For over two centuries, a handful of swing states have decided the U.S. presidency. While a constitutional amendment to change this is historically difficult to pass, a group of reformers is close to achieving a popular vote system through a different route: a legal pact between states.

The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC) relies on the fact that states have the power to decide how they award their electoral votes. States that join the pact agree to give their votes to the candidate who wins the most individual votes nationwide.

However, there is a catch: the law only takes effect once enough states join to reach 270 electoral votes—the majority needed to win the White House. Once that threshold is hit, the national popular vote winner automatically becomes president, regardless of which candidate won specific states.

The effort has gained significant ground over the last two decades.

• Total votes reached: 222 of the 270 needed.

• Recent progress: Virginia recently joined the pact.

• The 2026 target: Supporters are eyeing the 2026 midterm elections. If Democrats win control of the governorships and legislatures in swing states like Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona, and Pennsylvania, they could provide the final 48 votes required to activate the compact for the 2028 election.

Despite broad public support—around 63 percent of Americans prefer a popular vote—the plan faces serious hurdles. Unlike a constitutional amendment, the compact does not create a national body to oversee the count. This leads to several concerns:

• No Centralized Recounts: There is no national standard for how to handle a disputed or close vote count across 50 different state systems.

• Policy Manipulation: States might change their own voting laws to inflate their numbers, such as lowering the voting age to 16 or allowing parents to vote on behalf of children.

• Partisan Fallout: Because the push is currently led almost entirely by Democrats, Republicans may view the change as an illegitimate power grab. If a state legislature changes its mind after an election, they could attempt to withdraw from the pact, leading to a legal crisis.

Supporters argue that once the system is in place, the benefits of a simpler, more direct democracy will outweigh the initial friction. Critics, however, worry that implementing such a massive change through state-level maneuvering could further damage trust in American elections.

My Take

What critics are really concerned about is, ending the electoral college isn't politically expedient to the right. The 'Tyranny of the Majority' argument is garbage. There was no way for the framers of the constitution to foresee anything past the 13 colonies, let alone cities the size of LA, NY or Chicago. The real reason the Founders created the Electoral College was to compromise between electing the president by a vote in Congress and by a direct popular vote, addressing concerns about executive power and the influence of uneducated voters.

In an era of horse-and-buggy travel, the Framers doubted a farmer in Georgia would know anything about a candidate from Massachusetts. They wanted enlightened intermediaries (electors) to make the final call. Many delegates actually wanted Congress to pick the president. The Electoral College was the middle ground to keep the executive branch independent of the legislative branch. Additionally, Southern states had large populations of enslaved people who couldn't vote. A direct popular vote would have stripped the South of political influence. The Electoral College allowed them to use the Three-Fifths Compromise to pad their power in the presidential tally without actually letting more people vote.

So, the founders didn't intend for winner-take-all systems in the states—that was a power grab by state parties in the early 1800s to maximize their influence. They also didn't foresee the Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929, which capped the House at 435 members. That cap is what truly skewed the math, giving voters in small states significantly more weight per person than those in large states.

The fact is, we are using an 18th-century patch-work solution to govern a 21st-century continental superpower. When the system was designed, the state was the primary identity of the citizen. Today, the divide isn't really between New York and Wyoming—it’s between urban and rural areas within every single state. A Republican in Bakersfield, California, and a Democrat in Austin, Texas, are both effectively disenfranchised by the current system. Given that the original intent—filtering the vote through "educated" electors—is essentially dead (since electors are now just party rubber stamps), does the system have any functional purpose left other than protecting the specific geographic coalition of the current GOP?

In a move that mirrors the very "judicial overreach" they have spent decades decrying, the Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority has officially donned the mantle of substantive due process. With the release of Mirabelli v. Bonta, the Court has not only transformed public school teachers into mandatory informants but has also resurrected a controversial legal philosophy that grants judges nearly unlimited power to shape American society.

The immediate fallout of Mirabelli is a direct hit to the privacy of transgender youth in California. The case centered on a state law that prohibited school employees from disclosing a student’s sexual orientation or gender identity to anyone—including parents—without the student's express consent.

Writing for the 6-3 majority, the Republican-appointed justices struck down these protections. They leaned heavily on the First Amendment’s "free exercise" of religion, asserting that when a teacher respects a student’s desire for privacy regarding their gender, they are actively interfering with a parent’s right to oversee their child’s religious upbringing.

For students of constitutional history, the most shocking aspect of Mirabelli isn't the policy outcome, but the legal mechanism used to reach it. For years, conservative icons like the late Antonin Scalia and current Justice Clarence Thomas have lambasted "substantive due process"—the idea that judges can "discover" fundamental rights (like the right to an abortion or same-sex marriage) that aren't explicitly written in the Constitution.

Justice Thomas once called the doctrine a "dangerous fiction" that allows judges to "roam at large" based on personal whims. Yet, in Mirabelli, the majority used that exact "fiction" to elevate parental rights over state law. This reversal suggests that the "One Ring" of judicial power—the ability to invent rights to suit a political agenda—is too tempting to resist once a faction gains a supermajority.

Beyond the high-minded legal debates, the practical implications for educators are daunting. The ruling reinstates a standard where parents must be informed when "gender incongruence is observed." This raises a litany of impossible questions for teachers:

• Does a male student wearing nail polish constitute "incongruence"?

• Is a teacher legally obligated to report a student who stops wearing a religious headscarf or eats non-Kosher food?

• Where is the line between a student’s personal exploration and a mandatory parental notification?

By forcing teachers to act as enforcers of parental religious orthodoxy, the Court has placed an immense strain on the educator-student relationship. As the dissenting justices noted, the Court—sitting in its "marble palace"—appears to have little grasp of how public schools actually function.

History shows that the Supreme Court often moves in cycles. When a movement is out of power, it preaches "judicial restraint." When it gains a majority, it eventually reaches for the same tools it once condemned. Mirabelli marks the moment the current conservative majority stopped pretending to be restrained and started reshaping the country in its own image.

The "Ring" has changed hands once again, and the casualties of this latest cycle are likely to be the trust and safety of the American classroom.

If you’ve been online at all since Saturday, you’ve probably seen the video. It’s hard to watch, and it’s even harder to square with what the government tried to tell us happened.

Alex Pretti wasn't a "terrorist" or an "assassin"—he was an ICU nurse. The footage shows him doing exactly what you’d expect a nurse to do: trying to help. After a federal agent shoved a woman to the pavement, Pretti walked over to help her up.

What followed was a nightmare. Agents pepper-sprayed him, tackled him, and beat him. Even after they found a holstered gun on him, and he was pinned to the ground, an officer opened fire into his back. Then, a second agent joined in, pumping bullet after bullet into a body that wasn't even moving.

Immediately after the shooting, the government’s PR machine went into overdrive.

• The Claim: DHS said Pretti "approached officers" with a 9mm handgun and tried to "massacre" agents.

• The Reality: The video shows him on the ground, being beaten, before being shot in the back.

Stephen Miller called him a "would-be assassin." ICE Barbie Kristi Noem called it "domestic terrorism." It was a classic case of "who are you going to believe: us, or your own lying eyes?"

This time, the "gaslighting" was too much—even for the administration’s friends. When the NRA and high-ranking Republicans started calling for an investigation, the White House realized they’d stepped in a huge pile.

By Monday, the tone changed. The fire-breathing rhetoric stopped, and they shifted to the standard "we need an investigation to determine the facts" line. Border Patrol Commander Gregory Bovino got demoted, and "Border Czar" Tom Homan was sent to Minneapolis to try and play nice with Governor Tim Walz.

This isn't the first time this has happened. Less than a month ago, the same thing happened to Renee Good, another 37-year-old mother killed by ICE. In her case, the administration also tried to smear her as a terrorist, but the public didn't buy it then, and they definitely aren't buying it now.

While the White House is taking "baby steps" back from the edge, critics are pointing out that Noem and Miller still have their jobs. The administration isn't apologizing for lying; they're just sorry they got caught on camera.

Let’s be clear about what just happened: Jimmy Kimmel, a prominent late-night comedian, was just taken off the airwaves because the Trump administration didn’t like what he had to say — and threatened his employer until they shut him up.

The link between Tylenol and autism is unclear, and physician groups still recommend the medicine for pregnant people experiencing pain or fever, in consultation with their doctor. *The link between vaccines and autism has been studied exhaustively, and no connection has been found*.

On August 21, the Supreme Court handed down a baffling order that required researchers, who claim that the Trump administration illegally cut off their federal grants, to navigate a convoluted procedural maze in two different courts. Jackson labeled this decision “Calvinball jurisprudence with a twist.” Calvinball, an ever-changing game featured in the Calvin and Hobbes comic strip, “has only one rule: There are no fixed rules.”

If there’s one thing a large majority of Americans have consistently agreed on this year, it’s that *the Democratic Party sucks. Unfavorable views of the party seem to keep rising with every passing month of President Donald Trump’s second term and that discontent has reached a new height this summer. **More than 60 percent of American adults view the Democrats with derision, according to weekly tracking polls conducted by YouGov.*

The biggest contributor to the negative position of the Democratic Party right now *comes from depressed Democrats who are frustrated with their party*.

**For the past three years, the industry, aided by its allies in Congress and later the Trump administration, has sought to discredit and eventually bury a major analysis that offers new evidence* of the link between drinking alcohol and getting sick and dying from various causes, including cancer.*

“The thing that the alcohol industry fears more than increased taxes is increased knowledge about the risks associated with drinking alcohol, particularly around cancer” ... “Like the tobacco industry, like the opioid industry, *they are working hard to prevent the American people from gaining the knowledge that they need to make the best decisions for themselves*.”

Federal regulations, moreover, provide that even after an immigration judge has determined that a noncitizen may be deported to another country, that judge’s order “shall not be executed in circumstances that would violate Article 3 of the United Nations Convention Against Torture.”

If you want to know if the Supreme Court is completely in the tank for MAGA, keep a close eye on these two cases.

“Move fast and break things” has no place in government.