Day: October 14, 2026

Less than 30 days ahead of the 2026 midterms and almost nobody I talk to in Philadelphia is excited. Not my neighbors. Not my students or colleagues at Temple University, where I research and teach political communication and public opinion. Not even my politically engaged friends.

This mirrors the national mood in recent years: In a Pew Research Center survey, just 4% of Americans said they feel excited about politics; 65% said they feel exhausted.

“There are many factors that go into voter apathy,” explains Temple University political communications professor Bruce Hardy, “barriers to participation, lack of trust, cynicism, sense of disenfranchisement and powerlessness, political fatigue, and so on.”

Voter malaise and campaign fatigue aren’t new, but something feels different to me this time.

Lauren Cristella, president and CEO of the Committee of Seventy, a nonpartisan organization established to improve the voting process and engage Philadelphia citizens in the democratic process, agrees. She points to election integrity fears being hotly debated in the national media as part of the problem.

“We are sitting on the back side of a big decline in voter enthusiasm,” she said, “And yes, we need to start giving voters something to be excited about. However, what we are seeing in the commonwealth is a lot of confusion and fear around election integrity.”

This tension, in my view, is the real story of the 2026 midterms. Voters still care. The stakes are higher than ever. But the question on many voters’ minds is: Will my vote even count?

Election integrity fears are widespread

This is not just a Philadelphia problem. A July 2026 Gallup survey of more than 23,000 adults found that 2 in 3 Americans were concerned about political leaders pressuring election officials to change outcomes. Half worried that their own ballot would not be counted.

Voter confidence is sliding. In a 2026 University of California San Diego survey, 49% of Americans said they expect the midterms to be free and fair, while 51% expect unfair elections or aren’t sure.

A 2026 Pew survey similarly found that barely half of Americans are confident that November’s midterm elections will be conducted fairly and accurately. This represents a 10-point drop in national voter confidence from 61% in the 2024 elections.

Gap between democratic attitudes and voting behavior

Social and behavioral scientists have long understood the tension between one’s beliefs and attitudes about voting: For example, many people say they believe voting is an important democratic behavior, but then don’t actually vote themselves.

Efforts to close the gap between people’s intentions to vote and getting them to actually vote are where issues like mail-in voting, polling locations, time off work and voter ID laws make a difference.

Voting by mail has been a flash point since the 2020 presidential election when Philadelphia and Pennsylvania sat at the center of controversy. However, this should not be an issue for Philadelphians – or Pennsylvanians – in the upcoming midterms. The U.S. Supreme Court recently blocked a federal attempt to impose new Postal Service rules limiting mail-in voting.

Cristella told me that mail-in voting is “the safest and most secure of any time in the commonwealth’s history.” Every ballot can be tracked.

So why are Pennsylvania voters not convinced?

‘What’s the point?’ is a rational response

A 2021 article that cites experts at Tufts University explains how pushing myths like the “election was stolen” or “the election wasn’t fair” – presumably to explain away Donald Trump’s loss in 2020 and create mobilization for his 2024 presidential run – can boomerang and end up lowering confidence in future elections.

If people don’t believe their vote will count, then it becomes completely rational to simultaneously hold the opinion that voting is generally good for democracy, while also lacking any faith that their own vote will even be counted.

Framing theory explains how the presentation of information in the media influences the way people process and interpret it.

Hardy attributes much of the current state of voter apathy to the media’s focus on fraud and voter integrity. He says that “much of this comes from political discourse and media focusing on national political conflict, a seemingly endless election cycle, and a constant reinforcement of political in-groups and out-groups.”

Even though our elections are safe and secure in Philadelphia, he explains, “All of this negative national media coverage can overshadow the importance of local elections and leave people feeling disengaged from the politics closest to home.”

Cristella agrees that media framing is a significant part of the problem.

“Issues surrounding election fraud and vote integrity get amplified and muddied,” she said. When isolated issues in other states occur, even if proved untrue, the intense and repeated national media attention on them shakes voter confidence here at home.

What this means for Philly

The 2026 midterms will be an important election for Pennsylvania, as the election will determine the state’s next governor and lieutenant governor, as well as members of the U.S. House of Representatives and the state Legislature.

Philadelphians have a lot on the line.

Economic concerns, in particular, are a major issue this election. A recent Gallup poll indicates that confidence in the economy is at its weakest level since 2022. And the voters are feeling the pinch.

While the 2026 Philadelphia primary had a low 22% turnout, Cristella believes issues like affordability will lead to a strong turnout in November.

As a longtime Philadelphian who believes strongly in our democracy, I am staying hopeful.

Pennsylvania has 40,000 poll workers for each election. To become a poll worker, visit vote.phila.gov or vote.pa.gov.

Read more of our stories about Philadelphia and Pennsylvania, or sign up for our Philadelphia newsletter on Substack.

Heather LaMarre does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

​Politics + Society – The Conversation

Democrats are gaining momentum in their bid to retake the Senate in November. This has led Republicans to prepare for the possibility that a conservative Supreme Court justice might announce their retirement before the new Congress is sworn in on Jan. 3, 2027.

This would give President Donald Trump his fourth Supreme Court nomination, helping to ensure conservative dominance on the court for decades.

As a Supreme Court scholar, I know that judicial appointments have real consequences. Look no further than Roe v. Wade: Within two years of securing a 6–3 conservative majority, the high court in 2022 eliminated the constitutional right to abortion that had existed for almost 50 years.

If Democrats take over the Senate and a Republican-appointed justice retires before Jan. 3, this will trigger one of the most explosive confirmation battles in American history.

Here’s how the fight is likely to play out – and why the stakes are so high.

Who is most likely to retire?

Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas top the list of potential retirees should Democrats win the Senate in November. Alito and Thomas are the court’s oldest justices, at 76 and 78, respectively. Thomas is also the court’s longest-serving justice, appointed by President George H.W. Bush in 1991.

Perhaps more importantly, both justices have deep ties to the conservative legal movement. This is a network of lawyers, judges and politicians who seek to etch conservative principles into law. Overturning Roe v. Wade was at the top of the conservative wish list.

My research suggests that both Alito and Thomas care about their legacies. And they both understand that a Democratic-controlled Senate would block another Trump-appointed nominee.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer made this clear on Oct. 5, 2026, as did Senate Judiciary Committee member Richard Blumenthal, the Democrat from Connecticut. Blumenthal said, “It is slim to none that we would support a nominee from this administration.”

Though Alito has recently indicated he intends to stay on the court through its 2026 term, Thomas has made no recent public statements about retirement. And Alito is free to change his mind at any time.

If Alito or Thomas announced their retirement after the midterms, Republicans would have enough time to confirm a successor. The Senate has four and a half work weeks scheduled between Election Day and Jan. 3. Justice Amy Coney Barrett was confirmed less than a month after her nomination, making the timeline tight but doable.

Democrats will likely attempt to slow down the process, but they face an uphill battle with few options. Republicans stripped away key delaying tactics in recent years by ending the filibuster in 2017 and ignoring the Judiciary Committee’s quorum rules in 2020. This rule requires nine members be present to transact business, including two members of the minority party.

A potentially historic battle

A Republican effort to confirm a Supreme Court nominee during a lame-duck Senate would spark a historic battle with Democrats.

Democrats would surely point to how Republicans handled President Barack Obama’s appointment of Merrick Garland in 2016. A seat on the court opened up after conservative Antonin Scalia died on Feb. 13, almost nine months before the November presidential election.

Republicans refused to move Garland’s nomination through the confirmation process, using their majority power to set the Senate’s agenda. This marked the first time since 1866 that a Supreme Court nomination that was not withdrawn failed to receive an up-or-down vote in the Senate.

To justify this, Republicans created the so-called “McConnell Rule,” named after former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. According to McConnell, the Senate should not fill Supreme Court vacancies “in the middle of a presidential election year.”

Four years later, Senate Republicans abruptly abandoned the rule. This allowed them to push through Coney Barrett’s confirmation just days before the 2020 presidential election.

Democrats did not take kindly to this reversal.

Schumer pulled no punches in a speech the day of Barrett’s confirmation vote. Schumer said the day “will go down as one of the darkest days in the 231-year history of the United States Senate.”

He alleged the Republican majority made “a mockery of its own stated principle – that the American people deserve a voice in the selection of Supreme Court Justices – completing the partisan theft of two seats on the Supreme Court using completely contradictory rationales.”

Democrats were clearly outraged by what they saw as two stolen Supreme Court seats.

However, I believe that pushing through a nominee will trigger an even fiercer fight. Senate Democrats will see such a confirmation as a power grab that sidelines the voice of voters.

Furthermore, if a Republican justice retires should Democrats win the Senate, the move will almost certainly be viewed as purely partisan.

This has the potential to further erode public support for the court, which is sitting near historic lows. And it will likely fuel the fire of Supreme Court reform, including the possibility of expanding the number of justices on the court.

Put simply, in securing a short-term conservative victory, Republicans may end up handing Democrats the exact justification they need to reshape the high court.

Paul M. Collins Jr. does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

​Politics + Society – The Conversation

The proposed livestream of Nidal Hasan’s execution by a U.S. military firing squad gives an old question a new audience. Hasan, an Army psychiatrist convicted by a military court of killing 13 people at Fort Hood in Texas in 2009, is scheduled to be executed on Dec. 3, 2026.

Explaining the plan to make his death public, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said that “people need to understand … there’s serious consequences for these types of things.”

Whether the broadcast will proceed remains uncertain. But as a historian of the early American republic, I recognize a familiar expectation behind it: that watching someone die will teach a useful lesson. Americans at the republic’s founding debated that premise — and doubted what the lesson might be.

The power of government

On Aug. 17, 1797, New Yorkers gathered to watch John Young hang.

An English musician and music publisher struggling with debt, Young had shot and killed Robert Barwick, a deputy sheriff taking him into custody. Barwick left a widow and nine children.

Young’s conviction by a jury brought him to a scaffold surrounded by soldiers, before an immense crowd.

Governor John Jay, a leading Federalist who placed greater faith in firm government than in popular judgment, had authorized the military presence after the sheriff reported fears of a rescue. But Jay also wanted the execution to impress its witnesses with the power of the government carrying it out.

Writing to James Kent, New York City’s chief municipal legal officer, two days before the hanging, Jay stressed that the authority of law should prevail visibly. The occasion should be “particularly solemn and impressive,” he said. The “authority of the law should be seen to bear down (on) all opposition.”

Solemnity, however, proved difficult to arrange. The military escort played lively music as the procession made its way to the scaffold. One newspaper critic thought an uninformed passerby might mistake the spectacle for “the celebration of some Festival.”

Soldiers formed a square around the gallows. The crowd remained orderly. Young addressed a few words to the minister, sang a psalm “and with great composure pulled his cap over his face,” reported one newspaper. Then, before the assembled witnesses, he was hanged.

Loss of government’s dignity

Whatever the crowd’s reaction that day, the public execution had already become an argument about the nature of government.

The display did not impress everyone as evidence of governmental strength. Writing in the “Greenleaf’s New York Journal” two weeks after the hanging, “A CITIZEN” accused Jay of “letting down the dignity of civil authority.” Calling out troops for the execution suggested, among other things, “a wantonness on the part of the Executive.”

To this critic, the military presence advertised executive excess. The spectacle could undermine the very authority it was meant to affirm.

That point mattered in a republic still deciding how its authority should differ from that of the European monarchies that Americans portrayed as corrupt.

In the 1780s and 1790s, American reformers took particular aim at England’s “sanguinary laws” – statutes prescribing death for offenses ranging from murder to relatively minor theft.

By 1776, nearly 200 offenses carried a possible death sentence in England. These laws had accumulated piecemeal over generations, but American critics portrayed them as a single system with bloodshed at its center.

England’s punishments became a measure of what republican justice must overcome. Independence required Americans to reconsider how readily, and under what circumstances, their own governments could take a life.

The contrast was partly an exercise in national self-definition. Americans cast English severity as evidence of an old, corrupt political order and imagined their own laws as rational, proportionate and suited to free citizens.

In practice, the distinction was harder to sustain.

Nevertheless, the aspiration entered constitutional language. New Hampshire’s 1784 Constitution declared a multitude of sanguinary laws “both impolitic and unjust.” Punishment’s proper object was “to reform, not to exterminate mankind.”

Reform did not necessarily mean abolition. In 1796, New York reduced the number of crimes punishable by death but retained capital punishment for murder.

Young went to the gallows the following year. Even if Jay favored milder criminal laws, he was able to see a carefully staged execution as a necessary assertion of public authority.

No guarantee of lesson learned

Other Americans pressed further.

Benjamin Rush, the Philadelphia physician and signer of the Declaration of Independence, opposed executing even murderers. His argument went to the heart of the relationship between government and the governed.

“Capital punishments are the natural offspring of monarchical governments,” Rush wrote in 1792. “Kings consider their subjects as their property.”

For Rush, a republic that put citizens to death still acted like a monarchy, treating citizens’ lives as its own to dispose of. Calling the killing a lawful punishment did not make it less an act of revenge.

A related debate concerned the audience. Even Americans who accepted capital punishment could doubt the wisdom of making it public.

In 1787, Rush had already questioned what spectators actually learned from watching others suffer. Sympathy for the condemned could turn them against the government: “We secretly condemn the law which inflicts the punishment – hence arises a want of respect for laws in general,” he wrote in a pamphlet titled “An Enquiry into the Effects of Public Punishments upon Criminals and upon Society.”

Alternatively, repeated exposure to cruelty could harden spectators, encouraging the very violence that punishment was supposed to deter. “How often,” Rush asked, “do we find pockets picked under a gallows, and highway-robberies committed within sight of a gibbet?”

The crowd could pity the condemned, admire his composure or simply enjoy an outing. Gathering witnesses did not guarantee that they absorbed the intended lesson. The complaint about festive music at Young’s execution exposed that uncertainty: Officials could stage the spectacle, but they could not control its meaning.

What harm does this prevent?

Young’s execution gives the proposed broadcast of Hasan’s death a particular resonance. The crimes, jurisdictions and audiences differ, yet the ambition remains recognizable: to make one person’s punishment teach everyone else a lesson – and demonstrate the government’s strength.

Cruelty concerns more than the pain inflicted. It also lies in treating a person as fodder for exposure, humiliation and public instruction. The condemned person’s body becomes a public demonstration of whom the state protects – and whom it has the power to destroy.

But spectators may come for the theater of death itself, drawn by fascination with what human beings can do to one another. What officials present as instruction can become the marketing of guilty pleasures.

Cesare Beccaria, an Italian criminologist and economist whose 1764 essay “On Crimes and Punishments” helped shape American reform debates, argued that punishment could not undo a crime, only prevent future harm. Suffering beyond that purpose was unnecessary cruelty.

For Beccaria, an execution’s fleeting spectacle deterred less effectively than lifelong penal servitude. Beccaria’s alternative was harsh, but his principle constrained the state: The power to inflict suffering did not establish its necessity.

At Young’s scaffold, the state could end his life without controlling the meaning of his death. A broadcast would vastly enlarge the audience, but reach is no proof of usefulness, and curiosity supplies no justification.

Beccaria’s question thus remains: What future harm does this additional spectacle prevent? If it prevents none, what justifies it – and what does it reveal about the government that stages it?

Maurizio Valsania does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

​Politics + Society – The Conversation

When Hurricane Isaias hit the Florida Panhandle on Oct. 9, 2026, it was just the latest weather disaster for Americans in a year that continues to break records.

The hottest U.S. summer on record left millions of Americans facing life-threatening heat waves. Extreme heat and drought set the stage for wildfires. Flooding from powerful storms and days of heavy rainfall inundated communities in several states. And now a “Super El Niño,” on top of already rising temperatures and sea levels, is expected to make extreme events worse, at least into spring 2027.

In the past, states relied heavily on federal aid and expertise to respond quickly to disasters. But in communities across the U.S., people recovering from floods, storms and wildfires in 2025 and 2026 have been left waiting much longer for federal aid – if it arrives at all.

Will there be political consequences in the midterm elections for the slow aid and lack of government assistance?

The answer to that question runs through the ways the Trump administration has changed disaster response and federal disaster aid. As a professor who has written for years about civic engagement and climate policy, I have reason to believe that voters’ frustration with slow disaster aid may show up at the polls.

Cuts to FEMA hobbled federal disaster help

Even though the United States is experiencing more disasters as the climate changes, the federal programs meant to help Americans recover are being diminished.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency has faced significant cuts to funding and staff since the Trump administration took office in January 2025. The administration initially talked about abolishing the agency, arguing that states and communities could deal with disasters on their own. It created a plan to cut FEMA’s staffing by 50%, but in September 2026, a judge found that plan to be unlawful.

FEMA lost over 17% of its trained staff members in 2025 alone, including hundreds of people who were on call to respond to disasters. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin continues to defend the administration’s goal of a leaner workforce at the agency.

The Trump administration also withheld billions of dollars meant to help states reduce their disaster risk and protect homes, hospitals and other structures from storm damage. Lawsuits forced the administration to restore some of the funds, but many communities are still struggling on their own.

These changes have tangible effects on how well states are able to recover from disasters and how well they can prepare for the disaster risks ahead as the climate changes.

Slower aid, if it arrives at all

The Trump administration is also taking longer to approve emergency funding after disasters than past administrations did and denying more of those requests.

In 2025 it denied 26% of requests for major disaster declarations, which unlock immediate federal aid. That was up from an average of 15% over the previous two decades.

An independent analysis of FEMA data exposes some clear patterns in funding delays under the Trump administration. The review found that major disaster declarations have taken an average of nearly 10 weeks to be issued during the current Trump administration, up from an average of three weeks or less over the previous two decades.

The administration says it is simply conducting more thorough reviews when governors make these aid requests. But people caught in disasters don’t have time to wait. Major disaster aid includes individual assistance, such as temporary housing, loans and repair grants, that disaster survivors need quickly to recover.

The review also found that about 85% of the requests for federal assistance from states that went for Donald Trump in the 2024 election were eventually approved, while only about half of requests have been approved in states that voted for his Democratic opponent, Kamala Harris.

A separate Associated Press report in July 2026 noted that no other president had such a sharp partisan divide in approving disaster declaration requests between Republican and Democratic governors since at least 1989, when a federal law set rules for disaster determinations.

Disaster failures can mobilize political moderates

A handful of studies, including mine, have found that people who have experienced a disaster often have higher levels of civic engagement.

In my study, civic engagement included contacting elected officials, signing petitions, attending public meetings, participating in boycotts or joining protests, among other actions. We didn’t look at the connection to voting patterns, but I believe there is good reason to expect our findings to extend to voting as well.

The relationship between experiencing a disaster and level of civic engagement was strongest for political moderates who are sometimes referred to as the “movable middle” – they could swing in either political direction if they have reason to do so.

Given the disasters America has seen in recent years and the sharp drop in federal assistance, I expect that political moderates who become more civically engaged will play a significant role in the midterm elections this year.

How FEMA cuts play out in a crisis

Several recent disasters have shown what happens when the federal government isn’t prepared to respond quickly.

After the devastating July 4 floods that swept through Texas Hill Country in 2025, the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees FEMA, waited three days before approving funding to send federal search-and-rescue teams, a Congressional report confirmed. Other funding approvals took an average of 12 days, leaving local and state programs to fill critical gaps in disaster systems.

In summer 2026, Texas was hit with floods again. The president approved assistance for some of the counties after a seven-week delay. Other requests for assistance were still waiting months later.

FEMA denied individual and statewide assistance to Michigan after severe storms and tornadoes tore up homes across several rural communities in March 2026.

With highly contested Senate races looming in both states, these actions by the Trump administration could color voters’ views or contribute to a lack of enthusiasm for the party in power and even increase support for the opposition.

A survey conducted by Pew Research Center in May 2025 found that the majority of Americans believe that it is a good idea for the federal government to provide financial assistance to help people rebuild after disasters in place at high risk of extreme weather.

These findings are relatively consistent across political parties: 60% of those who identified as Republican or leaning Republican said they believed it was a good idea, as did 68% of those who identified as Democrat or leaning Democrat.

Too little, too late?

Trump recently started announcing disaster aid approvals in states consequential to the control of Congress in the midterm elections, including in Wisconsin and Ohio. In some cases, he coupled his candidate endorsements with disaster funding announcements.

I don’t believe those late announcements will move the needle in his party’s favor at this late date.

Dana R. Fisher does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

​Politics + Society – The Conversation