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.
DOJ lawsuits in Alaska and California preview post-Election Day fights over certification and seating winners. Here’s how officials and voters can prepare.
Less than two weeks before Election Day, President Trump’s Justice Department asked a federal court to stop Alaska from certifying its U.S. Senate race if Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan loses to Democrat Mary Peltola. The lawsuit claims that a second candidate on the ballot, Daniel J. Sullivan, will confuse voters. That argument went nowhere in June, when the Alaska Supreme Court ruled that the state had no legal way to remove him from the ballot. Asked about the suit, the president took credit. “I’m the one that said do it,” he told reporters.
Alongside the Alaska suit, the Trump administration sued California to keep the state from counting mail ballots from 20,000 people it calls “likely” noncitizens. Over the summer, the Department of Homeland Security put that number at 190,000. Legal experts expect both suits to fail, as so many suits like them have. Still, Alaska and California give us an early look at what the weeks after November 3rd could bring: recount demands, calls to review or throw out ballots, and pressure to delay seating winners.
These efforts can do a lot of damage even when courts reject them, because every week of delay leaves voters without the representative they chose. Election officials, judges, reporters and voters need to prepare now, before the first post-election challenge arrives.
And the challenges will arrive. Whoever holds power over who takes a seat has used it before, and the delay always lands on voters.
After the 2020 election, Donald Trump and his allies filed over 60 lawsuits challenging results in states he lost, and most of them failed due to a lack of evidence. In Michigan, Republican canvassers in Wayne County blocked certification for hours before reversing course. The suits lost, but they still caused major political delays.
Delay can come from inside Congress, too. Take, for instance, Rep. Adelita Grijalva, who won Arizona’s 7th District special election on September 23, 2025, but wasn’t sworn in until November 12th, 50 days later. House Speaker Mike Johnson’s explanation kept changing: first he was waiting for official results, then for the House to return to session, then for the government shutdown to end. Critics pointed to her pledge to sign the Epstein discharge petition. Democrats noted that Johnson had sworn in two Republicans, Jimmy Patronis and Randy Fine, on a day the House had gone out of session. Arizona’s attorney general sued to try to force the swearing-in, and Johnson called the suit “patently absurd.” Still, Grijalva took her seat only when the House came back.
In this case, one official’s discretion over procedure kept more than 800,000 Arizonans without a vote in the House for seven weeks.
To be sure, seating disputes are rare. The House last refused to seat a certified winner on the first day of a new Congress in 1985, when the Democratic majority declined to seat Indiana Republican Richard McIntyre and, months later, seated his Democratic opponent by four votes. Federal law also requires the House clerk to list members whose credentials show they were elected under state and federal law, which leaves little room for personal or political discretion. But little room and no room are different, and the limited space still provides room for a long fight.
Preparing for that fight belongs to all of us.
State officials already know certification timelines. It’s their job to know. They should publish those timelines now and meet them to build public trust. Knowing that legal interference is coming, courts should be prepared to schedule expedited hearings so challenges can’t run on forever. Reporters should explain, now, that slow counts and recounts in close races are normal rather than signs of fraud, and they should separate filed lawsuits from proven problems. Both parties could also publicly commit to seating every certified winner when the new Congress convenes on Jan. 3rd.
Voters have work to do, too. We can learn our state’s certification deadlines and give the counts the time they need without claiming fraud. Millions of people vote, and counting every ballot takes a little while. We also need to remember that when a television network calls a race, that call is a media organization’ projection. It isn’t the official result, and no one ever officially wins on election day. The certified count decides who wins.
The lawsuits in Alaska and California show us that legal battles are coming. The delay in seating Arizona’s 7th District Representative shows that even when the winner is clear, it can take weeks for that person to take office. If the challenges after November 3rd go the way these suits suggest, voters in other states could wait just as long, or longer for the representation the Constitution promises them.
We still have time to hold the people in power to that promise.
Stephanie Toliver is a Public Voices Fellow and a member of the OpEd Alumni Project sponsored by the University of Illinois.
Woman at the podium
SÃO PAULO, Brazil — As the United States grapples with polarization, declining trust in institutions, and questions about democracy's future, some Brazilians are pursuing an unconventional strategy to strengthen civic life: training better political leaders before they ever run for office.
One organization at the center of that effort is RenovaBR, a nonprofit, nonpartisan initiative founded to prepare citizens for public service, educate prospective candidates, and support elected officials throughout their careers. The organization describes its mission as promoting "political education as a path to renewal" to help create a more qualified, representative, and effective political class.
During a recent visit to Brazil as part of the Brazilian Blueprint—an intercultural civic-learning initiative organized by Stories Change Power—I met with many organizations working to strengthen democracy from the ground up. Renova BR stood out because it treats political leadership as a discipline that can be taught, studied, and improved systematically.
Its curriculum focuses on public policy, governance, political communication, campaign management, and democratic institutions, preparing future public officials while encouraging broader civic participation. Unlike traditional candidate-recruitment programs, RenovaBR does not align with a single political party. Instead, it develops leaders from varied ideological backgrounds who share a baseline commitment to democratic values, ethical conduct, and effective governance.
In the United States, leadership initiatives typically focus on civic engagement, campaign mechanics, or party-specific recruitment. Few operate at RenovaBR's scale or explicitly frame political leadership as a democratic skill to cultivate formally—a philosophy that carries renewed weight as Americans look past the midterm elections and toward 2028.
When I asked what specific steps RenovaBR has taken to rebuild public confidence amid widespread skepticism, Gabriel Morais, Director of Institutional Relations, emphasized that effective leadership requires understanding citizens' needs rather than merely pursuing political power.
“RenovaBR was founded in 2017 in response to widespread dissatisfaction with politics in Brazil," said Morais. "Our conviction is that rebuilding public trust requires political leaders who listen to people, act ethically, and have the skills to turn public needs into effective policies. Over the past nine years, we have pursued that goal through four main areas of work.”
To execute this mission, the organization operates across four core pillars:
Broadening Leadership Access: Offering tuition-free educational programs to welcome individuals from diverse professions, regions, and social backgrounds—including those who previously never considered running for office.
Vetting for Democratic Values: Using a thorough selection process, including background checks and interviews, to ensure candidates are committed to ethics, transparency, inclusion, and continuous learning.
Continuous Skill-Building & Support: Providing practical training in governance, accountability, and ethical conduct that extends beyond election day through ongoing peer mentorship and professional development for elected officials.
Cross-Ideological Dialogue: Serving as a nonpartisan platform to train leaders across the democratic spectrum, fostering collaboration and constructive problem-solving across opposing viewpoints.
These efforts have yielded tangible results. Since 2017, RenovaBR has trained over 3,600 citizens, and more than 400 alumni have won public office since the 2018 electoral cycle. In the 2026 general election, 47 RenovaBR-trained leaders were elected in the first round alone, spanning 14 political parties across 17 Brazilian states.
“We recognize that rebuilding public trust is a long-term effort that depends on many institutions and actors. Our contribution is to prepare leaders to earn that trust through their everyday conduct: listening to the people they represent, making informed decisions, working across differences, and being accountable to the public," he said.
I also explored how Brazil's approach to training leaders differs from the United States' and what American civic organizations might learn from a model that prioritizes political pluralism over party loyalty.
“As a nonpartisan organization, RenovaBR’s model involves training people from across the ideological spectrum and from multiple different backgrounds together, in the same classroom, teaching them how to collaborate with each other constructively,” Morais said. “American civil society organizations could learn from this model and encourage future leaders with opposing viewpoints to work together and overcome polarization.”
While traditional political training often occurs within partisan silos that limit exposure to differing perspectives, bringing leaders together in shared spaces teaches them to negotiate, disagree respectfully, and collaborate—an approach especially relevant as both nations navigate deep political divisions.
Finally, I asked whether Brazil's recent experiences with democratic backsliding had reshaped how the organization prepares future leaders.
“The pressures Brazil’s democracy has faced have strengthened our conviction that institutional resilience depends, in part, on the commitment and conduct of the people who serve in public office,” Morais explained. “Leaders need both the skills to develop effective policies and a clear understanding of their responsibility to uphold democratic rules, including when those rules produce outcomes they disagree with."
“We want the leaders we train to advocate firmly for their ideas while recognizing the legitimacy of political opponents and respecting the institutions that allow democratic competition to take place. Preparing people to govern also means preparing them to exercise power responsibly, accept its limits, and remain accountable to the public.”
These insights highlight a central lesson from Brazil's democratic renewal: strong institutions matter, but so do the people who staff and lead them.
As Americans continue debating electoral reform, civic engagement, and institutional resilience, organizations like RenovaBR offer a compelling thesis. Democracy is not preserved solely through laws, courts, and elections—it is equally sustained by investing in the character, preparation, and standards of the people who choose to serve.
That may be one of Brazil's most vital lessons for the United States.
Hugo Balta traveled through Brazil, reporting on how the country's efforts to strengthen democracy, expand civic participation, and address environmental challenges may hold valuable insights for the United States.
Balta is executive editor of The Fulcrum, publisher of the Latino News Network, and twice president of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists. He is an accredited Solutions Journalism and Complicating the Narratives trainer with the Solutions Journalism Network.
Mahatma Gandhi addressing some of his thousands of followers on the lawn of the home of Dr. Ansari where Gandhi stopped during his peace meetings with Viceroy Lord Irwin.
In 2007, the United Nations gathered to declare an International Day of Non-Violence. It fittingly chose Gandhi’s birthday, October 2nd, for the occasion: a day to affirm “the universal relevance of the principle of non-violence” and strive toward a common culture of tolerance and understanding.
The resolution passed by consensus, co-sponsored by 140 member nations. Each attested to what nearly everyone believes: that they—their culture, their country, their party, their movement— want peace.
Of course, for Gandhi, that desire wasn’t contingent. Even in the bloody struggle for Indian independence, non-violence for him and his most loyal followers was non-negotiable. Their resistance would be peaceful no matter what their enemy chose to do.
For the rest of us, non-violence is often what we aspire to somewhere down the line. It sits on the other side of something, or someone, who must be dealt with first—whether because of their own violence, or because we won’t tolerate the idea of a peace that includes them. Sometimes that hoped-for peace involves more than mere non-violence. It’s a world complete with the other things we all want, and that the member nations of the UN have agreed on in the past: happiness, human rights, clean drinking water, friendship, justice, the eradication of poverty.
The more we believe that this future is within our reach—and the worse we believe those who stand in its way to be—the more extreme the actions we’re willing to justify to get there.
“We live in a world of abstractions, of bureaus and machines, of absolute ideas and of crude messianism,” Albert Camus wrote in 1946, having just witnessed the world tear itself apart. “We suffocate among people who think they are absolutely right, whether in their machines or in their ideas.”
In Neither Victims nor Executioners, Camus lamented that those who advocated for violence did so because they were unable to truly imagine other people’s death—that in an industrialized age in which people had become removed from reality, they lost the ability to understand the consequences of what they advocated for. He couldn’t have imagined a world of algorithms that reinforced certainty in narratives, or of media that created an illusion of insight while severing the humanity of those on the screen. Nor could he have foreseen how the descendants of some participants in the apocalyptic war he had witnessed would become so comfortable, and view its bloodshed as so foreign, that they would not only come to view non-violence as inadequate, but as something that stands in the way of the kind of peace they want.
By 1947, India had achieved independence. There were other factors at play, not the least of which was the war, but Gandhi’s non-violence movement could be considered a success. He had been adamant that his approach hadn’t meant shying away from a fight. “On the contrary,” he wrote, “the non-violence of my conception is a more active and real fight against wickedness than retaliation whose very nature is to increase wickedness.”
But the empire he waged his peaceful struggle against was not the Nazi regime, nor was it the Iranian theocracy of today. The British Empire could be brutal in its rule, but it had a conscience that could be appealed to. Not long before Gandhi’s own time, it had launched sweeping efforts to vaccinate against smallpox in India and fought a costly campaign at sea to eliminate the slave trade worldwide. It had also pioneered limits on the power rulers held over subjects. Its government answered to voters, and its voters read the newspapers of a free press that publicized the government’s shortcomings. What worked against this enemy had its limits when used against others.
Today in the West, a growing scorn for non-violence is justified by drawing equivalences between our domestic enemies and those for whom peaceful confrontation has only meant easy prey. The insistence that those who stand in the way of our ideal peace are as bad as Nazis goes further than justifying extreme measures. It distorts the whole moral landscape, as reality is sacrificed to preserve our narratives and maintain a certainty in our own goodness even as we opt for violence.
It starts with the concept of violence itself. Structural violence, epistemic violence, silence as violence—all serve to rationalize the use of actual violence in response. Where the demand for a pretext for violence exceeds the supply of it, substitutes have been found by inflating the very meaning of the word.
Gandhi had been open about his hatred for the system the British had set up in his country. He also hated aspects of the caste system that Hindus had long maintained. But he insisted that he did not hate people. “No human being is so bad as to be beyond redemption,” he wrote, “no human being is so perfect as to warrant his destroying him whom he wrongly considers to be wholly evil.” That belief in the fallibility of all human beings informed Gandhi’s non-violent approach. For those who prefer the alternative in their pursuit of peace, that view is inverted—the enemy as an evil oppressor requires innocent victims, and an innocent victim is one whose violence is justified.
Gandhi refused to hold all Englishmen responsible for the actions of the empire, just as he refused to condemn his fellow Hindus for the caste belief that regarded some people as untouchables. In rationalizing the pursuit of peace by extreme means, the very concept of the individual becomes a casualty. For a Manichaean worldview that splits the world into good and evil—those who share a specific vision of a peaceful future, and those who don’t—all that matters is the group one belongs to.
“From Right to Left, everyone, with the exception of a few swindlers, believes that his particular truth is the one to make men happy,” Camus wrote. “And yet the combination of all these good intentions has produced the present infernal world.” He could see that we couldn’t arrive at the perfect ideals we all desire, “however lofty and necessary, whether happiness or justice or liberty,” by simply eliminating those who stood in the way. Gandhi knew that beyond defeating enemies, this pursuit would ultimately require power. Because that power ultimately rests on violence, he wasn’t interested: “By its very nature, non-violence cannot ‘seize’ power, nor can that be its goal,” he said. “But non-violence can do more; it can effectively control and guide power without capturing the machinery of government. That is its beauty.”
If we truly want to attain peace, as all of us seem to do, then what we need isn’t power. Peace requires protection from power. Perfection requires power without limits. The liberalism of the West was built on those kinds of limitations, and on the recognition that we were willing to live in an imperfect peace rather than shed blood for the chance at a perfect one.
We don’t need to be Gandhis, incapable of hatred and willing to lie down before the violence of the state. But as new generations of peace-loving idealists turn away from liberalism and non-violence, we should heed his warnings that while violent means might bring temporary victories, the evils they bring are permanent.
That all life is sacred, and that while one should be willing to sacrifice oneself for the good, one must never sacrifice others—these were the deeply held beliefs at the root of his philosophy. It remains to be seen if any lasting peace, no matter how imperfect, can be had without beliefs like them.
Nick Xavier Smith is a former U.S. Army officer and the author of the forthcoming book The Good Guy Problem. He writes about extremism, liberalism, and human nature on his Substack.
Smoke hangs over the city against a twilight sky following an explosion during an air raid alert on October 2, 2026 in Kyiv, Ukraine
The drone that slams into a Ukrainian apartment building may have been designed in Iran, built in Russia with Chinese parts, and launched alongside North Korean artillery shells.
Retired Rear Adm. Mark Montgomery came back from a couple of weeks in Ukraine with a blunt observation: Ukraine “is fighting Russia, North Korea, Iran and China.”
That is the core argument of “Axis of Aggressors: Countering the Cooperation of China, Russia, Iran and North Korea.” Montgomery wrote the book this summer with Bradley Bowman and Elaine Dezenski of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
The authors document 616 instances of security cooperation among the four regimes. These countries are not a formal alliance, and they don’t fully trust one another. They don’t have to. They share a goal, a weaker America, and help each other get there.
Ukraine’s battlefield shows how their cooperation works. North Korea has sent artillery shells and thousands of troops. Russia now builds Iran’s Shahed drone design in its own factories, using Chinese machine tools and components.
According to the book, China also buys as much as 95% of Iran’s oil exports while Russia and North Korea have signed a treaty with a mutual-defense clause.
The axis isn’t only fighting Ukraine. Since the United States and Israel struck Iran on Feb. 28, Americans have been at war with one of its members. Russia has reportedly passed Iran intelligence on U.S. military targets.
The Soufan Center describes Moscow’s help as repayment for Tehran’s drones. The weapons Iran sold to Russia were refined in Ukraine, and the lessons now flow back to the forces firing at Americans in the Gulf.
Hold that picture up against the last several weeks of American policy.
On Oct. 9, after a call with Russian President Vladimir Putin, President Donald Trump lifted sanctions on Russian diesel through next April. The same day, Putin’s aide said Russia would continue fighting until it achieved “all its objectives.”
The next day, Trump called on Ukrainians to replace President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and he said Zelenskyy “better damn well stop” striking Russian refineries.
According to Axios, a Ukrainian official said White House envoys Steve Witkoff and the president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner had threatened to cut off U.S. intelligence if the strikes continued. Within days, Ukraine’s Starshield satellite link was throttled.
The moral case is simple. One country invaded, and the other is defending its borders. Pressuring the victim to stop hitting the invader’s war machine while easing sanctions on the invader turns that reality upside down.
Set morality aside, and the policy still fails on American interests alone.
First, money. By Putin’s own account, Ukraine’s refinery strikes have cost Russia about 1% of its GDP. That revenue funds the same war machine Moscow shares with Tehran. Every dollar returned to Russia’s energy sector is a dollar available to a partnership that helps Iran target Americans.
Second, credibility. The book’s sharpest warning is what the authors call the simultaneity problem: four adversaries could force the United States into several crises at once. Montgomery’s example is a Chinese move on Taiwan, during which North Korea threatens South Korea to pin down American forces.
Deterrence in that scenario depends on whether our allies and enemies believe American commitments hold. They are watching what happens to Ukraine when fuel prices rise before an election.
Third, coherence. In July, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth acknowledged to Congress that Russia and China were enabling Iran at different levels. Days later, the president said, “I don’t know that they are enabling.” An administration that cannot agree on whether the axis exists will not counter it.
High diesel prices squeeze real families, and they deserve an answer. That answer cannot be a sanctions waiver for a country whose partners are helping target American service members.
Congress has tools. Trump signed a Russia sanctions law on Sept. 18, and the diesel waiver seems to conflict with it. Lawmakers should demand accounting. The book’s prescriptions, closer coordination with allies and expanded defense production, are bipartisan in spirit. They deserve a hearing before the next crisis, not after it.
The four regimes have figured out they are stronger together. The danger is that Washington is teaching them America is weaker alone, and that its word can be traded for a few cents at the pump.
Lynn Schmidt is a columnist and Editorial Board member with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. She holds a master's of science in political science as well as a bachelor's of science in nursing.
