Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

The Civic Voice: Why democracy needs good news

Speaker Nancy Pelosi at an event for the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act

Voting rights legislation named for the late Rep. John Lewis is a potential bright spot for democracy, writes Carney.

Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
Eliza Newlin Carney is a journalist and founder of The Civic Circle, which uses the arts to empower young students to understand and participate in democracy. This is the first in Carney's new monthly column, The Civic Voice.

Author and policy expert Robert Kagan drew broad notice with his Washington Post essay declaring that the nation is "already in a constitutional crisis" and may be on the cusp of "mass violence," but he is hardly the first to forecast democracy's demise.

Headlines like "Will 2024 Be the Year American Democracy Dies?" and books with titles like "How Democracies Die" and "Twilight of Democracy" have become commonplace in the post-Trump era.

The apocalyptic tone of much democracy writing is unsurprising given the magnitude of the crises facing the nation and world. But there is a danger that bleak alarmism can itself corrode democracy still further. The "genre of disaster prediction," as newsletter writer Robert Hubbell dubbed it in his response to Kagan, tends to stoke paralysis and despair.

This very demoralization is toxic to democracy. When the Economist Intelligence Unit first downgraded the United States from a "full" to a "flawed" democracy in 2017, it was because public trust in political institutions had tanked. "Popular confidence in government and political parties is a vital component of the concept of democracy" embodied by the index, the report noted.

When journalists, thought leaders and even democracy advocates harp exclusively on the ways government and institutions have failed, citizens lose faith. And without at least some faith in the system, Americans drop out. If all is lost in any case, why vote, speak up, follow the news, or engage in community and civic life?

That's why democracy advocates must go beyond prophesying doom and do the hard work of envisioning, and championing, a path forward. It's not that dire warnings aren't called for, or threats not real. It's that raising the alarm is not enough. Indeed, relentless doomsaying risks obscuring the opportunities that can arise from moments of disruption.

This column, The Civic Voice, will spotlight civic solutions and success stories as an antidote to 'round-the-clock bad news. As solutions-focused sites like the Solutions Journalism Network, the Good News Network and the new online magazine Reasons to Be Cheerful attest, Americans are thirsty for a bit of hope.

The value of good news goes beyond spreading cheer. Publishing a story about what's working "is the ultimate form of holding power to account," said Reasons to Be Cheerful co-editor Christine McLaren in an interview. That's because "it's giving people a story to point to and say, 'Look! It doesn't need to be this way! There are people doing it differently and here's how.'"

Spreading good news may sound "corny," acknowledged journalist Roxanne Patel Shepelavy, writing about "Where to Find Hope" in The Philadelphia Citizen. But hope is more important than ever, "because we can't heal what ails us if we don't think a cure exists."

So where can democracy advocates find hope? Here are a few signs that American democracy, while buffeted on many fronts, has as much (if not more) potential to revive and thrive as to collapse with a whimper.

Voting Rights. The unprecedented state-level assault on voting rights since the 2020 election, stoked by Donald Trump's "Big Lie," constitutes perhaps the most direct threat to American democracy today.

Yet on the good-news front, Arizona Republicans' highly criticized 2020 vote audit reaffirmed that "truth is truth,"and gave President Biden an even bigger win. And the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which would restore key Voting Rights Act protections, is winning serious attention on Capitol Hill.

A surprising number of states, moreover, are making it easier to vote, not harder. While 19 states have enacted 33 laws that limit voting since the 2020 election, according to the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University, the number of laws that expanded voter access is actually far larger, totaling 62 in 25 states.

These laws to facilitate voting, with measures like expanded early nd mail-in voting, "do not balance the scales," the Brennan Center asserts. But according to The Washington Post's Perry Bacon Jr., the voting rights expansion is one of several "groundbreaking initiatives" in blue states, from "Baby Bonds" in Connecticut to greenhouse gas cuts in Oregon, that offer "a vision for a better America."

Constitutional Reforms. On Capitol Hill, as breathless reports remind us daily, partisan and intraparty disputes have stalled infrastructure legislation and placed the nation at risk of default. But such congressional stalemates themselves may usher in important constitutional changes, argued John F. Kowal and Wilfred U. Codrington III recently in Politico.

Constitutional amendments tend to come in waves and "typically have followed periods of deep division and gridlock like ours," wrote Kowal and Codrington, who authored a book on the topic. "In fact, history suggests that periods of extreme political polarization, when the normal channels of legal change are blocked off due to partisan gridlock and regional divides, can usher in periods of constitutional reform to get the political system functioning again."

People Power. Election law expert Richard Hasen's law review article warning that partisans in state legislatures, election offices and even the Supreme Court may usurp voters' choices in 2024 was plenty sobering.

But Hasen's article also emphasized that voters have a way of having the last word. He noted that public pushback helped defeat some of the worst elements of recent state-level voting restrictions, and that organizing and political action "will be needed to reinforce rule-of-law norms in elections." He also suggested "preparing for mass, peaceful protests in the event of attempts to subvert fair election outcomes."

Hasen's article prompted yet another flurry of articles on democracy's possible collapse. But Hasen's analysis spoke not just of gloom, but also hope. Democracy will be stronger if the hopeful side of the story gets out as well.

Read More

elections
Report: Party control over election certification poses risks to the future of elections
Brett Deering/Getty Images

The Trump Administration’s Efforts To Undermine Election Integrity

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.”

Keep ReadingShow less
Is Trump the Wizard of Oz? Behind the Curtain of Power, Illusion, and a Constitutional Crisis
Getty Images, bbsferrari

Is Trump the Wizard of Oz? Behind the Curtain of Power, Illusion, and a Constitutional Crisis

“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.

Keep ReadingShow less
A Wealthy Congress Doesn’t Reflect American Constituents

US Capitol

Samuel Corum/Getty Images

A Wealthy Congress Doesn’t Reflect American Constituents

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.

Keep ReadingShow less
Trump’s Imperial Presidency: Putting Local Democracy at Risk

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

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.

Keep ReadingShow less