RepresentWomen's mission is to strengthen our democracy by advancing reforms that break down barriers to ensure more women can run, win, serve, and lead. More women in elected and appointed positions at every level of government will strengthen our democracy by making it more representative, reviving bi-partisanship and collaboration, improving the deliberative process, encouraging a new style of leadership, and building greater trust in our elected bodies. RepresentWomen accomplishes its mission in these 4 ways: conducts research to track representation and assess best practices; educates PACs, donors, party leaders & elected officials about reforms to advance women's representation & leadership; advocates at the local, state and federal levels to adopt institutional reforms; forges strategic collaborative partnerships to build a lasting & successful movement for gender parity.
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The Civility Trap
May 02, 2026
When Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney spoke last January at the World Economic Forum in Davos, he offered a warning that reached well beyond geopolitics. Too often, he said, nations “go along to get along,” accommodating rather than confronting hard truths. That instinct may preserve short-term calm, but it ultimately leaves countries weaker, more vulnerable, and less prepared for what lies ahead.
His warning resonates far beyond international affairs.
Over the past decade, public discourse in the United States has grown noticeably harsher. Mockery has increasingly replaced debate. Public officials, journalists, and ordinary citizens alike have become targets of ridicule and intimidation. Behavior that once would have disqualified a public figure is now often defended as authenticity or strength.
The costs of this rising incivility are not abstract. People stop working together. Relationships fray. Attention shifts from solving shared problems to scoring points. Who among us has not witnessed families, friendships, or entire communities pull apart? A growing body of research suggests that living in a climate of hostility does not make us more engaged or energized—it makes us less happy.
In response, calls for greater civility have become both understandable and necessary.
Over the past several years, a remarkable effort has emerged to push back against polarization and contempt. More than 500 organizations across the United States now work to promote respectful dialogue across differences, many of which are connected through the Listen First Coalition. They’ve demonstrated that people with deep disagreements can listen to one another, ask genuine questions, and speak honestly without dehumanizing one another.
I have been part of this work myself. In my politically diverse community, I help lead an initiative designed to bridge the widening divides that have emerged in recent years. I host an education podcast aimed at defusing the culture-war exchanges that have wreaked havoc on our school systems. And as a school board member, I have introduced a resolution urging public members who address the board to treat one another with dignity rather than contempt.
That work matters. In communities across the country, including my own, these efforts have helped preserve relationships that might otherwise have broken under the strain of polarization.
But here is the mistake we sometimes make, and it is one I have made myself.
Civility, for all its virtues, is too low a bar to support meaningful democratic engagement.
In our effort to counter rising hostility, civility can become a trap—one that rewards getting along over getting honest, and offers the comforting illusion of harmony even when serious problems remain unresolved. I am not arguing against civility itself. Rather, I am urging us not to confuse civility with health.
Otherwise, we risk treating strategies designed to reduce hostility as if they were sufficient answers to our most pressing public problems. We start to believe that if conversations are polite, meetings are calm, and voices remain measured, then things must be going well.
That assumption is the civility trap, and it emerges whenever civility becomes the goal rather than the groundwork for change.
I have fallen into this trap as a school board member. I am proud that our meetings are orderly, that public comments are largely respectful, and that our votes are often unanimous. But I am far less proud of how little time we devote to confronting the hardest problems facing our students—hunger, chronic absenteeism, and the mental-health challenges that quietly prevent many of them from learning. Civility, in those moments, becomes less a pathway to improvement than a shield against discomfort.
This is what Carney was pointing to on the global stage. Going along to get along can feel responsible. It can look mature. But it often masks avoidance and conceals vulnerability. The sustained ovation that followed his remarks suggested that many in the room recognized the danger he was naming.
An important clarification is in order. I am not arguing that civility is always insufficient.
In some settings—especially among family members and close friends—restoring civility can be a genuine and hard-won achievement. When people on the brink of estrangement can share a holiday meal without contempt or speak without shouting, something meaningful has already been accomplished. In those contexts, civility is not a trap; it can be a lifeline, keeping relationships intact and creating the possibility, over time, for deeper, more difficult conversations to emerge naturally when people are ready.
The problem arises when we carry that same standard into institutions, communities, and public life—places where the goal cannot be mere coexistence, but collective attention to the problems we are obligated to face.
Why do we fall for the civility trap so easily? Pride and complacency can certainly play a role. So does discomfort, uncertainty, messiness, and conflict. Naming real problems rarely comes with neat answers.
But the most powerful force is fear.
People fear that lifting the rocks—examining what is not working—will lead to finger-pointing, shame, and blame. And for those who rightly take pride in being fair-minded and respectful, there is an additional fear: that challenging the status quo will cost them the very identity they value most—their commitment to civility itself.
The irony is that avoiding hard conversations rarely protects civility in the long run. It simply delays conflict, often until it erupts in more destructive ways. Avoided problems do not disappear; they deepen.
The answer is not incivility. Contempt, bullying, and humiliation—whether in politics, institutions, or personal life—never serve the public good. They corrode trust and make cooperation impossible.
Civility must be the foundation—not the finish line.
If we are serious about doing the best we can for ourselves, our fellow citizens, or a stable world order, we need more than calm. We need a commitment to treat others—even our adversaries—with dignity, and the courage to engage in dissent and healthy conflict rather than avoiding it. Disagreement has always been part of a healthy society. Contempt corrodes democracy, but so does a civility that asks nothing of us.
Ken Futernick is the author of The Courage to Collaborate - The Case for Labor-Management Partnerships in Education (Harvard Education Press); professor emeritus at California State University, Sacramento; and a school board member in El Dorado County, California. He is also the host of the podcast “Courageous Conversations about Our Schools.”
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Rep. Burgess Owens, R-Utah, addresses the chamber in front of a portrait of George Miller.
(Matthew Junkroski / MEDILL)
House Democrats and Republicans Clash over Free Speech in Higher Education
May 02, 2026
WASHINGTON — Witnesses and representatives sat in silence as Rep. Burgess Owens, R-Utah, spoke about how universities should strive for intellectual diversity and introduce controversial ideas. Rep. Alma S. Adams, D-N.C., agreed with his rhetoric, but went on to criticize her Republican colleagues for standing in the way of free expression.
“Unfortunately, what we often see, especially in hearings like this, is not a good faith effort to strike that balance, but a selective narrative,” Adams said. “My colleagues on the other side of the aisle frequently claim that there’s a free speech crisis on college campuses, arguing that universities lack viewpoint diversity and silence certain perspectives.”
Over the course of the hour-long hearing on Wednesday, Democrats and Republicans jabbed at each other, representing opposing ideas of what counts as suppressing students’ freedom of speech.
Democrats criticized the Trump administration for withholding funding from universities that failed to follow the president’s policies, such as his ban on diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. Democrats also bemoaned the administration’s crackdown on free speech for noncitizen students. Republicans, meanwhile, spoke about how universities have suppressed conservative voices by allegedly refusing to hire conservative professors. They also said conservative students have to self-censor, and universities deny funding to right-leaning student organizations.
The hearing marked the latest clash on higher education freedom of speech ideals in the federal government following the Trump administration’s crackdown on university grant funding in response to university diversity, equity, and inclusion practices and investigations into alleged antisemitism.
The Republican House majority meant that House Republicans were responsible for choosing most of the witnesses. Of the four witnesses, two came from right-leaning organizations, representing the Alliance Defending Freedom and the American Council of Trustees and Alumni. Only one witness represented a left-leaning organization: the American Civil Liberties Union.
Rep. Suzanne Bonamici, D-Ore., said the discussion on freedom of speech acted as a distraction from the crisis of higher education affordability, which she said was a larger issue.
“That’s what we should be having a hearing about, how to make colleges affordable,” Bonamici said. “But instead, my colleagues are continuing to villainize institutions of higher education.”
Bonamici read off a list of words the Trump administration removed from government websites, including words like “women”, “gender”, “sex”, and “immigrants”.
Rep. Mark Harris, R-N.C., said colleges had “weaponized recognition and fee processes against student groups they didn’t like.” He cited a 2020 lawsuit against California State University San Marcos, which alleged that the college awarded its LGBTQA Pride Center $296,498 for its activities. Meanwhile, it denied a recognized pro-life group’s $500 funding request for a speaker.
“This is just one clear example of how many colleges and universities show ideological preferences and funding with no transparency or how funding decisions were approved or denied,” Harris said.
Rep. Mark DeSaulnier, D-Calif., asked a witness for advice on how to encourage universities to create campuses that welcome all views.
“Having this free expression should be joyful… But it’s become so politically us against them without the acceptance that they might be right occasionally,” Rep. Mark DeSaulnier, D-CA, said, emphasizing the “occasionally” part of his sentence to his Democrat colleagues.
As the only witness from the left, Emerson Sykes, senior staff attorney at the ACLU, said, while students of all political opinions send in freedom of speech complaints to the ACLU, he focused on how the Trump administration has targeted blue states with legislation affecting freedom of speech.
Topics targeted by the Trump administration have included discussion of race, gender, climate change, and diversity, equity, and inclusion. Within the last year, the administration’s efforts resulted in over 300 higher education institutions dismantling their diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. The president’s executive actions also prevented transgender women’s participation in collegiate sports and targeted pro-Palestine protestors.
“What we're really seeing most in our country at the moment are efforts to prohibit the teaching of particular ideas, whether it's in K-12 or in higher education, and this sort of direct government censorship should not be lost in the discussions around self-censorship or discomfort around sharing conservative views in higher education institutions,” Sykes told Medill News Service after the hearing.
After the hearing, the committee published a recap that focused on three of the four witnesses, omitting any mention of the ACLU representative.
The recap’s conclusion said: “Too many universities have abandoned their mission to encourage students to think for themselves. Committee Republicans are working to hold colleges accountable and to protect students’ First Amendment rights, ensuring that higher education remains a place where ideas can be tested, challenged, and debated openly.”
Matthew Junkroski is a graduate student at Northwestern University.
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Primary Elections Skew Representation: Inside the 2026 Primary Problem
May 02, 2026
Earlier this year, the Bridge Alliance and the National Academy of Public Administration launched the Fellows for Democracy and Public Service Initiative to strengthen the country's civic foundations. This fellowship unites the Academy’s distinguished experts with the Bridge Alliance’s cross‑sector ecosystem to elevate distributed leadership throughout the democracy reform landscape. Instead of relying on traditional, top‑down models, the program builds leadership ecosystems—spaces where people share expertise, prioritize collaboration, and use public‑facing storytelling to renew trust in democratic institutions. Each fellow grounds their work in one of six core sectors essential to a thriving democratic republic.
Below is an interview with Beth Hladick. Beth is the Policy Director at Unite America, where she oversees original research and commissions studies that diagnose the problems with party primaries and evaluate the effectiveness of reform solutions. In addition to her research portfolio, Beth leads outreach efforts to educate stakeholders on elections and reform. She brings a nonpartisan perspective shaped by her experience at the National Conference of State Legislatures, the Oregon State Legislature, and the U.S. Senate.
Her Fellows for Democracy and Public Service Initiative will create “The 2026 Primary Problem: Diagnosing the Divide.” The project will use the 2026 midterms to shift the national narrative from "horse race" coverage to structural analysis and rigorously document how partisan primaries disenfranchise voters and fuel polarization.
Question: Tell us about your journey to this project. What experiences or feelings led you to believe that this project is important?
Beth Hladick: In working in the service of elections, I saw firsthand how their incentives shape their political behavior and how primary elections often reward ideological intensity over. I've spent years researching what we've diagnosed as the “primary problem,” which is that there is a low turnout in party primaries. In 2024, just 7 percent of Americans effectively elected 87 percent of Congress. And if you're wondering why Congress doesn't represent us or solve the urgent problems facing our democracy, I think it's because they're beholden to less than 10 percent of the electorate that reelects them in party primaries. We're in a midterm election season that will be the least competitive of our lifetimes, meaning that no matter who wins or loses in November, this will be the least accountable Congress of our lifetimes.
Question. Could describe your project, your approach, and your anticipated stakeholders.
Beth Hladick: The project is called the “2026 Primary Problem Diagnosing the Divide.” The plan is to raise the salience of the problems with party primary elections and the evidence on the impact of reform to demonstrate that it's the largest solvable structural democracy issue of our time. The project will use the 2026 midterms, from horse race coverage to structural analysis, and rigorously document how party primaries disenfranchise voters, distort representation, and fuel division in our politics.
Question. What practical outcomes do you expect? What tangible forms or actions can be executed?
Beth Hladick. We’ll produce two explainer videos and have a lot of rich analytical insights into how those videos perform. Who are those videos reaching? What's compelling? How are viewers engaging with that content? We live in an entirely new digital age, where the average American now spends about 150 minutes a day on social media, and about two-thirds of that time is spent watching video. So, we’re excited about the opportunity to reach people through video, knowing that's where many people spend their time.
Question. How might citizens or other key stakeholders utilize your work on this project to improve American democracy?
Beth Hladick. I think journalists can use our research and visuals to contextualize primary outcomes beyond horse-race coverage. I think it's also important that journalists pay attention to the primary type, especially in states that use closed primaries. Over 17 million Americans are locked out of elections entirely just because they're registered independents in closed primary states. Also, policymakers can draw on our research to better understand the implications of their state's primary system. Lastly, I think citizens can better understand how election design affects governance and can demand that systems reflect broader representation, participation, and accountability.
You can watch a video of Beth’s interview here:
- YouTube youtube.com
Bradford Fitch is the former CEO of the Congressional Management Foundation, a former congressional staffer, and author of “The Citizen’s Handbook for Influencing Elected Officials."
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Young woman holding a "I Voted Today" sticker after voting.
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Gen Z Cares about Politics, We Just Don’t Believe Politics Cares about Us
May 02, 2026
As part of a collaboration between The Fulcrum's NextGen initiative and Made By Us, The Fulcrum is publishing Letters to America, a series created through the Youth250 project that invites Gen Z to reflect on the nation’s past, present, and future as the United States approaches its 250th anniversary.
We've entered a big election year, and people are asking the same tired questions: whether the next generation will show up to repair the broken democracy they've inherited or if apathy will keep them home. I used to believe the myth, but last November proved otherwise. And even in places where youth turnout wasn’t record-breaking, the idea that young people don’t care simply doesn’t match reality. After all, survey data from the 2022 midterms suggests that only 28% of Gen Zers didn’t vote because they thought it wasn’t important. I’ve spent the past two years mobilizing students on dozens of college campuses across the US to register to and cast their votes, and I’ve seen firsthand just how deeply my generation cares about the fate of our country—and why their passion so often stops short of the ballot box.
Every day, thousands of my fellow students across the nation are working tirelessly to make their campuses and communities better places. From supporting the operations of local food pantries to administering free flu shots to healthcare workers and providing free income tax assistance, our issue is not indifference. It’s that our preferred forms of engagement often happen outside the orbit of electoral politics.
But this raises an important question: if Gen Z is so invested in social change, why isn’t that energy showing up in voting numbers? The answer is simpler than you may think. For students, casting your ballot is often just plain hard.
I’ve had dormmates from out of state who didn’t have a local driver’s license, meaning they needed to fill out a paper registration form and physically drop it off at the county elections office. Without a car, facing limited public transportation options, and in the middle of a full course load, it was easier for many not to vote. My own voting experience was not without issue. I ordered an absentee ballot to my campus P.O. box, waited weeks for it to arrive, and by the time I filled it out and returned it to my home state, the deadline for acceptance had passed. No matter how engaged college students might be, structural barriers —and often, deliberate disinformation campaigns— pose significant challenges to being able to have a say in our future.
Unfortunately, this leads to a major chicken-and-egg problem. When the existing system prevents young people from voting, candidates and elected officials don’t see young voters as a constituency they must answer to, leaving us feeling unheard and further disengaged. When leaders offer genuine hope, speak to young people’s concerns, and present a future we can imagine ourselves thriving in, something shifts. Just look at Zohran Mamdani’s recent success in New York City. Rather than demonizing his opponents and painting an apocalyptic picture of the Big Apple if he wasn’t elected, he campaigned on a future that would address issues young people care about, such as affordability and housing.
When young people feel seen, when the system opens space for their voices, and when casting a ballot feels like building something new and better, participation stops being a chore and becomes the natural next step.
So, how do we move towards a world where young people are both deeply engaged in their communities and habitual voters? How do we remove the structural challenges students face while countering the narrative that Gen Z doesn’t care?
For young voters, campus organizers, and other interested parties, the answer is simple: get involved with organizations and people who are passionate about closing the voting gap. Nonpartisan groups like the Fair Elections Center’s Campus Vote Project and Every Vote Counts work directly with colleges and universities nationwide to provide students with the resources, information, and opportunities they need to get to the ballot box. From institutionalizing pro-voting campus reforms to directly challenging legislative barriers, exposing disinformation, and supporting nonpartisan voter registration drives, these nonprofits play a critical role in bringing Gen Z’s civic energy to the polls.
But they can’t do it alone. These groups need student leaders like me to help turn our campus networks into real voting power. If we want a government that reflects our needs and the needs of those who come after us, we have to channel the same energy we bring to every other part of our civic lives into the ballot box. We’ve already seen what our votes can do when we show up, and that momentum is ours to build on. With students stepping forward—and with real support from our institutions and communities—we can make voting a habit and strengthen the civic muscle our generation has already proven it possesses.
Jason Vadnos, 19, Nashville, TN
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