People Get Ready
There’s a pro-renovation majority within reach
The approach of the midterm elections — just 18 weeks to go! — is revealing an unexpected problem: Because many of us who long for deliverance from the endless slop of the Trump presidency don’t seem to realize how close we are to winning, we are not prepared to turn opportunity into achievement.
I know it seems unwise to predict victory. People rightly worry about the desperate anti-constitutional actions that President Donald Trump could attempt to bend the election his way. And people are understandably beaten down by a daily barrage of awful headlines. Plus, overconfidence brings with it the risk of undercutting the hard electoral work necessary to successfully check this presidency.
But at the same time, we must not allow either learned despondency or misplaced humility to prevent us from getting ready to act on what could be a historic wave in support of constitutional democracy.
Imagine the following: In January, Democrats and pro-democracy Republicans have secured a modest majority in the Senate and a crushing margin in the House. Despite efforts by Trump to use the Justice Department to block some new members of Congress from being seated, those majorities are duly sworn in and begin serving. Within months, virtually every House committee has launched an investigation into malfeasance and corruption in U.S. departments and agencies. With each passing week, new information about White House abuses of power, threats to our national security and personal graft explodes into public view.
In that world, the tide of stunning headlines will have reversed direction, and the wide revulsion that produced the anti-Trump wave will only grow stronger. And at that point, Americans longing both for a restoration of democracy and for progress on all of the major challenges of the day — housing, health care, employment, climate change, campaign finance reform and scores of others — will have the greatest window of opportunity to make real progress since the post-Watergate period a half-century ago.
It does not matter whether this scenario is likely. (Though I think it is.) What matters is that it is possible, and whether, if it occurs, the forces for reform will be ready to offer the country carefully designed, politically vetted and legislatively effective solutions.
In my field — sustainable finance — the answer is: not yet. In many ways this is understandable, because so many arms of the federal government — particularly the Securities and Exchange Commission — have been deployed to roll back critical shareholder rights that have given investors the ability to hold corporate boards accountable. The leaders of the most prominent organizations have been relentlessly investigated by congressional committees, forced to respond to harassing lawsuits, and preoccupied with rebuffing Trump administration attacks on investor freedom. Their focus on beating back those attacks has been understandable and exemplary.
With a new Congress only months away, however, it’s time to break free of the despondency that can come from always playing defense. Reform does not just occur with victory in an election. It comes, as the Republicans showed with Project 2025, when people have spent time developing ideas that are ready when a political opening arrives.
If we want to move our immense capital markets toward better alignment with 21st century democracy and with future economic, ecological, and human prosperity, Congress could pass a series of ambitious reforms. A Protecting Retirement from Catastrophic Risk Act would direct retirement fund trustees to identify and manage systemic risks that threaten long-term portfolio returns. A National Sustainability Accounting and Measurement Act could create standardized, auditable systems for measuring environmental, social, and governance performance. A Public Benefit Corporation and Stakeholder Governance Act could create stronger legal frameworks for corporations pursuing long-term value creation across multiple stakeholders.
Additionally, in the same spirit of creativity that led New Deal reformers to establish the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and Social Security, a new generation of lawmakers could create institutions designed for an era of systemic risk and AI-enabled transparency.
A Federal Sustainability Accounting Board could establish and oversee nationally recognized standards for measuring environmental, social, and governance performance. A Systemic Risk and Fiduciary Commission could monitor threats to the long-term stability of retirement systems, capital markets, and the broader economy, helping fiduciaries identify and manage risks that cannot be diversified away. Finally, a National Transparency and Systems Intelligence Agency could harness advances in data collection, measurement, and artificial intelligence to provide real-time visibility into the health of critical economic, environmental, and social systems. Together, these institutions would help equip democratic capitalism with the information infrastructure needed to navigate the vast, interconnected, planetary challenges confronting the American people.
These are examples of my priorities, in my area of expertise. We can safely predict that after years of reckless regulatory and legal destruction, there are thousands of creative ideas waiting to be unleashed, debated, and introduced into our legislative process. What about in the areas you care most about? What’s your agenda for the post-Trump moment?
And yes, President Trump will still have veto power in 2027. Fine, make him use it. Because after 2026 comes 2028, and the chance to put a renovator in the White House. Starting now, let’s get a package of problem-solving, pro-Constitution bills ready to put on his or her desk. There’s a sunrise on the horizon. Let’s shake off the gloom and get busy designing the future.
Bob Massie is an expert on sustainability and finance who has served as the president of the nonprofit sustainability organization Ceres and was the co-founder of the Global Reporting Initiative. In 2018, he was a Democratic candidate for governor of Massachusetts.
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If you want to have a successful legislative agenda--or more than a law here or there, and instead a series of laws that actually advance a new model of governance--you've got to have formulated a legislative program to begin with that provides both rationales for legislation as well as a coherent overview as this article lays out. Project 2025 to my understanding, and experience with dealing with OMB, certainly had an overarching agenda, but one that was mainly ideological at its core and aimed to make changes primarily within the executive branch through budgetary controls and executive orders; the abuse of executive orders during this Administration is one of the most overlooked constitutional violations that has yet occurred, and largely facilitated much of its policies. The Democratic Party and other party interests would do well to campaign on such legislative changes to give substance to their policies in a way the electorate can understand and act upon--usually neither party does so, and it's hard to understand why not unless it's an ideological crusade that intends to achieve its means furtively and against the public will--recall that President Trump repeatedly denied any influence by Project 2025 throughout his '24 campaign.