The Democrats’ call for Americans to “protect democracy” from candidate Donald Trump fell flat in the 2024 presidential election. Over and over, President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris said that Trump and other Republicans represented an existential threat to the political system, calling out things like Project 2025 and the extreme anti-immigration aims of aides like Stephen Miller, and predicting a more authoritarian second term if Trump were to be reelected.

More than a year into Trump’s second term, we should acknowledge that they were right.

Trump has drastically expanded his executive authority, targeted his enemies using the traditionally apolitical Justice Department, marginalized Congress in the build up to another war in the Middle East, and engaged in a midcycle redistricting effort meant to win the midterm elections before they begin. 

In short, Trump is behaving less like a democratically elected leader — and more like an authoritarian — than ever. At the same time, the Democrats’ “save democracy” message seems to have hit a brick wall, and issues like tackling affordability and the cost of living are rising on the priority list. I don’t think that’s because Americans don’t care about democracy. I think it’s because they want to see the system improved, not just protected.

More than 60 percent of Americans are unsatisfied with democracy as-is, per Gallup polling. And all across the country, I hear the desire for more creativity from both parties in proposing solutions to the major issues driving our politics, as well as a call to improve democracy by making it more responsive to everyday people. So much of the current malaise is driven by an electorate that feels without agency, written out of the process in selecting the president (the Electoral College), in Congress (gerrymandering), or in the Supreme Court (lifelong terms).

So this week on the America, Actually podcast, I talked with Amy Walter, publisher and editor-in-chief of the Cook Political Report, about the state of Trump’s redistricting efforts and ways we can “improve” democracy, not just protect it.

Here’s three things she pointed out:

1) The primary process has been corrupted

Walter argues that the primary system — created over a century ago to wrest nominations away from party bosses in smoke-filled rooms — has a new kind of dysfunction. “The primary process has become as corrupted as it was back then,” she told, pointing to a flood of outside money “attached either to an issue or a corporate interest,” and a primary electorate that skews “very far left or right.” 

Her proposed fix: a single national primary day — rather than months of state-by-state primaries — with an open ballot, where “every voter is allowed to vote. … You don’t have to be a Democrat or a Republican.” It won’t solve everything, she concedes, “but it at least addresses one of the major problems.”

2) Gerrymandering could erase majority-minority districts

The Supreme Court’s decision in Louisiana v. Callais weakening Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act has, by Walter’s count, handed Republicans something like a four-to-six-seat advantage in the redistricting wars. In the short term, maps in Tennessee, Louisiana, and Alabama “basically took three Black-majority districts, two of which were represented by Black members of Congress, and made them safely Republican.” (Though Alabama’s new map is still being litigated.)

But the longer-term threat is bipartisan: She warns the same logic could push Democrats to break up their own majority-Black and majority-Hispanic seats in order to spread those voters into more winnable districts. 

“How far will Democrats be willing to go to expand their advantage in states where they have majority Black or majority Hispanic seats?” she asked — a “real messy” conundrum where both parties may decide minority representation isn’t the priority.

3) Not all reforms work

Reforms alone don’t cure the malaise, Walter cautioned, pointing to California as the cautionary tale. The state has a wish list of electoral reforms — open top-two primaries, easy registration, mail-in voting, ballot initiatives — but as Walters says, “It doesn’t mean that the state is governed better.”

The incentive structure itself is broken, she says: A member of Congress who “keeps your head down and gets stuff done” gets nothing; instead, it “benefits those who make the most noise, do the most damage, refuse to do any sort of compromising.” Until that changes, she told me, “you can create all the reforms you want, but if people feel like the system is broken, they’re not going to participate.”

As always, there’s much more in the full show, so listen to America, Actually wherever you get your podcasts or watch it on Vox’s YouTube channel.

Virginia’s plan to redraw its congressional maps to create as many as four new Democratic seats is dead, struck down by the state supreme court. Its impact on Virginia politics, though, is still being felt — and nowhere more visibly than in Virginia’s First District. 

The district, which covers much of Virginia’s coastline and includes parts of the Richmond suburbs, is one of the few in the country that is actually competitive, and it’s been thrown into chaos due to the ongoing gerrymandering wars that have consumed the 2026 midterm cycle. 

To learn more, I traveled there last month for the latest episode of Vox’s video podcast, America, Actually.

Originally, Virginians voted to redraw their maps to be more favorable to Democrats in response to Republican efforts to do the same in Missouri, Texas, and elsewhere. But a court effort threw out that result, restoring the state’s original maps and sowing uncertainty for candidates and volunteers who had been advocating for the change.

Even more, Virginia has become a place where the underlying tensions in the gerrymandering battle have begun to bubble up to the surface. Newly elected Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger’s approval rating has taken a hit since endorsing the Democrats’ campaign to draw new maps, and she recently admonished House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries against pursuing his “maximum warfare, everywhere, all the time” strategy when it comes to redistricting. (The phrase, as Jeffries has noted, isn’t original to him: It’s also how the Trump camp described its own redistricting efforts.)

“It is outrageously premature of us to be talking about any sort of redistricting or map changing effort when we have to win the most consequential midterms of my lifetime this November,” Spanberger told the New York Times in May.

On our trip to Virginia’s First District, America, Actually spoke with Democratic volunteers who had organized for the referendum and were now pivoting to selecting a primary candidate. We also attended a candidate forum at the Libbie Mill Library in Richmond, Virginia, where several candidates vying to be the Democratic nominee in the district made their pitches to voters. 

At events like this, it’s easier to see how the party’s message for the midterms is taking shape. Here are three takeaways: 

1) Redistricting exhaustion is real

I understand the pickle Spanberger is in. Democrats organized, knocked doors, and convinced voters to embrace a redistricting effort that many people were uncomfortable with — and then watched a court erase it. Katie Sitterson, an Indivisible Virginia volunteer we talked to in Virginia’s First, described the morale hit as taking “the air out of your sails.” 

When I asked whether it had dampened volunteer enthusiasm, she put it bluntly: “People start to feel like, ‘What does it matter?’ I tried, and we’re doing all these things, and we even voted, and we used our voice, and it still didn’t work.” She said the reversal confirms the exact “lack of agency” voters already feel — and makes it that much harder to keep people in the fight for a full year.

I think that explains some of Spanberger’s resistance to Jeffries’ strategy. The “all warfare, all the time” move is something that excites the base — valuable in a midterm or national primary. Picking and choosing your spots to expend political capital is more important in purple areas like Virginia’s First or in statewide elections.

2) “Woke” isn’t dead

The short period where Democrats leaned into social justice language during the 2020 election seems to have passed. But at the Indivisible candidate forum in Richmond, there were lots of medical masks being worn, an open embrace of identity politics, and candidates leaning in. 

“I always say that joy is the best resistance we have,” one candidate told attendees. “Hope is not a dirty word.” Another introduced himself as “a child of immigrants,” and a third described herself as “unapologetically progressive…who doesn’t take any corporate money.”

These days, “wokeness” has become sort of a punchline in elite Democratic circles, as more and more politicians run away from the progressive message of 2020. But those are values people legitimately believe in and will re-emerge as a point of tension in a national Democratic primary.

3) Democrats have a message

If “affordability” was the buzzword of the 2025 elections thanks to New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, I think “corruption” is emerging as the same thing for 2026, driven by a reaction to President Donald Trump’s actions and elevated by leading national politicians like Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA). But what’s most clear in these House races is that many candidates don’t see affordability and corruption as separate issues, but as linked ideas. Basically: Things are getting more expensive for you as Trump is grifting in the White House.

Here’s how Tim Cywinski, one of the Democrats running in Virginia’s First, put it: “From my experience with everyday people — Republican, Democrat, left, right, everyone between — it’s all about affordability and corruption.” He said the connection doesn’t require explaining insider trading or crypto: “You don’t have to know the nuances of the stock market. You just see that they are getting wealthier, while at the same time everybody else is getting…it’s harder to live. Life shouldn’t be this unaffordable. And if you say, ‘Yes, it’s because of them, but also at the same time, they’re enriching themselves,’ that drives people crazy. And for them, it doesn’t matter who they voted for in the last election.”

That sweet spot was Cywinski’s focus — pointing out that prices are rising for most Americans as Trump puts a seeming “for-sale sign in front of the White House.” Candidates think that contrast can not only motivate Democrats to turn out, but peel off enough independents and Trump voters to win a district like Virginia’s First. 

As always, there’s much more in the full show, so listen to America, Actually wherever you get your podcasts or watch it on Vox’s YouTube channel.