This commentary is by Liza Cochran, a teacher, writer and community organizer who lives in Lincoln. She co-authors Brave Little Voices on Substack.
While out canvassing recently, I spoke to a lifelong Vermonter who said he hadn’t given much thought to the upcoming primary election on Aug. 11. It’s not that he doesn’t care, he explained, but he was too busy staying abreast of Washington politics.
I get it. I have this impulse, too: to train my attention on the biggest threat, especially when the stakes for our democracy feel so high. What’s more, the pervasive havoc of this presidency — the violence and destruction and cruelty of it — sets the beauty of a Vermont summer apart and makes it difficult to believe that anything we could do here in our brave little state has much bearing.
But what I’ve come to realize is that this redirection of our attention to national politics is a stolen sense of agency all its own: an imposed futility that is both dangerous and by design. This, too, is one of the tactics used by authoritarian governments attempting to amass their power. If they can keep the fires of destruction burning bright and broadly, our captivation with those blazes will blind us to our immediate surroundings. The gravity of elsewhere erodes our footing here, and without quite realizing it, and mostly unintentionally, we forfeit our own power.
The neighbor I talked to is right: The stakes for our democracy have never been so high. What we must do in the face of that threat is pay vigilant attention to its source and, just as importantly, reboot our agency here at home, beginning with voting in the upcoming primary.
President Trump’s tampering with the upcoming midterms has already begun. He “is trying to use the levers of the federal government, along with personal influence over state and local lawmakers, to reshape the rules governing the 2026 midterms and future elections in extraordinary ways,” according to a recent report in The New York Times. And on July 16, in a prime-time address to the nation, Trump used the pulpit of the presidency to undermine Americans’ confidence in the election, spouting far-fetched claims that have been discredited time and again, creating a pretense, according to the Guardian, for denying the results in November.
Although his address did little to persuade even his Republican allies, Trump is wielding his influence wherever possible. He recently put presidential powers, newly expanded by the Supreme Court, to use by firing the Democratic members of the Election Assistance Commission. The federal commission, whose mission is, in part, to help Americans participate in the voting process, acts as a nonpartisan liaison between the federal government and the states, helping officials administer their elections by certifying voting machines and maintaining the national mail-voter registration forms, among other critical tasks. The two Democratic members Trump fired had “resisted his efforts to require would-be voters to document their U.S. citizenship before registering,” The Associated Press reported, a demand to address a virtually nonexistent problem.
For months, the administration has been laying the groundwork to control the outcome of the election, from stripping Black power from Southern states in midcycle redistricting, to executive orders to control the U.S. Postal Service’s delivery — or lack thereof — of mail-in ballots. But now, in the heat of summer, as Trump’s poll numbers plummet, the administration is attempting to strangle the voting process in increasingly desperate ways. The president has threatened to yank anti-terrorism funding from any state that refused to back his SAVE America Act, and the Department of Justice has sent letters to election officials in all 50 states and Washington, D.C., warning of criminal prosecution over noncitizens voting, despite an abundance of research demonstrating this to be a nonissue.
Looming largest of all is the surging presence of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement around the country, an ominous reminder of the administration’s power to reach far into state jurisdictions with its federal muscle and weapons. Agents detained three people in Middlebury on July 7, one from the parking lot of a dentist’s office, amid the new average of 2,000 daily arrests. Each of these detentions is a loved one disappeared from their family, their workplace, their neighborhood — a life exploded into disarray and devastation. Trump, unrestrained even after the killings in Texas and Maine, will continue to sow violence in our streets between now and November to intimidate voters into staying home.
If all this chaos is meant to deliver a message, it is this: We are in control, not you.
But here’s where our agency comes back to life: Our elections are not administered by Trump or the federal government. They are run by us. By Vermonters who answer only to their constituents and locally elected officials.
Our state’s elections are where we assert our commitment to the democratic process. Voting in the primary on Aug. 11 is a literal use of our voices, but it’s also a symbolic signal, a counter message to the federal government that we will not be silenced in November. Regardless of whether you vote Democratic or Republican, let’s show the country that we Vermonters take our constitutionally granted rights seriously.
Early and mail-in voting for the primary is already underway. You can check your voting status and request an absentee ballot by visiting the Vermont Voter Portal.
