, survival can become more practical than vindication.
The problem, then, is not merely whether rights exist. It is whether the institutions surrounding those rights make them realistically usable.
That requires changing the architecture of enforcement.
Whistleblower and retaliation complaints involving public institutions should have access to genuinely independent review. Oversight loses credibility when the institution implicated in a complaint retains practical control over the evidence, pace or disposition of the process.
Accountability procedures also need meaningful time limits. Investigations, grievances and administrative proceedings should not become indefinite holding patterns. Reasonable deadlines, written explanations for extensions and expedited review where retaliation is alleged would reduce the power of delay itself.
Evidence preservation should begin early when protected complaints are made. Relevant emails, recordings, personnel records and investigative materials should not depend entirely on an individual employee knowing which preservation demand to make before information becomes difficult to recover.
Rights also need practical access to representation. Legal-defense funds, nonprofit assistance, union-independent resources and other pooled support mechanisms could narrow the gap between having a legal right and having the resources to enforce it.
And oversight should be measurable. Agencies and reviewing bodies should publish anonymized information showing how many complaints are filed, how long they remain pending, how they are resolved and what remedies follow substantiated violations. Public accountability becomes far more meaningful when outsiders can evaluate whether the machinery actually works.
That is also where organized civic participation matters. Journalists, watchdog organizations, employee coalitions, professional associations and engaged citizens can force patterns into public view that would otherwise remain isolated as individual disputes. Their role is not to decide every allegation in advance. It is to make secrecy, indefinite delay and institutional indifference more costly by creating sustained scrutiny.
These reforms share one principle: the burden of enforcing a right should not be so punishing that exercising the right becomes its own deterrent.
My experience has changed the way I think about law. I no longer believe truth automatically produces accountability. Truth must be preserved. Exposure must become evidence. Evidence must enter a mechanism capable of imposing consequences.
I still believe in law. But I no longer worship it.
The law remains one of civilization's greatest inventions. Yet law without accountability can become ritual. Rights without remedies can become literature. Oversight without independence can become theater.
A locked door is still a locked door even when someone tells you that you technically possess the key.
The task of reform is not merely to print more rights on paper. It is to build institutions in which ordinary people can exercise those rights without being financially, professionally or psychologically destroyed by the process.
I still intend to enter.
But I will never again mistake the existence of the door for proof that the system wanted me to walk through it.
Jabril Gushiniere is a Cook County correctional officer, public-records researcher, and founder of the Cook County Corrections Coalition in Chicago.
