In this episode of Democracy Works from The McCourtney Institute for Democracy, the team discusses democracy’s many doomsayers and how to heed their warnings for the future without falling into despair.
Podcast: On democracy's doomsayers
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Report: Party control over election certification poses risks to the future of elections
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The Trump Administration’s Efforts To Undermine Election Integrity
Aug 27, 2025
The administration’s deployment of the military in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., on a limited basis tests using the military to overthrow a loss in the midterm elections. A big loss will stymie Project 2025, and impeachment may perhaps loom.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and the president have said L.A. is “prelude to what is planned across the country,” according to U.C. Berkeley law professor Erwin Chemerinsky. Chemerinsky reports that on June 8, “Trump said, ‘Well, we’re gonna have troops everywhere.’” The Secretary of Homeland Security recently announced that in L.A., “Federal authorities were not going away but planned to stay and increase operations to ‘liberate’ the city from its ‘socialist’ leadership.”
Additional Democratic-controlled cities appear to be targeted.
The president claims that protestors “hate” America. He inveighs against an “enemy within,” including accusing former President Barack Obama of treason. The president roused soldiers at Fort Bragg against his political opposition. MAGA hats were sold on the base. In renaming bases, he seeks to honor Confederate generals who rebelled against the Constitution. The president attacks and demeans the judiciary.
Congress has ceded its power to check the president. The Speaker of the House has declared that California’s governor should be tarred and feathered, a process that can cover a person with hot tar.
Here’s how the election might be undermined.
The president’s executive order on elections, among other provisions, bars counting absentee and mail-in votes that arrive after election day, greatly increases proof of citizenship requirements, and limits permissible voting systems. At least two courts have so far invalidated a number of the requirements, including that absentee and mail-in ballots not be counted after election day. The president now threatens another executive order that would bar mail-in voting altogether.
Confusion, delay, and disorder can arise with the legal status of his executive orders, having them potentially tied up in court or subject to conflicting or unclear court rulings. The president’s call for an atypical reapportionment in Texas can trigger reapportionments in red and blue states that may be tied up in court, adding to the disorder. The Justice Department’s threats of criminal charges against election workers add to the disruption.
Claiming a failed election, red state legislatures or the president, purportedly exercising emergency powers, throw out some or all of the opposition’s votes for U.S. representatives and senators. This way, they install a large Republican majority. The Supreme Court rules these actions unconstitutional. The president and his supporters defy the Court’s orders. As massive protests erupt, the administration completes the overthrow with in-place and additional military under the Insurrection Act, potentially supplementing it with a Brown Shirt-like army of newly recruited 18 to 25-year-old purported ICE agents. Some 15 to 18 million people, who were seemingly willing to support a coup if the president had lost the 2024 election, stood by.
James G. Blaine, the Speaker of the House of Representatives between 1869-1875, observed that by 1869, “Those who anxiously and intelligently studied the political situation in the South could see how unequal the contest would be and how soon the men who organized the rebellion would again wield the political power of their States—wield it lawfully if they could, but unlawfully if they must; peaceably…but violently if violence in their judgment became necessary.” The like-minded progeny of these people and that of other like-minded people now control the national government. They are relentless. They view their opposition as spineless cowards.
In 1875, General of the Army William Tecumseh Sherman wrote to his senator brother, “Outside help sooner or later must cease, for our army is ridiculously small, in case of actual collision. It is only the Memory of the War Power that operates on the Rebel Element now. They have the votes, the will, and will in the End prevail.”
Today, our army is not “ridiculously small.” Its oath is to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. If the administration issues unconstitutional orders to the military, generals, judges, and the American people must be decisive and relentless in defending the nation’s Constitution. As Abraham Lincoln said at Gettysburg, we must “highly resolve…that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
Daniel O. Jamison is a retired attorney.Keep ReadingShow less
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Is Trump the Wizard of Oz? Behind the Curtain of Power, Illusion, and a Constitutional Crisis
Aug 27, 2025
“He who saves his Country does not violate any law.”
In February 2025, Donald Trump posted a quote attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte on Truth Social, generating alarm among constitutional experts.
“I am Oz, the Great and Terrible,” the Wizard of Oz declares from behind his curtain.
“In this country everyone must pay for everything he gets.” And, “I never grant favors without some return.” Is this the president speaking? It’s certainly rhetoric we have heard before. No, it is the Wizard in L. Frank Baum’s book, “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz”—which was published in 1900.
Before the 1939 film, “The Wizard of Oz,” starring Judy Garland, and before Gregory Maguire wrote “Wicked”—igniting a phenomenon in the theatre world and now in film, begging the question, was the “Wicked Witch” really wicked—there was Baum’s series of fourteen books about Oz.
So, what of this Wizard? What of this President? Are they as great and powerful as they claim? Or are they both charlatans, great pretenders who claim to have special powers to govern, to grant, to rule?
Yet—and this is a critical point—they have been ordained with this power by their citizens.
President Trump was voted into office a second time, taking the “swing states” to win the Electoral College. And the inhabitants of Oz, seeing a seemingly miraculous flying balloon descend on their city, declared the man in it a wizard.
Of course, there are other players afoot. Oz has witches, Munchkins, and most importantly, Dorothy and her companions, who ultimately challenge and expose the Wizard.
And we have a legislative and judicial branch, and most importantly, our Constitution. In this country, we are governed by a system of checks and balances. It is up to us all to remind each other, and the world, of that fact.
So, what is it that the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, and the Lion want? And what does Dorothy want? They want the same things we do.
The Scarecrow wants a brain. We might wish for a more discerning one lately, one that will not capitulate to fear-mongering and rumor.
And the Tin Man wishes for a heart, presumably an “open” heart, encompassing more than his own small circle. Without such, life in Oz, in the U.S., or anywhere, becomes a cruel, joyless competition, devoid of true meaning.
The Lion needs courage. Don’t we all? Living is not for the faint of heart, in any age. Courage is the difference in every situation. Brains and a heart are essential, but without the courage to use them, they merely fester.
“My life is simply unbearable without courage,” the Lion declares. So are our own.
And of course, Dorothy’s greatest wish is to go home. It is Glinda, the Good Witch, who ultimately grants her wish. “Your silver shoes will carry you…. If you had known their power, you could have gone back the very first day.” (The “ruby” slippers were originally “silver” slippers in the book, but were changed to ruby to take advantage of the new color film in the movie version.)
So, Dorothy had it in her power all along to go home.
As we too, have it in our power to defend and protect our principles, our home. We may begin on the yellow brick road or the wrong road, and we may encounter wicked witches or be imprisoned, but we must keep going on our journey.
Lately, it does seem that our politics are swinging terrifyingly right, and there are those who act as the Winged Monkeys in Oz, willing to “obey any order” they are given. But the pendulum swings, and it will again. It always does.
We have all heard of rose-colored glasses, and there is justification in accusing the MAGA movement of refusing to remove theirs, instead of ordaining all that their “leader” does.
In Oz, the Emerald City was not even green. The Wizard confesses, “I put green spectacles on all the people, so everything they saw was green.”
But we cannot wear rose-colored glasses, or green ones. No distortion of facts, no fairy tales, will work in the end. We must envision our destiny, and live it out in the bright, clear light of day.
“What a world! What a world!” the Wicked Witch of the West screeches in the 1939 film, after Dorothy has thrown a bucket of water on her, and the witch melts.
Many would say the same regarding the state of our country and the world. Others would claim that we are at last approaching justice and common sense.
We must agree to disagree. But we do have a plan that has now stood the test of time, a map that can direct our path. What we cannot ever do is linger long in those intoxicating fields of scarlet poppies. We must not fall asleep.
Amy Lockard is an Iowa resident who regularly contributes to regional newspapers and periodicals. She is working on the second of a four-book fictional series based on Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice."Keep ReadingShow less
US Capitol
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A Wealthy Congress Doesn’t Reflect American Constituents
Aug 27, 2025
Imagine being told from a young age that your life is already written: the jobs you’ll hold, the obstacles you’ll face, the limits you’ll never cross. What you’re born into is what your life will be. For millions of Americans making a low wage, that’s the reality. Democracy, in theory, is supposed to offer a way out — a chance to shape your own future. That’s the “American dream.” But for too many, it remains just a promise, out of reach. When children grow up believing their circumstances are permanent, they inherit a cycle instead of a chance.
I know this tension firsthand. On paper, I might look like I fit the mold of opportunity: white-passing, educated, and building a career. But beneath the surface, my story goes beyond that. I grew up in a low-income, mixed-race household with a Hispanic father and a white American mother. In my family, the paths laid out were often blue-collar jobs, teen pregnancy, addiction, incarceration, or worse. None of my three sisters graduated from high school, and no one in my immediate family attended college. I became the exception — not because the system was designed for me but because I found a way through it.
I easily could have accepted my situation, which involved living paycheck to paycheck and witnessing close family members enter the criminal justice system. Based on the saying “History repeats itself,” I should have done just that. But education was the key for me. I relied on school to distract from a tough home life. I’m not sure what drove me to invest so much time into studying, but I was determined to finish high school and attend college. Now, I hold two bachelor’s degrees and a master’s degree, with plans to obtain a law degree. I overcame my circumstances; I didn’t become them.
But hard work and determination can only get a person so far. My path wasn’t easy, and neither is the path for the 36.8 million Americans living in poverty. We need an institutional framework in place to prevent a socioeconomic hierarchy that would relegate an entire “class” of people to the bottom. True democracy should not just leave room for outliers; it should make success attainable for anyone. It should uplift those who start with the least, turning what is often called the “American dream” into an American reality.
The problem is that our government too often fails to reflect the communities it serves. When elected officials don’t share the lived experiences of everyday people, they miss what matters most.
Congress is overwhelmingly composed of representatives and senators from upper-class or highly educated backgrounds. In 2023, fewer than 2% of federal legislators came from working-class backgrounds, despite the fact that 27% of the U.S. workforce holds blue-collar jobs.
Wealth disparities are stark. The median U.S. household net worth is $192,700, while Congressmembers’ median net worth in 2020 was over $1 million. The net worth of the wealthiest lawmakers, like former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, is in the hundreds of millions.
Ninety-six percent of the 118th Congress have college degrees, with the majority coming from white-collar professions, though a few have backgrounds as ride-share drivers, electricians, and carpenters. In 10 states, no lawmaker works or has worked in a working-class job, according to researchers at Duke University and Loyola University Chicago.
“These estimates illustrate the striking disparity between Americans and the people who represent them in elected office,” said Nicholas Carnes, a political scientist at Duke University. “In principle, anyone can run for office, but in practice, the people who are running and serving are overwhelmingly drawn from America’s professional classes.”
Some, however, come from humble beginnings. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., for example, “pulled extra shifts as a waitress and bartender to support her family,” her House biography says. I, too, have worked in restaurants to support myself and my family. My first job was at the age of 16 as a hostess at a Mexican restaurant called Sticky Cactus in McDonough, Georgia, and later I became a waitress there. I remember smiling with pride after receiving a $50 tip, which would go toward my University of Georgia admission fee. My parents couldn’t afford the $500 to secure my spot for freshman year.
An elected official’s economic background shapes their policymaking. Officials from affluent backgrounds may prioritize lowering taxes for high earners or enhancing business incentives. In contrast, officials from working-class backgrounds may focus on raising the minimum wage or expanding affordable healthcare. The former is not inherently wrong; Congress needs members of all socioeconomic backgrounds, and that’s the point. Greater economic diversity is needed.
Representation isn’t about identity politics. It’s about ensuring that policy is shaped by people who understand, from their lived reality, what it means to break a cycle — what it means to overcome your situation, rather than become it. Poor people, to put it bluntly, deserve a seat at the congressional table to bring firsthand understanding of financial insecurity and systemic barriers so many face.
We should elect leaders who reflect the diversity of our communities, not just in terms of race and gender, but also in background, socioeconomic class, and life experiences. For me, democracy means having the chance to turn rejection into redirection and to overcome a situation rather than become it. It means transforming lemons into limonada. And it means ensuring the promise of an “American dream” isn’t reserved for the lucky few but built into the American structure.
Ashley N. Soriano is a graduate student at Northwestern University Medill School of Journalism in the Politics, Policy and Foreign Affairs specialization.
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U.S. President Donald Trump visits the U.S. Park Police Anacostia Operations Facility on August 21, 2025 in Washington, DC.
Getty Images, Anna Moneymaker
Trump’s Imperial Presidency: Putting Local Democracy at Risk
Aug 26, 2025
Trump says his deployment of federal law enforcement is about restoring order in Washington, D.C. But the real message isn’t about crime—it’s about power. By federalizing the District’s police, activating the National Guard, and bulldozing homeless encampments with just a day’s notice, Trump is flexing a new kind of presidential muscle: the authority to override local governments at will—a move that raises serious constitutional concerns.
And now, he promises that D.C. won’t be the last. New York, Chicago, Philadelphia—cities he derides as “crime-ridden”—could be next. Noticeably absent from his list are red-state cities with higher homicide rates, like New Orleans. The pattern is clear: Trump’s law-and-order agenda is less about public safety and more about partisan punishment.
In effect, it represents a dramatic inversion of federalism and reshapes the balance of power. For over two centuries, local control over policing and public safety has been a core principle of American governance, respected by presidents of both parties. Ronald Reagan refrained from intervening in New York’s crime crisis, preferring to let state and city officials address it. Barack Obama left local officials in charge during Ferguson’s unrest in 2014. To find parallels to Trump’s approach, one must look abroad—to authoritarian leaders like Viktor Orbán in Hungary, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey, or Vladimir Putin in Russia—where centralized crackdowns on cities are a common tactic of strongman rule.
Selective Enforcement and Political Targets
Trump’s crackdown reveals a selective pattern. Crime statistics show that some of the cities he names are not the nation’s most violent. Washington ranked fourth in homicide rates last year, while Chicago and New York were far lower. Meanwhile, St. Louis and New Orleans—both with higher homicide rates—escaped his attention. The common thread isn’t safety but partisanship: he singles out Democratic strongholds while sparing cities in red states. In doing so, Trump reframes public safety as a partisan test of loyalty rather than a matter of governance.
This is troubling because public safety has long been a shared responsibility, with local governments closest to their communities making the key decisions. By federalizing this function selectively, Trump shifts the emphasis from community safety to political punishment. Ordinary residents—people concerned about schools, housing, and neighborhood policing—become pawns in a national feud rather than citizens whose well-being is the priority.
If presidents can target opponents’ cities while ignoring allies’ failures, federalism becomes less about constitutional balance and more about partisan advantage. Even if future presidents avoid this path, the precedent itself erodes constraints on the office. Over time, that erosion can normalize the idea that cities are bargaining chips in presidential politics. Communities become pieces in a national political game, and their residents become collateral in a struggle for executive dominance.
Congress and the Erosion of Checks
Many of the same GOP voices now cheering Trump’s federalization moves once denounced far smaller assertions of executive power by Democratic presidents. Republicans railed against Barack Obama’s use of executive actions on immigration policy, such as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). They also criticized Joe Biden’s attempts at student debt relief as unconstitutional overreach. The contrast underscores how partisan convenience often dictates whether lawmakers view presidential assertiveness as tyranny or necessary leadership.
What makes this shift especially dangerous is Congress’s silence. GOP lawmakers have cheered Trump’s actions as necessary to “restore order,” while Democrats have offered little resistance. By doing so, they weaken their own institution and normalize executive overreach into local functions that the Constitution never intended the presidency to control. Speaker Mike Johnson and Majority Leader Steve Scalise both praised the federalization of D.C.’s police, while Democratic opposition remained muted and fragmented.
This problem is compounded by selective enforcement. When presidents push boundaries and Congress fails to respond, temporary excesses risk becoming permanent norms. Each time Congress defers, it cedes more ground to the White House, setting a precedent that future presidents of either party can exploit. When lawmakers abandon their constitutional duty to check the executive, the balance of power tilts further toward an overmighty presidency, leaving local democracy exposed.
Consequences for Citizens and Cities
For citizens, the implications are not abstract. When federal authority displaces local control, it is ordinary residents who feel the disruption most directly. In Washington, the clearing of homeless encampments with only a day’s notice left vulnerable people scrambling for shelter and services. In cities like New York or Chicago, a federal takeover could mean policies imposed by distant officials who lack an understanding of neighborhood realities. Public safety decisions risk turning into political theater instead of policies grounded in community needs. The result is a hollowing out of local democracy, where residents lose both voice and agency in the issues closest to home.
This shift also corrodes trust. Past examples show how blurred accountability undermines confidence. During Hurricane Katrina, disputes between federal, state, and local authorities left residents uncertain who was responsible for failures in relief efforts. More recently, during the COVID-19 pandemic, conflicting state and federal directives left citizens confused about who was in charge of testing, lockdowns, and vaccine rollouts. Citizens expect local leaders—mayors, city councils, police chiefs—to be accountable for safety and services. If those responsibilities are usurped by the White House, accountability blurs. Communities may feel they have no recourse when policies are heavy-handed or ineffective, deepening cynicism about government at every level.
Conclusion: Restoring the Balance
The danger in Trump’s actions is not just what he has done in Washington but the precedent they set for the presidency itself. Once federal takeovers of local functions are normalized, the constitutional safeguards meant to protect citizens from centralized power become weaker, no matter who occupies the White House. Local democracy erodes not in a single stroke but in the steady expansion of executive authority into spaces where it does not belong.
If American democracy is to remain resilient, Congress must reassert its constitutional role. Citizens must also demand accountability. They cannot remain passive when presidents overstep. Lawmakers could start by reining in the use of executive orders, strengthening limits on emergency declarations, and clarifying boundaries for federal involvement in local policing. Courts and state governments can also reinforce limits on federal intrusion. The alternative is a presidency where cities are pawns, communities are silenced, and local self-government—the very foundation of federalism—is reduced to a relic of the past.
Robert Cropf is a professor of political science at Saint Louis University.Keep ReadingShow less
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