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After President Donald Trump fired Attorney General Pam Bondi on April 2, 2026, news reports suggested that she fell from grace, not for being too independent, but for not being effective enough at defending him and prosecuting his political enemies.

As The New York Times reported the previous day, Trump was disappointed with “Ms. Bondi’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files, which has become a political liability for Mr. Trump among his supporters. He has also complained about her shortcomings as a communicator and vented about what he sees as the Department of Justice’s lack of aggressiveness in going after his foes.”

The president has long indicated that whoever served as attorney general in his administration should see themselves as his lawyer rather than as someone representing the U.S. government.

During his first presidential term, Trump was gravely disappointed with Jeff Sessions, his first attorney general, who recused himself from the investigation into alleged political interference in the 2016 election. He replaced Sessions with William Barr, who abandoned Trump when the president did not accept the results of the 2020 election.

Having learned from those mistakes, Trump set out to find a political ally and loyalist to take the helm at the Justice Department in his second administration.

As a scholar of law and politics, and someone who has written about the role of the attorney general, I think Trump’s desire has a familiar ring to it. It is not unusual for presidents to put people who share their views and policy preferences into the role. But Trump has gone far beyond what is usually done.

Bondi’s ascent

Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz was Trump’s first choice for attorney general during the president’s second term. Many commentators viewed Gaetz as a firebrand who was temperamentally unsuited for that position. Some criticized him for calling the president an “inspirational leader of a loving and patriotic movement” in the aftermath of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. In the face of growing opposition generated in part by allegations of his misconduct, Gaetz withdrew.

Trump turned to Bondi a few hours later. She had served as Florida’s attorney general and drawn praise from across the political spectrum for her professionalism.

A bipartisan group of former state attorneys general wrote a letter attesting to their “firsthand knowledge of her fitness for the office” and her “wealth of prosecutorial experience and commitment to public service.”

In addition, as PBS noted at the time of her appointment, Bondi was “a longtime Trump ally and was one of his lawyers during his first impeachment trial, when he was accused — but not convicted — of abusing his power as he tried to condition U.S. military assistance to Ukraine on that country investigating then-former Vice President Joe Biden.”

She also showed her loyalty by attending Trump’s New York trial for paying hush money to porn actor Stormy Daniels, with whom he allegedly had an affair.

At the time of her nomination, Bondi seemed to have the attributes of an attorney general. She had the credentials to take on the job of running the DOJ and the confidence of the president who appointed her.

From confirmation to downfall

During her confirmation hearings, Bondi promised to safeguard the Justice Department’s independence and bolster its transparency. She also vowed to not serve as the president’s personal attorney.

And in response to a question from Rhode Island Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, she pledged in January 2025 that “there will never be an enemies list within the Department of Justice.”

But she also showed her willingness to joust with Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee. She hewed to the MAGA script by refusing to say that the president had lost the 2020 election. And she mounted a spirited attack on the Biden Justice Department, which she claimed had been “weaponized for years and years and years.”

Once in office, Bondi took on the difficult task of leading the Justice Department while also pleasing the president. She stood by when Trump used an appearance at the department to give, according to The New York Times, a “grievance-filled attack on the very people who have worked in the building and others like them.” The Times added: “He appeared to offer his own vision of justice in America, one defined by personal vengeance rather than by institutional principles.”

Bondi apparently did not do enough to deliver on that version of justice.

Last year, Trump had to urge Bondi to take action against his political enemies, including former FBI Director James Comey, California Senator Adam Schiff and New York Attorney General Leticia James.

“They’re all guilty as hell,” Trump posted on his social media platform, Truth Social, “but nothing is going to be done. “We can’t delay any longer, it’s killing our reputation and credibility,” he added. “They impeached me twice, and indicted me (5 times!), OVER NOTHING. JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!”

Bondi took her marching orders and launched investigations of those the president named. However, she was not able to secure any convictions. NBC News quoted a former official in the Trump White House who said that failing to secure indictments “is a problem for job security with the president.”

If that wasn’t enough, Trump was also reportedly frustrated with the way Bondi had handled the release of the Epstein files, first promising full disclosure and then botching the rollout of the files.

Contending visions of the attorney general’s job

Bondi’s tenure illustrates the conflicting visions of what an attorney general should do that animate today’s American politics.

The questions Democrats asked her during her confirmation were designed to get her to commit to their view of what the attorney general should do. Those questions signaled their belief that anyone occupying that office should maintain their distance from the president and uphold the Justice Department’s independence.

But right from the start of the republic, presidents have chosen close political allies to serve as attorney general.

It’s common for presidents to appoint their friends and supporters to be attorneys general. Since Franklin D. Roosevelt, many presidents have chosen their campaign manager or their party’s national chairperson to be attorney general of the United States.

But even compared with this history, Trump and his allies have a radically different vision, seeing the attorney general as just another Cabinet member whose responsibility is to carry out the president’s policies and implement his directions. As Trump put it in a 2017 interview with The New York Times, he has the “absolute right to do what I want to do with the Justice Department.”

In the end, it seems that Bondi was fired for her failure to be effective in the political role assigned to her. It is likely that the president will want to replace her with someone even more political than she was, who promises to deliver more of the results he wants.

Austin Sarat 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 first parents convicted of involuntary manslaughter for a mass school shooting committed by their child were Jennifer and James Crumbley. The Crumbleys were convicted in 2024, after their 15-year-old son Ethan killed four students at Oxford High School in Michigan in 2021.

In March 2026, Colin Gray became the first parent convicted of murder for a mass shooting carried out by his child. His son, Colt, 14, killed two students and two teachers in 2024 at Apalachee High School in Georgia.

Critics of the Crumbley and Gray decisions worry that holding parents responsible for school shootings may lead to parental accountability for a broad range of children’s actions.

This is possible, but I believe it is unlikely.

That’s because parents already have long been held liable for the actions of their children, as Baylor law professor Dyllan Taxman notes. The previous failure to find parental liability for gun dangers was the exception.

But even if the Crumbley and Gray convictions do not portend the beginning of parental convictions for a new and wide-ranging category of parental actions, they do suggest a growing belief that parents who allow their children easy access to guns are dangerous and unfit.

As a family law scholar, I think this changing view about parental gun ownership may have significant ramifications for parents in other legal contexts, most notably custody determinations.

Guns and best interests

Child custody decisions in the U.S. are based on a court’s determination regarding the “best interest of the child.” Irresponsible gun ownership can be a factor in such conclusions, but historically such considerations have been rare.

This absence is shocking given the well-documented dangers that unsecured firearms pose. Since 2020, firearms have been the leading cause of death for children between the ages of 1 and 19. The statistic includes accidental shootings as well as homicides and suicides. The vast majority of child gun deaths occur at home. And more than 4.6 million children live in a home with at least one unlocked and loaded firearm.

The failure to routinely consider parental gun practices, including gun storage and children’s access, in custody determinations is notable – not just because unsecured guns pose a significant danger to children, but because other less substantial risks regularly factor into custody decisions.

Perceived moral dangers, such as a child’s exposure to profanity or a parent’s nonmarital relationship, are common factors in custody determinations. Similarly, exposure to secondhand smoke or a child’s obesity are also frequent considerations.

Consequently, while the consideration of parental gun behaviors is not entirely absent from custody decisions, its relative rarity suggests a deliberate unwillingness to link them with parental fitness considerations.

The Crumbley and Gray convictions suggest this reluctance may be waning.

Loss of custody as a deterrent

School shootings are relatively rare, but custody disputes are not.

Consequently, if irresponsible gun ownership becomes a common consideration in custody decisions, the implications for gun safety could be substantial. That’s because this approach avoids the pitfalls of previous gun control attempts.

Unlike other gun safety measures, the consideration of gun ownership in custody cases largely avoids Second Amendment concerns regarding the constitutional right to bear arms. As William & Mary law professor James Dwyer notes, in child custody cases the state operates “outside the bounds of the (Constitution) … to the extent of being freed from the restrictions ordinarily generated by the constitutional rights of others.”

The result is that constitutionally protected behaviors are frequently considered in custody decisions.

In the 2011 South Carolina case Purser v. Owens, for instance, the family court considered the mother’s abortion in its best-interest analysis and held that having an abortion demonstrated the mother was irresponsible and thus unfit.

In the 2003 Virginia case Roberts v. Roberts, a father lost custody for his statements that women cannot do what men do.

And in the 1985 Colorado case In re Marriage of Short, a court affirmed parents’ religious beliefs are a relevant factor in custody determinations.

As these cases demonstrate, the fact that some harmful parental behaviors are also constitutional rights doesn’t mean they’re excluded from custody determinations.

A second benefit of raising gun ownership in a custody dispute is that the parent raising this issue does not need to be a gun control advocate. They don’t need to dislike guns, and they can even be a gun owner themselves.

For gun ownership to become relevant, a parent simply needs to argue that the other parent’s gun practices are irresponsible compared to their own. If this increases a parent’s custody prospects, it can be assumed many parents will make this argument.

Parents are paying attention

For parents facing accusations of irresponsible gun practices, the potential loss of custody should provide a strong incentive for modifying their gun behavior.

Case law demonstrates that parents routinely refrain from behaviors that could hurt their custody case. And there is every reason to expect the same result with gun ownership.

Importantly, the Gray case already proved that parents are paying attention to these trends. During his trial, it was revealed that about a week before the September 2024 shooting, Gray’s estranged wife – and Colin Gray’s mother – Marcee Gray, did an internet search for “school shooter parents charged with manslaughter.”

Then, after reading articles about the Crumbley cases’ convictions, she called Colin and asked him to secure his guns. Although Colin ignored his wife’s warning, the next parent might listen, especially when the warning is coming from a divorce attorney.

Should irresponsible gun ownership become a common factor in custody disputes, parents will be advised to secure their guns, and many will heed this advice, I believe. The Crumbley conviction almost prevented Colt Gray’s access to firearms.

Marcia Zug 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 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence isn’t the only important anniversary in 2026. This year also marks the 75th anniversary of an extraordinary case of student activism that helped lead to the Supreme Court’s decision outlawing segregated schools.

In April 1951, 16-year-old Barbara Rose Johns organized a student strike to protest the shabby conditions and inadequate education at her segregated Black high school in Prince Edward County, Virginia.

Prince Edward County is located about 65 miles southwest of Richmond and around 30 miles east of Appomattox, or 48 kilometers, in a part of Virginia known as Southside. African Americans constituted almost half the population, but they were largely prevented from voting before passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965 and could not eat in local restaurants before passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The public schools were segregated, and for decades there was no Black high school at all.

In 1939, following years of pressure by Black residents, the white authorities opened a high school for African Americans. That segregated institution was named for Robert Roosa Moton, who had been raised in Prince Edward County and served as an administrator at Hampton Institute in Virginia before being appointed as the second head of Tuskegee Institute following the death of Booker T. Washington.

The new building became severely overcrowded almost immediately. Although it was designed for a maximum enrollment of 180, attendance reached 219 the year after it opened and 377 in 1947.

The following year, the school board put up three temporary outbuildings to accommodate the overflow. Many Black residents scorned these buildings as “tar paper shacks” because of their covering and dilapidated condition. They had inefficient wood stoves that provided limited heating, and their thin walls often leaked when rain fell.

The shabbiness of these interim structures became a source of continuing tension, as negotiations between the Black community and white authorities for a more permanent facility dragged on inconclusively into early 1951.

Johns makes her move

As an 11th grader at Moton High School, Johns began talking with some of her fellow students about taking action to protest the shacks and improve their education.

On April 23, 1951, someone lured Moton’s principal, Boyd Jones, out of the building on the pretext that two students were in trouble elsewhere in town. After Jones left, Johns summoned the student body to the auditorium, where she exhorted her peers to walk out to protest the deplorable condition of their school.

Johns also sent a letter to Oliver W. Hill and Spottswood W. Robinson III, two Richmond civil rights lawyers who worked closely with the NAACP, asking for their legal assistance.

The strike went on for two weeks. During that time, Hill and Robinson met twice with hundreds of students and parents. The meetings grew out of the lawyers’ initial skepticism about litigating over school conditions in rural Prince Edward County, where they feared that plaintiffs would be subject to severe physical and economic retaliation.

Those meetings persuaded Hill and Robinson that the Black community broadly supported an effort to obtain desegregation rather than mere improvements in the separate Black schools. The lawyers therefore filed their lawsuit in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia on behalf of scores of Black students and parents, alleging that segregated schools violated the 14th Amendment.

Victory – and messy history

Johns’ initiative had both short- and long-term consequences.

In the immediate aftermath of the strike, the all-white school board fired Jones, whom they regarded as having put the students up to their activism despite his – and the students’ – insistence that the whole affair was a student initiative.

The lawsuit – and other similar suits filed in South Carolina, Delaware and Kansas – failed in the lower court. The plaintiffs appealed to the Supreme Court, which reversed those judgments and ruled in the consolidated case called Brown v. Board of Education that segregated public schools were unconstitutional.

Meanwhile, in the wake of the student strike at Moton, Johns’ family feared that she would be in physical danger if she remained in Prince Edward County for her senior year. They sent her to live with her uncle Vernon Johns, a minister and outspoken civil rights advocate, in Montgomery, Alabama.

Johns graduated from Drexel University and worked for many years as a public school librarian in Philadelphia before her death in 1991.

The post-Brown history of Prince Edward County is very complicated. White authorities closed the public schools for five years to avoid desegregation. For a long time afterward, virtually all the white children went to a private academy that opened when the public schools closed.

But that messy history cannot detract from the courage and impact of Barbara Johns.

In December 2025, her statue replaced that of Robert E. Lee as one of the two Virginians displayed in the U.S. Capitol. Johns is there – along with George Washington.

Jonathan Entin 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

In May 2025, the U.S. Department of Justice began sending letters to state governments demanding copies of statewide voter registration lists. The request was unprecedented: It demanded not only publicly available voter data, such as names and addresses, but also sensitive information, including driver’s license and Social Security numbers.

That data is considered highly sensitive because it can be used to commit identity theft, access financial or government records, and facilitate targeted harassment or intimidation, particularly if the data were mishandled or leaked.

Underlying these requests is the Trump administration’s stated goal of rooting out fraudulent and illegal voting. With voter data in its hands, the DOJ seeks to identify ineligible voters and mandate state election officials to remove those voters from the rolls.

States have responded in a variety of ways. Some have fully complied with the requests, some partially complied, and many outright refused to provide any voter information. For the latter states, the Trump administration has taken the fight to court and sued to get the information, claiming that federal law requires the states to hand it over.

The majority of cases are still going through the courts.

I’m an election law scholar who focuses on election administration. This battle over voter data has raised numerous questions about the Trump administration’s motives, the legality of its actions and, more generally, the role of the federal government in election administration.

The DOJ has a tough road ahead in convincing election officials and judges across the country that all of its demands in these cases are constitutionally legitimate.

Federal power grab

States have exclusive authority to govern and administer state and local elections. The federal government, on the other hand, historically has played a much more limited role in election regulation and administration. By constitutional design, Congress may regulate only the “time, place, and manner” of federal elections – in other words, the procedural elements of elections for federal offices.

And even then, states hold concurrent authority to regulate federal elections.

Nevertheless, in his second administration President Donald Trump has sought to expand the federal government’s control over elections. In February 2026 he called on Congress to “nationalize” elections. He has also made an administration priority the passage of the SAVE America Act, a bill that would mandate states to turn away any voter without documentary proof of U.S. citizenship.

Trump’s initiatives apparently stem from conspiratorial allegations that the 2020 presidential election was rigged against him, resulting in fraudulent and illegal voting that gave Joe Biden the presidency. And they are ultimately what animates the DOJ’s crusade for voter information from the states, with Attorney General Pam Bondi having recently stated that “accurate, well-maintained voter rolls are a requisite for the election integrity that the American people deserve.”

So far, the DOJ has sent requests to at least 48 states and the District of Columbia demanding their complete voter registration lists – information on every individual registered to vote in the given state.

In doing so, the DOJ has asked the states to sign onto an agreement under which they agree to remove within 45 days any voters that the DOJ flags as ineligible. But by signing this agreement, a state is effectively handing over the administration of its voter rolls to the federal government.

DOJ’s legal arguments

Only 12 states – Alaska, Arkansas, Indiana, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas and Wyoming – have fully complied with the requests, handing over to the DOJ private information such as the driver’s license and Social Security numbers of their registered voters.

Five states, meanwhile, have provided publicly available voter information – name, address and party affiliation – to the DOJ while withholding more sensitive information. The remaining 31 states of the 48 to receive requests, along with the District of Columbia, have refused to give any voter list to the federal agency.

The DOJ has sued 29 states for refusing to hand over voter lists and has also sued the District of Columbia, sparing only Iowa, Alabama and South Carolina. Only one sued state – Oklahoma – has thus far capitulated to the DOJ.

In these lawsuits, the DOJ cites three legal sources that supposedly give the agency the right to request voter information from state officials.

First, the DOJ points to a provision of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 that requires states to “make available for public inspection” all records necessary to ensure the accuracy of their voter registration lists. As critics note, though, this provision does not require states to reveal sensitive voter information. All 50 states are, in fact, currently in compliance with the act’s mandate.

Second, the DOJ invokes the Help America Vote Act of 2002 and its requirement that all states must maintain a computerized, statewide voter registration list. Nevertheless, no provision in that law provides explicit authority to the federal government to request these registration lists from state officials.

Finally, the DOJ has argued that the states have an obligation under the Civil Rights Act of 1960 to comply with the agency’s demands. Specifically, Title III of the act permits the U.S. attorney general to request for inspection “all records and papers” kept by state election officials relating to “any application, registration, payment of poll tax, or other act requisite to voting.”

While perhaps the strongest of the three arguments, that title of the Civil Rights Act goes on to require the attorney general to offer a “statement of the basis and the purpose” of their request.

In the DOJ’s requests to states, Bondi has apparently provided zero justification as to why the states must hand over sensitive voter information to the DOJ. Indeed, any stated purposes appear unrelated to the Civil Rights Act’s aims of combating racial discrimination.

What’s possible

There are further legal questions regarding whether the states could even comply with the DOJ’s proposed 45-day deadline for removing declared ineligible voters.

For example, the National Voter Registration Act forbids states from removing people from the voter rolls in certain instances without first providing notice and waiting two federal election cycles – a timeline well beyond 45 days.

In the 29 targeted states, federal courts have thus far dismissed four lawsuits in California, Georgia, Michigan and Oregon. Oklahoma, as noted above, has settled its case with the DOJ. While the remaining lawsuits have yet to fully play out, the DOJ likely faces less-than-sympathetic judges in these cases.

Even if the DOJ loses in court, though, the federal government may continue attempting to receive states’ voter information through other means.

The SAVE America Act, for instance, currently under consideration in the U.S. Senate, contains a provision that incentivizes states to submit their voter registration lists to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security on a quarterly basis or otherwise subject their residents to stringent voter ID laws. Should Congress pass the act, the executive branch would have much clearer federal authority to force voter data from state election officials.

John J. Martin 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

President Donald Trump appeared on former Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino’s podcast in February 2026, where he stated: “The Republicans should say, ‘We want to take over, we should take over the voting.’ The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting.”

Trump’s call to nationalize elections, to transfer the constitutionally mandated control of elections from local to federal authorities, drew bipartisan opposition and added to Democratic fears that the president may attempt to interfere with upcoming midterm elections.

Despite Trump’s call to “nationalize the voting,” the U.S. Constitution clearly notes that states run elections – not the federal government.

The federal government, however, has a role to play in national elections – as an observer. Federal observation ensures that Americans cast their votes on election day without reprisal.

Initially dispatched to deter voter discrimination against Black Americans after passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, election observers ensured that those qualified to vote could do so without trouble.

But with its 2013 ruling in the Shelby County v. Holder case, the U.S. Supreme Court changed the federal government’s relationship to the election process. The ruling significantly weakened the federal govenment’s ability to send federal observers to the polls.

As a scholar of civil rights and voting rights, I know that federal oversight during elections has always been a valued part of the electoral process, even when subject to criticism.

Yet, this current moment, with the Trump administration’s efforts to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the 2026 midterms, feels different. What I have noticed recently is how the public’s thinking has shifted about the federal oversight of elections. Where once it was largely welcomed as an ensurer of fairness and proper procedures, now it is seen as a misuse of authority.

Establishment of federal observers

The key contribution of the Voting Rights Act that Americans are typically taught about in school is its abolition of racial discrimination in voting. The measure put a stop to poll taxes and literacy tests, which had disproportionately reduced Black voter registration.

But the act also created the type of federal observation of elections that is most familiar to Americans today.

The measure allows the Department of Justice to deploy federal observers to polling stations. That deployment can happen through a court order or by requirement to places with documented histories of voter suppression. The latter was determined by a section of the Voting Rights Act that also details the guidelines for which places merit that designation.

Federal observers take notes, often beside poll monitors, and document potential unlawful practices by poll workers.

Unlike monitors, federal observers are stationed inside polling stations. They keep notes on the tallying of votes and verify those thrown out. And where the Justice Department requires the permission from respective districts to send monitors, federal observers are sent by the U.S. attorney general and do not require the same permission.

Historically, observers were also charged with registering voters at polling stations and local registrars’ offices with the specific goal of assisting disenfranchised minorities.

Perception of federal observers

Determined to maintain Jim Crow laws that enforced racial segregation, several Southern Democrats opposed the Voting Rights Act.

Some Americans also criticized the act as government overreach. And they castigated the U.S. attorney general in 1965 when he dispatched federal registrars to the South following the passing of the measure, and when he sent federal observers to the South for the 1966 congressional elections.

Despite this opposition to federal observers, and just months after the Voting Rights Act’s passage, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights wrote that federal observers received “praise from registration workers and the (voter registration) applicants.”

Within a few years of the act, roughly 1 million Black Southerners had registered to vote. Over time, federal election observers began to focus less on registering voters, practically phasing out this practice by the 1980s, and serving only as observers.

The change

Over the decades, conservative politicians, as they gained more seats in Congress and state legislatures, developed new strategies – they filed lawsuits, rearranged voting districts – to circumvent what they argued was federal overreach in the election process. These changes helped them gain political influence and promoted their philosophy of states’ rights. They were successful.

The increase in conservative political influence gave way to an increasingly conservative Supreme Court. This was reflected in the U.S. Supreme Court’s 5-4 ruling in Shelby County v. Holder.

In that ruling, the court struck down the section in the Voting Rights Act outlining the guidelines for deciding whether a county or state needed federal oversight. With no guidelines to follow, the federal government removed most of its oversight.

After the court’s ruling, several states – Texas, Alabama and Mississippi, for example – made rapid changes to the voting process. Those included new voter ID laws, the purging of voter registration rolls and gerrymandering. These changes have resulted in further voter disenfranchisement, disproportionately effecting Black and Hispanic voters.

The Voting Rights Act guidelines had also helped determine where to send federal observers. With this section revoked, the federal government’s ability to send federal observers, in the way it had done for roughly 50 years, also disappeared.

The Justice Department sent federal observers to five states during the 2016 presidential election, compared to 23 states during the 2012 presidential election.

Since Shelby, disagreements over federal oversight persist and the role of federal observers has changed.

In 2024, the Justice Department announced it planned to send out 86 monitors on Election Day, the most federal monitors in two decades, due to concerns of possible partisan interference in elections. Some Republican-led states threatened to ban them from the polls.

To send out federal observers, the Justice Department needs a court order. But during the 2024 elections, courts determined that only four states needed federal observer oversight.

Redefining federal observers

During the Civil Rights Movement, federal election observers were the strongest line of defense to ensure fair voting.

Recently, however, the federal government’s election focus – such as attempting to require voters to provide documentary proof of U.S. citizenship when registering to vote – has shifted to what it says is voter fraud and accusations of cheating.

Still, one thing has remained certain. Federal observers are important. Their history, even now as they are less prevalent, can inform how we discuss the federal government’s role in elections.

Allison Mashell Mitchell 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

Detroit Mayor Mary Sheffield delivered her first State of the City address on March 31, 2026, at Mumford High School on the city’s northwest side.

In the speech, Sheffield touted the accomplishments of her administration’s first 90 days, which included bringing the cash assistance program RxKids to Detroit. Sheffield also announced a new initiative called Ride to Rise, which offers free bus service to the city’s K-12 students year-round.

Sheffield stressed mandates to tackle poverty, support youth development and seniors, build more single-family homes, increase homeownership and make the city a welcoming place for small businesses to grow and thrive.

That commitment to improving the lives of Detroiters, according to Sheffield, is reflected in the $US3 billion budget she introduced on March 9, 2026.

“This budget is a statement of our priorities and our values,” Sheffield said during the address.

Giving residents a say

One thing that’s missing from her budget proposal is any mention of participatory budgeting – something that Sheffield often championed during her 12 years serving on the City Council.

On the campaign trail, Sheffied said that participatory budgeting allows “residents to feel empowered and have a direct say in how their tax dollars are spent.”

I’m a professor of political science and author of a recent book called “Budget Justice” about grassroots politics. I think Sheffield had it right on the campaign trail – communities around the country want to democratize the budget process so that local governments better address their needs and increase transparency and accountability.

I gained this perspective by serving on New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s transition team on community organizing, mass governance and participatory budgeting.

Participatory budgeting is a democratic experiment that gives constituents, rather than elected officials, power to decide how to allocate a portion of public funds. Although Detroit often holds community engagement forums and open calls for grant funding, participatory budgeting differs because it puts the power of the purse into the people’s hands.

Cities need democracy between elections

I first encountered participatory budgeting in 2011. Leaders from the grassroots organization Community Voices Heard and others helped to bring it to New York City during the Occupy Wall Street protests. Protesters who were part of that movement questioned why banks received governmental bailouts while households struggling with predatory student debt did not. I joined the rulemaking steering committee for New York’s new participatory budgeting process and stayed involved for the next decade.

New York’s process consists of four stages each year. In the fall, residents learn about the process through public service announcements, local media, door-knocking outreach or word of mouth. They then attend neighborhood assemblies where they pitch thousands of proposals for community projects. Frequently, a simple question gets them started: “How would you spend $1 million of the city’s budget?”

Meeting face to face matters. I’ve observed dozens of these assemblies, and people are much less likely to troll others in person than they are online, when they are anonymous and fueled by keyboard courage.

Over each winter, some residents volunteer to research and curate the proposals that will end up on the ballot. They also work with city agencies to develop ideas into full-fledged proposals. In New York, these projects have ranged from curb extensions at intersections identified as dangerous by local residents to summer arts camps and conflict resolution training programs.

Each spring, residents vote for the proposals that they want implemented.

Each summer, winning projects get funded.

In New York City, voting week for 2026 participatory budgeting proposals is April 11-19.

Engagement beyond voting

In the fiscal year 2026 budget cycle, New Yorkers allocated $30 million in public funds as part of the city’s $116 billion budget.

The nonprofit Community Development Project reported that 68% of the 17,000 people who voted on participatory budget proposals at the time of the survey had never worked together on a community issue before. Roughly 1 in 4 stated that they were not eligible to vote in regular elections, primarily because of being under age 18 or holding an undocumented immigration status.

For many, participatory budgeting helped them to understand their communities in new ways. As one participant put it, “I was able to see the needs (of) the community in a way I’ve never seen before. … I didn’t know how bad of an asthma cluster there was in public housing. I don’t have kids, so I don’t know about needs at school. I don’t have any relatives who live in senior housing, so I didn’t know about the issues they faced.”

Participatory budgeting also produced ripple effects. Participants were 8.4% more likely to vote than those who had not participated in the process. The effects are even greater for those who have lower probabilities of voting, such as low-income and Black voters.

In Detroit, only 22% of voters took part in the most recent municipal election. Participatory budgeting could be a tool for increasing turnout.

No shortcuts for meaningful participation

In my experience, participants need to feel they are doing meaningful work.

Research shows that participatory budgeting works best when communities allocate significant pots of money through the process, when residents are trained and encouraged to stay engaged beyond the process, and when combined with efforts to change practices in other parts of government, too.

In Boston, the Better Budget Alliance works to make sure projects that didn’t get funded through the city’s participatory budgeting process still get included in community demands for the larger city operating budget, and vice versa.

In New York, the Mamdani administration has just announced a new Office of Mass Engagement that aims to deepen the levels of transparency, listening and follow-through in the city.

In other words, experiments such as participatory budgeting can serve as an entry point to transformational change.

That change may look like the ambitious and growing national people’s budgets movement, which brings together local residents and community groups to protest budget cuts on essential services, articulate budget priorities and democratize the budget process. Unlike participatory budgeting, the movement’s campaigns often ask questions regarding divestments – for example, from jail expansions – as well as investments. It also concerns itself with taxes and the revenue side of the budget, and how budgetary powers should be shared by the mayor, city council, agencies and residents.

A beginning in Brazil

In Brazil, where participatory budgeting first began, the process was seen as an investment in working-class residents. Brazilian cities that implemented the process collected 16% more in taxes than cities that did not implement the process. Cities with participatory budgeting were seen as more legitimate, making their residents more willing to support additional taxes. These cities also boasted of higher tax collection and compliance rates.

Participatory budgeting also helped residents to harness the popular pressure and political will to reject development projects – such as luxury hotels – that they felt reflected business interests more than public needs. Because citizens expressed interest in providing funds for prenatal health, prominent political scientists even credit participatory budgeting with lowering infant mortality.

In American cities such as New York and Detroit, participatory budgeting processes could in time take on more challenging issues, such as universal day care or social housing.

Opaque budgets and an austerity mindset lead to distrust in government, perpetuating anti-tax sentiments.

This undermines the capacity of government to get things done. Robust participatory budgeting can help residents press for what they value most and serve as a tool to help cities such as Detroit thrive.

Celina Su served on New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s transition team subcommittee on community organizing. She also served on the New York city-wide steering committee for participatory budgeting and advised the process for its first decade, from 2011 to 2021.

​Politics + Society – The Conversation

Cars on the road today are 99% cleaner than they were in 1970. Air quality in the United States is much, much better as a result. In Los Angeles, where I live, lead levels in the air were 50 times higher in the 1970s than today, and the amount of lead in kids’ blood has plummeted.

What made that drop possible is arguably the most important environmental technology ever invented: the catalytic converter.

California has long had the authority under the federal Clean Air Act to set emissions standards for cars and trucks that are higher than the nation’s, and its early use of that authority is a major reason why catalytic converters are now standard in vehicles and people are healthier across the country.

At a time when the Trump administration is attacking California’s ability to cut air and climate pollution and revoking its Clean Air Act waivers, it’s helpful to remember just how important the state’s leadership has been in making the air Americans breathe so much healthier.

As I recount in my forthcoming book, “Smog and Sunshine: The Surprising Story of How Los Angeles Cleaned Up Its Air,” California’s role in the emergence of catalytic technology is often downplayed. The passage of the 1970 Clean Air Act is typically given the credit. That law deserves accolades for its key role. So does William Ruckelshaus, the first administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

But without California’s willingness in the early 1970s to push automakers to meet tough standards, the technology would have developed more slowly and the air would have remained dirtier for many more years.

Birth of the catalytic converter

Eugene Houdry invented the first catalytic converter technology in the 1950s. Years earlier, he had developed the Houdry process for catalytic cracking, which makes converting crude oil into gasoline much easier. That invention in the mid-1930s helped spur the mass adoption of cars and trucks in the U.S.

Widespread car ownership altered American life, changing where people lived, worked and vacationed. But cars also brought terrible smog as their use skyrocketed. When Houdry realized his life’s work was choking the air of Los Angeles, he decided to do something about it. By the late 1950s, Houdry had invented a rudimentary catalytic converter.

You might think that this invention, which Houdry said could make “the lung cancer curve dip,” would lead carmakers to install the technology on their new vehicles.

But that is not what happened. Instead, auto manufacturers engaged in what the government described as a yearslong conspiracy to keep emissions-limiting technology off the market, ultimately leading to an antitrust legal settlement.

It wasn’t until the passage of the 1970 Clean Air Act that carmakers got serious about improving upon Houdry’s invention for mass market installation.

The Clean Air Act’s ambition

The 1970 Clean Air Act is a remarkable piece of legislation. Passed with only one negative vote and signed into law by President Richard Nixon, the act set wildly ambitious goals. They included a requirement that carmakers cut auto pollutants by 90% by 1975.

Congress passed this requirement knowing that the technology to cut emissions wasn’t ready for prime time. Houdry’s catalytic invention couldn’t work with leaded gasoline, and it hadn’t been tested in tough conditions, such as freezing cold or sweltering heat.

The Ford Motor Co., with Lee Iacocca as its president, told Congress in 1970, “If such (pollution cuts) are established … the technology as we know it today would not permit us to continue to produce cars after January 1, 1975.”

Congress ignored Ford’s dire warning and passed the stringent cuts.

Automakers responded with two separate tactics. The first was to gear up – alongside companies like Corning Glass and the Engelhard Company – to develop technology to meet the 90% cuts. Most of their efforts focused on improving the catalytic converter, made more plausible when Engelhard determined that catalytic converters wouldn’t corrode with unleaded gasoline. The EPA’s Ruckelshaus ordered gas stations to make unleaded gasoline available as of Jan. 1, 1975.

While the auto companies worked to meet the congressional mandate, they also pressured Congress and the courts to weaken or delay it. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit obliged, ordering Ruckelshaus to extend the deadline for compliance by a year. Congress eventually extended the deadline to 1981.

But California did not let up.

A gamble that paid off

California has the authority under federal law to issue its own automobile pollution standards, as long as the standards are stronger than federal standards and the state receives a waiver from the EPA. No other state has similar power, but states can adopt California’s higher standards.

After the federal appeals court gave carmakers an extra year to comply with the federal rules, California decided it would not let car companies off the hook.

The state asked Ruckelshaus to grant a waiver for California to issue standards tough enough that carmakers would have to install catalytic technology to meet them.

Ruckelshaus faced enormous pressure to deny the waiver, with automakers arguing that the technology was neither effective nor available. But in a hint of the resolve he would later show in refusing Nixon’s order to fire Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox, Ruckelshaus gave California the go-ahead in 1973, and the state’s rules went into effect for the 1975 model year.

He reasoned that doing so would maintain “continued momentum toward installation of (catalyst) systems … while minimizing risks incident to national introduction of a new technology.” In other words, California could serve as a guinea pig for the rest of the country by adopting tough standards.

The gamble paid off. Since California was the nation’s largest auto market, companies had strong economic incentives to change their models to meet the state’s standards. Catalytic technology is now not only standard on American vehicles but also on vehicles around the world, and air quality in the U.S. is vastly improved.

With the adoption of the catalytic converter, leaded gasoline was banned and eventually phased out, and lead levels began to drop almost immediately.

Continuing California’s legacy

Catalytic converters have removed 8 billion tons of pollution from the air in the U.S. They have saved hundreds of thousands of lives and led to the removal of a deadly neurotoxin, lead, from the atmosphere.

California’s standards have spurred important technological innovations for vehicles, including new types of less-polluting gasoline and vehicles that emit no pollution at all.

But the state’s ability to set higher standards is under attack. Congress – at the behest of the Trump administration – has overturned three waivers the state was granted to cut even more pollutants and the greenhouse gases that cause climate change. The Trump administration has also sued California to invalidate its mandates for automakers to sell zero-emissions vehicles.

Today, California officials are searching for alternative ways to continue to make cars and trucks cleaner. The state has set aside money to replace federal tax incentives for electric vehicles, and the Legislature is exploring creative ways to hold indirect sources of emissions, such as rail yards, ports and warehouses where vehicles are constantly running, accountable for air pollution.

But these alternatives aren’t as powerful as the authority to exceed federal standards to make the air cleaner.

Ann E. Carlson’s research was supported by UCLA. President Biden appointed her to serve as Chief Counsel and Acting Administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration from 2021-2024.

​Politics + Society – The Conversation

The British- and American-backed plot to overthrow Iran’s prime minister in 1953 laid the groundwork for the 1979 Iran hostage crisis and decades of hostility with the U.S. that have now culminated in a war launched on Iran by the U.S. and Israel.

Many Americans only know the anger and tension with Iran that has grown from those roots set down during the middle of the last century. But as an archaeologist who has spent over 50 years specializing in Iran, and from my research on Iranian history in the context of changes undergone by Iran’s nomadic population through time, I believe it is worth recalling the time when the two countries had a distinctly different relationship.

In the 1800s, American missionaries journeyed to what was then called Persia.

The missionaries helped build important institutions – schools, colleges, hospitals and medical schools – in Persia, many of which still exist.

Dr. Joseph Plumb Cochran, an American physician fluent in Persian, Turkish, Kurdish and Assyrian, founded a hospital in Urmia in 1879, as well as Iran’s first medical school. When Cochran died at Urmia in northwestern Iran in 1905, over 10,000 people attended his funeral.

This image clashes with most American stereotypes of Iran and its people, and is at odds with decades of anti-Iranian sentiment emanating from Washington.

Iran and the United States, in fact, have a deep history of mutual respect and friendship.

From 1834, when the first Protestant American mission was established in Urmia, until 1953, when the CIA’s involvement in Iran’s internal affairs set the United States on the road to conflict with Tehran, Americans were the good guys.

Imperial bad guys

For years, Americans have seen images of Iranians shouting “Death to America.” President Donald Trump returned the sentiment during his first term, vowing to bring Iran death and destruction. And on Feb. 28, 2026, after weeks of threats and military preparation, the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran, killing Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei; that war continues to this day.

But before all that happened, when Americans were the good guys, there were other countries who were instead manipulators and who exerted undue influence over Iran.

The bad guys, at whose hands Iran suffered most, were Russia and Great Britain. Those two nations – often at the invitation of Iran’s leaders – economically exploited Persia to further their own imperial ambitions, using sustained diplomatic, military and economic pressure.

After two ill-judged wars fought against Russia – the First (1804-1813) and Second Russo-Persian Wars (1826-1828) – Persia (the name Iran was officially adopted in 1935) lost large amounts of territory to the czar.

Much later, Russia found another means of exerting control over the Persian crown, loaning millions of rubles to its rulers, like Mozaffar ed-Din Shah, who reigned from 1896-1902 and needed capital to fund his lavish lifestyle.

With the exception of the Anglo-Persian War (1856-1857), Persian relations with Great Britain were less openly hostile. But what they lacked in martial vigor was more than compensated for by economic exploitation.

Toward the end of the 19th century, the shah granted exclusive concessions to the British for everything from telegraph lines to tobacco. Rights to Iran’s oil were given to the Anglo-Persian (later Anglo-Iranian) Oil Company.

So assured were Britain and Russia in their control of Persia that, in 1907, they signed the infamous Anglo-Russian Convention. That agreement divided the country – unbeknownst to its Parliament, let alone its inhabitants – into Russian, British and “neutral” spheres of influence. After it became public it provoked the outrage of ordinary Persians and the international community at large.

America the good

Iran’s relations with the United States were completely different.

The 19th- and early 20th-century history of British and Russian imperial ambitions and involvement in Iran put Iran in a dependent, exploited position at the hands of the governments of these two countries.

But the presence in Iran of American missionaries and, later, invited government technocrats, was of an entirely different quality. These were Americans offering aid, with no expectation of advantage to be gained officially for the United States government.

American Presbyterian missionary efforts in Iran began in 1834 and focused on education, with 117 schools established around Urmia by 1895. Efforts were also directed at medical and social welfare. These were nongovernmental missions. The U.S. government was conspicuous by its absence in Iran and Iranian affairs.

By the late 19th century, the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions had opened new stations in cities across northern Iran, from Tehran to Mashhad. American diplomatic relations with Persia were established in 1883. A decade later the American Presbyterian Hospital was founded in Tehran by John G. Wishard.

After the First World War, Presbyterian schools for both boys and girls proliferated, the most famous of which were the American College of Tehran for boys, established in 1925, and Iran Bethel School for girls.

In 1910, the Persian Parliament, aware that the country’s finances were in disarray, invited the U.S. to identify a “disinterested American expert as treasurer-general to reorganize and conduct collection and disbursement of revenue.”

Despite Russian attempts to block the initiative, W. Morgan Shuster, a distinguished career civil servant, was appointed by Persia in February 1911. He arrived in Tehran in May, bringing with him four other Americans.

The mission was a failure, lasting only eight months, and, unsurprisingly, was adroitly sabotaged by the combined efforts of British and Russian diplomats in Tehran.

The country’s financial situation after the First World War was still precarious. With none of the colonialist baggage associated with the two European superpowers, America was turned to, almost as a last resort, to fix what ailed Iran. Riza Shah, father of the last shah, appointed an American, Arthur C. Millspaugh, as the administrator-general of the finances of Persia.

When Millspaugh arrived in Tehran in 1922, a newspaper editorial addressed him with these words: “You are the last doctor called to the death-bed of a sick person. If you fail, the patient will die. If you succeed, the patient will live.”

Despite his often testy relations with foreigners, Riza Shah acknowledged Millspaugh’s American Financial Mission was “the last hope of Persia.” The fact that the mission was far from an unqualified success does not detract from its importance. Nor did it diminish America’s image as an honest broker in Iranian eyes, in contrast to that of Russia and Great Britain.

Of course, not every Iranian-American interaction during this period was positive. Robert Imbrie, the American consul in Tehran, was brutally murdered in 1924, allegedly because a fanatical religious leader accused him of being a Baha’i and poisoning a well.

Riza Shah used the episode to crack down on dissidents and impose strict controls on public gatherings.

America the bad

America’s benign image in Iran was forever shattered in 1953 when the CIA, working with Great Britain, engineered a coup against Mohammad Mossadegh, the democratically elected prime minister who had nationalized the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company.

Even though the overthrow of Mossadegh damaged Iranian trust in America, the years just prior to Iranian revolution in 1979 saw the number of Iranian students in the United States steadily rise.

Over one-third of the approximately 100,000 Iranian students pursuing university degrees abroad in 1977 were in the U.S. By the time of the Islamic revolution two years later, that number had climbed to 51,310, making Iran by far the biggest single source of foreign students in America, with 17% of the total foreign student population. The next-largest contributor of foreign students, Nigeria, accounted for only 6%.

“Iranian students have been here for nearly a century … there are deep and abiding connections that reveal themselves when you look at the historical record,” researcher Steven Ditto, who wrote a report on Iranian students in the U.S., told The Washington Post in 2017.

The legacy of American goodwill, personal friendship and doing the right thing by Iran has not been completely lost, although the war now underway may make it seem as though America’s good relationship with Iran has been lost irretrievably.

Deep friendships dating back well over a century can withstand a great deal. A reservoir of goodwill and affection may lie dormant while political storms rage. Iran and America were good friends in the past, and for good reason. I believe that Americans would do well to remember that.

This is an updated version of an article originally published on Aug. 19, 2020.

Daniel Thomas Potts 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