Why do local and state elections matter, and how can voters be sure that their voices are being represented in the lawmaking process? We open the third season of Democracy Decoded with an overview of democracy at the state and local level, and how we can ensure that all citizens can have their voices heard.
This episode is from the Democracy Decoded podcast as a part of The Democracy Group.
dollar bill reimagined with President Trump's picture
Until recently, tariffs had the sound of something from the nineteenth century. The famous Senator Henry Clay was so enthusiastic about them that, in 1832, he designated the protection they afforded “the American System.”
At that time, Clay argued that the “transformation of the condition of the country from gloom and distress to brightness and prosperity, has been mainly the work of American legislation, fostering American industry, instead of allowing it to be controlled by foreign legislation, cherishing foreign industry.”
More than half a century later, Congressman (and later president) William McKinley championed tariffs and embraced Clay’s belief that import duties would protect domestic industries and workers from foreign competition. In 1890, he sponsored the legislation that raised tariff rates dramatically, saying that doing so would boost the American economy.
Today, all of this sounds very familiar, having been brought back into the American lexicon since President Donald Trump entered the political scene. On July 31, the president issued an Executive Order “imposing additional ad valorem duties on goods of certain trading partners.”
The order was another unilateral exercise of presidential authority rather than the result of democratic deliberation.
The order claims that tariffs are needed to protect “the domestic manufacturing base, critical supply chains, and the defense industrial base.“ However, it is challenging to discern how this purpose justifies the complex array of tariff rates it imposes on various countries.
No economic logic would result in a 25% tariff on goods from India and a 19% tariff for Pakistan, or a 15% rate for Jordan and a 41% rate for Syria. But that should not be surprising.
The president seems to care more about imposing tariffs as an exercise of power than about any such logic. That has been apparent for months as his on again-off again tariff policy unfolded. Or consider the president's actions with Brazil.
As the BBC notes, “Trump has raised Brazil's rate to a whopping 50% – potentially launching a trade war with Latin America's biggest economy, which sells large amounts of beef, coffee, steel and other products to the United States. The announcement on Wednesday means Brazil will face one of the highest US tariff rates in the world, at least so far.”
But, as the BBC observes, “this new policy isn't even really about trade….It's political, and part of a growing feud between the US and Brazil…..” Trump is using tariffs “as retaliation over the prosecution of his ally, right-wing former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro.”
Since he took office in January, the president has ignored the fact that the Constitution assigns the authority to impose tariffs to Congress. He claims authority under “The International Emergency Economic Powers Act… (IEEPA), the National Emergencies Act, section 604 of the Trade Act of 1974, as amended…and section 301 of title 3, United States Code.”
What’s the emergency?
As the Brennan Center for Justice argues, there is none. “Emergency powers,” it says, “are designed to let a president respond swiftly to sudden, unforeseen crises that Congress cannot act quickly or flexibly enough to address. Presidents can rely on these powers to create temporary fixes until the crisis passes or Congress has time to act.”
But, the Brennan Center continues, “Emergency powers are not meant to solve long-standing problems, no matter how serious those problems may be. Nor are they intended to give a president the ability to bypass Congress and act as an all-powerful policymaker.”
In fact, no president claimed emergency powers “to impose tariffs for 48 years…., until Trump did so this year.” But emergencies, real or not, and emergency powers are never good for democracy.
In May, the United States Court of International Trade recognized that when it ruled that nothing in the laws of the United States “delegates… powers to the President in the form of authority to impose unlimited tariffs on goods from nearly every country in the world. The court,” it added, “does not read IEEPA to confer such unbounded authority and sets aside the challenged tariffs imposed thereunder.
The Administration’s position did not receive a better reception on July 31 in a hearing before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington. The lawyer representing the administration conceded that “no president has ever read IEEPA this way.”
Members of the court, the Washington Post reports, “appeared unconvinced by the Trump administration’s insistence that the president could impose tariffs without congressional approval, and it hammered its invocation of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to do so.”
Neal Katyal, Solicitor General in the Obama Administration, got it right when he told the court that what President Trump has done with tariffs is a “’ breathtaking’ power grab that amounted to saying ‘the president can do whatever he wants, whenever he wants, for as long as he wants so long as he declares an emergency.’”
The president is using tariffs to reward those he likes and punish his enemies. He seems to want to stand astride this country and the world, making them both bend to his will.
Tariffs are a key weapon in his arsenal to be wielded as the president wants, regardless of the economic damage they do or the pain they inflict. Many economists warn that such damage will be substantial both here and abroad. According to CNBC, “The tariffs are expected to cost U.S. households an average $2,400 in 2025, with the levies disproportionally impacting clothes.”
While Trump’s tariffs are bringing additional revenue to the federal government, they are slowing economic growth and destabilizing the world economic order that for decades has been important to the prosperity this nation has enjoyed.
They are also not good for our political system. In April, the economist Paul Krugman identified what he called “The secret sauce of the Trump tariffs….Nobody knows what they will be. Nobody knows what comes next.” That may be bad for businesses trying to make plans, but it is good news for a political leader seeking to make his will and whims the center of the political universe.
The president has compared his role in imposing tariffs to that of a storekeeper who owns the store where everyone wants to shop. As he told The Atlantic, “I have to protect that store. And I set the prices.”
Note the singular.
And President Trump is not shy about channeling Clay and McKinley and again emphasizing his singular role. “I’m resetting the table. I’m resetting a lot of years….Our country was most successful from 1850 or so to, think of this, from 1870—really, from 1870 to 1913. And it was all tariffs.”
“And then some great genius said, ‘Let’s go and tax the people instead of taxing other countries.’”
The president, who frequently refers to himself as a genius, is using tariff policy in a way that the people who wrote the American Constitution would never have imagined. It is just another sign of trouble for our democracy.
Austin Sarat is the William Nelson Cromwell professor of jurisprudence and political science at Amherst College.
Democratic Donkey with megaphone
Editor's Notes: below is a new version of the article published earlier today (2:13 pm EST, 8/9/25)
The Democratic Party is in disarray, trying to determine how best to defeat Trump and the MAGA movement in the next midterm and presidential elections.
Their disarray is unfortunately not new. After the 2004 election, Vice President Mondale said, ""Unless we have a vision and the arguments to match, I don’t think we’re going to truly connect with the American people.“ They still have no vision, yet it is there for the asking.
The Pledge of Allegiance says, "with liberty and justice for all." It's about equality. The pledge and the concept of preserving American values should be the rallying cry of Democrats.
Yet when doing a Google search for “preserving American values," not a single Democratic Party organization showed up. But many state and local Republican Party organizations did because they use that phrase in policy documents.
Then last week, looking for a new platform for my blog, I entered the title "Preserving American Values" and the tagline: "Our nation stands under attack ... from within not without.." One platform, using AI, designed a new blog for me, but AI had assumed because of the words I used that I was a MAGA adherent. Talk about proof for the following argument.
I have for the past 2 decades—since writing the book, We Still Hold These Truths—argued that the Democratic Party should embrace America’s founding document—the Declaration of Independence—as the basis for their policies, making it their Mission statement. They should rightfully wrap themselves in the flag.
But they have not followed my advice. Instead, it is the MAGA Republicans who have embraced, deceitfully, the phrase “Preserving American Values;” deceitful in that their take on the values is always self-serving, it's about their rights.
By Democrats not tying their policies to our founding documents, they have left themselves open to Republican criticism for being “elite”, un-American, and not supporting the working man.
Whereas in actuality, it is the Republicans who have always sided with the true elite—large corporations and banks—and against the working man. Trump talks rousingly in support of the working man, but he has in fact done little. Democrats must expose Trump and MAGA Republicans for what they are … hypocrites masquerading as the party of the people.
Why have Democrats not claimed the provenance of our founding documents for their policies? Everything the Party has worked for since the turn of the 20th century derives from the Declaration of Independence: the right of all people—including women, workers, the poor, and people of color— to equality, to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.. Yet they never talk about the Declaration.
Democrats must fight for the hearts and minds of the American people by adopting a vision that resonates with the people. A centrist liberal vision that speaks to all Americans, that does not pit one segment against another, and promotes economic well-being for all. And this includes corporations; they have a vital role to play, but they cannot to be allowed to control government or act against the greater good.
Luckily, there is a vision at hand that is as American as apple pie—the words of the Declaration of Independence. You couldn't draft a more appropriate mission statement for the Democratic Party.
I therefore proposed in 2004, and have often since, that the Party adopt a Mission statement based on the words of the Declaration:
“To build a country of greater opportunity where:
These words from the Declaration of Independence are the moral philosophy, the heart, the soul of American democracy. This is, or at least until recently was, America’s common faith. Democrats must restore that faith.
True, there were aspects of the American experiment that went against these values—slavery and the continuing inequality of women—but the exigencies and mores of the time do not negate the aspirational nature of the words, and indeed they have proven to be the light that has guided us.
Besides the concept of equality, the role of government noted in the Declaration and implemented in the Constitution is critical. That role is "to secure these rights."
What does that mean? It means that government must do what is necessary to insure that all Americans—whether White or people of color; whether rich, middle class, or poor; whether male or female—have a truly equal opportunity to pursue the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
And the government insures that opportunity by enacting policies that promote the education, jobs and economic stability necessary to allow people to advance themselves and feel financially secure. Once the government insures equal opportunity, it is the individual's responsibility to take advantage of it.
For example, welfare is not charity, but an example of the government's providing support so children have an equal opportunity to have a good education. You can't do well in school if you're hungry, if your housing is not secure. But it is then a child's and his parents' responsibility make the most of that opportunity.
But beyond the problem of not having a vision, another major problem is that the Party sees itself one way—the party of the people, the average man—while a large number of those very people—the White middle class worker—see the Party differently. What happened?
The Party must understand its role in this, Yes, the Party worked hard during the 20th century to increase people's rights and their standard of living, first for the American worker and later for the poor and people of color.
But it must realize that in the last decades of the 20th century, it was so focused on righting the discrimination that people of color and the poor suffered historically, that it didn't notice the depths to which the formerly middle class worker sank during the following decades They must do a mea culpa and insure those worker that they are now, once again, whole-heartedly included in the Party's vision for all Americans.
And they must show all Americans that their interests are not really separate or opposed. That by enacting policies that ensure all citizens—White and people of color, the poor and disadvantaged as well as the middle-class worker—have a realistic opportunity to pursue their rights, all benefit. All benefit, even the rich and corporations, from policies that move all people forward because it will create a more prosperous country. Democrats must counter the prevalent us v them attitude.
It is past time for Democrats to regain the rhetorical upper hand and reclaim their position as the party of the people, the party of America’s historic values.. Democrats must go on the offensive.
Ronald L. Hirsch is a teacher, legal aid lawyer, survey researcher, nonprofit executive, consultant, composer, author, and volunteer. He is a graduate of Brown University and the University of Chicago Law School and the author of We Still Hold These Truths. Read more of his writing at www.PreservingAmericanValues.com
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences gave a presentation on their findings on their idea for Community Partnership Visas to a crowd at the American Enterprise Institute on May 29, 2025.
Immigration has taken center stage in political discourse across the United States for more than a decade. A politically divided two-party system continues to claim it holds the solution to a deeply complex system. Meanwhile, immigration raids have increased since President Donald Trump took office. Yet some believe the issue remains worth tackling because the country has not fully recognized the power of immigrant labor.
One group believes it has found a bipartisan solution by proposing the Community Partnership Visa. The place-based visa aims to boost local economic growth and allow counties across the country to benefit from immigration, if it proves successful.
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences introduced the proposal in May at the American Enterprise Institute. The program builds on previous concepts, offering a restructured visa for immigrants who qualify as a “source of economic growth.” Under the plan, states or municipalities would sponsor immigrants directly.
According to the academy’s research, most immigrants settle in a small number of cities and towns, meaning many parts of the country have not “benefited from immigration, which can reverse trends of economic stagnation, population decline, and labor shortages.”
“It should be flexible,” said Jonathan Cohen, a senior program officer at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. “If a community needs agricultural workers, or if it needs nurses, or if it needs professors, there should be a way to modulate the community's needs.”
Cohen said the CPV stands apart from other programs, such as the Heartland Visa, which focus only on high-skilled workers.
But immigration remains a politically and legally complex issue, and federal authorities currently control the decision-making process.
The CPV would resemble existing programs like the H-1B and H-2B visas by issuing roughly 65,000 to 66,000 visas annually. Proponents argue that figure would support “meaningful economic revitalization.” Under the proposal, recipients would agree to live and work in their assigned community. If they fail to secure employment, they could petition to move to another eligible area.
Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies, has followed immigration policy closely, including past efforts to create place-based visa programs. She said these standards are not realistic.
“Green cards are in such demand,” said Vaughan. “Unfortunately, it is likely that people would take advantage of being able to get a green card through a program like this, and then just move wherever they want.”
Vaughan said current green card holders have the right to live and work wherever they choose. She warned that the CPV would represent a major policy shift and could result in misuse.
When immigrants enter the country with the intention of helping a local government but later decide to relocate, Vaughan argued, the government cannot force them to stay.
“There must be a reason why Americans don’t want to live there,” she added. “Why should we expect immigrants to want to live there if it’s not able to do well with Americans living there?”
Vaughan said qualifying counties should focus on improving living conditions to naturally attract employers and residents. She argued that the visa program would act as a temporary fix, using immigrants as a bandage to cover broader structural problems.
Cohen said the opposite sometimes proves true in struggling regions.
“There are places where Americans should and could do these jobs, but for whatever reason, they don’t want to,” he said. “Or they’re not choosing to move to suburban Cleveland for example, and those communities as a result are aging and losing the working age population.”
But immigration remains a complex political and humanitarian issue, and the federal government continues to hold authority over it.
Vaughan said systemic issues, including fraud and integrity problems, plague current visa programs and have gone unaddressed.
“The problem with this [the CPV] is that under our constitution, immigration and the regulation of it is a federal responsibility,” said Vaughan, voicing concern that the program would change how green cards are distributed.
“This proposal is seeking for the federal government to allow state and local governments to run a small immigration program,” she said.
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences acknowledged it must conduct further analysis on some elements of the plan. The group would also need congressional approval for the program to move forward.
Cohen remains hopeful that lawmakers will consider the idea or a version of it.
“Especially because of this current state of the immigration debate, there is some momentum for this idea of a place-based visa program,” he said.
Angeles Ponpa is a graduate student at Northwestern Medill in the Politics, Policy, and Foreign Affairs specialization, and a Fulcrum summer intern.
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Republican Elephant lassos Texas
“We have an opportunity in Texas to pick up five seats. I got the highest vote in the history of Texas, as you probably know, and we are entitled to five more seats, President Donald Trump told CNBC’s Squawk Box.
In a dramatic escalation of partisan warfare over congressional control, Texas Republicans—backed by President Trump and the White House—have unveiled a new congressional map designed to flip five Democratic-held seats and solidify the GOP’s narrow House majority ahead of the 2026 midterms.
“We want to make sure that we have maps that don't impose coalition districts while at the very same time ensuring that we will maximize the ability of Texans to be able to vote for the candidate of their choice, said Gov. Greg Abbott.
The proposed map, released during a special legislative session convened by Abbott, targets districts in Austin, Dallas, Houston, and South Texas. It redraws boundaries to favor Republican candidates, including in areas with large Latino populations. Trump, who carried 27 of Texas’s 38 districts in 2024, has called the redistricting effort “a simple redrawing” that could yield five additional GOP seats.
The proposed redistricting map has drawn significant criticism from Democrats, who argue that it undermines voting rights for communities of color. Critics claim the map dilutes the political influence of voters of color, particularly in Tarrant County, where these voters are divided among multiple Republican-leaning districts. Additionally, the reshaping of Texas’s 35th District—originally established under a court order to protect minority voting rights—has raised concerns about potential violations of the Voting Rights Act.
“If Trump is allowed to rip the Voting Rights Act to shreds here in Central Texas, his ploy will spread like wildfire across the country,” Casar said in a statement. “Everyone who cares about our democracy must mobilize against this illegal map.”
More than 50 Texas House Democrats fled the state to deny Republicans the quorum needed to pass the map, echoing a similar tactic used in 2021. Governor Abbott has threatened fines, arrests, and even removal from office for absent lawmakers.
Rep. Ana Hernandez, D-Houston, brushed off Abbott’s threat, saying Democrats were “using the tools at our disposal, which is a quorum break, to fight and advocate for our communities.”
The success of the GOP’s redistricting strategy may hinge on whether Trump’s gains among Latino voters in 2024 carry into 2026. Trump won 42% of the Latino vote nationally and 50% of Latino men, a dramatic shift from 2020. In Texas, he made double-digit gains in majority-Hispanic counties along the Mexico border and in South Florida.
Four of the five new GOP-leaning districts are majority Hispanic, suggesting Republicans are betting that economic concerns and cultural messaging will continue to resonate with Latino voters.
"Republicans are afraid to face voters in a free and fair election," Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, D-New York, the House minority leader, said in an Aug. 3 post on X.
While the GOP aims to expand its House majority, the redistricting could backfire. Some Republican incumbents fear their seats may become more competitive, and legal challenges are expected.
If the map is enacted, it could reshape the national political landscape—triggering a wave of mid-decade redistricting in other states and intensifying the battle for control of Congress.
Hugo Balta is the executive editor of the Fulcrum. and the publisher of the Latino News Network.
