More Than a Vote: What It Takes to Protect Democracy
As the 2026 midterms approach, the Trump administration's efforts to expand federal control over elections are raising urgent questions about ballot access and the future of democratic participation. In our latest and last installment of Repairing America, Anoa Changa-Peck examines what it will take to protect voting rights, from restoring legal safeguards and reforming the Supreme Court to supporting local election officials and investing in grassroots organizing. In today's America, defending democracy will take more than showing up on Election Day; it will sustained action to make sure everyone's vote, and voice, can be heard.
What It Will Take to Protect the Right to Vote
From federal interference in elections to a Supreme Court that has weakened voting rights protections, the threats to American democracy are interconnected—so are the reforms needed to confront them.
From the Reporter’s Notebook 📓
Writing this from a solutions-focused standpoint was a great challenge given the current landscape and how dark things may seem. But I found clarity in revisiting Lani Guinier’s work, and others cast aside in favor of maintaining the U.S. political status quo. This system cannot simply be repaired. It requires reform and reconstruction to fit the country as it exists today and our vision for a more representative, fair future. It also requires a culture shift and embracing a new approach to representation and political participation grounded in shared interests, not electoral outcomes. Elections are a pathway to moving agenda, and they absolutely have consequences. But as members of the body politic, we need to embrace an ethos of co-governance and civic accountability. We can’t abdicate our responsibility to protect the collective good to power-hoarding elites.
Read More From the Series
AI Doesn’t Have to Be This Harmful
AI is already eroding privacy, undermining public services, and imposing costs on local communities. Experts say strong regulation could help prevent further damage and ensure the technology’s benefits are shared more broadly.
Read the reporting from Ryan Biller here.
Why Having Insurance Still Doesn’t Guarantee Mental Health Care
Patients seeking mental health care are confronting ghost networks, provider shortages, denied claims and rising barriers to treatment. Here’s what advocates say could make the system work better.
Read Misha Valencia’s feature here.
How Big Money Took Over American Elections
The Supreme Court’s 2010 decision helped create a new era of corporate and billionaire spending in elections. Here’s how that system took shape — and where efforts to rein it in are gaining ground.
Read Anoa Changa-Peck’s feature here.
How Congress Can Take Back Its Power Over the Courts
Congress has the constitutional power to expand the lower courts, reshape the Supreme Court, limit its jurisdiction and restore checks on an increasingly powerful judiciary.
Read Lisa Needham’s feature here.
What If We Treated Housing Like a Human Right?
America’s housing crisis is the product of decades of underbuilding, restrictive zoning, rising costs and policy choices. There are ways out — if we’re willing to think differently about housing.
Read the reporting from Ryan Biller here.
The Student Debt Crisis Needs More Than Another Repayment Plan
As borrowers face rising payments and an increasingly chaotic loan system, experts and advocates are pushing for solutions that address the cost of college itself — from stronger grants to free college and debt cancellation.
Read the feature from Rainesford Stauffer here.
America’s Child Care Crisis Was a Political Choice
For decades, the U.S. treated child care as a private responsibility instead of a public good. States are now testing a different future.
Read the full piece from Elliot Haspel here.
America’s Public Health System Was Too Easy to Break
Replacing Trump’s health officials won’t be enough. Rebuilding America’s public-health system means restoring scientific expertise—and creating safeguards that can survive the next administration willing to ignore it.
Read the rest from Kavin Senapathy here.
About the Series: What Would It Take to Actually Fix This Country?
Our new series looks past the churn of daily news to interrogate the systems shaping American life, and offers tangible fixes to the problems we collectively face.
Read the full introduction to the series here.