In the age of unmonitored social media and AI, among other informational threats, it’s important to strengthen our media literacy. This helps us spot mis- and disinformation from people who may be trying to manipulate or distort our opinions on voting, democracy, and more.
On July 4th, the President signed into law the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBB), a nearly 1,000-page bill that changes federal spending levels by stripping tens of millions of our most vulnerable neighbors of their health care and nutrition.
The OBBB slashes vital programs like Medicaid, Medicare, and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly food stamps) to pay for tax cuts that disproportionately benefit the wealthiest Americans. This blog looks at just some of the new law’s provisions.
Throughout his lifetime, John Lewis was a stalwart warrior for the promise of American Democracy. We owe it to the legacy of John Lewis’ life of service to answer his end-of-life plea not to sit silent but to do our part to ensure that a robust American democracy continues.
Local elections happen annually in the United States. The officials elected and the decisions they make affect your daily life as much, if not more, than those in the federal government. From road repairs, schools, and urban planning to immigration and policing, local government is constantly present in every part of American life.
In this new world, the burden of discerning what is true or false falls on each of us individually. Social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram have not fully tried to correct harmful falsehoods on their platforms. Meta’s small programs, such as Community Notes, a way for people to add more context to confusing and misleading posts, or YouTube links to vetted information, play a small yet inconsequential role in spreading mis-, dis-, and mal-information.
So the responsibility falls to us — as parents, friends, colleagues and, above all, as citizens — to develop the skills needed to navigate a highly polluted information ecosystem.
This Independence Day, Americans will likely gather for parades, fireworks and barbeques, celebrating our democracy with familiar traditions. But while many will spend the holiday waving flags, the Trump administration and his allies are attempting to systematically dismantle the very reason for this holiday, and not to mention, put our country and the people in it, Americans, in harm's way.
On March 24, 2025, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Louisiana v. Callais. The case has massive implications for voting rights and democracy, as it involves two related but distinct concepts: racial vote dilution and racial gerrymandering.
The easiest way to separate these two ideas is to examine the winding path Callais took to end up at the Supreme Court.
The right to contraception is currently protected in the United States by a combination of federal court cases and state legislation. Tens of millions of women and other people of reproductive age rely on contraception to make decisions about their bodies and lives.
However, in recent years, government attacks on reproductive freedom have made it clear how our fundamental rights can be eroded and taken away, making additional state and federal protections for contraception imperative.
The United States Congress is using a fast-track budget process known as budget reconciliation to pass legislation that will take away health care and food access from millions of people to pay for tax cuts for corporations and wealthy Americans.
That gives us just weeks left in the process to demand that our members of Congress represent everyday Americans and oppose cuts to Medicaid.
Our history is replete with people with disabilities who paved the way for a stronger, more representative democracy — like Judy Heumann, Sojourner Truth, Senator Tammy Duckworth, Claudia Gordan, Harriet Tubman, Joyce Ardell Jackson, and Vilissa Thompson, to name a few.
Yet we also know that anti-voter laws and regulations disproportionately impact people with disabilities, and the fight to make the vote more accessible is ongoing.
In this blog, we’ll highlight some of our favorite voting rights activists who were also women with disabilities. Then, we’ll examine how ability and voting rights intersect today.