It's Almost Our Anniversary

We are coming up on four years of Civil Discourse. Our anniversary will be this Sunday.

I knew it was close, but with the crush of everything going on, I hadn't focused on the fact that it was almost here until this gorgeous reminder from a good friend and chronic supporter showed up earlier this week.

I don’t want to let this anniversary pass without commenting on it. Because I feel incredibly fortunate to be part of a community of people who are passionate about our democracy and our country’s future. It’s a difficult time. It would be so much more difficult if we weren’t all in this together.

When I started Civil Discourse four years ago, I didn’t know exactly what it would become. I knew what I wanted it to be: a place where the law was explained plainly and honestly, where the stakes were never minimized, and where people who cared about democracy could come together and think clearly about what was happening to it. I spent 25 years as a federal prosecutor. I stepped down as the United States Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama the night before Donald Trump’s first inauguration. From that experience and as a law professor, a legal analyst for MSNOW, and an author, I believed—I still believe—that understanding the law is not a luxury reserved for lawyers. It’s the foundation of citizenship.

What I didn’t fully anticipate was you.

In four years, we have built something I am genuinely proud of—not because of anything I’ve done alone, but because of what we’ve done together. Civil Discourse has become a community of people who refuse to look away. People who read carefully, ask hard questions, share what they learn with their neighbors, and show up—at the ballot box, at town halls, in their elected officials’ offices, in conversations that matter. Lawyers and teachers and nurses and retirees and students and parents. People who understand that democracy is not a spectator sport and who act accordingly. I am grateful for every single one of you. You have made this work possible, and more than that, you have made it meaningful. Not infrequently, your kind words, your emails, and your support have kept me sane.

We have covered a lot of ground together. We watched the Supreme Court dismantle the Voting Rights Act piece by piece—from Shelby County to Callais to this week’s Alabama ruling—and we tried to understand not just what each decision said, but what it meant, and what came next. We watched an administration test the limits of the rule of law, and then test them again, and then push further still. We watched the courts—sometimes, not always—hold. We watched January 6th become a legal case, then a political football, then a cautionary tale that too many people in power are working hard to erase. We saw the end of abortion rights for far too many Americans. We covered all of it, and we named what we saw.

I want to be honest with you: this is not a moment for congratulations. What we have built matters because the need for it has never been greater. The Voting Rights Act is effectively gone. The Supreme Court is not going to save us. The press is under pressure it hasn’t faced in generations. The institutions we were taught to trust are being tested in ways that reveal exactly how much they depend—have always depended—on the good faith of the people running them. That good faith is in short supply right now.

So what do we do?

We keep going. We keep reading, and thinking, and talking to the people around us. We explain to our neighbors what the Callais decision actually means and does. We help people register to vote, and then we help them make a plan to actually vote. We pay attention to local races—school boards and city councils and state legislatures—because that is where so much of this fight is actually being waged. We fund the organizations doing the hard work of litigation and voter enrollment in places where it is most difficult and most urgent. We do not let the enormity of the problem become an excuse for paralysis.

I started Civil Discourse because I believe that an informed public is democracy’s most durable defense. Four years in, I believe that more than ever. Not because things are going well—they are not—but because I have watched what happens when people understand what’s at stake. They don’t give up. You haven’t given up. That matters more than I can say. The title of my book is more than just a title; it’s a mantra: Giving Up Is Unforgivable.

The news right now is bleak in some ways. As of today, Trump says he wants Todd Blanche to be his next Attorney General, for instance. And he conceded that he was appointing Bill Pulte to be the next Director of National Intelligence because he might find out some things “about rigged elections, etc., etc.” But there is also good news, signs of a small but vital shift among some Republicans, like Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy, who joined Senator Cory Booker in filing an amicus brief that argues Trump’s $1.776 billion slush fund is unconstitutional, a violation of the Article I branch of government’s power of the purse. Trump is in real danger, having frittered away his slender majorities, of facing actual guardrails, imposed by a functioning Congress. The future is not certain, but there is reason to believe we have the opportunity to get it right ahead of us.

We have more work to do than we did four years ago. The road ahead is longer and harder than any of us would have wished. But I know who is walking it with me, and that makes all the difference.

We’re in this together,

Joyce

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