The redrawing of legislative district boundaries. A 1967 federal law requires House members be elected from single-member districts that (within each state) have nearly identical populations. House maps must be redrawn after reapportionment but before the first congressional election of each decade, based on population changes in each state revealed by the census.
Primary voting, Michigan
The Fulcrum is committed to nurturing the next generation of journalists. To learn about the many NextGen initiatives we are leading, click HERE.
We asked Nathaly Suquinagua, a bilingual multimedia journalist with a B.A. in Journalism and a minor in Dance from Temple University, and a cohort member with the Fulcrum Fellowship, to share her thoughts on what democracy means to her and her perspective on its current health.
Here’s her insight on the topic.
Democracy can mean many things, especially given the state of the world over the last few months. That word is unraveled into multiple categories, and what it also means to the people closest to you. To me, democracy means equality, representation, and the chance to build a better world together. Having the opportunity to vote and elect people who share the same values as the individual allows for a genuine decision about who has the best intentions for what matters most and what is crucial in civic engagement.
Being a first-generation American with my immigrant parents from Colombia and Ecuador to me also means voting is more than a personal choice; it is a way to represent my family that doesn't have a voice at the ballot box. This perspective brings the meaning of democracy into focus and raises an important question: What does democracy truly mean for those who can’t vote but still call this country home, like my parents?
Speaking with Lauren Cristella, president and CEO of the Committee of 70, a 121-year non-partisan, nonprofit based in Philadelphia serving the commonwealth, focusing on making sure that the elections are free, fair, safe, and secure, mentioned that our system of government among the people is at a historic low.
“I think all the polling that we've been seeing recently, especially among people like 35 and younger, is really troubling that they don't have faith in our system of government. They don't believe that democracy is necessarily the best form of government.” Cristella said.
According to the Committee of 70, approximately 17% of registered voters in Philadelphia participated in the primary election on May 20, 2025. This makes us question why this is occurring, and now, I believe, it is more crucial than ever to vote and make a difference.
If Philadelphia continues to lose its share of the turnout, it can diminish the state's influence in national politics. More importantly, it reflects a troubling reality: I believe many people who once thought that their voices mattered by voting have given up. These people have given up on democracy, feeling unheard and powerless.
This just shows how much people have lost their faith in the system. As a voter myself who continues to vote and stay involved as an activist, I’ve felt that the power of democracy has diminished, and issues that I care about and vote for have felt overlooked and reversed. One of the most prominent issues is the immigration status in the US and deporting hard-working immigrant families, and the gutting of the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Act (DEI), just to name a few of the prime examples. Representation and equality are what I truly believe in, and it is what drew me to journalism. Being the voice of the voiceless and seeing others like myself in the media is what I strive to be.
Having the responsibility of thinking of my loved ones when voting has been frustrating, and it makes me wonder if the cause is not that people don’t care, but rather that they feel unheard and stuck. With so many executive orders getting cut back and gutted, it can feel like no one is listening to you. I often feel overwhelmed by the amount of information available, whether it’s on my phone or during a conversation with someone. Revisiting the core of democracy, it’s clear that meaningful conversations are key to driving change and motivating people to take action.
It's about ensuring that people have access and are informed about what's happening in their local politics. Providing translations in multiple languages can help create a sense of unity and inclusion in the political process. When people are informed, regardless of their voting status, they can still engage in meaningful discussions and even encourage others who can vote to take action.
According to Pew Research, “Naturalized citizens–immigrants who hold U.S. citizenship-who – who voted in the election split their votes about evenly, which shows that naturalized citizens are a politically diverse group and can make a difference when voting to make their home a better place to live in.
As challenges intensify both in the U.S and around the world, it's crucial to stick together and ensure that we are the ones holding people accountable for what we see is wrong. Whether sharing your story, voting, or even reporting issues online, having that sense of community is essential for you and for the people who may not have the luxury of voting and having their say in the place they call home.
I believe that there's some hope in all this; it's the people who care that give me hope about democracy and organizations like the League of Women Voters and the Committee of 70. Doing little things is a huge help in promoting democracy and ensuring unity in all this. Being able to discuss government and democracy, even among grade school-age children, is important to ensure that people who can, can have a say in it by voting and making a difference in local politics. I believe that this is what America is all about: being able to express your concerns and being united, regardless of one's political stance.Nathaly Suquinagua has reported for Billy Penn/WHYY, NJ Urban News, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and Slice of Culture, covering community, culture, social issues, and public interest stories. As a first-generation Hispanic journalist, she’s dedicated to telling underrepresented stories with depth and cultural nuance.
United States flag, Red representing the Republican party, and the Blue representing the Democratic party.
Despite the division in our politics, Americans across the aisle agree on two essential issues: there’s a problem with the role of money in politics (the public’s #1 concern), and there is too little cooperation between our leaders in solving the nation’s problems (the #5 concern). These two issues erode trust in our institutions and the integrity of our elections, and leave communities and voters across the country feeling sidelined.
That’s why we, two state legislators from opposite sides of the aisle, have come together. Unchecked political spending and partisan gridlock hurt government where it is intended to be most accessible: in our local communities.
Consider Wyoming. In 1870, Louisa Swain of Laramie cast her vote in a local election half a century before the 19th Amendment gave women the right to vote nationally. Wyoming’s early commitment to civic participation was crucial in keeping local and state government closely tethered to its people.
But today, that connection between government and the people it’s meant to serve is under siege, not just in Wyoming but nationwide. The overwhelming influx of out-of-state money into local and state elections silences the voices of everyday citizens. In the 2024 election cycle, A projected $4.6 billion was spent on state elections for candidates and ballot measures, surpassing previous records.
This has a corrosive impact. Voters feel powerless, and our jobs as elected representatives are becoming increasingly challenging. Public servants face mounting pressure to appease national donors rather than their constituents. Campaigns that once focused on community priorities are now battlegrounds for national special interests, injecting divisive rhetoric and millions of dollars of dark money into races that were once decided around kitchen tables and in town halls.
This nationalization of local elections is no longer the exception—it’s the rule. Just look at Wisconsin, where more than $100 million flooded this year’s state Supreme Court race. Billionaires and Washington D.C. power players weren’t investing because they cared about the judicial needs of Wisconsin residents. They were using the race as a political proxy war, a trend currently playing out in statehouses, school board contests, and mayoral elections across the country.
It wasn’t always this way. For most of our nation’s history, states have had the authority to set reasonable limits on campaign finance to protect the integrity of their elections. However, a series of Supreme Court decisions ruled that political spending constitutes a form of protected speech under the First Amendment, thereby stripping states of the ability to protect their elections from outside influence.
Those Supreme Court cases were, and still are, wrong. They not only elevated the voices of the wealthiest donors over the average voter but also violated the long-standing principle of states’ rights to limit political spending. This has resulted in the nationalization of our elections, which has stifled discussion on the issues that impact citizens at both the local and state levels.
The path forward is clear: we need a constitutional amendment that restores states’ and local communities’ authority to set their own rules on money in politics. Amending the Constitution is the only way to reverse Supreme Court decisions, and has been the instrument commonly used throughout American history to strengthen the will of the people at the ballot box. If the damage is being done at the state level, then it’s the states that must lead the way toward a solution.
Twenty-three states, from Utah and Nevada to West Virginia and New Hampshire, have already passed resolutions in support of this amendment. Six states—including our state of Wyoming—introduced resolutions supporting a constitutional amendment just this year. Polls show that more than three-quarters of Americans support returning this power to the people. Bipartisan momentum to address this issue is growing.
As lawmakers from different parties, we don’t agree on everything. But we do agree on this: government works best when it elevates the voices of citizens, not special interests. When it invites cooperation, not conflict. And when it allows communities—not billionaires or out-of-state operatives—to shape the future of our towns and our states. That vision isn’t new; it’s rooted in our founding. As the late U.S. Senator Alan Simpson wisely explained: “We need to get back to basics with our Constitution and our political system. As a nation, we cannot accept the law of aristocracy, where the political rights of people are based on their wealth.”
This movement to amend the Constitution gets us back to the basics. It returns power to the states and the people, ensuring our government is accessible, responsive, and focused on the issues that voters actually care about.
Andrew Byron is a Republican state representative in Wyoming.
Mike Gierau is a Democratic state senator from Wyoming.
Democracy in America is being driven into the shadows. Anyone in doubt need only pause to reflect on the events of June, when the military parade of the autocrat-in-chief in DC coincided with a manhunt for an assassin of lawmakers in Minnesota. Lawmakers who had stood up for reproductive freedom, as well as other progressive issues.
Let us say their names. Melissa Hortman. John Hoffman. They died by gun violence for what they believed in, and as a result of what they had worked for as elected officials. The gunman who robbed us of them also killed Hortman’s husband, Mark Hortman.
If news reports are accurate, the killer planned to target many more, including Planned Parenthood offices.
We must acknowledge that Melissa and John died in the line of duty. This, in a country where acting as an elected official serving the interests you pledged to your constituents, you would advocate for, puts a bounty on your head, especially if you are committed to reproductive rights.
As U.S. democracy is being eclipsed by lethal forces, we must look directly into the sun and acknowledge this truth: the future of feminism is now. Women and men, gay and straight, LGBTQ and trans, are in the streets talking at the top of their lungs about rights – to our own bodies, to the justice and human dignity which flow from those rights, and to the democratic processes which protect them.
“Hands Off!” signs – a staple phrase of abortion advocacy – abound, and have taken on new meanings. As in, hands off my body; hands off my health care; hands off, DOGE; hands off, ICE.
Reproductive freedom is a potent rallying cry: the nexus, even, around which many other cries for justice are assembling. And with it comes feminism: an equally powerful resource in the fight against the deadly march towards authoritarianism in the US.
It’s well known that feminists themselves have not been immune from racism, classism and heteronormative ways of thinking. As scholars have shown for decades, including myself, mainstream feminist organizations and advocates have tended to imagine gender equality through a white, middle-class liberal lens.
And historians have often excluded Black, Brown, and Indigenous women from their narratives, thereby contributing to the erasure of the forms of solidarity and equity those women and their comrades practiced in their communities and traditions.
Meanwhile, American history is rife with examples of women of color who stood up to violence and hatred. Of the many studies of civil rights worker Fannie Lou Hamer, Keisha Blain’s Until I am Free: Fannie Lou Hamer’s Enduring Message to America, stands out for its determination to make visible the sheer force of Hamer’s relentless refusal of police brutality and economic injustice under Jim Crow.
If Americans want to draw knowledge as well as strength from the futures to be found in the feminist past, they need to look beyond a strictly US history perspective as well. In her study, Scales of Resistance, for example, Maylei Blackwell shows how Indigenous women in Mexico grounded their vision in a combination of bodily autonomy and community practice.
Have a look too at Emma Mashinini’s autobiography, Strikes Have Followed Me All My Life, a harrowing account of her trade unionism under threat of death from the South African government – all in service of a better future for working people.
And with a title evoking the perpetual pull of the horizon, there’s Sara Rahnama’s The Future is Feminist. Her research documents the role of Muslim reform movements in keeping “the woman question” at the heart of public policy debate about the very future of Algeria in the brutalizing context of French colonialism – the backstory, in other words, to Algerian women’s contributions to the struggle for independence.
The takeaway here is not only the power of remembering these warriors and studying their example to gird ourselves for the struggle we face now. It is the urgency of understanding that despite the terror of the times they lived in – and of course, because of it – feminists and their allies have always had their eye trained on the horizon.
They thought and acted beyond the present because they were resolutely against the present.
When war is at your doorstep, the present is well-nigh impossible to escape. In our time, with the surround sound of social media, the present pours into our minds and psyches with a relentlessness and a velocity it’s hard to ignore or stop.
To truly move against the present, we need to pause and reorient ourselves toward the future, as many feminists have done in the past.
We need their individual example, yes. And we need the histories of the future-thinking they worked with and for.
When Fannie Lou Hamer famously said, “I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired,” she diagnosed the high price she paid as a Black woman for the violence of racism and misogyny. She also declared her intolerance of the present and identified it as the threshold for Afrofuturist action.
It’s time for a feminist countermovement that rejects the anti-democratic insurgency of the present. That counterinsurgency must be rooted in a vision of a better world than the one those in power are trying to normalize today.
That future vision includes universal, gender-affirming healthcare; universal basic income; equal access to higher education; humane border policies; immigration justice; gun safety laws; electoral security and protections; and democratic agendas that prioritize the poor and disenfranchised.
And last but not least, reproductive freedom. For without guaranteed protections for the choices we make regarding our bodies, the future is the past. For everyone.
As history has shown, there is no single pathway to the future of feminism. But however we manifest it, the only way out of the shadows engulfing democracy now is to be resolutely against the present is. It’s what we owe to those who have paid with their lives for rejecting the order of things today.
My next rally sign? “Hand Off Feminist History. Hands off the Feminist Future.”
Antoinette Burton is a historian at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and an alumna of the OpEd Project.
Christian cross necklace on American flag.
The Fulcrum is committed to nurturing the next generation of journalists. To learn about the many NextGen initiatives we are leading, click HERE.
We asked Angeles Ponpa, a graduate student at Northwestern Medill in the Politics, Policy, and Foreign Affairs specialization, and a Fulcrum summer intern, to share her thoughts on what democracy means to her and her perspective on its current health.
Here’s her insight on the topic.
"Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and to God what belongs to God." This verse from Matthew 22:21 has long echoed in Catholic political thought. Once a response to a Pharisaical trap about taxation, it is now often invoked by religious leaders urging the faithful to take civic responsibility seriously, not despite their faith but because of it.
I did not always understand this balance. I grew up the child of undocumented immigrants who came to the United States from Michoacán, Mexico, as teenagers fleeing poverty. Their legal status was never justified in my eyes, but it taught me that politics was not abstract. It was personal. I watched political debates over immigration in the early 2000s shape how families like mine were treated. It made me pay attention.That early curiosity led me to the high school debate club, then to campus activism in college, and eventually to a career in politics. I worked on campaigns and later served in the Illinois State Senate. I believed I was contributing to something greater, a better public future. But over time, I began to feel I was living a double life.
Catholics, after all, are not strangers to political engagement, although they differ in their leanings. A 2024 Pew Research Center survey found that 52 percent of U.S. Catholics identify or lean Republican, while 44 percent identify or lean Democratic. It is a near-even split that reflects the diversity of the Church’s laity in political thought. Yet political affiliation alone cannot define Catholic civic responsibility, which must first be rooted in faith and moral conscience.
Working in Springfield, Illinois, brought that contradiction into focus. I was excited to begin my role, but quickly realized that being a legislative assistant often meant doing whatever was asked, organizing offices, running errands, or defending decisions that conflicted with my Catholic beliefs. The Eighth Commandment instructs Catholics not to bear false witness against their neighbor. Yet, I felt I was doing exactly that when justifying policies I knew were morally flawed but were labeled as good politics.
When budget season arrived, I found myself facilitating tens of thousands of dollars in taxpayer spending on mailers and office supplies while struggling to afford rent and working a second job. My conscience was unsettled.
At the same time, I began reconnecting deeply with my faith.
During the pandemic, Catholic voices on social media sparked something in me. Though I had grown up a "cultural Catholic," I had never opened the Bible. As I leaned into prayer and study, I sought out a spiritual director, Father Brendan, who helped me process the conflict between my beliefs and my work. He introduced me to A Man for All Seasons, a film about St. Thomas More, an English statesman who was executed for refusing to acknowledge King Henry VIII as the head of the Church of England. He remained loyal to the pope and was later canonized as a saint in the Catholic Church.
If you think you have gone through something difficult, there is likely a saint who has experienced a similar challenge. For me, that saint is Thomas More. His unwavering loyalty to the Church made him the patron saint of statesmen and politicians, and a model of moral integrity and conscience in public life.
As I was discerning the tension, Pope Francis gave this moral clarity: "A good Catholic meddles in politics, offering the best of himself, so that those who govern can govern." He emphasized that politics is "one of the highest forms of charity because it serves the common good," and that prayer and active participation are central.
I also found resonance in the experience of former Congressman Dan Lipinski, a devout Catholic who remained pro-life in a largely pro-choice party. He criticized partisanship as a "sectarian divide" and warned that "people are making their political party their religion," adding that he believed Catholics could help bridge that gap. He lost his seat in a 2020 primary in part because he refused to compromise on conscience, a reminder that moral consistency often comes at a cost.
Sen. Marco Rubio, also a practicing Catholic, has echoed similar struggles from the right. "Faith shapes my values. It influences the dignity of life, the importance of marriage, and the obligation to help those in need," he said during a 2015 presidential debate. Rubio has often spoken about how his faith informs his policy decisions and how that same faith draws skepticism in a political climate that frequently treats conviction as extremism. He continues to reference his faith publicly, including during his Senate confirmation hearing for Secretary of State five months ago.
Like Lipinski, he illustrates how Catholics in public life face pressure from both sides of the aisle when their values challenge the party line.
After months of discernment, I left the Senate and the political career I had worked so hard to build. I chose journalism instead, a field where I could still engage with public life but with truth, not spin, at the center.
This decision was mine alone, but it was informed by Catholic teaching. The Catechism is clear: "Those subject to authority should regard those in authority as representatives of God" (CCC 2238), and "co-responsibility for the common good makes it morally obligatory to pay taxes, exercise the right to vote and to defend one's country" (CCC 2240).
Voting is not optional for Catholics. Civic participation is not just a right. It is a duty. Yet today, many young Catholics opt out. Some refuse to vote because they believe neither party reflects their values. Others, disillusioned by corruption or moral compromise, think political involvement is inherently dirty. But inaction is not a virtue. The Gospel calls us to be salt and light, to engage the world, not retreat from it.
Here is what should be happening: Catholics, especially young ones, need to renew their civic engagement in a way that resists polarization. We must form our conscience, speak out even against our own party, and participate consistently even when options are imperfect. Withdrawal is not moral purity. It is a failure of duty.
To be clear, the Church does not demand blind allegiance to any party or politician. Catholics are called to speak out when policies violate human dignity. But choosing not to vote or to disengage is a failure to contribute to the common good.
Much of this confusion stems from misreading "separation of church and state." That phrase is not in the Constitution. It came from Thomas Jefferson in a letter reassuring Baptists that the government would not interfere with their religious practice. The First Amendment protects the free exercise of religion and prohibits the establishment of religion. It does not ask the faithful to leave their values at the door of public life.
The Church reaffirmed this in the Second Vatican Council's Dignitatis Humanae, which emphasized religious liberty and action under the Gospel Law. Catholics can and must participate in political life while remaining faithful to the Church's teachings.
In 1 Timothy 2:2, St. Paul urges prayers "for kings and all in authority, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness." Every Sunday, we pray for our elected leaders and ask that they govern wisely. But prayer must be paired with action. Catholics are not passive observers. We are citizens.
In a moment of polarization and despair, opting out may feel easier. However, democracy depends on those willing to participate. My choice to leave politics was an act of conscience. But my continued engagement through journalism is my way of staying in the arena and encouraging others to do the same.
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