Donald Trump and the Future of the Presidency

President Donald Trump (Wikimedia commons)

(9/17/2026) On September 24 I will present the concluding lecture in a four-part series on "The History of the Presidency" at Coe College. The history ones were easy, because "hindsight is 20/20."  The present and future of the presidency are complicated, so the concluding talk needs some sorting out, which I will try your patience by attempting to do here.

Donald Trump turned 80 this summer, and given his age, physical condition, and public approval in the mid-to-upper 30s, his time in the White House is likely to be over in a little over two years. Even before then, his influence is likely to diminish. But his impact is likely to be lasting. In terms of our common life, we are likely to be living a long long time with four aspects of his distinctive presidency: checks and balances, corruption of the economy, threats to free elections, and world politics. None of these challenges originated with Trump's presidency, but with his approach they have exploded in magnitude. It's the difference between having a leaky roof over your house, and having no roof at all. (This is not to overlook his policies, his manner of expression, and his ghastly taste in decorating, just to say those will be easier to overcome.) 

I. Checks and Balances

"Checks and balances, Jefferson... are our only security"--
JOHN ADAMS

How did we get here? Checks and balances were under pressure before Donald Trump was even born. The Framers of the U.S. Constitution devised these mechanisms to ensure accountability in the national government, presuming that each branch would have the incentive to oversee the others in order to protect its own powers. With the modern presidency, however, a variety of factors have driven the presidency to the center of the national government, and partisan legislators have increasingly seen their fates bound up with that of their party's Presidents. 

What has Trump done? Under Trump, though, the challenges to checks and balances have expanded as ideological allies have seen unilateral presidential action as the fastest way to get what they want. On Trump's authority alone, the American security state has focused on immigrants, violently occupying cities and acting as a secret police force seizing people off streets, at airports, at hospitals, and even at immigration centers. Thousands, including some American citizens, have been imprisoned in squalid conditions and/or deported to countries like El Salvador and Liberia that are not their countries of origin, but that have agreed to cooperate with the Trump administration (Putsch and Seagbeh 2026). An executive order redefining citizenship contrary to the 14th Amendment was at least struck down by the Supreme Court in Trump v. Barbara. Similar brutal displays of executive authority have been used on tariffs, as well as governmental reform via the Department of Governmental Efficiency (DOGE, Sollenberger and Rozell 2026). 

In order to prevent reviews of his actions, Trump has decimated safety mechanisms within the executive branch. In his first week in office, he fired 13 inspectors general, the departmental officers in charge of internal oversight (Haberman, Savage and Karni 2025; Broadwater 2026). He also fired the judge advocates general in each of the military branches (MLT staff 2025), the entire Foreign Influence Task force in the FBI (Penn 2026), the Director of Governmental Ethics, the head of the National Archives and Records Administration, the head of the Office of Special Counsel, and 34 of 36 members of the Public Integrity section within the Department of Justice. He also fired all Democratic members of several independent regulatory agencies. Whatever the merits of the individuals involved, the systematic nature of these actions is difficult to miss.

Congressional Republicans' incentives have been to protect Trump, not their own prerogatives or good policy, and the Supreme Court has, with some exceptions, by and large upheld Trump's assertions of authority, notably in the Slaughter v. Trump case that expanded presidential authority to fire independent regulators (Jouvenal 2026).

What happens next? It's possible that future Congresses and courts will act to restrain presidents, particularly if they were of the opposite party. (See the Court's striking down Joe Biden's forgiveness of some college student loans.) But for this to stick, there must be some way for future presidents to act in cooperation with Congress and the courts, rather than running into pure partisan opposition.

The bad scenario is that future presidents use Trump's precedents to justify their own unilateral actions, making all presidents into temporary (we hope!) dictators. In that case, it's up to voters to choose presidents as responsibly as possible.

II. Corruption and the Economy

Trump memecoin (swiped from cryptonews.com)

How did we get here? Corruption has probably been endemic to governments since humans first formed states, but at least in America, it has never risen to such a level as to distort the economy. If anything, the rise of civil service and the decline of political machines has made American politics increasingly clean. Professional oversight, in secretary of state's offices across the country as well as the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, have ensured that votes are counted as fairly as humanly possible. Trump's various challenges to 2020 vote counts were swiftly dismissed in court. But his innate sense of grievance was clearly communicated to his supporters as well as opportunistic job-seekers.

What has Trump done? Trump's personal corruption is on a staggering level. For one example, he has reaped more than $1.4 billion since returning to office from cryptocurrency alone--and those are numbers he's copped to on federal forms, so the reality could be even greater. His crypto ventures have been pitched to those seeking influence with the administration, such as the government of the United Arab Emirates, which poured $500 million into Trump's World Liberty Financial Venture (Morse, Allison, and Tran 2026; Yaffe-Bellany and Lipton 2026). The ventures are not good business investments, being structured so that Trump gets his money up front while everyone else takes their chances. Investors had lost $3.81 billion on Trump's meme coin by mid-2026 (Lipton, Fuller and Yaffe-Bellany 2026). Trump has also monetized early access to his statements, which have moved markets, particularly during the Iran war (Uberti 2026).

Trump has returned the financial favors, too, with donors to his campaign, his various projects, and his sons' ventures being rewarded with federal contracts, presidential pardons, eased economic sanctions, and access to top officials (Yourish Vogel and Smart 2025, Halper 2026, Vogel and Aleaziz 2026, Sonne and Lipton 2026, Kaplan Elliott and Mierjeski 2026, Edwards 2026). Transportation companies have prudently sponsored Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy's reality-TV show as well as his son-in-law's campaign for a Wisconsin congressional seat (Hartnett 2026). The Department of the Treasury announced last month that it will eliminate a unit established to track financial misdeeds. Even presidential pardons have been exchanged for favors or political support (Vogel and Craig 2026).

As Trump uses the power of the federal government to reward friends (and punish enemies), it increases the risk that business investment will be driven by what will please the President rather than what will bring a return in the marketplace. At the same time, important government data that investors use has been compromised by Trump's retribution against news that he feels makes him look bad (Grossman 2025, Rampell 2026a). As Trump violates economic rules and norms without facing any consequences, it encourages more such behavior.

What happens next? The best case scenario is that Trump has given corruption a bad name, and that future presidents will be angelic because they fear being compared to Trump. It is possible that Congress will close some loopholes, but I wonder if the lesson of the 1970s reforms post-Watergate is that the law is a clunky instrument where the incentive to self-regarding official behavior is strong enough. The worst case scenario is that the modicum of trust that underlay Western capitalism has been badly damaged, and that prosperity will be more difficult to achieve and particularly to spread, because people will be loath to risk capital when they might be subject to the capricious actions of others.

III. Electoral interference

Bethany Lutheran Church in Cedar Rapids,
where your humble blogger casts his humble votes

How did we get here? Twenty years ago, Republican control of Congress was threatened by the unpopularity of the President. How much that would affect congressional candidates was unknown until Election Day, but there was never any suggestion that Republicans would not honor the result, and their graciousness in defeat was symbolized when Dennis Hastert (R-IL) handed the House Speaker's gavel to Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). 

The historical tendency of leadership selection processes to be corrupted or end in violence was well-known to the American Framers. They would have been aware of two European continent-wide wars, the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714) and the War of the Austrian Succession (1740-1748), as well as all the many machinations documented by Niccolo Machiavelli in The Prince. That awareness informed Article II's weird design of presidential elections by an Electoral College, which itself was never to gather in one place. Then when President John Adams lost his bid for reelection in 1800, and voluntarily yielded power to his rival Thomas Jefferson, it was a watershed moment in American history. Even with some of the sketchiest election results--in 1876, and arguably 1960 or 2000--the winner was allowed to govern, and the loser waited for another day. Trump, by contrast, complained about being cheated before votes were even cast in 2016, and has never stopped insisting that he was the rightful winner in 2020 (Zakrzewski 2026).

What has Trump done? Unfortunately, non-stop complaining has been only the beginning of Trump's attacks on electoral democracy. He has actively intervened in the 2026 elections, including calling for states to change congressional district lines, limit voting by mail, and aggressively cull their voter rolls (Marley and Binday 2026, ProPublica 2026, Marley and Sanchez 2026). He has disabled or taken over the Election Assistance Commission as well as election security agencies including the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency at Homeland Security, the public corruption team and Foreign Influence Task Force at the FBI, and the Civil Rights division voting team at the Department of Justice (Marley 2026).

This month, it emerged that hundreds of personnel from the Department of Homeland Security have been trolling through state election files, ostensibly in search of illegal voters, often without the state's consent, and always with access to off-limits personal identification data (Corasaniti and Aleaziz 2026). He has raised the possibility of sending Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to polling places, which at least one Republican candidate (Bobby Charles in Maine) have endorsed. Other candidates, including Rick Jackson in Georgia and Mike Rodgers in Michigan, have called for similar voter intimidation tactics (Hausmann 2026). Even if he is not successful in perverting the outcome, barring a big wave day for Democrats he has cast dangerous doubt on their legitimacy.

What happens next? Trump's claims of electoral fraud in 2020 were all laughed out of court, and none of his emulators have been taken seriously. So far, so good, and maybe that will continue, and the 2026 and 2028 elections will be accomplished with a modicum of fairness. The second-worst case scenario is anything that works in 2026 will be redoubled in 2028, and elections will feature candidates choosing voters--through constant efforts to redistrict, disenfranchise, and make voting more difficult--rather than the other way around. The worst case is that American elections become arenas for displays of raw power--think of what would have happened if J.D. Vance had been Vice President on January 6, 2021--and decreasingly free or fair.

IV. America in the World

The U.S. won the Cold War, and then managed the aftermath
(Wikimedia commons)

How did we get here? America's historic distance from European conflicts--"We go not abroad in search of dragons to destroy," said John Quincy Adams--wobbled by the late 19th century with the temptation to get ourselves an empire like all the cool kids had. Fifty years later, World War II showed clearly isolation was no longer an option, and America suddenly became the leader of the free world. For all our faults and poor decisions, America served as the backbone for world order, macroeconomic stability, and the spread of democratic values.

Trump and the world. It is not clear that President Trump values any of those goals. His language is that of dominance and "winning," so there is a constant concern that our allies are taking advantage of us, and need to be put in their places. Cooperation and multilateral approaches are inherently suspect, while he openly admires autocrats like Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin, and even Kim Jong Un. Probably the most emblematic picture of this facet of the Trump presidency is when he and Vice President J.D. Vance sat on either side of Ukrainian President Volodomir Zelensky and took turns berating him (neither one making any sense as they did).  

Trump has brandished tariffs as a weapon against trading partners, highlighted by "Liberation Day" on April 2, 2025, and implemented erratically since; talked about annexing Canada and the Danish territory of Greenland; favored politically-connected ambassadors over career diplomats; and captured the Venezuelan leader, installing a puppet regime that made substantial oil concessions to Americans. The Iran war has been an ongoing bizarre spectacle, with unclear objectives and constantly shifting pronouncements during the course of the war.

Trump is not the U.S., but he has made us harder to trust. Now these things are happening, as international actors realize they need to plan for a very different United States:

• Finland became the tenth European country to join the French Forward (Nuclear) Deterrence program, begun in March 2026 to be an independent alternative to the U.S. (Last 2026)
• The Netherlands announced it is shifting its gold reserves from America to London, and other countries are considering similar moves. "Trump is erratic and one cannot rule out that someday he will come up with creative ideas how to treat foreign gold reserves," explained Markus Ferber, a member of the European Parliament (Rampell 2026b).
• Saudi Arabia has been described as stuck between an assertive Iran and a disengaging United States. "In some sense it's their worst-case scenario," said former U.S. ambassador Michael Ratney (Nereim 2026).
• The European Union has invited Canada to seek "associate member" status. "We must urgently reexamine our partnerships," said leading EU official Ursula von der Leyen (Smialek and Stevis-Gridneff 2026).

What happens next? I'm spitballing here, but there is no one who can fill the world role the United States has played since 1945. China is less principled and more self-serving. The European Union has an inherent collective action problem. Who else ya got? It is difficult to imagine a world without American ballast being other than unstable, more expensive, and more violent.

***

In 2020 and 2021, after Trump lost his bid for reelection, I thought we could quickly return to something like normality. Clearly, I was wrong. I didn't reckon with the pandemic, or the deeply-seated emotions and interests among the general public that gave so much air to Trump's pretensions. Now, even if 2026-2028 go as well as can possibly be expected, I am not nearly as sanguine. The underlying trust in America that made so much of our lifestyles thinkable is shattered, and can't just be snapped back into place. International trading partners, allies, immigrants, domestic political actors, jobseekers, any Americans with life challenges--they have all been bitten not once but twice, they know the MAGA attitudes remain, and that a few votes in a few states could bring it all back. I expect us to be dealing with this mess for the rest of my life.

SEE ALSO:

"The Authoritarians' War on Cities is a War on All of Us," 26 August 2025

"Constitution Day: Whatever Happened to the Separation of Powers?" 17 September 2020

"Priests, Prophets, and the Fourth of July," 3 July 2019

10th Anniversary Post: Paying Attention to the Suburban Development Behind the Curtain

 

(Google Maps screenshot)

(9/5/2026) Ten years ago, we in the United States were engaged in a presidential election campaign that would bring us the first of two presidential terms for Donald Trump. That was not the outcome I anticipated back in September 2016, but I certainly noticed the surly tone of American politics. The presidential debates occurred against the backdrop of rising Cedar River levels.

The grass-roots efforts by hundreds of Cedar Rapidians this past weekend to protect their fellow citizens' homes and businesses speak to the best potential of our common life. The candidates just don't. Clinton is no visionary, and has a fondness for national programs that will at best nibble at the edges of problems, though the few moments in the debate where the public had a chance to be illuminated were hers.... Trump, whose campaign has been a toxic stew of racial innuendo, vacuous comments, and personal insults, has nothing to recommend himself to anyone who cares about our common life.

After four years of Trump and a terrifying pandemic, I thought Joe Biden had a chance to lower the national temperature and to provide some healing and space for our best instincts to become more visible. Alas, I was wrong again, though I think that was what he was largely trying to do. 

Meanwhile, the public mood of the American public continues to be anxious and defensive. The Pew Research Center summary of a year's worth of public opinion surveys concludes "Americans are in a sour mood" (Smith, Cooperman and Deane 2026). Nearly three in five think America's "best days are behind us," with people under 50 way more pessimistic than their elders. More people expect the future economy to be stronger, and political divisions narrower than was the case three years ago, but those hopeful folks remain decidedly in the minority. The tone of other responses depends on the question, but majorities expect the U.S. economy to be weaker, the U.S. to be a more dangerous place to live, and the U.S. to be less important in the world. More people say the increased use of artificial intelligence has them "more concerned than worried," led by an upsurge in worried young people (McClain and Park 2026). 

More problematically, there has not been across-the-board revulsion at President Trump's efforts to corrupt the 2026 off-year elections (Marley and Binday 2026, ProPublica 2026, Marley and Sanchez 2026). For many Republicans, the imperative to keep the Democrats from winning office outweighs their concern for the integrity of the political system.

The reasons for all this angst are varied. A more partisan media universe highlights conflict. As income inequality rises, fewer people are "middle class," defined as between 2/3 and double the median income, and the earnings gap between college graduates and those with lower educational attainment has increased ("The United States at 250" 2026). Data from New York City show wealth increasingly concentrated among the people at the very tippy top (Shapiro 2026). The percentage of people who know all or most of their neighbors has declined, and with that the percentage of people who trust them has declined even more (Silver and Hatfield 2025). Even if you don't know the exact statistics, people are generally aware enough of these phenomena that they feel less of a stake in the society.

We might be sitting, right now, in the wealthiest society ever on Earth. And yet, many people are disconnected from areas of opportunity, or losers in a winner-take-all economy, or waiting for their jobs to be obsoleted by artificial intelligence, or find their lives upended by yet another climate disaster, or unable to do the simplest errand without getting in a car and fighting traffic. The way we have developed promises us freedom and convenience, but is making us anxious and surly.

ORIGINAL POST: "Paying Attention to the Suburban Development Behind the Curtain," 26 September 2016

The Arc of Justice bends towards 2nd Street SE

Schematic drawing shows car lanes and new wider
pedestrian areas

The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice--THEODORE PARKER, 1853 (later made famous by Martin Luther King, Jr.)

(8/27/2026) The 8th Avenue bridge is going to be completely replaced, because it's nearing the end of its useful life--it was built in 1937--and because we need some river crossing to be high enough to allow traffic to cross during a major flood. The other crossings--A, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 12th, and 16th--have gates that will close during a flood, keeping the traffic dry but the bridges wet.

Rob Davis, Flood Control Systems Manager for the city, presented the plans to a fairly large public crowd at the City Services Center on 15th Avenue SW.

Crowd awaiting presentation on 8th Avenue bridge project

The new bridge will be 15 feet higher than the current one, and will have one pier in the river instead of seven. This should result in lower water level--because less displacement--but requires a center tower supported by cables above ground that look bougey and thus have drawn some ire. 

Other resident ire has been directed at the cost of the project, the time it will take and the complexity of detours, and the removal of the bridge's original name, which was to have been the Arc of Justice. (Shouldn't we should all call it that anyway? I'm calling it that anyway.)

The audience questions, though, were mostly technical in nature, and there was no sign of ire at the 4:45 presentation. Maybe the 5:45 presentation was more fraught.

Rob Davis, CR's Flood Control Manager

The total cost will run about $123 million, about half from the federal government--presumably the reason for the disappearance of the Arc of Justice name, in this age of Trump--and half from the city. The entire project will take more than three years to accomplish, with the bridge not open to traffic until spring 2030 and all work not expected to be complete until that fall. The current skinny sidewalks, added in the early 1960s, will be replaced by 14-foot-wide multiuse paths (see above picture).

It does not appear that the path along the west side of the river that extends more or less southwest out of the McGrath Amphitheater behind the Chelsea and Mott buildings will be extended under the bridge. Currently it ends abruptly at a wall of weeds.

Wide sidewalk ends under the current 8th Avenue bridge

The schematic perspective that shows this area doesn't show the sidewalk in question at all.

Schematic view of new bridge, with the west side on the right

However, we are promised a trail through Riverside Park and then parallel to 1st Street SW, to which the current sidewalk will easily connect. So, besides flood preparedness, the Arc of Justice will bring connectivity for cyclists and pedestrians, and aesthetic pleasure for all.

And if this bridge, with the police station at one end and the federal courthouse at the other, causes people to reflect on justice, and heroes of justice like Dr. King who made it their life's cause, so much the better. And when the money's been spent, and Trump is no longer President, maybe the City will make it official.

SEE ALSO: Abigail Homrock, "Cedar Rapids to Replace Nearly 90-Year-Old Bridge Starting Next Year," kgan.com, 26 August 2026

Book review: Escaping the Housing Trap

$185,000 bought this house five blocks from me

Charles L. Marohn Jr. and Daniel Herriges, Escaping the Housing Trap: The Strong Towns Response to the Housing Crisis. Hoboken NJ: Wiley, 2024. 

(8/25/2026) This fall I'm part of a local group that has decided to take on the housing crisis in our town. There's one in every town, of course, and the precise nature of the crisis varies all over the place, with Cedar Rapids somewhere in the middle of that spectrum. Our group will benefit greatly from people like the authors of this book who have thought seriously about problems in housing, can explain their origins and nature in everyday language, and are optimistic about our ability to improve the situation in our communities. At least it has motivated me to read this third in a series of Strong Towns books! (See links to previous reviews below.)

The most recent measure of the Case-Shiller Index of U.S. home prices was 331.020 in May 2026, which means that, taking into account overall inflation as well as typical seasonal variation, the average home price this year is more than 3.3 times what it was in January 2000. Housing prices been rising steadily since early 2012. Rising home prices are good, say Charles Marohn and Daniel Herriges, for three types of people: individual homeowners, for whom the value of their house is a major investment; governments at all levels, which can tax the increasing value and/or economic activity that it produces; and investors in funds that have great piles of money tied up in housing. As a result, though they say "they want housing to become more affordable," they want/need it to happen "without prices going down" (p. 6). Part I of Escaping the Housing Trap describes how housing has become a major investment--perhaps the major investment for most Americans: a perfect storm of zoning and construction standards, suburban development, and innovative financial instruments, with government backstopping when it all goes blooey. "In the 2020s, national too-big-to-fail banks seek long-term mortgages from fragile homeowners" so "there will always be a coordinated effort to reinflate the housing market. There must be; if the housing market fails, the financial system fails" (p. 70).

They also do a good job of explaining why all the new buildings have empty retail space: cutting rent so businesses can afford to move in would negatively impact the value of the building. It's more financially advantageous to keep the space vacant than to rent it at what the market will bear (p. 68).

Commercial space in New Bohemia and Czech Village has been filling up,
even first floor retail in this "three-over-one"...

...but time will tell how long it takes this newcomer
to fill its retail space

Part II looks at how the housing system affects those outside of it: renters, including those who would like to own their own homes, those in unstable housing situations, and those who are stuck in houses that are too much for them. Zoning and the financial system work together to prevent construction of missing middle housing that could be more widely affordable and a good investment (ch. 5, on zoning lockdown), and opposition to new construction is political powerful in towns across the country (ch. 6, on the NIMBY phenomenon). But even well-intentioned policies to expand access to housing fail to make a dent. They run up against the same obstacles that individuals in the housing marketplace have met: "The very same problems that bedevil the effort to get abundant, affordable market-rate housing to exist are going to make it hard to deliver affordable social housing at any sort of scale" (p. 145). 

$100,000 will get you four blocks from me

By now they have our attention, and we're anxious to hear what might be able to break the housing logjam in any sustainable, scalable way. Bring on Part III!!

It does not disappoint, unless you're looking for a slam-dunk solution, which they (and the Strong Towns organization) avoid like the plague. They do propose a new approach to housing, because any existing approach leads to one or more of the following intolerable outcomes: inability to provide much affordable housing, lowering existing property values, vulnerability to capital flows especially outflows, and/or adding to already-high local government liabilities (pp. 153-156). They recommend an approach that (1) focuses on "the people who aren't well-served by today's limited housing offerings," by (2) filling "the demand for low-cost, affordable units" with "the resources that are available locally" (p. 156). That means, while "no neighborhood can be exempt from change" (pp. 156-158), at the same time "no neighborhood should experience radical change" (pp. 158-159). 

There are a lot of supporting ideas in the remaining pages, centering around enabling and relying upon a "swarm" of small developers who don't need economies of scale to succeed (ch. 10), and shifting the financial paradigm by insisting that every development be self-sustaining (ch. 11). That means gradually "thickening" existing neighborhoods: more "starter" homes on smaller lots, and more small multi-family units ("missing middle housing"). They key to the approach is not plug-and-play what worked in, say, South Bend, Indiana (pp. 167ff.), but to take small steps cautiously and flexibly. 

Their argument is hopeful, accessible, reasonable, and done with integrity. There are surely weaknesses in it, but in the final analysis we must and can do better than keeping on with an approach that is spectacularly failing, even in relatively low-cost cities like Cedar Rapids.

(Source: strongtowns.org)

SEE ALSO: 

"Book Review: Confessions of a Recovering Engineer," 8 December 2021

"Strong Towns' Bottom-Up Revolution (V)," 5 April 2020 [with links to earlier essays in the series]

Joe Cortright, "Why America Can't Make Up Its Mind About Housing," City Observatory, 16 May 2017

Shane Phillips, The Affordable City: Strategies for Putting Housing Within Reach (and Keeping it There) (Island, 2020)

Pete Saunders, "It's Not an Affordability Crisis; It's a Misalignment Problem," Corner Side Yard, 19 August 2026

Angie Schmitt, "Without Changing Our Retail Model, We're Never Going to Get Walkable Cities/ Neighborhoods," Love of Place, 24 August 2026

10th Anniversary Post: Linn County's First Bicycle Boulevard

 

Marion portion of Linn County Trails and Bikeways Map
(downloaded from linncountytrails.org)

(8/18/2026) Linn County's first designated bicycle boulevard, announced ten years ago, may be forgotten but it is not gone. Nor is it a bicycle boulevard, but there is no need to chew that cabbage again. 

The trusty trails maps show three types of trail infrastructure in Marion. The most distinct are offstreet trails, such as the Grant Wood trail that runs east-west through Uptown Marion and on to the county line, the soon-to-be completed CeMar trail that will connect Marion with Cedar Rapids, and the Indian Creek Trail that runs parallel to 10th Street and connects to the Linn-Mar Community Schools campus.

The north end is at Tower Terrace Road,
next to the football stadium

The landscape is lovely, including creek crossings
(not pictured)

Mowed paths connect to nearby subdivisions

Flashers for crossing 10th Street north of Boyson Road

Several major streets have side paths, which are wide sidewalks that accommodate bicycles as well.

Tower Terrace Road has both a side path and a painted bike lane:
Aesthetically I like the wild growing median, but I think it 
encourages cars to go faster

Prudent riders of all ages choose the side path

The path invites conflict with turning traffic
(here at Dollar Tree, but crossing 10th Street is even dicier)

Some streets--McGowan Boulevard, 29th Avenue, and 31st Street--are designated "bike-friendly streets." This means, in the case of McGowan, the dreaded sharrow.

McGowan Boulevard, looking east from 10th Street

Geode Street, which becomes 3rd Street north of 29th Avenue, does not appear on the trails map since the 2021 edition, but should still qualify as a "bike-friendly street"--not because of its sharrow, but because it's a low-traffic street that is the only north-south street in that neighborhood that goes all the way from Boyson to Tower Terrace. In fact, Geode continues south of Boyson to Lininger Park, where it connects to the Creekside Trail, which eventually connects to the CeMar Trail.

Geode Street, north of Boyson: Sign and sharrow,
with special designation "BLVD"

Some of those sharrows have been repainted

Crossing 29th Avenue by Novak Elementary School,
with its track and excellent playground, remains rough

3rd Street facing south from Tower Terrace Road

So, yeah, calling Geode/3rd Street a "bicycle boulevard" was silly puffery. But it's certainly an important cog in an increasingly connected trails system.

ORIGINAL POST: "Linn County's First Bicycle Boulevard," 29 August 2016

SEE ALSO: "Do Bicycle Boulevards Need a Purpose?" 17 July 2018

yard by Gill Park (2016) is still decorated, but
alas bikes have been replaced by dogs and Charlie Kirk

Justice in the World Today (II)

Rising rents are just one obstacle to opportunity today
(Source: Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University)

(8/11/2026) Some time ago, First Presbyterian Church in Cedar Rapids engaged me to do two talks, on justice and social welfare. Since they were scheduled close together, I've treated them as a two-part series, even though I don't think that's how they were conceived, and I'm not even sure I'm doing them in the intended order!

The first talk, "Justice in the World Today," happened August 2, and is described here. Drawing on Biblical and philosophical sources, I argued justice is a condition, in which people get what they deserve (substantive justice), and government officials play by agreed-upon rules (procedural justice). While even procedural justice is critical for marginalized people, because they are the ones who suffer most when things get irregular, social welfare seems to deal most directly with substantive justice. Leaving aside the question of who deserves more, we can agree at least agree that everyone deserves enough to live, the opportunity to improve their lives, and security from threats. (Note that I'm sliding over definitional issues with each of these ideas.)

If we accept all that, then it follows that public policy in a just society should look to the well-being of the poor, the mentally and physically handicapped, and other socially marginalized people. Do they have access to these things they need in life?

If we look upstream from the social problems that surround us, a common element is isolation. Physical isolation is most evident in areas of concentrated poverty, an unfortunate outgrowth of automobile-oriented development that left many areas behind and many people stuck there. Adults have less access to economic opportunities as well as lower life expectancy (Ludwig 2014). Children do less well in life than those raised in more socioeconomically mixed areas (Chetty, Hendren and Katz 2016). In disasters, people suffer most in these areas, as witness studies of the 1995 heat wave in Chicago that found deaths concentrated not just in very poor neighborhoods, but in those very poor neighborhoods where residents lacked access to each other found in places like grocery stores, public libraries, and senior centers (Klinenberg 2003, Helfland 2020). The difficulty of just getting from such neighborhoods to jobs has been dubbed "mobility redlining" by author Steven Higashide (2019: 92).

U.S. transportation policy has exacerbated physical marginalization by severing neighborhoods by building interstate highways through them, as with the Dan Ryan Expressway in Chicago, I-94 in Minneapolis-St.Paul, and even I-380 in Cedar Rapids.

Not all isolation is physical. Homelessness is isolation of a different sort, driven by housing markets and inequality that make any risky personal choices even more costly. 

So, while direct provision of resources can deal with emergency situations, for most people on the margins, approaches that help to remove obstacles and build connections are more sustainable for everyone involved. 

• Encouraging compact development (as opposed to sprawl): the closer people are to the action the more they are likely to benefit 

• Encouraging local entrepreneurship (as opposed to colonization by out-of-town franchises and in particular big box stores): the more money that stays in the city the more likely it is that everyone benefits 

• Bringing more money into a city can benefit all its residents if and when that money circulates to support public facilities (the library, swimming pools, &c.) and local businesses. 

• Connecting areas of concentrated poverty to the rest of the city: ghettos are the result of design, and can only be overcome by design.

How these play out will vary from unique place to unique place, but wherever we are, there are stories to inspire us:

• Cycling Without Age, Copenhagen Denmark (Peñalosa 2026). Peñalosa's 880 Cities initiative is named for extreme ages, but his biweekly webinar is aimed at improving access across all manner of obstacles. This episode profiles a group of volunteers that provide trishaw outings for older adults. A similar program exists in Iowa City (J.C. Nesmith 2026).
• Redesigned transit network, Des Moines Iowa (Walker 2026). Walker's firm worked with Des Moines Area Regional Transit Authority to improve ridership while cutting costs by 10 percent. Among other things, they got frequency down to every 15 minutes in central Des Moines and Windsor Heights, and the number of jobs available within 45 minutes' ride is up by 15 percent.
• Plant trees (Galle 2026). Not only do trees provide shade during heat waves, Nadina Galle summarizes health research that has found more trees related to heart health, neonatal outcomes, children's mental health, and health care spending.
• Housing (Strong Towns n.d.). Housing supply and cost are increasingly problematic, because many families are invested in the value of their house, zoning barriers price out small developers, and large developments carry risk both in the present and future. So, cities can help by enabling small, incremental development in their town. (See also Strong Towns founder Charles Marohn's latest book, Escaping the Housing Trap: The Strong Towns Response to the Housing Crisis [co-authored with Daniel Herriges, Wiley, 2024]).
• Housing First (McLean 2023, Kristof 2023, Ionescu 2023, Holder 2023). Cities like Houston, Minneapolis, Atlanta and Denver have reduced their unhoused population by providing housing and following up with intensive support services. (Improvement is measurable, but the effort involved is admittedly intense, and the effects may not be noticeable to the casual observer.)

Bringing those at the margins into connection with the rest of us is not easy, and comes with costs. It's worth noting that not doing this comes with costs as well, in the form of security efforts as well as the loss of their talents. When God speaks through Isaiah to command the Israelites to Learn to do good; seek justice; rescue the oppressed; defend the orphan; plead for the widow (Isaiah 1:17), it's not to make us less happy, but all of us happier.

PRINT SOURCES:

Steven Higashide, Better Buses, Better Cities: How to Plan, Run, and Win the Fight for Effective Transit (Island, 2019)

Eric Klinenberg, Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago (University of Chicago, 2003)

SEE ALSO:

"The Safety Dividend: The Surprising Impact of Well-Managed Public Spaces," Reimagining the Civic Commons, 11 August 2026

Justice in the World Today

 

Hope he gets some of that coffee:
Statue of Thucydides in Vienna, Austria

(7/31/2026) A long time ago, according to the ancient Greek historian Thucydides (c. 460-400 BCE), a delegation from Athens went to the burg of Melos to demand its surrender. Melos, which was trying to stay neutral in the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta, resisted. The Athenians offered to argue it out with them, but refused to listen to arguments about justice. Justice, they said, was only for powers of equal strength, while weaker cities had to obey the commands of the weak.

Thucydides' rhetorical purpose in this conversation has been debated (cf. Fisher 2026), but one common interpretation is that democratic Athens had in its pride lost the moral bearings that were a source of its strength, presaging their catastrophic defeat in the war. Justice towards the weak, it seems, is an obligation of the strong. Moreover, philosophers from Plato to the Framers of the U.S. Constitution treat justice as a social condition rather than individual choice.

Justice in the Bible

If that was indeed Thucydides' argument, it would certainly be a Biblically-based conclusion. References to justice in the Hebrew Bible make clear that (a) it is one of God's fundamental expectations for human behavior, and (b) God repeatedly finds those in power failing to treat the weak justly. Here, for example is Amos, who explicitly mentions ill treatment of the poor as one thing that is pissing God off:

For I know how many are your transgressions and how great are your sins--you who afflict the righteous, who take a bribe and push aside the needy in the gate... I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them, and the offerings of well-being of your fatted animals I will not look upon. Take away from me the noise of your songs; I will not listen to the melody of your harps. But let justice roll down like water and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream. (Amos 5: 12, 21-24, NRSVUE)

Micah and Isaiah sound similar themes: Learn to do good; seek justice; rescue the oppressed; defend the orphan; plead for the widow (Isaiah 1:17). 

There's less of this in the New Testament, where, for example, Joseph is trying to be an individual "just man" (Matthew 1:19, RSV) when his first instinct upon learning of Mary's pregnancy is to get rid of her without subjecting her to public disgrace. But there's Jesus's condemnation of the collective religious leadership which "neglect justice and the love of God" (Luke 11:42, NRSVUE).

Justice in the World Today

So, our most ancient understandings of justice tell us that, in assessing the state of justice in the world today, we should look to the well-being of the poor, the mentally and physically handicapped, and other socially marginalized people. Do they have access to the things they need in life? The record is mixed, which may be news to those who tend towards either gloom or cockeyed optimism.

1. Substantive Justice

The aspect of justice that most directly affects the weak is substantive or distributive justice, in which everyone gets what they deserve--not necessarily equal portions, because people differ in all sorts of relevant ways. Here it's good to attend to Nicholas Kristof, who can be as gloomy as anybody, but whose annual end-of-the-year column reminds us of the progress our species has made. "Measured by child mortality, education, nutrition or women's rights, we humans are probably in the best decade in the past 300,000 years," he wrote in 2025, even as tyrants were waging wars and Elon Musk had eviscerated the U.S. Agency for International Development.

• Infant mortality increased over the previous year, but still was less than half what it had been in 2000
• Malnutrition continued to decline, though the rate of decline had slowed
• Literacy worldwide had reached 88 percent
• Deaths from drug abuse in the United States declined 30 percent since 2023
• Public health research had produced a new HIV drug, gene editing against sickle cell anemia, and possibly was close to being able to regrow limbs
• Solar energy is increasingly accessible, and batteries are close behind

The State of the Nation report, produced by the Murphy Institute at Tulane University, is America-centric but contains a lot of good information about other countries. They find the United States remains ahead of 98 percent of other countries in terms of other countries, and is also a leader in education, physical health, and violence reduction. However, we're declining on citizenship and democracy (only 33rd percentile in belief in democracy), life satisfaction, and mental health (only 11th percentile in depression and anxiety). While the U.S. remains high on environmental conditions, physical health (57th percentile in child mortality), and civil liberties, other countries are progressing more quickly. So it's a mixed bag, with a lot of progress in other countries, with some declines as well. The report's authors are unsure whether American decline in some areas is in spite of our economic growth, or connected to how that growth has been distributed.

2. Procedural Justice

Another important aspect is procedural justice, not just because we like the rule of law and respect for individual rights (which we do), but because corruption and arbitrary government limit progress and, particularly for the less-well-connected, opportunity. Freedom House's Freedom in the World report for 2025 shows the vast majority of people live under governments that are rated Not Free or Partly Free. Autocracy is asserting itself all over the world, "usually at the expense of minority groups, democratic activists, and a range of other perceived enemies." Freedom House analyzes the "real-world" freedom enjoyed by individuals, rather than what might be stated in the constitution. Assessment

is done by a combination of in-house analysts and country specialists. If you're curious, the United States rates 81 points out of 100, which puts it in the "free" category. However, it lost three points since 2024 and eight points since 2016.

Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index for 2025 shows increasing public sector corruption worldwide: the global average is at a record low of 42 (out of 100, with higher being better on this measure), with more than two-thirds of countries score below 50, and 31 countries scoring significantly lower than they did in 2012. Corruption remains a serious threat in every part of the world. Unlike Freedom House, Transparency International collects their data from other sources, specifically 13 surveys of corruption done by agencies including the World Bank and the World Economic Forum. The U.S. is tied for 29th best of 182 countries, scoring 64 out of 100, down one point from 2024 but lost11 points since 2017.

Conclusion

I continue to find the annual January celebration of Martin Luther King Jr. Day in my town meaningful, because it's a chance for the entire community to rededicate ourselves to making good on the promise of "justice for all." Pete Saunders (2026) listed a number of discriminatory public and quasi-public policies in the post-Jim Crow era, some still in full flower today: aggressive policing, exclusionary zoning, blockbusting, inadequate local public funding, retail redlining, and predatory lending. There is a lot of work to be done to build just cities, beginning with recognizing our common humanity and hence our mutual situation. As Dr. King said in his 1963 letter from jail to clergy in Birmingham, Alabama, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."

We have come over a way that with tears has been watered,
We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered,
Out from the gloomy past, Till now we stand at last

Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.

--JAMES WELDON JOHNSON

SEE ALSO: "Roll Down Justice: MLK Day 2026," 20 January 2026