'If You Can Keep It': Democracy In 2026

0:07After a year of new leadership, court fights, dramatic change to the federal government, and deep political division. where does American democracy stand as we move into 2026? And just as important, what does it mean for you? Our series, If You Can Keep It, is our ongoing look at what the latest headlines mean for our democracy. And since this is our first If You Can Keep It conversation of the year, we're asking, what gives you confidence in American democracy right now? What worries you? And what do you think we need most in the year ahead? I'm Jen White. And I'm Todd Zwilich. You're listening to the 1A Podcast.

0:40We hear answers to those questions from our guests and from you after this short break. Stay with us.

0:50Let's start the conversation by meeting our guests. Joining us in studio, we have Kate Woodson. She's a journalist and the founder of Invisible Threads Impact Lab for Personal and Civic Resilience, where she explores ties between mental health and democracy. Kate, welcome back. Thanks. Also with us, Max Steyer. He's president and CEO of the Partnership for Public Service. It focuses on the federal workforce and the strength of government institutions. Max, welcome back. Thank you, and Happy New Year. Happy New Year. And Gabe Fleischer is also with us, founder and editor-in-chief of the Wake Up to Politics newsletter.

1:22Gabe, great to see you. Thanks for having me. So first, let's just start with your overall evaluation of the strength of our democracy right now at the start of 2026. Kate, I'll come to you first. So I'm going to give a sandwich answer, starting with the positive. I think that there is a collective sense that we need to build mutual aid and concern for others, that there is increased desire and involvement in protest movements, in calls for accountability, in calls for truth. That said, I'm deeply, deeply concerned. I think that we have a unique challenge in that there isn't a collective consensus that there is a democratic threat, that democracy is in decline.

2:13You know, a lot of countries that are facing authoritarianism, there's essentially the prospect of there's a dictator or there's democracy. But we are in a process of trying to stop the decline of democracy within a democracy. and that's very, very confusing to people. And so as a result, people are essentially in kind of this freeze-overwhelmed paralysis that prevents them from taking concerted action to defend the institutions and not only the institutions but the people who make them strong. So I'm deeply concerned, but I think that there is growing awareness, thanks to the attack on Venezuela, that we have a deep problem inside and outside this country.

3:00Max, your thoughts? So for me, it's unfortunately pretty straightforward, and that is that we're facing the most significant threat to our democracy, certainly in our lifetime, and I think actually for most of the history of our country. And I do think that it's complicated by several factors because it begins, obviously, with our current president who believes that there is no distinction between his private interests and the public interests. And that, to me, is the fundamental fight that we have right now, is a recognition that our government institutions are there for the public good rather than for the interests of the leader of the day.

3:36But I think we have complications because the other elements of our government that are intended to support our democracy, in particular the Supreme Court, have actually created super rules that make it very difficult for a democracy to function effectively. And in the near term with respect to executive power, it begins with the decision to basically give a free hand to any president, and in particular this president, in the immunity decision. And you're seeing it carried out further in the unitary executive theory, which they are creating. There's an activist court that is creating rules that make it hard for, I think, democratic processes to actually right the ship.

4:13We have an unpopular president who has been removed from accountability. and Congress has not stepped up. I mean, I think the strength here is, as it always needs to be in the American people, I do think that you're seeing people engage in ways they've never had before. They're energized. I think the answer to the question of what can they do is a difficult one and many people struggle with that. And part of our responsibility is to try to help provide answers. Gabe, I'm particularly interested in what you're hearing from young people about our democracy in this moment. I mean, I would say there's no question that I think young people and a lot of people feel that democracy is under threat in this moment, that Donald Trump has posed a test to this democracy.

4:53I would say, look, we have three branches of government. And I think clearly Donald Trump is someone who's articulated an incredibly broad theory of executive power. Clearly, as Max said, Congress, as the legislative branch, has not done a whole lot to really assert itself and try to counter that. I would disagree with parts of what Max said about the courts. I think the story there is a little bit more checkered. And I think as we head into 2026, is going, there's a lot of unanswered questions. I think Donald Trump's articulated a very broad theory of executive powers. At times, the court has upheld it, and at times, they've pushed back as recently as with the National Guard ruling we saw just a few weeks ago, where they ruled, at least in a temporary ruling, that he couldn't place troops in Chicago.

5:32So I think there's no question he's tested democracy. I think there are some institutions that have not fought back as hard, some that have fought back harder. As you point out, young people, I think, are incredibly skeptical of all of those institutions, are incredibly downbeaten, incredibly, you know, have very little faith in any of the institutions. No matter what they may or may not be doing, there's kind of a widespread dissatisfaction with all the institutions holding up America. Kate, your work looks at democracy not just as a government system, but as a lived experience. What do you think is the link between democracy and mental health?

6:07You've talked about it before here on 1A. As we head into the new year, people's personal sense of their own well-being and the health of the democracy. You've said are linked. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, a democracy is made up of people and the conditions that enable us to have a healthy relationship with ourselves and other people or not. And so when you think of a democratic system, I think you need to think of all of the nervous systems that make it up. Every single one of us in this country, if you are not a robot, has a brain, a brainstem, nerves that are constantly scanning for danger. The primary goal is to keep us safe and alive.

6:46And we are in a situation where our economy, our political system, even our media system is constantly making people feel that they are under threat and in danger. And when you operate on a very high level of stress all of the time, that degrades your physical health, your mental health. It degrades your relationships with other people. Stress actually limits your ability to listen clearly, to think critically, to connect and empathize with others. So when our systems are built to degrade our dignity and to keep us in constant threat, that degrades democracy itself. Well, let's go to the phones.

7:25We've got Jackie on the line. Jackie, where are you calling from and what's on your mind? Hi, great to be on with you, Jen. My name is Jackie Mahoney. I'm calling from Orlando. great great conversation so far um i guess my question is you know how do we as a nation fight back against in in a legal way against those that are not playing by the law so we're using the legal system to push against breaking the law around due process now you know this invasion in Venezuela, not to mention the boat bombings prior to. So I'm very concerned about our democracy. I don't feel like we're in a democracy right now.

8:13We do not have three separate branches and checks and balances. The executive branch is doing what they will and breaking laws all over the place. So to that point, how do we get our country back to a democracy? Jackie, thanks for that call. I want to start first with something Jackie alludes to, which is something we hear from listeners often, which is this feeling of overwhelm, exhaustion, anxiety, and disengagement. And Kate, what happens to a democracy when large numbers of people just check out? What happens is what's happening right now. When large numbers of people check out, abuse of power runs free and rampant.

8:55There is a pattern throughout history that collective trauma leads to polarization, which opens the door for authoritarianism. You see this and you saw this in Spain. You've seen this in Poland. You've seen this all over the world. And we are exceptional, but we're no different than others. So when this caller is asking, what can we do to reclaim democracy? You have to think of it on different levels. When we talk on a systems level, big picture democracy, the courts, people get really overwhelmed. So break it down. There's the individual, there's your community, and then there's the system. Look at your sphere of influence in this moment.

9:33As an individual, are you operating at a constant level of stress that makes you see threat everywhere? If you see threat everywhere, you will divide into us versus them, black versus white, binaries. And binaries break down the nuance that democracy is needed. So to reclaim democracy, we need to start in part by noticing our own stress and practicing resilience. to draw on our own internal and external resources to be able to engage in a grounded way. I'll turn to the others in this room to tackle the bigger systems of reclaiming democracy. And Max, I want to come to you for that question, but first read this email we got from Pennsylvania.

10:18America has never been a true democracy. From the beginning of our country, some group has not had the right to vote. And as long as we use an electoral college to determine election winners and not the popular vote, we are not a true democracy. Thousands, if not millions, of incarcerated individuals cannot vote. Voting laws in southern states that violate the Voting Rights Act are allowed to stand. And gerrymandering makes it so minorities don't have elected power, electoral power, rather, in some states. So they lay out a laundry list of their concerns. But again, there has been this divide in the country from its founding.

10:54So how do we both acknowledge that historical reality, but also move forward in building a more democratic society? Yeah, and I think it's an important question. I just come back to an earlier statement about the concerns about people checking out, given the overwhelming amounts of stuff that's happening right now. In my view, people have already been checked out. And one of the reasons why we are in the situation we are today is that most Americans, by and large, have not owned their own democracy. And some of the issues you've just flagged are part and parcel of that. When you look at gerrymandering, it is true in our country now.

11:30Politicians choose the voters rather than voters choosing the politicians. And when I referenced earlier the Supreme Court and the super rules they're setting, I think they've set the conditions for many of the challenges that we face right now with respect to gerrymandering, with money and politics. So those are real issues that have engaged some small segment of our society, but not broadly speaking have been subjects of concern. So to flip this, in my view, again, the proverbial never waste a crisis, there is an opportunity for the public to engage at a level that it hasn't for a very, very long time.

12:03In the space that I operate in around government, the last time the public fundamentally cared about the nature of their government was on the heels of the last spoil system in the late 19th century. So my hope and my work is to activate the public so that they do own their own democracy. And if they do, we're going to wind up in a better world. It's going to be an ugly next three years. I can't help myself reminding myself we've not even been through one year yet of this insanity. We've got three more years to come. But I think fundamentally we need to have the public engage. They need to understand what is happening.

12:38There are current tools, and we're going to have to build new ones. And I think there's an opportunity to rethink things that we've assumed have to be that they don't have to be. Just want to read this email from Cecile who says, I like what Michelle Obama said. Our democracy isn't broken. It's just not utilized. There are lots of signs of decay and apathy. I agree with you, Max. There are also signs of life, resistance, if you like, millions of Americans in the streets just in the last couple of months. You know, we don't do apathy here on 1A. We do engagement, and that's what we're about. And we're not alone.

13:09So let's just stipulate these things do exist and there are Americans all over the place concerned and engaged with this problem. Gabe, about five years ago, you were probably starting out in this game. I think you were an undergrad at this time five years ago, right? That's about right. So for the time that you've been in journalism covering politics, where have you seen the shift? How have you seen, since we're talking about the erosion of democracy, where have you seen the differences from day one to now in your career? Well, I'll say, I mean, obviously there's a lot of shifts over five years, but in terms of the engagement point, I don't think what I see is a decline in engagement or a decline in people paying attention to the news or following what's going on.

13:48I mean, I do think this speaks to a bit of a paradox that we see. I mean, when we ask people in the polls, when we ask people to describe what they think about politics, what are the words that come to mind? We hear all the words that are coming up now about apathy and about decline in interest and just I can't pay attention. It's too much. And yet you juxtapose that with viewership statistics and statistics of people reading newsletters like mine or paying attention to social media or tuning into cable news, and you don't see as much of that same decline. In fact, I'm someone, as you noted, I've been engaged in politics a long time from a very young age, long before a lot of my peers are really paying attention to politics.

14:24But certainly since 2016, since the 2016 election, I would say that has not been the case. I was someone who was involved in politics even before that. And then ever since then, you know, it's kind of been, I would say, a big rush of interest. We've seen this in voter turnout in 2020, 2018, 2024. I suspect in the 2026 midterms as well, you know, we'll see a huge uptick in turnout. So I think it's complicated when you ask the question of are people tuned out, are people disengaged? They say they are, but then when you look at their actual kind of behavior in terms of whether they're paying attention to the news, whether they're casting ballots, that hasn't always turned out to be the case.

15:00And in the past five years of covered politics, I only see more and more interested in engagement every year. I think there's a big difference between attention and engagement. And I certainly think that the attention economy has gripped people and people are glued to social media. that is very different than being engaged in constructive, healthy, systemic change that goes beyond the election cycle. And one of the things that is crucial in this moment is that we are not just looking at quarterly results or election results, that we are looking 30 years down the line and generations ahead. You know, South Africa is still grappling with apartheid 30 years later, and we are looking to fix democracy today.

15:40So there has to be this connection between attention on social media, clicks, and engaged, sustained change that acknowledges the Democratic decline did not start with Donald Trump. The conditions were there that enabled him to fill the gap. So to the reader that's asking about, you know, people in prison who aren't able to engage in the democratic process, this country has a history of criminalizing the mentally ill. It has a history of criminalizing the poor. So we need to look at economic justice, reform, mental health, in addition to everything else that we're talking about, if we want to create a foundation for lasting democracy and well-being.

16:25Judy emails, We have a democratically elected president doing exactly what he promised to do when he ran for office. I'm not seeing the problem here. Progressives are trying to stoke fears about democracy as a means for regaining political power. Bobby mails. I don't think we have a democracy right now. Trump, with all his enablers, the Supreme Court, the Republican Party and his tech billionaires have demolished our democracy. I don't think the Democratic Party will do much even if they win back the House. Trump will ignore their powers. So unless they win the Senate, then our democracy is doomed for my lifetime.

16:53And I am 71. I am in the process of getting a dual citizenship with Canada as a way out of this country I no longer recognize. We'll hear more from you and our guests in just a moment.

17:08We got this email from Britt who says, The panel's framing is overly alarmist and reflects their ideological biases. The scope and limits of executive power have been tested repeatedly over the past century, often under far more extreme circumstances. It's worth asking whether these same concerns would be applied consistently to the expansive and aggressive use of executive authority under FDR or the extensive military incursions by the Obama administration. The more substantive threat to democratic governance has been the growth of the vast administrative state staffed by unelected bureaucrats and increasingly insulated from direct democratic accountability rather than episodic assertions of executive power.

17:51Max Deer, that sounds like a comment and a question or a comment made for you. Thank you. And I'm glad to have that opportunity to talk about it because I think it's incredibly important to understand that we, in fact, are not talking about a partisan issue at all. We've had 140 years of history where Republican and Democratic presidents have all agreed that fundamentally our government is there for the public good and we have an administration that has turned that upside down. And so we have a president that is using the clothing of partisan language to pursue his own private agenda. And if you need to look for evidence of that, it's very clear from the examples of the cryptocurrency engagements that he's had that have given him private access to resources that are fundamentally beyond the scope of what a president should be doing.

18:45If you look at the first actions of the administration when removing the inspector generals that were there really to provide the kind of oversight to avoid waste, water, and abuse, the entire architecture that was set up post-Nixon to ensure that presidents actually were following the rule of law. And we have a president who's been very explicit about it. So I think it's vital that Americans understand that this is not the usual partisan fight. This is something special and important. And we are really talking about the soul of democracy when we look at the nature of public power and what's appropriate to be using it for.

19:25And you have that in the context of our own country, which was built around this idea that no individual, no president should have the kind of authority that a king has had. And that was the reaction to the setup of our government originally. So this is different. It is fundamentally critical for us to understand those differences and to respond accordingly. I think it is made, as I said, more complicated by the role the Supreme Court has been playing in unleashing the executive in ways that have frankly not been available to executives for the modern history of our country. But really important, this is not partisan.

20:08I've been doing this work for over 25 years. I've worked with Republican and Democratic presidents, senior officials, and none of them would be comfortable with what's happening today. Well, let's go back to the phones. We've got Nastly on line five. Where are you calling from and what's on your mind? Yes, thank you for having me. I'm calling from Miami, Florida. I love this conversation and I so appreciate it. As an AI student at MDC, I would love to know and ask. First, I want to make a comment and I would ask and ask a question. My comment is that I just wanted to piggyback on what was said about mental health.

20:44I think that our health system needs to elevate and increase our options, especially in minority communities. We don't have the best health care. We have the highest vitamin D deficiency, which is cognitive. And us as humans, we do have a level of stress tolerance. We just don't have the health to tolerate the stress, either political, family or whatnot. And my question is, how are we going to use AI to implement basic human rights in the United States? And I would love to have this conversation on a broad spectrum because we need to use AI to kind of liberate the stress that we're having in the political tension and economic tension, but also to create basic human rights for everybody.

21:31Thanks for that call. Kate, I'm going to come to you first because the use of artificial intelligence, the way it's being integrated into our lives at numerous levels, that's been an ongoing conversation here on the program, but your thoughts? Yeah, I think, you know, every generation has a new iteration of technological evolution. This is ours in this moment. I think what we need to do is learn discernment skills along with the technology. I think a lot of times we're handed essentially, you know, tools for good or weapons for bad. And so how we need to learn to use AI has to have a fundamental focus on humanity, on dignity.

22:14There needs to be conversations in classrooms, in newsrooms, in boardrooms about what is the goal here. This is really lofty, but I think the tech companies I don't think are going to have codes of conduct for AI. They're going to just want to addict you with it. And so it has to be a collective effort in whatever capacity you're in, whether you're at home or at work, that you develop your own standards of operating so that the AI doesn't dehumanize us. Let's go to Charlie. Charlie, where are you calling from and what's on your mind? Okay. My name is Charlie. I'm calling from Maryland. And what's on my mind is, as in many cases when I'm listening to the radio, no matter what the subject is, it's often that the host doesn't challenge the assertions that are being made by the guests.

23:07And I feel like that's part of democracy, is challenging people's notions. And hopefully people can back their notions up with scientific evidence. It's difficult in the realm of sociology, which democracy falls in, but it is possible to have good science, even in sociology. And my anecdote is that I don't find democracy to be under any sort of threat. I think that our three branches of government are working quite well, and they fight, and that's good. Anyway, I'll leave it at that. Okay, Charlie, thanks for that call. One of the questions we got was about this broader idea of, are we really having the same conversation when we talk about democracy?

23:54Whether people are defining it in the same way. Gabe, I'll come to you first. Do you think there is a shared conversation about what it means to live in a democracy right now in the U.S.? I mean, I think clearly not. I mean, I think, you know, one interesting thing we've seen, you know, when we do polling in previous election cycles, we've seen, you know, in the 2024 election cycle, you know, threats of democracy. and worries about democracy was one of the leading issues that people said they were worried about. But then when you drill further and ask, OK, what do you mean by threats to democracy?

24:22Obviously, Democrats and Republicans are going to have two very different sets of answers. Obviously, in that election cycle, Republicans are very worried about political prosecutions and prosecutions of then-candidate Trump. And obviously, Democrats are worried about the threats from January 6th and the threats from Trump. So I think, no, there's no question. I think we're having two separate conversations. And I think also there's, I think maybe two separate conversations happening kind of in the media class and having, you know, happening in studios like this that are also happening kind of, you know, kind of broadly across the country.

24:51Again, when you look at polls, you know, threats to democracy are an issue that certainly worries people. But certainly when you look at young people, for sure, when you ask them, you know, really what kind of decides their vote? What are the issues they really can be voting on? I think people are much more worried about kind of issues they perceive as much closer to, you know, their own kitchen table, to their own pocketbook. You know, this idea that, you know, there might be kind of abstract worries about democracy that other people, you know, in kind of ivory towers are worried about. But, you know, if you can't afford kind of the price of eggs or the price of gas, that isn't something that is rising to necessarily as many voters, you know, the top of their priority list.