Federal Level

Trump Signs DHS Bill, Ending 75-Day Record Shutdown

President Trump signed legislation on Thursday funding the Department of Homeland Security through the end of the fiscal year, ending what became the longest agency shutdown in American history at 75 days. The bipartisan bill, which the Senate had passed unanimously a month earlier, funds the TSA, Coast Guard, FEMA, and Secret Service while leaving ICE and Border Patrol funding to be addressed separately through budget reconciliation. Speaker Mike Johnson said the House passed the measure by voice vote earlier Thursday. ^{1, 2}

White House Claims Iran War Is ‘Over’ as 60-Day Deadline Arrives

A senior Trump administration official declared Thursday that U.S. hostilities with Iran have “concluded” for purposes of the War Powers Resolution, arguing that the ceasefire in place since early April effectively ended the conflict. The 60-day clock set by Trump’s March 2 notification to Congress expires Friday, May 1. Democrats sharply rejected that interpretation, with Senator Tim Kaine calling it constitutionally baseless. On Thursday, the Senate rejected Democrats’ sixth war powers resolution 47-50, again largely along party lines. ^{3, 4, 5}

Senate Clears 45-Day FISA Extension; House CBDC Provision Shelved

With the Section 702 surveillance authority set to expire Thursday night, the Senate approved a 45-day clean extension by unanimous consent, and the House passed the same measure 261-111. Senate Majority Leader John Thune had declared the House’s earlier three-year FISA bill “dead on arrival” in the Senate because Republicans attached an unrelated ban on Central Bank Digital Currency to it. The 45-day stopgap gives lawmakers until June 12 to negotiate a longer-term solution. ^{6, 7}

Senate Bans Members and Staff from Prediction Market Betting

The Senate voted unanimously on Thursday to prohibit its 100 members and their staff from trading on prediction markets such as Polymarket and Kalshi, effective immediately. The measure, introduced by Senator Bernie Moreno (R-OH), amended the Senate’s standing rules in response to a series of incidents in which anonymous traders made hundreds of thousands of dollars accurately forecasting U.S. military actions, raising alarm about potential insider trading by those with access to classified information. ^{8, 9}

New Video Shows Cole Allen Shot Secret Service Agent at WHCD

U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro released nearly six minutes of surveillance footage on Thursday showing Cole Allen, charged with attempting to assassinate President Trump at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, shooting a Secret Service agent at point-blank range. Secret Service Director Sean Curran stated the agent was shot by Allen, not by friendly fire as some online theories had suggested. Allen, 31, agreed Thursday to remain in custody without bail, though he reserved the right to challenge detention at a later date. ^{10, 11}

State Level

DeSantis to Sign Florida Redistricting Map, Targets 4 More GOP Seats

Governor Ron DeSantis announced Thursday he will sign Florida’s newly passed congressional redistricting map “as soon as I get it,” following Wednesday’s party-line legislative approval. The map would shift Florida’s 28-seat congressional delegation from a 20-8 Republican advantage to a projected 24-4 split by redrawing districts that include minority communities in Tampa, Orlando, and South Florida. Multiple voting rights groups filed legal challenges on Thursday, and Democrats argue the map violates the state’s own Fair Districts constitutional amendments. ^{12, 13}

Louisiana Suspends House Primaries After Voting Rights Ruling

Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry issued an executive order Thursday suspending the state’s congressional House primaries, originally scheduled for May 16, after Wednesday’s Supreme Court ruling invalidated the state’s existing map as an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. Early voting for those races, set to begin Saturday, will not proceed. The state’s Senate primary and all other May 16 races will go forward as planned. Republicans are expected to redraw the map in a way that could eliminate at least one of the two Democratic-held House seats. ^{14, 15}

Trump Presses Tennessee to Redistrict, Flip Memphis Dem Seat

President Trump posted on Truth Social Thursday that Tennessee Governor Bill Lee had pledged to “work hard” to redraw the state’s congressional map following Wednesday’s Supreme Court ruling on the Voting Rights Act. Trump said the effort would “give us one extra seat,” referring to the Memphis-based 9th Congressional District, Tennessee’s only Democratic-held House seat, represented by Rep. Steve Cohen. Governor Lee’s public response was noncommittal, telling reporters Trump had simply asked him to “look at” the maps, but Senator Marsha Blackburn called for a special session. ^{16, 17}

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Article Sources

1. AP News, https://apnews com/hub/congress

2. Politico, https://www.politico com/live-updates/2026/04/30/congress/trump-dhs-legislation-ends-record-shutdown-00902034

3. Reuters, https://www.reuters com/world/us/pivotal-us-iran-war-deadline-approaches-with-no-end-sight-conflict-2026-04-30/

4. CBS News, https://www.cbsnews com/news/senate-iran-war-powers-democrats/

5. CNBC, https://www.cnbc com/2026/04/30/trump-iran-war-centcom-hormuz-congress.html

6. 5Calls org / AP, https://5calls org/issue/fisa-section-702-fbi-surveillance/

7. Politico, https://www.politico com/live-updates/2026/04/30/congress/new-ban-on-prediction-market-trading-00901232

8. The New York Times, https://www.nytimes com/2026/04/30/us/politics/senate-prediction-markets-ban.html

9. The Epoch Times, https://www.theepochtimes com/us/senate-passes-rule-banning-members-from-trading-on-prediction-markets-6019579

10. USA Today, https://www.usatoday com/story/news/politics/2026/04/30/trump-secret-service-agent-friendly-fire-white-house-dinner/89878933007/

11. Just the News, https://justthenews com/government/security/secret-service-director-clarifies-agent-was-struck-alleged-shooter-whcd-not

12. Wikipedia / NBC News, https://en.wikipedia org/wiki/2026_Florida_redistricting

13. NBC News, https://www.nbcnews com/politics/2026-election/florida-legislature-passes-redistricting-plan-creating-four-additional-rcna342656

14. NBC News, https://www.nbcnews com/politics/2026-election/louisiana-delay-house-primaries-supreme-court-redistricting-ruling-rcna342858

15. Politico, https://www.politico com/news/2026/04/30/louisiana-house-primary-delay-congressional-map-00900005

16. USA Today, https://www.usatoday com/story/news/politics/2026/04/30/trump-tennessee-redistricting-voting-rights-act/89875829007/

17. The Tennessean, https://www.tennessean com/story/news/politics/elections/2026/04/30/trump-post-tennessee-redistrict-house-seat-republican/89875592007/

Federal Level

Supreme Court Deals Major Blow to Voting Rights Act in 6-3 Ruling

The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 on Wednesday in Callais v. Louisiana that Louisiana’s congressional map creating a second majority-Black district was “an unconstitutional racial gerrymander,” sharply narrowing Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. Justice Samuel Alito wrote for the conservative majority; Justice Elena Kagan dissented, warning the ruling would make it nearly impossible to factor race into drawing districts. With November midterms approaching, Republican-led states are already signaling plans to redraw maps in their favor. ^{1, 2, 3}

House Passes FISA; Johnson Survives Revolt to Clear DHS Funding Path

After a chaotic two-hour standoff, Speaker Mike Johnson persuaded Republican holdouts to pass a three-year extension of FISA’s Section 702 surveillance program 235-191 on Wednesday. The bill now heads to the Senate, where a House-added ban on Central Bank Digital Currency complicates passage before Thursday’s expiration deadline. Separately, Johnson cleared a budget reconciliation path that could end the 74-day DHS shutdown, though an immediate resolution is unlikely as Congress departs for a weeklong recess. ^{4, 5, 6}

Hegseth Faces Congress Over Iran War; $25 Billion Cost Revealed

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth appeared Wednesday before the House Armed Services Committee in the first congressional hearing since the start of the Iran conflict, where the Pentagon disclosed the war has cost $25 billion to date. Lawmakers from both parties pressed Hegseth on strategy, troop readiness, and the firing of senior military officials. Active combat remains paused while the naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz continues, and the USS Gerald R. Ford, deployed for an unprecedented 10 months, is set to return home. ^{7, 8}

DOJ and ATF Roll Back Gun Rules in Largest Single-Day Action in a Decade

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche on Wednesday signed a five-rule package reversing Biden-era firearms regulations, the largest single-day rollback of federal gun rules in more than a decade. The package, the result of a 14-month review ordered by President Trump, repeals the zero-tolerance gun dealer policy, creates a federal gun-rights restoration system, and narrows the legal definitions used to prohibit certain individuals from owning firearms. The Senate also confirmed Robert Cekada as the new ATF director on a 54-46 vote. ^{9, 10}

Trump Threatens to Cut Troops in Germany After Feud with Chancellor Merz

President Trump announced Wednesday on Truth Social that the United States is “examining and contemplating” a reduction of the 38,000 American troops stationed in Germany. The threat came after German Chancellor Friedrich Merz publicly said the U.S. was being “humiliated” by Iran and criticized Washington’s lack of a clear strategy in the conflict. Trump accused Merz of accepting Iran having nuclear weapons. Congressional Republicans have signaled opposition to any troop withdrawal from a key NATO ally. ^{11, 12}

State Level

Florida Legislature Passes DeSantis Redistricting Map, Sends to Governor

Florida’s Republican-controlled Legislature passed Governor Ron DeSantis’s congressional redistricting map on Wednesday, with the House voting 83-28 and the Senate 21-17 in a mostly party-line vote. The map would shift the state’s 28-seat congressional delegation from its current 20-8 Republican advantage to 24-4. DeSantis cited Wednesday’s Supreme Court Voting Rights Act ruling as validating the redistricting effort. Democrats called it unconstitutional, and voting rights groups announced legal challenges would be filed immediately upon the governor’s signature. ^{13, 14, 15}

South Carolina Republicans Target Lone Democratic Seat After SCOTUS Ruling

Following Wednesday’s Supreme Court ruling limiting the Voting Rights Act, Republican gubernatorial candidates in South Carolina called on the state legislature to redraw its 6th Congressional District, the only Democratic-held seat in the state, currently represented by veteran Rep. Jim Clyburn. Lieutenant Governor Pamela Evette said it is “time for the State Legislature to dismantle the Democratic dominance” in the district, which was drawn to ensure minority representation. No redistricting session has been called yet. ^{16, 17}

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Article Sources

1. Reuters, https://www.reuters com/world/us-supreme-court-blocks-louisiana-voting-map-with-second-black-majority-district-2026-04-29/

2. NPR, https://www.npr.org/2026/04/29/nx-s1-5754657/supreme-court-louisiana-redistricting

3. The New York Times, https://www.nytimes com/2026/04/29/us/elections/supreme-court-voting-rights-act.html

4. NBC News, https://www.nbcnews com/politics/congress/house-fisa-spy-program-budget-resolution-dhs-shutdown-ice-farm-bill-rcna342730

5. The Hill, https://thehill com/homenews/house/5854744-rule-vote-fisa-farm-bill-dhs-2/

6. The Washington Post, https://www.washingtonpost com/politics/2026/04/29/house-mike-johnson-fisa-dhs/

7. PBS NewsHour, https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/hegseths-contentious-hearing-in-congress-reveals-partisan-divide-over-iran-war

8. AP News, https://apnews com/live/iran-war-hegseth-congress-trump-updates-04-29-2026

9. Guns and Gadgets Daily, https://gunsandgadgetsdaily com/doj-atf-rules-april-2026/

10. Newsmax, https://www.newsmax com/us/second-amendment-gun-rights-trump-admin/2026/04/29/id/1254666/

11. Politico, https://www.politico com/news/2026/04/29/trump-us-reducing-troops-germany-00899352

12. The New York Times, https://www.nytimes com/2026/04/29/us/politics/trump-germany-us-troops.html

13. NPR, https://www.npr.org/2026/04/29/nx-s1-5804703/florida-redistricting-voting-map-republicans-house-seats

14. Politico, https://www.politico com/news/2026/04/29/florida-legislature-redistricting-map-desantis-gop-00898457

15. Democracy Docket, https://www.democracydocket com/news-alerts/florida-passes-gop-gerrymander-sending-map-to-desantis/

16. CNN, https://edition.cnn com/2026/04/29/politics/live-news/supreme-court-temporary-protected-status

17. Fox News, https://www.foxnews com/politics/house-passes-fisa-renewal-bipartisan-vote-putting-pressure-senate-looming-deadline

Federal Level

Comey Indicted Again Over Instagram Seashell Post

A federal grand jury on Tuesday indicted former FBI Director James Comey for the second time, charging him with two counts of threatening the president over an Instagram photo he posted in 2025 showing seashells on a beach arranged to spell “86 47.” Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche announced the charges at a press conference, saying each count carries a maximum sentence of ten years. Comey called the indictment politically motivated. A warrant for his arrest was also issued. ^{1, 2, 3}

King Charles Urges Unity in Historic Address to Congress

King Charles III delivered a rare address to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday during his four-day state visit to the United States, urging Americans and the British to stand together in defense of democracy and against isolationism. The King praised the NATO alliance, called for continued U.S. support for Ukraine, and condemned political violence in the wake of last weekend’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner shooting. He and Queen Camilla attended a State Dinner at the White House Tuesday evening. ^{4, 5, 6}

FCC Orders Early Review of Disney’s ABC Broadcast Licenses

The Federal Communications Commission on Tuesday directed Disney to submit broadcast license renewals for all of its ABC-owned and -operated television stations within 30 days, years ahead of their scheduled 2028 review. The FCC cited an ongoing investigation into Disney’s diversity, equity, and inclusion policies as potentially violating anti-discrimination rules. The action comes days after President Trump called on ABC to fire late-night host Jimmy Kimmel. Disney said its stations have consistently operated in full compliance with FCC regulations. ^{7, 8, 9}

Congress at Standstill on DHS, FISA, and War Powers

With FISA’s Section 702 surveillance authority set to expire Wednesday and DHS emergency pay funds expected to run dry by Thursday, Congress remained deadlocked on Tuesday. Speaker Mike Johnson has not yet secured enough Republican votes for any of the three top priorities: a permanent DHS funding deal, a long-term FISA reauthorization, or a War Powers vote on the Iran conflict. Democrats continue to tie DHS funding to immigration enforcement reforms, and the House Rules Committee failed again to advance either bill. ^{10, 11, 12}

Iran Situation Room Meeting Yields No Breakthrough

President Trump held a Situation Room meeting with his national security team on Tuesday to review Iran’s latest proposal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz in exchange for lifting the U.S. blockade and suspending the threat of resumed bombing. Multiple news outlets reported that Trump does not appear open to the offer, which would postpone nuclear talks to a later date. The naval blockade remained in place, with oil prices reaching their highest level since the start of the Iran conflict. ^{13, 14}

State Level

DeSantis Opens Redistricting Session, Targets Four Dem Seats

Florida’s Republican-controlled Legislature convened a special redistricting session on Tuesday to consider Governor Ron DeSantis’s proposed congressional map, which would redraw districts to give Republicans four additional House seats, shifting the delegation from 20 Republicans and seven Democrats to 24 Republicans and four Democrats. The map targets Democratic incumbents Kathy Castor, Darren Soto, Lois Frankel, and Debbie Wasserman Schultz. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has called the plan illegal, and legal challenges are already being prepared. ^{15, 16, 17}

Federal Agents Raid 22 Minnesota Sites in Fraud Probe

FBI and Homeland Security agents executed 22 search warrants on Tuesday at businesses across the Minneapolis-Saint Paul area as part of a large-scale fraud investigation targeting alleged misuse of federal Medicaid and child-care funds. Officials said the operation was not related to immigration enforcement. Vice President Vance, who leads a White House fraud task force, said the administration “will not relent.” Federal prosecutors have previously suggested that fraud in Minnesota’s programs could total as much as $9 billion since 2018. ^{18, 19}

Virginia High Court Expected to Rule Soon on Redistricting

Following Tuesday’s oral arguments, the Virginia Supreme Court is expected to issue its ruling within weeks on whether the voter-approved redistricting referendum can take effect before the November midterms. A lower court has already permanently blocked certification of the results. The high court’s decision will determine whether new district lines could net Democrats up to four additional U.S. House seats in a contest that both parties say will decide control of Congress. ^{20, 21}

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Article Sources

1. WLRN / NPR, https://www.wlrn org/national-politics/2026-04-28/grand-jury-indicts-former-fbi-director-james-comey-for-a-second-time

2. ABC World News Tonight, https://www.youtube com/watch?v=UFKlXyF7PXM

3. The Daily Record, https://thedailyrecord com/2026/04/28/james-comey-indicted-justice-department/

4. Reuters, https://www.reuters com/world/uk/king-charles-promote-british-american-unity-rare-speech-congress-2026-04-28/

5. NPR, https://www.npr org/2026/04/28/nx-s1-5800874/trump-king-charles-relationship-congress-state-dinner

6. Sky News / YouTube, https://www.youtube com/watch?v=yWt5STzCHAg

7. Semafor, https://www.semafor com/article/04/28/2026/fcc-prepares-review-of-disneys-tv-licenses

8. Deadline, https://deadline com/2026/04/fcc-disney-jimmy-kimmel-1236874587/

9. CNBC, https://www.cnbc com/amp/2026/04/28/fcc-begins-review-of-disney-broadcast-licenses-years-ahead-of-schedule.html

10. CNBC, https://www.cnbc com/2026/04/28/dhs-tsa-shutdown-congress.html

11. Alston & Bird / Public Policy Look Ahead, https://www.alston com/en/insights/publications/2026/04/look-ahead-april-27-2026

12. NBC News (PBS NewsHour), https://www.youtube com/watch?v=38RPg3ER8rIk

13. Democracy Now, https://www.democracynow org/2026/4/28/headlines

14. PBS NewsHour, https://www.youtube com/watch?v=dEPKWy3qsQk

15. NPR, https://www.npr org/2026/04/27/nx-s1-5797938/floridas-desantis-unveils-a-voting-map-that-could-add-to-trumps-gop-redistricting

16. New York Times, https://www.nytimes com/2026/04/27/us/desantis-florida-gop-house-map.html

17. Politico, https://www.politico com/news/2026/04/27/desantis-florida-redistricting-map-00893037

18. Reuters / U.S. News, https://www.usnews com/news/world/articles/2026-04-28/us-agents-raid-22-minnesota-sites-in-social-welfare-fraud-probe

19. AP / U.S. News, https://www.usnews com/news/us/articles/2026-04-28/agents-serve-search-warrants-in-federal-fraud-probe-in-minnesota

20. KSAT / AP, https://www.ksat com/news/politics/2026/04/27/virginia-supreme-court-considers-whether-to-block-voter-approved-us-house-map-favoring-democrats/

21. Washington Post, https://www.washingtonpost com/politics/2026/04/27/redistricting-congress-virginia-court-trump/

Federal Level

Cole Allen Charged with Attempted Assassination of Trump

Cole Tomas Allen, 31, of Torrance, California, was formally charged on Monday in federal court in Washington with attempted assassination of President Trump, transportation of a firearm across state lines, and discharging a firearm during a crime of violence. Prosecutors said Allen opened fire on a Secret Service agent at Saturday’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner, striking the officer’s vest, before being subdued. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro said additional charges are expected. Allen faces a potential life sentence on the top count. ^{1, 2, 3}

Rubio Dismisses Iran’s Hormuz Reopening Proposal

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Monday that Iran’s latest proposal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz in exchange for lifting the U.S. blockade is unacceptable, arguing that Iran’s terms amount to charging tolls on international waters. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed that President Trump met with his national security team on Monday to review the Iranian offer, while adding that Iran’s conditions do not yet meet the administration’s requirements. The naval blockade remains in place. ^{4, 5}

House Faces ‘Nightmare Week’ on DHS, FISA, and Budget

Republicans returned to Washington on Monday confronting a week of high-stakes legislative deadlines: a funding deal to permanently reopen DHS, a vote on the House’s budget reconciliation blueprint to fund ICE and Border Patrol, and the April 30 expiration of Section 702 of FISA, the key intelligence surveillance authority. Speaker Mike Johnson has not yet secured enough votes for any of the three measures. Senate Democrats continue to block DHS funding absent immigration enforcement reforms. ^{6, 7}

Supreme Court Locks In Texas GOP Map, Netting Up to 5 Seats

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 on Monday to formally reinstate Texas’s Republican-drawn congressional map, overturning a lower court’s finding of racial gerrymandering. The map, approved by the Texas legislature in 2025 at President Trump’s urging, could convert up to five Democratic-held congressional districts to Republican control ahead of November’s midterms. The three liberal justices dissented. ^{8, 9}

King Charles Arrives at White House for First U.S. State Visit

King Charles III and Queen Camilla arrived at the White House on Monday afternoon for a four-day state visit, the first of President Trump’s second term. The two leaders held a private bilateral meeting, and the royal couple attended a garden party at the British Embassy. On Tuesday, the king will address a joint session of Congress, the first by a British royal since Queen Elizabeth

State Level

Virginia Supreme Court Weighs Fate of Redistricting Referendum

The Virginia Supreme Court heard oral arguments on Monday on the Republican challenge to the voter-approved redistricting referendum passed on April 21, which could net Democrats four additional U.S. House seats in November. The justices questioned whether the Democratic-controlled General Assembly followed the state constitution’s procedural requirements in placing the amendment before voters. A lower court has already permanently blocked certification of the results; the high court’s ruling will determine whether those new district lines can take effect before the midterm elections. ^{12, 13}

California Billionaire Tax Qualifies for November Ballot

Supporters of a proposed one-time 5 percent wealth tax on California billionaires announced on Monday that they had collected nearly 1.6 million signatures, well exceeding the approximately 875,000 required to qualify the measure for the November ballot. The initiative, backed by major labor unions, is designed to raise roughly $100 billion, primarily to offset federal cuts to Medicaid and other health programs. Governor Gavin Newsom and a number of Silicon Valley executives have pledged to oppose it. ^{14, 15}

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Article Sources

1. NY Post, https://nypost com/2026/04/27/us-news/whcd-shooting-suspect-cole-allen-charged-with-trying-assassinate-president-trump/

2. CNBC, https://www.cnbc com/2026/04/27/cole-allen-whcd-arraigment-trump.html

3. TMZ / AP, https://www.tmz com/2026/04/27/cole-allen-arraigned-following-white-house-correspondents-dinner-shooting/

4. ABC News, https://abcnews com/International/live-updates/iran-live-updates-rubio-dismisses-iran-peace-proposal/?id=132444768

5. CNBC, https://www.cnbc com/2026/04/27/trump-iran-war-strait-of-hormuz-rubio.html

6. CNN, https://www.cnn com/2026/04/27/politics/dhs-funding-fisa-farm-bill-johnson

7. NPR, https://www.npr org/2026/04/27/nx-s1-5798766/congress-under-pressure-to-end-dhs-shutdown-as-it-returns-to-session-this-week

8. Reuters, https://www.reuters com/legal/government/us-supreme-court-formally-reinstates-pro-republican-texas-voting-map-2026-04-27/

9. Al Jazeera, https://www.aljazeera com/news/2026/4/27/us-supreme-court-reinstates-republican-favoured-texas-electoral-map

10. NYT, https://www.nytimes com/live/2026/04/27/us/trump-news

11. Reuters, https://www.reuters com/world/uk/britains-king-charles-address-us-congress-april-28-2026-04-01/

12. KSAT / AP, https://www.ksat com/news/politics/2026/04/27/virginia-supreme-court-considers-whether-to-block-voter-approved-us-house-map-favoring-democrats/

13. Wikipedia / Democracy Docket, https://en.wikipedia org/wiki/2026_Virginia_redistricting_amendment

14. AP News, https://apnews com/article/california-billionaire-tax-09ef038f86019d4c62b76aeff707158d

15. Forbes, https://www.forbes com/sites/maryroeloffs/2026/04/27/billionaires-tax-closer-to-california-ballot-heres-who-has-already-left/

Federal Level

WHCD Shooter Arraigned; Attempted Assassination Charges Loom

Cole Tomas Allen, 31, will appear Monday in Washington federal court for his arraignment on charges of using a firearm during a violent crime and assaulting a federal officer at Saturday’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner. Acting AG Todd Blanche said additional counts, including attempted assassination of the president, remain under consideration. Allen’s manifesto identified senior Trump administration officials as targets and referred to him as the “Friendly Federal Assassin.” ^{1, 2, 3}

Trump vs. CBS: ‘60 Minutes’ Interview Turns Combative

In a Sunday night appearance on CBS News’ ‘60 Minutes,’ President Trump clashed sharply with anchor Norah O’Donnell while discussing the Correspondents’ Dinner attack. When O’Donnell read from the alleged shooter’s manifesto, Trump told her, “You’re a disgrace.” He said he was “not making it easy” for Secret Service as they evacuated him and that he wanted to see the threat firsthand. Trump called for the dinner to be rescheduled within 30 days. ^{4, 5}

Iran Talks Stall as Foreign Minister Flies to Moscow

With U.S.-Iran peace negotiations at a standstill following Trump’s cancellation of the Pakistan summit on Saturday, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi flew to Moscow on Monday to meet with Russian President Putin. Trump said Sunday that Iran knows what it needs to do to get a deal and can simply “call us.” The U.S. blockade of the Strait of Hormuz remained in place, with oil prices rising Monday morning. ^{6, 7}

House Passes One-Week Fix, Ending 10-Week DHS Shutdown

In an early Saturday morning vote, the U.S. House of Representatives approved a one-week stop-gap spending bill that re-opens the Department of Homeland Security after a ten-week partial shutdown, the second-longest in American history. The measure gives lawmakers one more week to negotiate a long-term solution, with the Senate’s separately passed $70 billion ICE and Border Patrol reconciliation resolution still awaiting House action. Congress is set to return from recess on Monday, April 28. ^{8, 9}

Supreme Court Hears Landmark Geofence Warrant Case

The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments Monday morning in Chatrie v. United States, a landmark Fourth Amendment case examining whether law enforcement can use “geofence warrants” to compel tech companies such as Google to disclose location data for all users within a designated area at a specific time. The case arose from a 2019 Virginia bank robbery investigation and could reshape how police use smartphone location data in millions of future criminal cases. A ruling is expected before the Court’s summer recess. ^{10, 11}

Supreme Court Also Hears TPS Cases for 356,000 Migrants

Also Monday, the Supreme Court heard consolidated arguments in cases testing whether the Trump administration can end Temporary Protected Status for approximately 350,000 Haitians and 6,000 Syrians. Lower courts have blocked the terminations, and the Court is expected to rule before its summer recess. The administration argued the cases are identical to its earlier success in ending TPS for Venezuelans, while immigrant advocates warned that deportees would face life-threatening conditions. ^{12, 13}

State Level

Virginia Supreme Court Weighs Redistricting Referendum

The Virginia Supreme Court heard oral arguments Sunday on the Republican challenge to the April 21 voter-approved redistricting referendum that could give Democrats four additional U.S. House seats in November. GOP plaintiffs argue the Democratic-controlled legislature violated procedural rules to place the constitutional amendment on the ballot. The current Republican-drawn map remains in effect while the court deliberates, with a ruling expected within weeks and the stakes described as among the highest of the 2026 cycle. ^{14, 15}

House Democrats Set Barrage of Iran War Powers Votes

House Democrats announced Sunday they plan to force repeated votes on war powers resolutions throughout May and beyond, with at least six resolutions already prepared, aiming to compel Republican members in competitive districts to go on record about Congress’s authority to declare war. Representative Ro Khanna introduced a new resolution last week, followed by two more from progressive colleagues. With the War Powers Resolution’s 60-day clock ending this week, Democrats say the pressure campaign will intensify regardless of the outcome. ^{16, 17}

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Article Sources

1. Reuters, https://www.reuters com/world/us/suspect-washington-dinner-shooting-set-appear-court-2026-04-27/

2. NPR, https://www.npr org/2026/04/27/nx-s1-5800175/white-house-correspondents-dinner-cole-allen-federal-court

3. El Pais / AP, https://english.elpais com/usa/2026-04-27/the-suspect-in-the-attempted-attack-on-trump-faces-arraignment-in-washington.html

4. Variety, https://variety com/2026/tv/news/trump-60-minutes-white-house-correspondents-dinner-shooting-1236730966/

5. CBS News, https://www.cbsnews com/news/trump-white-house-correspondents-dinner-shooting-60-minutes-transcript/

6. US News / Reuters, https://www.usnews com/news/world/articles/2026-04-27/iranian-foreign-minister-heads-to-russia-trump-says-call-us-to-negotiate

7. NDTV, https://www.ndtv com/world-news/us-israel-iran-ceasefire-news-live-updates-us-donald-trump-must-lift-blockade-before-fresh-talks

8. Visa HQ / AP, https://www.visahq com/news/2026-04-26/us/house-bill-ends-dhs-shutdown-amid-controversy-over-denaturalization-drive/

9. Al Jazeera, https://www.aljazeera com/news/2026/4/23/us-senate-passes-ice-funding-resolution-after-vote-a-rama-whats-next

10. Lawfare, https://www.lawfaremedia org/article/oral-argument-preview--chatrie-v.-united-states

11. Brennan Center for Justice, https://www.brennancenter org/our-work/research-reports/okello-chatrie-v-united-states-america

12. NPR, https://www.npr org/2026/03/16/nx-s1-5745069/supreme-court-tps-syria-haiti

13. Washington Examiner, https://www.washingtonexaminer com/news/supreme-court/4493132/supreme-court-trump-bid-end-tps-haiti-syria/

14. KSAT / AP, https://www.ksat com/news/politics/2026/04/27/virginia-supreme-court-considers-whether-to-block-voter-approved-us-house-map-favoring-democrats/

15. Washington Post, https://www.washingtonpost com/politics/2026/04/27/redistricting-congress-virginia-court-trump/

16. The Hill, https://thehill com/homenews/house/5846206-democrats-iran-war-powers-votes/

17. Politico, https://www.politico com/news/2026/04/16/house-rejects-trump-limits-iran-war-00876707

Federal Level

Armed Suspect Storms Correspondents’ Dinner; Trump Safe

A 31-year-old California man, Cole Tomas Allen of Torrance, rushed a security checkpoint armed with a shotgun, a handgun, and multiple knives outside the Washington Hilton on Saturday, where President Trump was attending the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. A Secret Service agent was shot but protected by body armor; Trump, Vice President Vance, and Cabinet members were all safely evacuated. Allen told police he intended to target Trump administration officials. Trump held a late-night press conference at the White House and said the event would be rescheduled within 30 days.^{1, 2, 3}

Trump Cancels Iran Peace Talks: ‘We Have All the Cards’

President Trump on Saturday abruptly canceled a planned trip by envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner to Pakistan for talks with Iran, saying the Iranian regime was experiencing “tremendous infighting” and its latest proposal was not good enough. Trump told reporters at Palm Beach International Airport that Iran submitted a “much better” new paper within ten minutes of his cancellation. Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi had already landed in Islamabad before Trump pulled out, and the White House said Iran can simply call if it wants to talk.^{4, 5, 6}

May 1 War Powers Deadline Puts Congress in the Spotlight

The Iran conflict is approaching the 60-day limit set by the 1973 War Powers Resolution, with legal analysts on Saturday placing the hard deadline as early as April 29 and no later than May 1, by which point Trump must obtain congressional authorization or begin withdrawing U.S. forces. Congress has not passed an Authorization for Use of Military Force, and the Senate blocked a war powers resolution for the fifth time this past week. Republican senators Susan Collins and Thom Tillis both signaled Saturday they may break with the administration if no congressional vote occurs.^{7, 8}

Trump Hosts Crypto Investors at Mar-a-Lago, Drawing Ethics Fire

President Trump on Saturday hosted a gala luncheon at Mar-a-Lago for the top 297 holders of his $TRUMP meme coin, with the leading 29 investors receiving a private VIP reception before he left for the Correspondents’ Dinner. Democratic senators Elizabeth Warren, Adam Schiff, and Richard Blumenthal called it an unprecedented “pay-to-play” scheme that blurs the line between the presidency and Trump’s personal financial interests. The $TRUMP coin has declined 96 percent from its peak while the Trump family has reportedly generated over $1 billion from crypto ventures.^{9, 10}

State Level

New York AG Sues Trump Over $73M in Withheld Highway Funds

New York Attorney General Letitia James filed suit on Friday against the Trump administration to block the cancellation of more than $73 million in federal highway funding, after the U.S. Department of Transportation cut the money because New York refused to rescind commercial driver’s licenses the federal government claimed were issued unlawfully. James argued the licenses complied fully with both state and federal law and were granted only to individuals with legal immigration status. The administration separately threatened to withhold an additional $147 million in future highway aid, a move James said would disrupt critical road and bridge projects across the state.^{11, 12}

Virginia Redistricting Court Battle Escalates After Ruling Block

Attorney General Jay Jones confirmed on Saturday that Virginia will appeal a circuit court judge’s April 22 ruling that permanently blocked certification of the redistricting referendum results and declared the authorizing legislation void. The referendum, passed by voters on April 21, could have flipped up to four U.S. House seats from Republican to Democrat. The case is expected to proceed rapidly through the Court of Appeals of Virginia with the November midterms drawing closer.^{13, 14}

NYC Mayor Mamdani Issues First Veto, Splits City Council

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Friday issued his first mayoral veto, rejecting a City Council bill that would have required the NYPD to establish formal buffer zone security perimeters around schools during protests. Mamdani said the bill threatened the free speech rights of union organizers and immigration protesters, while Council Speaker Julie Menin called the veto a failure to protect students. The bill passed 30 to 19, four votes short of the 34 needed to override, leaving its fate uncertain.^{15, 16}

Texas Democrats Set Houston Runoff; Incumbents on Shaky Ground

The first federal midterm primaries of 2026 produced a significant result on Saturday as Democratic Reps. Al Green and Christian Menefee advanced to a May 26 runoff for a Houston-area congressional district, a race triggered by redistricting and reflecting broader incumbent vulnerability heading into November. Political analysts said the results signal that incumbents across both parties face tougher-than-expected challenges this cycle, with voter frustration over the Iran war and cost-of-living concerns driving anti-incumbent sentiment nationwide.^{17, 18}

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Article Sources

1. Reuters, https://www.reuters com/world/us/trump-removed-white-house-correspondents-dinner-attendees-take-cover-2026-04-26/

2. CNN, https://www.cnn com/2026/04/25/politics/trump-rushed-white-house-correspondents-dinner

3. NPR / TPR, https://www.tpr org/news/2026-04-25/a-suspect-is-in-custody-after-trump-is-rushed-from-correspondents-dinner

4. Palm Beach Post, https://www.palmbeachpost com/story/news/trump/2026/04/25/president-donald-trump-ends-palm-beach-weekend-by-calling-off-iran-talks/

5. Fox News, https://www.foxnews com/live-news/iran-war-trump-us-ceasefire-deal-strait-hormuz-pakistan-talks-april-25

6. White House, https://www.youtube com/watch?v=MuvSCCTVYn8

7. CNN, https://www.cnn com/2026/04/25/politics/war-powers-act-trump-iran-war-congress-analysis

8. The Hill, https://thehill com/homenews/senate/5836355-collins-tillis-trump-iran-war-powers-resolution/

9. Reuters, https://www.reuters com/world/us/trump-hosts-crypto-contest-winners-mar-a-lago-his-coin-languishes-2026-04-25/

10. The Guardian, https://www.theguardian com/us-news/2026/apr/23/trump-crypto-memecoin-event-mar-a-lago

11. New York Times, https://www.nytimes com/2026/04/24/nyregion/letitia-james-lawsuit-highway-funding.html

12. New York AG, https://ag.ny.gov/press-release/2026/attorney-general-james-sues-trump-administration-restore-highway-funding

13. Wikipedia / AP, https://en.wikipedia org/wiki/2026_Virginia_redistricting_amendment

14. Democracy Docket, https://www.democracydocket com/news-alerts/virginia-supreme-court-clears-way-for-voters-to-counter-gop-gerrymanders/

15. Politico, https://www.politico com/news/2026/04/24/mamdani-vetoes-one-of-two-protest-buffer-zone-bills-in-escalating-beef-with-nyc-council

16. New York Times, https://www.nytimes com/2026/04/24/nyregion/mamdani-buffer-zones-veto.html

17. CNBC, https://www.cnbc com/politics/

18. The Hill, https://thehill com/homenews/campaign/texas-midterm-primary-2026/

Federal Level

Trump Sends Witkoff and Kushner to Pakistan for Iran Talks

The White House announced Friday that U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff and President Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner will travel to Pakistan on Saturday to meet with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, who arrived in Islamabad on Friday. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said the president sent the delegation “to hear the Iranians out,” adding that “we’ve certainly seen some progress from the Iranian side.” Iran’s spokesperson denied a direct meeting was formally planned, but both sides confirmed the encounter is taking shape. ^{1, 2, 3}

War Powers Deadline Looms as Iran Conflict Enters Day 60

Friday marked the approach of the critical May 1 deadline under the 1973 War Powers Resolution, which requires President Trump to obtain congressional authorization or begin withdrawing U.S. forces from Iran within 60 days of notifying Congress of hostilities. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth stated Friday that the U.S. naval blockade around the Strait of Hormuz will last “as long as it takes.” Congress has not yet passed an Authorization for Use of Military Force, leaving the administration’s legal standing in question. ^{4, 5}

DOJ Drops Criminal Probe of Fed Chair Jerome Powell

The Justice Department announced Friday it is ending its criminal investigation into Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell over cost overruns at the Fed’s Washington headquarters renovation. U.S. Attorney for D.C. Jeanine Pirro said the matter will now be handled by the Fed’s inspector general. The decision clears a significant obstacle for the Senate confirmation of Kevin Warsh, Trump’s nominee to replace Powell, whose term expires May 15. ^{6, 7}

DOJ Authorizes Firing Squads for Federal Executions

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche on Friday signed a directive expanding federal execution methods to include firing squads, electrocution, and gas asphyxiation, in addition to reinstating lethal injection with pentobarbital used during Trump’s first term. The Justice Department said the expansion is intended to address ongoing drug-supply challenges for lethal injections and to expedite capital punishment cases. The federal government has not historically used firing squads; five states currently permit the method. ^{8, 9}

Appeals Court Strikes Down Trump Asylum Ban at Southern Border

A divided three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled Friday that President Trump’s January 2025 executive order barring migrants from claiming asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border is unlawful. The court held that Trump cannot use emergency entry powers to override the immigration statutes passed by Congress. The ruling sets up a likely showdown at the Supreme Court, as the Trump administration is expected to appeal. ^{10, 11}

Judge Questions Trump’s $10B Lawsuit Against His Own IRS

A federal judge on Friday questioned whether President Trump can legally sue the Internal Revenue Service and the Treasury Department, both agencies he controls, in his $10 billion lawsuit over the leak of his tax returns. Judge Kathleen Williams expressed concern that the two sides in the case are not “sufficiently adverse” to establish court jurisdiction and ordered a hearing on the matter for May 27. Trump and his sons filed the suit in January over a contractor’s unauthorized disclosure of his tax records. ^{12, 13}

State Level

North Carolina Democrat Quits Party After Primary Loss

State Rep. Carla Cunningham, who has represented north Charlotte’s District 106 as a Democrat for seven terms, announced Friday that she has switched her voter registration to unaffiliated. Cunningham, who lost her March primary by a wide margin after crossing party lines to help override Democratic Governor Josh Stein’s veto of an immigration cooperation bill, said she “came to realize that I want to serve the people, not a party.” The switch is significant because Republicans may now need only one additional vote to reach a veto-override supermajority in the state House. ^{14, 15}

White House Blames Youngkin for Virginia Redistricting Loss

Senior White House officials told Politico on Friday that they hold former Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin responsible for Democrats’ redistricting victory this week, saying he “should have done more” and that his decision to leave a special session open allowed state Senate Democrats to ram through the new congressional maps. A Virginia circuit court judge blocked certification of the referendum results on Wednesday, but Virginia Attorney General Jay Jones said Friday the state will appeal, keeping the fight alive ahead of November midterms. ^{16, 17}

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Article Sources

1. USA Today, https://www.usatoday com/story/news/world/2026/04/24/iran-war-trump-ceasefire-updates--live/89761694007/

2. NPR, https://www.vpm org/npr-news/npr-news/2026-04-24/kushner-and-u-s-envoy-witkoff-will-head-to-pakistan-for-new-iran-talks

3. New York Times, https://www.nytimes com/2026/04/24/world/middleeast/kushner-witkoff-pakistan-iran.html

4. Al Jazeera, https://www.aljazeera com/news/2026/4/24/trumps-may-1-deadline-can-he-continue-war-on-iran-after-that

5. NTD / PBS News, https://www.youtube com/watch?v=S-0MPqFxTqQ

6. NPR, https://www.npr org/2026/04/24/nx-s1-5798661/justice-department-drops-inquiry-into-fed-chair-jerome-powell

7. CNN, https://www.cnn com/2026/04/24/business/doj-criminal-probe-of-powell

8. Reuters, https://www.reuters com/world/us/justice-department-readopts-firing-squads-us-federal-executions-2026-04-24/

9. NPR, https://www.npr org/2026/04/24/nx-s1-5798990/doj-firing-squads-executions-trump-capital-punishment

10. New York Times, https://www.nytimes com/2026/04/24/us/politics/appeals-court-trump-asylum-claims.html

11. Newsweek, https://www.newsweek com/trump-court-setback-ongoing-border-asylum-battle-11875548

12. Bloomberg Law, https://news.bloomberglaw com/litigation/trumps-10-billion-irs-leak-suit-called-into-question-by-judge

13. CNN, https://www.cnn com/2026/04/24/media/trump-whcd-correspondents-dinner-debate

14. Charlotte Observer, https://www.charlotteobserver com/news/politics-government/article315527007.html

15. Carolina Journal, https://www.carolinajournal com/rep-carla-cunningham-leaves-the-democratic-party-registers-unaffiliated/

16. Politico, https://www.politico com/news/2026/04/23/virginia-redistricting-blame-white-house-gop-00889443

17. Political Wire, https://politicalwire com/2026/04/24/white-house-blames-glenn-youngkin-for-virginia-map/

Federal Level

Trump Brokers Three-Week Israel-Lebanon Ceasefire Extension

President Trump announced Thursday evening that Israel and Lebanon agreed to extend their ceasefire by three weeks after a second round of ambassador-level talks at the White House Oval Office. The initial 10-day truce, which took effect April 16, had been set to expire by Monday. Trump posted on Truth Social that the United States will help Lebanon defend itself against Hezbollah, and said he looks forward to hosting Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and Lebanese President Aoun at the White House in the near future. ^{1, 2, 3}

Trump Signs 17th Drug Pricing Deal, Closes Regeneron Agreement

At a White House healthcare affordability event on Thursday, President Trump announced a most-favored-nation pricing agreement with Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, the 17th and final deal of its kind with major drug companies. Under the agreement, the price of Regeneron’s cholesterol medication Praluent will drop from $537 to $225, and the company will offer its new gene therapy for rare genetic deafness at no cost to U.S. patients. The 17 companies now collectively represent 86 percent of the branded pharmaceutical market. ^{4, 5, 6}

DOJ Indicts SPLC on Fraud and Money Laundering Charges

The Justice Department on Wednesday unveiled an 11-count federal indictment against the Southern Poverty Law Center, the prominent civil rights nonprofit, accusing it of secretly funneling more than $3 million in donor funds to leaders of white supremacist and hate groups it publicly claimed to oppose. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said the SPLC created fictitious bank accounts to hide payments to informants over nearly a decade, including a leader of the group that organized the deadly 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville. The SPLC called the charges politically motivated. ^{7, 8, 9}

Federal Government Reclassifies Medical Marijuana to Schedule III

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche on Thursday signed an order moving state-licensed and FDA-approved medical marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule III under the federal Controlled Substances Act, the most consequential federal drug policy shift in decades. The change stops short of full legalization but removes cannabis from the same category as heroin, allowing marijuana businesses to deduct standard expenses and opening the door to broader clinical research. A DEA public hearing is scheduled for June 29 to weigh further reclassification. ^{10, 11, 12}

Georgia Congressman David Scott Dies at 80

Democratic Representative David Scott of Georgia, who served 24 years in Congress and was the first Black man to chair the House Agriculture Committee, died Wednesday at age 80, one day after casting his final House floor vote. Scott had been campaigning for a 13th term despite health concerns. His death is the fifth member of the 119th Congress to die in office, leaving Democrats with 212 seats compared to 218 for Republicans. ^{13, 14}

State Level

Houston Reverses ICE Policy Under $114M State Funding Threat

The Houston City Council voted 13-4 on Wednesday to gut a recently passed ordinance that had limited local police cooperation with federal immigration agents, after Texas Governor Greg Abbott threatened to strip the city of more than $114 million in public safety grants. The original ordinance, passed just two weeks earlier, had required officers not to detain people solely on the basis of civil immigration warrants. Civil rights groups called the reversal unconstitutional, while the city attorney said the amended language makes no substantive change to the prior measure. ^{15, 16, 17}

Michigan GOP Governor’s Race Shrinks as Leonard Drops Out

Former Michigan House Speaker Tom Leonard announced Thursday he is withdrawing from the 2026 race for governor, citing an “increasingly negative” primary environment that he said risks damaging Republican prospects in November. Leonard was one of six GOP candidates who had already filed petition signatures for the August primary ballot. The Republican field still includes U.S. Representative John James, former Attorney General Mike Cox, and Senate Minority Leader Aric Nesbitt. ^{18, 19}

Florida Redistricting Session Opens Tuesday, Agenda Expanded

Florida legislative leaders confirmed Thursday that the special redistricting session will convene Tuesday, April 28, through May 1, with the Senate scheduled to gavel in at noon. Governor Ron DeSantis has broadened the session agenda beyond congressional map-drawing to include an AI Bill of Rights and vaccine-related legislation that failed during the regular session. Republicans are seeking a new map that could produce up to five additional GOP House seats, with legal challenges already being prepared by Democrats. ^{20, 21}

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Article Sources

1. CBS News, https://www.cbsnews com/live-updates/iran-war-trump-video-strait-of-hormuz-ship-attack-ceasefire-lebanon/

2. Reuters, https://www.reuters com/world/middle-east/lebanon-seek-ceasefire-extension-us-hosted-talks-with-israel-2026-04-23/

3. Times of Israel, https://www.timesofisrael com/trump-declares-3-week-truce-extension-after-hosting-2nd-round-of-israel-lebanon-talks/

4. The Hill, https://thehill com/video-clips/5845509-watch-live-trump-gives-remarks-on-health-care-affordability/

5. AP News, https://apnews com/article/trump-white-house-regeneron-drug-pricing-mfn-bdacc3b7e47f4ba23e85bb14705073de

6. White House Fact Sheet, https://www.whitehouse gov/fact-sheets/2026/04/fact-sheet-president-donald-j-trump-announces-deal-with-regeneron-to-bring-most-favored-nation-pricing-to-american-patients/

7. DOJ Office of Public Affairs, https://www.justice gov/opa/pr/federal-grand-jury-charges-southern-poverty-law-center-wire-fraud-false-statements-and

8. NPR, https://www.npr org/2026/04/22/nx-s1-5794620/doj-indicts-southern-poverty-law-center-on-federal-fraud-charges

9. CNN, https://www.cnn com/2026/04/23/politics/what-to-know-criminal-case-southern-poverty-law-center

10. Politico, https://www.politico com/news/2026/04/23/trump-moves-to-reschedule-marijuana-00888729

11. The Guardian, https://www.theguardian com/us-news/2026/apr/23/trump-administration-reclassify-marijuana-schedule-iii

12. USA Today, https://www.usatoday com/story/news/politics/2026/04/23/donald-trump-department-of-justice-state-marijuana-reclassification/

13. NBC News, https://www.nbcnews com/politics/congress/georgia-rep-david-scott-dies-80-rcna341463

14. PBS NewsHour, https://www.pbs org/newshour/politics/rep-david-scott-a-georgia-democrat-seeking-13th-term-in-congress-dies-at-80

15. Texas Tribune, https://www.texastribune org/2026/04/22/texas-houston-city-council-ice-cooperation-amendment/

16. ABC13 Houston, https://abc13 com/post/houston-city-council-vote-revised-ice-proposal-risk-losing-114-million-public-safety-funding-state/

17. Democracy Now!, https://www.democracynow org/2026/4/23/headlines

18. Bridge Michigan, https://bridgemi com/michigan-government/whos-running-michigan-governor-former-house-speaker-tom-leonard-jumps/

19. Mid-Michigan Now, https://midmichigannow com/news/local/tom-leonard-pulls-out-of-race-for-michigans-next-governor

20. WFTV, https://www.wftv com/news/local/redistricting-takes-center-stage-florida-lawmakers-schedule-special-session/

21. MultiState, https://www.multistate.us/insider/2026/4/6/florida-redistricting-push-awaits-supreme-court-ruling-on-voting-rights-upcoming-flor

Federal Level

Iran Seizes Two Ships After Trump Extends Ceasefire

Iran’s Revolutionary Guard seized two commercial container ships in the Strait of Hormuz on Wednesday, the first such seizures since the war began in February, just hours after President Trump extended the ceasefire indefinitely at Pakistan’s request. Iran said both vessels, the MSC Francesca and the Epaminondas, were operating without proper permits and manipulating their navigation systems. The seizures came as the Strait’s daily traffic has dropped from roughly 130 ships to a handful, and peace talks remain stalled with no Iranian delegation yet dispatched to Islamabad.^1, 2, 3

Navy Secretary Phelan Fired Amid Wartime Pentagon Shake-Up

Secretary of the Navy John Phelan was fired on Wednesday by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, effective immediately, making him the first service secretary dismissed under Trump’s second term. Sources told Reuters and CNN that Phelan clashed with Hegseth and Deputy Secretary Stephen Feinberg over the pace of shipbuilding reform and the administration’s push to build a new “Golden Fleet.” Navy Undersecretary Hung Cao will serve as acting secretary.^4, 5, 6

Senate Votes Through Night on $70B ICE Funding Plan

The Senate held a marathon “vote-a-rama” into the early hours of Thursday, working through dozens of Democratic amendments to a Republican budget resolution that would provide $70 billion to fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Patrol for 3.5 years through budget reconciliation. Democrats, who lack the votes to block the measure, offered amendments focused on enforcement safeguards and cost-of-living concerns. A final Senate vote is expected Thursday before the bill moves to the House.^7, 8

Congress Hits Record-High 86% Disapproval Rating

A new Gallup poll released Wednesday found that 86 percent of Americans disapprove of Congress, matching the highest level recorded in more than 50 years of tracking. Just 10 percent approve, one point above the all-time low of 9 percent set in 2013. Gallup noted that three of the five times disapproval has hit 86 percent have coincided with a government shutdown, and Republicans account for much of the recent decline in confidence.^9, 10

White House Ballroom Contract Shields Anonymous Donors

Documents obtained by The Washington Post and Public Citizen and released Wednesday reveal that the Trump administration’s $400 million White House East Wing ballroom project allows donors to contribute anonymously while excluding the White House itself from conflict-of-interest safeguards. The contract, signed in October 2025 between the White House, the National Park Service, and the Trust for the National Mall, was made public only after a court ordered its disclosure. Senate Democrats called the arrangement a “shady scheme” and have introduced legislation to ban anonymous donations for White House construction projects.^{11, 12, 13}

GOP Faces Mounting Midterm Anxiety as Agenda Stalls

A New York Times analysis published Wednesday found that congressional Republicans are deeply worried heading into the 2026 midterms, bogged down in internal disputes over surveillance law, housing legislation, and the DHS funding fight, with six months remaining before November elections that could determine control of both chambers. A Politico report the same day revealed White House political aides met Wednesday with disgruntled Republican allies, trying to repair relationships with key 2024 coalition groups frustrated by the ongoing Iran war and stalled cost-of-living agenda.^14, 15

State Level

California Governor Debate Puts Crowded Field on Display

Six candidates vying to lead California faced off Wednesday night in a debate hosted by Nexstar Media, the first major televised confrontation since former Rep. Eric Swalwell resigned from the race this month following sexual assault allegations. Two Republicans, conservative commentator Steve Hilton and Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, debated alongside four Democrats: former HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra, businessman Tom Steyer, former Rep. Katie Porter, and San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan. The state’s top-two jungle primary is set for June 2.^16, 17

Florida Redistricting Session Looms as Legal Fights Mount

Florida’s special legislative session on mid-decade congressional redistricting is now set to begin April 28 through May 1, after Governor Ron DeSantis delayed it from its original April 20 start date while awaiting a pending U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Louisiana v. Callais on Voting Rights Act standards. Republicans are eyeing a new map that could produce up to five additional GOP-leaning seats, though House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries warned Wednesday that the plan is illegal, and several legal challenges are already being prepared.^18, 19

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Article Sources

1. Reuters, https://www.reuters com/world/europe/three-vessels-hit-by-gunfire-strait-hormuz-crews-safe-2026-04-22/

2. AP News, https://apnews com/article/us-iran-war-hormuz-israel-pakistan-ceasefire-april-22-2026-267230f7f32b436822484479313840f7

3. NPR, https://www.npr org/2026/04/22/nx-s1-5795405/iran-middle-east-updates

4. Reuters, https://www.reuters com/world/us-navy-secretary-phelan-fired-by-pentagon-source-says-2026-04-22/

5. CNN, https://www.cnn com/2026/04/22/politics/john-phelan-navy-secretary-leaving

6. NBC News, https://www.nbcnews com/politics/white-house/navy-secretary-john-phelan-leaves-trump-administration

7. Reuters, https://www.reuters com/legal/government/us-senate-edges-toward-advancing-ice-border-funding-plan-2026-04-23/

8. Hawaii Public Radio / NPR, https://www.hawaiipublicradio org/national-international/2026-04-22/senate-gop-is-kickstarting-budget-reconciliation-to-fund-ice

9. Newsmax / Gallup, https://www.newsmax com/politics/gallup-poll-dhs-disapproval-rating/2026/04/22/id/1253791/

10. The Daily Beast, https://www.thedailybeast com/americans-disapproval-of-congress-rockets-to-record-high-under-trump/

11. Washington Post, https://www.washingtonpost com/politics/2026/04/21/trump-ballroom-donor-deal/

12. CBS News, https://www.cbsnews com/news/trump-east-wing-ballroom-contract-fundraising/

13. US News / Reuters, https://www.usnews com/news/politics/articles/2026-04-22/trump-ballroom-deal-shields-donor-identities-limits-conflict-safeguards

14. New York Times, https://www.nytimes com/2026/04/22/us/republicans-congress-midterm-elections.html

15. Politico, https://www.politico com/news/2026/04/22/trump-white-house-midterms-coalition-00885740

16. KTLA 5 / Nexstar, https://www.youtube com/watch?v=EgksL8O3rcU

17. The Hill, https://thehill com/video-clips/5843344-california-gubernatorial-primary-debate-nexstar-live/

18. New York Times, https://www.nytimes com/2026/04/22/us/redistricting-republicans-democrats-florida-virginia.html

19. Washington Examiner / YouTube, https://www.youtube com/watch?v=Qi04OqSqZqI

Principle 9: Demonstrate American and democratic values through dignified, restrained, and humane leadership at home and abroad.²

In the spring of 1947, the United States faced a choice. Europe lay in ruins after six years of war. The Soviet Union was extending its influence westward. The temptation to pull back, to let Europe solve its own problems, to concentrate American resources at home, was real and politically popular. Instead, Secretary of State George Marshall stood before the graduating class at Harvard University and proposed something historically unprecedented: that the wealthiest nation on earth would spend roughly $13 billion, the equivalent of about $140 billion today, to rebuild the economies of the nations it had just helped defeat, not as a condition of surrender, but as an act of strategic generosity grounded in the belief that stable, prosperous democracies were better neighbors than desperate, unstable ones.¹ The Marshall Plan worked. It rebuilt Western Europe, created the architecture of transatlantic cooperation that endures today, and generated more goodwill toward the United States than any military victory in the preceding century. It worked not because America was the most powerful country in the world, but because it chose to use that power in a way that others found worth following.

What Democratic Theory Says About Leading by Example

Political scientists who study how democracy spreads and survives, have reached a consistent finding: democratic values do not travel primarily through military force. They travel through demonstration. Harvard political scientist Joseph Nye coined the term “soft power” to describe the ability to attract and persuade rather than coerce, and he identified three sources of it: a nation’s culture, its political values as it actually practices them, and its foreign policy when it is seen as legitimate and morally consistent.⁴ When any of those three sources is undermined, soft power erodes, and the burden shifts to harder and more expensive instruments.

Pillar 9 of the nine-pillar framework for democratic governance holds that a consolidated democracy requires the overwhelming majority of citizens, elites, and organized groups to genuinely accept democratic procedures as the only legitimate path to power.³ Linz and Stepan’s formulation is precise: democracy is only truly consolidated when it has become “the only game in town,” not merely as a legal fact but as a behavioral and attitudinal reality. The relevance to global leadership is direct. The United States cannot credibly argue that democracy is the best form of governance while simultaneously undermining the democratic norms at home that give that argument its force. Pillar 6, which covers vibrant civil society and independent information, identifies freedom of expression and access to alternative information as procedural prerequisites for democracy, not optional additions.³ When the United States restricts those freedoms domestically, or tolerates their restriction, it weakens the claim that it stands for anything other than the interests of whoever holds power.

The Data on Where Things Stand

The Brand Finance Global Soft Power Index 2026, which measures the soft power of 193 nation brands across 100 countries, recorded the steepest overall score decline of any nation for the United States.⁵ The U.S. score fell 4.6 points to 74.9 out of 100, with declines across every metric except familiarity. The reputation subcategory fell 11 ranks. Specific attribute scores dropped sharply: generosity fell 68 points, good relations with other countries fell 50 points, friendliness fell 32 points, human rights and rule of law fell 10 points.⁵

The Gallup World Poll for 2025 added a specific data point that had not been recorded in nearly 20 years: China surpassed the United States in global leadership approval.⁶ China’s median global approval was 36 percent; the United States stood at 31 percent. U.S. approval had fallen eight points in a single year, from 39 percent in 2024 to 31 percent in 2025. U.S. disapproval of global leadership reached a record high of 48 percent.⁶ Approval of U.S. leadership declined by 10 points or more in 44 countries between 2024 and 2025. The declines were concentrated among U.S. allies. The Democracy Perception Index for 2025, which surveyed more than 110,000 respondents across 100 countries, found that 55 percent of surveyed nations now hold negative views of the United States.⁷

The foreign aid picture is equally stark. The OECD’s preliminary findings for 2025 document that international development assistance from member nations declined by approximately 23 percent in a single year, the largest annual decline since the OECD began tracking these figures. The United States accounted for three-quarters of that decline. U.S. official development assistance fell from approximately $63 billion in 2024 to just under $29 billion in 2025, a 57 percent drop, following the dismantling of USAID.⁸ The Lancet study that accompanied these findings estimated that current trends in development funding could be associated with more than 9.4 million additional deaths by 2030.⁹

It is also necessary to say plainly that the problem predates any single administration. The Obama administration’s failure to close Guantanamo, despite a public commitment to do so, handed adversaries a decade of ready-made propaganda. The Bush administration’s decision to authorize enhanced interrogation techniques, later documented by the Senate Intelligence Committee, damaged American credibility on human rights in ways that persisted long after the policy ended. The Democratic Party’s tendency to use foreign policy language about values while supporting transactional relationships with authoritarian governments undermines the very argument it claims to make. These are not partisan failures. They are institutional failures that Principle 9 is specifically designed to address.

What the 45 Percent Are Saying

The data on what American voters, and particularly independent voters, actually believe about global leadership is more consistent than the political debate suggests. A 2024 U.S. Global Leadership Coalition poll found that at least 8 in 10 Americans say the United States should play a leading or major role on the global stage.¹⁰ More than 8 in 10 say the U.S. should invest in a smart balance of diplomacy and global development alongside a strong defense.¹⁰

On foreign aid specifically, the Pew Research Center survey from 2025 found that 83 percent of Americans support providing medicine and medical supplies to people in developing countries, and 78 percent support providing food and clothing.¹¹ An Oxfam America survey from the same year found that 2 out of 3 Americans do not support the Trump administration’s 85 percent cuts to aid programs, and more than 95 percent of respondents identified a level of foreign aid spending higher than the administration’s current budget as appropriate.¹² A University of Maryland Program for Public Consultation survey found that solid majorities of Americans, after being informed about specific programs and hearing arguments both for and against, wanted to maintain or increase aid for humanitarian relief (56 percent), global health (64 percent), the environment (65 percent), and democracy and human rights (60 percent).¹¹

Independent voters hold these views with particular consistency. What distinguishes independent sentiment on global leadership from the positions of either party is a specific frustration: they want the country to lead, but they want it to lead in a way they are not embarrassed by. The Independent Center’s 2025 survey found that 77 percent of respondents held a favorable view of politicians willing to work with both sides.¹³ That same instinct applies internationally. They do not want unilateralism or isolation. They want credibility.

The Centercratic Position

Principle 9 commits to a specific, practical approach to global leadership that is grounded in the same standard applied throughout this series: behavior evaluated against evidence, not against ideology.

First, the values demonstrated at home and the values claimed abroad must be consistent. This is not idealism. It is strategic coherence. A country that argues for an independent judiciary while its executive officials publicly attack judicial rulings cannot simultaneously argue that independent judiciaries are a universal good. A country that restricts press access and threatens journalists cannot credibly hold authoritarian governments to account for restricting press access. The Centercratic position is that the domestic and international faces of American democratic governance must be the same face.

Second, humanitarian assistance is a strategic investment, not charity. The original architects of the Marshall Plan understood this precisely: Secretary of Defense James Mattis put it in contemporary terms when he described U.S. foreign policy as resting on both “the power of intimidation” and “the power of inspiration.”¹⁴ Eliminating the instruments of the power of inspiration while expanding the instruments of intimidation is not a strengthened foreign policy. It is a more expensive one. The Centercratic position is that humanitarian and development assistance must be restored to a level consistent with America’s strategic interests and consistent with what the American public actually supports.

Third, diplomacy must be conducted with the professionalism and institutional memory that career foreign service officers provide. The hollowing out of the State Department, the replacement of professional diplomatic channels with personal envoys accountable to no institutional process, and the conduct of sensitive negotiations through informal back channels that bypass congressional oversight are not the practices of a country that expects its word to be trusted. The Centercratic position is that American diplomacy requires a professional, independent, fully staffed foreign service.

Fourth, leadership means accepting constraints on one’s own behavior as the price of asking others to accept those same constraints. The United States cannot expect adherence to international norms on the use of force, on trade, on the treatment of prisoners, or on press freedom while claiming exemptions for itself. The Centercratic position is that the United States should rejoin and lead the multilateral institutions it helped create, not as an act of deference to foreign governments, but as the most effective way to shape the rules of a world order it has an interest in maintaining.

The Stakes of Getting This Wrong

The V-Dem Institute’s 2025 data, which has provided the empirical spine of this entire series, documents that autocracies now outnumber democracies worldwide 91 to 88. Liberal democracies, at 29, remain the rarest form of governance on earth, with less than 12 percent of the world’s population living under what can reasonably be called liberal democracy.³ That ratio has been declining for nearly two decades. It does not decline because authoritarianism is winning arguments. It declines because democracies are failing to make them.

Joseph Nye’s framework is explicit on the mechanism: soft power fails when the product it is selling no longer reflects the reality of the seller.⁴ When the United States cuts aid to countries in crisis and simultaneously requests $200 billion for a military campaign, it is not projecting the image of a country whose power serves a larger purpose. It is projecting the image of a country that has confused force with leadership. China’s five-point advantage in global approval ratings is not primarily the result of China becoming more admirable. It is primarily the result of the United States becoming less so.⁶

The historical lesson is not complicated. The Marshall Plan succeeded because it was genuinely generous, genuinely multilateral, and genuinely tied to American values rather than solely to American interests. The countries it rebuilt became, for the remainder of the twentieth century, the most reliable partners the United States had. The cost was $140 billion in today’s dollars. The return was seventy years of transatlantic stability. That is not sentiment. That is a strategic calculation with a documented return on investment.

The nine principles that this series has examined are not nine separate arguments. They are one argument, made nine ways. Democracy requires structure, accountability, honest deliberation, capable governance, and the willingness to defend it. Principle 9 is the principle that asks whether the United States is willing to be the thing it asks the rest of the world to become.

Notes

1. Brookings Institution, “Applying the Lessons of the Marshall Plan to U.S. Global Leadership Today,” March 8, 2022. The Marshall Plan provided $13 billion from 1948 to 1952, roughly $140 billion in current dollars, through multilateral European-designed recovery programs. Documents five lessons for contemporary U.S. global development engagement.

2. Centercratic Party, Centercratic Party Principles, Version 13, 2026. Principle 9: “Demonstrate American and democratic values through dignified, restrained, and humane leadership at home and abroad.”

3. Paul J. Chapman, The Nine Pillars of a Working Democratic Republic, 2025. Pillar 9 (Shared Commitment to Democracy) and Pillar 6 (Vibrant Civil Society and Independent Information) are the primary pillars for Principle 9. V-Dem 2025 data: autocracies outnumber democracies 91 to 88; liberal democracies total 29; less than 12 percent of world population lives under liberal democracy.

4. Joseph S. Nye Jr., Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics (New York: PublicAffairs, 2004). Nye defines soft power as the ability to attract and persuade through culture, political values as genuinely practiced, and foreign policy perceived as legitimate and morally consistent. Referenced in The Hill, “The World Is Watching America Lose Its Moral Compass,” March 5, 2026.

5. Brand Finance, “Global Soft Power Index 2026,” January 19, 2026. The United States recorded the steepest overall soft power score decline of all 193 nation brands measured. U.S. score fell 4.6 points to 74.9 out of 100, with declines in reputation (-11 ranks), generosity (-68 points), good relations with other countries (-50 points), friendliness (-32 points), and human rights and rule of law (-10 points).

6. Gallup, “China Edges Past U.S. in Global Approval Ratings,” April 3, 2026. China’s median global leadership approval was 36 percent in 2025 compared to 31 percent for the United States, the widest gap in nearly 20 years. U.S. approval fell from 39 percent in 2024 to 31 percent in 2025. U.S. disapproval reached a record high 48 percent. Approval declined by 10 points or more in 44 countries.

7. KKRVA Analysis, “The Shifting Sands of Global Perception: America’s Declining Soft Power and China’s Rising Influence,” May 29, 2025. Citing the 2025 Democracy Perception Index (110,000+ respondents, 100 countries): 55 percent of surveyed nations hold negative views of the United States; Trump rated negatively in 82 percent of countries surveyed.

8. Al Jazeera, “US Led ‘Historic’ Foreign Aid Decline in 2025 Amid Trump Cuts: OECD,” April 9, 2026. OECD data: international development assistance declined 23 percent in 2025, the largest annual decline on record. U.S. aid fell from approximately $63 billion in 2024 to just under $29 billion in 2025, a 57 percent drop. The U.S. accounted for three-quarters of the total global decline.

9. CNN, “One Year On From Dismantling of USAID, Study Projects That Global Aid Cuts Could Lead to 9.4 Million Deaths by 2030,” February 4, 2026. Citing The Lancet study on projected mortality from continued aid funding reductions. The Center for Global Development estimated 500,000 to 1,000,000 additional deaths attributable to USAID cuts in 2025 alone.

10. U.S. Global Leadership Coalition, “New Public Opinion Poll Shows Overwhelming Majority of Voters Want U.S. to Lead Globally,” September 24, 2024. At least 8 in 10 Americans say the U.S. should play a leading or major role on the global stage. More than 8 in 10 say the U.S. should invest in a smart balance of diplomacy and global development alongside a strong defense.

11. Pew Research Center, “Majorities of Americans Support Several, But Not All Types of Foreign Aid,” May 1, 2025. 83 percent of Americans support medical assistance; 78 percent support food and clothing aid. University of Maryland Program for Public Consultation survey: solid majorities supported maintaining or increasing aid for humanitarian relief (56 percent), global health (64 percent), the environment (65 percent), and democracy and human rights (60 percent) after hearing balanced arguments.

12. Oxfam America polling, cited in Oxfam America, “Aid Funding: Opinion Polling Shows Strong Support for Foreign Aid,” July 8, 2025. Two out of three Americans do not support the Trump administration’s 85 percent cuts to aid programs. More than 95 percent of polling respondents identified a level of foreign aid spending higher than the administration’s current budget as appropriate.

13. Independent Center, “2025 Nationwide Online Governmental Sentiment Survey,” October 16, 2025. Survey of 1,200 adults (margin of error plus or minus 2.8 percent). 77 percent of respondents hold a favorable view of politicians willing to work with both sides. 31 percent identify as moderates or centrists, the largest single political self-identification group.

14. Secretary of Defense James Mattis, quoted in Brookings Institution, “Applying the Lessons of the Marshall Plan to U.S. Global Leadership Today,” March 8, 2022. Mattis described U.S. foreign policy as resting on the “power of intimidation” and the “power of inspiration,” with USAID and diplomatic engagement as essential components of the latter.

Federal Level

Trump Extends Iran Ceasefire Indefinitely, Blockade Stays

President Trump announced Tuesday that he is extending the ceasefire with Iran on an open-ended basis, citing a “seriously fractured” Iranian government that has not yet produced a unified negotiating position. In a Truth Social post, Trump said at the request of Pakistani mediators, the U.S. military would maintain its naval blockade of Iranian ports while remaining “ready to attack.” Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi responded that the blockade “constitutes an act of war” and that Tehran knows “how to stand against intimidation.” ^{1, 2, 3}

Warsh Pledges Fed Independence at Confirmation Hearing

Kevin Warsh, President Trump’s nominee to replace Jerome Powell as Federal Reserve chair, appeared before the Senate Banking Committee on Tuesday and repeatedly vowed to maintain the Fed’s independence, stating that Trump “has not asked me to predetermine or commit to any decision on interest rates.” Democrats, led by Senator Elizabeth Warren, pressed Warsh on whether he would be a political “sock puppet,” while also raising concerns over a Justice Department criminal investigation into outgoing Chair Powell. Powell’s term expires May 15. ^{4, 5}

Senate Advances ICE Funding Reconciliation to End DHS Shutdown

The Senate voted 52 to 46 on Tuesday to advance a budget resolution that would fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection for 3.5 years through the budget reconciliation process, bypassing the 60-vote filibuster threshold. The resolution could unlock up to $70 billion in new spending for immigration enforcement and is a central element of the plan to end the 67-day partial DHS shutdown. Senators are expected to hold a “vote-a-rama” on amendments later this week before a final vote on the framework. ^{6, 7}

RFK Jr. Grilled on Vaccines, Budget Cuts in Senate Hearing

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. testified Tuesday before both the House Energy and Commerce Committee and a Senate Appropriations subcommittee on the proposed fiscal year 2027 HHS budget, which includes cuts exceeding 12 percent to agency funding. Lawmakers from both parties challenged Kennedy over his department’s handling of childhood vaccination guidelines, the restructuring of federal health agencies, and whether recent policy changes have undermined public trust in vaccines. ^{8, 9}

Tucker Carlson Apologizes for His Role in Trump’s Return

Conservative commentator Tucker Carlson, one of the most prominent media figures who championed Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign, said Monday on his podcast that he is “tormented” by his past support and that he “misled people.” Carlson, who broke publicly with Trump in April over the Iran war, told his brother that “you and me and millions of people like us are the reason this is happening right now,” referring to the ongoing conflict. “I want to say I’m sorry,” Carlson added. ^{10, 11}

State Level

Virginia Democrats Win Redistricting Referendum by Thin Margin

Virginia voters narrowly approved a constitutional amendment on Tuesday that allows the Democratic-controlled General Assembly to bypass the state’s bipartisan redistricting commission and draw new congressional maps, with approximately 51.5 percent voting yes and 48.5 percent voting no. The new maps could shift Virginia’s congressional delegation from six Democrats and four Republicans to as many as ten Democrats and one Republican, potentially giving Democrats four additional U.S. House seats ahead of the November midterms. Republicans have signaled they will mount legal challenges, and the Virginia Supreme Court is already considering a related case that could overturn the result. ^{12, 13, 14}

Rep. Cherfilus-McCormick Resigns Minutes Before Expulsion Vote

Florida Democratic Representative Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick resigned from Congress on Tuesday, submitting her letter moments before the House Ethics Committee was scheduled to convene to recommend a punishment for her 25 proven ethics violations, which centered on the alleged misappropriation of $5 million in FEMA funds into her congressional campaign. House Speaker Mike Johnson said she “assessed that the votes were there” for expulsion. Her departure is the third congressional resignation this month, following Democrats Eric Swalwell and Republican Tony Gonzales, who both stepped down on April 14. ^{15, 16, 17}

Florida Redistricting Session Delayed Again to April 28

Governor Ron DeSantis has pushed Florida’s special session on mid-decade congressional redistricting back to April 28 through May 1, after the original April 20 start date passed with no proposed maps from the governor’s office or legislative leaders. The governor has cited the pending U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Louisiana v. Callais on Voting Rights Act standards as the basis for the delay. Some Republican members of Congress from Florida have privately expressed concern that a new map could cost them their own seats. ^{18, 19}

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Article Sources

1. CNBC, https://www.cnbc com/2026/04/21/trump-iran-war-ceasefire.html

2. Al Jazeera, https://www.aljazeera com/news/2026/4/21/trump-announces-extending-iran-ceasefire-but-says-blockade-remains

3. NBC News, https://www.nbcnews com/meet-the-press/video/trump-extends-ceasefire-with-iran-261836357913

4. New York Times, https://www.nytimes com/live/2026/04/21/business/kevin-warsh-fed-chair-hearing

5. NPR, https://www.npr org/2026/04/21/nx-s1-5787863/federal-reserve-kevin-warsh-confirmation-hearing

6. CBS News, https://www.cbsnews com/news/senate-republicans-budget-resolution-reconciliation-ice-cbp-dhs/

7. CNBC, https://www.cnbc com/2026/04/21/senate-republicans-immigration-dhs-shutdown-ice.html

8. The Hill, https://thehill com/video-clips/5840628-watch-live-rfk-jr-house-energy-commerce-panel-hhs-trump-fiscal-2027-budget/

9. NBC New York / AP, https://www.youtube com/watch?v=VeCsCEevVQo

10. New York Times, https://www.nytimes com/2026/04/21/us/politics/tucker-carlson-trump-apology.html

11. LA Times, https://www.latimes com/world-nation/story/2026-04-22/tucker-carlson-sorry-for-supporting-trump

12. NPR, https://www.npr org/2026/04/21/nx-s1-5793878/virginia-redistricting-results-trump

13. Al Jazeera, https://www.aljazeera com/news/2026/4/22/virginia-redistricting-election-results-key-takeaways-from-democrats-win

14. NPR, https://www.npr org/2026/04/22/nx-s1-5787989/redistricting-map-trump-midterms-congress

15. NPR, https://www.npr org/2026/04/21/nx-s1-5793994/florida-democrat-rep-sheila-cherfilus-mccormick-facing-possible-expulsion-resigns

16. New York Times, https://www.nytimes com/2026/04/21/us/cherfilus-mccormick-florida.html

17. CBS News, https://www.cbsnews com/news/rep-sheila-cherfilus-mccormick-resigns-ethics-hearing/

18. Central Florida Public Media, https://www.cfpublic org/text/politics/2026-04-21/redistricting-headaches-voters-counties

19. Politico, https://www.politico com/news/2026/04/17/florida-special-session-redistricting-ai-vaccines-desantis-legacy-00877860

Principle 8: Unite with allies to deter aggression and defend free nations against military, cyber, and economic threats.¹

In the autumn of 2024, technicians at a major American telecommunications company noticed something unusual in their network traffic. What investigators found, after months of painstaking analysis, was that Chinese government-linked hackers had been sitting inside the core infrastructure of nine U.S. telecommunications companies for more than a year.² The group, known as Salt Typhoon, had accessed the metadata of over one million Americans’ calls and text messages.³ It had reached the very wiretapping systems that law enforcement agencies use to conduct court-authorized surveillance. In at least one state, it had penetrated the U.S. Army National Guard’s computer network for nine months without detection.⁴ The breach was not discovered by a government agency monitoring for threats. It was discovered by a private company reviewing ordinary network traffic. No alarm had sounded. No warning had been issued. The people whose private communications were exposed did not know, and many still do not.

Why This Principle Comes Eighth

Principle 8 states: unite with allies to deter aggression and defend free nations against military, cyber, and economic threats.¹ It is the second of three principles in the Principled Leadership cluster, and it marks the series’ first sustained turn toward America’s external security environment. The seven principles examined before this one addressed how democracy is built and governed from within: its structural guardrails, its elections, its rule of law, its culture of deliberation, its approach to legislation, and its standards for governing. Principle 8 asks the question that comes next: once that democratic system is built, who defends it from those who would undermine or destroy it from the outside?

The two pillars this principle serves are Pillar 2, Separation of Powers and Institutional Accountability, and Pillar 9, Shared Commitment to Democracy.⁵ These are not accidental pairings. A democracy that concentrates the decision to use military force in a single executive, without genuine legislative oversight, has already compromised one of its own structural safeguards. And alliances among democracies are not merely strategic conveniences. They are, at their foundation, coalitions of states that have agreed to resolve disputes through institutions rather than through coercion. When the United States strengthens those coalitions, it expands the zone in which democratic governance is viable. When it weakens them, it contracts that zone.

Two Threats, One Principle

The Salt Typhoon breach is the most thoroughly documented example of what modern national security failure looks like in practice. It was not a missile strike. It was not a troop movement. It was patient, methodical access to the communications infrastructure that every American uses every day. The hackers did not destroy anything. They read it. They listened. They waited.² That patience is itself a strategic posture. Data exfiltrated from telecommunications networks, stored and analyzed over time, can be used to identify intelligence officers, track diplomatic negotiations, anticipate military movements, and generate leverage over officials. It is the kind of advantage that takes years to fully exploit. The response to such a breach therefore matters as much as the breach itself. In early 2025, the Trump administration disbanded the Cyber Safety Review Board, which had been conducting the formal investigation into Salt Typhoon, before it completed its work.²

The damage to American alliance relationships in this same period has been documented with equal specificity. In January 2026, Gallup published its annual survey of U.S. leadership approval across all 31 NATO member states. The overall approval rating had fallen 14 percentage points from the prior year, settling at 21 percent.⁶ Country-level declines were steep: Germany fell 39 points, Portugal 38, Canada 22, the United Kingdom 16.⁷ For context, U.S. leadership approval among NATO allies averaged 39 percent during the Biden administration and 45 percent during the Obama years.⁷ The decline coincided with renewed presidential statements about potentially withdrawing from NATO entirely and about acquiring Greenland from Denmark, a NATO ally, by force if necessary.⁶

Both parties carry responsibility for the current state of American security. The Biden administration’s documented slowness in approving weapons transfers to Ukraine during the first months of Russia’s 2022 invasion, and its repeated internal debates about which systems were too “escalatory” to provide, allowed the conflict to widen in ways that a more decisive posture might have deterred. Congress allowed a six-month gap in Ukraine aid funding in 2023 and 2024 that materially affected battlefield outcomes. These were failures of will and process, not of capability, and they belong in any honest account of the period.

What the 45 Percent Are Saying

The 45 percent of Americans who identify with neither major party have been consistent on national security even when their elected representatives have not.⁸ The 2025 Chicago Council on Global Affairs survey found that 72 percent of Americans believe security alliances benefit both the United States and its allies, an increase from 64 percent the prior year.⁹ Support for alliances in Europe reached 68 percent, in Asia 72 percent. These are not partisan numbers. The Chicago Council’s 50-year polling record shows that support for an active American role in the world, and for consulting allies before major foreign policy decisions, has been a durable majority position across party lines for decades.¹⁰

Among independent voters specifically, 60 percent said in the 2025 survey that the United States should consult with its major allies before making significant foreign policy decisions, a figure that has risen 10 points since the Council first asked the question in 1974.¹⁰ A separate Gallup survey conducted in February 2026 found that 49 percent of Americans want to maintain the current U.S. commitment to NATO, while 28 percent want to increase it, a figure that had risen eight points in a single year as the withdrawal debate intensified.¹¹ Only 7 percent favor complete withdrawal from the alliance.¹¹

What frustrates independent voters on this issue is not disagreement about the importance of national security or the value of alliances. It is the experience of watching security treated as a political instrument: intelligence agencies deployed for domestic political purposes, foreign policy announcements made on social media before allies are notified, and cybersecurity review boards dissolved mid-investigation for reasons never clearly explained to the public. They want the country defended. They do not want the apparatus of defense used for partisan advantage.

The Centercratic Position

Principle 8 commits to a specific, practical approach to national security that is neither isolationist nor reflexively interventionist. It rests on four concrete commitments.

First, alliances are strategic assets, not negotiating chips. The value of NATO, of the Indo-Pacific security architecture, and of bilateral defense relationships is structural, not sentimental. The United States has not fought a major war on its own territory in more than 160 years in part because its alliances have allowed it to address threats far from American shores, with shared costs and shared intelligence. Treating those commitments as a subscription service to be canceled if payments are late destroys the very credibility that makes the alliance a deterrent. The Centercratic position is that commitments made are commitments honored, and that any renegotiation of burden-sharing within alliances is conducted through diplomatic consultation, not public ultimatums issued to allied heads of state.

Second, cybersecurity infrastructure is a national defense obligation, not a private-sector responsibility. The Salt Typhoon breach succeeded in part because the telecommunications companies it targeted were operating under a regulatory framework that treated their networks primarily as commercial assets.³ The Centercratic position is that critical communications infrastructure requires security standards equivalent to those applied to military networks, that the federal government must fund and enforce those standards, and that when a breach of Salt Typhoon’s magnitude occurs, the investigation must run to completion before the investigating body is dissolved.

Third, national security encompasses economic coercion and information operations alongside military threats. China’s current strategy does not rely primarily on the use of military force. It relies on economic dependency, technology transfer, information manipulation, and infrastructure penetration of precisely the kind Salt Typhoon demonstrated. A defense posture adequate to that strategy requires tools beyond military spending: export controls with consistent enforcement, investment screening that is genuinely independent of commercial pressure, and civic literacy programs that equip citizens to identify and resist foreign influence operations.

Fourth, Congress is a co-equal partner in decisions about the use of force. The Constitution assigns the power to declare war to the legislative branch for reasons the framers understood precisely: concentrated executive authority over the use of force is one of the oldest mechanisms through which republics lose their republican character. The Centercratic position is that the War Powers Resolution means what it says, that authorizations for the use of military force must be specific and time-limited rather than open-ended, and that the practice of conducting sustained military operations under emergency authorities never intended to cover them must end.

What Happens When This Fails

The V-Dem Institute’s 2025 data, foundational to this entire series, documents that autocracies now outnumber democracies worldwide for the first time in two decades. Liberal democracies, at just 29, remain the rarest form of governance on earth. Less than 12 percent of the world’s population now lives under what can reasonably be classified as a liberal democracy, while 72 percent live under autocratic rule.⁵ That ratio is not fixed by history or fate. It responds, directly and measurably, to the choices that existing democracies make about whether to defend themselves and each other.

The historical record on this is not ambiguous. The interwar period of the 1920s and 1930s, when the United States retreated into formal isolation and Britain and France concluded that their alliance commitments were too costly to honor, did not produce a generation of peace. It produced a decade of incremental appeasement followed by the most destructive war in human history. The mechanism was not mysterious: authoritarian states expand when the cost of expansion is low, and the cost of expansion is low when democratic states are unwilling to coordinate a response. The lesson is not that the United States should be at war everywhere. It is that the credibility of the deterrent, maintained through consistent and predictable alliance behavior, determines how often the deterrent must actually be tested.

At 21 percent approval among NATO allies, the United States is not projecting strength to the nations it has pledged to defend.⁶ It is projecting uncertainty. Uncertainty is not a deterrent. It is an invitation.

Tomorrow, this series concludes with Principle 9: Exemplify Global Leadership, and the question of what it means for the United States to lead not only through military and economic power but through the example of its own democratic conduct, and why the two have never been separable.

Paul J. Chapman is the founder and Executive Director of the Centercratic Party and the author of “Nine Pillars of a Working Democratic Republic.” He publishes The Center Voter at centervoter.com.

Notes

¹ Centercratic Party. Party Principles, Version 13, 2026. https://centercratic.party/our-principles/

² Wikipedia. “2024 Global Telecommunications Hack.” Updated 2025. Documents nine confirmed U.S. telecommunications companies breached by Salt Typhoon, access maintained for over a year before detection, and the disbanding of the Cyber Safety Review Board before its investigation concluded.

³ New Lines Institute for Strategy and Policy. “2024: When China’s Salt Typhoon Made Cyberspace Tidal Waves.” October 22, 2025. Describes the Salt Typhoon campaign as targeting ISP-level infrastructure, enabling data exfiltration affecting over one million users.

⁴ Scripps News. “Salt Typhoon Hack Targeted National Guard Computer Networks.” July 17, 2025. Reports that Chinese hackers penetrated U.S. Army National Guard networks in at least one state for nine months in 2024 as part of the broader Salt Typhoon campaign.

⁵ Chapman, Paul J. The Nine Pillars of a Working Democratic Republic. Centercratic Party, 2026. Pillar 2 covers separation of powers and institutional accountability; Pillar 9 covers the shared commitment to democracy as a prerequisite for democratic consolidation. Drawing on: Linz, Juan J., and Alfred Stepan. Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996; Dahl, Robert A. Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition. Yale University Press, 1971. [Thread attachment: The-Nine-Pillars-of-a-Working-Democratic-Republic.docx]

⁶ Gallup. “U.S. Leadership Approval Drops Among NATO Allies.” January 14, 2026. Approval of U.S. leadership across 31 NATO member states fell 14 percentage points in 2025 to an overall rating of 21 percent, coinciding with statements about potential NATO withdrawal and the acquisition of Greenland.

⁷ CTV News. “NATO Members Sour on U.S. Since Trump Returned: Gallup Poll.” January 24, 2026. Documents country-level approval declines: Germany down 39 points, Portugal down 38, Canada down 22, United Kingdom down 16. U.S. approval under Obama averaged 45 percent; under Biden, 39 percent.

⁸ Chapman, Paul J. “I’m Independent! What Does That Mean?” The Center Voter, January 28, 2026. https://centervoter.com/p/im-independent-what-does-that-mean

⁹ Chicago Council on Global Affairs. “US Public Support for Alliances at All-Time High.” October 13, 2025. Reports 72 percent of Americans believe security alliances benefit the United States and its allies, up from 64 percent the prior year, with support for alliances in Europe at 68 percent and in Asia at 72 percent.

¹⁰ Chicago Council on Global Affairs. “The American Political Environment, Ripe for a New Foreign Policy.” January 27, 2026. Fifty years of polling data showing 60 percent of independent voters support consulting major allies before significant foreign policy decisions, up from 50 percent when the question was first asked in 1974.

¹¹ Gallup. “Top U.S. Foreign Policy Priority: National Security.” March 4, 2026. Reports 49 percent of Americans support maintaining the current NATO commitment, 28 percent want to increase it (up from 20 percent in 2024), and only 7 percent favor complete withdrawal from the alliance.

¹² The Center Voter. “Congress Pushes Back on Trump’s NATO Withdrawal Threat.” April 3, 2026. https://centervoter.com/p/todays-essential-political-news-4minute-b87

Federal Level

Iran Ceasefire Expires Today; Talks in Islamabad Still in Doubt

The two-week U.S.-Iran ceasefire, in effect since April 7, expires today, Wednesday, April 22, and no new agreement has been reached. On Monday, April 20, Vice President JD Vance, envoy Steve Witkoff, and Jared Kushner departed for Islamabad, but Iran’s foreign ministry announced it had “no plans” to send a delegation. Trump told Fox News on Monday that a deal would be signed “today,” a claim that multiple outlets said overstated the situation. U.S. officials expressed guarded optimism on Tuesday that Iran was “positively reviewing” participation, but no Iranian team had arrived as of Tuesday morning. ^{1, 2, 3}

Trump Labels New Iran Deal ‘Far Better’ Than 2015 JCPOA

President Trump posted Monday on Truth Social that any agreement currently under negotiation with Iran “will be far better” than the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, which he called one of the “worst” deals in U.S. security history. Trump said Iran must not retain the capability to develop nuclear weapons, while Tehran has insisted its nuclear program must remain unimpeded. The two positions reflect a wide gap that negotiators have yet to bridge as the ceasefire deadline arrives. ^{4, 5}

Trump Labor Secretary Resigns Amid Misconduct Investigation

Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer resigned on Monday, April 20, becoming the third cabinet secretary to leave the Trump administration in its second term. The departure followed an internal investigation by the department’s inspector general into allegations of an affair with a subordinate, alcohol use during work hours, and misuse of federal travel funds. At least four other Labor Department officials, including her former chief of staff and deputy chief of staff, had already left amid the same inquiry. Deputy Secretary Keith Sonderling was named acting secretary. ^{6, 7, 8}

DOJ Installs Trump Loyalist to Lead ‘Grand Conspiracy’ Probe

The Justice Department on Monday confirmed the appointment of 81-year-old Joseph diGenova, a veteran Trump ally who helped challenge the 2020 election results, to lead the so-called “grand conspiracy” investigation targeting former intelligence officials who probed Trump. DiGenova replaced career prosecutor Maria Medetis Long, who was removed after reportedly expressing concern about a rushed effort to bring charges against former CIA Director John Brennan. The case is being handled in the Southern District of Florida before Trump-appointed Judge Aileen Cannon. ^{9, 10, 11}

Senate Moves to Vote on ICE Funding Reconciliation Framework

The Senate is set to vote as early as this week on a budget resolution that would authorize a second reconciliation bill providing an estimated $75 billion for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection. The move is designed to end the 65-day partial DHS shutdown, which has been the longest in American history, by bypassing Democratic opposition through a simple majority. Senate conservatives led by Ted Cruz are pushing to expand the bill beyond ICE and CBP to include defense funding and cost-of-living measures, complicating Majority Leader Thune’s push for a narrower, faster-moving package. ^{12, 13}

State Level

Virginia Redistricting Referendum Votes Today; Control of Congress at Stake

Virginia voters cast ballots today, Tuesday, April 21, on a constitutional referendum that would allow the Democratic-controlled General Assembly to temporarily redraw the state’s congressional maps and potentially flip as many as four additional House seats to Democrats. More than 1.16 million Virginians voted early, and both parties have spent heavily. President Obama recorded a closing video urging a “yes” vote, while Republicans countered with his own 2017 anti-gerrymandering remarks. The outcome could have significant implications for which party controls the House of Representatives after November. ^{14, 15}

House Ethics Committee Meets Today on Cherfilus-McCormick Sanctions

The full House Ethics Committee convenes today, Tuesday, April 21, at 2:00 p.m. to determine a punishment recommendation for Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick of Florida, who was found guilty of 25 ethics violations linked to the alleged diversion of $5 million in FEMA funds into her 2022 congressional campaign. Speaker Mike Johnson has said the evidence is “indisputable” and predicted she will be expelled, while Rep. Greg Steube has vowed to force an expulsion floor vote regardless of the committee’s recommendation. Expulsion requires a two-thirds House majority, which would require roughly 70 Democrats to join Republicans. ^{16, 17}

Florida Special Session Underway to Redraw Congressional Maps

Florida’s legislature convened on Monday, April 20, for a special session called by Governor Ron DeSantis to redraw the state’s congressional districts in a move that Republicans believe could yield three to five additional GOP House seats ahead of November. The session, which runs through April 24, was pushed back from an earlier date so DeSantis could await a Supreme Court ruling on the Voting Rights Act in Louisiana v. Callais, though no decision has yet been issued. Democrats are expected to mount legal challenges to any new map. ^{18, 19}

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Article Sources

1. Reuters, https://www.reuters com/world/middle-east/us-positive-iran-deal-talks-still-uncertain-ceasefire-end-nears-2026-04-21/

2. The Maine Wire, https://www.themainewire com/2026/04/u-s-iran-talks-stall-as-ceasefire-deadline-looms-wednesday/

3. AP News, https://apnews com/live/iran-war-israel-trump-04-21-2026

4. Anadolu Agency, https://www.aa com.tr/en/world/morning-briefing-april-21-2026/3912855

5. CNBC, https://www.cnbc com/2026/04/20/trump-defense-iran-war-pakistan-vance-witkoff-kushner.html

6. NPR, https://www.npr.org/2026/04/20/nx-s1-5739251/labor-secretary-trump-chavez-deremer

7. New York Times, https://www.nytimes com/2026/04/20/us/politics/lori-chavez-deremer-labor-secretary-steps-down.html

8. ABC Australia, https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-04-21/labor-secretary-lori-chavez-deremer-leaves-trump-cabinet/106588716

9. NBC News, https://www.nbcnews com/politics/justice-department/trump-loyalist-joe-digenova-leading-grand-conspiracy-probe-rcna340861

10. New York Times, https://www.nytimes com/2026/04/18/us/politics/digenova-trump-lawyer-conspiracy.html

11. ABC News, https://abcnews com/Politics/trump-loyalist-joe-digenova-dispatched-lead-dojs-controversial/story?id=132171939

12. The Hill, https://thehill com/homenews/senate/5835883-reconciliation-dhs-fisa-warsh/

13. Fox News, https://noticias.foxnews com/politics/senate-gop-readying-party-line-funding-bill-despite-divisions-anger-house

14. Reuters, https://www.reuters com/legal/government/virginia-gerrymandering-fight-republicans-claim-obamas-with-them-he-isnt-2026-04-18/

15. WHRO/NPR, https://www.whro.org/2026-04-21/here-are-the-results-for-virginias-2026-redistricting-ballot-measure

16. CBS News, https://www.cbsnews com/news/sheila-cherfilus-mccormick-house-ethics-committee-sanctions/

17. Yahoo News / Fox News, https://noticias.foxnews com/politics/indicted-democrat-sheila-cherfilus-mccormick-refuses-resign-expulsion-vote-looms

18. WFSU/NPR, https://news.wfsu.org/state-news/2026-04-15/florida-redistricting-special-session-pushed-back-a-week

19. NBC News, https://www.nbcnews com/politics/2026-election/florida-gov-ron-desantis-calls-april-special-session-redistricting-rcna252844

That is not a charge. It is a description, one that the movement’s most prominent leaders now largely embrace themselves. Bernie Sanders calls himself a democratic socialist openly, repeatedly, and without apology.¹ Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez carries the same label. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani told the Wall Street Journal that Sanders’s 2016 presidential campaign gave him “the language to even describe my own politics as being a Democratic socialist.”² So why does much of the political media continue to call these figures progressives, as though the word were politically neutral? The answer is that the name was never neutral. It was strategic from the start.

Where the Name Came From

In the spring of 1912, a worker standing inside a Chicago meatpacking plant had no minimum wage, no protection against a 14-hour shift, and no recourse if the machines hurt him. His employer answered to no regulatory body. His alderman was on the payroll of the same corporation that ran the plant.³ When reformers looked at that America, they concluded the system was broken. They called themselves progressives. The word described a moment and a mission: moving an industrialized nation beyond the Gilded Age’s lawless extremes.

The movement drew its intellectual energy from a generation of American academics who had studied at German universities, where they absorbed ideas about active state management, centralized administration, and a theory of government that differed fundamentally from the limited-government philosophy the American Founders had built.⁴ Those ideas were not inherently socialist. But they were the intellectual ancestors of socialism’s American cousin: the belief that expert-run government, not private markets and individual liberty, should determine the shape of society.

Theodore Roosevelt gave this thinking its first dramatic national voice. His Square Deal framed government as an active referee between capital and labor, not a passive bystander.⁵ His 1912 Bull Moose campaign pushed further, calling for social insurance, labor standards, and a more direct style of democratic governance.⁶ Roosevelt was not a socialist. But he established a template that later generations would push further: that the federal government’s job was not to protect individual liberty within a constitutional framework, but to produce the outcomes that experts and reformers considered fair.

Wilson and the Philosophical Break

Woodrow Wilson went further than Roosevelt, not just in policy, but in philosophy. Wilson openly admired Bismarck’s Germany, describing its system of relatively unchecked state power as “nearly perfected” and acknowledging it was “a foreign science, speaking very little of the language of English or American principle.”⁷ What Wilson was describing was not an update to the American founding. It was a replacement for it.

The Declaration of Independence holds that rights are God-given and pre-political, meaning government cannot grant them and cannot legitimately take them away. Wilson reversed that premise entirely, arguing that liberty is “the right of those who are governed to adjust government to their own needs,” not a natural condition but something the state manages and distributes.⁷ From that philosophical shift flowed everything: the Federal Reserve, the Federal Trade Commission, the income tax, and the idea that expert administrators, insulated from democratic accountability, should run the mechanisms of modern society.⁸ This was the birth of what scholars call the administrative state, the permanent, largely unelected bureaucracy that governs vast swaths of American life today.

Wilson’s legacy carried another dimension that honest history cannot ignore. He re-segregated the federal workforce, rolling back Black advancement in civil service employment.⁹ The progressive movement he led also intersected with the eugenics movement, which produced the Supreme Court’s 1927 ruling in Buck v. Bell, upholding compulsory sterilization of those deemed unfit.¹⁰ The movement that called itself the voice of the people simultaneously held much of the population in profound contempt.

From New Deal to Great Society: Socialism by Degrees

Wilson’s philosophy did not die when he left office. It went underground into universities, think tanks, and the Democratic Party’s policy infrastructure, waiting for the next crisis that would make the case for activist government self-evident. The Great Depression provided it.

Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal did not invent a new ideology. It applied the Wilsonian blueprint at a scale Wilson had only theorized.¹¹ The alphabet agencies, including the SEC, the NLRB, and the Social Security Administration, institutionalized the idea that expert bureaucrats managing complex economic systems was not just acceptable but necessary. Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society in the 1960s layered Medicare, Medicaid, federal education programs, and sweeping anti-poverty initiatives on top of that foundation.¹²

These programs produced real benefits for millions of Americans, and supporters of progressive governance rightly point to that record. But they also produced something else: a federal government that had fundamentally redefined its role from the one the Constitution described. The question of whether that redefinition was a reform or a revolution is the argument American politics has been having ever since.

The Reagan Correction and What It Did Not Fix

The 1970s exposed the limits of the progressive model. Inflation, crime, urban decline, and a general collapse of public confidence in institutions produced the Reagan era, a sustained cultural and political backlash against the idea that government expertise could solve every social problem.¹³ Reagan won by speaking directly to Americans who felt that progressive governance had become condescending, fiscally reckless, and inattentive to the disorder that ordinary people actually experienced in their daily lives.

The backlash stalled the progressive advance but did not reverse it. The New Deal and Great Society infrastructure remained largely intact. Progressive ideas retreated into universities, activist networks, and the Democratic Party’s policy offices, where a new generation was being shaped by thinkers who believed Reagan had interrupted something essential and necessary.¹⁴ What came back in the 2000s and 2010s was not the moderate progressivism of Franklin Roosevelt. It was something more explicitly ideological, more culturally assertive, and far less interested in the broad coalition politics that had made mid-twentieth century liberalism work.

Bernie, AOC, and Mamdani: Progressives Who Call Themselves Socialists

A decade after his first bid for the White House ended in failure, Bernie Sanders is still trying to take over the Democratic Party. At 84, he has done more to reshape it than any other figure of the past decade, and he is not finished.¹⁵ He speaks at least once a week with New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who shocked the political establishment in 2025 by defeating Andrew Cuomo in the Democratic primary. He swore Mamdani in as mayor in January.

Sanders has assembled an email list with more than five million contacts. More than 8,500 people have expressed interest in running for office through his organization, far surpassing anything the national Democratic Party has built. During a recent nationwide rally tour, Sanders drew the biggest crowds of his career.¹⁵ His litmus test for endorsements is revealing. He asks candidates whether they will “stand up to the oligarchs,” demand that “the wealthy start paying their fair share,” and whether they believe in “healthcare as a human right and Medicare for All.”¹⁵ That is not progressive. That is socialist.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez carries the same label and is now considering either a run for the White House or a primary challenge to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer in 2028.¹⁵ Sanders said of the prospect: “I’m a big fan of Alexandria’s.” In Denver, a 28-year-old Democratic socialist named Melat Kiros is mounting a surprisingly competitive challenge against a veteran 30-year congressman by running on Medicare for All and free child care.¹⁵

Mamdani told the Journal he has always seen Sanders as a political North Star, and that Sanders’s 2016 campaign gave him the language to call himself a democratic socialist.² In New York City, a population of 8.5 million people is now the test case for what that language means when it meets a $5.4 billion budget deficit.¹⁶ Wall Street has taken notice. Former Jersey City Mayor Steve Fulop has stepped forward to organize business opposition to Mamdani’s proposed tax increases on the wealthy and corporations.¹⁶

The Congressional Progressive Caucus, the formal legislative arm of this movement, includes nearly 100 members in the House and Senate. Its 2024 policy agenda called for Medicare for All, a federal minimum wage of $25 per hour, a Green New Deal framework, and sweeping expansions of housing and childcare programs.¹⁷ These are not fringe positions within the Democratic caucus. They are its stated platform.

Why Mainstream Democrats Are Running Scared

The Democratic establishment knows exactly what is happening. It is simply too afraid of its own activist base to say it plainly.

Between 2020 and 2024, the Democratic Party lost ground in voter registration in all 30 states that track partisan affiliation, a net swing of 4.5 million voters toward Republicans.¹⁸ Among men under 45, the share registering as Democrats fell from roughly two-thirds of new registrants in 2018 to less than half by 2024. In Pennsylvania alone, nearly twice as many registered Democrats switched to Republican between 2020 and 2025 as went the other way.¹⁸ In Miami-Dade County, once a Democratic stronghold by 200,000 voters, Republicans now hold the registration advantage.¹⁸

DNC Chairman Ken Martin reversed course in late 2025 on his pledge to publicly release a detailed review of the party’s 2024 election failures, calling the findings “a distraction” ahead of the midterms.¹⁹ His own party’s internal review reportedly found that presidential campaign messaging was “not credible for many voters,” that outreach began too late, and that Democrats had taken younger voters for granted. These are polite ways of saying the party’s left-wing brand cost it the election.

Matt Bennett, co-founder of the centrist group Third Way, put it directly: the voters who decide elections “don’t want an upheaval of the economy as progressives have proposed.”¹⁵ Nathan Brand, a senior adviser to the Senate Republican campaign committee, is equally direct about the electoral calculation: “Republicans would always rather run against a Bernie-backed candidate than a traditional candidate.”¹⁵ Even as these warnings pile up, the progressive machine keeps winning primaries, keeps pushing the party’s platform further left, and keeps insisting the problem is that Democrats have not gone far enough.

Schumer and Sanders “disagree on almost everything,” in Sanders’s own words.¹⁵ That is an accurate description of the state of the Democratic Party in April 2026. One side is trying to win elections in Pennsylvania and Arizona. The other is trying to build a socialist movement. Both call themselves Democrats. They are not.

The Constitutional Problem Nobody Is Talking About

The dispute between progressive governance and the American constitutional system is not just a policy argument. It is a structural conflict that the courts are now actively adjudicating. The Supreme Court’s 2024 decision in Loper Bright v. Raimondo overturned Chevron deference, the decades-old doctrine that had given federal agencies broad latitude to interpret their own statutory authority.²⁰ That decision marked a direct judicial challenge to the administrative state’s foundational premise: that unelected experts should be trusted to expand government power beyond what Congress has explicitly authorized.

As Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas argued in a speech at the University of Texas in April 2026, the progressive project from Wilson forward has represented a sustained challenge to the principles of the Declaration of Independence, specifically, the idea that rights are pre-political and that government’s role is to protect them, not to define and distribute them.⁷ That critique is not an abstraction. It describes a real and ongoing tension between what the progressive movement is trying to build and the constitutional framework within which American government is supposed to operate.

Where This Is Going, and Why 45 Percent of America Should Be Deeply Concerned

The most important political fact in the country right now is not what progressives or Republicans are doing. It is what the rest of America is doing, which is leaving.

Gallup reported in January 2026 that 45 percent of American adults now identify as political independents, an all-time high, surpassing the previous record of 43 percent set in 2014 and 2023.²¹ Republicans and Democrats each stand at just 27 percent. Among Gen Z adults, 56 percent call themselves independents. Among millennials, the figure is 54 percent.²¹

These are not disengaged voters. They are not people who have tuned out. They are people who have made a deliberate decision that neither of the two parties that currently dominate American political life represents their interests, their values, or their understanding of how a functioning government should behave. They watched the Democratic Party spend a decade lurching left toward an agenda it now struggles to distinguish from democratic socialism. They watched the Republican Party abandon principled conservatism for something else entirely. And 45 percent of them decided they were done with both.

The Democratic Party’s Gallup favorability rating stands at 34 percent, the worst the organization has recorded in the modern era.²² The voters who left the party between 2020 and 2024 did not relocate to the progressive wing. They relocated to political independence, and the polling offers no evidence they intend to return. Political analyst Lee Drutman has projected that even if Democrats win the House in 2026 and the presidency in 2028, structural forces including the 2030 Census and population shifts toward red states could produce a Republican wave by 2030 and 2031 more durable than anything the party has faced in decades.²²

The 45 percent of Americans who have walked away from both parties are not waiting for a more progressive Democratic Party. They are not looking for a more energized socialist movement. They are looking for something the current system is structurally incapable of providing: a governing organization that treats them as capable adults, builds policy on facts rather than ideology, and is accountable to voters rather than to donors and activist bases.

The progressive movement is real. Its grievances about inequality and corporate power are legitimate, and its policy ambitions connect with genuine suffering in the American economy. But calling it progressive does not make it so. What it is, is a well-organized, well-funded, electorally ambitious movement that believes the American government should look substantially more like the European social democracies its founders admired a century ago. American voters, at least the 45 percent who are watching from outside both parties, deserve to have that stated plainly, so they can make an informed decision about what kind of country they want to live in.

Endnotes

1. Bernie Sanders, interview with the Wall Street Journal, as quoted in Eliza Collins, “Bernie Sanders Is Back as a Left-Wing Kingmaker,” Wall Street Journal, April 13, 2026. Sanders has self-identified as a democratic socialist throughout his career and reiterated the label in this interview.

2. Zohran Mamdani, quoted in Eliza Collins, “Bernie Sanders Is Back as a Left-Wing Kingmaker,” Wall Street Journal, April 13, 2026.

3. Centercratic Party / CenterVoter.com, “Progressivism: Past, Present & Future,” 2026, centercratic.party. Opening scene of Chicago meatpacking conditions drawn from this document, which in turn draws on Library of Congress primary source materials for the Gilded Age and Progressive Era.

4. Daniel J. Mahoney, “The Progressive Origins of the Administrative State,” Social Philosophy and Policy, Cambridge University Press, January 8, 2007; American Mind, “The German Stamp on Wilson’s Administrative Progressivism,” November 2, 2020, americanmind.org.

5. Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library, “What Was the Square Deal?”, trlibrary.com; Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Theodore Roosevelt: The Square Deal,” April 15, 2026.

6. Miller Center, University of Virginia, “Transforming American Democracy: TR and the Bull Moose Campaign of 1912,” February 12, 2017, millercenter.org; Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Bull Moose Party,” March 18, 2026.

7. Justice Clarence Thomas, remarks at the University of Texas, Austin, April 15, 2026, published as “Justice Thomas: Progressives vs. the Declaration,” Wall Street Journal, April 16, 2026. Wilson quotations are drawn directly from Thomas’s speech and the primary sources he cites therein.

8. Centercratic Party, “Progressivism: Past, Present & Future,” 2026, centercratic.party; Heritage Foundation, “The Birth of the Administrative State,” November 19, 2007, heritage.org.

9. Berkeley Haas News, “How Woodrow Wilson’s Racist Policies Eroded the Black Civil Service,” July 24, 2024, newsroom.haas.berkeley.edu; Equal Justice Initiative, “President Wilson Authorizes Segregation Within Federal Government,” calendar.eji.org.

10. Centercratic Party, “Progressivism: Past, Present & Future,” 2026 (citing Buck v. Bell, 274 U.S. 200, 1927); historical scholarship on forced sterilization in twentieth-century America.

11. Roosevelt House, Hunter College, “From FDR’s New Deal to LBJ’s Great Society,” roosevelthouse.hunter.cuny.edu; Time, “The New Deal and the Great Society: How They Were Different,” April 4, 2016.

12. Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Great Society,” March 8, 2026, britannica.com.

13. Ruy Teixeira, “How Progressives Blew It,” The Free Press, October 27, 2024, thefp.com; general historical scholarship on the Reagan era and the conservative resurgence of the 1970s–1980s.

14. Hoover Institution, “Obama and the State of Progressivism, 2011,” November 30, 2010, hoover.org; Center for American Progress, “Social Movements and Progressivism,” April 13, 2010.

15. Eliza Collins, “Bernie Sanders Is Back as a Left-Wing Kingmaker,” Wall Street Journal, April 13, 2026.

16. Wall Street Journal, “Wall Street Enlists Marine Veteran Steve Fulop Against Zohran Mamdani’s Push to Raise Taxes,” 2026.

17. Congressional Progressive Caucus, “Congressional Progressive Caucus Unveils New Legislative Agenda to Deliver Equality, Justice, and Economic Security,” April 17, 2024; Centercratic Party, “Progressivism: Past, Present & Future,” 2026.

18. Shane Goldmacher and Jonah Smith, “The Democratic Party Faces a Voter Registration Crisis,” New York Times, August 20, 2025; Centercratic Party, “Progressivism: Past, Present & Future,” 2026 (citing L2 voter registration data).

19. John McCormick, “Democratic Party Flip-Flops on Releasing Review of 2024 Election Failures,” Wall Street Journal, December 18, 2025.

20. DLA Piper, “Chevron Overruled: In Loper Bright v. Raimondo,” June 2024, dlapiper.com; K&L Gates, “The End of Chevron Deference,” June 27, 2024, klgates.com.

21. Gallup, “New High of 45% in U.S. Identify as Political Independents,” January 12, 2026.

22. Lee Drutman, “The Democratic Party Is About to Make the Most Predictable Mistake in American Politics,” Undercurrent Events, March 23, 2026; Gallup, January 2026 report (cited in Drutman).

Principle 7: Reject both government overreach and government absence. Provide essential services, measure results, end what fails, and enforce fiscal discipline.¹

In the spring of 2025, the federal agency that administers the nation’s 1.8 trillion in student loan debt lost hundreds of expert staff members in a matter of weeks. The Office of Federal Student Aid, which is responsible for managing repayments for 42 million borrowers, saw its operational capacity deteriorate sharply. Loan servicers began reporting communication failures. Borrowers trying to navigate repayment options found the agency unable to respond. By late 2025, nearly 58 percent of federal student loan borrowers reported they had little trust that the government would help keep their loans affordable, up from lower levels the year before.² The problem was not that the agency had too much money or too many employees. The problem was that the capacity to deliver an essential service had been dismantled faster than any alternative could be built to replace it. That is what government absence looks like in practice.

Why This Principle Comes Seventh

Principle 7 states: reject both government overreach and government absence; provide essential services, measure results, end what fails, and enforce fiscal discipline.¹ It is the first of three principles in the Principled Leadership cluster, and it marks a deliberate shift in the series. The first four principles established the structural guardrails: democratic institutions, term limits, election integrity, and equal justice. Principles 5 and 6 established how a democracy should deliberate and what it should try to build through that deliberation. Principle 7 asks what the government that emerges from all of that should actually do, and how it should be held accountable for doing it.

The two pillars this principle serves are Pillar 3, Effective Impartial State Institutions, and Pillar 7, Broad-Based Economic Participation.³ Linz and Stepan, in their study of democratic consolidation, identified a “usable state bureaucracy” as one of the five essential arenas of functioning democracy. Their insight is precise: without a state that can actually implement what its legislature decides, democratic governance becomes an exercise in performance. A congress can pass any law it likes, but if the agency responsible for enforcing it has been hollowed out, the law is theater. Acemoglu and Robinson, approaching the same problem from a different angle, argued that democracy is sustained over time when large segments of the population have a genuine economic stake in the system’s stability. When essential services fail the people who need them most, that stake erodes.³

Two Failure Modes, Equal in Danger

American governance in the current era faces both failure modes simultaneously, and it is important to say so plainly, because most political commentary frames the problem as a choice between them.

The first failure mode is overreach: government that expands without accountability, that creates programs it cannot fund, that borrows against the future to avoid difficult decisions in the present. This failure is real, documented, and serious. The Congressional Budget Office reported a 1.8 trillion deficit in fiscal year 2025, a figure that, while 57 billion lower than the prior year, is projected to grow substantially over the next decade. The CBO forecasts cumulative deficits of 24.4 trillion through 2036, driven primarily by entitlement spending on autopilot. Medicaid is projected to grow 47 percent over the next decade. Medicare is projected to grow 105 percent. Social Security, 74 percent. Revenue is projected to grow far more slowly. The gap between what the government has promised and what it is prepared to pay for represents a genuine threat to the country’s fiscal stability, and both parties have contributed to it for decades.⁴

The second failure mode is absence: government that abandons essential functions, that eliminates services before any replacement exists, that treats dismantlement as an accomplishment rather than a transition. The student loan example is one instance of this. The record low legislative output of the 2025 Congress is another: fewer than 40 bills were signed into law in the first year of the Trump administration’s second term, the fewest in the modern era.⁵ Congress held 659 roll-call votes in the Senate in 2025, but nearly 60 percent of them were focused on advancing executive and judicial nominations rather than legislating. The House cast 362 votes, barely half of 2017’s total. Health care subsidy legislation that needed to pass was left unaddressed all year. As Rep. David Joyce of Ohio, a 13-year veteran of the House, put it at the end of the session: “Other than that, I really can’t point to much that we got accomplished.”⁵

Both parties have inhabited both failure modes. Democrats passed the Affordable Care Act without a plan to control the structural cost drivers that made health insurance unaffordable in the first place. Republicans passed the One Big Beautiful Bill while simultaneously allowing government to shut down for 43 days over a spending impasse, a record.⁵ Neither the expansion without discipline nor the disruption without transition is a governing philosophy. They are both failures to govern.

What Independent Voters Are Telling Us

The 45 percent of Americans who identify as political independents have watched both failure modes play out for long enough to have strong opinions about them, even if those opinions do not map neatly onto either party’s narrative.⁶

A 2025 Gallup survey found that 63 percent of Americans believed the federal government was doing too many things that should be left to individuals or businesses, while simultaneously, 61 percent said they were worried the government was cutting services too fast without adequate replacements.⁷ These numbers are not contradictory. They reflect the same underlying demand: a government that does fewer things but does those things well, that is accountable for results, and that does not cut services that real people depend on before anything exists to take their place.

The same Gallup data showed that independent voters were the most likely to hold both views simultaneously. They were more likely than either Democrats or Republicans to say they wanted results over ideology, competence over scale, and fiscal discipline combined with basic service delivery. The student loan data reinforces this. Nearly 42 million Americans carry federal student loan debt.² For most of them, the government’s capacity to administer that debt fairly and competently is not an abstract policy preference. It is a direct, daily economic reality.

The Centercratic Position

The Centercratic Party’s seventh principle draws a clear line between two things that American political debate has often blurred: the question of what government should do and the question of how government should do it.¹

On the first question, the principle is not ideological. It does not presuppose that government should be large or small, activist or restrained. It presupposes that government should provide essential services, meaning those that markets cannot or will not provide to all citizens equitably, and that it should stop providing services that have demonstrably failed or that the private sector can deliver more effectively. This is an evidence standard, not an ideological one. Whether a particular program clears that bar is an empirical question, answerable by data, not a matter of party affiliation.

On the second question, the principle is precise: measure results, end what fails, and enforce fiscal discipline. These three commitments work together. Measuring results means building into every significant federal program a mechanism for tracking whether it is actually achieving its stated purpose. The student loan program, as documented by researchers at the Institute for College Access and Success, has been expanded and contracted repeatedly by both parties without any systemic mechanism for assessing whether it was helping borrowers build sustainable financial lives.² Ending what fails means that when the evidence shows a program is not working, the response should not be political protection but redesign or termination. Enforcing fiscal discipline means that commitments made in the present must be funded in the present, not deferred to a future Congress that did not make them.

The CBO’s 10-year forecast makes the cost of failing to apply this standard unmistakable. Spending is projected to rise to 24.4 percent of GDP by 2036, well above the pre-pandemic historical average of 20.1 percent, while revenue is expected to average roughly 17.7 percent of GDP over the same period.⁴ Net interest payments are projected to double by 2036. The gap between those two lines is not a partisan talking point. It is an arithmetic reality that neither party has been willing to address squarely.

What Happens When This Fails

Linz and Stepan’s analysis of democratic consolidation was explicit about what happens when a state loses the capacity to perform its essential functions. Their conclusion was that a state without effective institutions does not simply deliver services poorly. It loses legitimacy. Citizens who cannot rely on government to enforce contracts, deliver services they have paid for, or manage resources entrusted to it begin to look for alternatives, whether those are private arrangements that serve only the wealthy, local strongmen who fill the vacuum, or demagogues who promise to burn the whole system down.³

The United States is not at that point. But the indicators are worth watching. The Peter G. Peterson Foundation’s April 2026 report put the federal debt at 36.2 trillion, equivalent to 106,900 per person.⁴ Acemoglu and Robinson’s framework of inclusive versus extractive institutions offers a precise warning: when a state’s fiscal commitments outrun its capacity to fund them, the adjustment is almost never orderly. It is almost always borne disproportionately by those with the least political power to resist it.³ The students who find their loans in disarray, the veterans whose benefits are the fastest-growing entitlement in the CBO’s forecast, the seniors dependent on Medicare’s long-term solvency: these are the people who pay the price when governing is replaced by performance.

The Stakes

The principle is not about the size of government. It is about the quality and accountability of government. A small government that cannot perform its essential functions is not efficient. It is just broken. A large government that spends without measuring whether its programs work is not compassionate. It is irresponsible. The Centercratic position is that the American people deserve neither variety of failure.

The 2026 midterms offer a test of whether this framing has a political constituency. The evidence suggests it does. The voters who are most frustrated with the current political environment are not primarily asking for more government or less government. They are asking for government that works, that is honest about what it can afford, that stops programs that have failed, and that does not cut essential services faster than alternatives can be built to replace them. That is Principle 7 in plain language.

Tomorrow, this series turns to Principle 8: Defend Our Freedom, and the question of what it means to protect American security in a world of military, cyber, and economic threats.

Paul J. Chapman is the founder and Executive Director of the Centercratic Party and the author of “Nine Pillars of a Working Democratic Republic.” He publishes The Center Voter at centervoter.com.

Notes

¹ Centercratic Party. Party Principles, 2026. https://centercratic.party/our-principles/

² Chapman, Paul J. “America’s Student Loan Crisis: How We Got Here and How We Can Fix It Together.” Centercratic Party, January 16, 2026. https://centercratic.party/ [Space file: Student-Loan-Crisis.pdf]

³ Chapman, Paul J. Nine Pillars of a Working Democratic Republic. Centercratic Party, 2026. Drawing on: Linz, Juan J., and Alfred Stepan. Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996, Chapter 1, pp. 7-15; Acemoglu, Daron, and James A. Robinson. Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty. Crown Publishers, 2012, Chapters 1-3. [Thread attachment: The-Nine-Pillars-of-a-Working-Democratic-Republic.docx]

⁴ Wall Street Journal Editorial Board. “What Washington Won’t Talk About.” The Wall Street Journal, February 16, 2026. [Space file: What-Washington-Wont-Talk-About-WSJ.pdf] See also: Peter G. Peterson Foundation. “The National Debt.” https://www.pgpf.org/national-debt-clock (accessed April 2026).

⁵ Kane, Paul. “Congress Set Records in 2025, Some More Dubious Than Others.” The Washington Post, 2025. [Space file: Congress-set-records-in-2025-some-more…ious-than-others-The-Washington-Post.pdf]

⁶ Chapman, Paul J. “I’m Independent! What Does That Mean?” The Center Voter, January 28, 2026. https://centervoter.com/p/im-independent-what-does-that-mean

⁷ Gallup. “Government.” Gallup Poll Social Series, 2025. https://news.gallup.com/poll/27286/government.aspx

Federal Level

U.S. Navy Seizes Iranian Tanker in Hormuz Hours Before Talks Resume

President Trump announced Sunday that the U.S. Navy fired on and seized the Iranian-flagged tanker Touska as it attempted to breach the American blockade in the Strait of Hormuz. Trump said a Navy destroyer blew a hole in the ship’s engine room after the Iranian crew ignored commands, and that the United States now has full custody of the vessel. Iran vowed retaliation, and the seizure came just hours before a high-level U.S. delegation was set to arrive in Islamabad for a new round of peace talks. ^{¹, ², ³}

Vance, Witkoff, Kushner Head to Islamabad as Ceasefire Nears End

The White House confirmed Sunday that Vice President JD Vance, Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, and presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner would lead the U.S. delegation for a second round of negotiations with Iran beginning Monday evening in Islamabad. Iranian state media said Tehran had “no trust” in the United States and would not participate so long as the American blockade of Iranian ports remained in place. The two-week ceasefire that began April 8 is set to expire Wednesday, leaving a narrow window to reach a deal. ^{⁴, ⁵, ⁶}

Trump Approval Sinks to 37 Percent, a Second-Term Low

A new NBC News Decision Desk poll released Sunday showed President Trump’s job approval at 37 percent, the lowest of his second term and just above his first-term floor of 34 percent. A majority of adults disapproved of his handling of the Iran war, and disapproval among voters aged 18 to 29 reached 76 percent. Pollsters attributed the drop to the Iran conflict, rising oil and gas prices, and broader anxiety over the cost of living. ^{⁷, ⁸, ⁹}

Mamdani Defends First 100 Days on Meet the Press

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani sat for an exclusive interview with Kristen Welker on Meet the Press on Sunday, defending his first 100 days in office and pushing back on Wall Street opposition to his proposed tax increases on high earners and corporations. Mamdani said he would continue to press the state legislature for approval of the taxes to close a $5.4 billion budget gap. He also addressed the slow pace of his free-bus and rent-freeze pledges, arguing that early child-care expansions show his agenda is already reaching working families. ^¹⁰

Cook Report Shifts Four Senate Races Toward Democrats

The Cook Political Report moved four key Senate races in favor of Democrats over the weekend, including contests in Maine, North Carolina, Iowa, and Ohio. Democrats need a net gain of four seats to take the majority. Republicans are privately discussing contingency strategies, including an accelerated push on judicial confirmations, should they lose control of the chamber in November. ^¹¹

State Level

Obama Releases Closing Video Urging Virginia ‘Yes’ on Redistricting

Former President Barack Obama released a new video Sunday urging Virginia voters to approve Tuesday’s redistricting referendum, telling viewers the state had already reached “record numbers” of early votes in favor. More than 1.16 million Virginians had cast ballots before Election Day. Republicans countered with ads featuring 2017 remarks from Obama against gerrymandering, and Democratic strategists acknowledged growing anxiety that the dueling messages could confuse voters before the final vote. ^{¹², ¹³, ¹⁴}

Federal Judge Lets ICE Deport Elderly Laotian Grandparents

U.S. District Judge Tana Lin of the Western District of Washington ruled Friday that federal courts do not have the authority to block Immigration and Customs Enforcement from detaining and deporting two elderly Laotian immigrant grandparents with decades-old drug convictions. Advocates called the potential removals “cruel” given the petitioners’ age and long residence in the country. The ruling reinforces a pattern of courts deferring to executive branch discretion over the timing and execution of deportation orders. ^¹⁵

Nevada AG Ford Racks Up Court Wins Against Trump Administration

Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford, who is running for governor, highlighted over the weekend a string of courtroom victories for a coalition of Democratic state attorneys general challenging Trump administration policies on immigration, federal grants, and education. Ford’s office has joined multistate suits that have secured injunctions in more than a dozen federal cases this year. The wins have become a central argument in his gubernatorial campaign heading into Nevada’s 2026 primary. ^¹⁶

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Article Sources

1. USA Today, https://www.usatoday com/story/news/world/2026/04/19/iran-war-updates-trump-talks--live/89685600007/

2. CNN, https://www.cnn com/2026/04/19/world/live-news/iran-war-us-trump-hormuz

3. New York Times, https://www.nytimes com/live/2026/04/19/world/iran-us-war-trump-hormuz

4. CBS News / Face the Nation transcript, https://www.cbsnews com/news/face-the-nation-full-transcript-04-19-2026/

5. CNBC, https://www.cnbc com/2026/04/19/iran-says-talks-continue-while-it-retains-control-of-strait-of-hormuz-.html

6. Al Jazeera, https://www.aljazeera com/features/2026/4/20/second-round-in-islamabad-whos-at-the-us-iran-negotiating-table

7. NBC News, https://www.nbcnews com/video/trump-s-approval-rating-hits-record-low-in-nbc-news-poll-261675077797

8. Newsweek, https://www.newsweek com/donald-trump-sees-worst-polling-second-term-youth-vote-sours-11850670

9. Forbes, https://www.forbes com/sites/saradorn/2026/04/19/trump-approval-rating-hits-new-low-most-adults-disapprove-of-iran-war-poll-finds/

10. NBC News / Meet the Press, https://www.youtube com/watch?v=w6IUTQSrmYk

11. MSNBC / Cook Political Report, https://www.youtube com/watch?v=sFiWpjFZouU

12. ABC News, https://abcnews com/Politics/barack-obama-calls-virginians-vote-new-video/story?id=132078412

13. The Hill, https://thehill com/homenews/campaign/5836897-obama-virginia-redistricting-pressure/

14. Reuters, https://www.reuters com/legal/government/virginia-gerrymandering-fight-republicans-claim-obamas-with-them-he-isnt-2026-04-18/

15. Newsweek, https://www.newsweek com/judge-allows-dhs-cruel-deportation-elderly-us-grandparents-11850498

16. YouTube / MeidasTouch, https://www.youtube com/watch?v=jfNNo2OwsmQ

Principle 6: Build policies that earn broad, lasting support. Where consensus is out of reach, respect that communities will find their own path.¹

In June 1989, a bipartisan group of senators, environmental advocates, and coal-state Republicans sat down to work out the details of what would become the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990. The political obstacles were formidable. Democrats wanted command-and-control regulations. Republicans balked at the costs. The Reagan years had left environmental legislation stalled for a decade. Yet, over the course of the following year, the two sides found a mechanism they could both accept: a market-based system of tradable pollution credits. It was not anyone’s ideal policy. It was a genuine compromise. When the final bill came to a vote, it passed the Senate 89 to 10 and the House 401 to 25. Those margins told a story about what happens when legislation is built to last.² That story is exactly what Principle 6 is about.

Why This Principle Comes Sixth

This is the sixth article in a nine-part series on the Centercratic Party’s governing principles. Principle 6 states: build policies that earn broad, lasting support, and where consensus is out of reach, respect that communities will find their own path.¹ It is the second and final principle in the Collaborative Governance cluster, and it completes the thought that Principle 5 began. Principle 5 established how a democracy should argue. Principle 6 establishes what a democracy should be trying to accomplish through that argument: not a narrow victory, but a durable agreement.

The two pillars that Principle 6 serves are Pillar 8, a civic culture of tolerance and compromise, and Pillar 5, responsible political parties.³ Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba, in their foundational 1963 study of political culture across five democracies, identified what they called the “civic culture” as the essential social substrate of stable democratic governance: a population that participates actively but also accepts that political outcomes require negotiation rather than maximalism. A party system serves democracy, in the analysis of Linz and Stepan, when it channels competition into constructive policy-making rather than zero-sum conflict. The pillar framework that grounds this series is direct on the point: when political parties treat every vote as a weapon and every majority as an unlimited mandate, the civic culture of compromise that sustains democratic governance begins to dissolve.³

The Anatomy of a Policy That Does Not Last

American political history is full of lessons about what happens when one party pushes major legislation through on the narrowest possible majority, with no buy-in from the other side. The lesson is almost always the same: the policy survives until the other party regains power, and then the work of unraveling it begins.

The Affordable Care Act passed in March 2010 without a single Republican vote.⁴ From the day it passed, it was a target. Republicans attempted to repeal it more than 70 times over the following years. In 2017, they came within one vote. The skinny repeal bill failed 51 to 49 only because three Republicans defected. A policy affecting one-sixth of the American economy, touching the health coverage of tens of millions of people, has spent fifteen years as a political hostage because it was passed by one party and opposed by the other from the moment of its birth.⁵

The Trump administration’s One Big Beautiful Bill, which passed the House in May 2025 by a margin of 215 to 214, is already tracing a similar arc.⁶ Within days of passage, Republican members of the House were telling reporters they had regrets. Several said they had been pressured into voting yes and were uncomfortable with the Medicaid cuts the bill contained. The Senate signaled it would make substantial changes. A bill so narrowly passed, in a chamber so tightly divided, is not a policy accomplishment. It is an opening move in a fight that will continue for years.⁷

Compare those episodes to the 1983 Social Security reforms. In 1982, the Social Security system was months from insolvency. President Reagan appointed a bipartisan commission, chaired by economist Alan Greenspan, that included representatives from both parties. After months of negotiation, the commission produced a package of payroll tax increases and benefit adjustments that neither side loved but both sides could accept. The legislation passed the Senate 58 to 14 and the House 243 to 102 with large majorities from both parties.⁸ More than four decades later, the 1983 reforms still stand. No serious attempt has been made to repeal them. The policy endured not because it was perfect but because it belonged to both parties. Neither side had the incentive to tear down what both sides had built.

The pattern extends beyond any single policy to the structure of congressional behavior itself. Congressional Quarterly has tracked party unity votes, defined as roll calls in which a majority of each party is on opposite sides, since 1953. In 1990, the party unity rate was 54 percent in the Senate and 49 percent in the House. By 2025, the rate had reached 85.3 percent, the highest level ever recorded. Congress in 2025 was the most partisan since CQ began keeping score.² What that number means in practice is that the space for bipartisan policy-making has shrunk to almost nothing. The exceptions, when they happen, have become news.

Both parties share responsibility for this condition. Democrats passed the Affordable Care Act through reconciliation specifically to avoid needing Republican votes. Republicans passed the 2017 tax cuts the same way. Obama governed by executive action on immigration when he could not get legislative agreement. Trump has signed more executive orders in his second term than in his entire first term.² The pattern is bipartisan: when one party cannot persuade the other, it goes around them. The policies that result are always the first target when the other side returns to power.

What Independent Voters Are Telling Us

The 45 percent of Americans who identify as political independents understand this problem viscerally, even if they do not always have the vocabulary for it.⁹

A 2025 survey by the nonpartisan research organization Center Forward found that 72 percent of Americans believe elected officials should prioritize finding common ground over pushing through their party’s priorities. Among independents, that number was 81 percent. The same survey found that 68 percent of Americans believe that major policy changes should require support from both parties to be considered legitimate.¹⁰

A September 2025 poll found that 76 percent of Americans favor compromise from politicians to get things done, including 65 percent of Republicans and 82 percent of Democrats.¹¹ What independents are describing is not a demand for weak or wishy-washy governance. They are describing a demand for governance that can actually last. They have watched too many cycles of one party passing something transformative, the other party spending years trying to repeal it, and nothing getting better in the meantime. They are not asking for less ambition. They are asking for policies that can survive a change in administration.

Pew Research found in October 2025 that 73 percent of Americans want their party leaders to compromise with the other side to get things done, compared to only 24 percent who want their leaders to hold firm.¹² That preference held across both parties and was strongest among political independents. The voters have been saying the same thing for years. The parties have not been listening.

The Centercratic Position

The Centercratic Party’s sixth principle states its requirements with deliberate precision: build policies that earn broad, lasting support, and where consensus is out of reach, respect that communities will find their own path.¹ Both halves of that statement matter equally.

The first half is a standard for governance. It asks legislators and executives to measure the success of a policy not just by whether it passes but by whether it can survive the next election cycle and the one after that. A policy that passes with 51 percent of the vote in a divided legislature and is immediately targeted for repeal has not solved a problem. It has created a new one. The standard for “broad, lasting support” is not unanimity. It is the kind of majority that reflects genuine persuasion rather than pure party discipline.

The second half is a standard for federalism. The Centercratic Party recognizes that on some questions, national consensus is genuinely out of reach. On those questions, the appropriate response is not to force a national solution but to allow communities, states, and regions to find their own paths. That principle is not a concession to division. It is an acknowledgment that a country of 340 million people, spanning enormous geographic, cultural, and economic diversity, will not always arrive at the same answers on every question, and that a governing system which forces identical solutions on communities with different circumstances will generate endless conflict and diminishing legitimacy.

In practical terms, this means that the Centercratic Party commits to three specific behaviors. First, it will seek genuine consultation with the opposing party before advancing major legislation, not as a procedural formality but as a genuine effort to incorporate concerns that might otherwise make a policy vulnerable to repeal. Second, it will use reconciliation and other procedural shortcuts only for genuinely budgetary matters, not as a workaround to avoid the hard work of persuasion. Third, on questions where national consensus cannot be achieved, it will support giving communities the authority to govern themselves, rather than imposing a federal solution that half the country will spend the next decade trying to reverse.

What Happens When This Fails

The political science of polarization offers a precise description of what happens to a democracy that abandons the principle of broad support. Gordon Heltzel and Kristin Laurin, reviewing decades of research, identified a self-reinforcing cycle: as parties pursue narrow victories rather than broad coalitions, citizens perceive the gap between the parties as even wider than it is, which leads them to disengage from anyone on the other side, which increases actual polarization, which makes broad coalition-building even harder.¹³ The researchers concluded that the only way to interrupt the cycle is for political and media institutions to actively combat the misperception that compromise is impossible.

The 1990 congressional session, now viewed as one of the most productive in modern American history, produced the Clean Air Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Immigration Act, and a bipartisan budget deal, all under a divided government.² The lesson its veterans draw is not complicated. Former senator Bob Dole, who championed the ADA and watched a successor treaty to his signature achievement fail in 2012 along party lines, said it plainly before his death in 2021: “If somebody is at a two and you are at four, there ought to be some way to get to three. And you settle on three.”²

The 2026 midterms will test whether the current moment produces any pressure toward that kind of governing. The party unity data suggests it will not happen on its own. It will require leaders, in both parties, who are willing to trade a narrow victory today for a durable agreement tomorrow. The Centercratic Party exists, in part, to make that trade worth making.

Tomorrow, this series turns to Principle 7: Govern with a Balanced Approach, and the question of what effective governance actually requires.

Paul J. Chapman is the founder and Executive Director of the Centercratic Party and the author of “Nine Pillars of a Working Democratic Republic.” He publishes The Center Voter at centervoter.com.

Notes

¹ Centercratic Party. Party Principles, 2026. https://centercratic.party/our-principles/

² Rosenwald, Michael S. “How a Historically Bipartisan Congress Gave Way to Partisan Rancor.” The Washington Post, April 2026. [Space file: How-a-historically-bipartisan-Congress-…-partisan-rancor-The-Washington-Post.pdf]

³ Chapman, Paul J. Nine Pillars of a Working Democratic Republic. Centercratic Party, 2026. Drawing on: Almond, Gabriel A., and Sidney Verba. The Civic Culture. Princeton University Press, 1963; Linz, Juan J., and Alfred Stepan. Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996.

⁴ Brookings Institution. “Republicans Learn the Limits of Reconciliation with Failed ACA Repeal.” July 27, 2017. https://www.brookings.edu/articles/limits-of-reconciliation-and-failed-aca-repeal/

⁵ CHEAC. “Senate Rejects Repeal of the Affordable Care Act.” July 2017. https://cheac.org/senate-rejects-repeal-of-the-affordable-care-act/

⁶ Progressive Policy Institute. “House Republicans Pass ‘One Big Beautiful Bill’ Despite Several Big Red Flags.” May 21, 2025. https://www.progressivepolicy.org/house-republicans-pass-one-big-beautiful-bill-despite-several-big-red-flags/

⁷ New York Times. “After Muscling Their Bill Through the House, Some Republicans Have Regrets.” June 3, 2025. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/03/us/politics/house-republicans-policy-bill-regrets.html

⁸ Social Security Administration. “The 1983 Greenspan Commission on Social Security Reform.” https://www.ssa.gov/history/reports/gspan7.html

⁹ Chapman, Paul J. “I’m Independent! What Does That Mean?” The Center Voter, January 28, 2026. https://centervoter.com/p/im-independent-what-does-that-mean

¹⁰ Center Forward. “The American Voter Mindset, 2025 Center Forward Voter Research Journal.” November 5, 2025. https://center-forward.org/voter-research-journal/

¹¹ LiveNow from Fox. “Americans Favor Compromise from Politicians to Get Things Done in Government: Poll.” September 28, 2025. https://www.livenowfox.com/news/americans-compromise-politicians-government-poll

¹² Pew Research Center. “What Americans Want and Expect from Party Leaders.” October 29, 2025. https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2025/10/30/what-americans-want-and-expect-from-party-leaders/

¹³ Heltzel, Gordon, and Kristin Laurin. “Polarization in America: Two Possible Futures.” Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences 34 (2020): 179-184. [Space file: Polarization-in-America-two-possible-futures.pdf]

Federal Level

Heading 4

Trump Accuses Iran of ‘Total Violation’; Threatens Devastating Strikes

President Trump accused Iran on Sunday of a “total violation” of their ceasefire agreement after Iranian Revolutionary Guard gunboats fired upon merchant vessels near the Strait of Hormuz, including ships linked to France and the United Kingdom. Trump posted on social media that the U.S. would “knock out every single power plant and every single bridge in Iran” if Tehran did not accept his terms. Despite the threat, Trump confirmed that U.S. negotiators are heading to Pakistan on Monday for a second round of talks, with the April 22 ceasefire deadline now just three days away. ^{1, 2, 3}

Democrats Eye Wave Election as Special-Election Trend Deepens

A Politico analysis published Saturday found that Democrats have outperformed their 2024 presidential baseline in virtually every special election held since President Trump took office, at both the congressional and state legislative levels. In Iowa alone, Democrats outperformed the 2024 margin by 12 to 13 percentage points in three separate state legislative contests held within key congressional battleground districts. Democratic strategists say the data points toward a wave election in November, though analysts note the political environment can still shift. ^{4, 5}

Trump Signs Order to Fast-Track Psychedelic Drug Research

President Trump on Saturday signed an executive order directing the FDA to expedite its review of psychedelic drugs, including ibogaine, and committing $50 million in federal funding for state-level research programs. The order drew rare bipartisan praise, with veterans organizations arguing that ibogaine shows significant promise for treating PTSD and opioid addiction among military veterans. FDA Commissioner Marty Makary indicated that an initial decision on ibogaine’s regulatory status could come as early as this summer. ^{6, 7}

2028 Shadow Primary Heats Up as Democrats Audition in Michigan

Former Vice President Kamala Harris, Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey, and Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear spoke Saturday at a Women’s Caucus luncheon during the Michigan Democratic Party convention in Detroit, in what observers described as an early audition for the 2028 presidential race. Harris called the Trump administration “the most corrupt, indifferent, and incompetent” in American history and suggested she remains open to another run, without explicitly declaring her candidacy. Beshear drew strong audience reactions by focusing on working-class economic concerns, with Rev. Al Sharpton comparing his reception to that of Bill Clinton in 1992. ^{8, 9, 10}

State Level

Virginia Redistricting Referendum Votes Tuesday; Race Is Too Close to Call

Virginia voters head to the polls Tuesday, April 21, to decide whether the Democratic-controlled General Assembly should assume control of congressional redistricting and redraw the state’s maps to favor Democrats in 10 of 11 congressional districts, shifting from the current 6-5 Democratic margin. Early voting ended Saturday, and the most recent polling shows the measure passing with roughly 51 percent in favor and 45 percent opposed, though a Republican enthusiasm gap could tighten the result. Both parties have spent heavily, with more than $93 million raised and the vast majority coming from undisclosed nonprofit donors. ^{11, 12, 13}

House Ethics Hearing for Rep. Cherfilus-McCormick Scheduled for Tuesday

The full House Ethics Committee meets Tuesday to determine the punishment for Representative Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick of Florida, who was found guilty of 25 ethics violations tied to allegedly funneling $5 million in FEMA funds into her congressional campaign. Speaker Mike Johnson has publicly stated he expects the House to vote to expel her, and Republican Representative Anna Paulina Luna urged Cherfilus-McCormick to resign before expulsion becomes necessary. Any change in House membership carries significant weight given the current 218-214 Republican majority. ^{14, 15}

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Article Sources

1. Korea Times / Reuters, https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/world/20260419/wrapup-4-trump-accuses-iran-of-total-violation-of-ceasefire-threatens-new-attacks

2. Al Jazeera Live, https://www.aljazeera com/news/liveblog/2026/4/19/iran-war-live-tehran-says-no-date-set-for-us-talks-hormuz-strait-closed

3. CNBC, https://www.cnbc com/2026/04/19/iran-says-talks-continue-while-it-retains-control-of-strait-of-hormuz-.html

4. Politico, https://www.politico com/news/2026/04/18/democrats-special-election-results-analysis-00879021

5. Race to the White House, https://www.racetothewh com/house

6. Reuters, https://www.reuters com/world/trump-announces-reforms-accelerate-access-psychedelic-drug-treatments-2026-04-18/

7. ABC News, https://abcnews.go com/Health/wireStory/trump-signs-order-speed-review-psychedelics-including-controversial-132165514

8. New York Times, https://www.nytimes com/2026/04/18/us/politics/harris-booker-beshear-2028-president-democrats.html

9. Facebook / National Action Network (Rev. Sharpton), https://www.facebook com/nationalactionnetwork/posts/

10. AOL / AP, https://www.aol com/articles/harris-booker-speak-ahead-michigan-180226001.html

11. Wikipedia / Ballotpedia, https://en.wikipedia org/wiki/2026_Virginia_redistricting_amendment

12. Washington Examiner, https://www.washingtonexaminer com/news/campaigns/4530821/virginia-redistricting-referendum-tight-race-early-voting

13. Virginia Public Media, https://www.vpm org/news/2026-04-08/va-constitution-gerrymandering-free-fair-elections-maps-vrc-ballot-april

14. Yahoo News, https://www.yahoo com/news/articles/speaker-johnson-predicts-house-expel-205700437.html

15. The Hill, https://thehill com/homenews/house/5830471-mike-johnson-cherfilus-mccormick-expulsion/

Principle 5: Conduct fact-based debates with respect. Acknowledge disagreements. Prohibit personal attacks and bad-faith tactics.¹

On April 7, 2026, Justice Sonia Sotomayor stood at a lectern at the University of Kansas School of Law and criticized a colleague’s opinion in an immigration case. That is normal. Supreme Court justices disagree with each other in writing all the time, and those disagreements are part of how the law develops. What was not normal was what she said next. Referring to Justice Brett Kavanaugh without naming him, she remarked that his opinion reflected the perspective of someone whose parents were professionals, suggesting he could not truly understand people who earn by the hour. Eight days later, she issued a rare public statement. “I made remarks that were inappropriate,” she wrote. “I regret my hurtful comments. I have apologized to my colleague.”² The incident would not have made national news if it were unusual. It made national news because it was recognizable. Even at the Supreme Court, the line between disagreeing with an idea and attacking the person who holds it has become harder to hold.

Why This Principle Comes Fifth

This is the fifth article in a nine-part series examining the Centercratic Party’s governing principles. Principle 5 states: conduct fact-based debates with respect, acknowledge disagreements, and prohibit personal attacks and bad-faith tactics.¹ It is the first of two principles in the Collaborative Governance cluster, which addresses not what government does but how it deliberates. After four principles about structure, this one is about behavior. The four Democratic Guardrails protect the system from being broken by force. This principle protects the system from being broken by words and the habits of mind that produce them.

Self-governing people cannot decide anything together if they cannot argue productively. The pillar framework that grounds this series identifies two pillars that Principle 5 directly serves: Pillar 6, a vibrant civil society with independent information, and Pillar 8, a civic culture of tolerance and compromise.³ Robert Putnam’s research on civic life in America documented what happens when those conditions erode: citizens disengage, trust collapses, and the networks of association that allow people to solve problems together dissolve. Levitsky and Ziblatt identified the erosion of what they called “mutual toleration” as one of the two primary mechanisms of democratic decay. When political opponents stop treating each other as legitimate rivals with different views and start treating each other as existential enemies to be destroyed, the democratic norm of peaceful competition gives way to something much less stable.³ The Sotomayor moment was a small but vivid example of a very large pattern.

The Numbers Behind the Feeling

Americans are not imagining that political discourse has gotten worse. The data confirms it.

A Pew Research study found that 84 percent of American adults say political debate has become less respectful over the last several years. Only 4 percent say it has become more respectful. And 78 percent say political debate has become less fact-based, while just 5 percent say it has become more fact-based. These findings held across every political and demographic group the researchers measured.⁴

Trust in the information Americans receive has fallen in parallel. A Gallup poll released in October 2025 found that only 28 percent of Americans now express a “great deal” or “fair amount” of trust in newspapers, television, and radio to report the news fully, accurately, and fairly. That is down from 31 percent the year before and 40 percent five years ago. Among Republicans, trust in media has been below 20 percent since 2015. Among Democrats, once the most media-trusting group, trust has fallen to just 51 percent. Among independents, it remains well below 50 percent.⁵

Separate Pew research found that overall trust in information from national news organizations fell 11 percentage points between March and October 2025 alone, dropping to 56 percent. Local news fared better at 70 percent, but that too had declined sharply from 82 percent in 2016.⁶

The physical consequences of the rhetoric are not abstract. The U.S. Capitol Police investigated 14,938 threatening statements, behaviors, and communications directed at members of Congress and their families in 2025. That is a 58 percent jump from 9,474 cases in 2024, itself a record. It is the third consecutive year of increases, and the Capitol Police stated plainly that “reducing violent political rhetoric is one of the most effective methods to lower the number of threats nationwide.”⁷ Conservative activist Charlie Kirk was killed while speaking at a college campus in September 2025. Former Minnesota state House Speaker Melissa Hortman was killed alongside her husband in a politically motivated attack that same summer. The Democratic Party platform analysis published by The Center Voter found that hostile references to Republicans in Democratic platforms quintupled between 1976 and 2024, cooperative language declined by more than half, and opposition-focused content rose from 15 percent to 40 percent of total platform content.⁸ The Republican Party’s rhetorical trajectory has been equally well documented.

Both parties have been complicit in this deterioration. The pattern did not begin with any single figure or any single election cycle. It accelerated with social media, with the donor economics that reward ideological purity over problem-solving, and with a media landscape in which outrage reliably generates more engagement than accuracy.⁹ Pointing to one party as the cause is itself a bad-faith argument. The problem belongs to the whole system.

What Independent Voters Are Telling Us

The 45 percent of Americans who identify as political independents have a specific relationship with this principle. They are not simply frustrated by rudeness in the abstract. They are describing a system that has made it impossible to learn what is true.¹⁰

The Claremont McKenna College Civility Survey, conducted in spring 2025 with 3,000 adults, found that 53 percent of Americans describe society as uncivil, compared to just 26 percent who say it feels civil. Half of Americans believe civility has declined in just the past 12 months. More striking still: 57 percent of respondents said they had held back honest opinions in the past year to avoid conflict, and 35 percent said they do not feel safe sharing their honest opinions on social media. A third of Americans encounter incivility online or in person on a weekly or daily basis.¹¹ When respondents were asked what drives the decline, they identified digital aggression through social media at 28 percent and political polarization at 21 percent.¹¹

Independent voters responded to all of this by disengaging from the partisan debate, not because they have no opinions, but because the format of the debate has been designed to generate heat rather than light. Forty-seven percent of independents describe themselves as moderates. They favor different parties on different issues. They are, by every measure, the voters who are most open to persuasion by facts and most likely to be driven away by personal attacks. They are precisely the voters that fact-based, dignity-preserving debate is supposed to reach. And they are precisely the voters the current style of political combat has most thoroughly alienated.¹⁰

The Centercratic Position

The Centercratic Party’s fifth principle states its requirements plainly: conduct fact-based debates, treat opponents with respect, acknowledge genuine disagreements rather than pretending they do not exist, and prohibit personal attacks and bad-faith tactics.¹ Each of those four requirements has practical meaning.

Fact-based debate means that claims made in political argument must be traceable to evidence that can be examined and challenged. It does not mean that facts are never in dispute or that every question has a clear answer. It means that when facts are uncertain, that uncertainty is acknowledged rather than weaponized. A politician who cites studies that support their position and ignores studies that complicate it is not conducting a fact-based debate. A politician who fabricates or misrepresents data to win an argument has crossed from debate into manipulation.

Respectful debate means engaging with the best version of an opponent’s argument rather than the worst. It means disagreeing with the idea rather than attacking the person. Justice Sotomayor understood this when she apologized. The disagreement with Kavanaugh’s legal reasoning was legitimate. The suggestion that his upbringing disqualified him from understanding working people was a personal attack, not a legal argument, and she said so herself.²

Acknowledging genuine disagreements is, paradoxically, one of the most important and least practiced civic skills in current American politics. Many of the hardest policy questions involve real trade-offs where reasonable people disagree. Immigration policy involves genuine tensions between border security and humanitarian obligation. Fiscal policy involves genuine tensions between debt reduction and the cost of cutting services people depend on. Pretending those tensions do not exist, or that anyone who takes the other side is acting in bad faith, does not resolve the disagreement. It makes the disagreement impossible to resolve.

Prohibiting bad-faith tactics means naming specific behaviors and holding all participants to the same standard: no fabricated statistics, no deliberate misquotes, no guilt-by-association attacks that have nothing to do with the policy at hand, no threatening language toward opponents, and no tactics designed to shut down debate rather than advance it. These are not censorship. They are the rules of a game that can only be played if both sides agree to play it honestly.

What Happens When This Fails

The researchers who study political hostility have found a pattern that is worth stating plainly. Escalating hostile rhetoric moves through distinct stages. It begins with adversarial debate, in which opponents argue hard but still treat each other as legitimate rivals. It progresses to incivility, in which the argument becomes personal and disrespectful. It continues to intolerance, in which opponents begin to question each other’s right to participate. And it ends in belligerence, in which rivals are no longer treated as adversaries to be defeated but as enemies to be eliminated.¹² That last stage is where democratic politics ends.

The United States has not reached the final stage. But the trajectory of the data points in that direction. Threats against Congress have tripled since 2017. Political violence has claimed lives in Minnesota and at college campuses. A majority of Americans report self-censoring to avoid conflict. Trust in the factual basis of public debate has dropped to historic lows. None of this is inevitable. All of it is reversible. But reversal requires more than a wish for things to be different. It requires that the people who participate in democratic debate, from elected officials to journalists to citizens who share information online, choose deliberately to argue by a different set of rules.⁷

An Argument Worth Having

The Centercratic Party does not ask Americans to pretend there are no hard disagreements. There are. It does not ask them to stop arguing. Arguments are how democracies reach decisions. What it asks is that those arguments be conducted in a way that leaves the people who disagree still capable of finding common ground when the argument is over.

Justice Sotomayor’s apology was not a small thing. It was a public acknowledgment that the line between legitimate disagreement and personal attack is real, that crossing it is wrong, and that crossing it reflects poorly on the person who does it regardless of how strongly they believe they are right. That acknowledgment, coming from one of the most visible institutions in American life, is a small but honest example of what this principle looks like in practice. It is also a reminder of how rare that kind of accountability has become, and how much work there is to do.

Tomorrow, this series examines Principle 6: Seek Unity through Broad Support, and why policies built on narrow majorities tend not to last.

Paul J. Chapman is the founder and Executive Director of the Centercratic Party and the author of “Nine Pillars of a Working Democratic Republic.” He publishes The Center Voter at centervoter.com.

Notes

¹ Centercratic Party. Party Principles, 2026. https://centercratic.party/our-principles/

² SCOTUSblog. “Justice Sotomayor Apologizes for ‘Inappropriate’ Remarks About Justice Kavanaugh.” April 15, 2026. https://www.scotusblog.com/2026/04/justice-sotomayor-apologizes-for-inappropriate-remarks-about-justice-kavanaugh/

³ Chapman, Paul J. Nine Pillars of a Working Democratic Republic. Centercratic Party, 2026. Drawing on: Putnam, Robert D. Bowling Alone. Simon and Schuster, 2000; Levitsky, Steven, and Daniel Ziblatt. How Democracies Die. Crown Publishers, 2018.

⁴ Pew Research Center. “Americans’ Feelings About Politics, Polarization, and the Tone of Political Discourse.” September 19, 2023. https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2023/09/19/americans-feelings-about-politics-polarization-and-the-tone-of-political-debate/

⁵ Gallup. “Trust in Media at New Low of 28% in U.S.” October 2025. https://news.gallup.com/poll/695762/trust-media-new-low.aspx

⁶ Pew Research Center. “How Trust in Information from News Organizations and Social Media Has Changed.” October 28, 2025. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/10/29/how-americans-trust-in-information-from-news-organizations-and-social-medias/

⁷ U.S. Capitol Police. “Threats Against Congress Spiked in 2025, Extending a Three-Year Rise.” January 27, 2026. Reported in: NBC News. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/threats-congress-spiked-2025-rose-third-year-row-capitol-police-say-rcna256259

⁸ Chapman, Paul J. “The Democratic Party: From Bridges to Walls.” The Center Voter, January 30, 2026. https://centervoter.com/p/the-democratic-party-from-bridges

⁹ Chapman, Paul J. “Congress Is Now Irrelevant: What America Can Do About It.” The Center Voter, January 18, 2026. https://centervoter.com/p/congress-is-now-irrelevant-what-america

¹⁰ Chapman, Paul J. “I’m Independent! What Does That Mean?” The Center Voter, January 28, 2026. https://centervoter.com/p/im-independent-what-does-that-mean

¹¹ IW Group. “The Civility Paradox: A National Survey of 3,000 U.S. Adults.” Claremont McKenna College Dreier Roundtable, October 2025. https://drt.cmc.edu/2025/10/04/civility-survey-3/

¹² Abramowitz, Noam, and Ofer Kenig. “Hostility and Democratic Erosion: Introducing the Political Hostility Scale.” Democratization, November 2025. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13510347.2025.2581840