We pay rent. Or we pay on our mortgage. We buy groceries. We fill the gas tank. We pay insurance premiums, utility bills, medical bills, co-pays, credit card balances, car repair bills, childcare bills, and property tax bills.

We decide what can wait, what cannot, and what happens if one more expense lands before the next paycheck.

That is the economy most people live in. Not the Dow. Not gross domestic product. Not a quarterly earnings report. Not a politician’s favorite chart.

The real economy is whether people can afford the ordinary costs of staying housed, fed, healthy, employed, connected, and secure.

“Affordability” points to real pressure. But by itself, the word is too broad. People need candidates to name the bills.

This is not a messaging exercise in search of a topic. The evidence is already sitting on kitchen tables, in bank accounts, and in unpaid bills.

The bills people struggle to pay must be the top priority for candidates before Election Day and for officeholders afterward.

A Harris Poll for The Guardian found that 95% of Americans say the country faces an affordability crisis, and about half say they struggle to afford basics such as groceries and gas.

KFF reported in April 2026 that 64% of adults worry about affording healthcare costs, tied with concern about gas and transportation costs.

And Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies reported that nearly half of renter households were cost-burdened in 2024, spending more than 30% of income on rent and utilities.

Taken together, those numbers point to the same conclusion: Candidates should stop treating “affordability” as the whole answer. It is only the starting point.

People do not experience affordability in general. They experience specific costs.

Affordable housing. Affordable groceries. Affordable healthcare. Affordable childcare. Affordable transportation. Affordable utilities. Affordable insurance.

Wages that cover real life.

Affordable means within reach without forcing people to sacrifice food, medicine, housing, work, safety, or basic dignity.

That is the message candidates should use. That is also the language voters and activists should demand.

Even “affordable housing” needs clearer language.

Some people hear the phrase and think it means housing only for people with very low incomes. Others use it to mean housing that working people, young families, seniors, teachers, nurses, caregivers, service workers, and middle-income renters can actually afford.

Both concerns matter. But when the same phrase means different things to different people, politicians can sound compassionate while saying very little.

So, ask the next question: Affordable for whom? Affordable at what income? Affordable because rents are lower, wages are higher, public support is stronger, or supply is larger? Affordable now, or affordable only in a campaign brochure?

In plain language: Say “housing people can afford,” then explain which people and how.

We should expect politicians to talk about all their ideas in plain language—in terms that make sense to us.

Make candidates get specific

Don’t settle for:
“We care about affordability.”

Ask:
What will you do to raise wages?
What will you do to lower housing costs?
What will you do to lower healthcare costs?
What will you do about childcare?
What will you do about utility bills?
What will you do about grocery prices?
What will you do about transportation costs?

And don’t stop there. Ask the questions that turn campaign language into accountability:

What policy would you support?
Who pays?
Who benefits?
When would people feel the difference?

Action resources at Plainly, Garbl

For readers who want to move from concern to action, these advocacy resources may help:

Social Safety Net and Economic Security—organizations strengthening support for individuals, families, and communities.

Affordable Housing and Homelessness—advocacy groups working to expand access to housing and support people experiencing homelessness.

Economic Equity and Stability—organizations promoting economic security, fair wages, and opportunities for working families.

Political Action for Introverts, Extroverts, and Everyone in Between—a guide to finding activist work that fits your temperament, energy, skills, and comfort level

Suggested Text for Writing Email Messages to Elected Officials—it could also work as a script for phone calls

Contact Information: Washington’s U.S. Senators and Representatives

Contacting Washington State Officials and Key Departments

Advocacy Groups Working to Influence Local Government

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We lowered the bar—and somehow it's still over his head.

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This Fourth of July is more than a milestone. It is a checkpoint.

Two and a half centuries after the Declaration of Independence, Americans are still arguing over the responsibilities of government, who gets heard, who gets believed, who gets power, and how truth survives in public life.

That argument is not a failure of democracy. It is part of democracy, when it is grounded in facts, open debate, public accountability, and the freedom to challenge those who govern in our name.

I care about this partly because of my experience working as a journalist and with journalists. I still think like one: Check the claim, look for evidence, ask what’s missing, and correct the record when needed. I also care because I’ve seen up close how local government and civic action depend on people knowing what is actually happening around them.

The First Amendment protects more than expression. It protects the rights that make democracy possible without government control: freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, freedom to petition the government, and freedom of religion.

Those freedoms allow people to question authority, expose wrongdoing, gather in public, organize for change, worship or not worship, publish unpopular ideas, and demand answers from public officials.

But freedom does not inform, verify, or defend itself.

An independent free press helps communities see what power is doing. But that promise weakens when local newsrooms shrink or disappear after advertising revenue flows to online platforms and distant corporate owners. Fewer reporters are left to cover school boards, courthouses, city councils, statehouses, and local issues that shape daily life.

When verified reporting fades, communities are left with more noise, more rumor, and fewer shared facts.

A free society needs more than speech. It needs people who know how to judge what they read, hear, watch, and share.

That does not mean trusting every headline. It does not mean pretending all news sources are equally reliable. And it does not mean retreating into cynicism by declaring that “all media are biased,” as if that settles anything.

Bias matters. But calling something biased is not the same as checking whether it is accurate.

Facts are not left, right, or center. Interpretations may differ. Emphasis may differ. Values may differ. But claims still need evidence, sources still need scrutiny, and corrections still need to be made when the record is wrong.

Media Literacy Tools

I’m using this Fourth of July to highlight Plainly, Garbl’s Media and Journalism Tools. I list a few of the tools below.

The point is not to tell readers what to think. It is to help readers test claims, recognize bias, judge accuracy, support independent journalism, and choose news sources with care.

A free country needs free expression. It also needs citizens who know how to sort evidence from assertion, reporting from opinion, skepticism from cynicism, and facts from fog.

These resources are meant to help readers defend facts, understand media bias, spot disinformation, evaluate news sources, and support independent journalism.

A few key resources:

If You’re Concerned About Bias, Check for Accuracy
A plain-language essay on why accuracy is the foundation of journalism—and why bias is not the same thing as dishonesty.

The Truth Toolkit: Fact-Checking Resources for Informed Resistance
A guide to credible fact-checking organizations and practical ways to verify questionable claims.

Evaluating the Evaluators: A Guide to Media Analysis and Bias Rating Resources
A guide to tools that rate media credibility, reliability, accuracy, and bias—and how to use them without outsourcing your judgment.

Saving Local Journalism and Independent Media Advocacy
A guide to organizations working to rebuild local journalism, defend press freedom, support nonprofit and independent newsrooms, and strengthen community-based news.

Progressive Media Sources for News, Ideas, and Action
A guide to fact-based journalism and analysis from a progressive perspective.

Other guides at Media and Journalism Tools include moderate and conservative media, Pacific Northwest media, nonprofit newsrooms, credible topic-based sources, and trusted commentators.

Related advocacy group resources at Plainly, Garbl cover all First Amendment freedoms and more. This spotlight focuses on the news media and journalism tools that help people use those freedoms with care.

The work does not end with the links.

The promise of the First Amendment is not passive. It asks something of us.

Read carefully. Check facts. Support journalism. Listen across differences. Speak honestly. Correct mistakes. Defend the right of others to question power, even when their questions make power uncomfortable.

After 250 years, the work of self-government is still unfinished.

Good.

That means it is still ours.

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We sometimes hear about small-r republicans and small-d democrats. Those words can sound odd in a country where Republican and Democratic refer to political parties, candidates, campaign signs, and cable-news arguments.

But those words began as descriptions of government, not party brands.

A Republican candidate is not the same thing as republican government. A Democratic candidate is not the same thing as democratic self-rule.

The party labels may tell us who is running. They do not, by themselves, tell us who respects representative government.

That test has to be earned.

As the United States approaches the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, that distinction is worth remembering. The Declaration did not celebrate party labels. It asserted that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.

That principle still asks something of us: Who respects the people’s right to govern themselves, and who only wants power in the people’s name?

What republican meant

In the founding era, a republic meant government without a king, with public power exercised through representatives chosen by the people. It did not mean government by one ruler. It did not mean a direct public vote on every law.

James Madison made that distinction in Federalist No. 10. He described a republic as a system where government is delegated to a smaller number of citizens elected by the rest. He contrasted that with what he called “pure democracy,” meaning direct rule by citizens gathered to decide public questions themselves.

That old distinction can sound strange today because we often use democracy more broadly. We call the United States a democracy because the people are supposed to govern through elections, rights, public debate, and accountable institutions.

But the Constitution itself does not use the words democracy or democratic. It does use republican in Article IV, which says the United States shall guarantee every state a “Republican Form of Government.”

In plain English, that means representative government.

That does not make the United States less democratic in the modern sense. It means the Constitution’s structure is representative. The people govern but not by voting on every bill, budget, court case, treaty, or regulation. They govern through elected officials, the separation of powers, public pressure, and the rule of law.

What democratic means now

Today, small-d democratic usually means more than holding elections.

It includes the right to vote, fair access to the ballot, the rule of law, peaceful transfer of power, equal protection under the law, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, public accountability, and respect for election results.

A country can hold elections and still fail democratic tests. If voters are threatened, districts are rigged beyond recognition, courts are captured, opposition leaders are punished, journalists are intimidated, or officials refuse to accept lawful election results, democracy is weakened even if ballots still exist.

That is why the word democratic should not be treated as a decoration. It is a standard.

What federal meant

Another founding-era word belongs in this conversation: federal.

Federalism is the division of power between the national government and the states. The Constitution created a stronger national government than the one under the original Articles of Confederation. But it did not eliminate the states. Madison argued in Federalist No. 39 that the proposed Constitution was partly national and partly federal.

That tension is still with us.

Federal, state, and local power all shape people’s rights and daily lives. Civil rights can be protected or damaged at every level.

So when we talk about republican government and democratic self-rule, we are not talking only about the White House or Congress. We are also talking about state legislatures, governors, courts, county officials, city councils, school boards, election administrators, and the people who push them to do their jobs.

The names of today’s political parties do not settle any of these questions. A party label can tell us who is running but not whether that candidate respects representative government, voting rights, the rule of law, lawful limits, and public accountability.

That test has to be applied to everyone who seeks power. Applying the same test to everyone does not mean pretending everyone is passing it.

A party, candidate, or movement that undermines voting rights, excuses political intimidation, treats legislatures as rubber stamps, or refuses to accept lawful election results is failing the test, whatever name it uses.

That brings us back to representation.

The representation test

In our constitutional system, the branch most built for representation is the legislative branch: Congress nationally and state legislatures. Presidents and governors can lead, propose, persuade, administer, veto, and respond to emergencies. But they are single executives.

Legislatures are different. They are made up of many elected people from many places, each tied to a district, state, or community. That does not mean they always listen or represent people well. It means representation is built into their structure.

That structure is the point.

When legislative bodies are ignored, bypassed, gerrymandered, intimidated, or turned into rubber stamps for one leader, republican government is weakened.

When voting is restricted, election results are denied, public servants are threatened, and citizens are treated as enemies instead of participants, democratic self-rule is weakened.

That is where the old words become real. They have to be practiced, defended, and demanded.

The question is not simply whether a candidate has an R or a D after a name. The question is whether that candidate respects the people’s right to govern themselves through fair elections, representative institutions, lawful limits, and public accountability.

That is the test.

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Donald Trump does not need to turn every American into a red-hat loyalist.

He does not need everyone to chant at rallies, repeat conspiracy theories, or cheer cruelty as strength. Trumpism does not have to make everyone bigoted, selfish, or ignorant. That would be too obvious.

He only needs to make enough of us think like MAGA skeptics: distrust government, journalism, courts, universities, science, public records, elections, expertise, and one another. Distrust even the idea of public service.

Once that happens, democracy has no common ground left to stand on.

The greater danger is that it spreads cynicism. It says every institution is corrupt, every journalist is lying, every scientist is political, every court is rigged, every election is suspect unless “we” win. Every fact is just somebody’s opinion wearing a lab coat.

That is how democratic society gets hollowed out.

My journalism training and experience taught me not to trust sources unquestioningly. It taught me to be skeptical, not cynical.

Check the quote. Confirm the fact. Look for the original document. Ask who benefits. Check whether a website is credible. Notice what is missing. Call one more source. Read past the headline. Correct the error.

That is not distrust. That is the work of accuracy.

Democracy needs that kind of skepticism, not just among journalists but also among all of us.

It does not need the manufactured cynicism that says every institution is corrupt, every expert is lying, every journalist is fake, every court is rigged, and every fact is just another political weapon.

Social media makes it easy to spread lies, half-truths, rumors, innuendo, and careless mistakes faster than truth can catch up. Trump and his administration have shown how effectively that system can be exploited.

Even fact-checking can become part of the problem when it repeats the falsehood more loudly than the truth. Corrections should be clear, accurate, and honest, but they should lead with what is true.

Otherwise, deceit keeps doing its work. It makes people wonder: Who do we believe? Can we believe anyone?

That is the distrust Trumpism feeds on.

Healthy skepticism asks questions and checks facts. MAGA-style cynicism dismisses answers and facts before they can be checked.

That is the heart of it.

A democracy needs skepticism. Citizens should question government, journalism, universities, courts, corporations, science, and other expertise. Blind trust is not democracy.

But corrosive distrust is different. It does not ask, “What is true?” It says, “Nothing is true unless my side says it.” It does not demand better institutions. It teaches people to give up on institutions altogether.

That difference—between skepticism and cynicism—shows up in several ways.

Skepticism is necessary. Cynicism is the trap.
We should not worship institutions. Government makes mistakes. Media outlets fail. Universities can be elitist. Science can be misused. Courts can be political. But the answer is accountability, not arson.

MAGA turns every referee into an enemy.
Election officials, judges, journalists, scientists, teachers, civil servants—anyone who can check power becomes part of “the deep state,” “fake news,” “woke academia,” or some other cartoon villain.

The goal is not truth. The goal is dependence.
Once people distrust every outside source, they become dependent on the leader, the party, the influencer. That is the con. Old trick. New hat.

This warning is not only about Trump supporters. Distrust of institutions did not begin with MAGA.

Opponents can absorb the poison too.
People who oppose Trump can also be worn down by cynicism, including the cynicism he spreads. We can begin to assume every institution is already lost, every public servant has already failed, every news source is useless, and every legal process is only theater.

That is understandable. It is also dangerous. That despair helps authoritarian politics.

Many judges still follow the law. Many journalists still dig for facts. Many public employees still protect records, administer programs, count votes, and serve the public. Many citizens still show up.

Democracy does not survive because institutions are perfect. It survives because people keep pushing them to work. We do not have to agree on everything to rebuild trust in the things that help us find out what is true.

The goal is not blind trust.
The goal is repair: build trustworthy institutions, demand evidence and accountability, and defend the people and processes still doing their jobs.

But we should also recognize the trap being set for us.

When every source of shared knowledge is dismissed as corrupt, the loudest voice wins. When every referee is called rigged, only power is left.

And when democracy loses trust—not blind trust but earned trust—it does not become freer.

It becomes easier to rule.

Ask tough questions. But ask them honestly.

Related Resources at Plainly, Garbl

If You’re Concerned About Bias, Check for Accuracy
How to read the news without losing trust in the facts

The Truth Toolkit: Fact-Checking Resources for Informed Resistance
Understanding where to find reliable fact-checking resources is more critical than ever.

Evaluating the Evaluators: A Guide to Media Analysis and Bias Rating Resources
Understanding the watchdogs that track journalism’s trustworthiness

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We hear so much about what’s going on in Washington, D.C.

That makes sense. Presidents dominate the news. Congress fights, stalls, performs, negotiates, and sometimes even legislates. Federal courts issue decisions that can change the country.

But a lot is also going on in the “other Washington”—this Washington, the state: the home of Costco, Mount St. Helens, Puyallup, and Pearl Jam.

Washington state government may not command the same national attention, but it shapes much of daily life here: schools, roads, elections, housing, healthcare, policing, courts, environmental protection, labor standards, public records, consumer protection, and the power of cities and counties.

And it does not matter only when the Legislature is in session or when candidates are on the ballot. State government operates all year. So should citizen attention.

During session, bills move quickly

Washington’s Legislature meets in Olympia for a few intense months each year, starting in January. In odd-numbered years, lawmakers meet in a longer session. In even-numbered years, they meet in a shorter one.

During those sessions, bills move quickly. Hearings are held. Amendments are made. Budgets are written or adjusted. Laws are passed, blocked, weakened, strengthened, or quietly buried.

I learned some of this years ago, when I was assigned for one legislative session to help lobby for the local government agency where I worked. In Olympia, I worked with the main lobbyist and consultants. I attended hearings, met with legislators, watched the process up close, and learned a bit about how much happens outside the speeches and headlines.

I did not come away thinking lobbying was my calling. Too much of it seemed to happen in actual lobbies, among people more comfortable working the room than I was. My introvert self was not exactly built for that sport. Writing is my forte.

But I did come away understanding this more clearly: State government is complicated because real life is complicated. Legislators have to weigh many needs, costs, consequences, and trade-offs when writing, revising, and voting on bills.

Lobbyists, advocates, and citizens can help by bringing concrete needs and concerns into the process. That might not simplify the work, but it can help lawmakers see how proposed legislation would affect real people and real communities.

That does not mean everyone has to become a lobbyist. Most of us will not. Most of us should not have to. But we do have to pay attention before decisions are final.

That is one important time to pay attention. But it is not the only time. Government does not stop governing when we stop watching.

Outside the legislative session, agencies write rules, programs are administered, budgets are carried out, courts issue rulings, boards and commissions meet, local governments implement state laws, and public officials keep making choices long after the campaign signs come down.

Where theory turns into practice

Citizens do not lose their voice when the Legislature adjourns. They can still act:

• When a law passed in Olympia becomes a rule written by an agency, citizens can comment on the proposed rule, ask questions, and explain how it would affect real people and real communities.

• When a budget decision becomes a service funded or not funded in a county, school district, health program, ferry system, court, or public works department, citizens can ask how the money is being used, what is missing, and who is being affected.

• When a campaign promise becomes a vote, a silence, a hearing, a staff decision, or a missed opportunity, citizens can follow up with the officials who made that promise and ask what happened.

• When state agencies, boards, and commissions meet outside the legislative session, citizens can attend, submit comments, request records, and bring concerns before decisions become routine.

• When local governments carry out state laws and budgets, citizens can show up where those decisions become visible—at city councils, county commissions, school boards, port commissions, public utility districts, and public meetings closer to home.

That is where people often experience government most directly—not as a theory, but as a road, a classroom, a ballot, a permit, a utility bill, a court date, a public meeting, a ferry schedule, a park, a clinic, or a missing service.

Elections are one door into state power

This year, legislative elections add another reason to pay attention.

Here in the 24th Legislative District, both state House seats are on the ballot, as usual. One race includes an incumbent. Longtime Rep. Steve Tharinger is vacating the other. That means voters are not only choosing names on a ballot. We are choosing what kind of state representation we expect.

What should our representatives understand about rural communities, small cities, tribes, housing, healthcare, ferries, forests, schools, climate, local journalism, public safety, and the cost of living? What will they do when the national noise fades and the state work begins?

Those questions matter before the election. They matter after it, too.

The practical point is simple

Citizens can do more than vote every few years and hope for the best:

• We can follow bills during the legislative session.

• We can contact our legislators before a bill is drafted, while it is moving, and after it passes. We can testify in person or remotely.

• We can submit written comments and ask that our position be recorded.

• We can follow state agencies when they propose rules.

• We can watch what statewide elected officials do with the authority voters gave them.

• We can support advocacy groups that track issues more closely than any one person can.

Federal politics will keep demanding attention, too. Some of that attention is necessary. Washington, D.C., has enormous power. Presidential actions matter. Congressional failures matter. Federal court rulings matter.

But national politics can also become a trap. It can train us to stare at distant power while overlooking power closer to home. I see that in myself, unfortunately. It can make us feel helpless when we are not.

It can make government seem like something that happens somewhere else, to someone else, beyond our reach.

The other Washington is not somewhere else

It is Olympia. It is our legislative district. It is our county courthouse, city hall, school board, port commission, public utility district, and local ballot.

It is the state agency writing rules, the committee taking testimony, the budget line that funds a program, the official who answers or does not answer a public concern.

State government can protect rights or restrict them. It can strengthen democracy or weaken it. It can fund services or starve them. It can help communities solve problems or leave them to struggle alone.

So yes, keep an eye on Washington, D.C. But do not forget the other Washington.

It is closer to home. And closer to our reach.

Related resources

Washington State Officials and Key Departments
A guide to contacting elected officials, tracking legislation, and advocating for what matters

Local Government and Community Action
Guides for understanding and influencing local government

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Plainly, Garbl went public on June 1, 2025, as a resource for clarity and action.

One year later, I still believe those two words belong together. Clear words help people understand what is happening. Clear action helps people do something about it.

That is why I keep coming back to the First Amendment—not as a slogan, not as a shield for every careless comment but as a set of freedoms that make democratic action possible.

The First Amendment is not just about saying what we think. It protects the civic tools people need to question power, share facts, gather with others, worship or not worship as they choose, and push government to do better.

In other words, it protects the space where citizenship happens.

Plainly, Garbl grew out of Informed Resistance, a social media group I started for people who wanted to stay informed and respond to political threats with facts, purpose, and practical action. This Substack site became a way to expand that work with advocacy resources, clear-writing guides, media literacy tools, commentary, playlists, and reminders that democracy is not a spectator sport.

But clear action depends on clear understanding.

A recent online discussion reminded me how often people invoke the First Amendment without really understanding what it does and does not do. That is not unusual. “Free speech” is one of the most familiar phrases in American public life. It is also one of the most misused.

The First Amendment says, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”

The First Amendment is mainly a limit on government power. It bars public officials from punishing, censoring, or retaliating against protected expression. It also protects the news media, religious liberty, peaceful assembly, and the right to ask the government to correct wrongs.

It does not turn every Facebook group, workplace, publication, or private organization into a constitutional courtroom.

A private online group can set rules for respectful discussion. A newspaper can choose what to publish. A business can enforce workplace standards. A community organization can reject bullying, threats, cruelty, and harassment. None of that automatically violates the First Amendment.

That does not mean every private rule is wise, fair, or well applied. Moderators can overreact. Employers can make bad decisions. Publishers can show poor judgment. Communities can be inconsistent.

But the constitutional question is narrower: Is the government restricting protected expression?

That distinction is important because it keeps us from confusing disagreement with censorship, moderation with tyranny, and consequences with constitutional violations.

There is another misunderstanding worth clearing up.

Some people talk about rights and laws as if they exist mainly to create punishment after someone acts. Say what you want. Do what you want. Accept the consequences (or not).

Consequences matter. But they are not the main purpose.

The larger purpose is prevention and protection. Constitutional rights are meant to prevent government abuse before damage is done. Laws against threats, fraud, harassment, stalking, and discrimination are meant to discourage harmful conduct before people are harmed.

Punishment is one enforcement tool. It is not the whole point.

That matters in a democracy because liberty and accountability have to work together. Freedom without responsibility can become intimidation by the loudest or most powerful people in the room. Rules without liberty can become censorship and control.

The hard work of democracy is holding both truths at once.

That is why the First Amendment should not be treated as a bumper sticker. It is a working tool of self-government.

It allows people to criticize public officials, investigate government decisions, gather in public protest, practice a faith or no faith, sign petitions, write letters, call elected officials, testify at public meetings, and demand answers.

It also protects speech that many of us find offensive, foolish, or wrong. That is part of the bargain. Government should not have the power to silence ideas simply because officials, or even majorities, dislike them.

But that does not relieve us of responsibility for how we use our freedoms:

• We can defend free speech without excusing cruelty or bigotry.

• We can protect dissent without spreading lies.

• We can argue fiercely without making threats.

• We can challenge power without dehumanizing people.

Those distinctions are not weakness. They are civic discipline.

For Plainly, Garbl, this is not an abstract issue. Clear writing, reliable information, independent journalism, public records, peaceful protest, advocacy, and practical citizenship all depend on First Amendment freedoms.

So do the people and organizations working every day for civil rights, environmental protection, peace, public health, education, local journalism, government accountability, and human dignity.

One year into this project, I am more convinced than ever that clear and truthful words matter. Not because words solve everything. They do not. But unclear, false, or deceitful words make almost everything worse.

If we want to defend freedom, democracy, and human dignity, we have to understand our rights, use them responsibly, and protect them before they are damaged.

That is the work ahead for Plainly, Garbl’s second year: clearer words, stronger action, and a continuing belief that democracy works best when people know their rights, respect the rights of others, and use those freedoms to build something better.

Site Directory for Plainly, Garbl:
A curated collection of guides, groups, and tools to help you speak out, stand strong, and stay informed.

Freedoms of Speech, Press & Assembly:
A ranked guide to organizations safeguarding free expression and civic participation.

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“A rising tide lifts all boats” has long been used as a hopeful promise: If the country prospers, everyone benefits.

But that promise has always needed a second line:

A rising tide should lift all boats—and everyone in them.

White, Black, Latino, Asian, Native, people with disabilities, LGBTQ+, straight, male, female, people of different faiths, people of no faith, conservative, progressive, independent, uninvolved, and disengaged.

Boomers and Gen Xers. College graduates and people who left high school early. The middle class, the working class, and people experiencing poverty. Small-business owners, union members, unrepresented workers, and people who are unemployed. City dwellers, suburban families, and rural farmers. Homeowners, renters, and people without housing.

People who vote every year, people who rarely vote, people who feel politics has forgotten them, and people who have been told too often that their lives matter only when they are useful to someone else.

That is the promise democracy is supposed to make.

Not comfort for some. Not opportunity for some. Not freedom for some. Not justice when convenient.

For all of us.

The U.S. Constitution names that promise in its preamble: to “establish Justice,” “provide for the common defence,” “promote the general Welfare,” and “secure the Blessings of Liberty” for ourselves and future generations.

That does not mean every idea is equally wise, every argument is equally honest, or every political movement deserves our trust. It does not mean we excuse cruelty, normalize bigotry, or pretend authoritarianism is just another point of view.

It means democratic government should help people live decent, secure, and meaningful lives—not just deliver victory for one faction, one class, one race, one religion, one party, or one ZIP code.

Moderation, progressivism, and conservatism can all contribute something useful. They can also all fail badly.

Progressivism fails when it becomes so certain of its own righteousness that it forgets how to persuade, organize, and build a majority.

Moderation fails when it becomes a polite excuse to protect the comfortable and to ask everyone else to wait.

Conservatism fails when it stops conserving democracy, community, dignity, and the common good—and instead, protects concentrated wealth, corporate power, resentment, and privilege.

And its trickle-down promise has failed too many people for too long. We were told that if the yachts rose high enough, everyone else would somehow be lifted along with them.

But too often, the people with the least power were left clinging to life rafts and preservers while the well-connected sailed away dry.

That is not a rising tide. That is abandonment with better marketing.

And when the tide falls—when jobs disappear, costs rise, disasters strike, rights are threatened, schools struggle, hospitals close, or help takes too long to reach the shoreline—the test of democracy becomes even clearer.

Do we protect only those already safe? Or do we repair the leaks, build the lifeboats, strengthen the docks, and make sure no one is left waving from the rocks?

Democracy needs principle. It also needs persuasion. It needs moral clarity. It also needs coalitions.

It needs people willing to fight for justice without forgetting that the point is not to defeat every opponent forever but to build a society decent enough for all of us to live in.

A rising tide should not float the wealthy while leaving people with the least bailing water. It should not lift yachts while leaving behind rowboats, canoes, wheelchairs, ferry passengers, farmworkers, teachers, nurses, immigrants, veterans, small-business owners, students, retirees, and exhausted parents.

If democracy means anything, it means we rise together—or we fail separately.

And right now, failing separately is not a luxury we can afford.

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We have treated skin as a warning label, a border checkpoint, a costume, a crime scene, a passport, a threat.

We have made laws around it, built neighborhoods around it, invented fears around it, and passed those fears from one generation to the next.

And yet skin is not an argument. It is not a verdict. It is not a résumé, a rap sheet, a political platform, or a moral code.

Skin is an organ.

It feels cold, heat, pressure, pain, comfort, and touch. It blushes, burns, scars, wrinkles, stretches, heals, and remembers. It carries fingerprints, freckles, birthmarks, calluses, tattoos, and wounds. It is where the world meets us before the mind has time to explain.

That may be why bigotry has always been so eager to misuse it.

Skin color is the obvious example, and the ugliest one. But bigotry is rarely satisfied with one excuse. It has also attached itself to accents, hair, clothing, names, bodies, faces, age, disability, gender, faith, poverty, and every visible or imagined difference it can press into service.

Bigotry is lazy. It uses whatever it can.

A beard becomes a threat. A scar becomes a story others think they know. Dark skin becomes danger. Brown skin becomes “foreign.” Old skin becomes disposable. Young skin becomes naivete. Female skin becomes public property.

Queer bodies become targets. Poor bodies become invisible until someone wants to blame them. The immigrant bodies of our industrious ancestors become criminals and terrorists.

What a terrible waste.

Not just a waste of skin, but a waste of sight.

We could look at one another and see evidence of survival. We could see difference as distinction. We could see the body as the place where dignity lives, not where prejudice begins.

Instead, we too often use skin as a shortcut. And shortcuts are dangerous when they lead away from truth.

The old slogan said, “A mind is a terrible thing to waste.” True enough.

But the body matters too. The face across from us. The hand we refuse to shake. The stranger we fear before they speak. The neighbor we never really see.

Skin is not the problem.

The problem is what we have been taught to project onto it.

Skin is thin, but its wounds can run deep. And they are ours to mend.

Related Resource:

If words can wound, they can also help repair. Garbl’s Inclusive Language Guide offers practical advice for writing and speaking in ways that respect people, avoid assumptions, and make meaning clear.

If this reflection speaks to you, please consider sharing it.

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Environmental protection seems to have slipped from public urgency at the very moment it needs defending most.

Not environmental concern. Many people still care about clean air, clean water, public lands, wildlife, climate change, and the places they love.

Not environmental volunteerism. People still clean beaches, plant trees, restore habitat, recycle, conserve, and show up for local projects.

I mean protection: the harder work of defending laws, agencies, climate rules, shorelines, refuges, public lands, clean-air standards, clean-water rules, and public health safeguards before damage is done.

That concern came into sharper focus for me after Earth Day, when a friend challenged me to think harder about the difference between environmental restoration and environmental protection.

He was not attacking restoration. Neither am I. Restoration projects give people a way to take part, see results, build community, and draw attention to environmental care.

Damaged places need repair, and habitat work, cleanups, and native plantings give people practical ways to help.

But his larger worry stayed with me: Have we become more comfortable repairing damage than preventing it?

Repair is not prevention

Restoration repairs. Protection prevents.

A serious environmental movement needs both. But they are not the same. Restoration can heal a damaged shoreline, replant a forest, reconnect a river, or rebuild habitat.

Protection asks a harder question: What are we willing to defend before the damage happens?

That question is less comfortable because protection often creates conflict. It can mean source control—stopping pollution before it spreads—along with fighting destructive projects, confronting regulators, challenging business interests, questioning public bodies, and sometimes criticizing people or groups we otherwise respect.

That is where some of the old spirit seems to have faded.

Experts make the same point

Experts do not treat restoration as a substitute for protection. The United Nations’ restoration framework describes the goal as preventing, halting, and reversing ecosystem degradation. And that order matters. Prevention comes first.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature has made a similar point about forests: Restoring degraded areas is important, but it cannot replace protecting intact primary forests.

Climate change has not paused

Climate change also belongs in this discussion.

It has not gone away. It has been crowded out. Public attention is scattered by threats to democracy, war, prices, immigration fights, culture-war conflict, and the daily turbulence of Trump-era politics.

But fires, floods, drought, erosion, heat, sea-level rise, damaged habitat, and polluted air do not pause because the news cycle is exhausted.

Climate change has become oddly normalized in the U.S. Its impacts are no longer shocking enough. They risk becoming background scenery in a country overwhelmed by crisis.

Yale and George Mason’s fall 2025 climate survey found that 64% of Americans are at least somewhat worried about global warming, including 29% who are very worried.

But the same research found that only 39% hear about global warming in the media about once a month or more; only 23% hear about it on social media that often; and only 14% hear people they know talk about it that often.

Concern remains. Public conversation lags.

Cutting greenhouse gas emissions remains essential. But environmental protection is also climate work. Protecting forests, wetlands, shorelines, watersheds, public lands, and wildlife refuges helps store carbon, reduce flooding, cool communities, protect drinking water, and give natural systems a fighting chance.

EPA: Protection is in the name

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency began operating on Dec. 2, 1970, during the Nixon administration.

Its name still matters. It was called the Environmental Protection Agency because the country had finally recognized that clean air, clean water, public health, and natural systems needed national protection.

That was true 55 years ago when I was a college sophomore and seeking causes to support. It is more urgent now.

The irony is bitter. An agency created under a Republican president is now being undermined under another Republican president.

The Trump administration is weakening federal environmental protections. Climate rules are under attack. And other agencies created to safeguard public health and natural resources are being hollowed out.

In February 2026, EPA finalized its rescission of the 2009 greenhouse-gas endangerment finding. That finding had served as the legal prerequisite for regulating greenhouse gas emissions from new motor vehicles and engines under that part of the Clean Air Act.

Buried under the daily storm

Part of the problem is attention. Trump dominates the political weather. Daily outrage crowds out long-term threats.

Environmental protection is competing with everything else: democratic breakdown, court decisions, immigration fights, foreign conflicts, economic anxiety, public safety, and the daily presidential spectacle.

But environmental protection is not separate from those fights. It is part of the same question:

• Do public safeguards still matter?

• Do laws still matter?

• Do agencies still serve the public?

• Does science still guide policy?

• Does the government still protect people and places that cannot protect themselves?

Put protection back in front

Environmental restoration is still necessary. So are cleanups, recycling, conservation, public education, local projects, and practical hope.

But the environmental movement also needs its protective backbone.

The EPA was created because the country recognized that clean air, clean water, public health, wildlife, and the natural world could not be left to goodwill, profit, or local politics alone. That remains true.

If we care about the environment, we cannot only repair damage after the fact. We must also defend the protections that prevent damage in the first place.

That is the work in front of us now.

Related commentary: This piece follows my earlier Earth Day reflection, “Earth Day Is a Reminder, Not a Ritual,” shifting from environmental care and awareness to the harder work of defending protections before damage is done.

Resources for action

Environmental Protection & Climate Action
A ranked guide to groups fighting pollution, defending ecosystems, and promoting climate solutions.

Energy Conservation & Climate-Smart Energy
A ranked guide to organizations supporting renewable energy, decarbonization, and energy justice.

Environmental Justice and Community Resilience
A ranked guide to advocacy groups helping communities confront pollution and build climate resilience.

National Parks, Public Lands & Natural Resources
A guide to advocacy groups protecting public lands, conserving natural resources, and expanding environmental access for all.

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Turn on political coverage during an election season, and you might think you’re watching a game.

The language sounds familiar: Who’s ahead, who’s behind, who’s gaining momentum, who’s slipping. Candidates become front-runners. Polls become scoreboards. Commentators decide who “won the week.”

The news media lean heavily into this horse-race framing because it’s easy to follow and easy to sell. Political parties often lean into it, too, because competition energizes donors and voters.

It can feel less like civic decision-making and more like a running play-by-play. We don’t just describe elections this way; we start to treat them that way.

Elections are contests. That part is true. They involve strategy, competition, and, ultimately, winners and losers.

But democracy is not a sporting event.

Three different things

It helps to separate three things we often lump together. Elections choose leaders. Politics is the competition over ideas, priorities, and power. Governing is the responsibility that begins after the votes are counted.

The word politics doesn’t help much. It’s often used as a catchall: “I’m sick of politics,” or “That’s just politics.” People may mean campaign combat, partisan gamesmanship, or even government itself. Those are not the same. Blurring them together makes it easier to dismiss the entire system instead of expecting it to work better.

Politics isn’t just a game people play. It’s how we decide how to live together.

The problem comes when the competitive mindset of campaigns carries over into governing.

When language shapes the outcome

You can see it in the language. Terms like “front-runner,” “surging,” “slipping,” and “momentum” don’t just describe a race. They can shape it—steering attention, donor confidence, and media coverage toward candidates already ahead. And candidates with different ideas or stronger local ties struggle to break through.

That kind of framing narrows the field before voters have fully weighed their choices. It also rewards familiarity and incumbency, sometimes more than judgment or ideas.

After the election

The same mindset shows up after the election. Winning is often treated as total victory. Losing is treated as total defeat. Governing becomes an extension of the campaign, a chance to reward supporters, sideline opponents, and keep score.

That may work in sports. It doesn’t work in a democracy.

In a game, the losing team goes home. The fans regroup and wait for next season.

In a country, the people who supported the losing side still live here.

They still pay taxes. They still rely on public services. They still send children to school, drive on public roads, depend on public safety, and expect their government to function. They don’t become spectators just because their candidate didn’t win.

That’s why governing cannot be treated as a continuation of the contest.

Public office carries an obligation that goes beyond winning.

It means making decisions that affect everyone, not just the people who voted for you. It means recognizing that disagreement is part of democracy, not a reason to dismiss or ignore large parts of the public.

The way we talk about elections can make that harder. When coverage focuses on who’s ahead instead of what they plan to do, it trains us to think like fans instead of citizens.

Democracy is not meant to be a spectator sport. It depends on citizens who pay attention, take part, and expect to be represented—not fans watching from the sidelines while others keep score.

When political leaders act as if victory gives them exclusive ownership of the outcome, it reinforces the idea that governing is about winning, not serving.

We should expect more.

Voters have every right to choose sides in an election. That’s how democracy works. But after Election Day, the standard should change.

Less scorekeeping. Less chest-thumping. Less treating fellow Americans as defeated opponents.

More evidence that governing still means serving everyone who lives here.

The horse race may make for good headlines.

But once it’s over, the job is to govern.

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In the spring of 1970, I was a college sophomore when the first Earth Day on April 22 sharpened my growing awareness that air pollution, damaged waterways, and unchecked growth were not simply the price of progress.

Earth Day helped change how we understood our relationship with the natural world.

What began as a nationwide day of teaching, organizing, and public action became one of the defining civic moments in modern American life.

It helped move environmental stewardship from the margins into the mainstream. It laid the groundwork for laws and institutions that still shape our daily lives, from clean air and water protections to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Over time, that shift became part of my own working life.

For three decades, I worked in communications for two public agencies serving King County, Washington: Metro Transit and the regional wastewater treatment utility.

Then, as now, I saw both functions as part of the same environmental mission.

Wastewater treatment protects Puget Sound, Lake Washington, and other local waterways by controlling pollution and improving water quality. It reinforces the link between public infrastructure and environmental health.

Transit reduces dependence on cars, helping to improve air quality. It makes urban, suburban, and rural life more sustainable and connected.

At the time, much of my work felt practical and service-oriented rather than overtly “environmental.”

But that is exactly the point Earth Day still teaches.

Environmental protection is not only activism, legislation, or symbolic gestures once a year.

It is also the steady, often invisible work of building and maintaining the public systems that make healthier communities possible.

It is transit that gives people alternatives to driving. It is treatment plants that keep toxins out of marine waters. And it is land-use decisions that protect habitat and balance growth with stewardship.

Just as important, it is citizens taking daily personal actions to protect, preserve, and enhance our environment—from recycling their household and yard waste to ending use of toxic garden products to riding the bus, carpooling, bicycling, or walking to work and school.

My experience in local government reinforced for me something Earth Day has always tried to teach: Environmental stewardship is not separate from daily life. It is daily life.

It is the water we drink, the shorelines we treasure, the forests that define this region, and the climate patterns that increasingly shape wildfire seasons, drought, fisheries, and storms.

Earth Day 2026 calls on communities worldwide to begin environmental action on Saturday, April 18, and carry that momentum through the following week, including Earth Day itself on April 22. Scheduled events and activities vary by community.

This year’s Earth Day theme, Our Power, Our Planet, reminds us that sustaining environmental protections still depends on people, institutions, and communities working together. That continuing work affects the cost of living, public health, infrastructure reliability, and long-term stability.

Lasting change rarely starts in Washington, D.C., even when federal policy matters deeply.

It starts in communities.

It starts when people show up for a shoreline cleanup, support local land-use decisions that protect habitat, reduce waste at home, advocate for renewable energy, or simply refuse to look away from the long-term consequences of short-term convenience.

Here in the Pacific Northwest, that responsibility is especially visible.

We live close to what we are trying to protect: marine waters, forests, farmland, salmon habitat, and the climate patterns that increasingly shape wildfire seasons, drought, fisheries, and storms.

Fifty-six years after that first Earth Day, the lesson still holds: Public priorities can change when enough people decide they must.

Much of the most lasting environmental work is not dramatic.

It is built into the systems we rely on every day—and how we work to improve them through citizen action and involvement.

That is what makes Earth Day a reminder, not a ritual.

Related commentary: My follow-up piece, “Protect What Still Protects Us,” looks at why environmental protection needs to stay visible and defended after Earth Day—not just through restoration but through laws, agencies, and clean air, clean water, public lands, and climate safeguards.

Take action year-round

Looking for ways to turn Earth Day concern into year-round action? Explore these Plainly, Garbl resources.

🧭Advocacy Groups:

• Environmental Justice and Community Resilience

• National Parks, Public Lands, and Natural Resources

• Environmental Protection and Climate Action

• Transportation and Transit for All

• Energy Conservation and Climate-Smart Energy

🗺️ Local Government and Community Action

🏛️ Government Resources

🧰 Activism Tools

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A nation’s budget is where patriotism stops being theater and becomes math.

The timing matters.

With war dominating the headlines, the White House is now asking Americans to accept historic domestic cuts while dramatically increasing military spending.

Whatever happens in Iran, Trump’s proposed 2027 budget sends a clear message about priorities at home: More for force, less for the institutions that help communities thrive.

He’s proposing a staggering $445 billion increase, pushing military costs toward $1.5 trillion. And he pays for it, partially, by driving domestic discretionary spending toward its lowest share of the economy since the Eisenhower era.

What this budget really cuts

Here is what “more for force” means in plain terms:

• Health research: $5 billion less for the National Institutes of Health, slowing medical breakthroughs and public-health work.

• Disaster readiness: $1.3 billion less for FEMA’s prevention and resilience grants, even as coastal and rural communities face more severe emergencies.

• Public health and family services: a $15 billion cut to Health and Human Services.

• Science and innovation: NASA loses $5.6 billion, weakening research, climate monitoring, and the innovation economy.

• Tax fairness: nearly $900 million less for IRS enforcement, making it harder to pursue wealthy tax cheats and large corporations.

• Everything local: schools, libraries, environmental protection, and community grants all face the squeeze of a 10% domestic cut.

These are not abstract numbers. They affect public services and the basic systems people depend on every day.

A budget shows a country’s priorities. The U.S. Constitution’s first spending clause places “the common Defence and general Welfare” side by side as national responsibilities.

This budget does not erase either duty. It raises the question of whether we are still keeping them in balance.

Right now, this budget asks Americans to normalize endless force while accepting scarcity everywhere else.

We should refuse that false choice.

Where the military money goes

The increase flows in three directions:

• Advanced weapons: The budget adds billions for shipbuilding, AI-enabled systems, missile defense, and nuclear modernization.

• Defense contractors: A large share of the increase goes to private companies building aircraft, ships, weapons systems, and surveillance technology.

• Global operations: More funding supports overseas bases, rapid deployments, and military infrastructure tied to an expanded U.S. footprint.

The contrast is no longer abstract.

This budget expands war-making capacity while cutting the systems that keep communities healthy, informed, and prepared.

It also exposes an old claim: There is “never enough money” for schools, health care, disaster response, libraries, or local infrastructure. That is not an economic truth. It is a political choice.

Real democratic strength is not just military power. It is also public trust, strong institutions, and local governments that still work. It is a government that serves people instead of trying to dominate them.

History shows that leaders can use a permanent sense of emergency to build authoritarian habits. In 1933, after the Reichstag fire, Hitler used emergency powers to suspend civil liberties in Germany and turn fear into control. People are easier to manipulate when they are tired, afraid, and told that only force can keep them safe.

That is why citizenship matters here.

Citizenship is not only the right to vote every few years. It is the responsibility to notice what government priorities are doing to the culture around us. It is the obligation to ask tough questions when leaders promise security while weakening the institutions that make communities secure in the first place.

Here’s what we must do about it

• Call your members of Congress and tell them to reject any budget that expands military spending by gutting health, science, disaster response, and education.

• Push local leaders and advocacy groups to spell out what these cuts would mean in your own community.

• Write letters, posts, and op-eds that connect federal numbers to local consequences.

• Defend public investment: Schools, hospitals, research, libraries, disaster planning, and child care are not luxuries.

If we can always find more money for destruction, why is there never enough for dignity?

Action resources

🟪 Advocacy Groups for Peace, Defense Spending, and Nuclear Arms Control

🗺️ Guides for Influencing Local Government and Community Action

🏛️ Contact Information: Washington’s U.S. Senators and Representatives

🏛️ How to Contact Federal Officials—and Be Heard

🧰 Suggested Text for Writing Email Messages to Elected Officials—And Calling Them, Too

🧰 Online Guides for Writing Letters to the Editor

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We often hear that American jobs were “lost” to China, Mexico, India, or other countries. The language makes it sound as if those jobs simply disappeared, carried away by forces beyond anyone’s control.

Today, that story is retold as payback: Other countries took our jobs, and tariffs are how we strike back.

It’s a powerful political message because it creates a visible target: foreign governments and foreign companies.

But that framing misses a harder truth. In many cases, the decision to move production was made by U.S. companies themselves, often with the support of investors, trade policies, and consumers who welcomed lower prices.

Over the past several decades, U.S. companies have made deliberate decisions to shift manufacturing and production overseas. Sometimes they built their own facilities abroad. More often, they contracted with foreign companies to make the products Americans buy every day—from electronics and clothing to household goods and auto parts.

They did it for reasons that made business sense: lower labor costs, fewer regulations to protect workers and the environment, established manufacturing hubs, and easier access to materials.

There was also relentless pressure to keep prices low in a highly competitive marketplace.

Many of us, me included, accepted and often benefited from those lower prices. We filled our homes with less expensive goods, many labeled Made in India, Made in Vietnam, Made in Mexico, or Made in China.

Retailers built entire business models around affordability, convenience, and constant availability. Investors rewarded companies that improved margins by reducing production costs.

In other words, this was not just a corporate decision. It became part of a larger economic system that companies, policymakers, investors, and consumers all helped reinforce.

That is why tariffs alone cannot solve the problem.

With the one-year anniversary of Trump’s April 2 “Liberation Day” tariffs approaching, this is a useful moment to ask what those tariffs changed—and what they never could.

They do not automatically rebuild the factories, workforce pipelines, supplier networks, and infrastructure that once supported domestic production. They do not reverse decades of decisions that made overseas production the default choice for many industries.

Instead, tariffs often shift the immediate cost of imported goods to the people standing closest to the cash register: consumers and small businesses.

But as a broad promise to “bring jobs back,” they often ask for a tax policy to solve a structural problem.

The deeper issue is not simply where products are made. It is how we built an economy that rewarded moving production elsewhere in the first place.

That raises harder questions than campaign slogans usually allow:

• What should the government do to rebuild domestic supply chains, infrastructure, and worker training?

• What responsibility should companies bear when they choose short-term savings over long-term economic resilience?

• What responsibility do consumers share when lower prices come with hidden costs to local jobs and community stability?

Those are not easy questions, because changing course may mean paying more for some goods, at least in the short term.

Someone always bears the cost. The question is whether we are honest about who.

That does not mean ignoring unfair trade practices or neglecting industries that matter to national resilience. It does mean recognizing what tariffs can and cannot do.

It also does not mean returning to the industrial economy that the United States once had. That world has been transformed by automation, technology, and global supply chains.

But it is realistic to rebuild key domestic industries, strengthen regional supply networks, and create modern, stable opportunities for workers in manufacturing, infrastructure, clean energy, and advanced logistics.

Getting there requires long-term investment in people, worker training, modern transportation, and environmental protection. It means supporting policies that make domestic production practical, sustainable, and not merely symbolic.

And it may also require something from the rest of us: a willingness to think beyond the lowest price tag.

That is the part we do not talk about enough.

The real question is not who to blame. It is whether we are willing to help build an economy that creates stronger opportunities for American workers, job seekers, and communities.

Related reading

Tariffs Don’t Bring Jobs Back—or Lower Prices
How tariff costs often land on consumers and small businesses while doing little to rebuild domestic industries, July 9, 2025.

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I was playing with the word trust the other night—turning it sideways, pulling it apart, probably overthinking it.

Then it hit me: This isn’t a word problem. It’s a country problem.

Trust isn’t a slogan. It’s what makes a country work. You don’t notice it when it’s there. You feel it when it’s gone.

Elections require trust. Courts require trust. Markets require trust. Streets require trust—drivers trusting each other not to kill them. Families, schools, churches, teams—all of them run on trust.

So here’s the question:
Can anything function without it?

What we’re seeing in this country right now isn’t random chaos. It’s not just politics as usual. It’s something more deliberate.

It’s a strategy:

• Undermine trust in elections. People stop believing outcomes.

• Undermine trust in courts. People stop believing the law.

• Undermine trust in journalism. People stop believing facts.

• Undermine trust in science and expertise. People stop believing what’s known.

Once trust is weakened everywhere, what’s left?

Not shared understanding. Not common ground. Just power.

This didn’t happen by accident. It has been encouraged, amplified, and exploited, most visibly by Donald Trump and those who have chosen power over truth: his advisers, his enablers, his benefactors, and those who continue to support him.

They have learned something dangerous: A country that stops trusting itself becomes easier to control.

We still print “In God We Trust” on our money. But a country can’t function if it’s taught to trust nothing else—not its institutions, not its neighbors, not even itself.

Now we’re being trained not to trust anything at all. Distrust is being weaponized as a path to power.

Our coins still say, E pluribus unum—”out of many, one.”
But if we forget the “many,” the “one” stops being unity and starts becoming control. It means one country, not one leader.

Words don’t have to change to lose their meaning. They just have to be hollowed out. And when shared meaning disappears, trust goes with it.

The U.S. was built on trust; it’s built into the word itself.

So what do we do?

Not blind trust. Not naive trust.

Earned trust. Defended trust:

• We show up, as people did across this country at the No Kings protests.

• We support institutions that still deserve it and challenge those that don’t.

• We support credible journalism and pay attention to reporting that earns our trust.

• We push back on lies, even the small ones.

• We stay engaged, especially when it’s exhausting.

Because once trust is gone, it’s not easily rebuilt.

And without it?

Without trust, there is no us, no U.S.

“More than 8 million people protested against the Trump administration at more than 3,300 No Kings events across the US and in more than a dozen countries on Saturday, according to organizers. It’s the greatest number of protests in a single day in US history.”—The Guardian, March 29, 2026

Turning Concern Into Action

Executive Overreach and Abuse of Power
A ranked guide to organizations resisting authoritarianism and defending democratic norms.

Trump, MAGA, and Right-Wing Resistance
Top organizations taking action against Donald Trump, MAGA politics, and radical right-wing agendas.

Legal Resistance for Justice
A ranked guide to legal groups challenging anti-democratic policies and abuses of power.

🌟 … and music for inspiration and resilience:

Trust, Power, and the Truth We’re Told
Songs about doubt, deception, resistance, and the work of rebuilding trust

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Antisemitism. I don’t get it. At least that’s what I’ve been telling myself since my senior year in college, when I served as student government vice president and chaired the student legislature.

I recall one day when I was in my office, the only enclosed office I’ve ever had, with a door and wood-paneled walls. A student legislator came in and shut the door behind her.

Without saying much, she sat down and pretty quickly began crying. I’m sure we had an extended conversation, but mostly I recall her telling me how she had been harassed, ridiculed, and snubbed while growing up because she’s a Jew.

I was aware, somewhat, from history classes of the horrendous persecution of Jews in Europe before and during World War II. And at some point, perhaps that day in my student government office, I became aware of the persecution of Jews in the United States.

And I still don’t get it. I also don’t get discrimination against people because of their race and ethnic background. But I’ve seen racial discrimination and learned about it in college classes, news reports, and other reading, and from friends and acquaintances, and from novels and movies and TV shows, and from my own political involvement.

Admittedly, I’m no expert on any of this. And I haven’t studied antisemitism in-depth despite that unexpected introduction to it 55 years ago. I’m not a religious person, and I approach these issues more from a civic and constitutional perspective than a theological one.

So I’ve been aghast when I’ve been told that antisemitism is based partly on the claim that Jews killed Jesus. Huh? That matters? All these many centuries later?

Historians note that the Roman government executed Jesus, yet the accusation against Jews persisted for centuries in parts of Christian teaching. It fueled prejudice and still influences the way some people think about Jews today.

Other stereotypes, such as the long-standing myth that Jews control finance or banking, have also fueled prejudice over the years.

As a former journalist and government communications officer—and as a continuing news junkie and political activist—I believe the First Amendment protects one of our most significant civil rights: freedom of expression.

That freedom encompasses a lot, of course: the freedom of the news media to report and comment on our government (and other matters), the freedom of speech for people to speak out on our government (and other matters), the freedom to join with organizations to speak out nonviolently, and the freedom to lobby our government. All rights built into our constitution.

But it also includes the freedom of religion: the right of people to believe and follow whatever religious traditions and practices they choose or have learned from their families, friends, and personal studies. Again, a constitutional right of expression.

But those freedoms and others also guarantee at least two other things:

• First, the government’s responsibility (through our elected and appointed leaders and representatives) to prevent itself from diminishing those rights, and

• Second, the government’s responsibility to actively protect those rights, without infringing on our other civil rights.

I write that in this article about religious discrimination because I not only oppose the U.S. government infringing on the rights of all people in their religious beliefs and practices, but I also oppose the government dictating and enforcing religious beliefs and practices.

I am thankful I live in a country that was founded on guaranteeing those rights, that our country’s founders valued those rights. They are rights that are essential to our democracy—and all democracies, I believe.

I pity countries that don’t recognize or respect freedom of religion within their boundaries, that encourage and allow, if not require, that only certain religious beliefs be practiced by their citizens and residents. I pity the people of those countries.

That said, I don’t believe it’s a right or responsibility of the U.S. to enforce its freedom of religion around the world, even as its citizens evangelize for particular religions in other countries. But I also don’t believe the U.S. must respect or accept or—most certainly—participate in religious persecution in other countries.

And I don’t believe the U.S. should support or oppose other governments based on religion. Our decisions should be based on how those governments act, especially how they treat people.

The long history of persecution against Jews—including centuries of discrimination in Europe and the Holocaust—helps explain why many people see Israel as a necessary refuge and homeland for the Jewish people.

But criticizing the policies of a government is not discrimination against a religion or a people. Governments make decisions; religions express beliefs. Those are not the same thing.

That distinction matters. Tolerance does not require accepting intolerance. A free society depends on protecting people’s rights, including religious freedom, while rejecting efforts to harass, exclude, or harm others because of who they are.

To me, criticism of a government’s actions is not antisemitism when it focuses on policy rather than targeting people because of their religion.

Prejudice rarely survives because it makes sense. It survives because myths and fears are repeated for generations.

And tragically, people don’t always survive the consequences.

Related resources

🟥 Confronting Hate, Extremism, and Authoritarianism

A ranked guide to organizations working to expose, resist, and prevent movements that threaten civil rights, human dignity, and democratic norms.

🟥 Freedom of Religion & Belief

A ranked guide to advocacy groups defending religious liberty and the separation of church and state—both through civic action and faith-based leadership.

🔤 Garbl’s Inclusive Language Guide

Writing that respects people and makes meaning clear.

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I wrote this last June. I wish it felt dated.

It doesn’t.

These men reach for war not out of strength but out of ego. And they send others to kill and die in their place.

If that line lands with you, the rest is worth your time.

What Cowards Call Strength: War, Power, and Ego

When dominance masquerades …

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President Trump has repeatedly invoked the idea of a “national emergency” to justify sweeping executive actions.

But the phrase raises a simple constitutional question: What authority does a president gain by declaring one?

The answer may surprise many Americans. The U.S. Constitution never mentions a “national emergency.” It also doesn’t grant presidents sweeping emergency powers.

The Constitution was written to prevent one person from claiming unlimited power during a crisis. The founders had just fought a revolution against a king who exercised emergency powers whenever he wished. So they deliberately scattered authority across branches of government.

The founders feared emergency power

The framers knew the president might use emergencies to justify extraordinary authority.

James Madison warned:

“The means of defense against foreign danger have always been the instruments of tyranny at home.”

Fear and urgency make it easier for citizens to surrender power. The founders’ solution was not to empower a single leader but to require debate and shared responsibility.

Emergency power belongs mainly to Congress

The framers assumed crises would happen: war, rebellion, invasion. But they assigned most decisive powers to Congress, not the president.

Congress has the authority to declare war, raise and fund the military, and regulate militias. It also controls federal spending.

One clause is especially revealing. The Constitution allows suspension of the writ of habeas corpus only “in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion” when public safety requires it. Habeas corpus is the legal protection that prevents the government from imprisoning people without showing a lawful reason before a judge.

That provision appears in Article I, Section 8, describing congressional powers. That placement was not accidental. The framers expected emergency decisions to go through Congress.

The president’s main constitutional role in a crisis is narrower: commander in chief of the armed forces once they’re authorized and funded by Congress.

If everything is an emergency, nothing is

There is also a language problem here. If everything becomes an “emergency,” the word begins to lose its meaning. If every policy dispute or political priority is labeled a national emergency, what do we do when a genuine emergency arises?

Clear language matters in public life. When leaders exaggerate or stretch words beyond their meaning, they risk confusing the public. And the inflated rhetoric pushes government toward haste and concentration of power.

‘National emergency’ is a modern creation

Most modern emergency powers come from laws passed by Congress during the 20th century. A revealing moment came in the early 1970s when Congress investigated presidential emergency powers.

Lawmakers discovered that the United States had technically been operating under several national emergencies for decades. Some date back to the Great Depression.

Because those declarations had never been formally ended, hundreds of extraordinary statutory powers remained available to the president long after the original crises had passed.

Alarmed by what one Senate investigation described as a “permanent state of emergency,” Congress passed the National Emergencies Act of 1976 to impose clearer limits and oversight.

That law allows presidents to declare emergencies and activate dozens of powers already written into federal law.

In other words, these powers come from legislation, not directly from the Constitution.

But laws are only part of the story. The Supreme Court has also played a significant role in defining how far presidential emergency powers can reach.

The courts have limited presidential power, but …

During the Korean War, for example, President Harry Truman ordered the federal government to seize the nation’s steel mills to prevent a strike that he feared would disrupt military production.

In Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer (1952), the court ruled against him. The president could not take private property without authorization from Congress—even in wartime. The decision made clear that emergencies do not automatically create new presidential powers.

See the Sidebar below: Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. via Sawyer.

But over time, the court has also allowed broad presidential authority when Congress has delegated it.

For example, courts have generally upheld presidents’ use of emergency statutes to impose economic sanctions, redirect federal funds, or restrict trade during declared national emergencies.

Critics say this trend has gradually expanded presidential power. In their view, it goes beyond what the framers intended.

Supreme Court rulings are not permanent truths

Supreme Court decisions are interpretations of the Constitution, not the Constitution itself.

The Court has reversed itself many times. For example, it overturned Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) when it decided Brown v. Board of Education (1954). Plessy had allowed racial segregation under the doctrine of “separate but equal,” but Brown ruled that segregation in public schools was unconstitutional.

More recently, the Court overturned Roe v. Wade (1973), which had recognized a constitutional right to abortion, in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022).

The bottom line is simple

A president doesn’t gain constitutional authority simply by declaring a “national emergency.” If the Supreme Court says otherwise, that interpretation deserves to be challenged—just as past court mistakes have been challenged and overturned.

In a democracy, citizens and their representatives have every right to question interpretations that move us away from the unintended concentration of power.

That vigilance is one of the Constitution’s most important safeguards.

Sidebar: Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer (1952)

During the Korean War, President Harry Truman ordered the federal government to seize the nation’s steel mills to prevent a strike. He feared it would disrupt military production.

In Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer (1952), the court ruled that Truman lacked that authority. Even wartime, the justices said, does not automatically create new presidential powers.

In his concurring opinion, Justice Robert H. Jackson wrote: “Emergency powers would tend to kindle emergencies.”

That line is famous because it captures a simple truth: If leaders gain more power during emergencies, they have an incentive to keep declaring emergencies.

Jackson made an even broader point in the same opinion. He warned that if courts allow presidents to expand power during crises, the Constitution could gradually be reshaped by those precedents.

Another passage from the opinion puts it this way:

“With all its defects, delays and inconveniences, men have discovered no technique for long preserving free government except that the Executive be under the law.”

In other words, Jackson was defending the principle that even in emergencies, the president is still bound by law and by the constitutional structure of shared power.

Jackson warned that emergency claims can easily turn into permanent power if courts aren’t careful.

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When I was in eighth grade, I became fascinated with one of America’s most energetic presidents, Theodore Roosevelt.

It was a turbulent time in American politics, in 1963-64, as I recall. My father, a union member and committed Democrat, sat me down one day to explain why government had to stand up to concentrated economic power.

At about the same time, the previous owner of our house had left several books by Roosevelt. Already interested in U.S. history, I began reading them. I learned, among other things, about “trustbusting,” Roosevelt’s campaign against the country’s most powerful monopolies.

I had no idea that those books would influence how I think about the economy and democracy decades later.

A progressive Republican, Roosevelt was not hostile to business. He believed large corporations could do important things and spoke of distinguishing between “good trusts and bad trusts.” But he also believed that too much economic power in one place could threaten competition and democracy.

During his presidency, Roosevelt’s administration brought more than 40 antitrust cases, including a landmark effort to break up the powerful Northern Securities railroad trust.

Roosevelt argued that capitalism could remain healthy only if no single company dominated an industry.

As he told Congress in 1902, “Great corporations exist only because they are created and safeguarded by our institutions; and it is therefore our right and our duty to see that they work in harmony with those institutions.”

Regulating monopolies isn’t anti-capitalism. It protects the competition that capitalism depends on. And that benefits consumers, workers, businesses, and the economy.

For much of the 20th century, the concern about concentrated economic power remained part of American policy. Antitrust laws were used to challenge monopolies and limit mergers that threatened competition.

Competition matters not simply because it creates more businesses. It also matters because of what it produces for the public.

Economists have long observed that competitive markets tend to produce practical benefits:

• Prices stay lower. Companies must compete for customers rather than charge what the market will bear. That’s why airline fares dropped when low-cost carriers entered the market, and why generic drugs dramatically reduce prescription costs once patents expire.

• Companies work harder to improve their products. Businesses constantly look for better products and services to win customers. From smartphones to electric vehicles to streaming services, innovation often comes from companies trying to outdo one another.

• Consumers gain real choices. Shoppers have real alternatives rather than standardized options. Not just more stores selling the same thing but offering different approaches, products, and ideas.

• Service improves. Businesses must treat customers well when they can go elsewhere. Competition pushes companies to provide better customer service, better reliability, and better value.

• Businesses have a chance to start and grow. Competitive markets leave room for new ideas and new companies. When several companies dominate an industry, it becomes much harder for small firms and startups to enter.

• Workers have more job options. When several employers compete for employees, wages and working conditions tend to improve. When only a few companies control an industry, workers have fewer choices.

• Communities have a stronger voice. Local businesses often respond more directly to community concerns about environmental protection, public spaces, and quality of life.

Over the past four decades, however, the nation’s approach to corporate concentration has changed. Beginning in the 1980s, policymakers started treating large mergers as efficient and even desirable, approving mergers if consumer prices did not quickly rise.

As a result, industries became more concentrated. And independent businesses disappeared:

• Locally owned pharmacies have declined as large chains and pharmacy benefit managers dominate prescription distribution. Likewise, national chains have replaced neighborhood groceries.

• Large media chains have closed or absorbed thousands of community newspapers. That has left smaller staffs, reduced local coverage, and advertising revenue redirected away from those communities.

• Film production, distribution, and theaters that once showed independent movies are increasingly controlled by a handful of corporate entertainment firms.

• Private equity investors have bought hospitals, nursing homes, and physician practices—often cutting staffing and services to boost profits.

In recent decades, the idea that competition required protection faded from public debate. Fewer corporations now dominate markets that once supported dozens of competitors.

When did we decide that concentrated economic power was efficient instead of dangerous?

Efforts to regulate monopolies are criticized as anti-business. In reality, they protect the competition that makes markets work.

When only a few companies dominate an industry, prices rise, innovation slows, and smaller competitors disappear. Competition—not concentration—is what keeps markets dynamic.

Freedom in a democracy is not only freedom from government power. It is also the freedom of people to act—to start businesses, publish newspapers, compete in markets, and take part in civic life.

When economic power becomes too concentrated, those opportunities shrink.

Roosevelt worried that concentrated economic power could threaten democracy. As he warned in 1910:

“The absence of effective State, and especially national, restraint upon unfair money-getting has tended to create a small class of enormously wealthy and economically powerful men.”

More than a century later, it may be time to ask again a question that once guided American policy:

How much economic concentration is healthy for a democracy?

Related Reading at Plainly, Garbl

The Wrecking of the Republic: When Profit Trumps the Constitution
How corporate power and the Supreme Court are rewriting democracy

Congress Has the Power to Regulate Industry and the Duty to Do It
The Constitution is clear: Congress must regulate industry for the public good. Tell them to do their job before it’s too late.

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The United States and Israel have now launched military action against Iran. As of this writing, Congress has not declared war. Americans are again watching events unfold in real time, with consequences that are anything but theoretical.

When a president initiates military action without clear congressional authorization, it raises serious constitutional concerns—regardless of party.

I wrote the piece below in 2010, during the long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I reposted it last year because I believed its message still applied. I wish I did not feel compelled to spotlight it again today.

My argument then was simple: War does not solve root problems. It spills blood, expands suffering, and often leaves the original cause untouched. Treating violence as a solution is like putting a bucket under an overflowing sink instead of turning off the faucet.

Sixteen years later, the question remains the same. Will we deal with causes—or manage consequences?

The essay below is unchanged.

War = Deadly Child’s Play

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