This is Democracy – Episode 332: Midterm Elections, 2026

Zachary Suri and Professor Jeremi Suri are joined by Princeton historian Julian Zelizer to discuss the latest U.S. midterm election results, focusing on the unusually large Democratic gains in the House and Senate and surprising flips in traditionally Republican states, especially Texas. They examine whether the outcome signals a broader electoral realignment, what factors may have driven district-level shifts, and how a new Congress might set an agenda through major legislation even amid potential presidential vetoes.  Julian E. Zelizer is one of the leading experts on modern American political history, specifically the United States Congress and the political career of Lyndon Johnson. He is the Malcolm Stevenson Forbes, Class of 1941 Professor of History and Public Affairs at Princeton University. Professor Zelizer is the author and editor of 19 books on American political history, including: Taxing America: Wilbur D. Mills, Congress, and the State, 1945-1975; The Fierce Urgency of Now: Lyndon Johnson, Congress, and the Battle for the Great Society; and Fault Lines: A History of the United States Since 1974, co-authored with Kevin Kruse. Most recently, Zelizer published Burning Down the House: Newt Gingrich, The Fall of a Speaker, and the Rise of the New Republican Party.

Jeremi and Zachary speak with Sarah Adler Hartman, CEO of The Texas Tribune, about why journalism is essential to democracy and how nonprofit newsrooms can sustain state and local reporting.

This week, Zachary and Jeremi meet with Yale historian David Sorkin discussing his book, The Emancipationists: 19th Century Jews’ Campaign for Citizenship. David Sorkin is the Lucy G. Moses Professor of Modern Jewish History at Yale University. He is the author of numerous books, including The Transformation of German Jewry, 1780-1840, Jewish Emancipation: A History Across Five Centuries, and, most recently, The Emancipationists: Nineteenth-Century Jews’ Campaign for Citizenship. 

Zachary and Jeremi are back this week to speak with University of Washington professor Daniel Bessner about his essay collection Imperialist Realism. They discuss shifting public attitudes across age cohorts, limits of U.S. power in East Asia and changing warfare, and connect these themes to the approaching 25th anniversary of 9/11 and the dashed hopes of the Global War on Terror.

Jeremi and Zachary return from summer break to discuss local journalism. Zachary draws from his experience working as a local reporter in Milwaukee over the summer to highlight the challenges that small, local stations and publications face in reaching wide audiences today, and what opportunities history may teach us to find a path forward.

Jeremi and Zachary sit down with historian and former U.S. State Department official Michael Kimmage to take stock of where things stand in the fourth year of the war in Ukraine. Michael Kimmage is a professor of history at the Catholic University of America, and the director of the Kennan Institute. From 2014 to 2017, he served on the Secretary's Policy Planning Staff at the U.S. Department of State, where he held the Russia/Ukraine portfolio. His latest book is Collisions: The War in Ukraine and the Origins of the New Global Instability. Edited by Uriel Murillo.

Jeremi and Zachary speak with historian Vaneesa Cook about her book “Empire and Liberty,” using the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building to examine how monuments have reflected debates over U.S. liberty, empire, immigration, protest, and public memory from the late 19th century through the Cold War. They discuss how each landmark’s meaning has shifted over time through politics, popular culture, and commemoration as the nation approaches the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

In today's episode, Jeremi and Zachary discuss how U.S. universities are changing, delving into shifts in campus political culture, administrative growth around DEI, viewpoint diversity and ideological siloing. They also discuss the financial and policy pressures such as federal research funding cuts, visa changes for international students, and endowment taxes, and what exactly these changes mean for teaching, civics education, and the role of universities in public life.

This week, Jeremi and Zachary speak with Dr. Daniel Hummel to address the claim of the US as a "Christian Nation" by many of its citizens, and how this notion relates to our democracy. Dr. Daniel Hummel is the director of the Lumen Center in Madison, WI, and a research fellow in the History Department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His research and writing are on American evangelicals, theology, politics, and culture. His most recent book is: The Rise and Fall of Dispensationalism: How the Evangelical Battle Over the End Times Shaped a Nation. He has also written about similar topics for Christianity Today, New Lines Magazine, and the Washington Post.