'If You Can Keep It': The United States At 250

0:07Next year, on July 4, 2026, the U.S. celebrates the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Earlier this month, President Donald Trump kicked off the countdown of the anniversary at a rally in Iowa, right as Congress passed his sweeping domestic policy bill. Exactly one year from tomorrow, we will celebrate the 250th anniversary of America's founding with a birthday party, the likes of which you have never seen before. But before the celebrations begin, what do we know about how this country's identity has changed in 250 years, and what innovations have led us to this moment.

0:46These questions are the focus of a new project by the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress. It's a bipartisan think tank dedicated to finding solutions to the nation's most pressing challenges. The CSPC's report maps a timeline of the most important American innovations in 250 years, from bifocals and the steamboat to cell phones and artificial intelligence. The project also includes innovations in American democracy and examines what we need to do to make it another 250 years. For this installment of our weekly series, If You Can Keep It, we discuss what we can learn about the future of American innovation and democracy by looking at its past.

1:26I'm Jen White. You're listening to the 1A Podcast. We'll be back with our guests in just a moment. Stay with us.

1:37Joining us in studio to discuss the project is CSPC President and CEO Glenn Nye. He's also a former Democratic representative from Virginia's 2nd Congressional District. Glenn, welcome to the program. Thank you for having me. Also with us is Lauren Harper. She's a Daniel Ellsberg Chair on Government Secrecy at the Freedom of the Press Foundation. That's an organization advocating for press and speech freedoms. Lauren, welcome back. Thank you for having me. So, Glenn, let's start with this project at your organization. It began as a project highlighting science and technology. What kinds of innovations did you look at and did you want to highlight in this report?

2:12We started our project about a year ago. We were thinking about ways to help Americans celebrate but also reflect on the meaning of our 250th year, which just began. And we decided to do two things. And one was we wanted to create a module called Life in 1776 that described the beginning. So what was it like at that time? What did people eat? What was transportation like? How did people vote? How did they communicate with each other and engage in commerce? So we created this module on our website at thepresidency.org to define what the beginning of the picture looked like. But then we decided we wanted to create several timelines that describe change and innovation over time.

2:56And as we began to research this project, we really realized that the arc of American history is a story of innovation and reform. We looked first at science and technology and some of the things that you mentioned, from going back to Ben Franklin's bifocals to changes that have built on our industrial and scientific knowledge over time, from interchangeable parts to vaccine technologies all the way to modern computers and space travel. So we wanted to show how Americans innovated and built on the successes over time to get us where we are today, but also to remind people that the progress is still going and that we want people to engage on this.

3:44And then we decided we wanted to do a focus on democracy because, as you mentioned, a lot of people are focused today, and they will be on the anniversary of the country, the 250th, which this year began on July 4th. They will be trying to understand how far we've come and where we need to go. So we created a timeline of innovations in democracy that covers some of those key moments in time in how we've changed our democracy. and we've also solicited inputs from the public and surveys that we've put out to try to get some additional ideas to put on that timeline. Well, for this conversation, I think we should focus in on some of those innovations.

4:27And Lauren, you focus on government secrecy and the Freedom of Information Act. It passed in 1967. What is its state and what makes it a significant innovation when we talk about American democracy? Sure. So I'm going to back up a little bit because FOIA takes place in the context of other things. But I think when I think about the state of our democracy and threats to it and what we can do, I think broadly about the dangerous levels of government secrecy that we're seeing. And I think the level that we're seeing now makes it very difficult and increasingly impossible for the public to have a say in what the executive branch is doing and for Congress to conduct oversight.

5:07And I think there have always been, for example, too much overclassification. We've always had issues with the way that FOIA has been implemented since its founding. But we're seeing increasing levels of hindrances to access to information at agencies that we don't just normally think of as being secretive, like defense and intelligence agencies. We're seeing it increasingly at agencies that are immigration agencies, are agencies that study the environment and healthcare, and things like that. And I think that's why having an effective tool like the Freedom of Information Act, which is the law that allows the public essentially to know what the executive branch is up to to be effective, is so important because at its best, FOIA allows the public to dictate what information becomes public and not the government.

5:53This is an inherently democratic idea, and it's one that's under threat. And I'll say that FOIA's implementation has been struggling for quite a long time. Backlogs have risen. Agency FOIA officers don't have access to their agency records, which makes it really difficult to respond to records requests. But right now, we're in a unique environment where we're starting to see the firing of entire FOIA offices outright. We've seen this happen at the Health and Human Services Department. We're also seeing other agencies like the State Department lay off large numbers of their FOIA staff. And we recently saw last week a report in the Washington Post that the director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, actually fired a FOIA official for facilitating the release of a document in response to one of my FOIA requests because this document embarrassed the government and basically undermined their assertions for invoking the Alien Enemies Act to deport Venezuelan nationals to El Salvador.

6:46So I think what we're seeing is the compounding of longstanding systemic problems with FOIA being met with intentional acts to make access to that information even more difficult. But there are things that Congress can do and we can talk about that more. Glenn, this brings me back to you because I can imagine looking at this timeline, you would come away with an overall optimistic view of American democracy. But as we're hearing from Lauren, innovations aren't necessarily permanent. Changes can be rolled back. But specifically around this question of government transparency, when you look at that timeline, how often are these innovations tied to the public understanding the inner workings of their government and pushing for change?

7:34Very often. And so I think what our research project shows and our democracy timeline will be published in the next two weeks shows that our history really is oftentimes reform in response to challenges that people perceive and mistakes that have been made or left open from the past. And so this idea of creating a more perfect union is very much part of that story. We haven't always gotten it right. We haven't gotten it perfect today. But I think the idea that reform is not only possible, it's tradition, is really one of the key takeaways of this timeline. That reform is actually the norm that Americans have visited with each other on the state of our democracy periodically and consistently throughout our history and decided what things needed to be fixed and changed and got about changing it.

8:24And we hope that one of the takeaways of this historical reflection will be to get us out of this binary of deciding, are we happy or sad with our current democracy, but rather have us focus on the innovations that have taken place in the past, the innovators that took the time and energy. And it was often hard to make change and to inspire ourselves to say, we not only can do that too, but we should do that too. We were charged by our founders with continually working towards a more perfect union. And it's our responsibility to build on what they did and make it better. Lauren, I see you nodding emphatically.

9:02And you said there are things Congress could do to shore up the concerns around government transparency. What are some of those things they could do? There certainly are. And I'll apologize for having a more pessimistic tone than Representative Nye. It's not my intention. But yeah, FOIA is a great example because it was passed in 1966. But we've seen a handful of amendments over the years that have helped FOIA adapt to current needs. And I think that there are plenty of ways that we can go from here. I think one timely example might be, you know, so for example, last week the budget bill was passed.

9:37And one of the things the budget bill did was it granted ICE$45 billion to expand its detention efforts. And a lot of this money will go towards housing detainees as they await to be deported. Now, it's worth noting that ICE is one of those agencies. Most of the work that it does in this area is contracting with private prisons and private detention facilities. These are not entities that are subject to FOIA. So one of the pieces of legislation that's been introduced in the past, and it should be introduced again, I think, is something called the Private Prisons Information Act, which would make these private facilities that do public work with public funds subject to FOIA.

10:16But there are other things as well. I mean, FOIA, which is our main tool for accessing information about the government, is not a funded mandate. The money from FOIA basically comes from other parts of the agency. Congress could explicitly call out funding for FOIA and reform efforts. And they could also do practical things like making sure that FOIA officers have access to the records across an agency so they basically don't have to ask somebody who's working in another bureau with another, you know, job description to basically respond to public records requests. And I just want to add here, we spent some time talking about FOIA and how accessible government information is to the public.

10:51And one of the concerns we heard from people who work in these offices filling FOIA requests is just the backlog and the lack of resources around meeting that mandate. James in Minneapolis sends this message. I can think of five things that would be the biggest threats to democracy in our time, and those would include the Citizens United, unlimited political donations, plurality, winner-take-all voting systems, the Supreme Court's lifetime appointments, generative AI, and a militarized police force. Thanks for that message. I want to talk about the state of American democracy, We got two messages that I think perhaps capture where much of the country is right now.

11:32First from Paul, who emails, I was eight years old in 1976. I distinctly remember a sense of excitement and optimism during our bicentennial celebration back then. Today, dread and anxiety feel like the prevailing sentiment. The existential threats of climate change, rising fascism, and an economy that strangles working families makes any celebration next year feel hollow. I believe good people can rise to meet the moment, but we're facing an uphill battle. We also heard from Britt, who emails, American democracy is functioning as it should. It is built to move slowly, resisting the whims of individuals and the demands of any single movement.

12:10People lean on slogans and platitudes, framing every disagreement as an existential threat. This kind of alarmist, performative rhetoric is corrosive, and it's time to leave it behind. So two different viewpoints of where the country is right now. But we should note that in 2024, the Economist Intelligence Unit, that's an analysis research group owned by The Economist, rated the U.S. a, quote, flawed democracy for the ninth year in a row. Overall, the U.S. ranked 29th out of 166 countries. So, Glenn, I'm curious to hear your reaction to that assessment of U.S. democracy, but also what we're hearing from people listening to our conversation today.

12:47There are serious reasons for concern about the state of our democracy today, no question. But I want to encourage Americans at this 250th year to be less focused on whether they're feeling optimistic or pessimistic and engage themselves more on the question of whether they're feeling hopeful. And the difference being hopeful means you believe it's possible to change. And if we gather together and we had an American dialogue about where we are and where we should be going, it's possible to fix it. That is the nature of hope. So one of your callers mentioned plurality winner take all voting as one of the challenges that leads to some of the discord that we see in our politics today.

13:28And I think that's a good example of something that fits on this timeline of change. OK, there are states like Alaska right now that are experimenting with innovations. They've adopted change in their voting system to deal with exactly that problem. to have a nonpartisan, everybody vote on the same ballot primary, and then a multi-candidate general election, which solves for this problem of the plurality winner take all by requiring you to get a majority of the vote to win. Now they have to use a runoff system to get to that majority. And we'll talk a little bit more about that later. Absolutely.

13:59That fits on the timeline. If you go back to the beginning of our timeline and look over the history of this country, have we changed things? Absolutely. Just look at how far we've come in terms of who's allowed to vote. Just thinking about suffrage, in the beginning, it was landed white males who were allowed to vote. It wasn't until the 1820s where all white males got that right. Amazingly, it took until 1920 until we universally had women's right to vote in this country protected. That's a long time. That was a change that was a long time coming. We finally got there. 1965, we visited again with the Voting Rights Act to try to protect Black Americans' access to voting.

14:41We've also made changes in how we vote. Secret balloting wasn't really widely practiced until the late 1880s. We didn't really have until about 1904 statewide political primaries that involved the direct participation of voters. Before that, it was just party bosses making those selections. I want to dig a little bit more into the Voting Rights Act in a moment, but Lauren, first, I just want to get your response before we go to break. Yeah, I think it's absolutely correct. Change is the constant. I think one of the existential issues that we're seeing right now in the executive branch is that it's very difficult to know what change is actually taking place.

15:20I think part of that is a result of information coming down from agency websites. Information is being destroyed outright in certain cases, and agencies that have a positive ripple effect in terms of what the public knows about what records, what's currently happening, like the National Archives are being underfunded and their staff being cut. So I think that there are certainly things that we can do to shed light on those changes. For example, we could amend the Federal Records Act to involve a private right of action to allow people and members of the public to actually file suit when records are being unlawfully destroyed.

15:53But I think the question of what change is being taken place is a fundamental one and one we need more insight at with executive branch agencies. Lots more to discuss about the state of American democracy ahead of next year's 250th anniversary of the founding of the country. So to come, what are the biggest threats to American democracy and what changes to American institutions need to be made to ensure another 250 years of democracy? That's just a hack.

16:23Let's get back to the conversation. Hanna, Glenn, you mentioned the Voting Rights Act. It was passed in 1965. It originally included a preclearance rule. It required jurisdictions with a history of discrimination to obtain federal approval in order to change voting policies. But then in 2013, Shelby County v. Holder, in that case, the Supreme Court eliminated that preclearance rule. And as of last year, at least 31 states have enacted over 100 new restrictive voting laws. And so that leads us to this question from David, who says there is and always has been very little democracy in the United States.

16:56Why aren't we talking about gerrymandering and voter suppression? How would you respond? He's put his finger on an absolutely important challenge to our democracy, and that is that we have allowed partisan politicians to make voting rules, and that has resulted in a lot of dysfunction and disaggregation of voters from the democratic process. And I think if you brought back the founders today and showed them our democracy and asked them to assess how far we'd come in 250 years, they would be absolutely appalled at how much we allow partisan interest to control the way we do elections. The fact that we allow voters, excuse me, politicians to choose their voters versus voters choosing the politicians is a very strange thing.

17:44It's an unusual thing about American politics. Most other countries would not allow for. It's basically akin to having the referees in a sporting match wearing the jerseys of one of the two teams. But is that part of the continuum when you look at the timeline? Has that always been the case, or has there been a shift in the way we practice politics in this country? Well, gerrymandering has existed for a long time, but there have been efforts since the mid-1950s to try to fix that, to create independent commissions, to take those partisan interests out of drawing boundaries. My home state of Virginia was the most recent state to create an independent commission process.

18:23It's still the minority among states, but there is progress being made on this timeline. We're getting better and better. But there are entrenched partisan interests, and they exist on both sides of the aisle, in keeping that power in the hands of political partisans because they get to control who gets to get on ballots and how elections work. It's not just the gerrymandering and the drawing of the districts. It's also how we do political primaries. In most states, they have some form of a closed primary where independent voters are not allowed to participate in a taxpayer-funded primary election.

18:56And the result is it's not just a lack of fairness. It leads to dysfunction. I'm a former representative in Congress, and I can tell you with great certainty that the incentives from our election system that have been created by partisan actors optimizing for partisan outcome in elections for party advantage have led to dysfunctions in Congress that people point to and say that is – there's a reason why we only have an 11 percent approval rating in Congress. and it creates public disillusionment. And a lot of it comes back to how we do elections. Again, the good news part of the story is this is changeable.

19:33It hasn't always been that case. Primaries have only been around with voters participating for just over 100 years. We can absolutely fix this if we make a decision to do it. And I encourage people to just go back and take a look at George Washington's warning again, going back to the beginning of the timeline. At the end of two terms as president, George Washington wrote a farewell address, which he shared thoughts with the country, reflections on what he had learned. And he was very specific in warning us about the perils of partisanship, what he also called factionalism. And what he said essentially was, if we let ourselves become so tied to our party identities, and we put that above our interest in the country's best interests, what will happen is the system will become dysfunctional because it requires cooperation.

20:20Dysfunction will lead to public disillusionment, and then people will look for an authoritarian-type leader who can break through that dysfunction and just get things done. I think we're finding a lot of evidence of that today. I want to bring you in here, Lauren, and in particular in response to this email we got from Sandra who says, my son recently shared an alarming bit of information with me. He told me that the people he works with have no idea what's going on in our country. They don't listen to the news. They're on their phones, on TikTok, or whatever. I think I'm beginning to understand the way authoritarianism can take hold in a society.

20:52Our democracy is a very precious thing. Unless more Americans understand that and educate themselves about our daily happenings and issues, those precious rights will not be there for us. Yeah, I mean, I think she's absolutely right. You know, I think we've always had an issue with secrecy in this country. And like a lot of bureaucracies, I don't think the U.S. federal government is unique. And one of the ways it practices self-preservation is to be too secretive. I don't think that's new. But I think one of the things that we're seeing right now is the exploitation of pre-existing loopholes and transparency.

21:26I think a good example of that right now, for example, is, you know, the Trump Presidential Library. You know, we've had presidential library and foundations for decades. But one of the things that we're seeing now is the Trump Presidential Foundation has already racked up almost half a billion dollars worth of donations to this library. $400 million of that is from a plane. There are tens of millions of other dollars that came from settlement money from companies like ABC and Paramount settling defamation suits with the president. But we know about these. My point is that we know about these because of public reporting and high stakes litigation.

22:02The rules around contributions to these kinds of private organizations that may or may not build a library are largely secretive. this allows the potential for corruption to flourish. And this is an area where Congress could certainly step in and pass legislation to require more transparency around donations to those. But I think one of the other things that's happening right now is that Congress is also being impacted by excessive secrecy in the executive branch. So for example, FOIA offices, which I spent some time talking about, are also usually the offices that are responding to members of Congress's requests for information and government accountability offices requests for information.

22:40So if you have a GAO request to the CDC, for example, about something, but the CDC doesn't have anyone staffed not only to respond to FOIA requests, but also to GAO requests, that kind of thing also inherently limits Congress's ability to conduct oversight. And so I think when we're looking at ways to improve our democracy, it makes sense to focus on these hubs like FOIA offices that get information not only to the public, but to members of Congress. I think we need to start thinking seriously when we talk about reforms to FOIA to make sure that those reforms include not only funding for FOIA, but more independence and authority.

23:18Well, I want to get to a couple of emails we got here from Beth, who says, As a historian who studies the revolutionary era, I strongly feel that America has much to celebrate as we approach the 250th, as well as a very mixed legacy with which to reckon. Under the current administration, national commemorations have been so twisted as to be unrecognizable to our founders. The nation as a whole needs to understand the complexities of our collective origins and strive to live into our founding ideals and extend freedom and opportunity to all Americans. That would be the best way to honor those who, over the past 250 years, have labored to make the United States a more perfect union.

23:55And then we also got this from Martina, who says, As an African-American, this is a complicated topic. I personally don't think America has done enough to address its history with holding a group of people behind a line for over 400 years. And there are some pockets of people who still go out of their way to continue holding certain groups of people back. America can be beautiful for all. It can be as strong as it pretends to be. It can truly be united. But what we don't address will continue to pop up again. The greatest threat to democracy, in my opinion, will always be hate groups. Racism and hate should be shunned from society.

24:29No one is free until we are all free. And I think both of those messages, Glenn, highlight the fact that the U.S.'s history is very complicated. And there have been structural inequities that live alongside the innovations you outline on that timeline. So how are you in this project grappling with the question of not just the successes the country has enjoyed or the innovations in democracy we've seen, but the fact that often those innovations didn't apply to everyone? Absolutely. It is important to consider ourselves in the middle of a timeline, not at the end of it. I think sometimes human nature is such that we look back at changes that happened before us and we just simply assess where we are today and we decide if we're happy or sad.

25:23And again, one of the major takeaway points of our project is to encourage people to see this timeline for the purposes not of simply patting ourselves on the back for the great things and changes and reforms and innovations that Americans have done before us to get us to 250 years, which is a milestone worth celebrating. We are a unique country in many ways, and we should celebrate that. But we should also use this as an opportunity to reflect on what else we need to do. Again, see ourselves as part of a continuum, a timeline that will go on from here, but only if we choose to do what the people before us did, and that is to engage on this series of reforms to try to continue to make a more perfect union, to make it better.