NASW Social Work Talks - EP 136 - The Impact of Climate Change on Vulnerable and Marginalized Americans

Episode Date: February 5, 2026

In this episode of Social Work Talks, moderator Mel Wilson is joined by Nina Schlegel and Daniel Faber both of the Global Center for Climate Justice to discuss how climate change disproportionately affects vulnerable and marginalized communities across the United States. The conversation explores the impact of climate change denialism, voter disenfranchisement, and environmental injustice on communities of color, including Native American communities, as well as rural and inner-city populations—and why climate justice is a critical social work issue.

This episode of Social Work Talks is brought to you by DCFS, the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services. Hi, I'm Mel Wilson. I'm a Senior Policy Advisor for the National Association of Social Workers. Today, I will serve as the moderator for a very interesting podcast presentation dealing with the intersection of environmental justice and the anticipated threats to the American democracy during the upcoming 2026 midterm elections. Many view this upcoming election as having historical importance, not only to environmental justice and to American democracy, but also to the folks that we serve and individuals that we serve as social workers. Our guest today will discuss those threats and related election protection concerns. That said, let me introduce Nina Schleckle and Daniel Faber. Guys, it's on you. Well, thank you so much, Mel, and to the National Association of Social Workers for having us. This is a really incredible opportunity to reach more folks and talk about this issue. I'm Nina Schlegel. I'm the executive director of the Global Center for Climate Justice.

And I'm Daniel Faber. Thank you, Mel, for the introduction. And I'm a senior research fellow at the Global Center for Climate Justice. I believe there are several overviews that you guys want to do. So I'll just refer to my notes and let you start. I believe that Nina, you're starting off on the first one that deals with the center and the research and education functions that you guys do. So I'll start with you. All right. Thanks, Mel. Yeah, I'll just wanted to give everyone a little bit of a background on who we are and what we do. We're a research and educational resource hub for the climate justice, environmental justice and democracy movements, and also any policy aligned folks as well. Our lens is power. So specifically, we're looking at political and economic power and how the structures of power have created interlinked crises that we are now experiencing. So what I mean by that is the intersectionality of multiple different crises, whether it's economic inequality, climate change, environmental injustices, international and intergenerational injustices, and the concentration of corporate power and how those intersect and reinforce one another. And the way that we do that is by making leading-edge research broadly accessible through popular reports, articles, webinars, podcasts, presentations, public graphics and comments, comics on our website, and social media. I'll turn it over to Danny to introduce the concepts of environmental and climate justice, so we have a little bit of a grounding in this discussion as well. Yes, thanks.

So I'd like to say a few words about environmental and climate justice and what does it mean. I think it's very important that we all remember that one of our most fundamental rights as human beings is to live in a healthy and clean environment. It's a right that's guaranteed by many states, such as Massachusetts, and it's in the constitutions of many countries, such as Brazil. And whenever that right is taken away from us, it is representative of a crisis of democracy. If the state is not acting in such a way to protect the environmental rights of its citizens, then we can see that as a symptom of a lack of democracy.

Anytime a corporation or government agency knowingly displaces harm onto a community in the form of toxic waste or other types of pollution, that has to be seen as an antisocial act. And residents, when they become aware of these issues, will often fight back when they're confronted by an ecological threat. So therefore, what we find is that corporations and government agencies often pursue what we call the path of least resistance. They target those communities for the siting of polluting power plants and industrial facilities

and so forth. those communities with the least amount of political power to fight back. Sociologists call this control capacity, where people lack the resources to become mobilized. And, you know, social workers are often left dealing with the tremendous harm that individuals and families feel as a result of, you know, the imposition of these harms in the community. And in the United States, we find that it is lower-income, white working-class communities, and especially politically marginalized communities of color that are most often targeted for the siting of ecologically dangerous facilities. So I'll give you a quick example. State of California wanted

to build incinerators for disposing of garbage and medical waste and toxic waste. When you burn such waste, you produce super toxics out the smokestacks of the incinerator. Very, very dangerous carcinogens such as dioxins, mercury, and so forth. So communities throughout California were unwilling to accept these incinerators because of the danger they posed. So the state, to arrive at a solution, commissioned Sorrell Associates, a consulting agency, to help them come up with a solution. And on page 51 of the report, they conclude that under no such circumstances should such a facility be built within a one-mile radius of a white middle-class community because of the greater likelihood of encountering political opposition. Instead,

the state should target low-income communities, Catholic communities because they were considered to be more conservative, rural communities, communities where the offending facility would be on one line of political jurisdiction, the affected population on another, and they footnoted communities of color in the research by Robert Buller, a leading EJ scholar. Nowhere in the report. Did they talk about what are the optimum geologic, geographic, or climactic conditions that would minimize harm to the general population? It was solely in terms of the ability of a community to resist the imposition of these facilities. After the report is released, some 17 incinerators were built in Southern California alone in Los Angeles. Every single one of them was built in a

low-income community and neighborhood in Los Angeles, African-American and Latino communities, every single one of them. So for many residents, this is an example of environmental racism, the intentional targeting of communities of color for these dangerous facilities. I did a study in Massachusetts, and I found the cumulative environmental burden for communities of color is 39 times greater than what it is for predominantly white communities. And if we think about climate change, the same principle holds that one's vulnerability to climate change is also a function of how much power a person or a community possesses. So if you look at New Orleans, for example, around Hurricane Katrina, we knew long before

this disaster hit, that there was a dramatic underinvestment in the levees that were built to protect the African-American and white working-class neighborhoods around Lake Pontchartrain and so forth. So, in fact, it was on a federal government list of a very likely disaster that would occur if a hurricane did come along. The lack of investment in these levees allowed for Hurricane Katrina to overwhelm those levees, they crippled. And as a result of that, some 180,000 African Americans and low-income whites lost their homes. Tens of thousands of blacks were compelled to leave the city and never came back. They are examples of what are climate refugees. So power and democracy has everything to do with the likelihood of you living in a

community where your life could be in danger because of a polluting industrial facility or a lack of investment to protect your neighborhood from climate change. Thank you. And I think, Nina, you're going to pick up on just an overview on that intersection of these issues of democracy and voter suppression. So if you can do that. Happy to dive right in. It's a really meaty topic. So let's drop in. It might also sound a bit odd at first, but protecting our democratic rights and our institutions and countering voter suppression, these are also very much environmental justice and climate justice concerns. And that is because the political and economic interests of major corporate polluters are served by the

political disempowerment of the communities that Danny was just talking about. Communities who are most impacted by the operations of polluting facilities and those who most want climate action. So people of color and young folks are actually much more likely to vote for pro-environment candidates. And consequently, candidates of color elected to represent these communities also have some of the strongest pro-environment and pro-climate action records in Congress. To throw out some stats to make it real for folks, the Environmental Voter Project did some research and they found that the people most often listing climate as a top priority aren't in fact white. They are Black and Latina folks. They're also more likely to be making less than $50,000 a year. And they're also really likely to be younger. And again, these are the groups that are most targeted by voter suppression. And it's not just about political power. It's also about profits. So according to the International Monetary Fund, our government is subsidizing fossil fuels to the tune of $650 billion. Now that was in 2015. That's 10 times more than we spend on our public education system. So our government is providing critical support for these industries that may or may not actually be profitable without those subsidies. So voter suppression and the rollback of democratic rights, these tactics serve to enable business-friendly politicians whose campaigns are bankrolled by corporate polluters to gain control over the state and thwart our movements for environmental justice and for climate justice, but also movements for greater economic equality, for racial justice, and for women's rights, too,

because we know those are very intersectional movements. And we have a lot of data specifically from the heroes at the ACLU, the American Civil Liberties Union, that has tracked the impact of voter suppression on different populations. And they found that between, for example, both 2016 and 2018 alone, 17 million people in the U.S. were purged from voting rolls across the country. They found that roughly one out of every 16 Black Americans in this country cannot vote due to some form of disenfranchisement. And one in six people with a disability report having issues with voting on voting days. There's also geographic isolation issues when it comes to indigenous communities and whether or not they have a physical address to receive their ballot.

And there's also ways that student groups and students have been targeted where you've seen the elimination of polling places around university campuses that are thought to be more democratic. And then you have some really egregious laws and activities happening, for example, in Georgia, where it's unlawful to even hand someone a glass of water when they're standing in line waiting for hours in the heat to vote. So I can't describe it all because honestly, there's a limit in terms of the dark creativity that is possible when it comes to voter suppression tactics. Danny can talk about some of these a bit more. But yet these same populations are the most concerned about their futures and about their communities. And one of the points that I want

to stress here is that this is not just about Trump either. I know he sucks up a lot of airtime these days, but while so many of these efforts have actually accelerated under Trump, this is ultimately not just about his administration. This has been a long-term project to protect the interests of the powerful, to protect corporate interests and corporate assets too. And the narrative focus sometimes has been on the actions of extremists, of Trump supporting Republicans, on the MAGA wing. And those accounts do us a bit of a disservice by ignoring the role of corporate power in funding the institutional support, the model legislation, the networks and the policy playbook that is enacting a rollback of not only voting rights, but environmental rights too. and they go hand in hand. So we have to situate this issue within the long arc of struggle for greater democracy and representation in this country. These struggles are as old as the country itself and go all the way back to the 1700s when only white landowning elites could

vote. And it's only been through profound social movements and struggle over centuries that women, black and brown citizens, indigenous peoples, Asian Americans, immigrants like myself, students and young people in the working class have secured their right to vote and even participate in the American political progress process. And all that time, all those centuries, we have seen the powers that be push back with violence, voter intimidation, racist laws, poll taxes, literacy tests, registration labyrinths, and mis- and disinformation. And we're seeing some of that even today. Some of that and some of those exclusionary practices were addressed through the 1965 Voting Rights Act and other acts. And it could have been further

mitigated by legislation that was proposed under the Biden administration. But we're in a moment in history right now where these fundamental rights and even major parts of the Voting Rights Act are again under threat. This is not just happening in the contested swing states that are often in our news. According to the Brennan Center for Justice over the last five years, so since the 2020 presidential election, there's been at least 30 states that haven't acted 108 a restrictive voting laws. And many of these are going to take effect before we vote in the 2026 midterm elections. So this is real. This is relevant. This is raw. I want to close with this thought, and that is that voting really does matter. Because if it didn't, if it didn't help

bend the arc of our politics, of our movement towards greater environmental justice and climate action and economic equity, then I don't think we would be seeing such a concerted effort to stifle our voice. We wouldn't have Project 2025. We wouldn't have hundreds of millions of dollars being poured into anti-democratic tactics and voter suppression legislation. There's a reason behind it all. Thank you. That was great. Danny, we all talk a lot about the assault on democracy and including NASW and many of the voting rights and voting mobilization organizations. Could you you talk a little more elaborate on what exactly does that mean? How serious is that assault on democracy? Well, there's a growing concern among students of democracy, particularly in the

Political Science Association recently produced a letter stating that the guardrails of American democracy are under assault and that we are now officially considered to be a backsliding democracy. So we are witnessing one of the most profound assaults on America's democratic institutions that we've seen in quite some time. In fact, I would say the past six years have witnessed the greatest rollback of voting rights since the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. And most of it is done under the guise of stopping widespread voter fraud. I would submit email that this is really a myth and that very conservative forces are trying to garner support for the implementation of restrictive voter identification laws under the guise, the myth

of voter fraud. But voter fraud is exceedingly rare. The Brennan Center did some research on this and found that an American has a greater chance of being struck by lightning than to impersonate another voter at the polls. It's largely a mythology. I think there's only been, there was an exhaustive study that was done on voter fraud and only found something like 31 different incidents of voter fraud out of a billion ballots that were cast between 2000 and 2014. Again, since 2016, as Nina just mentioned, over 17 million people have been purged from the voting rolls under the guise of combating voter fraud. Not all of those were illegitimate. People do die, and so therefore, they can be purged from the polls. But we don't

know how many of these were legally versus illegally purged from the voting rolls. Over the last four years, there's been over a thousand bills introduced in 49 states that have been designed to roll back the voting rights of the American people, namely people of color and young people. And these numbers are extraordinary. If you think about it, a thousand bills in 49 states, state after state is now enacting law, making it harder for citizens to vote. And the Brennan Center, which again is one of the premier organizations, institutes that has done research on this for years, bipartisan, deeply respected, they've come to the conclusion that there's compelling evidence that shows that these laws are directly intending to suppress the vote

and that their newest research, in fact, shows that eligible voters who are often turned away from casting a ballot are much less likely to try again in later elections. It seems like they give up. So this is concerning because the effects of voter suppression can last years, if not a lifetime. And again, I want to emphasize that the rollback of voting rights is really meant to disproportionately impact people of color and young voters, as well as in some areas, poor working-class white voters that live in Democratic districts. Last year, Renstetter did another study that relied on a voter file of nearly a billion records. And it showed that the gap between the participation rates of white voters and non-white voters has grown across the country. And it's

grown at twice the rate in counties that were once monitored by the Robust Voting Rights Act. One of the decisions that's recently made by the Supreme Court around pre-clearance is that states no longer receive permission of the federal government to change their voting laws. Given those dangers and threats, what do you think some of the strategies are needed? And this is, again, back to you, Dan, strategies that are needed right now to help combat that or mitigate it or whatever, just because they are very, very serious. What's your thoughts on that? Well, so I think some of the strategies that need to be implemented should be in direct response to the strategies of voter suppression. So, for example, we see the enactment of harsher voter ID restrictions. 36 states have laws requesting or requiring voters to show some form of identification at the polls. um what we find is that blacks are five times more likely than whites to lack a government

issued id in georgia and texas which have elevated voter suppression to an art form most residents there don't understand the id requirements that have been recently adopted in their states these polls that were conducted by vote writers and the center for democracy and civic engagement university of maryland show that voting laws in both of the states because people don't understand them, they show up at the polls, they don't understand that they have a photo ID has resulted in the disenfranchisement of tens of thousands of citizens. So the first thing we should do is roll back these voter ID laws. Like I said, a lot of states, including the state like Massachusetts, does not require voter IDs. And they should accept all forms of

IDs. The state of Texas, you can use a hunting license, but you can't use a student ID. And so they accept IDs from voters that are considered to be more conservative, but more progressive voters, their IDs that are typical of them, like a student, are not accepted. So we need more universal codes around what can constitute an ID, acceptable ID, rather than these highly restrictive standards. The other thing is, you know, a lot of places, Anita referred to, for example, where Georgia for a period of time criminalized the fact that you would be handing out food or water to someone in line waiting to vote. Why was that adopted? Well, in Fulton County, which is predominantly a Black resident, they closed down about half of the polling places

in that county. So you come home from work, and now there are fewer polling places. You have to stand in line for four or five hours. So your family members and friends would bring you food water as you had to stand in lines for hours and hours. So they pass a law preventing you from doing that. A judge eventually overturned that. But we need legislation and rules put in place to ensure that there is an equitable and just number of polling places and drop-off ballots that allow all residents, whether they live in a Black community, a Latino community, or white community to have equal access to the polls and equal access to voting. I thought, well, was it really interesting, some of the targeting that went on the Dakotas

and Arizona, there were laws that were passed where you had to have a street address rather than a post office box to voting. Well, if you live on a reservation, you don't have a street address. You have a post office box. And so that simple rule disenfranchised thousands and thousands of indigenous people. So fighting the requirements around street addresses and not allowing post office boxes is something else that we can do. I think combating gerrymandering is critical. As you know, Trump recently said that he wanted to gerrymander Texas. Governor Newsom in California responded that they were going to gerrymander California to ensure that a greater number of Democrats would be elected

to counteract the gerrymandering that was taking place in Texas. Indiana, to their credit, refused to go along with this. But at last count, more than 59 million Americans live under minority rule in a state where the party with the fewer votes controls a large majority of the legislative seats. And that's due to gerrymandering. Jesse Jackson has observed with gerrymandering, he says, quote, voters aren't choosing their representatives, representatives are choosing their voters. The fix is in and the results are ruinous. So we need national legislation. We need independent commissions to end the process of gerrymandering, which disproportionately is impacting people of color throughout the country. The issue of gerrymandering, as you know, that

there's a movement towards redistricting started off with Texas, including now California and other States. And to a large degree, that does fit a definition, at least, of partisan gerrymandering. Are you in favor of reacting, in a way, as a way of dealing with the threats of also those who don't have a history of gerrymandering to get to actually begin aggressive redistricting to counter what the Trump administration is doing? Yeah, I think it's clear what we need are independent, nonpartisan commissions that look into the issue of gerrymandering and begin to draw up districts in such a way that they do not intentionally dilute the impact of the Black vote or Latino voters. The primary function of gerrymandering is to spread out those Black and Latino voters among a variety of white communities so that their vote becomes diluted. And so we really can't have this in the hands of one political party or the other at the end of every election cycle.

It really needs to be conducted by an independent commission that's bipartisan, that contains experts on how you do this in the fairest way possible. So I can interpret that as you're saying that it's okay to use a strategy of partisan gerrymandering, given what the other side has done. But there needs to be a really focus on gerrymandering reform in the long run. Yeah, it was really interesting. Now, if you look at the debate that took place in California when Newsom announced his intention, it had to go up on a popular referendum. And it was passed overwhelmingly. Over 70% of California voters voted in favor of this. But one of the things that comes back, the journalists and social scientists such as myself who are covering that process, it was loud and clear that the California voters did not like having to do this, but they recognized that on a national stage, they had to do something to counteract the gerrymandering that was occurring in many other states, such as Texas. I think that we're just seeing the tip of this iceberg. I think it's going to get worse and worse and worse. Unless there's a national legislation that can somehow establish the necessity of having independent commissions in every single state, I think this is just going to get worse and worse and worse. That makes sense. This episode of Social Work Talks is brought to you by DCFS, the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services.

Illinois DCFS is hiring. Make a difference for Illinois children and families with competitive salaries, excellent benefits, career advancement opportunities, and tuition reimbursement. Bilingual, Spanish, and English professionals are in high demand and may be eligible for additional pay. Learn more and apply today at dcfsjobs.illinois.gov. Another question for you, Danny, is dealing with this assault and the orchestration of this assault. I interpret this question as not alluding to Project 2025, which gets into orchestrating, managing, collaborating with folks who are out there trying to suppress votes. what's your thoughts on that effort being made and how can we help to sort of tamp down that orchestration? Well, I think there's so many aspects about the Project 2025 document, and it's very, very clear. And one of the things that we're going to emphasize here is that the Project 2025 agenda, which was an agenda for the Trump administration, was basically organized by the Heritage Foundation, but for the first time brought in over 100 other organizations.

And so the conservative movement could speak with one voice. One of the points we want to emphasize is the Heritage Foundation is in many ways a creation of some of the worst corporate polluters in the United States, particularly the oil and gas industry, and in particular the Koch Industries, the largest private oil services company in the country. They have put hundreds of millions of dollars into Heritage and allied think tanks. Heritage has been one of the key organizations that has been the architects, if you will, of providing the blueprints to states all over the country on how to roll back the voting rights of communities of color and youth. And so, heritage is a very appropriate focus. And one of the things that we find, for example,

that they talk about in Project 2025 is one of the strategies they hype is the need to replace nonpartisan election officers with more partisan electoral officials. And the notion here is that this allows them, if you can put partisans in charge of the electoral machinery, then they're better able to manipulate that machinery and pass new rules that can better affect their constituencies. The founder of the Heritage Foundation said, we hate free elections. We hate that the more people that vote are actually, you know, he says, actually are contrary to our own interests. And so one of the things that we find is that, and Donald Trump recently said this when he paraphrased, of all people, Joseph Stalin. He said, elections are decided not by

those who cast the votes, but by those who count them. And so this is a major concern to political scientists and other officials that are entrusted with safeguarding American democracy, that there's a real danger when you replace nonpartisan election official with partisan election officials, that they're going to start rigging the game. So I think one outcome of that is the wrongful purging of legitimate voters from the rolls under the guise of voter fraud. And that was something we see in the Project 2025 document. And it all goes into these attempts to make voter registration more difficult, and they're being quite successful. Briante McCorkle, who's from the League of Conservation Voters in Georgia, tells us that these efforts have been really

quite successful, that we've been seeing implemented in Georgia in recent years, particularly around voter ID laws and restricting the ability to do mail-in ballots and so forth. The corporate polluters and their commitment to against voting rights and voting activities, Is it driven more about deregulations that advantage them, or are you saying that that's part of a very deep political philosophy that is divorced from the deregulation, how their mindset is? Yeah, I think one of the most remarkable transformations in American politics has come about through the formation of what we here at the Center call the polluter industrial complex. And that is the manner in which the environmental movement took off during the 1970s, and many major corporations were caught off guard by the so-called environmental decade. Tens of millions of Americans became mobilized in the service of the environmental movement. Over 20 major pieces of legislation were adopted and so forth. And what happened was the oil and gas industry in particular, headed by the Koch brothers, but also ExxonMobil and other major corporate polluters, went about forming a very sophisticated infrastructure of think tanks and policy institutes and research centers, foundations, public relations firms, all with the primary goal of rolling back environmental legislation and heading off climate change. they have become the backbone of the conservative movement in the United States.

Many of them are single-issue-oriented policy groups that are focused just on climate change, such as the Heartland Institute, and others are multi-policy-issue-oriented, such as Heritage. But their primary enemy is government regulation. They want to roll back government regulation, not just respect the climate change, but environment, but all types of legislation so that they are freer of these costs and can make higher profits and increase their power. But as major corporate polluters, environmental regulation and climate change legislation represent the biggest threats to their profits. And I think one of the things that's really interesting, and Nina made this point earlier, is that the people who are on the front lines

of the climate crisis. The people who are experiencing the ecological crisis to the greatest degree are those communities that lack political economic power. They are Black and Brown and Indigenous communities and white working class communities and youth who are really concerned about the future of this planet that is going to be left to them and their children. And so therefore, they are some of the strongest pro-environment voters. So in order to maintain this neoliberal agenda of rolling back government regulation, of dismantling government agencies. A third of EPA staff has been fired. Their budget's been slashed. They have to go after those sectors of the American people that have the strongest pro-environment voting rights,

and that is people of color and youth. And that's the connection that we want the climate justice movement to realize is that the struggle for democracy is a struggle for climate justice. And Nina, this is a chance for you to pick up on some of the things that are being said. We know that the midterm elections are important, and we know that there's a lot of information that needs to be shared. The voters need to be aware of what that threat is in detail. So could you just, I mean, and feel free to go on and really get into this discussion in depth. What are some of the issues, what kind of information needs to be shared or in voter education kinds of things?

Yeah, thanks, Mel. There's a lot. I'll go over four areas of concern that we see in 2026. And I think the first thing to be on the lookout for is mis- and disinformation. This has been a long-running theme when it comes to voter suppression and has already been a huge threat to our ability to exercise our rights in the past. And now what we see with the advent of artificial intelligence and an even more polarized news media, it's a little unclear what kind of mis- and disinformation tools could possibly be used in the upcoming election.

So I encourage everyone strongly to go to your Secretary of State's website. They're a trusted source for ensuring that your vote can be properly counted. But along the lines of misinformation, we're seeing more and more election deniers in office, like Danny was talking about, right? So there's a nonpartisan voting rights group called States United Action. They found that 24 election deniers in 18 states now hold statewide office. And so there's a concern among activists, among voting rights lawyers and representatives that they could use their power to undermine fair election administration. There's also increasing risks of election sabotage in eight battleground states, and that's new research, too. The second thing is to be aware of different federal threats to our voting rights. Unfortunately, there's a few of them. There was an executive order signed by Trump last year in March that seeks to create more restrictive voter registration requirements and seeks to require documentary proof of U.S. citizenship when you go to vote and tries to forbid states from counting mail-in ballots that are received after Election Day. So some of that is being blocked. Some of that is still making its way through the courts, but that would have huge implications for millions of voters. We also, particularly in the environmental field, we are watching to see if Congress tries again to pass what's called the SAVE Act, S-A-V-E. This would eliminate mail-in voter registration. It would promote even more voter roll purges, institute potential criminal penalties for election workers, and create other barriers. So there was a lot of activism last year around that, and I suspect there will be this year as

well. There's also what the Department of Justice is doing, and even NPR was reporting on this, where around 70% of the lawyers that work within the civil rights division have left. And that includes the department's voting rights section, where it has shrunk from 30 lawyers to just a handful. And these are the folks at a federal level who are making sure that our elections are lawful. In addition to that, the administration has really shrunk the federal cybersecurity and infrastructure security agency. That's a mouthful. It's called CISA. But what they do is they monitor the security of our elections. And that seems kind of like a counterintuitive move if you're worried about voter fraud, to be really honest about it. And then all of the

political pressure around gerrymandering states that we've seen already. Another thing that I would have folks keep an eye out for are the cases that are making their way through the Supreme Court and will likely have decisions on very shortly. There's a number of them. There's a case where um the key question is whether laws that allow states to count mail-in ballots after election day are constitutional right so that's all wrapped up right now and we're waiting to see what comes out on that there's a case challenging the long established limits for how much political parties can even spend in coordination with candidates so that's been brought up by the national republican senatorial committee and they want to um they're arguing that

the existing caps on party expenditures are a restriction of free speech. The big one is Cal-A, the Voter Rights Act. Exactly. Yeah, that's the final one I was going to mention, which centers on Louisiana's adoption. It's actually a second redistricting map where they created a second. They have two. They created a second majority Black congressional district during the recent redistricting. And challengers are saying that that accounts to an unconstitutional gerrymander. So this case is actually super important because it could even further weaken the Voting Rights Act. And we've seen in 2013 with Shelby and other cases chipping away at the Voting Rights Act already. So that's

a lot. I think it creates, you know, overall an environment of uncertainty and mistrust at exactly the worst time right before an election and so that's why danny and i are doing this research but that's why it's so important to get involved in this struggle because it it sounds maybe very legislative very political but it's going to affect every aspect of our lives in the year to come the people we elect the legislation that's allowed to pass it has it's going to impact how affordable our energy is, how affordable our homes are, the funding that goes to our schools, our education system, our health insurance, our social security, our environmental protections, and so much more. So this is a fight that, you know, everyone should be involved in.

Yeah, before we throw the clothes out to move to the end of that, one of the things my biggest concern is the whole issue of militarization that goes under probably the title of voter interference, but it's much more ominous than that. As many people are talking about what's going on in Minneapolis, it's sort of a test place where you have ICE involved, but that's going to expand to the regular military. And there is certainly a sense that as we move towards and begin the voting process in the midterm, you can disrupt a voting place, especially with ICE, where you just simply ICE goes in and disrupts

it, it may not that they apprehend anybody. There's such fear in the voting process that it's going to have a significant impact. So when we do, we all do voter education, we need to include that discussion in it. And a lot of

this, I worry that folks don't see that as they see it very isolated to ICE and what's going on there, but it has a much bigger picture to it. What do you guys think can strengthen the American democracy? I'll leave it just like that and let you go for it. It's been kind of a heavy podcast so far.

Yeah, I know. Like, what can we do about it? You know, and actually just on the issue of militarization, the states are really pushing back against that. So you have lawsuits that are that are being launched around, you know, ISIS and just use of force. But also, I think that there are organizations and states really at the ready. Like if Trump were even thinking about invoking the Insurrection Act, the states are like, oh, heck no. But in terms of like this, this broader question of suppressing our rights, particular our voting rights, you know, as you'd mentioned, you know, the first thing is really talk about it to know our rights. You know, ACLU has been really great on this topic.

and i do want everyone to know that every eligible citizen has a right to vote cast a ballot freely fairly accessibly without fear of intimidation it's a federal crime to intimidate people when they're going to vote but also make sure that you and your community are all set and registered to vote particularly with these new laws and states you want to make sure that like you are not accidentally or intentionally disenfranchised that's at the individual level and the second thing I think is that we need to organize to demand justice. And that means organizing with your local voting rights organizations, showing your displeasure about what's happening in your state and your community, and rock up at your state representatives or state senators' door

and let them know. A lot of this happens in relative secrecy where the public doesn't really know about it until it's passed. And so it's important for lawmakers to know that we're going to hold them accountable. There's a lot of really great groups out there that you can get involved in. They really run the gamut. League of Women Voters, League of Conservation Voters, Black Voters Matter, Voto Latino, Campus Vote Project, Four Directions Native Vote. There's a ton of them. The third thing I will say is action at the state level, supporting that and advocating for that because it's made the states and our state representatives to really stand up for democracy. They are running our elections.

And so the Voting Rights Lab, other outfits have a number of different recommendations for what we can demand of our state legislators. There's been some really interesting initiatives being passed. So for example, in Montana, they recently passed a disclosure law statewide that requires a disclosure of donors funding election-related ads and communications to combat dark money. So there's another one that recently passed in Maine, where super PAC contributions in the state are limited to $5,000 annually. And that also cuts down on political spending. So there's actually so much that our states can do and need to do. Another one that i would float um depending on you know if you're able to do so is thinking about economic boycotts

and that means taking our time and money away from the corporations that have been engaging in voter suppression and anti-democratic acts so that means stop shopping at the stores and the subscriptions divesting your retirement funds if you're looking for a list of the baddies those corporate sponsors of voter suppression uh check out the incredible work by public citizen um they've been bought on this and let's be real like our money it's our money we give it to the corporations but then it's literally coming back and being used against us so we we have a right to hold them accountable there's a great example of that in michigan where um a black voters coalition organized a rally to name and shame general motors and blue cross blue shield

So all of this, all of this is happening is entirely un-American. And I think ultimately that's why all of our movements, the climate, environmental justice movement, pro-democracy movements need to combine forces to protect and expand our rights and counter the assault on our rights as Americans. And in closing, at the Global Center, do you have any resources that are specific to your organization that you want to mention? Yeah, we're actually going to, we wrote a report in 2022 that took a look at voter suppression across the country and how it intersected with the issue of climate justice. So feel free to check out that work on our website. We're doing a 2026 update to that report that will come out in the summer ahead of the 2026 midterm elections for our allies across the movements. But for individuals in general, for organizations, for social workers, there are so many resources out there. For more information on getting involved, I would check out those organizations I listed earlier. Also, Rock the Vote is great.

If you're looking at, you know, information on state-level legislation, check out Voting Rights Lab, too. And then for incredible research on all of these topics, there's ACLU, Brennan Center, Center for Media and Democracy, Earth Justice, League of Conservation Voters, and, of course, Public Citizen. So there's, we have a lot of allies. well let me add on Bruce that we're involved the leadership conference for civil and human rights and their burden of rights

100% task force that we need to mention hey guys thanks so much this was really really good stuff and so Nina

and Danny really I would thank you on behalf of the National Association of Social Workers and social workers in general thank you for doing this

and maybe we'll have a chance to do it again before the elections happen so thank you again And thank you, Phil, and thank you to all the social workers out there who do such important work. And we really appreciate all that you're doing to make this a better country as well.

So thank you. We appreciate that.