One of the greatest rights afforded to us as Americans is the right to choose our leaders and determine the direction of our communities. It is a right that generations before us fought to secure, defended at tremendous cost, and worked to extend to more and more of our fellow citizens. It is also a responsibility we should never take for granted.

Today is Election Day in Wisconsin, and across the country. Voters across our state will decide who serves in the governor’s office, who represents us in the state legislature and in Congress, and whether three proposed amendments to our state constitution should be adopted. These decisions will shape our schools, our cities and villages, our economy, our environment, our civil rights, and the opportunities available to the next generation. These are not abstract questions for political insiders. They affect our families, our neighbors, and the communities we call home.

As mayor, I see the importance of civic participation every day. Local government works best when residents pay attention, ask questions, share their perspectives, and participate in decisions that affect their lives. The same principle applies at every level of government. Democracy is strongest when people understand that their voices matter and use them. Voting is how we turn our individual voices into a collective decision about our future.

I recognize that many people are frustrated with politics. They see the partisan fighting, the personal attacks, and the seemingly endless campaigns. Some have concluded that their vote does not make a difference. Others believe the political system is so broken that participating in it is no longer worthwhile. I understand the frustration. But I believe withdrawing from our democracy only makes it easier for others to decide our future for us.

If we want better schools, safer neighborhoods, more affordable housing, responsible government, and an economy that works for working families, we have to participate in choosing the people responsible for making those things possible. We cannot complain about the direction of government while surrendering our opportunity to influence it.

Voting does not guarantee that our preferred candidates will win. Nor does it mean we will always agree with the decisions elected officials make. Democracy is not a promise that we will get everything we want. It is a commitment that we will have a voice in deciding what happens next.

And that commitment extends beyond Election Day. Being a dutiful citizen means staying informed, listening to people with whom we disagree, holding elected officials accountable, serving our communities, and treating our neighbors as fellow citizens rather than political adversaries.

Today, I will be casting my vote for David Crowley for Governor, Josh Kaul for Attorney General, JoCasta Zamarripa for Secretary of State, and Yee Leng Xiong for State Treasurer. I believe these candidates offer Wisconsin the leadership and priorities our state needs. I encourage voters to learn about these candidates, consider the choices before them, and make their own informed decisions. I am also voting NO on all three constitutional amendments.

Whatever your political preferences, I hope you will join me in taking the time to vote. Look beyond the headlines and campaign rhetoric. Consider what matters most to you, your family, and your community. And remember that the constitutional amendments on today’s ballot deserve your attention, too.

Our democracy belongs to all of us. It is not something we can leave to politicians, political parties, or people with the loudest voices. It depends on ordinary citizens choosing to participate, even when the process is frustrating and the stakes are high.

I have spent much of my professional life in public service, and one lesson has remained constant: communities are better when people take responsibility for their future rather than waiting for someone else to do it for them. Today is our opportunity to do exactly that.

If you have not voted already, make a plan to get to the polls. Encourage your family members, friends, and neighbors to do the same. Then, whatever the results, wake up tomorrow ready to continue the work of building a better community and a stronger democracy.

The right to vote is a gift. Exercising that right is one of the most important duties we have as citizens. Please vote.

As Americans prepare to vote, we should consider not only what the two major political parties promise, but how they ask us to think about our country and our neighbors.

For decades, Republican campaigns have repeatedly identified a group of people to blame for the problems facing America. Gay marriage. Transgender athletes. Immigrants. Communists. The targets change, but the strategy remains remarkably consistent: convince voters that their lives would be better if someone else had fewer rights, less acceptance, or less opportunity.

It is a politics built on fear. If people are anxious about the economy, their safety, or their children’s future, give them someone to blame. Tell them that the real problem isn’t the decisions being made in government, but the people who supposedly threaten their way of life.

Democrats offer a different vision, even when our political rhetoric doesn’t always live up to it. Our central argument is that government can help people build better lives, and that we all benefit when our neighbors have the opportunity to succeed.

We want strong public schools that prepare every child for the future. We want affordable health care so an unexpected diagnosis doesn’t bankrupt a family. We want good-paying jobs, reliable infrastructure, and an economy that works for working people. We want international alliances that make our country safer than it would be standing alone.

These aren’t benefits reserved for one group of Americans. They’re investments in our shared future.

Consider Joe Biden’s presidency. When he took office in January 2021, the country was still struggling through a global pandemic. His administration responded with an ambitious agenda to rebuild the economy and modernize America.

Federal investments helped rebuild roads and bridges, expand broadband access, upgrade water systems to address contaminants such as PFAS, support clean energy, strengthen domestic semiconductor manufacturing, and improve passenger rail service. These investments were intended to create jobs, strengthen American industries, and improve daily life for people across the country.

The argument wasn’t that one group of Americans deserved these improvements at the expense of another. It was that investing in our country could make life better for millions of people. Investing in infrastructure and long-term solutions does not manifest itself in time for the next election but it creates a lasting legacy. Many of the Biden-era projects are still under construction today, and Trump and Republicans are taking credit for them.

Donald Trump’s successful 2024 campaign took a different approach. Immigrants were portrayed as a threat to American communities and economic security. “They’re eating the dogs; they’re eating the cats.” His campaign used racialized appeals to voters’ fears and made transgender people a political target. One advertisement declared, “Kamala Harris is for they/them. President Trump is for you.”

The message was unmistakable: some Americans belong, and others are a threat.

Here in Wisconsin, we have another reason to consider the difference between political rhetoric and governing priorities. Republicans have controlled the state legislature for 16 years. For the past eight, we have had a Democratic governor, Tony Evers, who has repeatedly faced a legislature unwilling to fund or support much of his agenda.

Wisconsin’s public schools have struggled with funding decisions that have left communities fighting to maintain educational quality. Public employees endured significant compensation cuts under Scott Walker, with some workers facing losses of up to 20%, and many have struggled to keep pace with inflation since then. Local governments have also watched the state repeatedly retreat from its responsibility to help pay for essential services.

As a mayor, I see the consequences firsthand. Glendale’s annual budget has about 1% of its funding come from the state. The rest comes largely from property taxes, fees for services such as building permits and water, and limited federal assistance for mandated programs.

That is the reality of local government finance. We are expected to provide police protection, fire and rescue services, maintain roads, and deliver the everyday services residents depend on, while the state provides remarkably little direct financial support.

Republicans have spent years criticizing Democrats over the phrase “defund the police.” Yet their own decisions to restrict state support for municipalities have made it increasingly difficult for communities to pay for police officers, firefighters, and other essential services. Whatever the rhetoric, the practical result is that local governments must do more with fewer resources.

Perhaps it is time for Wisconsin voters to give Democrats control of the legislature and statewide offices, allowing them to repair the damage of the past 16 years and demonstrate what a more collaborative approach to governing can accomplish.

Tomorrow, as we approach Election Day, I hope we remember that our neighbors aren’t the enemy. The family struggling to afford groceries, the worker worried about health insurance, and the parent concerned about a child’s education all have legitimate needs, regardless of how they vote.

We can campaign by exploiting those anxieties and directing them at one another. Or we can offer solutions that recognize our common interests and bring people together.

The choice is between a politics that grows stronger by finding people to blame and a society that grows stronger by finding ways to help people succeed. I know which one I want to lead our communities and our country. I’m voting BLUE.

Whenever the economy struggles, the president gets the blame. Voters see higher prices, shrinking savings, and uncertainty about their financial future. They look to the White House for answers. The president’s party often pays the price at the ballot box, whether or not the president’s decisions actually caused the problem.

There’s a good reason to be skeptical of that instinct. Many presidential policies affect the economy gradually. Infrastructure spending, tax changes, and regulatory reforms can take years to influence productivity, wages, and investment. Meanwhile, economic conditions are also shaped by global events, Federal Reserve policy, and decisions made long before a president takes office.

But some presidential decisions have a much more immediate effect. Donald Trump has made two that illustrate the point: sweeping tariffs, and a war with Iran that has disrupted global energy supplies.

Let’s start with tariffs. A tariff is a tax on imported goods, generally collected from the American business bringing those goods into the country. When the tax increases the importer’s costs, the business has three basic options: absorb the cost through lower profit margins, negotiate lower prices with its supplier, or pass on some of the increase to its customers.

When businesses pass those costs along, the effects spread through the economy. Imported consumer goods become more expensive. American manufacturers that rely on imported components face higher production costs. Domestic competitors may raise their prices, too, because foreign products have become more expensive.

The result is upward pressure on consumer prices. The size and timing of that effect depend on the product, the availability of substitutes, and how much of the added cost businesses pass along. But the underlying mechanism is straightforward: a tax on imported inputs can increase the cost of finished goods sold to American households.

Then there is uncertainty. When the administration announces tariffs, changes the rates, grants exemptions, delays implementation, or faces legal challenges, businesses cannot confidently calculate future costs. Some postpone investment and hiring. Others build in price increases to protect themselves against the risk of another policy change. Uncertainty does not automatically cause inflation, but it can discourage investment and add to the costs businesses face.

Now add the war with Iran. The Strait of Hormuz is a critical passage for global oil and liquefied natural gas shipments. When the war and the resulting security crisis sharply restrict shipping through the strait, less energy reaches the world market than would otherwise be available.

The causal chain is direct: disrupted shipping reduces the supply of oil available to buyers; buyers compete for the remaining supply; global oil prices rise; and the cost of gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, and other petroleum products increases.

The United States does not have to import the specific barrels stranded in the Persian Gulf to feel the consequences. Oil is traded in a global market. When a major source of supply becomes inaccessible, buyers elsewhere compete for alternative supplies, and prices adjust internationally.

Higher oil prices then work their way into the broader economy. Trucking companies pay more for diesel. Airlines face higher jet-fuel bills. Farmers pay more for fuel and, potentially, for energy-intensive fertilizers. Manufacturers face higher costs for production, packaging, and transportation. Businesses absorb some of these increases, but others are passed on to customers through higher prices for goods and services. That is how an oil shock can spread well beyond the gas station.

There is an important economic distinction here. A tariff or oil-price spike can raise the overall price level without necessarily producing permanently higher inflation. Sustained inflation occurs when prices continue rising over time. But if higher costs arrive in successive waves, spread through supply chains, and become embedded in prices and expectations, the initial shock can make the inflation problem harder to resolve.

Now consider what happens when both shocks arrive together. Tariffs raise the cost of imported goods and production inputs. The disruption of oil shipments raises energy and transportation costs. Businesses face pressure from both directions, while households have less money left to spend on other things.

These are not the only causes of inflation, and the precise contribution of each policy must be measured against actual price data. But the economic pathways are clear and foreseeable.

Congress has a role, too. Republicans control both chambers of Congress. Lawmakers have tools to challenge the president’s trade policies, conduct oversight, and exercise Congress’s constitutional authority over military action. When congressional Republicans block meaningful constraints on the administration, they help preserve the policies and the risks those policies create.

On Tuesday, November 3, Trump himself will not be on the ballot. All 435 House seats and roughly one-third of Senate seats will be contested. Voters will have an opportunity to evaluate not only the president’s decisions but also the records of the lawmakers who supported his agenda or declined to challenge it.

Presidents cannot control every economic outcome. But they can impose taxes that raise costs, introduce uncertainty that discourages investment, and make decisions that disrupt critical global energy supplies.

Usually, blaming a president for the economy is politically convenient but economically simplistic. This time, the causal connections are much more direct. Trump’s tariff policies have raised costs and created uncertainty. His decision to wage war against Iran has contributed to a disruption of global energy supplies, with consequences for fuel prices and the cost of moving goods.

And congressional Republicans have had opportunities to challenge these choices. The responsibility for the economic consequences belongs not simply to the person in the White House, but also to the elected officials who have enabled his policies.

Wisconsin is in the middle of one of those election seasons when it can feel as though we’re living in two entirely different states. The race for governor is heated. Control of the state legislature is at stake. Several competitive congressional races could help determine which party controls the U.S. House. Drive through some neighborhoods, and the yard signs can make it seem as though neighbors have little in common beyond their shared property lines. Political divisions have found their way into our front yards, our conversations, and sometimes our relationships.

And then there’s the Milwaukee Brewers. The Brewers have won the World Series, and suddenly, Wisconsinites have something to celebrate together. All around town, Brewers gear has become the unofficial uniform for the last few weeks. People who disagree about how our state and country should be governed are united by the joy of watching their hometown team become world champions.

Perhaps nothing captures that excitement better than what happened at American Family Field. While the Brewers played three World Series games on the road in Tampa, the home ballpark sold out as fans gathered to watch the action on the enormous scoreboard. Thousands of people came to a stadium where the game wasn’t even being played. They wanted the ballpark experience: the familiar music, the collective groans after a missed opportunity, and the roar of a crowd celebrating a big hit.

They wanted to experience it together. Sports have a remarkable ability to bring people together across the divisions that otherwise seem to define us. We see it during the World Cup, when people rally behind their national teams, and during the Olympics, when athletes give us reasons to cheer regardless of where we come from. Here in Wisconsin, the Brewers have given us that same opportunity.

The magic isn’t that sports make our differences disappear. They don’t. Our disagreements about taxes, education, healthcare, immigration, and the direction of our state and country are real. They matter, and we shouldn’t pretend otherwise. The magic is that sports remind us our differences aren’t the only things we share.

As a mayor, I’ve spent years thinking about what holds a community together. Local government provides one answer. We need good roads, reliable emergency services, clean water, parks, good schools, and places to gather. These are things we build and maintain together, regardless of how we vote. But a community is more than the services its government provides. It’s also the relationships we develop and the experiences that remind us we’re part of something larger than ourselves.

The Brewers have given us one of those experiences. For a little while, we’re not Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives, or supporters of one candidate against another. We’re Brewers fans. That shared identity offers a useful lesson for a state heading toward a consequential election. It’s easy to see political opponents as fundamentally different from us when most of what we hear about them comes through campaign advertisements, partisan commentary, and social media arguments. It’s harder to maintain that distance when we’re standing next to someone, celebrating the same home run or agonizing over the same close play.

For a moment, we’re not trying to persuade one another. We’re simply sharing an experience. That doesn’t resolve our disagreements or eliminate our responsibility to advocate for the policies we believe are right. But it can remind us that someone who votes differently can still be our neighbor, our friend, and someone with whom we share a great deal.

We don’t need to wait for a championship to put that lesson into practice. We can talk to the neighbor whose yard sign supports another candidate. We can get to know the person behind the political label. We can look for opportunities to work together before assuming our differences make cooperation impossible.

A World Series championship can’t repair every fracture in our civic life. But the excitement surrounding the Brewers has reminded us what it feels like to belong to something together. Perhaps that’s where rebuilding community begins: not by pretending we agree, but by recognizing that we don’t have to agree on everything to appreciate one another, share a little joy, or work toward common goals.

So let’s celebrate the Brewers’ championship. And when the celebration fades, let’s carry some of that spirit into our neighborhoods and our civic lives. After all, there’s no Republican or Democratic way to cheer for a home run. Sometimes, we just need to remember how much we have in common before we forget how to be neighbors.

Go Brewers!

One of the most dangerous things a government can do is convince its people that everybody in government is corrupt. It is a remarkably effective strategy. Accuse your political opponents of the very misconduct you engage in yourself. Exaggerate or invent claims about government wrongdoing. Point to examples of corruption from previous administrations and insist that they prove “everyone” is doing it. Eventually, people stop trying to distinguish between those who abuse their power and those who are trying to hold them accountable.

They become cynical. They stop expecting better. And the people who actually are corrupt get precisely what they want. When everyone is presumed guilty, accountability becomes much harder.

American government has never been free of corruption. There have always been politicians who abused their offices, officials who enriched themselves, and public servants who violated the public’s trust. But our system has also demonstrated an ability to identify wrongdoing, investigate it, prosecute offenders, and secure convictions. Those cases were not proof that corruption was universal. They were evidence that accountability could work.

The Trump administration is presenting Americans with a very different picture. Start with the president himself. According to his 2025 financial disclosures, Donald Trump reported more than $1.4 billion in income from cryptocurrency ventures, including the $TRUMP meme coin and World Liberty Financial. These ventures raise profound questions about conflicts of interest when a sitting president profits from an industry affected by his administration’s policies. Reuters has also reported that Trump’s family crypto ventures generated substantial revenue while outside investors suffered significant losses.

Then consider Corey Lewandowski, a Trump ally who served as a senior adviser at the Department of Homeland Security. The Justice Department is now investigating allegations that he improperly profited from his government role and influenced federal contract decisions. Lewandowski denies wrongdoing, and the investigation has not established his guilt. But the fact that such serious allegations concern someone with access to the machinery of federal government deserves public scrutiny.

Consider, too, Alina Habba, Trump’s former personal attorney, whom he appointed to a senior White House role before selecting her to lead the federal prosecutor’s office in New Jersey. Her appointment raised questions about the independence of federal law enforcement when personal loyalty to the president becomes a prominent qualification for public office.

There are also questions about possible pay-to-play arrangements involving presidential pardons, financial relationships with political insiders, and allegations of improper stock trading by members of Congress. These matters deserve investigation and evidence-based conclusions, not assumptions of guilt. But they also deserve more than a shrug and the assertion that “everyone in Washington does it.”

And that is the point. Trump and his allies have spent years insisting that previous investigations into corruption prove the entire system is rigged. They point to misconduct by individual officials as evidence that their own conduct should not be scrutinized. Yet the prosecution of a corrupt official is evidence of a system attempting to work, not proof that the system is irredeemably corrupt.

The difference is whether wrongdoing is investigated or excused, whether independent institutions are allowed to do their jobs or pressured to protect political allies, and whether the people in power are held to the same standards as everyone else.

When a government investigates its own officials, demands transparency, and allows prosecutors and courts to operate independently, it demonstrates that accountability is possible. When it dismisses allegations against allies, attacks investigators, and treats scrutiny as persecution, it sends the opposite message.

The greatest danger is not simply that individual politicians might enrich themselves. It is that Americans will eventually conclude that honesty is pointless, that public service is inherently dishonest, and that nothing can be done to change the system.

That cynicism serves the corrupt. If voters believe everybody does it, they have little reason to demand better from anyone. If every investigation is dismissed as partisan, there is no longer a shared standard for accountability.

A corrupt government doesn’t need everyone to participate in corruption. It only needs enough people to believe that corruption is inevitable. Our democracy depends on rejecting that premise. Not every politician is corrupt. Not every investigation is political. And not every public servant is looking for a way to profit from public office.

We should demand evidence, insist on due process, and hold officials accountable regardless of party. We should also recognize that the institutions designed to investigate and prosecute corruption must be independent enough to pursue wrongdoing even when it leads to the president’s closest allies, or even the president himself.

The answer to corruption is not cynicism. It is accountability. And the moment we stop believing accountability is possible is the moment those who abuse public power become most secure in their positions.

Donald Trump and his MAGA allies have spent years accusing Democrats of weaponizing the federal government against them. Their argument is straightforward: Trump and his associates were investigated, prosecuted, and, in some cases, convicted because Democrats wanted to destroy their political movement.

But what does it actually mean to weaponize government? And how do we distinguish political persecution from legitimate law enforcement?

The simplest definition of “weaponization of government” is using the power and machinery of government to punish political opponents rather than to enforce the law fairly. Being investigated by someone from another political party does not, by itself, constitute weaponization.

Consider Trump’s own legal history. Some investigations into his conduct and that of his associates began while he was president. In New York, Trump was convicted of criminal offenses by a jury after hearing evidence and arguments from both the prosecution and the defense. We can debate individual prosecutorial decisions, but a conviction does not become political persecution simply because the defendant is a politician, especially when a jury is involved in the decision-making.

If you commit a crime and a prosecutor from the opposing party brings a legitimate case against you, is that weaponization? Of course not. The relevant questions are whether the law was applied fairly, whether evidence supported the charges, and whether the defendant received due process.

Now apply that same standard to what we are seeing under Trump today. The administration has pursued investigations and prosecutions targeting prominent political adversaries, including New York Attorney General Letitia James, California Senator Adam Schiff, former FBI Director James Comey, and former Trump adviser John Bolton. Each case deserves scrutiny on its own merits. But when a president publicly attacks his perceived enemies and his administration subsequently directs law enforcement toward them, legitimate questions arise about whether justice or political retaliation is driving those actions.

Weaponization extends well beyond criminal prosecution. Consider the administration’s immigration enforcement operations. Federal agents have surged into Democratic-led cities, including Chicago, Minneapolis, Los Angeles, and communities in Connecticut, conducting aggressive operations that have disrupted families, frightened immigrant communities, and raised serious questions about racial profiling and the treatment of people who have not been convicted of crimes. The administration defends these operations as necessary immigration enforcement. Yet the concentration of highly visible operations in Democratic-led communities raises a fundamental question: Are federal enforcement resources being deployed according to consistent national priorities, or are they also being used to intimidate communities whose residents and elected leaders oppose Trump?

When immigrant families live in fear of sending their children to school, when people are detained in public spaces, and when communities of color feel singled out, the consequences extend far beyond immigration policy. Enforcement that is perceived as politically selective undermines public trust in the institutions responsible for protecting everyone.

The same concerns apply to elections. The Justice Department recently announced plans to deploy approximately 1,000 election monitors nationwide for the November 3 midterms. Election monitoring itself is not new; the department has historically sent observers to help protect voting rights. But the scale of this year’s deployment, combined with the administration’s emphasis on alleged noncitizen voting and election fraud, has raised concerns among state and local officials. Recent announcements have identified heavily Democratic jurisdictions, including Detroit and other Michigan cities, as well as Philadelphia and other Pennsylvania communities.

Meanwhile, the Justice Department is demanding that California counties investigate thousands of people the federal government suspects may be noncitizens on voter rolls, despite state officials’ objections that the government has not provided adequate evidence to support its allegations.

If Democrats make substantial gains in the midterms, we should expect intense scrutiny of the results and potentially additional lawsuits challenging election procedures or alleging fraud. Those challenges must be judged on their evidence, not their political origins. But a government that repeatedly raises unsupported allegations, threatens election officials, and uses federal authority to pressure jurisdictions that oppose the president risks turning election administration into another instrument of partisan conflict.

Add to this the administration’s efforts to withhold federal funding from disfavored communities, challenge Democratic-led states in court, and pursue partisan advantages through redistricting. Taken together, these actions raise a larger question about whether the machinery of government is being used to serve the public or to strengthen one party’s hold on power.

The people targeted by politically motivated investigations face a punishment even when charges fail: legal bills, reputational damage, years of uncertainty, and the diversion of resources from their public service. The process itself can become the penalty.

We should apply the same standards to Democrats and Republicans. Investigations should follow evidence. Prosecutors should enforce laws impartially. Election officials should be free to administer elections without intimidation. Federal funding should not be a political reward, and immigration enforcement should operate under consistent legal standards.

The ultimate test is simple: Is government pursuing justice, or is it pursuing enemies?

Trump and his allies insist they were victims of weaponization. Yet when a president uses the institutions of government to target political adversaries, pressure communities that oppose him, and cast doubt on elections before votes are counted, the accusation deserves to be turned around and examined.

In a democracy, the law must be bigger than the president, bigger than any political party, and bigger than the desire for revenge. The government belongs to all of us. Its power should never become a weapon for one political faction to wield against the rest of the country.

“Triggered” and “safe space.” We have begun using both terms so casually that we have stripped them of their meaning. Being uncomfortable is not the same as being triggered. Neither is having a strong emotional reaction.

I know this distinction personally. I am a trauma survivor. I spent years in therapy working through the effects of childhood sexual abuse. Therapy did not teach me that I would never experience pain again. It taught me how to process my pain and keep the trauma of my past from controlling my present. It taught me resilience and that I could experience difficult emotions without being consumed by them.

A trigger can bring someone back into the emotional experience of past trauma. That is real, and it deserves compassion. But not every difficult feeling is a trauma, or a trigger.

Somewhere along the way, we have begun treating discomfort as something that must always be eliminated. We create safe spaces where people supposedly shouldn’t have to encounter anything that makes them uncomfortable, challenges their beliefs, or provokes an emotional reaction.

But that isn’t life. The human experience is emotional. We get angry. We get scared. We become frustrated. We are embarrassed. We grieve. We fall in love. We experience joy. We disagree. Sometimes we hurt one another’s feelings. None of that necessarily means something has gone wrong. Learning how to experience those emotions without being overwhelmed by them is one of the most important things we can teach young people.

There is a difference between protecting people from harm and protecting them from ever feeling uncomfortable. I believe deeply in the first. I do not believe the second is possible or desirable.

As a political leader, I work hard to create inclusive spaces where people are welcome, different perspectives can be heard, and everyone is treated with dignity. People should not have to fear being threatened, harassed, or assaulted. But an inclusive space is not necessarily an emotionally comfortable space.

Someone might disagree with you. Someone might challenge your assumptions. Someone might tell you that you are wrong. You might hear an idea that makes you angry or forces you to reconsider something you have believed for years. That is not necessarily a failure of the space. Sometimes, it is the reason the space exists. Democracy requires us to develop the capacity to sit with discomfort. We cannot build a functioning democracy if every disagreement is labeled as an attack, a trigger, or a trauma.

Perhaps what we need are not more “safe spaces,” but more “brave spaces.” A brave space is one where you can be yourself, speak honestly, listen to people who disagree with you, and experience difficult emotions without demanding that someone make those emotions disappear.

Bravery doesn’t mean the absence of fear. Resilience doesn’t mean the absence of pain. Maturity doesn’t mean the absence of emotion. They mean learning how to move through those things.

My own experience with trauma taught me that healing isn’t about creating a life in which nothing ever hurts. It is about developing the strength to face what hurts without allowing it to dictate who you become. As leaders, we should not be trying to protect young people from every uncomfortable feeling. We should instead be modeling what to do with those feelings.

Our goal should not be to raise a generation that never feels afraid, angry, embarrassed, or challenged. It should be to raise a generation that knows what to do when those feelings present themselves. Brave spaces provide the setting for precisely that kind of learning to happen. Safe spaces too often pretend that that kind of learning is unnecessary or is to be avoided at all costs.

For thousands of years, civilians have paid a terrible price for war. Armies may fight under the banners of nations, kingdoms, or causes, but the people who suffer most are often those who never chose to fight at all. Families lose their homes. Children lose their parents. Communities are destroyed. And generations inherit the trauma of decisions made by leaders they may never meet.

We sometimes imagine that this is a modern development, the unfortunate consequence of increasingly destructive weapons. But the history of warfare tells a different story. From ancient conquests and medieval sieges to the world wars and the conflicts of today, civilians have long been among the principal victims of organized violence. What has changed is not the existence of civilian suffering, but our capacity to inflict it on an extraordinary scale.

As warfare evolved, nations developed standing armies and established conventions that made battles between military forces the defining image of war. Soldiers assembled on battlefields, commanders maneuvered their troops, and victory depended on defeating an opposing army. Civilians still suffered, but the popular image of war became one of armies fighting armies.

Eventually, the world tried to establish international laws and standards to limit the destruction. The Geneva Conventions and other principles of international humanitarian law sought to protect civilians, distinguish combatants from noncombatants, and restrict the use of military force. These agreements represented an important recognition that even in war, there must be limits to what governments and their militaries can do.

But war has never been limited to armies fighting armies. Civilians have always been caught in the crossfire, deliberately targeted, displaced, starved, or killed in the pursuit of military objectives. The twentieth century made that reality impossible to ignore. Strategic bombing, sieges, genocide, and the use of nuclear weapons demonstrated how thoroughly the distinction between battlefield and civilian population could collapse.

Today, advanced aircraft, long-range missiles, precision-guided bombs, and drones allow militaries to strike targets from thousands of miles away. Governments describe these operations in the language of strategy and precision. They identify military installations, weapons depots, command centers, and other targets. We hear that a strike was successful, that an objective was destroyed, or that enemy capabilities were degraded.

But what do we hear about the people who lived next door to those targets? The language of modern warfare can make killing sound clinical. A building becomes a target. A neighborhood becomes a battlespace. Civilian casualties become collateral damage. The terminology may be familiar, but it obscures a basic truth: the people killed or injured are human beings, not abstractions in a military briefing.

The United States has engaged in military operations around the world for more than a century. From the world wars to Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, and numerous other interventions, Americans have repeatedly been told why military force was necessary and what it was intended to accomplish. At home, the experience of war is often sanitized. We see footage of precision strikes and hear about military objectives. We rarely experience the destruction as the people on the receiving end do.

We can watch a bomb hit a building from the safety of our living rooms and assume that the intended enemy was the only one harmed. We can hear that a target was destroyed and move on to the next story. The people who died in the explosion, the children buried beneath the rubble, and the families left homeless may never become more than a statistic.

This distance creates a dangerous illusion: that modern military technology allows us to wage war without inflicting suffering on innocent people.

It does not.

Precision weapons can improve accuracy, but accuracy is not the same as immunity from civilian harm. A bomb can hit exactly where it was intended to hit and still kill people who had nothing to do with the military objective. A strike against a weapons facility can destroy neighboring homes. An attack on a military commander can kill people nearby. A decision that appears reasonable on a map can produce catastrophic consequences for the people living on the ground.

Look at the conflicts unfolding around the world. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has brought missile and drone attacks against residential areas and civilian infrastructure. The war in Gaza has produced devastating destruction, mass displacement, and immense civilian suffering. Conflicts involving Iran and other regional powers demonstrate how quickly military action can spread beyond its original targets, placing entire populations at risk.

The circumstances of these conflicts differ, and responsibility for particular attacks must be assessed on the evidence. But the broader lesson is consistent: civilians pay a devastating price when governments choose to wage war, regardless of the justifications those governments offer.

We should be honest about our own responsibility in this history. The United States is not exempt from the consequences of its military decisions simply because our leaders describe their objectives as legitimate or our weapons as precise. Like other nations that resort to war, we have killed and harmed innocent people in pursuit of military goals. Acknowledging that reality does not mean treating every conflict as morally identical, ignoring the differences between aggressors and defenders, or suggesting that all military action is unlawful. It means refusing to assume that our intentions erase the suffering our actions cause.

International law recognizes that distinction. Civilians must not be deliberately targeted, and attacks must comply with the principles of distinction and proportionality. The presence of military objectives does not make every surrounding person expendable. Nor does an adversary’s violation of the laws of war relieve other parties of their own obligations.

The problem is that rules on paper cannot protect people when governments disregard them, accountability fails, or military objectives are treated as more important than the lives of those who stand in the way. The existence of international standards is progress. Their inconsistent enforcement is a reminder of how far we still have to go.

There is also a moral question for those of us who live in countries that wage war far from home. How much of the human cost are we willing to see? How often do we accept official explanations without asking who was killed? Why do we speak so readily of military success but so rarely of the civilians whose lives were destroyed along the way?

We should ask these questions of every government, including our own.

For thousands of years, people have justified war in the name of security, territory, justice, revenge, or peace. Sometimes military force may be necessary to defend people from aggression. But the stated purpose of a war cannot be the only measure of its consequences. We must also consider the lives lost, the communities shattered, the hatred deepened, and the conditions left behind for those who survive.

A military objective may be achieved while a human catastrophe unfolds around it. Winning a battle does not necessarily produce peace. Destroying an enemy’s infrastructure does not automatically create security. And killing an adversary does not guarantee that the next generation will be less inclined to fight.

War has never been humane, and civilians have never been reliably spared its consequences. We tried to establish international laws and standards because humanity recognized that the conduct of war must be constrained. Those principles remain essential, but they require more than our signatures on treaties. They require honest public debate, meaningful accountability, and a willingness to examine our own actions as critically as we examine those of our adversaries.

The greatest danger may be that we have become accustomed to civilian suffering as an unavoidable feature of war. We have learned to accept phrases like collateral damage as though they describe an unfortunate technical complication rather than the deaths of human beings.

We should resist that normalization. We should refuse to let distance, technology, or patriotism shield us from the consequences of the violence carried out in our name.

Armies may declare victory. Governments may announce that their objectives have been accomplished. But somewhere, families will be burying their children, searching for missing relatives, or trying to rebuild lives that will never be the same. They have been doing so for thousands of years.

The question is not why civilians continue to suffer in war. History has already answered that. The question is why, despite all our technological advances, international agreements, and declarations of moral purpose, we continue to accept their suffering as the price of achieving our goals.

There is something special about watching the Milwaukee Brewers win. In a small media market, with a fraction of the financial resources available to baseball’s biggest franchises, the Brewers have built a team that can compete with anybody. And when they swept the Los Angeles Dodgers, a franchise that seems capable of buying just about any player it wants, the victory felt even sweeter. Now the Brewers are headed to the World Series, and Milwaukee has every reason to celebrate.

The Dodgers represented everything that can make professional sports feel increasingly disconnected from ordinary fans. They operate in one of the country’s largest media markets, have an enormous payroll, and can assemble a roster filled with some of baseball’s biggest stars. The Brewers, by comparison, have to be smarter about how they spend their money. They develop talent, identify overlooked players, and build a team that succeeds because its members work together.

They are scrappy. They are resourceful. And they are Milwaukee.

But there is another reason I want to celebrate the Brewers: they represent something that too often gets overlooked in conversations about professional sports. The Milwaukee Brewers, along with all the other MLB teams, are a unionized workplace.

Behind the excitement of every pitch, every home run, and every victory is a group of professional athletes whose working conditions are shaped in part by collective bargaining through the Major League Baseball Players Association. The players’ union negotiates with team owners and league representatives over the terms and conditions of employment. That includes compensation, of course, but it also includes issues such as health and safety, benefits, working conditions, and the rules that govern the relationship between players and management.

That is what unions do. Too often, the public conversation about organized labor focuses almost exclusively on wages. Pay matters. Workers deserve fair compensation for the value they create. But unions are about much more than a paycheck. They give workers a collective voice in decisions that affect their lives, their livelihoods, and their workplaces.

Think about what that means for a professional baseball player. The owners have enormous financial resources, powerful legal teams, and control over the franchise organizations that employ the players. An individual athlete negotiating alone would have far less leverage than a group of players acting collectively. Through their union, players have a seat at the table and a mechanism for advocating for their interests.

That principle extends far beyond baseball. Workers in a manufacturing plant deserve a voice in decisions affecting their safety and working conditions. Construction workers deserve protections on job sites where a mistake can mean the difference between going home safely and suffering a life-changing injury. Teachers deserve a say in the conditions under which they educate our children, including the resources available to their classrooms and the professional judgment they bring to their work. And baseball players deserve a voice in the workplace where they earn their living.

The circumstances differ, but the underlying principle is the same: workers should not have to depend entirely on the goodwill of their employers to protect their interests. Collective bargaining creates a process through which workers can negotiate, establish standards, and hold management accountable to agreements.

That does not mean management and labor will always agree. They won’t. The relationship between owners and players has a long history of conflict, including labor disputes that have interrupted seasons. Collective bargaining is not magic, and unions are not perfect. But disagreement is precisely why workers need representation. A seat at the table matters most when the people sitting across from you have more money and power.

As someone who has spent much of my career working within and alongside organized labor, I understand that unions are about dignity as much as dollars. They are about the idea that the people doing the work should have a meaningful voice in how that work gets done.

And that brings us back to the Brewers. A team is more than a collection of individual contracts. It is a workplace where people with different skills, responsibilities, and experiences have to come together to accomplish something bigger than themselves. The players need coaches, trainers, and support staff. They need a shared commitment to their teammates. And they operate within a professional system whose rules are shaped by both management and the players’ collective representation.

The Brewers’ success is not proof that every unionized workplace will win a championship. Nor does a union guarantee a successful season. Keep in mind that the Brewers and the Rays are the only teams going to the World Series, even though the players on the other 28 MLB teams are also members of the MLBPA. However, the union is part of the broader framework that establishes the standards under which these athletes work.

This is worth remembering as we celebrate a team that represents our city so well. Milwaukee has always had a strong connection to working people. We understand the value of showing up, doing your job, supporting your co-workers, and taking pride in what you accomplish together. We understand that you don’t have to be the biggest to be the best. And we should understand that workers deserve a voice in the institutions where they spend their working lives.

So let’s celebrate the Brewers. Let’s celebrate the players who have taken down a baseball giant and given this small-market city a reason to dream big. Let’s celebrate the fans who fill American Family Field and make Brewers baseball part of the fabric of our community.

And let’s celebrate Milwaukee’s most popular unionized workplace. Because whether you work in a factory, build something on a construction site, teach children in a classroom, or play baseball in front of millions of people, the principle remains the same: workers deserve a voice, and unions help make that voice heard.

Go Brewers!

On Thursday, October 15, I had the pleasure of taking It’s All Local: Saving Democracy From the Ground Up on the road to Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where I earned both my master’s degree and Ph.D. Returning to a community that helped shape my life, this time to talk about the future of local democracy, made the evening at Flyleaf Books especially meaningful.

I was joined on stage by Durham Mayor Leo Williams for a conversation about the importance of local politics and the role mayors play in addressing the issues that shape people’s everyday lives. From housing and public safety to infrastructure and economic development, local government is where democracy becomes tangible. These are the issues people experience in their neighborhoods, and they are the issues local elected officials work to solve every day.

Too often, however, these conversations get lost in the noise of national politics. We spend so much time talking about Washington and the latest political controversy that we overlook the work happening in our own communities. Local government may not always attract the headlines, but it has an enormous impact on our quality of life.

Leo and I also discussed one of the most frustrating challenges facing mayors across the country: state preemption. In North Carolina and in Wisconsin, Republican legislators have repeatedly limited the authority of local governments to make decisions for their own communities. Mayors and city councils listen to their residents, identify local problems, and develop solutions that reflect community values, only to find that state lawmakers have stripped them of the authority to act.

This is not simply a partisan issue. It is a question of democracy. Communities are different, and the people who live in them should have a meaningful voice in shaping their futures. When state legislatures prevent local governments from responding to their residents, they weaken the connection between citizens and the democratic institutions closest to them.

The audience at Flyleaf Books brought thoughtful questions and perspectives to the conversation. We explored how local issues intersect with national debates, how mayors learn from one another, and how local leaders can share successful approaches to common challenges.

That exchange captured one of the central ideas behind It’s All Local: democracy is not something that happens only during elections or in the halls of Congress. It is built through relationships, conversations, and the collective work of making our communities better.

One of the great privileges of serving as mayor is being part of a network of local leaders who are willing to learn from one another. We face many of the same challenges, even when our communities have different political climates, resources, and priorities. By sharing what works, acknowledging what does not, and supporting one another, we can become more effective public servants.

As I reflected on the evening, I was reminded that the work of strengthening democracy begins close to home. It begins when neighbors talk to one another, when residents engage with their local government, and when elected officials listen and respond.

Returning to Chapel Hill gave me the opportunity to revisit a place that shaped my academic life while sharing a message that has become central to my public service: if we want to save democracy, we need to start by rebuilding it where we live.

Thank you to Flyleaf Books, Mayor Leo Williams, and everyone who joined us Thursday night. The conversation reinforced why I wrote It’s All Local and why I believe our best hope for a stronger democracy may be found in the communities we call home.

One of the fundamental differences between local government and the federal government is the way we think about time.

In local government, we routinely make decisions that will not bear fruit for five, 10, or even 20 years. We develop five-year capital improvement plans, 10-year comprehensive plans, and long-range master plans that guide development, infrastructure investments, housing, and the future growth of our communities. We spend hours debating decisions whose benefits may not be fully realized until long after the people making them have left office.

Why? Because the decisions we make today will shape the communities our children and grandchildren inherit tomorrow.

As mayor of Glendale, Wisconsin, I understand that my job is not simply to manage the city we have today. It is to help prepare the city we will become. That means thinking about the condition of our roads and infrastructure, the long-term sustainability of our finances, the housing our residents will need, and the economic development that will sustain our tax base. It means recognizing that a decision that looks inexpensive today might create an expensive liability five years from now. Good local government requires us to think beyond the next election.

Nonprofit organizations and businesses understand this, too. They develop strategic plans, establish measurable goals, set budgets, and evaluate whether their decisions are moving them toward a desired future. No responsible organization would deliberately make every decision based exclusively on what might generate the most favorable headlines tomorrow. At least, not one that expects to remain successful for very long.

Yet much of our federal government has increasingly become consumed by the politics of the moment. What will generate a favorable news cycle today? What announcement will energize the political base? What can we promise voters before the next election? What opponent can we embarrass, what controversy can we manufacture, and what immediate political advantage can we extract from the next decision? The long-term consequences often seem to be an afterthought.

This problem did not begin with Donald Trump. Both political parties have contributed to a political environment in which the next election can become more important than the next generation. Programs are created without sustainable funding. Tax policies are enacted without adequate consideration of their long-term fiscal consequences. Infrastructure needs are deferred because the bill is politically inconvenient. Difficult problems are kicked down the road because solving them requires making decisions that might upset voters today.

But Trump is perhaps the clearest illustration of what happens when the politics of the moment becomes the governing philosophy itself. Trump’s approach to leadership seems to be built around getting what he wants right now. He wants the deal, the headline, the public declaration of victory, and the immediate gratification of having bent someone else to his will. Tomorrow’s consequences are tomorrow’s problem. Next year’s liabilities are someone else’s responsibility.

His public persona, his television career on The Apprentice, and his own descriptions of dealmaking in The Art of the Deal have long emphasized winning, leverage, and the appearance of strength. The immediate transaction takes center stage. Whether the resulting arrangement creates lasting value is a separate question.

Trump’s business history offers a cautionary example. Several of his businesses have filed for bankruptcy protection, including multiple casino and hospitality ventures. Those proceedings do not mean that every deal he made was unsuccessful, but they demonstrate that a deal that looks advantageous at one moment can produce devastating consequences later. The initial victory does not tell the entire story.

Governing a country is not the same as negotiating a real estate transaction. The consequences of presidential decisions extend far beyond the president himself. They affect our national debt, international alliances, economic stability, public institutions, and the opportunities available to future generations.

When a president makes foreign policy decisions to secure an immediate political advantage, the damage to international relationships may take decades to repair. When tax and spending decisions ignore long-term obligations, future taxpayers inherit the bill. When environmental protections are weakened for immediate economic or political gain, communities may bear the costs for generations. And when public confidence in democratic institutions is sacrificed to satisfy one person’s immediate ambitions, rebuilding that trust becomes an enormous undertaking.

This is why long-range planning is so important. It forces us to consider consequences beyond the immediate reward. It requires us to acknowledge that today’s decisions create tomorrow’s opportunities and liabilities. It reminds us that leadership is not simply about exercising power; it is about accepting responsibility for what happens after we exercise it.

At the local level, we cannot afford to ignore the future. Our residents will still need safe roads, functioning utilities, responsible budgets, and vibrant neighborhoods long after the current mayor and council have left office. We are accountable not only for the decisions we make, but also for the problems we leave behind.

The federal government should be held to the same standard. America needs leaders who can look beyond the next news cycle and the next election. Leaders who understand that the national interest extends beyond their own political fortunes. Leaders willing to make difficult choices today because they believe those choices will leave the country stronger tomorrow.

The purpose of government is not to maximize the political advantage of the people temporarily holding office. It is to serve the public, protect our institutions, and build a future in which the next generation has at least as much opportunity as the current one.

In Glendale, we plan for five, 10, and 20 years from now because we know our decisions will outlive our tenure in office. Washington could learn something from that. The measure of leadership is not what you can win today. It is what you leave behind tomorrow.

I was born in 1970, in the middle of the Cold War. For as long as I have been alive, the United States has viewed Russia and its predecessor, the Soviet Union, as a geopolitical adversary. We disagreed about the most fundamental questions of government, individual liberty, economic systems, and the future of democracy. Generations of American leaders built our foreign policy around containing Soviet power and protecting our interests from an expansionist authoritarian regime.

When the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, we had an opportunity to build a different relationship with Russia. But Russia never became the reliable democratic partner that some Americans hoped it might. Under Vladimir Putin, it has instead become an increasingly authoritarian state that threatens its neighbors, interferes in democratic elections, and seeks to weaken the United States and our allies.

During World War II, the U.S allied with the Soviet Union for convenience, but our leaders never fully trusted the Soviet leadership. Shortly after the end of the war, the Soviet Union occupied and controlled much of Eastern Europe. The Cold War started and we have never had an alliance with the Soviet Union or Russia since. Russia is not our ally. Putin is not our friend. Yet Donald Trump seems determined to pretend otherwise.

Trump’s willingness to accommodate Putin is not simply a departure from the foreign policy of previous presidents. It represents a fundamental reversal of decades of American strategy. And his willingness to pressure Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, while pursuing sanctions relief for Russia raises a troubling question: Whose interests is the President of the United States actually serving?

Consider the reported push to remove Zelenskyy from office and ease sanctions on Russia to bring down diesel prices ahead of the midterm elections. If American foreign policy is being adjusted to improve the Republican Party’s electoral prospects, we have abandoned the principle that national security decisions should be guided by the national interest.

Ukraine is a sovereign democracy. Its people have fought and died to defend their independence against Russia’s invasion. Zelenskyy is the leader of a country struggling to survive an assault by a much larger authoritarian neighbor. Whatever legitimate disagreements Americans may have about the scope and cost of our assistance to Ukraine, pressuring its elected president to leave office while offering concessions to the country attacking it is not a strategy for defending democracy. It is a gift to Putin.

Sanctions exist to impose costs on Russia for its aggression and to limit its ability to wage war. They are not supposed to be bargaining chips that an American president casually trades away because fuel prices might affect his party’s performance in an election. Lower diesel prices may be politically attractive, but sacrificing our long-term strategic interests for short-term political convenience is a terrible bargain.

Our foreign policy should protect American security, strengthen our democratic allies, and make clear that invading another country carries consequences. It should not reward aggression, undermine an ally’s elected leadership, or give an authoritarian ruler more room to pursue his ambitions.

None of this requires us to pretend that every American president has gotten Russia policy right. They have not. Nor does supporting Ukraine mean that the United States must write an unlimited check or ignore legitimate questions about accountability. We can debate the means while remaining clear about the ends: a secure United States, a stable international order, and a Europe where countries are free to determine their own futures.

The larger problem is that Trump’s apparent admiration for strongmen fits his own political ambitions. He has repeatedly expressed admiration for authoritarian leaders and shown impatience with the democratic constraints that limit presidential power. He seems attracted to the idea of personal rule, in which institutions, laws, and political opponents are obstacles to overcome rather than essential components of a functioning democracy.

Fortunately, the American system was designed to prevent any president from exercising unlimited power. Courts have sometimes expanded the authority available to Trump, while continuing to constrain him in other areas. Those institutions, along with Congress, independent state governments, a free press, and an engaged public, remain essential safeguards against the concentration of power. But safeguards are only as strong as our willingness to defend them.

My entire lifetime has been shaped by the understanding that American interests and Russian/Soviet authoritarian ambitions are frequently in conflict. That does not mean diplomacy is impossible. It means diplomacy must be conducted with clear eyes and a firm understanding of whom we are dealing with.

We should not give Putin what he wants simply because Trump wants a deal. We should not abandon Ukraine because helping it defend itself is politically inconvenient. And we should never confuse a president’s personal relationship with a foreign dictator for a foreign policy that serves the American people.

The United States has spent generations building alliances and institutions to protect democracy from authoritarian expansion. We should not throw away that legacy for a temporary political advantage. Russia is not our ally. We should stop acting as though it is.

I have done a lot of driving this summer. I drove with my son from Austin, Texas, to Santa Rosa, California. I drove with my daughter from Milwaukee to Boston. I have driven hundreds of miles around Wisconsin and thousands of miles across the country.

And I have reached a conclusion: America’s highways are “trucked up.” I use “trucked up” deliberately. It is a euphemism for something considerably more profane.

The problem isn’t truck drivers. They are doing their jobs, delivering the food, furniture, building materials, appliances, and everything else that keeps our economy moving. The problem is the system we have created by putting enormous tractor-trailers on the same road surface with passenger cars and then expecting everyone to move safely at dramatically different speeds.

Consider what happens on a typical interstate. The posted speed limit might be 70 miles per hour for cars and 65 for trucks. Traffic is moving along reasonably well until one semi pulls into the left lane to pass another semi. Except the truck doing the passing is only one or two miles per hour faster than the truck it is passing. Suddenly, you have two lanes occupied by two enormous vehicles moving at 64 and 65 miles per hour. Behind them, cars begin stacking up.

And they stay there. For three miles. Four miles. Sometimes longer. Eventually, impatient drivers start looking for ways around the moving roadblock. Cars squeeze through increasingly narrow gaps. Drivers brake and accelerate repeatedly. Someone makes an aggressive pass on the right shoulder. Someone else changes lanes without seeing the vehicle beside them. A perfectly ordinary difference in vehicle speeds has become a dangerous situation.

And the consequences aren’t theoretical. In 2023, large trucks accounted for 84.4% of freight-transportation fatalities, and the Bureau of Transportation Statistics notes that the vast majority of those deaths involve other people traveling on highways rather than occupants of the trucks themselves.

So how did we get here? Part of the answer is that America made a series of transportation policy choices that increasingly favored moving freight by truck.

Beginning in the 1970s and culminating in major bipartisan deregulation legislation in 1980, Congress loosened the economic regulations governing both railroads and trucking. The Staggers Rail Act deregulated much of the freight railroad industry, while the Motor Carrier Act deregulated trucking. The goal was to make freight transportation more competitive and efficient, and there were legitimate reasons for doing so: America’s railroads were in serious financial trouble, with major bankruptcies threatening the system.

But deregulation changed the competitive landscape. Trucking offered something rail often could not: door-to-door delivery without the need for a transfer between modes. As highways expanded and logistics became increasingly sophisticated, moving goods by truck became enormously attractive to businesses.

And there was money to be made. The trucking industry grew into a powerful economic and political constituency, while investment and public attention continued to center on highways. Meanwhile, railroads consolidated and increasingly focused on the freight that made the most economic sense for them.

The result is not a conspiracy. It is something more mundane and, in some ways, more consequential: an economic system that has developed around trucking because trucking has been made convenient, profitable, and indispensable.

Look at the numbers. Federal transportation statistics show how enormous the trucking system has become. In the most recent historical freight data, truck transportation accounts for more than two trillion ton-miles of freight annually. Rail carries a similarly enormous amount of freight, but the two systems serve very different markets and have evolved very differently.

The question is whether we have allowed the economics of freight transportation to dictate the design of our highways, rather than designing a transportation system around safety, efficiency, and the public interest.

Other countries have made different choices. Germany, for example, does allow heavy trucks on its autobahns. But it also imposes significant restrictions on truck operations, including lane restrictions and limited access for Sunday and holiday driving, and has maintained a transportation system in which rail plays an important role in freight movement.

We don’t have to copy Germany. But we should be willing to ask why the United States has accepted a transportation model in which massive tractor-trailers (sometimes pulling multiple trailers) share the same lanes with passenger vehicles traveling 70 or 75 miles per hour.

Maybe we need more freight rail. Maybe we need designated truck lanes on heavily traveled corridors. Maybe we need stronger restrictions on truck passing where two semis can effectively shut down an interstate’s traffic flow. Maybe we need to rethink whether every freight movement that can be put on a truck should be put on a truck. And maybe we should recognize that transportation policy isn’t just about getting goods from Point A to Point B as cheaply as possible. It is also about whether everyone else sharing the road can get there safely.

This isn’t about getting trucks off the road entirely. We need trucks. They are an essential part of our economy, and truck drivers deserve safe working conditions and reasonable expectations, too. But we should stop pretending that putting increasingly larger trucks on increasingly crowded highways is the only way to move America forward.

After thousands of miles on America’s roads this summer, I have a simpler description for the system we’ve created: It’s trucked up.

If you live in a community where someone has proposed building a data center, you may have heard a lot about the enormous amounts of electricity and water these facilities can consume. You may have also heard warnings about the strain they could put on the electrical grid, the cost of new infrastructure, noise, land use, and the environment. Those concerns are legitimate.

But there is an important distinction that often gets lost in the debate: not all data centers are the same.

In fact, some data centers are relatively small, localized facilities that are an essential part of the Internet infrastructure we have come to depend upon every day. Others are large corporate facilities, often called colocation or colo centers, where companies rent space, power, cooling, and connectivity for their own servers. And then there is an entirely different category: the enormous, energy-intensive campuses being built to power artificial intelligence. It is that last category that deserves much of our attention.

A small or regional data center might serve a relatively limited geographic area. It can provide storage, computing capacity, backup systems, and network connections for businesses, governments, hospitals, universities, and Internet service providers. These facilities help make sure that when you send an email, access a website, stream a movie, use online banking, or connect to a cloud application, the service doesn’t depend on a single distant location. They are part of the plumbing of the modern Internet.

Then there are colocation facilities. Think of these as high-tech office buildings for computers. Instead of every company constructing its own specialized facility, businesses can lease space inside a professionally managed data center. The operator provides the building, security, backup power, cooling, and high-speed network connections. Multiple customers can operate their own equipment under the same roof. These facilities can be substantial. But their purpose is generally to provide computing and connectivity for many different customers and services. Again, this is part of how the Internet stays up and running.

Then we get to the new generation of data centers. Artificial intelligence has created an extraordinary demand for computing power. Training and operating the largest generative AI models requires enormous numbers of specialized processors working simultaneously. Those processors generate tremendous amounts of heat, which means they require sophisticated cooling systems. And all of those processors require electricity. Lots of it.

The resulting facilities can be enormous, sometimes occupying hundreds of acres and encompassing buildings covering multiple football fields. They aren’t simply bigger versions of the server rooms that make the Internet work. They are industrial-scale computing facilities.

A traditional data center might consume a relatively manageable amount of electricity compared with a massive AI campus. The largest AI facilities can require hundreds of megawatts of power, with proposed campuses potentially reaching into the gigawatt range. That is an extraordinary demand for a single development.

The same is true for water. Computers produce heat, and large computing facilities need to get rid of that heat. Depending on the cooling technology used, that can require substantial amounts of water. When a community is already dealing with water scarcity, aging infrastructure, or competing demands for its water supply, the prospect of dedicating enormous quantities of water to an industrial computing campus deserves serious scrutiny.

There is also a question of who pays. If an AI company needs a massive new electrical substation, transmission lines, roads, water infrastructure, or other public improvements, we should ask whether the company is paying the full cost. Or whether existing utility customers and taxpayers are being asked to subsidize the infrastructure necessary to support a highly profitable private enterprise.

That is not an argument against data centers. It is an argument for being precise about what we are talking about. We should NOT treat the small facility that helps a local hospital maintain its digital records, the colocation center supporting hundreds of businesses, and a sprawling AI campus consuming electricity on an industrial scale as though they are all the same thing.

They aren’t.

The Internet needs data centers. Our economy needs data centers. Our communities will continue to need data centers. But that doesn’t mean every proposed data center deserves an automatic welcome. When a project requires hundreds of acres, enormous amounts of electricity and water, and major new public infrastructure, we should ask a very different set of questions.

How much power will it consume? How much water? Who will pay for the infrastructure? What happens to the community’s electric rates? What happens during drought? How many permanent jobs will it actually create? And what else could that electricity, water, land, and infrastructure support?

The answer shouldn’t be determined by whether someone likes or dislikes artificial intelligence. It should be determined by whether the project makes sense for the community. The problem isn’t data centers in general. The problem is the data center that is the size of a small industrial city. So, please, let’s have our conversations about data centers with some precision.

There is a curious rhetorical trend in American politics that deserves more attention. Listen closely to the language of today’s political discussion on the right and you will hear a recurring theme: They don’t want you to know this. You’re not allowed to talk about this. Nobody is telling you the truth. Why isn’t anyone asking these questions?

These phrases may sound like invitations to think critically. In reality, they often serve a different purpose. They encourage us to distrust the very institutions, individuals, and sources of information we might otherwise turn to for answers. Before we even hear the argument, we are being told that someone is hiding something from us.

Fear has always been a powerful political motivator. If politicians can convince people that their security, prosperity, culture, or way of life is under threat, they can position themselves as the people who will protect them. But fear becomes even more politically useful when it is combined with suspicion. It is one thing to convince someone that a problem exists. It is another to convince them that powerful people are conspiring to keep them from discovering it.

That is where this language becomes so effective. When Donald Trump or J.D. Vance, another political figure says, “They don’t want you to know this,” the statement does more than introduce a claim. It establishes a story with villains, victims, and a hero. The villains are the people supposedly hiding the truth. The victims are ordinary Americans who have been deceived. And the hero is the politician who claims to be brave enough to reveal what everyone else is concealing.

The beauty of this rhetorical device, from a political communicator’s perspective, is that it can work even before anyone establishes whether the underlying claim is true. After all, who wants to be the person who has been fooled? Who wants to believe that their government, their media, their university, or their community leaders have been withholding important information? The suggestion alone can plant a seed of doubt. Once that seed takes root, every subsequent piece of information can be interpreted through it.

A correction becomes evidence of a cover-up. A journalist asking for evidence becomes part of the conspiracy. A scientific institution explaining its findings becomes an organization trying to silence dissent. The absence of evidence becomes proof that the secret is being kept especially well.

The claim becomes remarkably difficult to disprove because the person making it has already taught the audience to distrust anyone who might challenge it. Of course, genuine secrecy and institutional dishonesty exist. Governments conceal information, corporations protect their interests, and powerful people often evade accountability. Skepticism is healthy in a democracy. Asking uncomfortable questions is essential to holding people accountable.

But there is a difference between demanding transparency and manufacturing suspicion. One asks for evidence. The other asks us to assume that evidence is being hidden.

We should be especially wary when a politician offers us a conspiracy instead of documentation, insinuation instead of explanation, or an enemy instead of an answer. We should ask what evidence supports the claim, whether independent sources corroborate it, and whether the person making the allegation would accept the same standard of proof from someone on the other side. These are not partisan questions. They are the basic behaviors of an informed citizen.

The deeper danger of this rhetoric is not simply that it can persuade people to believe something false. It can gradually destroy their confidence in the possibility of knowing what is true at all. When every institution is presumed corrupt, every expert is suspect, and every disagreement is evidence of a hidden agenda, the public loses the common ground necessary for democratic self-government. And when people no longer trust anyone except the person telling them whom to distrust, that politician acquires extraordinary power.

Democracy depends on our responsibility to question authority. But it also depends on our willingness to examine our own assumptions, consider competing explanations, and change our minds when the evidence demands it. The next time someone tells you that you are not allowed to talk about something, or that powerful people desperately want to keep you from knowing the truth, pause before accepting the invitation to suspicion.

Ask a simple question: “What is the evidence, and how can I verify it independently?”

The truth does not become more credible simply because someone claims it is forbidden. And a politician does not become a truth-teller merely by insisting that everyone else is lying. Sometimes, the most important thing a political leader wants you to believe is not a particular claim about the world. It is that you should stop trusting anyone but them to explain it.

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to visit with the Eau Claire County Democratic Party at its coffee klatch. Dozens showed up to engage in a lively discussion that went well beyond the usual political conversation. We even ran out of chairs and some people had to stand. We talked about what it means to organize locally, build relationships, and create political infrastructure that lasts long after Election Day.

One of the most important parts of the conversation was a topic that has been on my mind for years: We have turned too much of our organizing over to consultants who have transformed organizing into marketing.

There is certainly a place for good political consultants. But a consultant cannot knock on a neighbor’s door for us. A television advertisement cannot replace a conversation across a kitchen table. A carefully targeted digital message cannot build the kind of relationship that develops when someone sees you repeatedly at their door, at a community meeting, at a neighborhood event, or in the grocery store.

Local campaigns require local organizing. That is especially true in communities like Eau Claire, Altoona, Fall Creek, and Augusta. The people who live there know their communities. They know the issues that matter to their neighbors. They know which roads need attention, where housing is becoming unaffordable, which neighborhoods are growing, which businesses are struggling, and what people are talking about around their dinner tables.

What we learn from those conversations should be our message. And when we talk to our neighbors about the things that actually affect their lives, our message resonates because it is authentic. We aren’t importing a national campaign message and hoping it fits. We are listening first and then talking about the issues our communities are actually experiencing.

Several local elected officials joined the conversation in Eau Claire, sharing their own experiences running for local office and engaging with their communities. They talked about how they have built campaigns around local issues and, importantly, how they take broader political questions and turn them back toward the circumstances their own neighbors experience every day.

That is what local organizing looks like. It isn’t simply taking a national message and putting a local candidate’s name on it. It is starting with the community and building the message from there.

That is one of the central ideas behind my book, It’s All Local: Saving Democracy From the Ground Up. Democracy is not rebuilt through better slogans, more sophisticated microtargeting, or increasingly expensive consultants. It is rebuilt through relationships.

During our conversation in Eau Claire, we talked about how county parties and neighborhood organizing teams can use that philosophy to build something much more enduring than an election campaign. Imagine building relationships with your neighbors that don’t disappear the day after the polls close. Imagine knowing the people in your neighborhood, not simply because you need their vote, but because you have invested in their community. That commitment is the foundation of political infrastructure.

I am having a wonderful time taking It’s All Local on the road and talking with people who understand that our democracy needs more than Election Day mobilization. It needs people who are willing to organize year-round, listen to their neighbors, build relationships, and create communities where people feel connected to one another.

Eau Claire was another fruitful stop on that journey. And next week, I head to North Carolina, where I will have the opportunity to continue the conversation with Durham Mayor Leo Williams at an event at Flyleaf Books in Chapel Hill.

I spent some of the most formative years in North Carolina while earning my Ph.D. at UNC-Chapel Hill. Returning now with a book about rebuilding democracy from the ground up feels particularly meaningful.

The message I will carry with me is the same one I shared in Eau Claire: If we want to save democracy, we have to start by knowing our neighbors. It really is all local.

Just under four weeks from now, Americans will go to the polls for the 2026 midterm elections. If current polling is right, Republicans are facing a political shellacking. That, by itself, is not indicative of a crisis. Elections are supposed to produce winners and losers. Parties lose elections. Voters change their minds. Political coalitions rise and fall.

What should concern us is what happens when a political movement recognizes that voters are turning against it and begins trying to manipulate the conditions under which those voters express their will.

Republicans have spent enormous sums trying to change the trajectory of this election, but the polling has barely moved. Democrats now lead the generic congressional ballot by roughly nine points, while Democratic candidates are competitive in states Donald Trump carried comfortably in 2024, including Ohio, Alaska, and North Carolina.

A Republican loss of the House increasingly looks likely. Even the Senate, which seemed almost unimaginable a year ago, is now within reach for Democrats. So what happens when Republicans know they are losing? We are seeing the answer.

The Trump administration has attempted to reshape federal involvement in elections, including efforts to influence voter-roll administration and absentee voting through the federal government and the U.S. Postal Service. There have also been concerns about whether federal immigration enforcement could intimidate voters at polling places, even as the administration says there are no plans for a broad deployment of ICE agents at polling locations. And all of this comes after Republicans spent the last 18 months re-gerrymandering state after state to squeeze an extra likely Republican House seat here and there.

Then there are the television advertisements. The federal government spent taxpayer dollars producing and airing advertisements that look remarkably like Trump campaign material, featuring Trump and promoting his agenda, while carrying the words “Paid for by the U.S. Government.” Trump defended them as being “for the country,” rather than for himself. After bipartisan criticism, he announced that future ads would instead be paid for by his political organization, MAGA Inc. He has not, however, committed to reimbursing taxpayers for the money already spent.

As I wrote on Tuesday, I believe we are at the end of a historic political cycle and have entered what scholars would call a “crisis phase.” During these periods, the old political order begins to lose its legitimacy, but the new order has not yet been established. Institutions are tested. Political movements become more desperate. The question becomes not simply who wins an election, but whether everyone will accept the rules of the game.

There is speculation that making the Republican losses as small as possible could matter if Trump later attempts to challenge, disrupt, or delegitimize election results. We should not wait until after Election Day to decide whether our democratic institutions are strong enough to withstand an effort to undermine them.

The most important thing we can do is vote. Not because one party deserves power forever. Not because every Democrat is right or every Republican is wrong. But because democracy depends on citizens believing that their votes matter and that the people who receive the most votes will actually govern.

This election will tell us more than who controls Congress or statehouses. It will tell us whether America still believes that elections are how we settle our political differences. And when the results come, the most important question will not be whether we like them. It will be whether we are willing to accept them.

I have been thinking a lot lately about an old theory of American history that originated with studies in the late 1980s, and what it might tell us about the moment we are living through. William Strauss and Neil Howe argued in Generations, and later, The Fourth Turning, that American history moves through recurring cycles of roughly 80 to 100 years. Each cycle contains four periods, or “turnings”: an era of institutional confidence, an era of cultural awakening and upheaval, an era of institutional unraveling, and finally a period of crisis that forces the country to confront fundamental questions about how it will govern itself.

It is not a perfect theory. History is not a clock, and human beings do not follow predetermined generational scripts. But the pattern is striking. The Revolution and founding of the Republic, followed roughly 90 years later by the Civil War, and then 80 years after that, the ending of World War II. And if Strauss and Howe’s framework is instructive, we are now living through the final segment of a cycle that began with the prosperity and institution-building of the post-World War II era.

My experience in local government has taught me something important about what comes next: democracy is not saved in Washington. Democracy is saved where people live.

After World War II, America did not simply experience economic prosperity. We built things. We built highways and schools. We expanded universities and hospitals. We created neighborhoods and suburbs. We built businesses and manufacturing centers. We expanded Social Security and eventually created Medicare. And we built unions, Rotary Clubs, and senior centers.

Millions of Americans belonged to organizations that brought people together around something larger than themselves. They went to union halls. They attended school board meetings. They belonged to churches and synagogues. They joined service clubs and neighborhood organizations. They coached Little League, volunteered at schools, and organized community events.

Even the enormous migration to the suburbs was, in many ways, an exercise in community building. People did not simply move into houses. They built communities around those houses. They created PTA organizations, youth sports leagues, civic associations, congregations, neighborhood groups, volunteer fire departments, local businesses, and schools.

There was certainly a federal government and there were national political movements. There were national battles over civil rights, labor, economic policy, and foreign policy. But the day-to-day work of building America happened on the ground. It happened in neighborhoods, classrooms, union halls, churches and synagogues, community organizations, and city halls. That matters enormously today because one of the things we have lost over the past several decades is the understanding that democracy is not simply a system of government. It is a set of relationships between people who share a community and believe they can accomplish things together.

The 1960s and 1970s brought enormous upheaval. Vietnam, the civil rights movement, the women’s movement, Watergate, political assassinations, economic turmoil, and enormous social and cultural transformation challenged institutions and traditions that previous generations had largely accepted. Much of that upheaval was necessary. Americans were challenging institutions and traditions that had excluded too many people for too long. But the period also accelerated a growing distrust of institutions. According to Pew Research Center, 73 percent of Americans trusted the federal government to do what was right most or all of the time in 1958, and that number reached 77 percent in 1964. By 1980, after Vietnam, Watergate, and years of economic turmoil, it had fallen to roughly one-quarter.

The next period compounded that distrust. The 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s brought tremendous economic and technological change, but they also brought a political culture increasingly built around telling Americans that government was the problem. Rush Limbaugh became a dominant voice in conservative talk radio, and Fox News, launched in 1996, helped create a fragmented media environment. Political media became increasingly dependent on conflict, outrage, and ideological identity. Pew has documented just how deeply Americans’ news consumption and trust became divided along partisan lines. We stopped simply arguing about what government should do. We started arguing about whether government could be trusted to do anything at all.

Then came 2008. The Great Recession did not simply destroy jobs, homes, and retirement accounts. It further damaged confidence in the institutions that were supposed to protect Americans. Then came COVID. A financial crisis followed by a global pandemic produced an extraordinary period of economic, social, political, and institutional disruption. This is the environment in which Donald Trump emerged. Pew notes that trust in government has never risen above 30 percent since 2007. By 2025, only 17 percent of Americans said they trusted the federal government to do what is right most or all of the time.

And I think it is important to understand something about Donald Trump: he did not create this crisis. He is a symptom of it. The anger, distrust, alienation, and exhaustion were already there. Trump understood how to harness them and turn them into a political movement. That does not make his political project inevitable, but it does make the moment in which he emerged more understandable. The danger at the end of a cycle like this is that people who have lost faith in their institutions can become willing to abandon the institutions themselves.

That is where we are now. The debate is not simply about Donald Trump. It is about whether Americans still believe democratic institutions are worth preserving. It is about whether we believe elections matter, whether an independent judiciary matters, whether a free press matters, whether public schools matter, whether unions matter, whether local government matters, and whether neighbors who disagree politically can still sit next to each other at a school PTA meeting and work out a problem. These questions are bigger than any one politician or any one election.

I have spent more than a decade serving as mayor of Glendale, Wisconsin, and sitting in council chambers while residents argue passionately about development, taxes, roads, parks, public safety, housing, trees, garbage, sidewalks, and everything else that makes a community a community. Something becomes obvious when you spend enough time in local government: most people do not experience democracy as an abstract constitutional concept. They experience it as a pothole that gets fixed, a school their child attends, a park where they walk their dog, a public meeting where they can stand up and speak, a road that gets plowed, or a neighborhood that feels safe. That is democracy.

That is why I wrote It’s All Local: Saving Democracy From the Ground Up. I did not write the book because I believe local government is somehow separate from the national crisis. I wrote it because I believe local government is one of the places where we can begin repairing faith in government itself. If we want people to trust democracy again, we cannot simply tell them to trust Washington. We have to give them experiences worth trusting. We have to create places where people know their neighbors. We have to rebuild civic organizations, strengthen unions, support public schools, and create opportunities for people to serve on boards and commissions, attend council meetings, coach youth sports, volunteer at food pantries, join neighborhood associations, participate in civic groups, and simply sit down with people who do not agree with them.

We have to rediscover the habit of doing things together. That is what Americans did after World War II. They did not wait for Washington to build their communities. They built them themselves. The federal government provided enormous resources and national leadership, but the actual work of creating communities happened at the local level. It happened when parents organized a PTA, when workers joined a union, when neighbors formed an association, when congregations opened their doors, when volunteers coached children, and when citizens showed up at a city council or school board meeting. The strength of American democracy was never simply found in the Capitol. It was found in all of those relationships between people.

If this really is the final stage of a generational cycle, then we should expect the enormous political conflict we are currently experiencing to get worse in the years ahead. The 2026 midterm elections will determine the composition of Congress and the degree of legislative support or resistance available to the current administration. The 2028 presidential election will determine who occupies the White House and the direction of federal executive power. Those elections matter more than many past elections because they may determine how we end this cycle and begin the next one. Elections cannot be the entirety of our response, however, because even if the national political system changes, the deeper problem will remain: we have lost too much of our civic infrastructure.

That cannot be repaired by a midterm election or a presidential election. It has to be rebuilt from the ground up. That is why I remain hopeful. Not because I think everything will work itself out, not because I believe history guarantees a happy ending, and not because Strauss and Howe necessarily got the cycle exactly right. I remain hopeful because I have seen what happens when ordinary people decide that their community is worth investing in. I have seen residents show up to meetings. I have seen neighbors solve problems together. I have seen unions train the next generation of workers. I have seen parents fight for their schools. I have seen people who disagree politically find common ground around a road, a park, a development project, or a child.

That is the America we need to rediscover. The first part of this cycle was about building. The middle was about challenging. The later decades were about unraveling. Now we are living through the crisis. We cannot know exactly what America will look like when this cycle ends, but we can decide what we build while it is happening.

If we want a democracy that survives this crisis, we cannot wait for somebody in Washington to save it. We have to save it where we live: in our neighborhoods, in our schools, in our unions, in our congregations, in our community organizations, in our city halls, and in the relationships we build with people who do not always agree with us. That is what It’s All Local means. Democracy is not something that happens to us. Democracy is something we do…together.

There are profound moments when something happens that forces us to stop and ask a very basic question: What kind of people are we? What happened in Tennessee last week is one of those moments.

Christa Pike was scheduled to be executed by lethal injection. Instead, after receiving two doses of pentobarbital, she remained alive. Witnesses reported hearing her breathing and snoring. She was eventually taken from the execution chamber to a hospital in critical condition. Tennessee Governor Bill Lee has now suspended executions in the state for the remainder of the year and ordered an independent investigation. This was the second failed execution attempt in Tennessee this year.

Pike was convicted of a horrific murder committed in 1995. Nothing about the brutality of that crime should be minimized, and Colleen Slemmer’s family has carried the consequences of that crime for more than three decades. But that doesn’t answer the larger question: Why are we killing people?

Tennessee had not executed a woman in more than 200 years. Nationally, women make up only a tiny fraction of those executed: 18 women have been executed in the United States since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. In the same period, more than 1,600 men have been executed.

And this isn’t simply a Tennessee question. The United States remains an outlier among wealthy democracies in retaining capital punishment. The Supreme Court effectively suspended executions in 1972, but after Gregg v. Georgia in 1976, states were permitted to resume them. The first execution after that period occurred in 1977.

I keep coming back to the contradiction in our political and moral language. There are people who describe themselves as “pro-life” because they believe every unborn life has an inherent value that the government should protect. Yet some of those same people support giving the government the authority to deliberately end the life of a person who has committed a terrible crime. Save the baby in the womb. But if that same human being grows up, commits an unforgivable act, and becomes a prisoner, the state should kill him…or her.

How do we reconcile those two ideas? The question isn’t whether murder is wrong. It is. The question is whether killing someone who has committed murder makes us safer, makes us more humane, or makes our society more just.

And what happened in Tennessee adds another question: What happens when the machinery of state-sponsored death doesn’t work as intended? Whatever one’s views on capital punishment, watching a condemned person remain alive and audibly suffering after the state began the process of killing her should force us to confront what execution actually means.

It is easy to talk about the death penalty in the abstract. It is harder when the curtain opens and someone is still breathing. Maybe that is the conversation we need to have. Not about whether Christa Pike deserves our sympathy. Not about whether Colleen Slemmer deserved justice. She did. But about whether a government should ever have the power to deliberately kill a human being, and whether, after what we witnessed in Tennessee, we are comfortable calling that justice rather than asking whether it has crossed into something else.

What kind of people are we? What kind of people do we want to be? And what kind of government do we want to give ourselves the power to become?

The allegations coming out of Cornell University should make every parent, every university administrator, and especially every father stop and ask a difficult question: What are we teaching our children about consent, boundaries, bodily autonomy, and respect for other human beings?

A former Cornell student has alleged that she was sexually assaulted by multiple members of the Chi Phi fraternity in 2024 after becoming impaired by alcohol and drugs. She has filed a civil lawsuit naming seven fraternity members, the fraternity, Cornell, and others. The Tompkins County district attorney has reopened the criminal investigation and plans to present evidence to a grand jury. The men accused have denied wrongdoing, and the facts will ultimately have to be determined through the legal process.

But whatever the eventual legal conclusions, the allegations themselves should force us to confront something larger than one fraternity, one university, or one night.

Men have to do better. We have to teach our sons that consent is not complicated. It is not something to be inferred from silence, intoxication, past sexual activity, flirting, clothing, or the fact that someone came to a party. Consent has to be freely given. When someone is incapacitated, impaired, uncomfortable, says no, pulls away, or simply cannot meaningfully participate in a decision, the answer is to stop.

We also have to teach our sons that another person’s body belongs to that person. Period. That lesson begins long before college. It begins at home. Parents cannot assume that schools, universities, athletic programs, fraternities, or friends will teach these values for us. We have to model respect, accountability, empathy, and boundaries from the time our children are young.

And if young men participate in something as horrific as the allegations emerging from Cornell, we need to ask how they came to believe that another person’s humanity could be disregarded. If someone can participate in an assault and believe there will be no consequences, that reflects a profound failure of the adults and institutions that were supposed to teach them better.

But there is another lesson we have to teach our daughters. We need to teach our daughters that their bodies are their own. No one has a right to their body without their consent. No one is entitled to sexual access because of a relationship, a date, alcohol, flirting, clothing, or anything else. They have the right to establish boundaries, change their minds, say no, and expect those boundaries to be respected.

And we have to teach young women something just as important: If someone violates those boundaries, it is not their fault. It is never the victim’s fault when someone attacks them, takes advantage of them, or sexually assaults them. Not because they drank. Not because they went to a party. Not because they trusted someone. Not because they didn’t fight back. Responsibility belongs to the person who chose to violate another person’s autonomy.

Universities have responsibilities, too. They need systems that take allegations seriously, support survivors, investigate fairly, and hold people accountable when misconduct is established. The Cornell controversy, and the reopening of the criminal investigation, should prompt every university to examine whether its policies actually protect victims rather than simply protect institutions.

Cornell happens to be in the news. But sexual assault is not a Cornell problem. It is a campus problem. It is a larger societal problem. We owe our daughters the confidence to know that their bodies belong to them. And we owe our sons the moral foundation to understand that another person’s body does not belong to them.