President Biden and lawmakers on Capitol Hill are entrenched in a high stakes battle over the debt limit – also known as the debt ceiling. But what exactly is the debt ceiling?
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Dr. Shaniqua Williams, assistant professor of political science
The Hidden Infrastructure of Democracy: Professionalizing and Diversifying Election Staff
Apr 18, 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 Dr. Shaniqua Williams, Assistant Professor at West Virginia University. Her research focuses on state politics, race and ethnicity, Black political behavior, Black women’s descriptive and substantive representation, and election administration. She is also a Research Fellow with the Center for Election Innovation and Research, where her work focuses on election administration, workforce development, infrastructure, and policy.
Her Fellows for Democracy and Public Service Initiative will focus on strengthening impartiality, transparency, and trust in U.S. election administration by developing an evidence-based framework to train and professionalize mid-level election staff and expand pathways to diversify the election workforce.
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Question: Tell us a little bit about your journey to this project. What experiences or feelings led you to believe that the project you’re engaging in is important?
Shaniqua Williams: I've been working with election administrators for years. Through that experience and my fellowship with the Center for Election Innovation and Research, I thought about who the people are working in elections. A lot of the research and attention are on chief election officials who are at the top of the food chain, and then your temporary workers such as poll workers. But the election workforce is huge. We have so many people who are involved in elections 365 days a year and there's not a lot of focus on them. Through my conversations I saw firsthand how much responsibility mid-level staff carry, and how access to training is uneven. I got involved and interested in professionalization and workforce pipelines, seeing how both could strengthen our capacity and expand access to the field.
Question. Could you describe the project, your approach, and your anticipated work with stakeholders?
Shaniqua Williams: I'm focusing on strengthening training standards for mid-level election staff while also expanding pathways into the profession. And through this project I plan to produce two essays. The first will outline scalable professionalization and training frameworks specifically focused on that mid-level staff. And the second essay will propose workforce pipeline partnerships between election offices and minority serving institutions. And so at the end of this project I plan to have quite a few deliverables and frameworks that could be used within academic institutions as well as within election offices for training and for recruiting diverse members into the workforce.
Question: What practical outcomes do you expect?
Shaniqua Williams: I plan to create one page implementation guides as well as partnership models that connect election offices with universities, especially minority serving institutions. Strengthening these professional development systems will help offices retain experienced staff. It will also improve operational consistency and create transparent career ladders.
I also think that expanding entry pathways will also help diversify the workforce and that will strengthen institutional legitimacy and public trust. So, within these pathways we will create a partnership framework, and it will provide a replicable model that jurisdictions can adopt to build recruitment pipelines through these minority serving institutions.
Question: How might citizens or other key stakeholders utilize your work on this project to approve American democracy.
Shaniqua Williams: Citizens benefit when elections are administered professionally, consistently, and transparently, which happens by strengthening training standards and expanding workforce pathways. This project’s goal is to enhance operational quality, institutional legitimacy, and trust in elections.
See a short video of Dr. Williams 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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Striking members of the Teamsters Local 210 walk a picket line outside of the Perrigo Company on September 15, 2025 in New York City.
Getty Images, Michael M. Santiago
Strikes Call For Ethical Treatment: The Need for Better Conditions
Apr 17, 2026
The country is in an era of work stoppage, strikes, and walkouts in response to severe pay concerns during an economic crisis of rising prices. However, these labor actions represent more than financial grievances. Contract negotiations are also an opportunity to consider the collective well-being.
Tenure line faculty and staff at my institution, the University of Illinois Springfield, continue to strike for wages and basic protections around our work.
The Economic Policy Institute reports, “Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) show that 306,800 workers were involved in 30 major work stoppages in 2025, a 13% increase from 2024.”
The recent TSA work stoppage is resolved, as the White House began making payments to more than 60,000 TSA workers after Congress failed to pass funding for the Department of Homeland Security.
But the uprisings in the meatpacking and poultry processing industries are a testament to the historic and ongoing struggles for human and animal liberation.
In Colorado, 3,800 unionized employees at the JBS Swift Beef plant in Greeley returned to work after a three-week strike, with no resolution or new contract. It was the first meatpacking strike in this country in 40 years.
Meanwhile, the USDA continues to push 2025 proposals to increase line speeds in meatpacking plants across the nation in an effort to lower grocery costs, even as factories are burdened by excess slaughter capacity.
This is despite concerns about worker safety and compromising on necessary safety inspections, within a factory farming industry that apparently has little regard for the cruelty it inflicts on the lives of animals meant for slaughter.
As a professor of English literature with a focus on critical ethnic studies and animal studies, I examine contemporary slaughterhouse narratives. Investigative journalism like Charlie LeDuff’s 2000 work on slaughterhouses, and Michael Grabell’s 2017 exposé on chicken plants have documented the ways in which dangerous meatpacking jobs are often left for migrant and inmate populations.
Yet these reports leverage a familiar and largely uncontroversial position—that humans (especially, in this context, people of color) should not be treated like animals. Or, as LeDuff writes, “You hear people say, ‘They don’t kill pigs in the plant, they kill people.’”
In this sense, inhumane treatment of workers is perceived to be a separate issue from the conditions of nonhuman animals.
Michelle Rojas-Soto, a member of the farmed animal protection movement, argues in a 2020 essay that a single-issue focus on animals, too, will do little to ultimately engender an equitable model of agriculture. She writes that speciesism and racism are interconnected nodes of oppression that reveal “the manifestation of our commitment to inequity.”
In my research, some authors of color tend to lean into this “entangled web” of oppression rather than shying away from it. Sesshu Foster’s speculative 2005 novel, Atomik Aztex, features a Chicano migrant laborer in Los Angeles who works as a pig butcher at Farmer John’s Meat Packing Plant, where a labor union is being organized, much to the dismay of the managerial class.
When I first came to central Illinois, I learned about Beardstown, once a sundown town where the local hog slaughterhouse sought to boost productivity by creating a second shift comprised almost entirely of newly arrived laborers from Mexico in the 1990s.
The plant went on to welcome migrant labor from West Africa, Asia, and Haiti. However, the prevailing narrative that immigration “saved the pork plant and, with it, Beardstown,” ushering in a celebration of diversity is incomplete.
In 2015, Cargill sold its entire swine and pork business to JBS USA, including the pork packing plant in Beardstown. It is nonsensical then to laud immigrant workers in Illinois when the same company was met with chants of huelga (strike) in Greeley, Col. during the first walkout at a U.S. beef slaughterhouse since 1985.
Disconnecting labor conditions from the conditions of animal life in the abattoir or slaughterhouse is absurd.
Yes, a hyperfocus on addressing any one form of oppression runs the risk of making progress at the expense of other vulnerable groups.
In Ruth Ozeki’s 1998 novel, My Year of Meats, the protagonist considers the impact of “bad knowledge” in the face of industrial slaughter, that “ignorance is an act of will, a choice that one makes over and over again, especially when information overwhelms and knowledge has become synonymous with impotence.”
Since the publication of Upton Sinclair’s famed 1906 novel, The Jungle, it has only become easier to remain willfully ignorant, as the centralized locality of Chicago stockyards in the early 20th century have been replaced by large-scale factories meant to be invisible to the public eye.
As part of a collective, however, it is possible to imagine futures free from subjugation and exploitation for all actors. This is what people can learn from animals, through whom, as Dr. Joshua Bennett argues in a 2020 essay, a “radically different set of relations is possible.” Today’s wins must be steps toward deeper, transformative change.
U.S. working conditions are in the spotlight for good reasons.
Tenure-line faculty at UIS are on strike for better working conditions because they yield better learning conditions for students.
If workers in the meat and poultry industries do not recognize the link between ethical treatment of animals and themselves, there remains little hope for systemic change that seeks to live with, not against, the nonhuman life.
Akash Belsare is an assistant professor of English at the University of Illinois Springfield and a Public Voices Fellow with The OpEd Project.
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Photo by Harold Mendoza on Unsplash
Experts Say Heavy Use of Reconciliation Bills Could Backfire
Apr 17, 2026
WASHINGTON, DC—As midterm elections take place across the country, Senate Republicans are using the tactic known as “reconciliation” to bypass bipartisan agreements, all before a new Congress takes office.
In the latest example, the GOP-backed reconciliation bill to supplement funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol agents is expected to hit President Donald Trump’s desk no later than June first.
This bill will bypass the need for any input from Senate Democrats.
David Bateman, a professor of government at Cornell University, said that reconciliation incentivizes partisan rather than bipartisan legislation.
“But remember, the reason people use reconciliation is that it is the only way that majorities can deliver on the promises on which they ran,” Bateman said in an email interview.
Although the congressional tool is permissible, experts say it is being used incorrectly.
“In order to do this, they have had to distort the purpose: the tax cuts, for example, significantly increased the deficit. In a sense, all of these reconciliation bills were all ‘abuses’ of the process,” Bateman said. “[...] They deviated from its purpose.”
Using the process of reconciliation to bypass negotiations regarding ICE, Border Patrol, and the overall Department of Homeland Security is not a new idea. In fact, Senator Lindsey Graham (R-NC), who is also the Senate Budget Committee Chairman, discussed using the bill to fund DHS-related expenses almost a year and a half ago.
“The Senate Budget Committee – through the reconciliation process – will aggressively push the most transformational border security bill in American history and revitalize our military,” Graham said in a 2024 statement.
Graham included in this statement that there would be funds to finish the wall, build additional technology at the border, and hire more ICE agents. In the same statement, however, he said this would be done within weeks or months.
“If the Republicans go forward with this reconciliation bill, they are saying to an out-of-control President that he can continue to do whatever he wants,” said Senator Elizabeth Warren, D-MA, in an interview with Fulcrum. “[...] All Democrats are asking for is that ICE agents follow the same basic procedures as pretty much all police officers all across the country.”
While the reconciliation bill will benefit Senate Republicans and bypass Senate Democrats’ list of demands now, it may come to their detriment in the future.
SoRelle Wyckoff, an assistant professor of public policy at the University of Virginia, said that if the bill passes, both parties could face various disadvantages.
“They [Democrats] would be totally shut out of the conversation and lose their ability to negotiate in the short term, but I don’t know how popular that would be among voters for Republicans to do that,” Wyckoff, who works at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy said. “[...] It's not good policy making for Democrats, but I do wonder if long-term it gave them a little more leverage.”
Now, as Republican senators craft the current reconciliation bill for ICE and Border Patrol funding, their stance on the issue extends beyond the budget—it’s a political battle with Senate Democrats pushing for reforms within the agencies.
Rather than the bipartisan negotiations seen within Congress prior to the spring recess, where both sides of the aisle voted to partially end the DHS shutdown by agreeing on a budget to fund TSA workers, Senate Republicans are taking the opportunity to fight against Senate Democrats and their request for reforms.
Steven Smith, a professor of political science at Arizona State University, said the use of the reconciliation bill has shifted since its inception in 1974. He added that its modern context wasn’t established till 2001.
“This budget process was designed to reduce the deficit, but here [in 2001,] the Republicans wanted to cut taxes, reduce revenues, all of which would have the effect of increasing the deficit,” said Smith in a phone interview. The second Bush administration tax cut was enacted as a reconciliation bill. The next year, there was another one. So that broke open thinking about what could go into a reconciliation bill.”
Smith said that since 2001, a reconciliation bill has only needed to address revenues, and in turn, has made the deficit worse.
University of Virginia Professor Wyckoff said the GOP strategy will likely continue using reconciliation bills to bypass bipartisan negotiations, just as they did with the Big Beautiful Bill. However, Wyckoff warns that this could have negative consequences for the institution of Congress.
“Using reconciliation in this way, and saying out loud, ‘We’re going to use reconciliation to bypass bipartisan negotiations,’ goes beyond political parties,” Wyckoff said. “It’s really bad for the institution; this isn’t how Congress is supposed to work.”
Jaylyn Preslicka is a reporter for Medill News Services.
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Photo by Ksenia Makagonova on Unsplash
Scarier Than the Boogeyman
Apr 17, 2026
April is Child Abuse Awareness Month. Going to college, I took a child welfare class to become a social worker, and we were taught about child abuse and neglect. We were taught that there are times when the government has to intervene to protect the welfare of a child and act in the child’s best interest. Growing up, I had no trust in the government. Child Protective Services (CPS) workers were labeled “baby snatchers,” and they were to be feared rather than trusted.
Early in my career, I went on home visits, and I supported women who were involved with child welfare. I saw firsthand cases of extreme neglect. I will never forget walking into a woman’s apartment where I saw three children, a baby on the floor next to a pile of milk and cereal caked into the carpet, a toddler staring blankly at a TV, and a five-year-old who smiled at me with silver teeth. The TV was blaring, and we had to announce ourselves multiple times before Mom came out of the bedroom. Mom had issues with drugs and the kids had been taken away on numerous occasions. I walked away from that visit conflicted. There were other occasions where CPS intervened, simply because mom was a survivor of domestic violence and the system was being used against the survivor by her abuser, labeling her as a bad mother, in a vindictive agenda.
Multiple things can be true at once. The government can have a role in keeping children safe and intervening when parents cannot or will not protect their children. The government can also be a bad actor and enable abuse and neglect of children. I used to work for the Child Abuse Prevention Center in San Francisco, and one of the key areas of programming was teaching children to keep themselves safe. But what do you do when the government is the one enabling the abuse and neglect of children? Today, we are seeing the government enable abuse and neglect of children in immigration detention centers.
For example, Gael, a 5 year old that was being evaluated for autism, was detained at Dilley Detention Center for 45 days, where his parents stated, “he struggled to eat, often gagging on food, and went more than a week without a bowel movement, leaving his stomach visibly swollen and causing him pain”. Dilley Detention Center in South Texas has a reputation for serving contaminated food, where children lack access to education and even basic medical care. An estimated 1,800 children had passed through Dilley as of December. Dilley is just one immigration detention center. Senator Jon Ossoff’s Office has received or identified 18 credible reports that children as young as two years old, including U.S. citizens, have been mistreated in DHS custody.
“The Dilley facility is a family residential center designed specifically to house family units together in a safe, structured, and appropriate environment…where families who have been in the U.S. illegally can get medical care, educational services, recreational opportunities, and essential daily living needs while they await deportation,” said ICE Director Todd M. Lyons. ICE also contends that, “Medical professionals complete full assessments of all detainees within 48 working hours of admission, providing immediate referrals and priority care for kids, pregnant women, and medically vulnerable residents”. Yet, in a case reported to Senator Jon Ossoff’s Office, a pregnant woman bled for days before facility staff would take her to a hospital. Once she was there, she was reportedly left in a room, alone, to miscarry without water or medical assistance for over 24 hours. In another case in Louisiana, a detainee reportedly “nearly miscarried twice” while in ICE custody.
ICE states that “Being in detention is a choice.” Yet, no parent would choose this for themselves or their child. Advocates are calling for the closure of Dilley and similar facilities. Gael was released after advocates, including child educator Ms. Rachel, spoke with Gael over Zoom and rallied public outcry for his release. If we care about protecting children and preventing child abuse, we can close these facilities, and we can hold the government accountable for its failure to protect children.Elisabet Avalos is a leader in housing justice, developing programs for survivors of violence experiencing homelessness, and a Public Voices Fellow of The OpEd Project on Domestic Violence and Economic Security.
Scarier Than the Boogeyman was first published by Latino News Network and was republished with permission.
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