From Braver Seders to the Catholic belief that we need not fear the truth, three Braver Angels leaders talk about how their respective religious traditions inspire their bridge-building work. They explore the spiritual side of Braver Angels, and how we can learn from the insights of each particular tradition
PRESENTE! A Latino History of the United States
The American Museum of the Latino faces more hurdles after over two decades of advocacy.
Congress passed legislation to allow for the creation of the Museum, along with the American Women’s History Museum, as part of the Smithsonian Institution in an online format. Five years later, new legislation introduced by Nicole Malliotakis (R-N.Y.) wants to build a physical museum for both the Latino and women’s museums but might face pushback due to a new executive order signed by President Donald Trump.
Advocacy for the National Museum of the American Latino began in 2003, with former Reps. Xavier Becerra (D-Calif.) and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.) introduced a bipartisan bill to create the museum. A report titled “To Illuminate the American Story for All” authored by a presidential commission created by former President George W. Bush’s administration in 2011 stated the creation of the museum is necessary.
“The Smithsonian American Latino Museum not only as a monument for Latinos, but as a 21st Century learning laboratory rooted in the mission that every American should have access to the stories of all Americans,” the report stated.
But legislation to officially create the museum did not pass until 2020. The National Museum of the American Latino Act of 2020 was passed in Congress and signed by President Donald Trump. The legislation was included under the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021, which includes a subsection authorizing the museum's creation.
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However, the National Museum of the American Latino is only online but has occasional in-person exhibits at its Molina Family Latino Gallery at the National Museum of American History. In February 2025, Malliotakis introduced the Smithsonian History of American Women and Latino (SHAWL) Act to build both Latino and women’s Smithsonian museums.
Malliotakis originally introduced the same legislation in August 2024 during the 117th Congress but reintroduced it for the 118th.
“The introduction of this critical bill brings us one step closer to fulfilling the dream of having both museums right where they belong — on the National Mall,” Rep. Tony Cárdenas, who joined Malliotakis in introducing the bill, stated in a press release.
According to documents from the National Museum of the American Latino, a physical museum would either be built on undeveloped land across from the National Museum of African American History and Culture or right northeast of the tidal basin.
The National Museum of the American Latino also stated that they do not comment on pending legislation.
Over at the White House on March 27, President Donald Trump recently endorsed the physical creation of the American Women’s History Museum. Still, he did not show support for the National Museum of the American Latino.
Trump endorsed building the women’s museum at an event associated with the Republican Women’s Caucus. He stated he would back Malliotakis’ legislation “100 percent.”
"The Republican Party today is the party of opportunity, security, and freedom,” Malliotakis stated in a press release.
But recently, the status of the American Museum of the Latino is uncertain as President Donald Trump signed a new executive order titled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.”
The executive order stated that the Smithsonian Institution is “under the influence of a divisive, race-centered ideology.
“Over the past decade, Americans have witnessed a concerted and widespread effort to rewrite our Nation’s history, replacing objective facts with a distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth,” the executive order states.
President and General Counsel of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) Thomas A. Saenz called the executive order “troubling” as in the past museums have been kept out of political debate.
“It seeks to introduce current political disputes into policy surrounding long-term preservation of history through museums and similar institutions,” Saenz said in reference to the executive order.
During his second administration, Trump has signed other executive orders seeking to eliminate “woke” initiatives related to diversity, equity, and inclusion within government agencies.
Saenz said MALDEF, which supports the civil rights of all Latinos, wants the museum to have a permanent location on the National Mall. He also added that Latino advocacy organizations and historians should decide what exhibits go in the museum. Saenz said he hopes the museum’s exhibits show the full history and story of the community rather than playing along with stereotypes, like only showing American Latinos as immigrants.
“I hope that there will be consultation with such groups, which often have an understanding of the contemporary repercussions of exclusion patterns in our history and the way that history is taught and passed on in our country,” Saenz said.
Maggie Rhoads is a student journalist attending George Washington University School of Media and Public Affairs. At The Fulcrum, she covers how legislation and policy are impacting communities.
People putting their hands in together.
If we were deeply divided during the last presidential election, I find we’re all in the same boat now. As I travel the country, people tell me they’re disoriented by the uncertainty, chaos, and confusion in society. I hear this from Democrats, Republicans, Independents, and others alike.
What’s clear is that we have lost a basic sense of decency in our interactions. Empathy and compassion are missing from one another. Yet, there remains a hunger among people for belonging and connection—for community.
I believe we now face an urgent choice—as individuals, as communities, and as a country. Amid our differences and uncertainties, we can hunker down and bury our heads in the sand. We can wallow in despair. We can resist what is happening around us as if that alone is enough.
Or we can choose another path.
I recently convened a national virtual event with scores of leaders from every corner of the country called “What to do when you don’t know what to do.” As people joined the event, I asked them to tell me in a word how they were feeling about where the country and their lives are. Their responses came fast: frustrated, apprehensive, concerned, worried, anxious. Perhaps you feel this way too.
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During the event, I related my recent visit to Selma, AL, where I joined some 40,000 people to commemorate the 60th anniversary of Bloody Sunday. While I marched with others over the Edmund Pettus Bridge, I couldn’t help but wonder if we are ready to not just commemorate the past but to march back over that bridge together to commence our future. Not just in Selma, but in the nation.
There’s an old social justice song whose refrain includes the line, “Are you open? Are you willing?” I love those words. They make an entreaty to each of us to step forward, engage, and articulate what we are for.
I believe the answer to those questions—indeed, the choice before us—hinges on hope. For so many of us, hope feels absent, maybe diminished, even extinguished today. We are bombarded daily by dizzying executive orders, political debates, and the demonization of one side or another. All these contribute to a widespread lack of hope. But this is not a moment to surrender or give up. Instead, we must reground ourselves in where we can find hope.
I believe we can find it in those places closest to us—in our local communities and in our lives. It is in these places where progress is being made. Where we are bound to be more decent, compassionate, and empathetic toward one another. Where our belief in one another is often expressed in real ways. The trick is that we must each actively look for it. It’s there.
But when you find hope, don’t stop there. For we must each become agents of hope—choosing to lift up and make visible for others the hope that you find. Particularly in our current environment, we need more people to see themselves as agents of hope—finders and spreaders of hope in their communities. When we embrace this mission, we activate more people who will engage in helping us build more decency and community in our lives. We will not be so isolated and alone.
Just before I held that virtual event, I was in Reading, PA, engaging a group of leaders I’ve been working with these past few years to make progress on education issues. I opened the session similarly to how I began the virtual event. The same glum responses came. But as we talked about the work they’ve been producing over the past few years—which is truly creating some of the most transformational change I’ve ever witnessed—their demeanor shifted. At the end, I asked them again how they were feeling.
This time, people told me “hopeful.” Why? They said the actions they have been producing—stronger relationships, deeper trust, and new ways of working together—gave them hope. The hope they longed for was right in the room, with the people sitting right next to them, in the actions they were creating together.
Just like the people in Reading are demonstrating, hope is something close to us—that we can find, create, carry with us, and spread to others. But we must be willing to see it. We must become agents for it.
Are you open? Are you willing?
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U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to members of the media before boarding Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House on April 3, 2025 in Washington, DC.
I make a point of letting readers know when I change my mind about matters that bear on the ongoing discussion here at The Art of Association. I need to introduce today’s newsletter about what the second Trump Administration entails for civil society with just such an update.
My views on Donald Trump have remained more or less stable for a decade. As I wrote in the aftermath of Trump’s re-election and before his second inauguration,
“Ever since I saw Donald Trump speak in person, at a campaign event in New Hampshire in the fall of 2015, I have regarded him as a demagogue. To me, he exemplifies the “dangerous ambition” that Alexander Hamilton warned about in Federalist Paper #1 — and that the framers of the Constitution sought to exclude from the presidency. Trump subsequently demonstrated major shortcomings as a chief executive during his first term; in my view, he never really grasped nor demonstrated much interest in the core responsibilities of his office. Then came his shameless and sustained if ultimately unsuccessful bid to overturn the 2020 election. From my vantage point, then, Trump has repeatedly shown himself to be unfit for the office to which he was just re-elected.”
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Nothing Trump has said or done since his new term began has disabused me of this basic judgment. What has changed, however, is my perspective on the resilience of constitutional democracy in America vis-a-vis Trump’s demagoguery and the populist nationalism that he stokes with it.
I used to think, and sought to persuade others (e.g., see here and here), that our constitutional system had a staying power against the likes of Donald Trump, one anchored in an interlocking set of self-defense mechanisms. These include the separation of powers, checks and balances, fixed and biennial congressional elections, federalism, the Bill of Rights, etc.
Moreover, as recently as a year ago, I proposed that, whatever malevolent designs Trump might pursue in a second term, they would be tempered (as they were in his first) by his incompetence at wielding the levers of governing power.
Ten weeks into the second Trump Administration, I am seeing things differently. To be sure, many of the self-defense mechanisms of U.S. democracy persist. For example, we still have an independent judiciary that I expect – contrary to its critics on both the left and right – will generally acquit itself well during the next four years. And we will have federal elections again in 2026, 2028, 2030, etc.
But I am considerably less confident than I once was that these mechanisms will serve to uphold constitutional democracy. All bets are off in particular when majorities in Congress – the branch of government best positioned and meant to check an encroaching president – are instead aiding and abetting his usurpation of their roles. A Congress that has ceded to the executive the powers of the purse (i.e., taxing, tariffing, and spending) that the Constitution grants to it is “Congress” in name only.
It also is clear that President Trump and his acolytes have learned some things. Their second time around, they are using a swarming approach that is more effective in overwhelming and bypassing democracy’s defenses. To quote Hamilton again, they are exploiting the executive’s capacity for – and comparative inter-branch advantages of – “decision, activity, secrecy, and despatch.”
In sum, I have come to appreciate how constitutional mechanisms of democratic competition and unabashed authoritarian impulses can co-exist within the same polity. And I no longer presume that the former will ultimately confound the latter.
What type of regime will prevail? That depends on how civil society responds. For constitutional democracy to win out, civil society actors must reckon with the logic of competitive authoritarianism and rethink their roles and contributions in the face of it.
Political scientists Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way first developed the concept of competitive authoritarianism in the early 2000s. Their goal was to describe and classify a growing number of hybrid regimes in which elements of ongoing democratic competition coincided with undeniable patterns of autocratic rule. Today, Viktor Orbán’s Hungary, Narendra Modi’s India, and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Turkey stand as classic examples of this type of regime.
Trump has long made no secret of his admiration for these strongman rulers. In his second term, the U.S. will come to operate more like their countries. Levitsky and Way have recently observed how the U.S. is showing all the hallmarks of this regime type:
“Authoritarianism does not require the destruction of the constitutional order. What lies ahead is not fascist or single-party dictatorship but competitive authoritarianism—a system in which parties compete in elections but the incumbent’s abuse of power tilts the playing field against the opposition. Most autocracies that have emerged since the end of the Cold War fall into this category…But the system is not democratic, because incumbents rig the game by deploying the machinery of government to attack opponents and co-opt critics. Competition is real but unfair.
Competitive authoritarianism will transform political life in the United States. As Trump’s early flurry of dubiously constitutional executive orders made clear, the cost of public opposition will rise considerably…Americans will still be able to oppose the government, but opposition will be harder and riskier, leading many elites and citizens to decide that the fight is not worth it. A failure to resist, however, could pave the way for authoritarian entrenchment.”
A lot of elites have already decided the fight is not worth it. President Trump has made not only his congressional majorities but also media companies, law firms, and Ivy League universities bend the knee to his rule. He and and his appointees have quickly and unceremoniously fired and replaced senior military officers and agency officials who might have refused to do likewise. All the while, with Trump’s full support, Russell Vought’s OMB and Elon Musk’s DOGE are intentionally traumatizing and decimating the ranks of the federal civil service in order to bring it to heel.
President Trump is not just working the referees of our justice system – he is commandeering them to reward his allies and punish his enemies. He placed the Department of Justice and FBI under the control of his most committed partisans. They, in turn, are purging any lawyers, prosecutors, and investigators who prioritize constitutional scruples over the President’s demands. With a blanket pardon on Inauguration Day, President Trump gave a get-out-of-jail-free card to 1,500+ rioters, militiamen, and seditious conspirators convicted for their crimes on January 6, 2021. He is now lashing out with incendiary rhetoric and demands for the impeachment of federal judges who have the audacity to rule against his Administration. We are not in Kansas anymore.
All these acts of submission, vituperation, and domination send clear signals to the President’s friends and foes alike. It is how competitive authoritarianism takes root.
It may be that, having underestimated the stability of constitutional democracy in the face of Donald Trump’s leadership style and designs, I am now overestimating the threat he poses to it. But the authoritarian bent of his Administration is on full display wherever one looks.
For example, consider this footage of six ICE agents, masked and masquerading as “the police,” as they detain Rümeysa Öztürk, a Tufts University graduate student and legal resident of the U.S. One minute she is walking down a suburban Massachusetts sidewalk, off to break a Ramadan fast with friends. The next she is handcuffed and frogmarched into a Black SUV, then whisked away to a federal detention center in Louisiana. Her thoughtcrime? Co-authoring an op-ed in a student newspaper that criticized Israel. Watch and listen to the video in full to see how your federal tax dollars are now at work.
A more plausible critique of my updated assessment is that it ignores the laws of political gravity. Insofar as Donald Trump is doing unpopular things, like the sweeping tariffs he imposed last week, he and his party will suffer for it in future elections. But this presumes an opposition party that can harness public discontent against Donald Trump and the GOP – a capacity that has eluded the Democrats for years now.
Hoping for a “return to normalcy” scenario also glosses over another real possibility. We live in a dangerous world, one made more dangerous by the amateurism and politicized preoccupations of Trump’s national security appointees. A sudden emergency – terrorism in the homeland, a Chinese assault on Taiwan, a crippling cyberattack – could very well serve to strengthen the Administration’s hand.
All this said, the struggle between those seeking to keep the polity as competitive as possible, to the point of re-establishing liberal democracy, and those who seek to put their authority beyond the reach of democratic contestation is not likely to hinge on a single event, on one particular red line being crossed (or not). It rather will be an ongoing and cumulative conflict sprawling across government, politics, and society.
The good news about this dynamic for those on the side of preserving and enhancing competition is that it enables a much wider array of actors and associations to play constructive roles in the contest. The bad news is that the longer the struggle persists, the more the ranks of the public-spirited contestants risk getting thinned out by flagging zeal and the human tendency to make the best of what seems inevitable.
In competitive authoritarianism, it is necessary but insufficient for would-be strongmen to dominate government and politics. Ultimately, to cement their authority in place, they must subdue civil society. They can do this via payoffs, pacification, and / or distraction of those who are more malleable – and intimidation, investigation, and / or exile of those who are less so.
Here are five indicators we can track in the years ahead to assess whether civil society is rising to, or retreating from, the challenge we now face.
1). Collective action and mutual defense. These imperatives are rightly seen as key to the whole contest. The administration’s prime targets – e.g., law firms, universities, foundations, newspapers, scientific networks, etc. – must hang together when it tries to dominate one of their kind, lest they hang separately. Authoritarians like to subdue one institution at a time so that those next up become more apt to fold without a fight.
It is thus encouraging, for example, to see law firms like Perkins Coie, WilmerHale, and Jenner & Block contesting President Trump’s executive orders targeting them, other stalwart lawyers stepping up to represent them, and 500+ firms signing an amicus brief on behalf of Perkins. Conversely, it is discouraging to see other law firms striking Faustian bargains with the Administration and the largest “big law” groups staying silent about the frontal attack on their profession.
2). Widely shared and reflective patriotism. Given how Donald Trump has sought to wrap his bid to “Make America Great Again” in the flag, it would be tempting for his opponents in civil society to dismiss love of country as part of the problem. But this would surrender the most defensible high ground. It is on the basis of the values, achievements, and shared, warts-and-all history of democracy in America that we can envision a better way forward.
The celebration of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence in 2026 offers an opportunity to reclaim the mantle of patriotism. President Trump will no doubt proclaim a nostalgic and exclusive form of this civic virtue to rally his MAGA followers during the Semiquincentennial. To counter it, we need to exhibit a reflective, forward-looking, and inclusive patriotism that resonates with an ample majority of Americans.
3). Broad and centripetal policy coalitions. It will once again be tempting for progressive philanthropists, advocates, and activists to intermingle their pre-existing policy preferences with their efforts to defend democracy. This helps them maintain their intersectional commitments and alliances on immigration, climate, DEI, trans rights, political economy, etc. But it makes it much harder to build the cross-partisan coalition of supporters that liberal democracy requires.
Civil society actors who are serious about stopping and reversing authoritarian drift should ask themselves a clarifying question: “Do the policy positions we hold currently appeal to a broad majority of Americans, including the median voter?” If the answer is “no” or “not really,” then they should either modulate the intensity with which they insist coalition partners and leaders share their policy preferences, or candidly acknowledge that they are prioritizing those preferences over the recovery of liberal democracy.
4). Repair and revitalization. One of the main reasons liberal democracy finds itself on the back foot is that so many of the institutions and professions it relies on have lost their collective way. Even as we come to the defense of these endeavors, we also have to admit and follow up on the pressing need to fix and reinvigorate them so they can once more serve democratic purposes.
Jen Pahlka and Mark Dunkelman have pointed out why and how this needs to be done with the administration and implementation of government policy. Others have done likewise with philanthropy (myself included). Darryl Holliday and his colleagues are doing this with local journalism and civic media. And a growing number of critical friends and leaders are mapping out the changes needed in beleaguered institutions of higher education.
Consider what former Harvard President and current professor Larry Summers recently had to say about his own institution and others like it:
“To maintain the moral high ground, which universities have in large part lost, they need a much more aggressive reform agenda focused on antisemitism, celebrating excellence rather than venerating identity, pursuing truth rather than particular notions of social justice and promoting diversity of perspective as the most important dimension of diversity.”
This would certainly be a step in the right direction – and make our universities much better able to ward off the populist broadsides that have only just begun to ramp up.
5). Independence and self-reliance. Finally, we come to a related and difficult rub. Many of the prominent nonprofits that comprise an ostensibly independent sector find themselves dependent on funding from a federal government that is now hellbent on squelching, diverting, or micro-managing their missions.
Upon closer examination, in the wake of the Trump Administration’s early disruptions, much of what we have taken to calling “civic space” is more accurately described as federally funded and subsidized space. They are not the same thing.
I will have more to say about this prosaic but nonetheless profound challenge in an upcoming post. Suffice it to say for now that, unless and until it is resolved in a reconfiguration of nonprofit funding patterns that enables greater institutional autonomy, authoritarians will retain the upper hand
Daniel Stid is the executive director of Lyceum Labs, a fiscally sponsored project of the Defending Democracy Together Institute. The following is reposted with permission from his blog, The Art of Association.
Education Secretary nominee Linda McMahon (L), and U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., (C) appear during a Cabinet meeting at the White House on February 26, 2025 in Washington, DC. U.S.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has never been afraid to challenge conventional wisdom—sometimes aligning with scientific consensus, often rejecting it.
Now, as Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kennedy has the power to shape national healthcare policy. And many will measure his leadership with one critical question: Can he reverse America’s alarming decline in life expectancy?
For decades, the United States has spent more on healthcare than any other nation, yet health outcomes continue to lag behind global peers. According to the Peterson-KFF Health System Tracker, Americans now live four years less than citizens of other high-income countries. The U.S. premature death rate is nearly double that of comparable nations, a gap that has widened in recent years.
Peterson-KFF data points to three primary drivers for this, which together account for 68% of the gap:
Of course, Kennedy can’t address every factor contributing to premature death. Many “social determinants of health” (e.g., income, education, and housing), would require sweeping reforms across multiple government agencies, well beyond the scope of HHS.
But when it comes to direct medical interventions, Kennedy can enact meaningful reforms, ones that directly address the leading causes of premature death:
1. Chronic Disease: America’s Worst Health Crisis
According to the Peterson-KFF report, “About a third (32%) of the difference in premature death between the U.S. and similar countries is due to deaths from cardiovascular diseases, chronic respiratory diseases, and chronic kidney diseases.”
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Compared to citizens of peer nations, Americans are 2.5 times more likely to die from diabetes and nearly four times more likely to die from kidney disease. Preventable cardiovascular disease remains the nation’s leading cause of death.
These problems represent system-wide failures in prevention and management. According to CDC data, if every clinician and health system delivered care at the level of today’s top performers, the nation could prevent 30–50% of the complications tied to chronic conditions, including heart attacks, strokes, cancer, and kidney failure.
Kennedy has led in this area, repeatedly emphasizing the urgency of addressing chronic disease in America. During his Senate confirmation hearing, he stated, “We need to refocus [on chronic disease] if we are going to save our country. This is an existential crisis.”
His Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) initiative promotes shifting the healthcare system’s focus from disease intervention to prevention. This plan encourages community-based programs that improve diet, increase physical activity, and expand preventive screenings.
RFK has also advocated for expanding primary care access, a move that’s well-founded by research. Adding 10 primary care doctors to a community increases life expectancy 2.5 times more than adding 10 specialists, according to a Harvard-Stanford study. To that end, he has talked about shifting healthcare dollars from specialists to primary care physicians.
2. Deaths of Despair: A Growing Crisis
Approximately 12% of the U.S. life expectancy gap can be attributed to “deaths of despair,” which include deaths from drugs, suicides, and alcohol consumption. Combined, they account for 160,000 preventable deaths annually, disproportionately affecting rural and underserved communities, where access to mental health care and addiction treatment is more limited.
While some clinicians see these deaths as primarily societal, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) considers substance use disorder treatment a core medical responsibility and requires all physicians to complete eight hours of training to identify and manage patients with these problems.
Kennedy has long been outspoken about addiction treatment reform, shaped in part by his own personal struggles. He has criticized pharmaceutical companies for fueling the opioid epidemic and vowed to address predatory business practices in addiction treatment.
During his Senate confirmation hearing, Kennedy emphasized the role of technology in expanding healthcare access, particularly in underserved areas. He has advocated for the use of artificial intelligence and telemedicine to bring advanced medical care to rural areas, stating that such innovations could provide “concierge care to every American in this country, even remote parts.”
However, significant advances will require FDA approval of new generative AI tools and Congressional action to allow the provision of telemedicine across states, along with guaranteed Medicare funding for these services.
3. COVID-19: Lessons For Future Pandemics
The COVID-19 pandemic led to over 1 million American deaths and a historic drop in U.S. life expectancy. While every nation suffered, the United States was hit particularly hard. As of 2024, the U.S. has regained only half of the lost years, lagging far behind peer countries.
A major driver of the nation’s high mortality rate was widespread vaccine hesitancy. Though COVID-19 vaccines weren’t a flawless solution, they significantly reduced the risk of hospitalization and death. Still, many Americans—distrustful of public health agencies or swayed by misinformation—chose to forgo them, particularly in more conservative states.
To prevent future infectious disease epidemics, Kennedy will need to reconsider his unscientific views on vaccine risks—whether or not he remains uncertain.
During the Texas measles outbreak, he was slow to endorse vaccination as the best solution, though he eventually acknowledged that “vaccines not only protect individual children from measles but also contribute to community immunity.” While his administration recently removed a fake CDC website, spreading vaccine misinformation, Kennedy also appointed a vaccine safety researcher with a history of promoting discredited theories that linked vaccines to autism.
An Imperfect Leader At The Perfect Time
Kennedy has a rare opportunity to improve American longevity and to position the United States as a global healthcare leader.
By expanding preventive care, strengthening primary care access, and supporting evidence-based mental health and addiction treatments, he could reduce chronic disease and deaths of despair. Science-based interventions would also ensure the nation is better prepared to combat infectious disease threats.
However, if Kennedy undermines public trust in health institutions, promotes unproven treatments, or weakens vaccine programs, preventable deaths will rise and U.S. life expectancy will continue to fall.
The health of millions hinges on the path he chooses.
