A backroom deal for redrawing Michigan's state legislative districts has been rejected by a panel of federal judges, who will instead hear the case as a trial starting Tuesday.
The judges said the Democratic secretary of state had no authority to make the pact with fellow Democrats in the Legislature, who argue the current maps were an unconstitutionally partisan gerrymander at the hand of the majority Republicans in the state House. The Democratic plaintiffs say that about a dozen of the 110 districts ought to be redrawn to give them a fair shot.
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Tara Campbell
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Tara Campbell: Human Rights Champion
Nov 23, 2025
Dayton Democracy Fellow Tara Campbell always had one goal: to be part of meaningful change. Now the executive president of the Dayton United for Human Rights coalition, her interest in community activism started early, inspired by two mentors. One was Mona Jordan, who supervised her when she worked summers for a neighborhood organization. When Campbell attended Central State University West (now Central State University-Dayton), she gained another mentor in the late Idotha “Bootsie” Neal, the college’s director and the first Black woman on the Dayton City Commission. “Under both of their leadership is where my understanding of democracy, community, and civic engagement started from,” Campbell said.
After college, she entered the housing industry, and for more than 30 years has worked in the public and private housing sector. Campbell believes that access to safe and affordable housing is not just a need, it’s essential for stability, growth, and opportunity.“
When you don’t have a stable environment, it really plays a factor on one’s mental stability and how kids really thrive in school. Housing is the first foundation for success. Housing is a human right. When housing is unstable, it doesn’t just affect one individual, it echoes through their health, their family, and the community around them,” she said.
Housing was a natural springboard to her interest in helping people improve their lives and leading Dayton United for Human Rights, a volunteer-driven organization dedicated to human dignity and strengthening community. The organization and its allies began to campaign for Dayton to become a Human Rights City, which would be the first in Ohio.
The term “Human Rights City” emerged in the 1990s, driven by an international push to bring human rights concerns to the local level. Such a city makes a public commitment to apply the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights in its day-to-day operations. The 1948 declaration, comprising 30 articles, recognizes the equality of all people. It also outlines fundamental rights, including the right to an education, participation in government, freedom of assembly, religion, and others.
The human rights movement in Dayton, led by Campbell and her allies, paid off. In December of 2023, the Dayton City Commission unanimously passed a resolution committing Dayton to become a Human Rights City. Campbell said that this step is a way to protect democracy itself. It would not just be “flowery language.”
“We want to make sure that we uplift the voices of all people, especially marginalized communities and our youth. And so our mission is to educate people on their human rights and then they can use those rights to activate and ensure government respects and protects them going forward,” she said. “Human rights are not granted by institutions, they’re not inherited, they are simply the rights that we have, the rights we were born with because we’re humans, you know? And we demand our rights to be respected and protected.”
Dayton is in the midst of reviewing its standards, practices, and procedures that stand in the way of human rights. The coalition Campbell leads is compiling a community-led report after meeting with Dayton residents for 18 months. “We wanted to find out what it means for Dayton to become a true Human Rights City, what challenges exist, and what might effective solutions look like,” Campbell said. The report’s publication is planned to coincide with Human Rights Day on December 10, which celebrates the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Campbell sees all of her work as her contributions to democracy, particularly working with youth through art to help them better understand their roles as citizens. “We need to stop talking for the youth and allow them to create the table and be at the table,” she said. “They understand what they need. We need to offer them spaces to express themselves.” It’s all part of uplifting voices, Campbell said. “And getting the youth to understand the importance of their human rights that they were born with.”
Maura Casey is a former editorial writer for the New York Times and has worked with the Kettering Foundation since 2010.
This article was originally published as part of a series of articles about the Charles F. Kettering Foundation’s Dayton Democracy Fellows, a program that supports innovative leaders, changemakers, and dreamers who are building movements for inclusive democracy in their communities and in our wider world.
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The NYC Voter Turnout was the Highest in 50 Years. How do we Keep it Going?
Nov 22, 2025
This month, New Yorkers turned out in droves to vote in a historic election. More than 2 million people voted in the mayoral election – the highest in 50 years. Zohran Mamdani’s campaign succeeded in getting people involved in local New York City politics with hordes of people canvassing and volunteering for the candidate.
Now that the election is over, how can we keep this energy going? My research suggests one potential path forward. During my Ph.D. at Cornell, I studied the alternative ways that people get local information in today’s media environment. It’s no secret that local newspapers are struggling – since 2004, the number of journalists employed at newsrooms has dropped by about half.
So, for the past years, I have asked: If local newspapers are disappearing, where do people turn to instead?
Broadly, I found that people now turn to local online spaces to get crucial information about their communities. Most localities have some version of them. In some places, all the action happens on Nextdoor. In others, there’s one particular Buy & Sell group on Facebook that everybody goes to.
To understand this phenomenon, I started by talking with people about their local information needs, speaking with them about where they get information about civic issues like COVID outbreaks, schools, and local elections. I complemented these interviews with user surveys and data analyses of actual posts people made to Facebook, Nextdoor, and Reddit.
I struggled to find information on my local elections in New Jersey. So I turned to neighborhood forums to find information about my own mayoral candidates in Jersey City. The local reddit forum boasts 99,000 subscribers, almost one third of the city’s population. A few of the top candidates conducted an AMA on Reddit, where they answered people’s questions directly. Through this reddit forum, I also found a local Substack newsletter, run by a long-time member of the community. Though only one person runs the newsletter, and I don’t think the measly $5 per month donations offset all their efforts, this newsletter consistently provides analysis of local candidate policies and perspectives you can’t find elsewhere. On Youtube, a recording of the Mayoral Forum on Street Safety & Transportation sees the top candidates propose their traffic enforcement policy, with commenters who debate the most salient points.
When I cast my vote at City Hall on Sunday, these were the information stewards I was thanking. The moderators who organized the AMAs and let individuals ask questions, the newsletter writer who I’ve followed for years, and yes, even the YouTube comments that told me which points to pay attention to.
On these local online platforms, we desperately need good stewards of local information. We need these people precisely because these platforms have real problems. These spaces can be politically divided, toxic, and sometimes exclusionary. In my own work, I've found that Reddit's local communities tend to attract older, more educated users, and that Nextdoor posts can reflect troubling socioeconomic patterns.
But I have also witnessed so many examples where individuals made these imperfect spaces better. During the COVID-19 pandemic I talked to a nurse who spent her limited free time correcting misinformation in a local Facebook group chat. In my studies, people who followed historical pages about their city on Facebook told me they now viewed their city in a whole new light. A study I conducted on Reddit showed that people who participate in these online spaces are also more politically engaged and feel more closely tied to their communities. Good stewards don't just fill information gaps, but actively counter the platforms' worst tendencies. And you can be one of them.
Contributing to your local information ecosystem can also help you feel potent in the face of the national discourse. We’re going through a government shutdown right now, and while you may not be able to reinstate SNAP benefits for the entire nation, you can find out and synthesize how to donate to local food banks. These contributions don’t have to be constant: if you have 15 minutes free on a Sunday, you can make a difference to someone’s life.
I encourage you to take action on this today. You can start small: reply to questions on Nextdoor, or post useful information on your local Facebook group. Or go bigger: become a moderator on your local subreddit. Answer someone's question about the school board candidates. Share what you learned at the city council meeting. Explain ballot measures in plain language. You turned out to vote. Now get out and post.
Marianne Aubin Le Quéré is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Princeton’s Center for Information Technology Policy. She is a Public Voices Fellow on Technology in the Public Interest of the OpEd Project.
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From Nixon to Trump: A Blueprint for Restoring Congressional Authority
Nov 22, 2025
The unprecedented power grab by President Trump, in many cases, usurping the clear and Constitutional authority of the U.S. Congress, appears to leave our legislative branch helpless against executive branch encroachment. In fact, the opposite is true. Congress has ample authority to reassert its role in our democracy, and there is a precedent.
During the particularly notable episode of executive branch corruption during the Nixon years, Congress responded with a robust series of reforms. Campaign finance laws were dramatically overhauled and strengthened. Nixon’s overreach on congressionally authorized spending was corrected with the passage of the Impoundment Act. And egregious excesses by the military and intelligence community were blunted by the War Powers Act and the bipartisan investigation by Senator Frank Church (D-Idaho).
It seems perfectly possible that, once Trump leaves the White House, Congress could reassert its authority under Article I of the Constitution, as it has done before. What are the logical reforms that could be proposed better to correct the imbalance in our checks and balances system?
Problem: Executive branch ignoring federal law -- passed by Congress and signed by the President -- to spend appropriated funds.
Solution: Remove OMB's discretion to apportion federal funding and direct agencies to spend funds as directed by Congress. The Antideficiency Act, originally passed in 1880, prohibits federal employees from “making or authorizing an expenditure or any appropriation or fund in excess of the amount available in the appropriation or fund unless authorized by law,” according to the General Accountability Office. Penalties include removal from office, fines, and even jail sentences. Why not add a provision that imposes penalties for NOT spending federal dollars? The threat of prosecution is a remarkable incentive to obey the law and may be helpful here.
Problem: The President declaring emergencies to act in an unconstitutional manner, such as levying tariffs.
Solution: Pass a law clarifying how and when a President can declare an emergency. Thankfully, there is already bipartisan legislation to do just that. “The Article One Act,” led the House by Chip Roy (R-TX), (yes – Mr. MAGA himself), and Steve Cohen (D-TN), and by Mike Lee (R-UT) and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) in the Senate, would address this issue by terminating a presidential declaration of a national emergency after 30 days unless Congress passes a joint resolution approving the declaration. The Supreme Court may eventually rule against Trump on the tariff question, since the Constitutional language regarding Congress’s primacy role for tariffs and revenue is crystal clear. Yet more protection is clearly needed.
Problem: President Trump is firing federal agencies' inspectors general (IG), who are supposed to be free of political interference.
Solution: Strengthen the laws to provide additional protections to IG’s. The roughly 80 federal inspectors general are watchdogs established by Congress and embedded in federal agencies to root out waste, fraud, and abuse. Among other things, they take in whistleblower complaints and ferret out illegal activity. The Federal Vacancies Act should be updated, per a recommendation from the Project on Government Oversight, to vest the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency (CIGIE) with the power to make temporary appointments. As a backup in case a court strikes down that process, Congress should allow designated federal judges to appoint acting IGs from a list of candidates maintained by CIGIE. This mirrors the model for appointing temporary U.S. attorneys. This would ensure their qualifications and independence.
Problem: President Trump is eviscerating the Advice and Consent clause of the Constitution regarding the appointment of U.S. Attorneys, allowing him and his cronies to avoid U.S. Senate oversight and confirmation.
Solution: Change laws regarding the appointment of Acting U.S. Attorneys. Multiple cases are winding their way through the court system, with some courts invalidating these appointments in full. And the judicial branch may eventually correct this violation of the spirit of the Constitution. However, the chaos and delay are leaving our judicial system in tatters. Congress can clarify the role of Acting U.S. Attorneys, even directing rank-and-file career prosecutors to fill that role until the Senate confirms a replacement.
Problem: The federal courts are abetting Trump's power grab by creating new protections for the president, such as immunity from prosecution, and by dramatically expanding presidential hiring and removal authorities by asserting the unitary executive theory.
Solution: The Senate should strive to increase the percentage of nominees to the federal courts who have legislative branch experience and should dramatically limit the number of appointees who have worked in the Justice Department. This would ensure that federal judges are more respectful of Congress's prerogatives and less likely to embrace maximalist executive-branch legal theories.
There will likely be many who read these ideas and consider their contemplation a wasteful exercise. Congress has both neutered itself and allowed the executive branch to invade its jurisdiction to such a degree that an assertive legislative branch is unthinkable. However, at other times in American history, similar imbalances have occurred between the branches of government. And the American democratic pendulum always seems to swing back to restore sensible equilibrium. One thing is for certain: if we don’t at least discuss and debate a restoration of Congressional authority, nothing will happen.
Bradford Fitch is the former CEO of the Congressional Management Foundation and author of “Citizens’ Handbook for Influencing Elected Officials.” Daniel Schuman is the Executive Director of the American Governance Institute.
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In and Out: The Limits of Term Limits
Nov 22, 2025
Nearly 14 years ago, after nearly 12 years of public service, my boss, Rep. Todd Platts, surprised many by announcing he was not running for reelection. He never term-limited himself, per se. Yet he had long supported legislation for 12-year term limits. Stepping aside at that point made sense—a Cincinnatus move, with Todd going back to the Pennsylvania Bar as a hometown judge.
Term limits are always a timely issue. Term limits may have died down as an issue in the halls of Congress, but I still hear it from people in my home area.
I have supported term limits for Representatives and Senators at both the state and federal levels. Yet I supported only the term limits introduced by Todd. His term-limits bills would have limited both Representatives and Senators to 12 years in office, short of the 6 years for Representatives advocated by at least one term-limits group, but still imposing a significant limitation on the legislature. Todd’s bill also applied only to consecutive terms, meaning if there was a break in legislative service – either during the twelve years or after twelve years – the clock reset. Add Todd’s bill, which partially grandfathered existing Representatives and Senators.
Todd’s bill seemed the best approach at the time. I instinctively opposed term limits of less than twelve years: Turnover in Congress has democratic value, but six years? Twelve felt the correct number. Add that limiting voting to consecutive terms balances the right of people to vote for anyone they want with the problem of incumbency, as my boss highlighted: An incumbent just doing their job has a great advantage in getting reelected. If there is a break in incumbency, the playing field is more level. As to the grandfathering, this helps ensure time to prepare for what amounts to a radical change in constitutional structure.
Maybe I still support term limits. Maybe not. But first, I want to dispatch with the two less persuasive arguments for term limits.
Do term limits have to mean a lack of needed experience in the legislative process? I do not think so if we set a 12-year limit. A few years is enough time to get up to speed – especially if we elect people who do their homework before even running. Not to mention that experience in the life of a Congressional District or state is valid experience for serving in the legislature, too.
Would term limits increase the influence of lobbyists or increase the “revolving door”? Unlikely in the first case and only somewhat in the second. There would be plenty of new legislators with no real connection to all those lobbyists.
However, there is also this argument: Term limits would insulate Senators and Representatives from the people. If time is limited, you are free to ignore public opinion. If one does not need to be re-elected, whether in six years or twelve years or whatever, would not there be greater statesmanship in terms of following legislative judgment over public opinion?
Yet, on this last one, I believe statesmanship is different than ignoring public opinion. It involves an engagement with the people. Engaging with the people to take positions shaped by their views but not controlled by them. So, a statesman is someone who considers public opinion but does not surrender to it 100%. The true statesman seeks compromise both inside Congress with other legislators and outside Congress with public opinion. A true statesman is still a public servant.
I confess that I liked working for Todd in Congress. When we hit the 12-year term limit, I admittedly had a self-interest in staying in Congress, working for Todd. But I can also honestly say that a shift in my position has been buttressed by my experience with Todd in being a true public servant.
I take pride in this – our attempts to reach constituents by responding to their letters, postcards, e-mails, and phone calls, and engaging in conversation. Our use of direct media and news media to inform constituents of the best case for the votes of Todd – then letting them decide whether that “best case” is good enough. Our town halls, where Todd made himself totally accountable to the people of his Congressional District. All of this is shaping Todd’s votes and actions.
Contra typical term limits arguments, I sincerely left Congress with an even greater commitment to the people of our Congressional District. How could I not when engaging so much with its good people?Scott Miller is a graduate of Widener School of Law, a former chief of staff in Congress, and the author of 'Christianity & Your Neighbor's Liberty.
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