April 2020 Democracy Beyond COVID-19€¦ · aﬀor d any relaxation of social distancing. Shocking as these disputes may be for Americans in general, longtime observers of state-local

April 2020

Democracy BeyondCOVID-19The Politics of Crisis PolicymakingLee Drutman, Maresa Strano, Hollie Russon Gilman, Alexandra Stark, HeatherHurlburt, Mark Schmitt, & Elena Souris

Last edited on April 30, 2020 at 2:51 p.m. EDT

Acknowledgments

Many thanks to Rina Li for editing this project, toChad Lorenz and Tara Moulson for their editingcontributions, to Joe Wilkes for formatting thereport, and to Samantha Webster for editing thephotos.

newamerica.org/political-reform/reports/politics-policymaking/ 2

About the Author(s)

Lee Drutman is a senior fellow in the Political Reformprogram.

Maresa Strano is a policy analyst for the PoliticalReform program.

Hollie Russon Gilman is a fellow in the PoliticalReform program.

Alexandra Stark is a senior researcher for thePolitical Reform program. She has a PhD from thegovernment department at Georgetown University.

Heather Hurlburt directs the Political Reformprogram's New Models of Policy Change project.

Mark Schmitt is director of the Political Reformprogram at New America.

Elena Souris is a research associate with the PoliticalReform program.

About New America

We are dedicated to renewing America by continuingthe quest to realize our nation’s highest ideals,honestly confronting the challenges caused by rapidtechnological and social change, and seizing theopportunities those changes create.

About Political Reform

The Political Reform program works towards anopen, fair democratic process, with equitableopportunities for full participation, in order to restoredynamism and growth to the American economy andsociety.


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Contents

What Comes After the Pandemic?

COVID-19 Hits Local Democracy Where It Hurts

This Pandemic Will Transform Our Democracy—Perhaps for the Better

COVID-19 Is This Generation's 9/11. Let's Make Sure We Apply the RightLessons.

The Only Thing We Have to Fear Is Fear-Based Politics

In the Wake of Its COVID-19 Failure, How Do We Restore Trust inGovernment?


What Comes After the Pandemic?

COVID-19 has laid bare the failings of U.S. democracy and capitalism. Now, we havea chance to remake our world.

Lee Drutman

Chances are, this isn’t the first essay you’ve read about how COVID-19 willfundamentally change our world. But the disparate range of predictions, many ofthem contradictory, show that we have no actual idea what will happen next. Weare navigating a time of overwhelming uncertainty and contingency, and thefuture depends very much on who acts—and where, how, and when. In short, thisis a rare moment when we can truly shape our future.

The lessons of history suggest that moments of crisis force a reckoning andrethinking. When things go terribly wrong, we collectively ask whether there isn’tperhaps a better way. New ideas and structures can only rise up when old onesare cleared away.

And this is precisely what’s happening. The old shibboleths of U.S. democracy asthe global model and unfettered global markets as gateways to shared prosperityhave steadily rotted away over the last two decades. And the pandemic has, inone fell swoop, utterly demolished them.

So, what political and economic frameworks will we establish in their place?


The chance to reconsider the grand economic bargains of our market economyand the social safety net hasn’t been this high since the 1970s, when stagflationcleared away older economic doctrines and propelled economic policy in amore market-oriented direction. Today, the crisis is revealing the limits of thatover-marketized economy. The consequences of a patchwork, market-drivenhealthcare system with high costs and a large uninsured population have neverbeen clearer. The interconnectedness of the global economy, with its fragile“just-in-time” supply chains, has prompted a fundamental reconsideration of anindustrial model that has long put efficiency and profits ahead of resiliency andstability. And in a major crisis, of course, there are no small-governmentlibertarians; everyone is a Keynsian. What comes next depends whose ideas winthe day.

Which takes us to politics. Political scientists have long considered high levels ofeconomic inequality to be a fundamental threat to democracy: Support fordemocracy depends on faith that everyone is benefiting from the system. Thisfaith has been breaking down for a long time, but the United States has thus farstaved off a class war—largely because our hyper-polarized two-party systemgenerated a culture war instead. This hyper-partisan culture war, of course, hasengendered tremendous political dysfunction, gridlock, and a breakdownof long-standing agreements around procedural fairness and electorallegitimacy.

These conflicts are only getting worse, and 2020 is set to be yet another year ofbitter, dangerous politics. The question of how we vote (by mail or in person) hasbecome a deeply partisan issue, with Trump publicly going to war against theidea of expanding vote by mail. The basic rules of elections have become muchmore contested, especially this year, and almost every aspect of the COVID-19response is being politicized, complicating and undermining our ability to uniteas a nation against a common enemy (the virus).

As with our broken economy, the impetus to reconsider the fundamentals of ourpolitical system has never been greater. The pathologies of our zero-sum, winner-takes-all electoral incentives are on full display this year, with deadlyconsequences. It’s time to ask hard questions about why other majordemocracies were able to more successfully respond to the coronavirusoutbreak, while it devolved into another binary, hyper-partisan battle in theUnited States.

It will take a different kind of politics not just to manage COVID-19, but toaddress the destabilizing inequalities it has exposed and exacerbated. And if thisserves as a trial run for the disruptions and sacrifices the climate crisis willforce on us, political reform demands extra urgency.

In moments like this one, our instinct is to focus first on immediate needs. This isnatural and necessary—but we also can’t lose sight of the future. Uncertainty


https://www.investopedia.com/articles/economics/08/1970-stagflation.asphttps://catalog.simonandschuster.com/TitleDetails/TitleDetails.aspx?cid=12456&isbn=9781451667820https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/apr/16/profit-over-people-cost-over-care-americas-broken-healthcare-exposed-by-virushttps://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/apr/16/profit-over-people-cost-over-care-americas-broken-healthcare-exposed-by-virushttps://www.amazon.com/Breaking-Two-Party-Doom-Loop-Multiparty/dp/0190913851/https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2017/9/5/16227700/hyperpartisanship-identity-american-democracy-problems-solutions-doom-loophttps://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2017/9/5/16227700/hyperpartisanship-identity-american-democracy-problems-solutions-doom-loophttps://www.vox.com/2020/4/8/21213416/trump-mail-in-voting-wisconsin-coronavirushttps://www.technologyreview.com/2020/03/23/950378/vote-by-mail-is-the-best-way-to-save-the-2020-election-from-coronavirus/https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2020-04-04/coronavirus-voting-republicans-safety-pollshttps://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-covid-19-blame-game-is-going-to-get-uglier/https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/jgea4p/why-the-us-could-be-worse-off-than-italy-with-coronavirushttps://www.vice.com/en_us/article/jgea4p/why-the-us-could-be-worse-off-than-italy-with-coronavirushttps://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-covid-19-blame-game-is-going-to-get-uglier/https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/07/climate-change-earth-too-hot-for-humans.html

creates opportunity for a wider range of long-term outcomes—some withinstitutions and structures that help us be our best selves, and others that provokeour worst instincts, laying the groundwork for mass devastation.

In the wake of COVID-19, both extremes are conceivable. Our ultimate pathhinges on the long- and short-term resources we invest, the conversations wehave, and the political and economic choices we make. We can’t predict thefuture—but if we act now, and with reason and compassion, we can shape it intoone that promotes collective thriving.


COVID-19 Hits Local Democracy Where It Hurts

The pandemic is magnifying a decade-long power struggle between conservative statesand progressive cities.

Maresa Strano

Since COVID-19 arrived on the United States' shores, many red-state mayors—Republicans and Democrats alike—have struggled to coordinate their responseswith their state officials. We’ve watched mayors and local health authorities beggrudging governors to impose strict statewide social distancing mandates—onlyto be dismissed, overruled, or burdened with contradictory orders that make itdifficult for localities with some of the most vulnerable citizens to enforce life-saving measures.

In Georgia, for instance, Tybee Island’s beach closures were overturned twoweeks later by Republican Gov. Brian Kemp’s much-delayed statewide shelter-in-place order, which superseded local ordinances and allowed beaches toreopen. Tybee Island Mayor Shirley Sessions was one of many coastal citymayors to oppose the order and associated resumption of certain activities,noting that the island—which has two nursing homes and no hospitals—can’tafford any relaxation of social distancing.

Shocking as these disputes may be for Americans in general, longtime observersof state-local relations will be the first to say, “Yeah, that checks out.” The


https://www.ajc.com/news/local/tybee-island-mayor-blasts-governor-order-that-reopened-beaches/LB9d2LZiYDndA4dh0KNSnO/https://time.com/5816045/georgia-beach-closed-coronavirus/

intergovernmental conflicts we see today mark a predictable extension of adecade-long, woefully underreported power struggle between conservativestates and progressive-leaning cities—one which has significantly limited cities’ability to solve problems for their residents.

While the need to correct this imbalance has been evident for a long time, thecoronavirus pandemic has magnified both the health-related challenges citiesface and the unique political obstacles they must often confront to address thesechallenges. U.S. cities are the primary engines of their respective state economiesand, to a large extent, the world economy. According to a 2018 report from theUnited States Conference of Mayors, metro economies provided 99.5 percentof the United States' real GDP growth in 2017. Their combined output surpassedevery non-U.S. nation except China, and the economic value generated by the 10most productive metro economies exceeded that of 37 states.

Yet, as Fordham Law Professor Nestor Davidson notes, wealth alone doesn’tconfer governing power. Whether cities are able translate economic success intopolicies equal to today’s most pressing issues depends on “the basic structureof their legal authority,” or “home rule”—which has unfortunately beencollecting dust since 1953.

So, what is “home rule”? To understand, we need to go back to the U.S.Constitution. As Trump recently discovered, state powers derive from the10th Amendment of the Constitution; meanwhile, there’s no mention of localgovernments, leaving local authority entirely in states’ hands. Home rule—aProgressive-Era innovation created to protect localities from excessive andcounterproductive state interference—denotes a variety of state constitutionaland statutory provisions that give local governments the authority to governmatters of local concern. But home rule provisions vary, reserving significantaffirmative power to certain municipalities while requiring specific authorizationfrom the state in others. Either way, “power is limited to specific fields, andsubject to constant judicial interpretation."

Local authority has always been legally and politically vulnerable to the whims ofthe state. But as the gap between GOP- and rural-controlled state governmentsand Democratic-leaning city governments has widened over the last decade, theold home rule model no longer passes muster. One reason is the well-documented rise and spread of state “ceiling preemption”—where the stategovernment sets a statewide maximum standard that its subdivisions cannotexceed—and “punitive preemption,” when preemption laws expose local officialsor governments to penalties (such as fines, removal from office, or withholding ofstate funds) for noncompliance. These preemption laws often pass in reaction tothe emergence of progressive city policies aimed at improving public health indenser, more diverse populations.


http://www.usmayors.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Metro-Economies-GMP-June-2018.pdfhttp://www.usmayors.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Metro-Economies-GMP-June-2018.pdfhttps://www.law360.com/articles/1252310/reform-home-rule-to-protect-cities-from-state-interferencehttps://www.law360.com/articles/1252310/reform-home-rule-to-protect-cities-from-state-interferencehttps://www.law360.com/articles/1252310/reform-home-rule-to-protect-cities-from-state-interferencehttps://www.npr.org/2020/04/14/834040912/fact-check-trump-doesnt-have-the-authority-to-order-states-to-reopenhttps://www.nlc.org/resource/cities-101-delegation-of-power.https://www.nlc.org/resource/cities-101-delegation-of-power.https://www.newamerica.org/political-reform/reports/punching-down/https://www.newamerica.org/political-reform/reports/punching-down/

For example, 23 states have preempted local paid sick time ordinances (22 ofthem within the last decade). Forty-four states have banned local regulations ofride-sharing networks; eight states bar local control over nutrition, such asportion sizes and promotional games and toys; 10 states bar local regulation of e-cigarettes; 20 states preempt municipal broadband networks; 43 states currentlyoutlaw local regulation of firearms; and 31 states prohibit local rent-control. AsKim Haddow, executive director of the Local Solutions Support Center, toldCityLab, many of the most popular preemption laws—such as those barring localrent control, paid sick days, and broadband—are “the policies that are mostneeded right now.”

In this time of peak partisanship, and without modern home rule provisions, it’scommon for state preemption laws (and the local laws that inspired them) to endup in the courts—a trend that reinforces Alexis de Tocqueville’s 1835 observationthat “scarcely any political question arises in the United States that is notresolved, sooner or later, into a judicial question.” Preemption-related legalbattles frequently drag on for months or years, leaving localities paralyzed byconfusion over the laws’ validity and enforceability. State lawmakers and theirspecial interest benefactors profit from this confusion.

Recently, the pandemic has presented new opportunities for Republican stategovernments to deploy preemption, intentionally or not, as an instrument ofconfusion. With so many red state mayors taking action in advance of theirgovernors, late-arriving statewide orders have sent local authorities scrambling.

On top of general confusion, local governments fear the possibility of legal actionif they maintain measures stricter than the state’s. On April 2, Florida Gov. RonDeSantis, a Republican, reversed his position and mandated a 30-daystatewide shutdown to combat the coronavirus. But the relief felt by cityofficials who had spent weeks urging him to take more aggressive action wasshort-lived. That same evening, DeSantis signed a second order thatpreempted any conflicting local measures—perhaps by accident. While thelanguage of the second order typifies ceiling preemption, the governor claimedthe order merely “set a floor” that mayors could choose to go beyond.

Orders from some of DeSantis’s peers posed similar issues, but with the additionof specific caveats and exemptions that governors claim in the sole interest oftackling the coronavirus. Critics point out that red state governors (includingOhio’s much-praised Mike DeWine) are using the crisis as a pretext to imposepartisan or ideological preferences. Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves, forinstance, issued an executive order on March 24 preempting local governments’social distancing measures and redefining "essential business or operation” tocover gun stores, houses of worship, department stores, bars, Uber, cardealerships, construction services, and more.


https://www.epi.org/preemption-map/https://www.citylab.com/equity/2020/04/coronavirus-state-preemption-local-government-action-cities/608953/https://www.citylab.com/equity/2020/04/coronavirus-state-preemption-local-government-action-cities/608953/https://www.newamerica.org/weekly/what-do-puppy-mills-5g-and-paid-sick-leave-have-common/https://www.newamerica.org/weekly/what-do-puppy-mills-5g-and-paid-sick-leave-have-common/https://www.sun-sentinel.com/coronavirus/fl-ne-surgeon-general-ron-desantis-florida-stay-at-home-20200401-ngqn25jafbfjtbmdo6yzy2egye-story.htmlhttps://www.sun-sentinel.com/coronavirus/fl-ne-surgeon-general-ron-desantis-florida-stay-at-home-20200401-ngqn25jafbfjtbmdo6yzy2egye-story.htmlhttps://www.flgov.com/wp-content/uploads/orders/2020/EO_20-92.pdfhttps://www.flgov.com/wp-content/uploads/orders/2020/EO_20-92.pdfhttps://www.sun-sentinel.com/coronavirus/fl-ne-coronavirus-desantis-second-order-local-impact-20200403-sipn6s23tfc73motnyoz3j562y-story.htmlhttps://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/24/pandemic-new-front-abortion-wars-147315https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/04/01/coronavirus-state-governors-best-worst-covid-19-159945

Reeves’s order has drawn sharp criticism from local leaders, including MayorMario King of Moss Point. “I definitely think that he is 100 percent puttingeconomic interests before people’s health,” King said of the governor.

Cities can attempt to fight back against ceiling and punitive preemption laws,which limit their ability to effectively address today’s most pressing economicand cultural issues. But obstacles abound. In addition to the confusion these lawsleave in their wake, obsolete home rule protections give cities few reliableoptions.

Affirming de Toqueville’s insight about political issues inevitably becoming legalones, the National League of Cities determined last year that the politicalproblem of modern preemption called for an update to its 1953 “ModelConstitutional Provisions for Municipal Home Rule.” This round, the legalquestion was how to best reframe the state-local relationship for the modern era.The resulting report, “Principles of Home Rule for the 21st Century,”presents four principles of constitutional home rule reform that can stand up tothe contemporary needs of local government, and which merit seriousconsideration from the democracy reform community writ large.

First, the Local Authority Principle reaffirms localities’ initiative power (i.e., thepower to enact local policy without prior state authorization). This gives localgovernments more freedom and agility as policy innovators.

Second, the Local Fiscal Authority Principle recognizes local governments’power to tax and manage spending in ways that make sense for theircommunities (for instance, taxes on sugar-sweetened beverages, plastic bags,and e-cigarettes).

Third, the Presumption Against State Preemption Principle asserts that statesseeking to preempt local authority should have a solid, general reason to do so,rather than targeting certain jurisdictions because a city law clashes with thestate’s political or ideological preferences.

Lastly, the Local Democratic Self-Governance Principle defends a localgovernment’s right to manage its own property and personnel. This principleaddresses “punitive preemption,” whereby local officials can be held personallyliable or removed from office because of a state-local conflict. It also extendsstate “speech or debate” immunity, currently guaranteed to state lawmakers, tolocal officials.

Today, partisan differences over social distancing underscore several familiarflaws in our political system, from gerrymandering to the rural-urban divide. Butfor those who have spent the last decade or more tracking the rise and spread ofstate preemption, the above failures of federalism also reveal the urgent need fora home rule makeover. City governments aren’t just America’s frontline defenseagainst public health disasters; as the most trusted level of government, they


https://www.mississippifreepress.org/1935/foolishness-and-foolerychurches-stores-reopen-as-governor-overrides-mayors-covid-19-orders/https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/faculty_scholarship/2609/https://news.gallup.com/poll/243563/americans-trusting-local-state-government.aspx

also represent the most effective offensive force for positive change. In short, ourcities can do better, and their residents—especially the marginalizedcommunities of color most impacted by crises—deserve better.


This Pandemic Will Transform Our Democracy—Perhaps for the Better

Three ways America could emerge from COVID-19 with a stronger democracy.

Hollie Russon Gilman

As a test for democracy, Wisconsin’s recent pandemic-time primary electionfailed. Within 24 chaotic hours before polls opened, Governor Tony Evers cancelled the election, the Wisconsin Supreme Court overturned his decision,and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to grant an extension for mail-in ballots.Poll workers dropped out, and poll locations closed down over concerns aboutCOVID-19.

Consequently, the election itself was, to say the least, messy. Voters waited in linefor hours, some in rain and hail, putting themselves at risk for contractingCOVID-19. Thousands of others stayed home and never received their absenteeballots.

These problems were particularly apparent in Milwaukee, where only five of 180polling sites were open on election day. Milwaukee is also the site of half thestate’s fatal COVID-19 cases—and, as it so happens, 40 percent of Milwaukeeresidents are Black.


https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-election-wisconsin/wisconsins-supreme-court-orders-primary-to-proceed-as-planned-on-tuesday-idUSKBN21O2JNhttps://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-election-wisconsin/wisconsins-supreme-court-orders-primary-to-proceed-as-planned-on-tuesday-idUSKBN21O2JNhttps://www.cnn.com/2020/04/06/politics/supreme-court-coronavirus-ginsburg-wisconsin/index.htmlhttps://open.spotify.com/track/5B6Kjha6RRIMWGN7zGsAaT?si=QBM11BmNSse5BuVKjTibaghttps://open.spotify.com/track/5B6Kjha6RRIMWGN7zGsAaT?si=QBM11BmNSse5BuVKjTibaghttps://open.spotify.com/track/5B6Kjha6RRIMWGN7zGsAaT?si=QBM11BmNSse5BuVKjTibag

As Wisconsin demonstrated, COVID-19, like all crises, disproportionately affectscommunities that have long been marginalized in America. And in this way, it’s areminder that our democracy’s political inequalities mirror, derive from, andexacerbate other societal inequalities.

As the federal government continues to fumble its response to the pandemic,community leaders, mayors, and governors have become ever-more importantpolitical actors. And their work to address COVID-19 could be the first steptoward building a more inclusive, participatory democracy.

First, at the state level, leaders are expanding democratic access during thepandemic by allowing vote-by-mail. States like California, New Hampshire,and Texas are implementing new voting measures to prevent the kind of publichealth threats and participation challenges seen in Wisconsin. In the long run,these electoral reforms may expand access to voters who face obstaclesparticipating in traditional, in-person elections.

Of course, such a dramatic procedural change comes with its own challenges,especially when implemented on an expedited timeline. Advocacy groups andexperts cite concerns about voter education, outreach, and logistical challengesthat could prevent citizens from voting or result in discarded ballots: KristenClarke, president and executive director of the Lawyer’s Committee for CivilRights Under Law, noted to NPR that Black voters’ absentee ballots are morelikely to be rejected than white voters’, who vote absentee at higher rates. Fillingout ballots at home also means voters can’t be assisted by poll workers if they’reconfused or have questions. States now expanding vote-by-mail during thepandemic must ensure their efforts actually improve democratic access, ratherthan inadvertently accomplishing the opposite.

Second, local public officials are experimenting with technology to facilitate civicparticipation in the midst of social distancing. In March, Miami held its firstvirtual commission meeting and introduced three new methods of publicparticipation via online platforms. Similar efforts took place this month in Brentwood, Tennessee and the Baltimore Planning Commission, amongothers. Flint, Michigan has launched a website identifying communityresources available to residents during the pandemic, and the BloombergHarvard City Leadership Initiative and Bloomberg Philanthropies’ CoronavirusLocal Response Initiative are holding virtual gatherings with local leaders tohelp them navigate COVID-19 challenges. Such efforts are crucial during a crisis,and they could also succeed in finally making online engagement an integral partof civic life, promoting access for residents excluded from in-personengagement.

However, as digital life continues to move online, we’ll also need a publicreckoning around digital access, accessibility, and literacy. Recent Microsoftresearch suggests that "162.8 million people are not using the internet at


https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-04-16/skelton-vote-by-mail-elections-california-coronavirushttps://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/new-hampshire-gov-sununu-to-allow-absentee-voting-in-november-because-of-coronavirus-outbreak/2020/04/09/d0aa21c8-7aa2-11ea-a130-df573469f094_story.htmlhttps://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/04/15/835515753/texas-judge-set-to-order-state-to-allow-all-voters-to-request-mail-in-ballotshttps://www.npr.org/2020/03/24/820232540/as-coronavirus-delays-primary-season-states-weigh-expanding-absentee-votinghttps://twitter.com/Sarasti/status/1243295739670925316http://communityimpact.com/nashville/franklin-brentwood/government/2020/03/23/brentwood-to-host-virtual-city-commission-meeting-march-23/http://www.bizjournals.com/baltimore/news/2020/03/26/baltimore-planning-commission-kicks-off-new-era-of.htmlhttps://www.cityofflint.com/covid-19/https://www.hks.harvard.edu/faculty-research/policy-topics/cities-communities/leadership-front-line-mayors-get-crisis-response?sf121156461=1https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-fcc-massively-overstating-how-many-americans-have-broadband-access/https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-fcc-massively-overstating-how-many-americans-have-broadband-access/

broadband speeds,” and according to Pew Research, “racial minorities, olderadults, rural residents, and those with lower levels of education and income areless likely to have broadband service at home.” As officials shift publicengagement online, they risk deepening these divides. Thus, it’s critical thatdigital engagement augment rather than replace in-person engagement.

Finally, new community leaders and groups are springing up in cities around thecountry. Organizations are sewing masks for healthcare workers, connectingindividuals to vulnerable neighbors, and raising funds to cover essential billsand other costs for lower-income residents or residents who have lost their jobsas a result of the pandemic. Similarly, frontline workers are pushing back againstthe corporations putting their lives at risk. From Whole Foods, Amazon, and Instacart to Perdue and McDonald’s, workers are striking for hazard pay,better health protections, and sick leave and benefits for part-time workers.Workers in other sectors are also organizing for better conditions: A group of nursing home aides have reportedly bargained for hazard pay, and Coworker.org, a platform for organizing non-union workers, is scaling updramatically as workers across the globe mobilize around coronavirus.

In neighborhoods and workplaces, these efforts have reinforced existingcommunity networks and, in many cases, established new civic infrastructures—ones that include Americans who are underrepresented in traditional democraticprocesses. The National Domestic Workers Alliance, for instance, isorganizing a Coronavirus Care Fund and providing resources and webinars todomestic workers—most of whom are women of color and/or immigrants, and 65 percent of whom lack health insurance. Maintaining this civicinfrastructure even after the pandemic slows could be a powerful tool for futurecivic organizing and democratic engagement.

COVID-19 has made raw and visible injustices that have existed in our countryfor decades, and there’s no silver bullet. Building a more resilient, equitabledemocracy will require us to open policy domains to the public—especially themost marginalized, at-risk members of society—and find sustainable solutions tolong-standing challenges and inequalities. This requires a thorough examinationof how we got here, and collaboration across government, civil society, andphilanthropy to imagine a different type of society: one that protects andempowers the most vulnerable among us.


https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/fact-sheet/internet-broadband/https://www.masksforheroes.com/https://bedstuystrong.com/https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/mar/31/whole-foods-coronavirus-outbreak-us-healthhttps://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/20/amazon-warehouse-workers-plan-national-coronavirus-protest.htmlhttps://slate.com/technology/2020/03/an-instacart-worker-on-why-shes-striking.htmlhttps://www.thecut.com/2020/04/whole-foods-amazon-mcdonalds-among-coronavirus-strikes.htmlhttps://twitter.com/yolian_ogbu/status/1250211144314257409https://home.coworker.org/https://www.coworker.org/categories/coronavirushttps://www.domesticworkers.org/https://secure.actblue.com/donate/coronavirus-care-fund?refcode=covidfundhomepagehttps://membership.domesticworkers.org/coronavirus/https://idwfed.org/en/resources/home-economics-the-invisible-and-unregulated-world-of-domestic-work/@@display-file/attachment_1https://idwfed.org/en/resources/home-economics-the-invisible-and-unregulated-world-of-domestic-work/@@display-file/attachment_1

COVID-19 Is This Generation's 9/11. Let's Make SureWe Apply the Right Lessons.

Rather than militarizing our response, we need to orient our post-COVID grandstrategy around improving global health and opportunity.

Alexandra Stark

Some moments are seared into memory. My parents can remember exactlywhere they were and what they were doing when they heard about theassassinations of President John F. Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King. Mygrandparents vividly recall hearing the news about Pearl Harbor and V Day. Formy generation, that defining event was 9/11.

Cold War historian John Lewis Gaddis argues that surprise attacks, from theburning of the White House during the War of 1812 to Pearl Harbor, haveupended Americans’ assumptions about national security. Each attack promptedpolicymakers to reconsider the country’s existing security strategy, and revise itto extend its global and domestic reach.

Such was the impact of 9/11, which fundamentally reshaped our conceptions ofsecurity and politics, launching still-ongoing military interventions inAfghanistan and Iraq and a host of invasive domestic surveillance programs.


https://books.google.com/books?id=zF9wuxsMvf0C&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_atb#v=onepage&q&f=falsehttps://www.wired.com/2011/09/911-surveillance/

The post-9/11 period saw a sweeping reorganization and rapid expansion of theU.S. intelligence community; a 2010 Washington Post investigative seriesrevealed that “no one knows how much money it costs, how many people itemploys, how many programs exist within it or exactly how many agencies do thesame work." We’ve also seen expanded funding for military tools to fightterrorism: Congress has created an “Overseas Contingency Operations” account(described by critics, including then-Congressman Mick Mulvaney, as thePentagon’s “slush fund”) to fund our wars and circumvent caps on Pentagonspending. Altogether, the United States has spent $6.4 trillion on the war onterror since 2001, averaging out to about $320 billion per year.

This bloated counter-terrorism bureaucracy has scored some victories—theUnited States hasn’t experienced another terrorist attack on the scale of 9/11since then—but they come at a significant price. The invasion of Iraq spawned abrutal sectarian civil war, producing the conditions that allowed ISIS tometastasize; al-Qaeda and ISIS affiliates have now sprung up around the world.U.S. troops remain in Afghanistan almost two decades after 9/11, and we’ve goneon to create humanitarian disasters in places like Yemen and Libya. Proxy warsare being fought across the MENA region by actors supported by the UnitedStates and its regional security partners.

And in our fixation with waging wars abroad, we’ve neglected to address existinggaps and tensions within the United States—with devastating consequences.According to New America’s International Security Program, homegrownterrorist attacks inspired by trans-national jihadist and far-right ideologies have killed more than 200 people since 9/11. Mass shootings have killed morethan 1,300 people since 2009.

In short, we’re reaping the logical consequences of unchecked militarism andimperialism. Rather than creating sustainable job opportunities and expandingaccess to healthcare and education—all of which could increase communities’resilience to terrorist recruitment—we have chosen to invest in drones and aspecial forces presence around the world. Instead of encouraging responsivegovernance in our military partners, we’ve supported autocrats who claimedto be our partners in counter-terrorism. And we have under-resourced conflictprevention efforts abroad, focusing instead on funding never-ending militaryinterventions in Afghanistan and Iraq.

COVID-19 is likely to become another 9/11 moment, one that again reshapesAmericans’ conceptions of what security means. Far more Americans have beenpersonally affected by the virus over just the past couple of months than byterrorist attacks over the last two decades. Indeed, analysts from different ideological traditions have already begun speculating on what a post-coronavirus transformation in U.S. grand strategy might look like.


https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/top-secret-america-a-look-at-the-militarys-joint-special-operations-command/2011/08/30/gIQAvYuAxJ_story.htmlhttps://votesmart.org/public-statement/1100038/mulvaney-van-hollen-lee-sanford-amendment-helps-prevent-abuse-of-oco-slush-fund#.XpCeQ9NKg9chttps://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/figures/2019/budgetary-costs-post-911-wars-through-fy2020-64-trillionhttps://www.vox.com/2016/9/9/12839824/9-11-anniversary-terrorist-attack-safer-todayhttps://www.crisisgroup.org/middle-east-north-africa/gulf-and-arabian-peninsula/iraq/next-iraqi-war-sectarianism-and-civil-conflicthttps://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/10/how-isis-started-syria-iraq/412042/https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/10/how-isis-started-syria-iraq/412042/https://news.un.org/en/story/2019/02/1032811https://www.unhcr.org/en-us/news/briefing/2020/4/5e86f2cc4/libya-humanitarian-crisis-worsening-amid-deepening-conflict-covid-19-threat.htmlhttps://www.newamerica.org/international-security/reports/twenty-first-century-proxy-warfare-confronting-strategic-innovation-multipolar-world/https://www.newamerica.org/in-depth/terrorism-in-america/what-threat-united-states-today/https://everytownresearch.org/massshootingsreports/mass-shootings-in-america-2009-2019/https://everytownresearch.org/massshootingsreports/mass-shootings-in-america-2009-2019/https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/10/jamal-khashoggi-american-saudi-counterterrorism-relationship/573148/https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/01/15/pompeos-visit-bahrain-ignores-rights-issues#https://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/28/world/middleeast/28qaeda.htmlhttps://www.justsecurity.org/69571/putting-people-first-covid-19-reveals-shortcomings-of-us-approach-to-security-in-the-middle-east/https://www.fcnl.org/updates/25-organizations-urge-congress-to-fund-conflict-prevention-2028https://www.fcnl.org/updates/25-organizations-urge-congress-to-fund-conflict-prevention-2028https://www.justsecurity.org/69563/covid-19-shows-how-the-u-s-got-national-security-wrong/https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/04/08/why-pandemic-should-transform-way-america-thinks-about-war/?utm_campaign=wp_opinions&utm_campaign=3135842c06-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_08_01_04_01_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_source=P%26S%3A%20Drone%20News%20Roundup%20%E2%80%94%20All&wpisrc=nl_opinionshttps://responsiblestatecraft.org/2020/04/08/how-will-covid-19-change-us-national-security-strategy/?utm_source=P%26S%3A+Drone+News+Roundup+%E2%80%94+All&utm_campaign=3135842c06-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_08_01_04_01_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_066db1cbcd-3135842c06-391828993

But COVID-19 can’t be another 9/11 moment, if that means the securitizationand militarization of disease response. Like terrorism, the spread of infectiousdisease is not best fought by military means; there’s no weapons systemcapable of defeating COVID-19.

Nevertheless, this administration or a future one may be tempted to “repackageand rebrand certain counterterrorism activities and programs merely to suit theglobal challenge du jour,” as notes Dan Mahanty, director of the U.S. Programfor the Center for Civilians in Conflict. COVID-19 has already led to calls for the mobilization of military assets and comparisons to warfighting; moreover, calls to hold China accountable for the virus—and Sinophobic rhetoric from politicians and pundits—parallel xenophobia and racism toward Muslimsand Arabs in the wake of 9/11. Much like the State Department and USAIDfrequently found themselves justifying their programming in terms of counter-terrorism benefits, a securitized COVID-19 response could see resourcesdirected toward the Department of Defense at the expense of diplomacy and aidprograms.

This military-centric approach to security is both short-sighted anddangerous, as demonstrated by COVID-19’s rapid spread around the world.Rather than taking a securitized approach to COVID-19, a new grand strategymust be fundamentally oriented around human well-being.

What would this look like? To start, it would take a diplomacy-first approach toforeign policy, with increased State Department and USAID funding forprograms aimed at predicting and preventing outbreaks of violence in theimmediate term. This would require us to rebuild the State Department andreverse years of damage inflicted by the Trump administration. In the longerterm, it would feature peacebuilding efforts that bolster societies’ resilience toviolence by building institutions, supporting targeted communities, and shapingnorms. Rather than arming proxies and sending our special forces to partner withoften unsavory partner governments on counter-terrorism operations, adiplomacy-first approach would promote stability through conflict prevention.

It would also prioritize an expansion in international aid to combat the climatecrisis, criminal trafficking networks, nuclear proliferation, the small arms trade,and, of course, disease. Most of this international aid should not be subsumedinto the national security bureaucracy or budget; Instead, aid efforts should be coordinated at the international level to ensure that resources strengthenexisting institutions and are distributed equitably. The G-20’s temporary haltto debt payments from the poorest countries should also be extended to debtforgiveness and assistance that enhances the economic and health recovery ofvulnerable countries.

A strategy oriented around human well-being would also require the nationalsecurity bureaucracy to revamp its hiring and personnel practices. According to a


https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/21/magazine/f35-joint-strike-fighter-program.htmlhttps://responsiblestatecraft.org/2020/04/08/renovating-the-swamp-post-covid-19-by-reconfiguring-budgets-and-bureaucracy/https://www.defense.gov/Explore/News/Article/Article/2133487/general-compares-dods-covid-19-response-to-all-out-war/https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2020/04/we-must-continue-fighting-terrorism-relentlessly-coronavirus/164276/?oref=d-river&utm_source=P%26S%3A+Drone+News+Roundup+%E2%80%94+All&utm_campaign=b080256ab1-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_08_01_04_01_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_066db1cbcd-b080256ab1-391821245https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-takes-direct-aim-at-china-as-known-us-infections-double-and-criticism-mounts/2020/03/19/6df10828-6a06-11ea-abef-020f086a3fab_story.htmlhttps://twitter.com/thehill/status/1240364608390606850?s=20https://www.texastribune.org/2020/03/23/texas-politicians-coronavirus-language-could-stoke-stigma/https://twitter.com/billmaher/status/1248814741893476352?s=20https://web.archive.org/web/20110723050203/http://www.bsu.edu/news/article/0%2C1370%2C-1019-12850%2C00.htmlhttps://www.justsecurity.org/69571/putting-people-first-covid-19-reveals-shortcomings-of-us-approach-to-security-in-the-middle-east/https://www.justsecurity.org/69571/putting-people-first-covid-19-reveals-shortcomings-of-us-approach-to-security-in-the-middle-east/https://www.gq.com/story/trump-is-waging-war-on-american-diplomatshttps://www.newamerica.org/political-reform/policy-papers/building-us-resilience-political-violence/https://www.newamerica.org/political-reform/policy-papers/building-us-resilience-political-violence/https://www.usip.org/publications/2020/04/coronavirus-call-build-resilience-fragile-stateshttps://www.france24.com/en/20200415-covid-19-g20-endorses-temporary-debt-standstill-for-the-poorest-countries

2019 report from New America’s Political Reform program, the presence ofwomen decision-making improved processes and innovation in the nuclearsecurity community. A post-COVID grand strategy would benefit immenselyfrom a diversity of practitioners and communities.

Finally, a human-centric approach to security would largely collapse thedistinctions between the foreign and domestic policy arenas. The 9/11 momentfundamentally reshaped our domestic politics by heightening fear andprioritizing prevention of terrorist attacks, often at the expense of civil liberties.Our post-pandemic grand strategy would increase well-being abroad, whichwould have positive reverberations at home (infectious diseases, as we’ve found,don’t respect borders). Domestically, this new approach would center on buildingdemocratic institutions; creating secure, well-paying jobs; and transitioning to anequitable, low-carbon economy. This would be a stark contrast to the Trumpadministration’s beggar-thy-neighbor approach, with its emphasis on negotiatingbilateral trade deals that are better for “us” than for “them,” and which stokes xenophobic nationalism while essentially hijacking protective gear intendedfor our international partners.

In his farewell speech, in which he coined the term “military-industrialcomplex,” President Eisnehower reminded the nation that “America's leadershipand prestige depend, not merely upon our unmatched material progress, richesand military strength, but on how we use our power in the interests of worldpeace and human betterment.” Like 9/11, COVID-19 will unquestionablytransform our approach to security and politics. Unlike 9/11, it should spur us toreorient U.S. strategy around improving human health, prosperity, andopportunity—both at home and around the world.


https://www.newamerica.org/political-reform/reports/the-consensual-straitjacket-four-decades-of-women-in-nuclear-security/https://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/07/us/sept-11-reckoning/civil.htmlhttps://twitter.com/acyn/status/1249150638010839040?s=21https://www.politico.eu/article/coronavirus-united-states-cast-as-culprit-in-global-scrum-over-supplies/https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/eisenhower001.asp

The Only Thing We Have to Fear Is Fear-BasedPolitics

The pandemic is ravaging the United States—and so is our escalating culture of fear.

Heather Hurlburt

While we see every crisis in American life as shocking and unprecedented—and,of course, Y2K, 9/11, the 2008 economic crisis, Ebola, ISIS, and COVID-19 are allunique in important ways—patterns persist in how the public reacts, and whetherthe space for policy innovation closes or opens. Despite our rugged national self-image, Americans often tend toward fear: Something—whether it’s Americanexceptionalism, child-rearing habits, continental isolation, or Internet-shortenedmemories—leads us to believe over and over, against all evidence, that humanhistory has never seen anything like what our country is experiencing right now.

And Americans, like people everywhere, usually reward their leaders in a time ofcrisis. Social scientists have proposed a range of explanations for this: anintense need to believe that those in power are successfully keeping us safe, apsychological need to see aggression acted out against the source of crisis, orsimply a reduction in political strife that normally signals voters to oppose a givenleader. Those trends have manifested repeatedly over the last two decades—sohow do they play out against the polarized, anti-globalized politics of 2020?


https://pages.wustl.edu/files/pages/imce/lambert/9-11_research-current_directions.pdf

First, Americans tend to believe that social calm, and a lack of violent threats athome or abroad, are the norm. In fact, such periods are the exception rather thanthe rule. The last twenty years have been eventful—and that’s without including government shutdowns, catastrophic weather events, surges in domesticextremist violence, and epidemic-level gun violence.

At a casual glance, the period stretching from the late 1970s to 9/11, or from the1950s to the mid-1960s, might sound like nirvana. But ask someone who livedthrough the Cuban Missile Crisis, or who grew up with duck-and-cover drills andnuclear winter nightmares, how serene those years were. And for someAmericans, social peace was always illusory: The Roaring Twenties, the subjectof so much nostalgia, saw the rise of the second Ku Klux Klan, Tulsa’s BlackWall Street Massacre, and numerous other instances of large-scale racialviolence.

Seeing Washington, D.C. shut down is less strange when you’ve grown up on talesof your pregnant mother walking through it in the aftermath of the 1968 riots,with machine-gunners on the White House lawn. Contemplating the loss offamily is normal when your grandparents lived minutes from Strategic AirCommand in Omaha, Nebraska—central to every Cold War dramatization of anuclear exchange. Plenty of older Americans remember when polio shut downsummer trips to pools and movie theaters. And again, whether it was AfricanAmericans losing voting rights or Japanese Americans being herded into internment camps, few non-white Americans were ever under the illusion thatwhat they had couldn’t be ripped away tomorrow.

In short, our collective faith in the permanence and immutability of U.S.institutions is misplaced—but it may be particularly American. It may also leaveus open to swings of overreaction.

In the wake of 9/11, historian Peter Stearns argues in his book American Fear,Americans “have come, as a nation, to fear excessively.” Through interviews,personal recollections, and other data, Stearns compared public responses in theweeks following the 9/11 attacks—when Americans saw likely attackerseverywhere—to responses in the immediate aftermath of Pearl Harbor.Americans, he concluded, “were over three times as likely to be afraid” after9/11, and “the level of fear, when expressed, ran much deeper.”

Our disproportionate response to 9/11 has held true for subsequent crises. In2014, a majority of respondents told pollsters they were concerned about ISISattacks (90 percent) and a widespread Ebola epidemic (65 percent) withinthe United States. In reality, only 11 cases of Ebola were ever treated on U.S.soil, resulting in just two deaths. And, according to New America’sInternational Security Program, in all the years since 9/11, “individualsmotivated by jihadist ideology have killed 104 people inside the United States.”


https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/1/19/16905584/government-shutdown-history-clinton-obama-explainedhttps://www.theverge.com/2019/12/10/21003596/climate-change-end-of-decade-2019-temperature-storms-wildfires-effects-emissionshttps://qz.com/1355874/terrorism-is-surging-in-the-us-fueled-by-right-wing-extremists/https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/10/2/16399418/us-gun-violence-statistics-maps-chartshttps://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/12/second-klan/509468/https://daily.jstor.org/the-devastation-of-black-wall-street/https://daily.jstor.org/the-devastation-of-black-wall-street/https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2018/01/01/1968s-chaos-the-assassinations-riots-and-protests-that-defined-our-world/https://www.businessinsider.com/likely-us-nuclear-targets-2017-5https://www.argusleader.com/story/news/dell-rapids/2017/08/22/remembering-polio-epidemic-part/104718400/https://www.facingsouth.org/2016/08/history-voting-rights-struggle-still-being-writtenhttps://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/injustice-japanese-americans-internment-camps-resonates-strongly-180961422/https://academic.oup.com/jah/article-abstract/94/2/632/730538?redirectedFrom=fulltexthttps://academic.oup.com/jah/article-abstract/94/2/632/730538?redirectedFrom=fulltexthttps://www.newamerica.org/weekly/covid-generations-911-lets-make-sure-we-apply-right-lessons/https://www.cnn.com/2014/09/08/politics/cnn-poll-isis/index.htmlhttps://www.cnn.com/2014/09/08/politics/cnn-poll-isis/index.htmlhttps://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/ebola-poll-two-thirds-of-americans-worried-about-possible-widespread-epidemic-in-us/2014/10/13/d0afd0ee-52ff-11e4-809b-8cc0a295c773_story.htmlhttps://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/history/2014-2016-outbreak/index.htmlhttps://www.newamerica.org/international-security/reports/terrorism-america-18-years-after-911/what-is-the-threat-to-the-united-states/https://www.newamerica.org/international-security/reports/terrorism-america-18-years-after-911/what-is-the-threat-to-the-united-states/

After each of these crises, public opinion and voters rewarded leaders andcandidates who promised decisive, militarized action, and who acknowledgedthe intense levels of public concern. That support continued for some time evenas criticism of these responses mounted: President George W. Bush’s approvalrating skyrocketed after 9/11, remaining above 50 percent until the summer of2005. 2014 candidates who called for stronger responses to ISIS and Ebola (and,in some notorious cases, conflating the two) had very high rates of success inthe midterm elections that year. President Obama famously complained in an Atlantic interview about the difficulty of convincing Americans that terrorismposes a limited threat at home—and one could argue that he won a decisiveelectoral edge in 2008 through his willingness to directly address Americans’concerns about the economic crisis, while his opponent, Sen. John McCain, seemed to equivocate.

These days, COVID-19 is claiming a 9/11’s worth of U.S. victims every two days—a death rate that will likely continue into May. In Europe, leaders are seeing theexact kind of elevated public support one might expect in the United States—regardless of whether their countries are global leaders or laggards in flatteningthe curve of infections. French President Emmanuel Macron, for example, is enjoying his first majority support in two years, while Italian Prime MinisterGiuseppe Conte—who presided over a deeply problematic response—saw a 27percent increase and now sits at 71 percent approval.

Some U.S. reactions to COVID-19 mirror past responses to crises: a strong, cross-partisan spike in concern; bursts in support for state, local, and healthleadership. And, in a striking parallel to 2014, the virus isn’t the only thingAmericans are worried about: Perceptions of China as a threat are spiking, asare hate crimes against Asians and Asian Americans.

There is, however, one marked departure from the norm. While Trump initiallyenjoyed a bump in his approval ratings, it wore off much more quickly than hasbeen typical in past crises. Just days after the president applauded protestsagainst shelter-in-place restrictions, polling found him trailing well behindMichigan Governor Whitmer—whose restrictions were being protested—inapproval. After a rough first year in office, Whitmer is now seeing a bump, whileTrump’s approval ratings are back to their levels before the virus reached theUnited States. As Michigan pollster Richard Czuba said, “This is very much arally-around-the-flag moment, and voters typically would be rallying around theleadership of the president, and they clearly are not.”

Still, it’s been possible for decades in U.S. politics to cobble together pluralities ofvoters by offering them new bogeymen. Before ISIS, Al-Qaeda, and China,election seasons sensationalized crime, Japanese imports, and communists.Indeed, political scientists Steven Teles and David Dagan argue that terrorismwas largely swapped in for crime in the public imagination—and in politicalcampaigns—after 9/11. The United States’ history of prejudice, combined with its


http://sites.middlebury.edu/presidentialpower/2020/03/28/trump-covid-19-and-the-rally-round-the-flag-phenomenon/https://news.gallup.com/poll/116500/presidential-approval-ratings-george-bush.aspxhttps://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2014/nov/03/scott-brown-immigrants-isis-ebola-terror-new-hampshirehttps://prospect.org/power/anxiety/https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/04/the-obama-doctrine/471525/https://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/17/world/americas/17iht-mccain.4.16251777.htmlhttps://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/index.htmhttps://www.france24.com/en/20200405-france-s-coronavirus-crisis-throws-lifeline-to-macron-s-troubled-presidencyhttps://www.vox.com/covid-19-coronavirus-explainers/2020/3/29/21198801/coronavirus-us-italy-when-will-it-endhttps://euobserver.com/opinion/147994?utm_source=euobs&utm_medium=emailhttps://www.pewresearch.org/science/2020/04/07/polling-shows-signs-of-public-trust-in-institutions-amid-pandemic/https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2020/04/13/americans-see-spread-of-disease-as-top-international-threat-along-with-terrorism-nuclear-weapons-cyberattacks/https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/asian-americans-describe-gut-punch-of-racist-attacks-during-coronavirus-pandemichttps://www.axios.com/trump-unrest-coronavirus-c3b720e9-fae8-48d9-9de8-0ba8c61e5c61.htmlhttps://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/michigan/2020/04/20/poll-michiganians-favor-whitmer-covid-19-handling-over-trump/5164340002/https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/takeaway/segments/crime-reshaped-criminal-justicehttps://www.jstor.org/stable/40464347?seq=1https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/red-scare-dominates-american-politicshttps://global.oup.com/academic/product/prison-break-9780190246440?cc=us&lang=en&

diversity and the demonstrated electoral success of fear-driven approaches, hasled again and again to campaigns that demonize and target not just pandemicsand ideologies, but people and communities.

Such rhetoric has been responsible for spikes of violence against minoritygroups in the past. Now, with anti-Semitic, anti-Asian, and anti-immigrant hatecrimes on the rise, how we direct our fear has major implications for our socialfabric. We can’t always control economic conditions or pandemics (both of whichare significant risk factors for social unrest and violence). However, we can domore to step out of cycles of hate speech and incitement—and that means firstacknowledging how deeply ingrained these elements are in American life.

Fear, it seems, is as American as apple pie. We have to ask ourselves whetherfear-based politics might be, too.


https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/10/30/yes-political-rhetoric-can-incite-violence-222019https://www.npr.org/2019/11/12/778542614/fbi-reports-dip-in-hate-crimes-but-rise-in-violence

In the Wake of Its COVID-19 Failure, How Do WeRestore Trust in Government?

People lose trust in government when it fails. Government fails when people distrust it.Here's how to break that cycle.

Mark Schmitt

Several years ago, I was involved in the attempted launch of an organizationintended to restore public faith in government. This was during PresidentObama’s second term, when pervasive lack of trust in government wasprolonging the pain of the Great Recession, and Obama’s ambitious vision haddescended into a grinding squabble about budget deficits. Despite best effortsand great leadership, the idea didn’t quite catch on. Funders lost interest, and by2017, even the organization’s carefully chosen name, Indivisible, had beenclaimed by one of the country’s earliest and most successful anti-Trumpresistance groups.

One critique we often heard while trying to launch Indivisible was that weshouldn’t treat skepticism in government as a public relations problem.Americans distrust government for good reasons: Some people we talked toobserved that long lines at the DMV, the only physical space most of us encountera government agency, made them assume the worst about every other arm of


https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2015/07/14/new-group-promotes-the-role-of-government/81556820/

government. Others noted that for many low-income people and people of color,interaction with government often entails the routine brutalities of the criminaljustice system or the paternalism and complexity of welfare and Medicaid.

With the current pandemic and recession, we’re witnessing the most tangibleand consequential failure of government in recent U.S. history. Few of us willforget the ongoing tangle of errors, deceptions, and corruption that’s led to tensof thousands of unnecessary deaths, along with a shutdown of the economy andcommunal life. While we may be confident that a different president could havedone better, historical counterfactuals are cold comfort in a crisis. Our attitudesabout government will be indelibly shaped by these first several months of 2020,much as older generations were shaped for decades by the success of competentgovernment during the New Deal and the postwar era.

But it’s also distrust in government that’s led to this situation. For four decades,denigrating the public sector has been the primary note in our national politics.Due in part to a polarized government’s inability to respond sufficiently to the2008 recession and its long aftermath, Americans elected a president in 2016who promised, “I alone can fix it”—launching an accelerating attack on “theadministrative state” and leaving key agencies in the hands of unqualified,indifferent leaders or acting directors.

Thus, lack of trust in government can be a circular, self-reinforcing phenomenon:Poor performance leads to deeper distrust, in turn leaving government in thehands of those with the least respect for it.

Yet, as New York Governor Andrew Cuomo tweeted, “Government matterstoday in a way that it hasn’t mattered in decades. People need confidence ingovernment.” The question is, how do we break the cycle of distrust and neglect?

One lesson we learned while developing Indivisible was that treating citizens likecustomers doesn’t deepen their attachment to public institutions. The“Reinventing Government” effort led by Vice President Al Gore in the 1990s distributed cards to federal agencies with its mission statement—which startedwith, “Putting customers (the American taxpayers) first.” That project, as well ascomparable efforts to improve public-facing services at the state and local levels,brightened the experience of interacting with government (at the DMV, SocialSecurity and the IRS). However, general public trust in government, andparticularly in the federal government, continued to slide, along with faith inmost other institutions.

A flaw in the customer-centered model is that it assumes people draw a sharpdistinction between the side of government that delivers services and benefits(i.e., the bureaucrats and civil servants) and the political realm of politicians,elections, and legislation. People don’t, and there’s no reason why they should. Research shows that when asked about government, people don’t see the DMV;instead, respondents talk about a rigged political system dominated by the ultra-


https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/mar/28/trump-coronavirus-politics-us-health-disasterhttps://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/mar/28/trump-coronavirus-politics-us-health-disasterhttps://twitter.com/NYGovCuomo/status/1251937627915386880?s=20https://www.govexec.com/management/2013/04/what-reinvention-wrought/62836/https://www.people-press.org/2019/04/11/public-trust-in-government-1958-2019/https://www.topospartnership.com/project/publicwill/

wealthy. A friendly, efficient counter clerk won’t erase the image of an entiresystem designed to perpetuate the advantages of the very privileged. As politicalscientist Jamila Michener wrote in her book Fragmented Democracy, lower-income people’s experiences with dehumanizing government processes, such asapplying for Medicaid, shapes their experience as participants in democracy.

But this is also a healthy sign. The fact that citizens have broader expectations forsociety, rather than simply viewing themselves as customers, means they’vealready absorbed a basic principle on which democratic self-government rests. Italso means that restoring trust in government requires addressing campaignfinance, lobbying, the unquestioned assumptions underlying policy (such as theneed to reduce the federal deficit), and the many ways in which the wealthyreinforce their advantages in the political process.

A second problem with the customer-service model of trust in government is thatit omits the dimension of power. It assumes performance and trust have anatural, almost mechanical relationship: If government performs better, peoplewill have more trust in it, and vice versa. But as we’ve seen in the Trump era,many economic actors benefit from mistrust in government. It gives them coverfor deregulation, tax cuts, or simple corruption. Familiar political rhetoric aboutthe failures of government helps this cause, but poor performance itself givesthem an added advantage.

As if to prove this point, as I was writing this article, Trump expressed hissupport for anti-lockdown protesters, implicitly attacking the judgment of stateleaders. By fostering distrust in government, Trump is seeking, not for the firsttime, to strengthen his own political power.

For the same reason the public doesn’t draw a distinction between politicians andpublic employees, politicians have a rich opportunity—and obligation—in thismoment to demystify government and remind people of its importance. Manycandidates in the current cycle have pivoted, at least temporarily, to COVID-19relief efforts—including fundraising for charities and donating food. Rep.Katie Porter of California is one of several members of the class of 2018 who hasworked to circulate information about COVID-19 and recently enactedgovernment programs through livestreams and other means. In Oklahoma, aDemocratic member of Congress joined with a Republican mayor to hold a virtual town hall on the pandemic, drawing almost 8,000 participants. In timesof anxiety and confusion, politicians and elected officials can play an essentialrole in reconnecting citizens to their own collective voice and power.

Government also engenders distrust through its complexity and inaccessibility.The endless forms, reviews, and personal information required for programsintended to serve—such as a subsidized health plan under the Affordable CareAct or benefits delivered in the form of tax credits—create a barrier ofuncertainty and confusion. That complexity, often the product of political


https://www.newamerica.org/weekly/democracy-between-lines/https://www.newamerica.org/weekly/democracy-between-lines/https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/20/us/politics/trump-coronavirus.htmlhttps://www.cbsnews.com/news/campaigning-during-coronavirus-candidates-look-for-new-ways-to-connect/https://www.cbsnews.com/news/campaigning-during-coronavirus-candidates-look-for-new-ways-to-connect/https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/04/bernie-sanders-joe-biden-democratic-presidential-primary-coronavirus-crisishttps://twitter.com/AOC/status/1249013717897023488?s=20https://twitter.com/RepKatiePorter/status/1247966554064478213?s=20https://horn.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=233

compromise, deepens mistrust, even if those who need benefits ultimately getthem.

Promisingly, the federal government’s frantic COVID-19 response led to animprovisational experiment with near-seamless benefits: a $1200 relief paymentto many households, which will arrive without any forms or procedures. WhileTrump’s request to add his name to the checks will add days of unnecessarydelay, the move at least signifies his recognition of the political value ofuncomplicated benefits during a time of crisis.

There’s also a lack of clarity about the unique responsibilities of federal, state,and local governments. When government fails or succeeds, citizens don’t knowwhom to hold accountable, or whom to credit. The pandemic response hasdramatically revealed the absence of clear lines between federal and stateresponsibilities, but in some ways, the last decade has revolved around conflictsbetween states and the federal government, such as the expansion of Medicaidunder the Affordable Care Act. As Marquette political scientist Philip Rocco wrote earlier this month, the debacle is “less the product of any ‘AmericanFederalist System’ than of the absence of a system—or of an arrangement whoseelements simply cannot be coordinated with one another.”

After Trump’s election, there were calls for “progressive federalism” as aresponse, in which states would find their own ways to achieve goals likeprotecting workers’ rights or reducing carbon emissions. The crisis has shown thelimits of that naive hope, as states scramble and compete to purchasenecessary supplies and implement their own decisions about safety—even whileknowing their efforts could be undermined by other states or the federalgovernment.

The crisis has scrambled many economic and social priorities, but the need torestore trust in government remains urgent. We need to acknowledge wheregovernment has failed, understand why, and commit to building democraticinstitutions that are worthy of trust—institutions that reflect our collective valuesand that are capable of effectively responding to present and future challenges.


https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/coming-to-your-1200-relief-check-donald-j-trumps-name/2020/04/14/071016c2-7e82-11ea-8013-1b6da0e4a2b7_story.htmlhttps://medium.com/@philrocco/non-system-d59b5a8545edhttps://democracyjournal.org/magazine/44/progressive-federalism-a-users-guide/https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2020/04/18/coronavirus-creates-ppe-bidding-war-states-like-illinois-new-york/5144652002/https://www.newamerica.org/weekly/covid-local-democracy-where-it-hurts/

Notes


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Democracy Beyond COVID-19AcknowledgmentsAbout the Author(s)About New AmericaAbout Political ReformContents

What Comes After the Pandemic?COVID-19 Hits Local Democracy Where It HurtsThis Pandemic Will Transform Our Democracy—Perhaps for the BetterCOVID-19 Is This Generation's 9/11. Let's Make Sure We Apply the Right Lessons.The Only Thing We Have to Fear Is Fear-Based PoliticsIn the Wake of Its COVID-19 Failure, How Do We Restore Trust in Government?Notes

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April 2020 Democracy Beyond COVID-19€¦ · aﬀor d any relaxation of social distancing. Shocking as these disputes may be for Americans in general, longtime observers of state-local