Flynn is the president of Common Cause, one of the nation's oldest democracy reform advocacy organizations.
President Biden speaks frequently about democracy. He mentioned it 11 times in his inaugural address. But words must be matched with collective leadership. As he said in that speech, “we will lead not merely by the example of our power but by the power of our example.”
The United States will put this to the test when the Biden administration convenes a Summit for Democracy this week with representatives from more than 100 nations. The summit will “set an affirmative agenda for democratic renewal around the world,” according to the president. It will launch a “year of action” to “make democracies more responsive and resilient.”
It comes at a precarious time for U.S. democracy. After voters showed up in record numbers in 2020, state legislatures in 19 states passed 33 laws to make it harder to vote. Many of these laws disproportionately affect voters of color, young voters and others whose voices are silenced.
The assault on free and fair elections extends beyond bad laws. Disciples of the former president’s Big Lie have focused efforts on installing loyalists to local election boards. One in three election officials feel unsafe at work and face a barrage of violent threats for doing their job. Partisan legislators are gerrymandering districts to silence voters and subvert the bedrock principle of “one person one vote.”
The summit could be a hopeful end to a year that began with a racist mob of insurrectionists storming Congress to attack the peaceful transfer of power. The events of Jan. 6 interrupted two centuries of this practice in a democracy that survived the Civil War, two world wars, the Depression and many other hardships.
The specter of election sabotage is dangerous. The world took notice. Last month, an international think tank placed the United States on its list of “ backsliding democracies ” for the first time.
Earlier this year, Biden said that “we are in the midst of a fundamental debate about the future and direction of our world, between those who argue that ... autocracy is the best way forward and those who understand that democracy is essential to meeting these challenges.” Hence the announcement of the summit as a way to “demonstrate that democracies can deliver by improving the lives of their own people.”
Democracies must be responsive to the people, who hold the ultimate power. But the undue influence of money in politics, structural racism, corruption and voter suppression can poison the well.
Congress has the power to strengthen our democracy with legislation. The House of Representatives — the chamber closest to the People — did its part on at least three occasions this year. It passed the For the People Act to protect and expand the freedom to vote with fair national standards, break the grip of big money in politics, end gerrymandering, and bolster ethical standards in government. It passed the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act to repair and strengthen the Voting Rights Act and protect against racial discrimination in voting. And it passed the Washington, D.C. Admission Act to grant statehood to the people of our nation’s capital.
These bills (with the Freedom to Vote Act, a compromise version of the For the People Act) await Senate passage. Fifty Senators have voted four times to begin debate on some of them, but all Senate Republicans (with one exception) voted to block them.
No Senate loophole should stand in the way. The filibuster, as abused in today’s Senate, gives a minority of 41 out of 100 senators veto power over legislation being debated, unless it is subject to a filibuster exception. Those 41 senators can represent just 24 percent of the population.
Biden himself has expressed interest in solving this problem. He has spoken forcefully about voting rights. He has signed executive orders, installed voting rights advocates in the Department of Justice and nominated them to the federal bench, and tasked the vice president with leading this work.
But there is no substitute for legislation, and the time to act is now. Recently, more than 150 democracy scholars wrote that “defenders of democracy in America still have a slim window of opportunity to act. But time is ticking away, and midnight is approaching.”
If we are to lead by the “power of our example,” President Biden and senators must step up and do what it takes to pass these bills as quickly as possible. When our leaders embark on the year of action at the summit, this must be a top priority. Democracy is resilient, and they have the power to act. We cannot afford to wait.
Ben Droz
Ben Droz
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally at Pinnacle Bank Expo Center on the Nebraska State Fairgrounds on October 05, 2026 in Grand Island, Nebraska.
The President Invited Iran to Bomb My Home
I was driving home to San Diego from Los Angeles on Monday night when I heard that the President of the United States had offered both cities up to Iran as bomb targets. At a rally in Nebraska, defending his war, Trump told the crowd, “let [Iran] take out Los Angeles, let ‘em take out San Diego.” It was, he said, “a very small price to pay.”
I was coming from a Bernie Sanders rally for Proposition 40, the one-time tax on California billionaires that would send 90% of its revenue to healthcare. We desperately need it to pass because, in order to give tax breaks to billionaires, Trump signed a law that will strip health coverage from 10 million Americans; this tax will make sure we can still cover Californians. Call me crazy, but I think taxing billionaires one time so we can make sure kids in California get to see a doctor is a very small price to pay. I also think that even if Trump were joking, it is indefensible to make jokes about the potential destruction of so many lives. Human life is never a small price to pay. Human life is priceless.
Plus, the reality is: here in San Diego, we’re already paying the price for Trump’s actions, and it’s not small at all. He has gutted FEMA, tried to kill climate resiliency programs, and destroyed public health standards, while his signature law is set to cut off health insurance and food support for hundreds of thousands of San Diegans. Like plenty of American cities, San Diego is already busy finding local solutions to respond to the problems this president has recklessly created.
Not to mention, at least 19 American service members have been killed in this war already. Human rights monitors have documented more than 3,600 dead in Iran by April alone. Here at home, gas is sitting just pennies below its all-time record. Taxpayers have already spent more than $45 billion on the war, while Trump’s oil and gas portfolio has grown by roughly $15.5 million this year alone. Of course anything is a “small price” to someone paying free.99 for this war, and profiting from it. Meanwhile, We the People are paying twice: first for the war, and then for the consequences of that war. But now he wants San Diego to pay a third time, flippantly offering us up to Iran.
It is worth noticing which cities he thought to name. Were San Diego and Los Angeles strategically chosen to signify something to his audience, or were they simply the first cities that came to mind as expendable places? Either way, the effect is to normalize—-and to gauge a crowd’s reaction to–the idea of massive violence in major California cities, suitable targets because of their perceived liberal lean. So what if Iran needs to bomb a little bit of America before the war can be over? Who cares, says Trump, if they target Los Angeles and San Diego?
By the way, why didn’t he offer up San Francisco, the free-love hippie-town MAGA loves to hate (and also my birthplace)? Could it be because that’s where the tech titans live? The same ones who joined Trump for Xi Jinping’s state dinner, a guest list worth a combined $2.4 trillion?
San Diego may have fewer billionaires, but it is home to more than 115,000 active-duty service members and 230,000 veterans. One in six active-duty sailors–in the entire Navy–is stationed here. So is one in four Marines. You cannot throw a rock in this county without hitting a military family: brats and spouses and veterans are among us. I got out of the Navy last year after ten years, and eight of those were here in San Diego. When Trump says “let ‘em take out San Diego,” he’s talking about the backbone of the United States military. He’s also talking about the people fighting his war.
San Diego has not been watching this war from the sidelines. Today, the USS Abraham Lincoln returns to North Island after an almost yearlong deployment to the Middle East that featured food shortages, broken toilets, and mold in the showers after 286 days at sea without a single port call. Eight sailors in the Lincoln’s strike group attempted suicide, but in August, when a reporter asked whether the deployment had gone on too long, Trump said “not nearly long enough.” Now he has told a crowd in Nebraska that we should let Iran take out the city those sailors call home. These are sociopathic sentiments.
Last week at Quantico, Pete Hegseth closed his address to the force by telling them, “President Trump has your back and so do I.” To the contrary, President Trump has put one of the biggest military towns in the country forward as a target for our adversaries. With friends like these, the “domestic” in “against all enemies, foreign and domestic” starts to sound a lot less hypothetical.
San Diego is home to Naval Air Station North Island, Naval Base San Diego, Naval Amphibious Base Coronado, the Point Loma submarine base, Camp Pendleton, and Miramar (and I have been permanently stationed at or trained at all of them). If Iran bombed San Diego and Los Angeles, aside from the devastating loss of life, it would cripple an immense share of our national security readiness.
And for what, exactly? Trump says the war is “essentially almost over with.” This is the same man who claimed in June 2025 that Iran’s nuclear program had been “obliterated,” then launched a war over it anyway on February 28. More than seven months later, he wants us to believe two things at once: that we’ve basically won, and that we might need to sacrifice an American city or two to finish winning. If the war is almost over, why does anybody need to take out San Diego?
I wonder if Trump’s endorsed candidate for California’s 48th District here in San Diego County will respond to these remarks. He recently said “no pain, no gain,” when referring to the gas prices San Diegans are paying. Jim Desmond, would you apply that same mindset if we were bombed? Or do you have the moral courage to stand up for the people you’re running to represent?
Last November, six Democratic members of Congress, all veterans, including Senator Mark Kelly, recorded a video reminding troops of their duty to disobey unlawful orders, restating the law that says so. Trump called it “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH,” and then his Justice Department went looking for an indictment, which a grand jury refused. The president treated reading the law out loud to the troops as a capital offense, but then he himself invited a foreign enemy to destroy two American cities, possibly as a punchline. Is anyone calling the latter sedition? Who is demanding accountability?
Calling our lives a small price to pay affirms a moral bankruptcy, as well as an obvious dereliction of duty to the office he holds. While we can’t impeach him or invoke the 25th Amendment ourselves, we must stop being so quiet about what we’re paying already. We can make our voices heard by calling our representatives, writing op-eds, knocking doors, phone banking, and voting in defiance of the man who threatens the safety of our city. Ballots are already arriving in mailboxes. Vote, and vote yes on 40 (and no on 41 and 42).
Trump has been harming our cities for a while, but now he is inviting our military adversaries to join him in the harm. If we have any self-respect as Americans, we must not tolerate our leaders disregarding the dignity of lives in this way. We must fight for our home.
Julie Roland was a Naval Officer for ten years, deploying to both the South China Sea and the Persian Gulf as a helicopter pilot before separating in June 2025 as a Lieutenant Commander. She has a law degree from the University of San Diego, a Master of Laws from Columbia University, and is a member of the Truman National Security Project.