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Happy 250th Birthday, American Democracy—You're Under Attack!
The lesson of 250 years: Democracy is hard won and may be easily lost unless we are vigilant in protecting it.
Jul 04, 2026
This Fourth of July marks the 250th birthday of a new kind of nation state — based not on ancestral ties to a land or on the territorial reach of monarchs, but on shared principles about the rights of citizens and the purpose of the state.
The Founding Fathers set forth those principles in the Declaration of Independence: “All men are created equal” and have “unalienable Rights [to] Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” To “secure these rights,” Jefferson wrote, the government must “derive just powers from the consent of the governed.”
America has come a long way over two and a half centuries, but today we face a grave challenge from within — and especially from our own leaders.
Of course, those founding ideas have always been more aspiration than reality. In a sense the Declaration of Independence was an invitation to struggle over the inequalities that marred the new nation: slavery and white supremacy, the subjugation of Native peoples, the legal subordination of women, the limitation of voting rights to the well-off.
In the course of 250 years, those struggles have achieved tremendous progress.
A bloody Civil War won what Lincoln called “a new birth of freedom.” Slavery was abolished and the Constitution amended to strengthen the government’s ability to safeguard the rights of African Americans and other people.
Women were eventually enfranchised and achieved formal legal equality. The lawless subordination and genocides of Native Americans were eventually recognized as the evils they are. The Civil Rights Movement repealed American apartheid and restored rights that had been stripped away.
But equality and democracy are openly contested today in a manner not seen in a century. Those who oppose the Founding Fathers’ fundamental values are using our government to attack equality and democracy. The good news is that tens of millions of Americans are fighting back.
America is and always has been a nation of diverse peoples — a multi-ethnic, multi-racial mix — and that is what the Framers and their successors had in mind.
Indeed, the Declaration of Independence complained that the King obstructed the “Naturalization of Foreigners” and failed to “encourage migration hither.” Enslavers brought millions of Africans to our shores, and America became their land as well. National expansion westward incorporated French, Spanish, and Mexican peoples into America, too.
But today the Trump regime seeks to erase the diversity essential to our national character. White supremacy and white nationalism are threads running through nearly every policy — from ending civil rights enforcement to discriminating against African-American military leaders, terminating refugee programs for nonwhites, slandering Haitians, and calling Hispanic migrants “the worst of the worst.”
Free elections, majority rule, and democracy itself are Trump’s targets — from his efforts to overturn the 2020 election to his unrelenting assault on voting rights and representation today.
Today, gerrymanders demanded by Trump are likely to eliminate one third of African-American members of Congress. The Supreme Court has erased the protections of the Voting Rights Act. Evidence-free voter suppression laws are making it more difficult for eligible voters to cast their ballots, while Trump seeks to outlaw voting by mail and his backers threaten to deploy ICE to intimidate midterm voters.
On this 250th anniversary of our first struggle for American freedom and democracy, Americans are fighting back against this war on what makes America America — in the voting booth, in the courts, in the streets, and in our hearts.
The lesson of 250 years: Democracy is hard won and may be easily lost unless we are vigilant in protecting it. The vision of our Founding Fathers depends on you, me, and all of us to safeguard it.
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'Feels Very 1984': ICE Agents Push Poll Worker to Delete Post Calling for Charges Against Renee Good Killer
"ICE agents entered a polling place to intimidate a worker about her social media posts," said a civil liberties advocate.
Jun 25, 2026
A poll worker in Syracuse, New York said she was left unsettled after a pair of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents showed up at her polling place to tell her to delete Instagram content calling for the indictment of the agent who shot Renee Good in January.
The worker, Paigelynne Gonyea, was in the middle of her shift during Tuesday's elections in New York when she received a phone message from someone who identified himself as Dave Brody, a special agent with the Department of Homeland Security.
He said agents "were just by" her apartment and had spoken to her husband about a post in which she "doxxed an ICE agent back in January."
Gonyea said the agents were referring to a post she made on January 8, 2026, the day after an ICE agent shot and killed Good, a 37-year-old mother and US citizen, in Minneapolis. The post contained an image of the masked agent, who had at that point been identified as Jonathan Ross by the Minnesota Star Tribune.
"The ICE agent who shot and killed Renee Good in broad daylight has been identified as Jonathan Ross by the Minnesota Star Tribune," the post read. "I think today is a great day for Jonathan to be indicted!"
Gonyea said she could not leave her job working the polls to speak with the agents, so she told them to come to her polling place. "They knew I was a poll site worker and still came in," she said.
Referencing what happened to Good, she said she refused to meet with the agents outside alone.
“I’ve seen the news, especially in Minnesota,” she said. “And I didn’t want anything to happen to me at all.”
Video of the encounter, shot by another employee, shows the two agents entering the polling site at Central Library on Salina Street.
The agents handed Gonyea a form letter that read, "YOU MAY BE IN VIOLATION OF FEDERAL LAW."
The form, which Gonyea posted, said ICE's Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) had identified a post on Gonyea's account that it believed "may constitute a violation" of federal law.
The notice informed her that "it is unlawful to threaten to assault, kidnap, and/or murder a federal official" and that "knowingly making restricted personal information about a covered person, or their immediate family member, publicly available with the intent to threaten, intimidate, or incite the commission of a crime" was also illegal. It said violating these laws could subject her to state and federal prosecution.
The letter directed her to "promptly remove and/or discontinue the aforementioned behavior." It warned her that receipt of the notice "will be taken into consideration, should you continue to be involved in any criminal activities described above."
Gonyea told Syracuse.com that the agents presented her with copies of her social media posts and her driver's license and that "they tried to scare me into signing" the document "while I was working."
She refused to sign the notice despite continued pressure from the agents.
Gonyea was emphatic that her post—which only repeated publicly reported information—did not violate the law.
“I didn’t dox his personal information, such as address, phone number,” she said, adding that she would not remove the post.
Gonyea has discussed the case with the New York Board of Elections and the attorney general’s civil rights office, and she said she has contacted US Rep. John Mannion (D-NY), Syracuse Mayor Sharon Owens, and the New York Civil Liberties Union.
She has created a GoFundMe page to pay for potential legal expenses.
“For ICE to come to me over a social media post just feels very 1984 to me,” Gonyea said. “They definitely should have known better to not go into a polling place, even if I said it was OK.”
In a post on her GoFundMe page, Gonyea described the incident as a "pretty unsettling run-in."
"It’s the kind of situation that makes you stop and think about free speech and how far government authority can go. Honestly, it shook me, and I don’t think it’s something that should just be brushed off," she said. "It just doesn’t sit right with me."
Dustin Czarny, the election commissioner for Onondaga County, emphasized that federal law only allows specific people to enter polling places during elections—including poll workers, elections inspectors, voters eligible to vote at the site, and someone a voter brought to assist them in voting
Federal law specifies that it is unlawful for anyone in federal service to send “troops or armed men” to places where elections are held.
“There’s no role for law enforcement officials to be inside a polling place unless they are responding to an emergency of some kind,” Czarny said. “There is no indication of that here.”
Despite this, Trump administration officials have indicated a desire to send ICE agents to polling places on election day during the 2026 midterms.
Then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in February that her department had been "proactive to make sure we have the right people voting" in elections. In March, then-Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche asked at a conservative political conference, "Why is there objection to sending ICE officers to polling places?” adding, "Illegals can't vote. It doesn't make any sense."
Trump refused to rule out the possibility when asked about it by reporters in May, saying he'd "do anything necessary to make sure we have honest elections."
Critics of ICE have described agents' demands for Gonyea to remove political speech as a worrying new frontier for the agency's encroachments on civil liberties.
"ICE agents entered a polling place to intimidate a worker about her social media posts," said David J. Bier, the director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute. "Wouldn't you quit before you carried out an order to do this?"
"Americans refuse to be intimidated by these government criminals who hate the Constitution," he added. "Normal people want accountability, not impunity for killing Americans unnecessarily."
"But it’s not enough for ICE to disagree; they need to stamp out dissent," he said. "I know they monitor my social media. You should know that they’re monitoring yours too."
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GOP Governor Landry Blasted for Throwing Out 45,000 Votes in Louisiana With a 'Smirk and a Chuckle’
"It’s not a big deal," Landry said after casually announcing that legally cast ballots were "discarded" after he suspended elections.
May 12, 2026
Louisiana's Republican Gov. Jeff Landry is facing criticism over his blasé admission that tens of thousands of Louisianans would have their legally cast ballots thrown out after he suspended the state's primary elections.
Landry signed an executive order suspending the state's May 16 and June 27 primaries immediately after the US Supreme Court’s landmark decision in late April, which held that the state’s maps guaranteeing districts representing the state's Black residents constituted “an unconstitutional racial gerrymander."
The ruling in Louisiana v. Callais effectively destroyed Section 2 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act and set the stage for the GOP to draw new districts that could totally wipe out the electoral power of Louisiana's Black population, which makes up about one-third of the state, and do the same across the country.
Declaring a "state of emergency," the governor announced that elections were suspended just as early voting was set to begin, leading many to conclude that the right-wing high court's ruling was timed to allow Republicans to maximize their power as they enter this year's midterms.
In an interview with "60 Minutes" on Sunday night, Landry was asked by anchor Cecilia Vega about the unprecedented decision to suspend the election and what would happen to the roughly 45,000 mail ballots cast before the order went into effect.
Landry contended that he had no choice but to suspend the elections because "we don't have a map that our voters can vote on" as a result of the court's ruling.
Vega noted that during times of much greater strife, including "during the Civil War, during two world wars, elections still went on."
"We'll have an election, and we're actually going to have an election on Election Day," Landry responded, in an apparent shot at those who cast their votes early.
"But voting was already happening," Vega said. "More than 45,000 ballots have been returned. What happens to those?"
Landry said, "Those ballots are discarded, and those voters will vote again in November." (Notably, Landry's order does not delay primary elections until November, but until July 15 or whenever the legislature enacts new maps.)
Vega responded with incredulity at the governor's casual acknowledgment that the state would simply throw out tens of thousands of legally cast votes.
“You say that like it’s not a big deal,” she said.
“Well, it’s not a big deal,” Landry responded. “It’s not my fault. If anyone has a grievance, take it to the United States Supreme Court.”
The voting rights-focused news outlet Democracy Docket responded to Landry on social media: "It is a big deal to the 45,000 voters whose ballots you trashed. It’s also your fault."
They echoed the words of Rep. Cleo Fields (D-La.), whose majority Black 6th congressional district in Baton Rouge is expected to be chopped up by the GOP, and who has joined a lawsuit with other candidates hoping to stop Landry's suspension of elections.
“The Supreme Court ruled that the map that you created, that this legislature created, and this governor signed, was illegal,” Fields said to Landry on Monday. "The Supreme Court did not say, ‘Throw away those ballots.’"
The decision to suspend Louisiana’s primary comes amid a multi-pronged assault on voting rights coming from the administration of President Donald Trump, who has himself repeatedly floated the idea of canceling elections and praised Landry for “moving so quickly” to block his constituents from voting.
But many were particularly shocked at Landry's apparent ho-hum attitude toward mass disenfranchisement.
Civil rights attorney and public defender Scott Hechinger marveled at the “governor of Louisiana throwing out 45,000 votes with a smug smirk and a chuckle.”
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