I’ve written that corruption is the sleeper issue of 2026. Well, it’s awake. And the issue may be bigger than I realized.

That’s the implication of a new national poll released today by the Brennan Center. The survey was conducted in late April and early May, just before the president’s attempt to create a $1.8 billion slush fund to funnel taxpayer money to his political allies.

The results are striking. More than 9 in 10 voters believe corruption is a big problem across politics and government. Large majorities view corruption as endemic and deeply embedded in government institutions, from the Supreme Court to Congress to the presidency. They are dejected about the fact that scandals continuously go without consequences and shocking revelations fail to produce reform.

Margins are overwhelming among Democrats, Republicans, and independents.

Most importantly, voters back bold reform. Eighty-three percent want a law that bars presidents from having conflicts of interest and holds them to stronger ethical standards. Eighty-one percent want a new federal ethics enforcer. Seventy-nine percent want a constitutional amendment that restores limits on money in elections, and other anticorruption measures received similar levels of support.

It’s hard to find a set of proposals with a wider bipartisan appeal.

Yet there are notes here that should jar complacency. Listen carefully to voters. They define corruption broadly. Vast majorities see the spectacle of politicians catering to the interests of billionaires and big corporations as corrupt, not surprisingly. But to most Americans, wasting taxpayer dollars and even failing to respond to constituent needs are also forms of corruption.

Vast majorities believe this corruption is part of why government doesn’t respond to major issues, including concerns like affordability and housing. How do we connect these arcane government rules to people’s economic well-being? Voters are already doing so.

There are warning signs aplenty for politicians from both parties. Other polls have shown that voters think neither Democratic nor Republican politicians are better than the other on the issue.

Policymakers should understand that the public’s conception of what has gone wrong goes far deeper than super PACs or White House ballrooms or even slush funds. To them, it is a system that is fundamentally misfiring. A government that is not performing. And there is a willingness to name names and assign blame.

In some ways, these results are ominous. We often note that the 2024 election was the first time since the 1800s where the incumbent party lost the White House three times in a row (2016, 2020, 2024). This survey shows a deeply disquieted electorate, scornful of the political system and furious at its flaws. That environment created the conditions for Trump’s populist nationalism to emerge in 2016. It hasn’t gone away.

Yet this is also the kindling that can fuel new approaches, sharper critiques, and stronger solutions. If polls are to be believed, Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA) has turned his political fortunes through a relentless and often stirring stump-speech focus on corruption.

The breadth of public unhappiness suggests a deeper moral critique. Even now, amid wrenching technological change and evaporating standards, people seem focused on an underlying core of personal responsibility.

My old boss, President Bill Clinton, often talked this way, especially when he was running for president in 1992. “The American dream that we were all raised on is a simple but powerful one,” he would say. “If you work hard and play by the rules, you should be given a chance to go as far as your God-given ability will take you.”

More recently, that ethos was given voice in Hungary by its new president, Péter Magyar. Running against the authoritarian kleptocrat Viktor Orbán, Magyar vowed that Hungary would no longer be “a country without consequences.” He pledged to oversee not just new policies but a thorough effort to clean house and to hold accountable those who had stolen from the people.

The new Brennan Center research suggests that voters here, too, are ready for a country with consequences. That will help shape the next political era — if we are ready to make it happen.

IMAGE CREDIT: Greggory DiSalvo/Getty

Poisonous partisanship is ruining our country. What if political parties are a big part of the answer?

I know, I know. You have mixed feelings about parties. So did James Madison. In Federalist 10, published under a pseudonym in 1787, he said that the whole point of the Constitution was to avoid “faction,” which is what the founding generation called parties. But just five years after he denounced factions, he changed his mind and organized a political party. This time under his own name, he started writing “candid” essays about how factions are great. Parties, he said, are “natural to most political societies.”

Parties aren’t bad; they’re necessary and inevitable. Call it hypocrisy, or call it Madisonian pragmatism.

He was right to be ambivalent. At their best, strong parties can make the country work. At their worst, parties can devolve into instruments of raw power and corrupt domination. The trick is to harness their muscle for the good of the country while avoiding their excesses.

That was the theme of a book, In Defense of Partisanship, by Princeton historian Julian Zelizer. We spoke on the Brennan Center’s podcast last week about how to make sense of the attack on Black representation being pressed by Republicans across the South. I encourage you to take a listen.

“Parties have done good things,” Zelizer noted. “There have been moments in American history where strong parties actually were part of what moved America in different directions. Democrats will certainly point to the New Deal and Franklin Roosevelt, when you had a robust Democratic Party. . . . Conservatives will talk about Reagan in the 1980s and the reemergence of the Republican Party in the aftermath of Watergate that pushed politics in a rightward direction.”

But Zelizer isn’t blind to the darker sides of party power: “You can’t have partisanship with no guardrails.”

No guardrails. We are seeing that in the brutal grab for advantage set off by the Republican gerrymander in Texas last year. Democrats responded and came close to matching the Republicans.

Then the Supreme Court entered the political fray unnecessarily, pulling down the guardrails at the worst possible moment. The justices essentially overturned the Voting Rights Act, handing Republicans a new weapon to escalate the gerrymandering battle. What followed, predictably, was a shockingly rapid bid to eliminate seats held by Black elected officials all across the Old South.

Never has the Supreme Court intervened so dramatically, so close to an election, with such predictable partisan consequences. The only other possible example was the Dred Scott decision in 1857, which tried to outlaw the position of the Republican Party against the expansion of slavery. That backfired spectacularly: The brand-new GOP won the presidency, fought the Civil War, and ended slavery. It remains to be seen whether the Roberts Court’s gift to Republicans will boomerang in the same way.

To be clear, this is not an essay against bipartisanship. We who work for democracy should try hard to gain bipartisan support wherever possible. On issues ranging from criminal justice to surveillance to presidential power, there are surprising pockets of cooperation between Democrats and Republicans, such as Sens. Rand Paul (R-KY) and Mike Lee (R-UT) working with progressive and conservative reformers.

And some issues should be entirely nonpartisan. Americans of all parties should stand up for state and local election officials, who are trying to do their job under withering pressure.

But as Madison might have put it, we again need to take a candid look at the parties. There are certain problems facing the country, like systemic corruption, that require a coordinated response, organized by parties.

Indeed, the corruption issue offers the best chance to upend today’s rigid polarization. Republicans should be grasping at any chance they can to vote against the White House ballroom or the $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” slush fund. Democrats, who are seen as little better than their opponents in regard to corruption, will want to show they are for real — and that they can get something done. Sooner or later, regardless of who acts first, it will take the concentrated political oomph that comes from a party backing politicians in the halls of power to break the concentrated forces of the status quo.

Something similar needs to happen to respond to the gerrymandering frenzy. Both parties are now grappling across the country. But Congress could act immediately to ban partisan gerrymandering and bar mid-decade map drawing. That proposal was part of the Freedom to Vote Act, which passed the House and nearly passed the Senate in 2022, notably on a party-line vote. Now would be a good time for both parties to unite in this kind of political arms control.

Let’s not be naive about this: There have been times, such as the Progressive Era of the early 20th century, when Republicans and Democrats competed for the mantle of reform. More typically, though, one party or another takes the lead, and often enough, lawmakers from across the aisle join in to add a note of bipartisanship. And there have been times when vital reforms actually passed on only a party-line vote. That’s how the 15th Amendment to ban racial discrimination in voting became part of the Constitution.

Bipartisanship doesn’t guarantee peace and calm. The last time the Voting Rights Act was considered by Congress, it passed the Senate 98–0 and was proudly signed into law by President George W. Bush. Within a few years, the same Republicans who voted for the law turned against it and made election denial more generally a party cause.

But one way or another, this period of abuse and corruption must yield to a time of reform.

It’s not too soon to start thinking about the post-Trump era. Yes, he’s got more than two years in office to go. But there is an unmistakable sense that Trumpism, which a decade ago was the rude, disruptive new force, has become an uneasy and increasingly unpopular status quo. What comes next? That’s for all of us to decide. And the grubby, compromised political parties that make the system work or fail.

IMAGE CREDIT: Reza Estakhrian/Getty

Listen as Laura Field, author of Furious Minds: The Making of the MAGA New Right, dives into the characters, ideas, and institutions that have shaped the creation of the intellectual movement behind the MAGA new right.

Check out Furious Minds here: https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691255262/furious-minds?srsltid=AfmBOoozolQd2eDrGtMZLSzjlnw59ENrh-gr034Jfn3H2xN3M1jfO-s3.

Recorded on May 22, 2026.

The Brennan Center is a nonpartisan law and policy institute that works to repair, revitalize, and defend our systems of democracy and justice so that they work for all Americans. The Brennan Center cannot support or oppose any candidate for office.

It marks the end of a project, since the passage of the Voting Rights Act, to restrict the right to vote. And the frenzy that has ensued represents the worst of partisan impulses.

Listen as Julian Zelizer, professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University, creator of the popular Substack The Long View, and author of the recent book In Defense of Partisanship, discusses how we got here — and how lessons from history can help us develop a more productive two-party system and a more equitable democracy.

Check out The Long View here:

The Long View

Have we ever seen this before? Let's put the news in perspective and take the long view with political historian Professor Julian Zelizer.

By Julian Zelizer

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Check out In Defense of Partisanship here: https://globalreports.columbia.edu/books/in-defense-of-partisanship.

Recorded on May 20, 2026.

The Brennan Center is a nonpartisan law and policy institute that works to repair, revitalize, and defend our systems of democracy and justice so that they work for all Americans. The Brennan Center cannot support or oppose any candidate for office.

On Monday, Donald Trump dropped his sham lawsuit against the federal government. In exchange, the Justice Department under his control will establish a $1.8 billion fund for “victims of lawfare,” as Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche put it. This will be a slush fund for Trump’s allies — presumably January 6 insurrectionists and others already rewarded with a pardon.

There is a zone of lawlessness around the Oval Office, erected by the Supreme Court when it granted current and former presidents effective immunity from prosecution if their crimes involved “official acts.” Loot the taxpayers, misuse government power for graft, and you’re off the hook.

Last week, the president filed a report with the Office of Government Ethics detailing the stock trades he made this year. It is a novelistic tale of profiteering, recognizable as insider trading in every way except, perhaps, under the law.

Former U.S. Pardon Attorney Liz Oyer offers a useful guide.

In recent months, as Paramount and Netflix vied to buy Warner Brothers, Trump bought stock in all three companies. Now the Justice Department is considering whether to approve Paramount’s purchase of Warner Brothers.

As CNBC reported, Trump “scooped up shares” in the data firm Palantir. Soon after, he abruptly praised the firm. “Palantir Technologies (PLTR) has proven to have great war fighting capabilities and equipment,” Trump posted, even highlighting its ticker name. “Just ask our enemies!!!” All this while Palantir was winning big federal contracts.

He invested in Oracle while brokering its deal to buy TikTok.

Just this week, he paraded off Air Force One in China, flanked by the CEOs of Nvidia and Boeing. Trump bought millions of dollars of Boeing stock before the trip, which led to the sale of 200 Boeing airplanes to the Chinese government. Among his biggest purchases has been Nvidia stock, which has seen steep increases after the U.S. government cleared 10 Chinese companies to purchase its advanced chips, in a big reversal from earlier national security concerns.

Altogether, Oyer writes, “You’ll find it hard to avoid the conclusion that, to Donald Trump, governing is synonymous with profiteering.”

This president is constrained by the weakest legal rules in history.

Start with that immunity ruling, Trump v. United States. Before that, presidents knew they could be criminally prosecuted if they looted the government. Chief Justice John Roberts’s ruling all but stops any bribery prosecution before it starts, by preventing any inquiry into the president’s motivations, even when the act looks and smells like a bribe. Justice Amy Coney Barrett noted that the ruling would “hamstring the prosecution” in a case such as bribery. (Having critiqued the misguided majority, Barrett then mystifyingly voted with it.)

Insider trading laws are weak, in any case. The Securities Exchange Act of 1934 prohibits using nonpublic information to guide stock trading, but its application to elected officials remains murky. In 2012, Congress passed the Stock Act to prevent insider trading among members of Congress, but the president and vice president remain exempt.

It’s epic corruption in plain sight. History shows that after scandal comes reform — often, but not always.

In January, the Brennan Center published Nine Solutions for Political Corruption. In it, we call for a law to require the president to divest from all stocks and other assets that could generate a conflict of interest. That was the norm, and now it must be a law. Ethics rules should cover presidents and vice presidents too.

And we call for a constitutional amendment to end the unilateral power of a president to issue corrupt pardons.

What about that Trump v. United States ruling? In the past, after the Supreme Court has erred so gravely, we’ve changed the Constitution. The 14th Amendment, for example, undid the Dred Scott decision. Another amendment is needed to clean up the immunity mess.

The sturdiest protection against corruption would be fierce anger from fleeced taxpayers. A few months ago, when asked about his conflicts of interest, Trump said, “I found out that nobody cared, and I’m allowed to.”

It turns out that Americans do care. In January, a YouGov poll found that “large shares of both Democrats and Republicans think their party focuses too little on corruption.”

Let’s make this a major issue for the campaign trail and press politicians from both parties to provide solutions, not just soundbites. Or else, as Oyer wrote, we risk having future presidents who “loot and pillage our country without a shadow of shame.”

IMAGE CREDIT: Mandel Ngan/Getty

Watch as Murray joins The Briefing with Michael Waldman to discuss the history behind the Constitution’s articles and amendments, their relevance today, and their ability to protect democratic institutions.

Recorded on May 5, 2026

The Brennan Center is a nonpartisan law and policy institute that works to repair, revitalize, and defend our systems of democracy and justice so that they work for all Americans. The Brennan Center cannot support or oppose any candidate for office.

The late 19th century was a dismal time in American politics. Corruption ran rampant. Congress was governed by staunch partisan loyalties and nail-biting majorities. And redistricting, instead of being confined to after the census every 10 years, was a tool of manipulation and partisan hardball. “From 1872 to 1896,” a political scientist reports, “at least one state redrew its congressional districts each year.”

Of course, that era was marred by another phenomenon — one too familiar to us today. It saw a swift rollback in voting rights and representation for the newly freed Black population of the South. In 1875, after the Civil War and the adoption of the 15th Amendment, seven Black men served in the House, and one sat as a senator. Terrorism, political cowardice, and racial backlash ended Reconstruction. By 1902, Congress was once again all white.

That status quo largely held until the civil rights movement of the mid-20th century, culminating in the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The law ushered in the multiracial democracy we have taken for granted.

Nearly two weeks ago, the Supreme Court supermajority finished its project of demolishing the law. The ruling in Louisiana v. Callais convulsed American politics. Since then, we have seen an ugly frenzy in southern states, a brutal redrawing of district lines that could, as scholar Rick Hasen put it, “bleach the halls of Congress, state legislatures, and local bodies like city councils.”

Since the ruling, Louisiana has gone back to the drawing board to erase one of its majority-Black districts, even though early voting had already begun in the primary election that was set for May 16. Preparations are underway in Alabama and Mississippi for redrawing their maps. Just last week, Florida passed a new map, which had been in motion in anticipation of a favorable Supreme Court ruling. In some states, as in Tennessee, Black voters could be left without any effective congressional representation.

Blue states, too, are scrambling to redraw maps to help their party, though their success remains to be seen. In a surprise ruling last week, a closely divided Virginia Supreme Court struck down the just-passed constitutional amendment that gave the legislature the power to redraw the state’s congressional map, which would have likely handed several seats to Democrats.

While gerrymandering remains unpopular among voters at large, among the activists whose votes tend to control primaries, party loyalty rules. In Indiana, for instance, several legislative challengers backed by President Trump defeated most of the incumbents who refused to get on board with the Republican redistricting agenda.

Pundits who tally up the wins for each party may be missing the bigger point: Soon, state congressional delegations will begin to resemble the Electoral College — all red or all blue. Recall that Trump won one in every three votes cast in Massachusetts, while Kamala Harris won a similar share of the votes cast in Tennessee, yet both states will have monolithic party delegations.

What can be done?

The raw power grabs on display may be just the kind of thing to rouse voters to anger. Yes, midterm elections in November will turn on issues such as affordability and the war in Iran. But when people feel something being wrested away from them, they can fight back.

And Congress must act. It can ban partisan gerrymandering nationwide, in red states and blue states alike.

It should enact legislation to make clear that American citizens can sue to protect their right to vote when it is infringed. Legislation should give voters of color a meaningful opportunity to prove intentional discrimination, and it should make sure that judges apply strict scrutiny to laws that impinge on the franchise.

And Congress should recognize the danger of an unelected Supreme Court — highly ideological, appointed for life — taking a hammer to laws that uphold political equality. This past month reinforces the need for Court reform, including an 18-year term limit for justices.

Want more proof of the political role the Court has assumed? Alabama took, as Brennan Center senior fellow Joyce Vance put it, a “nanosecond” to rush to the justices for permission to gain the “benefit” of Callais, even though primary voting starts in a week. The justices quickly agreed, even though the state’s map had already been found intentionally racially discriminatory by a lower court, allowing the state to eliminate one of the two districts represented by Black lawmakers. This contravenes years of the high court’s assurances that rules should not change too close to an election. Calling balls and strikes? The fix seems to be in.

Alabama, of course, is where Selma is located. Its history is more complex than you might imagine. Here’s what I wrote in my book The Fight to Vote:

Alabama previously had one of the most democratically robust systems in the country, including universal male suffrage and a bar against gerrymandering. But its new Jim Crow constitution gave county registrars great discretion in barring African American voters. White men could vote without anyone attesting to their good character, but Black men required the recommendation of a white voter. As a result Black voting rates fell from 180,000 to fewer than 3,000 between 1900 and 1903.

History emphatically does not move only in one direction.

Abandoning the solemn commitment America made to guarantee equal representation regardless of race is a grave threat to our system of governance. And the fact that the Supreme Court has done it to enable partisan gamesmanship offends that legacy.

The Brennan Center was named after Justice William J. Brennan Jr., a leading force in the brief but celebrated period when the Court actually moved to ensure equality in our election system. He authored the opinion in Baker v. Carr, which established the willingness of the Court to enforce what would become the “one person, one vote” rule. He also wrote Thornburg v. Gingles, which set national standards so that voters of color could go to court and seek remedies when officials unfairly limited their opportunity to elect candidates to Congress. That American achievement is what the Supreme Court has so casually tossed away. It may be a long time before the Court will once again play a positive role in our democracy.

The stakes are high. Brennan put it well: “The Constitution will endure as a vital charter of human liberty as long as there are those with the courage to defend it, the vision to interpret it, and the fidelity to live by it.”

IMAGE CREDIT: Joe Raedle/Getty

The Brennan Center recently published the second installment in its series on Solutions for a Stronger Democracy: “Six Solutions to Fix the Supreme Court.” Listen as experts discuss the Court’s major issues and the proposals that would make a meaningful difference.

Speakers:

• Olatunde Johnson, Ruth Bader Ginsburg ‘59 Professor of Law, Columbia Law School

• Miriam Rosenbaum, Senior Fellow, Brennan Center

• Host: Michael Waldman, President, Brennan Center

Recorded on May 4, 2026

The Brennan Center is a nonpartisan law and policy institute that works to repair, revitalize, and defend our systems of democracy and justice so that they work for all Americans. The Brennan Center cannot support or oppose any candidate for office.

The Supreme Court’s decision to destroy what remained of the Voting Rights Act in Louisiana v. Callais will take every element of our already broken political system and make it worse. It was not a surprise. But it shocked nonetheless.

What should we do? Boil with fury at the ruling. Scoff at the justices who claim only to call “balls and strikes,” in a game they’ve fixed. But don’t stop there. Yell, loudly, for action by the one part of our government that can do something: Congress.

The Supreme Court’s ruling leaves the Voting Rights Act “all but a dead letter,” as Justice Elena Kagan put it. Callais is a grave blow to racial equality, especially in the South. Scholar Rick Hasen warned, “This decision will bleach the halls of Congress, state legislatures, and local bodies like city councils.” We may see the fastest rollback in representation since the end of Reconstruction after the Civil War. Even if it’s not as bad as that, it will be bad enough.

Arid legal abstractions can have harsh real-world consequences. After the 2013 Shelby County v. Holder ruling, which gutted the most important part of the Voting Rights Act, the gap between white and nonwhite voters’ turnout grew twice as fast in states that were once covered by the strong protections of the law, according to the Brennan Center’s research. Callais will only worsen this disparity, especially since the justices have agreed to rush the implementation of their decision so its effects will be felt as soon as possible.

To perfume its actions, the ruling glorifies, of all things, partisan gerrymandering. And this in the middle of a nationwide redistricting frenzy. Samuel Alito explained that states can deflect even proof of a racially discriminatory map by simply claiming that the manipulative district lines aim to entrench a political party. We aren’t discriminating against Black people, you see. Just against Democrats. Case closed.

After this overt assault on our democracy, Congress has a duty to act.

First, it should ban partisan gerrymandering — immediately. Such a rule would apply to red states and blue states alike. A bill to do this has been introduced by Sens. Alex Padilla (D-CA), Raphael Warnock (D-GA), Angus King (D-ME), and Adam Schiff (D-CA), building off language from the Freedom to Vote Act. Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) put forward the measure in the House.

Such a move is constitutional. None other than Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in 2019’s Rucho v. Common Cause ruling, “[The] Framers gave Congress the power to do something about partisan gerrymandering in the Elections Clause.” He even approvingly pointed to what became the Freedom to Vote Act, which would come very close to becoming law in 2022.

Second, Congress should enact new laws to give citizens a meaningful and robust right to vote, as well as a right to sue if their voting rights have been abridged, diluted, or denied. Judges should be charged with viewing any burden or dilution with extreme skepticism. It should be easier to prove discriminatory intent. And nationwide standards for elections would make them harder to manipulate.

Finally, Callais shows the urgent need for Supreme Court reform, starting with an 18-year term limit for justices. Judicial term limits would restore accountability. They would reflect the core value that nobody should hold too much power for too long. Term limits are broadly popular. The most recent Fox News poll on the issue showed that 78 percent of the public supports them. That’s an awful lot of Republicans, on top of Democrats and independents.

Momentum is growing. A Congressional Black Caucus statement put it well. “Our nation’s highest court has been compromised,” it declared. “The CBC will make it our mission to aggressively advance Supreme Court reform. We will work to establish term limits for justices to help restore independence, neutrality, and legitimacy to the Court.”

This kind of congressional pushback used to be common. But in recent years, a paralyzed and polarized Congress has failed to do its job. This torpor created the opening for an imperial judiciary and an abusive executive. As my colleagues Miriam Rosenbaum and Emily Whitehead noted, “In recent years, the Court has repeatedly gutted landmark pieces of democratically enacted legislation that had earlier survived the Court’s scrutiny.” Citizens United destroyed a century of campaign finance laws, just as Callais finished the job of demolishing the voting rights legislation overwhelmingly passed by Congress and signed into law by a Republican president. Yet Congress failed to restore the Voting Rights Act or repair campaign finance rules, even when Democrats controlled the White House and the legislature.

This year, Americans have been energized around voting issues in response to the egregious SAVE Act, now blocked in the Senate. But rhetoric is not enough, and playing defense surely is not enough. Lawmakers must put at the center of their agenda bold, tough, unflinching steps to restore the health of American democracy.

We need to keep up the fight in the states, too. Already, states have begun a new wave of abusive mapmaking, starting with the suspension of Louisiana’s primary election. Energized advocates are stepping up to defend representation for communities of color. Brennan Center experts are sharing data with lawmakers across the South to make the case that it is not just wrong but chaotic to rush to change district maps.

As ever, the most important role falls to we the people. The Supreme Court has been captured by a faction of a faction. It has acted recklessly to undermine a fair and free democracy. Let’s get passionate on the campaign trail. We should all demand of anyone asking for our votes: What are you willing to do to protect that vote?

We need to do what patriotic Americans have done before. We must turn our anger at an outrageous Roberts Court ruling into a rallying cry for action.

IMAGE CREDIT: Jose Luis Magana/Getty

In this emergency episode, Brennan Center experts analyze the ruling and assess what it will mean for voters in 2026 and beyond. They also discuss what Congress should do — right now — to preserve the equal right to vote.

Recorded on April 30, 2026

Read more of our work:

Six Solutions to Fix the Supreme Court

Growing Racial Disparities in Voter Turnout, 2008–2022

The Brennan Center is a nonpartisan law and policy institute that works to repair, revitalize, and defend our systems of democracy and justice so that they work for all Americans. The Brennan Center cannot support or oppose any candidate for office.

Recorded on April 22, 2026

Speakers:
V Spehar, Host and Creator, Under the Desk News
Pinky Weitzman, Vice President of Communication and Strategy, Brennan Center
Moderator: Michael Waldman, President and CEO, Brennan Center

Keep up with the Brennan Center’s work by subscribing to our weekly newsletter, The Briefing, at https://go.brennancenter.org/briefing.

The Brennan Center is a nonpartisan law and policy institute that works to repair, revitalize, and defend our systems of democracy and justice so that they work for all Americans. The Brennan Center cannot support or oppose any candidate for office.

At the Supreme Court, the stakes are getting higher and higher. Any day, the Court could rule on Louisiana v. Callais, which could effectively demolish what’s left of the Voting Rights Act and add chaos into our elections. It will also rule on President Trump’s birthright citizenship executive order, which could upend what it means to be an American. Several decisions coming down the pike will determine whether the rule of law will persist amid brazen, illegal acts by this administration.

Meanwhile, a chorus of voices has emerged questioning the Court’s credibility. This week, Fox News analyst Juan Williams, who calls himself a “good friend” of Justice Clarence Thomas, cited allegations of corruption and wrote of the Court: “A reckoning is overdue.” Graham Platner, a candidate for the U.S. Senate in Maine, publicly called for the impeachment of two justices.

The Supreme Court is a branch of government. Nothing more, nothing less. We want it to do what we need it to do: to stand up, with independence, for the rule of law. But we cannot rely on the Court to do that. Its power depends on its credibility — credibility it must earn.

An NBC News poll recently showed that public confidence in the Court is at an all-time low. It’s a dangerous combination for a branch that relies on public confidence for its relevance and authority. At a time when democracy has never been more tested, we need a strong, trusted Court to uphold the rule of law and defend our institutions.

The good news is that there are solutions that could greatly bolster trust.

At the Brennan Center, we know that times of crisis can bring opportunities for reform. It’s why we have not only sought to identify and analyze institutional problems, but offer innovative, thoughtful solutions to strengthen our democracy.

Today, we published the next installment in our Solutions series: “Six Solutions for the Supreme Court” by my colleagues Miriam Rosenbaum and Emily Whitehead. It’s a robust policy agenda that Congress can and should enact to improve the functioning of the Court and boost confidence.

It’s entirely appropriate to do this. The Supreme Court is a public institution. To be effective, it must maintain public trust.

The agenda we publish today includes term limits for justices — a reform widely popular across the political spectrum. (The most recent Fox News poll shows that 78 percent support term limits.) We suggest 18-year term limits, after which justices would assume senior status, through which they can continue to carry out their constitutionally guaranteed tenures with modified duties. Term limits should be accompanied by a system of regular appointments, so each president can name two justices per presidential term. Giving each president equal influence over the Court’s makeup would greatly enhance the democratic link between the Court and the public — a critical way to ensure the justices stay in touch with the views of the American people.

We also urge a binding ethics code. The Supreme Court is the only court in the country without an enforceable ethics code, leaving justices relatively immune from serious accountability. In recent years, this has led to scandals involving luxurious gifts and vacations, reports of justices engaging in political fundraisers and activities, and scenarios where justices fail to recuse themselves despite conflicts of interest. We are calling on Congress to pass a new ethics code, with a ban on stock trading, heightened gift restrictions, a clear mechanism of enforcement, and public reporting of findings, ensuring transparency and reducing the impression of a corrupt Court.

And the agenda includes reforms to the Court’s emergency docket (dubbed the “shadow docket”), which has been shown to be prone to abuse. The Court’s emergency docket has historically allowed it to quickly block lower court rulings to stop immediate harm. Yet recently, it has been used less to respond to emergencies and more to greenlight the Trump administration’s policies with unexplained, unsigned opinions. Of the 25 times the Court has answered Trump’s call to intervene to reverse lower court rulings, it has ruled in Trump’s favor 80 percent of the time, sometimes overturning decades of precedent. Congress can and should curb shadow docket abuse by requiring justices to issue written and signed opinions in shadow docket cases and codifying restrictions so the Court can only take up a case when there is a true emergency.

Other reforms include creating a mechanism to fast-track congressional responses to misguided rulings and improving the confirmation process.

And we call on the Court to further open its proceedings to the public and allow video in the courtroom. Already, audio tapes of the Court are available, with no diminution in its gravitas. Video would make its workings available to the widest audience.

We have yet to see how the rest of this term will play out. But these reforms are not about responding to any particular ruling. Rather, this agenda would be a strong first step in rebuilding confidence in the Court and ensuring it has the long-term credibility and institutional integrity to play the role we need it to play in our democracy.

IMAGE CREDIT: Matt Chase

The Brennan Center recently released its sixth annual survey of election officials, which reveals that they need our support heading into Election Day.

Listen as Elizabeth Howard, director of partner engagement in the Brennan Center’s Elections and Government Program, breaks down the challenges election officials are facing and discusses how we and others are working to ensure our elections remain free and fair.

Recorded on April 15, 2026.

Keep up with the Brennan Center’s work by subscribing to our weekly newsletter, The Briefing, at https://go.brennancenter.org/briefing.

The Brennan Center is a nonpartisan law and policy institute that works to repair, revitalize, and defend our systems of democracy and justice so that they work for all Americans. The Brennan Center cannot support or oppose any candidate for office.

Election upsets can scramble political expectations. This time, it might be one halfway around the world. In Hungary, Péter Magyar won a landslide victory over autocrat Viktor Orbán on the issue of corruption. After he won, he vowed Hungary would no longer be “a country without consequences.”

As if shaken awake, the media and politicians in our own country have suddenly noticed the corruption issue.

The New Republic mocked the other day, “Across the media landscape, the chattering class has assayed the election and made what is — to it, anyway — a fresh discovery: What if political corruption is bad? And what if campaigning against corruption is a winning issue?”

The American public is already there. A YouGov poll in January, for example, found that “large shares of both Democrats and Republicans think their party focuses too little on corruption.” Indeed, backers of both parties thought corruption was the biggest issue being ignored.

My reaction to this is: wow, yes! Voters have their heads screwed on right. And also, how do they even know about the growing corruption problem? Long gone are the days when newspapers competed to expose official wrongdoing. Trust me, there is nothing in today’s fragmented information landscape that is like past scandals pursued by dogged hordes of investigative reporters and orating TV correspondents.

Journalists fuss over candidate fundraising totals without mentioning that, for example, a single super PAC backed by the AI industry has already raised $75 million to spend in congressional races. That still falls behind the $171 million raised so far by a single cryptocurrency industry PAC. This spending will all be “independent,” and much of it will not be fully disclosed. Yet, with spending like this, these industries could effectively buy Congress.

Then there’s the orgy of self-enrichment. Forget the planned White House ballroom or the gilded doorknobs in the Oval Office. According to Forbes, President Trump and his immediate family increased their net worth by $3 billion in one year by leveraging public power. Other analyses peg the one-year amount at $1.4 billion.

Opposition politicians have started to pound away. But it’s not enough to decry sleaze. Jaded voters think “everyone does it.” Indeed, the group End Citizens United in 2025 published a poll suggesting citizens thought Democrats were more corrupt than Republicans.

House Democrats recently announced a task force to assemble an anticorruption agenda. Rep. Joe Morelle of New York leads the drive. When I spoke with Morelle months ago, he vowed, “This is going to be the most significant governmental reform since Watergate.”

That’s a high bar. Watergate led to laws to curb presidential abuse and clean up politics: A public financing system sought to curb big money in presidential campaigns. The Inspector General Act of 1978 placed watchdogs in major federal agencies. The Budget Impoundment and Control Act aimed to ensure that Congress, not the president, retained power of the purse. The War Powers Act tried to curb executive warmaking.

After scandal comes reform. Not always, but that’s when it happens. What would a reform agenda look like today?

In January, the Brennan Center published Nine Solutions for Political Corruption. We call for a ban on undisclosed “dark money” in campaigns, a ban on campaign donations from big government contractors, small donor public financing for congressional races, and a constitutional amendment to overturn the Supreme Court’s calamitous rulings in cases such as Citizens United. As for graft and grift, federal ethics rules should at long last apply to presidents. The Constitution should be amended to take away a president’s unilateral power to issue corrupt pardons.

And here’s something that would be a pleasant surprise: a real ban on congressional stock trading, a practice that has led to suspiciously outsized profits for both Democrats and Republicans.

A reform response can’t stop with punishment for grafters. There should be a nationwide ban on partisan gerrymandering. Term limits for Supreme Court justices. A curb on abuse of executive powers. Expect to hear from us on all these topics and more in our upcoming Solutions series.

An assault on corruption can unify. It unites voters from left and right, as well as those from the exhausted middle who are sick of politics that never seems to produce results.

To be clear, voters won’t give either party the benefit of the doubt. They see the problem of politicians decrying corruption . . . in ads paid for by secret crypto super PACs. The only way to pierce the cynicism is to act — and to make clear the connection between a broken politics and a government that seems to work for those who already have the most.

It remains to be seen how robustly this will be an issue in 2026. Candidates may think that all they need to do is stand there while their opponents’ corruption repels voters. What will really matter is whether politicians commit to not just a tweak here and there, but a systematic overhaul to end the culture of unaccountability that has left so many voters so disaffected for so long.

Meanwhile, the voters now have the hardest job. It’s not enough to roll our eyes. When candidates come calling, we should ask not just what will you denounce, but what you will do about it.

If we do that, we too can ensure that the United States is no longer “a country without consequences.”

IMAGE CREDIT: Daryl Solomon/Getty

Listen as Gregg Nunziata, Executive Director of the Society for the Rule of Law, assesses the effectiveness of the legal field in responding to these challenges and discusses what is needed to confront the illiberal forces eroding our democratic institutions.

This week, autocrat Viktor Orbán conceded defeat in Hungary’s general election. It was a landslide victory for Péter Magyar — and for democracy worldwide.

Over the course of 16 years, Orbán worked to dismantle and undermine democratic institutions. He took control of most news outlets. He rewrote election rules. He replaced judges with loyalists. His government faced numerous corruption scandals, including one surrounding a presidential pardon. He was also a fan favorite of the Trump administration. Our vice president campaigned for him.

What are the implications of his defeat for democracy in the United States? To be sure, midterm elections often rebuke the party in power, and it’s hard to predict whether this election augurs any November results. But just as Brexit presaged Trump in 2016, worldwide trends are at play. Amid Orbán’s takeover of elections, the media, and democratic institutions, the forces of democracy found a way to persevere through public organization and mass outrage.

In Hungary, one backstop against authoritarian rule has been the European Union. In the United States, perhaps it is the fact that states control elections, largely through a steadfast network of officials across the country who ensure elections are free and fair.

Today, that network is under immense strain. This week, the Brennan Center released our sixth annual survey of local election officials. It confirmed an alarming pattern: They are worried about the safety and security of the elections they supervise. Half worry about political leaders interfering with how they do their job. Seventy-one percent are actively planning or preparing for potential disruptions. Eighty percent are calling for more funds and support to keep up with election security needs.

These are Republican and Democratic public servants, trying to do their jobs far from the partisan fracas in Washington.

Between FBI raids seizing 2020 election ballots, efforts by the administration to meddle with voting equipment, and federal funding cuts to election security, election officials have many reasons to be alarmed. At the same time, organizations across the country have been working to give election officials the support they need to defend our elections in November.

After the Trump administration gutted the principal federal agency for training election officials and bolstering security, many organizations have jumped in to fill the gap in expertise. The Committee for Safe and Secure Elections, a coalition of current and former election officials and law enforcement, has been offering trainings and tabletop exercises to state and local leaders across the country so they can be prepared for high-stress, legally complex Election Day scenarios and establish lines of communication in case of potential interference.

The Brennan Center has also been working to keep officials informed. We are drafting handbooks for each state that outline relevant laws, suggest scenarios, and help election officials, their counsel, and others who support them to appropriately respond to federal interference.

We have also organized a series of courses for hundreds of attorneys who represent election officials to inform them about their rights and responsibilities and to give guidance on how to respond to requests for election data and access to equipment.

There is much more to do. States must step in to fill funding gaps left by the federal government. In the survey, 75 percent of local election officials said their state or local government has not provided additional resources or funding to address federal cuts. The use of artificial intelligence in elections is also a growing concern that election officials should be informed about.

Between now and November, all of us can help make sure election officials know we have their backs. We can have free and fair, even uneventful, elections this year. We can ensure the perseverance of our democratic institutions. As in Hungary, it will take organization, preparedness, and collaboration.

IMAGE CREDIT: Sean Gallup/Getty

Listen as Jong-Fast discusses the war with Iran, upheaval at the Justice Department, and the strengths and weaknesses of legacy and new media in responding to the current political moment.

Recorded on April 6, 2026.

Keep up with the Brennan Center’s work by subscribing to our weekly newsletter, The Briefing, at https://go.brennancenter.org/briefing.

The Brennan Center is a nonpartisan law and policy institute that works to repair, revitalize, and defend our systems of democracy and justice so that they work for all Americans. The Brennan Center cannot support or oppose any candidate for office.

For those who care about equality, what should come next? In their new book, How Equality Wins, Kenji Yoshino and David Glasgow outline a path forward for the equality movement in this time of uncertainty and discuss ways to modernize diversity, equity, and inclusion programs.

Listen as Kenji Yoshino discusses how this book can be used by organizations and governments to ensure a pluralistic, equitable society.

Recorded on March 12, 2026.

Keep up with the Brennan Center’s work by subscribing to our weekly newsletter, The Briefing, at https://go.brennancenter.org/briefing.

The Brennan Center is a nonpartisan law and policy institute that works to repair, revitalize, and defend our systems of democracy and justice so that they work for all Americans. The Brennan Center cannot support or oppose any candidate for office.

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court will hear a major constitutional case about birthright citizenship. We shouldn’t be debating this right now. But since the president chose to act with such striking disregard for the law, here we are.

Birthright citizenship is in the Constitution. The first sentence of the 14th Amendment reads, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”

This has been the law for more than 150 years. The amendment overturned the notorious Dred Scott decision, which said that even free Black Americans could not be U.S. citizens. The Supreme Court in 1898 confirmed the 14th Amendment’s plain meaning. In United States v. Wong Kim Ark, it ruled that children born here are citizens, even if their parents are not. That principle gave rise to generations of new Americans.

Donald Trump tried to Sharpie this out of the Constitution. A few hours after he took office, he signed an executive order purporting to deny citizenship to the children born here to non-U.S. citizens. Courts immediately ruled against the White House. Last summer, the Supreme Court stopped individual judges from issuing such nationwide orders, but it left open the possibility of class action lawsuits. Hence Trump v. Barbara, brought by the American Civil Liberties Union.

This is open and shut. Con law for dummies.

Grasping for arguments, Trump’s lawyers landed on this: The 14th Amendment’s “one pervading purpose” was to protect the children of former slaves, not anyone else. That reading puts aside the clear language of the amendment, along with a century and a half of history and tradition. It’s historical fan fiction, designed to appeal to an “originalist” Court.

Historians Martha Jones and Kate Masur, a member of the Brennan Center’s Historians Council, corrected the record in a key amicus brief. “When the Framers wrote birthright citizenship into the Constitution, they were not addressing only the status of former slaves,” they explained. “They were also remedying the eight decades of injustice imposed upon free people born in the United States, among them free Black Americans, including those who had never been enslaved.” What’s more, the historians note, “The Framers well understood that the Amendment’s broad terms would recognize and protect the citizenship status of the children of immigrants.”

One echo throughout history: We’ve seen the arguments against birthright citizenship before, and they were born of nativism and made by racists. In our Countering Originalism handbook, we call this a “negative precedent.” “Negative,” as in “really ugly.”

Our constitutional rights in 2026 should not just have to rely on the goings-on during the 1860s, when the amendment was drafted. For 150 years, hundreds of thousands of children born in the United States to noncitizen parents have proudly grown up as American citizens.

It’s an open-and-shut case, as I said. So why is this case happening at all?

Because Trump is forcing the issue. And the case offers a depressing window into how the Supreme Court helps drive, ratify, and legitimize extremist arguments. It has fired up an originalist-industrial complex to concoct historical evidence to buttress unjustifiable outcomes.

Trump didn’t dare do this during his first term. But after his “shock and awe” barrage of executive orders at the start of his second term, conservative scholars suddenly had to find it plausible, intriguing, worth a second look. Two top professors, Randy Barnett and Ilan Wurman, suddenly discovered a “puzzle” to solve. “Trump might have a case on birthright citizenship,” they found a way to write.

“A lot of people, when Trump first started talking about it, thought this is crazy,” conservative scholar John Yoo told The New York Times. Yoo thought Barnett and Wurman’s argument too, ahem, tortured, and instead made “the originalist case for birthright citizenship.” The vast majority of scholars agree.

I think the Court is highly likely to reaffirm birthright citizenship. But who knows? I thought it likely the Court would allow criminal prosecutions of former presidents, which is similarly anticipated in the Constitution. Here, the case is even clearer, since the law has affected the lives of so many people before now.

The willingness to chuck aside precedent as well as logic is a hallmark of the Roberts Court. This term, we brace for a demolition of the Voting Rights Act, a further grant of vast power to presidents (this time allowing them to command expert federal agencies that were made independent by Congress), and another ruling to undermine campaign finance rules. The Court stood up to block the unilateral imposition of tariffs and has shown some backbone on other emergency powers cases. But overall, bit by bit, it continues its project to remake the country.

As for birthright citizenship, it is one of the crown jewels of the U.S. Constitution. For a century and a half, the nation’s promise was that anyone born here, however humble their circumstances, is an American. Let’s hope the Court upholds that cherished principle. And let’s shake our heads at the fact that it has to.

IMAGE CREDIT: PS Photography/Getty

I want to tell you about something exciting and new from the Brennan Center. On Monday, March 30, we will launch a new newsletter: Major Questions. It will feature biweekly essays by the esteemed legal journalist Jesse Wegman. He’ll explain the stakes of key Supreme Court cases and rulings and consider innovative solutions for reforming the Court. We hope this will be essential reading for those looking to better understand the Court in this moment and ways we can improve this vital institution.

If you are interested, I encourage you to sign up here.

Why did we start this? We had a feeling there are lots of policymakers, journalists, activists, and fed up regular people who want to know about the Court, what it’s done wrong (and right), and how to make it the best it can be. This is part of the work we do through our Kohlberg Center on the U.S. Supreme Court. I’m very excited about this. Jesse is one of the country’s leading legal journalists and can help fill a big public gap.

Jesse joins the Brennan Center with more than 10 years of experience on the New York Times editorial board, where he wrote more than 1,000 editorials on the Supreme Court, democracy, and the law. He is also the author of Let the People Pick the President: The Case for Abolishing the Electoral College (St. Martin’s Press, 2020) and the forthcoming The Lost Founder: James Wilson and the Forgotten Fight for a People’s Constitution (Celadon, June 2026), the first full-length biography in more than 70 years of the most democratic of all the American founders. He talks often on television, radio, and podcasts about all these issues.

I recently talked with Jesse about what led him to launch this newsletter, what he plans to write about, and his broader views on the Court.

Click here to subscribe to Major Questions. And you can read my conversation with Jesse Wegman below:

Michael: You wrote about the Supreme Court and the law for more than a dozen years at The New York Times. Why is this an important topic to write about here and now?

Jesse: I loved writing for the Times, and I was grateful for the opportunity to work out my thinking about the Court in a very public forum. At the same time, as it became clearer to me how broken the Court was, I became frustrated at my inability to do anything about it other than write. I couldn’t just sit on the sidelines yelling at the refs anymore. So, it’s a thrilling opportunity to be here at the Brennan Center, an organization that is at the forefront of a national effort to reform the Court and make it the Court we know we need.

Michael: Who do you see as the target audience for the newsletter?

Jesse: I think there are a few obvious targets. The first is members of Congress and their staffs, who will be responsible for writing any Court reform legislation. The second is the American people, who both need to understand how the Court functions or doesn’t function and can influence their representatives. And the third is the groups and organizations that have spent years mobilizing around these and other issues and that we want to prioritize Supreme Court reform as soon as the opportunity arises.

Michael: Will the newsletter focus on the cases before the Court or reform more broadly?

Jesse: Just in the last decade and a half, the Court has handed down so many shocking decisions that have upended decades of settled constitutional law, eliminated constitutional rights, and overturned acts of Congress. I think of Shelby County v. Holder, which eviscerated the Voting Rights Act, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which eliminated the right to choose an abortion, and Trump v. United States, which gave the president almost complete immunity from prosecution. I think people are starting to see the radicalism of this Court for what it is.

What is less understood, and what I think this newsletter will help with, is understanding the cases that are before the Court in the broader context of a pattern of misuse of power that is deeply harmful to the democratic experiment. It’s not just the cases, because we know how these cases are coming out. It’s that the game was rigged from the start. I’m hoping that readers will see the danger of letting a court amass this much power with this little accountability.

Michael: On the one hand, you’re making the case that this Court has been wildly overreaching and ideologically driven. On the other hand, you believe it’s important that there be a strong Supreme Court that is respected and does what it’s supposed to do in our constitutional system. How do you strike the right balance?

Jesse: It is a delicate situation, because the Court is both an essential institution in American government and, right now, a very destabilizing one in its behavior. At the same time, it is an extraordinarily fragile institution. Alexander Hamilton wrote that the Court controls neither the sword nor the purse, so it depends on the support of the American public for its legitimacy and its authority.

That support, as we’ve seen in poll after poll, is at its lowest level in generations — for many good reasons. The Court has arrogated to itself far more power than it should have, overturning acts of Congress and its own precedents at an alarming rate, often by bare majorities — 5–4 or 6–3 votes. At the same time, it has increasingly insulated itself from accountability. Justices have lifetime appointments and yet are bound by no enforceable ethics code. The newsletter is going to be an effort to strike that balance: to show respect for the institution and, at the same time, to acknowledge that the only way to truly respect that institution is to reform it.

Read the full Q&A >>

IMAGE: NurPhoto/Getty