Like roughly 8 million other people, I joined No Kings rallies last weekend. I made it to two — in Winchester and Stoneham, Mass., where a feisty, multi-generational crowd filled the town common despite the chilly weather. News reports routinely suggest there isn’t much of an agenda for the crowds that gather to shout “No Kings!” and “This is what democracy looks like!” Organizers say that the point is to build a purposefully big tent.
Democracy’s tent should be big, but I think there is a clear agenda. At the Stoneham rally, we expanded the chant. “No Kings! By the People, For the People!” The best way to avoid an unbounded and overreaching executive — the best way to protect people from abusive power — is to ensure that the people, through their legislatures, remain the strongest power in the polity. Not a whimsical, arbitrary maximalist executive. Not corporate broligarchs. But all of us ordinary citizens.
As Maria McFarland pointed out here at the Renovator recently, the people have had at least one major victory. Ever since January 24, when Alex Pretti was shot by a federal agent in Minneapolis, I’ve carried as my personal slogan, “Pretti, Good, and Liberty!” This reminds me that the behavior of our government has broken through the fences necessary to keep any of us free and safe. Protecting liberty requires reversing that dynamic.
I am not alone in that opinion. No Kings activists around the country have been calling their members of Congress about Department of Homeland Security abuses. Ultimately, Congress held hearings and grilled DHS Secretary Kristi Noem. Even the Wall Street Journal editorial page weighed in.
And Noem got fired. The people rebalanced power. That was government by the people, for the people.
I’d like to propose a full agenda for how to rebalance power to the people, with three federal packages and a complementary state-level agenda. All of these have a bipartisan lineage and are designed to address structural failures, not to secure some partisan advantage. We need both federal- and state-level actions because representation failures can no longer be solved just by reform at the state level; gerrymandering and House malapportionment require federal solutions.
At the same time, elections are governed by states; state and federal elected officials act based on electoral incentives. As a result, state reforms that alter those incentives can drive improvements in representation, accountability, and governing behavior nationwide. Also, state-level civic infrastructure can reinforce reforms: Reforms create new incentives, while civic engagement fuels the durable civic culture required to deepen and strengthen government that is for the people because it is by the people.
Here’s the agenda I’d like to float:
An Anti-Corruption and Representation Package
Comprehensive restrictions on money in politics, including passage of the For Our Freedom constitutional amendment to undo Citizens United.
A stock trading ban for members of Congress.
Federal action to prevent gerrymandering.
Expansion of the House of Representatives to restore representational balance.
Passage of the Fair Representation Act, enabling multimember districts and ranked-choice voting for House elections, and ranked-choice voting for Senate elections, to provide better avenues for majoritarian accountability.
State Voting Rights Act passage with proportional representation as a structural remedy to vote dilution.
Information for America Package
Digital governance and privacy reforms, modeled on the state-level Digital Choice Acts, as well as Section 230 reforms so that platforms can be held liable for their algorithms.
Transparency and accountability standards for major platforms and AI providers.
Support for journalism and local news.
Re-Empowering Congress Package
Activated constraints on executive overreach (e.g. war powers, emergency authorities, administrative delegation).
Institutional reforms to congressional procedure and capacity (e.g. committee powers, staffing salary and talent pipeline, expertise, calendar control).
Reducing excessive power concentration in party leadership and the speaker.
State-Level Agenda
Election reforms like all-party primaries that expand the electoral base, increase representation and representational fairness, and reduce partisan gatekeeping.
State-level money-in-politics reforms as in the examples of ME, MN, CT, Seattle, and NYC, which have achieved meaningful limits on corporate spending in politics (ME, MN) and robust public campaign finance programs (CT, Seattle, NYC).
Local and municipal experimentation with ranked-choice voting and proportional representation, building proof of concept and public familiarity.
Civic learning, engagement, and coalition-building infrastructure, including:
Adult civic education and engagement opportunities.
Nonpartisan spaces for citizens to articulate shared democratic concerns and connect those concerns to institutional reform.
Civic strategies explicitly designed to support reform coalitions, not standalone dialogue disconnected from decisions or actions.
Deployment of technology to strengthen everyday connections between people and public institutions, improving responsiveness, transparency, and trust at the point of contact, for instance MAPLE in Massachusetts, a platform that lowers the barrier to submitting testimony to the state legislature or CalMatters in California.
Ok, time for a Renovator poll. Could you get behind this agenda? Call it the By the People, For the People agenda.
Also, with apologies, there’s no First Thursdays Renovator Assembly this month. Happy Passover! So we’ll dig in on the By the People, For the People Agenda during the May 7th Assembly. Mark your calendars! 7pm ET, by Zoom.
Danielle — this is the most substantive agenda the No Kings movement has produced, and the structural instincts throughout are exactly right. One wire I'd add before the panel comes online: the transparency misalignment. Public vote records, designed to create accountability, have become the primary coercion tool — party leadership, primary challengers, and donor networks all use them to punish legislators who stray. Most of what's on your list requires legislators to vote against that coercion. Without fixing that upstream, reform votes become career-ending before they can produce results. We've been working through exactly this at The Statecraft Blueprint — the Legislative Servitude essay lays out the mechanism and a structural fix. https://statecraftblueprint.org/p/legislative-servitude Grateful for the agenda. Let's build it.
Excellent list which I fully support. But I’d like to add one idea from an earlier post of mine:
Young Adults Have the Lowest Voter Turnout of Any Demographic
Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 number more than fifty million people—roughly the same size as the senior population. Yet because older Americans vote at far higher rates, they cast millions more ballots in every election. Young Americans consistently have the lowest voter turnout of any demographic group.
This means that many of the voices shaping our democracy come from citizens who are decades removed from the challenges facing young adults today, while the voices that represent their future are under-represented.
Young People Face Serious Challenges
Every generation experiences the world differently. Young people today face challenges that previous generations did not encounter in quite the same way: rising education costs, significant student debt, difficulty purchasing homes, concerns about raising a family and uncertainty about building stable financial lives. These issues affect young adults more directly than many older voters.
A healthy democracy needs to hear those perspectives. If younger citizens do not participate, their concerns are less likely to be represented in public decisions. But if they are informed, engaged, and encouraged to participate early, their voices can help shape policies that affect their generation for decades.
The Right to Vote Should Be a Milestone
In many cultures, the transition to adulthood is marked by meaningful ceremonies that recognize new responsibilities within the community. Becoming eligible to vote should be one of those milestone moments, the moment when a young citizen receives a voice in shaping the direction of the country. It should be something we look forward to and celebrate.
Research consistently shows that people who vote in their first eligible elections are far more likely to remain voters throughout their lives. Helping young citizens understand the importance of participation before they reach voting age may be one of the most effective long-term investments we can make in strengthening our democracy.
In recent elections there have been encouraging signs that more young people are becoming politically engaged. Many receive political information through podcasts, online media personalities, and social media platforms that speak directly to their generation.
This new media environment can be valuable. But it also presents a challenge. Healthy democratic judgment requires exposure to a range of perspectives and sources of information. When citizens rely too heavily on any single voice—whether a television network, a social media feed, or a podcast—they risk narrowing the information they use to form political decisions.
The goal is not to tell young people what to think. The goal is to help them learn how to think critically about public issues.
Preparing Young Citizens to Vote Wisely
As elections approach, there is often a strong push to get young people to the polls. That encouragement is important, but it is often focused more on participation than on preparation.
Surveys from organizations such as the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) and the Pew Research Center show that many young Americans care deeply about public issues and believe voting is important. Yet many also report feeling uncertain about how voter registration works, how primaries operate, how to evaluate candidates, and how to navigate the overwhelming flow of political information. The challenge, then, is not apathy, it is preparation.
The founders of the United States understood the importance of preparation. Thomas Jefferson argued that education was necessary so that citizens could “judge for themselves what will secure or endanger their freedom.” Voting alone is not enough. Citizens must also be able to evaluate information, weigh competing arguments, and make thoughtful decisions about the people entrusted with public power.
Civic preparation should begin before eighteen.
The high school years are the ideal time for young citizens to explore questions such as:
• How does our democratic system actually work?
• What responsibilities come with the right to vote?
• How can citizens evaluate information in an age of information overload and misinformation?
• What qualities should we look for in the people we entrust with power?
These are not partisan questions. They are citizenship questions.
A healthy democracy does not require every citizen to become a policy expert. That is why we elect representatives. But it does require citizens who understand their role in the system and who can recognize integrity, competence, and respect for democratic principles.
If young people enter adulthood without that preparation, they are left to navigate one of the most complex information environments in human history on their own. That is not fair to them. And it is not healthy for our democracy.
Democracy is not self-sustaining. Every generation must learn how to care for it. If we want young citizens to vote thoughtfully at eighteen, we must begin helping them understand their role as citizens long before that day arrives. Because the strength of a democracy is not determined on election day. It is determined in the years of learning that come before it.