Democracy Journal

If the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) already knows so much about our taxes, why does the process to file them have to be so onerous? A group of advocates and technologists got together to make tax filing suck less, and it worked really well. That is, until President Donald Trump killed it.

It’s not easy to be optimistic if you’re on the left side of the American political debate these days. Donald Trump is back as President, with a compliant, Republican-majority Congress ready to do his bidding.

The second Trump Administration has added a new dimension to what was once widely termed the “War on Terror.” In designating suspected drug cartels and organized crime groups in Latin America as terrorists, the administration has targeted them with bombings and military raids with the same post-9/11 rationalizations normally reserved for jihadists.

Reading Cory Haala’s When Democrats Won the Heartland stirred up a lot of political memories from my first 20 years living in the Upper Midwest—memories of being surprised, then truly encouraged and hopeful, and ultimately disappointed (but never cynical, at least not about progressive politics and possibilities).

The cost of everything is rising, and wages aren’t keeping up for everyone. “Affordability” has become the word of the moment, and with good reason: Zohran Mamdani rode the concept to his stunning mayoral victory in New York, President Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign was buoyed by rising costs, and now Democrats everywhere are rushing to embrace the idea. But the intense pressure has think tanks and politicians conflating an affordability agenda with what people need to live a good life.

The smartest tax doesn’t have to raise a lot of revenue to do social good. The point of a carbon tax, for example, is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to mitigate climate change. If it succeeds in incentivizing people to use less fossil-fuel-intensive energy, the economic gains would be enormous even if it raised little revenue. When assessing the value of a tax, we should look at both its potential revenue effects and why it might “fail” to generate this potential revenue.

For as long as the editors of this journal can remember, the broad left has been on the back foot about taxes. Barack Obama in 2012 said that “if you make less than $250,000 a year, like 98 percent of American families do, your taxes shouldn’t go up.” By the time Joe Biden was President, that promise had extended to families making $400,000. This defensiveness is one tooth in a ratchet of anti-tax, anti-government sentiment that’s been plaguing this country for decades.

The income tax is a landmark progressive innovation of the last century, and it is under attack from multiple sides. President Donald Trump has explicitly targeted the income tax, repeating his goal to eliminate and “substantially replace” it with tariffs during his last State of the Union. A number of leading Democrats are now adding their own proposals to undercut the income tax, threatening to weaken a crucial aspect of progressive governance.

Pundits talk a lot—a whole lot—about “preserving democracy” in the face of President Donald Trump’s rising authoritarianism. This is not the right call. Not because I disagree that American democracy is under assault and we need to take action, but because there’s a world of difference between struggling to restore a defective political order and engaging in a spirited, long term strategic fight for a real democratic future.

Any post-MAGA renewal of democracy starts with a federal right to vote. But it hardly ends there. Summer 2026, No. 81 – 26 MIN READ Sign up for our email newsletter! We'll send periodic reminders of what's new and what's coming. A Blog of Ideas What's in the Little Magazines Wonks in Exile Issue Contents Any post-MAGA renewal of democracy starts with a federal right to vote. But it hardly ends there. By Jefferson Cowie Summer 2026, No. 81 – 26 MIN READ By Lily L.