Kornberg is lead author of the Global Parliamentary Report, scheduled for publication in early 2022, and is writing a book on the U.S. Congress.
In September, American public trust in government stood at 24 percent, a near all-time low. One potential cause for our lack of trust in government is a feeling among citizens that they are not heard. A new study found that only 28 percent of Americans think their representatives pay attention to the general public's views on issues. Another research initiative found that most constituents do not feel heard by their representatives. In order to remedy ailing trust, Congress should institute more systematic and more direct ways of hearing from average Americans.
The crisis facing American democracy is not unique. According to a recent study, over half of citizens living in democracies think their voices are "rarely" or "never" heard and believe they do not have an impact on political decisions.
Congress can learn from how countries around the world are developing solutions.
A forthcoming study of 80 countries around the world, jointly commissioned by the United Nations Development Program and the Inter-Parliamentary Union, points to straightforward solutions. The Global Parliamentary Report draws on a rich dataset of interviews with 140 parliamentarians and staff around the world, focus groups, surveys of 70 parliaments, and input from civil society actors. Among many other lessons, the research reveals the importance of consistent codified methods for engaging citizens outside the halls of the legislature in order to regain public trust.
Moving democracy outside the halls of parliament can increase the reach of parliamentary engagement with citizens. The U.S. Congress normally hears from the American people in congressional hearings. Committees in this large country do not cover the cost of travel, and structural inequities influence who has the financial, physical and other resources necessary to travel to Washington, D.C. Moreover, the personal and professional networks of congressional staff and members of Congress create bias and congressional witnesses may not represent the full spectrum of American perspectives.
The Global Parliamentary Report presents examples of parliaments institutionalizing engagement outside of parliament in order to increase how many and which citizens legislators hear. In the United Kingdom, the select committee engagement team helps parliamentary committees put together engagement events beyond formal evidence sessions. There are about 40 events a year, reaching about 52,500 people. Sixty percent of events are held outside of Parliament. Tara-Jane Kerpens-Lee, manager of the select committee engagement team, explained, "We support committees to hear from the people that they want to hear from but can't always do that through the formal evidence channels."
In Serbia, regular "mobile committee hearings" bring parliamentarians to remote regions of the country. In one example, committee MPs and staff traveled to a remote region following extensive floods in 2014. They heard from about 30 citizens about the need for agricultural insurance. As a result of the hearing the committee voted unanimously against budget cuts. A member of the Serbian Agricultural Procedures Association explained that before these mobile hearings "the main problem was the lack of communication with the committee. ... In earlier years they were virtually impossible to reach ... so how would a peasant be able to enter the Assembly? It's a major relief for farmers when they were able to present their problems." His words illustrate the way in which taking parliament to the people increases the range of voices that legislators can hear.
In the wake of Covid-19, many parliaments are moving engagement online. In Brazil, interactive events allow for public participation in public hearings through toll-free calls and online questions and comments. As of November 2020, over 10 million users had registered more than 24 million opinions on 9,727 propositions. Sen. Zenaide Maia explained that digital tools are "really important because people can participate all the time ... not only voting during the campaigns." Regular online engagement presents another channel for engaging those outside of the capital.
If Congress were to hear from more and more diverse groups of people, Americans might begin feeling that policymakers are listening. Evaluations of events put on by the U.K. select committee engagement team show that 65 percent of participants feel heard by committees, and 60 percent feel positive that their views will go on to inform policy. Personal interactions with politicians also increase their relatability. The chairwoman of Subotica City Association for People with Autism Disabilities, an organization visited by the Serbian mobile committee, reflected "only then [after the hearing] I realized that[MPs] are people just like us. We just need to present them the problems we are coping with."
Congress has already experimented with digital hearings in the wake of Covid-19 and on occasion different committees hold field hearings and listening tours. In addition, individual members of Congress hold town halls in their districts. However, what is missing is a systematic and consistent method of engaging citizens across the country. By institutionalizing field hearings as standard practice for committees, creating a dedicated office within Congress to support engagement work, and incorporating digital methods that enable long distance participation in all hearings, Congress can regain trust by showing its citizens that it hears all Americans.
image of U.S. President Donald Trump is displayed on a digital billboard in Times Square in New York on April 8, 2026.
Trump is stuck between two realities. Neither serves the American people
Normally, I worry that events may overtake a column. But not so with the Iran war.
I don’t worry about running afoul of a headline or Truth Social post from the president because what is said about the situation is no longer very relevant to the reality.
On April 8, Nick Catoggio, my Dispatch colleague, dubbed an earlier stoppage with Iran “Schrödinger’s ceasefire.” This was a reference to the famous thought experiment by the physicist Erwin Schrödinger, who was trying to explain the weirdness of “superpositionality” in quantum physics. A cat in a box is both dead and alive at the same time until you open the box. Schrödinger meant to illustrate the absurdity of the idea that particles aren’t any one thing, but a “cloud of probabilities.”
The Trump administration is stuck in a word cloud of probabilities of his own making. The war is over. The war is on. The war isn’t a war. We have a deal, but we don’t have a deal, but we’re about to have a deal. We destroyed Iran’s military. No, we left it intact. We want regime change. No we don’t. We already accomplished it. We “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program a year ago. We had to go to war in February to prevent nuclear war. The Strait of Hormuz is open, closed, or something in-between. No deal without “unconditional surrender.” Let’s make a deal!
This everything-all-at-once vibe can be disorienting, particularly since most Americans didn’t have a war with Iran on their bingo cards until the shooting had already started. President Trump didn’t prepare the country or consult with Congress beforehand because he thought it would all be a smashing success in a matter of weeks.
The miscalculation that started it all: killing Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and much of Iran’s senior leadership, on the first day of the war. To “the great proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand,” Trump announced on Feb. 28. “When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations.”
I support regime change in Iran and shed no tears for Khamenei or his goons. But when you start a war by killing the regime’s top leaders, it’s not unreasonable for the remaining ones to conclude that you really intend regime change.
Khamenei was a murderous fanatic, but he was a fairly cautious one. He liked to threaten closing the Strait of Hormuz or attacking our regional allies, but he was reluctant to actually do it, fearing it would invite a regime change war. The mullahs and IRGC goons believed, not unreasonably, that if they lost their grip on power, they’d be lynched by the Iranian people they’ve brutalized for decades.
By starting with a regime change war, Trump removed any reason for the regime not to go for broke. When you have nothing to lose — particularly when you are a millenarian religious fanatic — a Persian Alamo strategy makes a lot of sense.
So Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz and attacked its neighbors.
But it turns out this wasn’t the Alamo. In the contest of wills, Trump blinked. The Iranian regime’s tolerance for punishment proved — so far — to be greater than Trump’s and that of our gulf allies. Militarily we could finish the job, but that would require ground troops and much greater economic turmoil. In a conflict Trump launched unilaterally without the prior support of Congress, NATO or the American people, Trump doesn’t have the political capital for that.
But that’s only half the problem. Trump wants the war over, but he doesn’t want to pay — militarily, economically, politically — what that would cost. So he wants to make a deal that ends it. But there is no deal available that wouldn’t come at an equally undesirable cost. Any deal that looks like what President Obama struck with the Iranians would be too embarrassing to bear. But the Iranians are convinced that they can get just such a deal, and they’re willing to drag things out as long as it takes.
The result: Trump’s in a box of his own making. He thinks he can talk his way out by simply asserting a reality that doesn’t exist. When the financial markets get nervous, he announces a breakthrough that is, at best, a possibility. When the Iranians agree to a deal that looks similar to one Obama might negotiate, Trump goes back to his threats.
It can’t go on forever. But I’m sure it’ll last until long after this column is forgotten.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.