Ken Scott Baron Podcast

1. Summary

NABWMT) has a rich history of advocacy at the intersection of racial justice, LGBTQ+ rights, and social equity. this proposal outlines the creation of a non-partisan, dedicated Get Out the Vote (GOTV) Initiative.

By launching a non-partisan voter engagement group, NABWMT can directly address systemic barriers to voting, combat disenfranchisement in marginalized communities, and ensure robust turnout among Black, multicultural, and LGBTQ+ voters across local, state, and national elections. This proposal is based on successful work of the author.

2. Strategy

NABWMT’s mission centers on combating racism, homophobia, and social injustice through education, fellowship, and civic advocacy. Voting is a primary mechanism through which community members protect civil rights, funding for public services, healthcare access, and anti-discrimination protections.

Targeted Community Needs: Black, LGBTQ+, and low-income voters face disproportionate hurdles, including voter ID laws, polling place closures, and voter fatigue or alienation.

Non-Partisan Advantage: Operating strictly as a non-partisan entity allows NABWMT to maintain compliance with 501(c)(3) guidelines, engage a broad coalition of community partners, and focus entirely on civic empowerment rather than party alignment.

3. Mission & Objectives

Core Mission

To empower marginalized communities by providing accessible voter education, breaking down barriers to the ballot box, and driving non-partisan voter registration and turnout. Our outreach will emphasize our values that are helped or impinged by current events.

Key Objectives

Increase Voter Registration: Register voters across local NABWMT chapters, focusing on underrepresented populations.

Provide Civic & Ballot Education: Host non-partisan candidate forums and publish plain-language guides on ballot measures, voter rights, and registration deadlines.

Drive Mobilization (Turnout): Implement peer-to-peer outreach, pledge-to-vote campaigns, and transportation assistance for early voting and Election Day.

Protections & Advocacy: Educate voters on their legal rights at the polls and connect them with voter protection hotlines.

4. Key Strategies & Action Plan

Phase 1: Voter Education & Awareness

Voter Guides: Distribute non-partisan information covering state-specific voting laws, ID requirements, early voting dates, and mail-in ballot procedures.

Civic Workshops: Host virtual and local town halls focusing on how local elections (school boards, judges, city councils) directly impact LGBTQ+ and racial equity issues.

Phase 2: Voter Registration & Engagement

Chapter Activation: Equip local NABWMT chapters with standardized voter registration kits and digital links.

Community Partnerships: Partner with non-partisan organizations such as When We All Vote, the League of Women Voters, and local Pride centers to co-host registration drives.

Phase 3: Turnout & Voter Assistance

Peer-to-Peer Outreach: Conduct non-partisan phone and text banks reminding members and community allies to submit ballots or head to the polls.

5. Non-Partisan Legal Compliance (501(c)(3) Guidelines)

To safeguard NABWMT’s tax-exempt status, all working group activities will strictly adhere to Federal/IRS non-partisan guidelines:

No Endorsements: The group will not endorse, support, or oppose any candidate, political party, or slate of nominees.

Equal Opportunity: If hosting candidate forums or debates, all certified candidates for a given office will be invited under equal rules and timing.

Issue Neutrality in GOTV: Outreach messaging will focus solely on the importance of voting and civic duty, without linking participation to voting for specific candidates or parties.

6. Structure & Implementation Roadmap

Proposed Group Structure

Coordinators: Oversee overall strategy, reporting to the NABWMT Board. Arrange phone banks, letters ,postcards and volunteer efforts.

Education & Communications: BMISJ manages voter guides, social media toolkits, and virtual events.

7. Next Steps & Recommendation

It is recommended that the NABWMT Board of Directors:

Approve the establishment of the NABWMT Non-Partisan GOTV Working Group.

Authorize the selection of a committee chair to begin initial planning and chapter outreach.

Allocate seed resources or delegate fundraising approval to support non-partisan printing, text-banking platforms, and event hosting.

Smartphones make it incredibly easy to connect across distances, but their physical presence and design can simultaneously hijack our attention and disrupt the depth of in-person interactions.

Navigating this requires a deliberate balance between leveraging digital convenience and preserving meaningful, face-to-face empathy

Now, in an article “Why We Delude Ourselves About the Birthrate,” published in The New York Times, explored the global decline in birthrates and challenges the conventional explanations often used to explain it.

This is interestng because the core argument that society frequently misdiagnoses the root causes of declining birthrates by blaming economic factors, lack of state support, or modern career pressures. Instead, the piece suggests the shift is deeply cultural and technological.

I have written previously about phones and how technology—specifically smartphones and digital culture—has fundamentally altered human interaction, dating, and intimacy, making the traditional path toward family-building less common or delayed.

The New York Times article highlights that standard government incentives (like cash payouts, subsidized childcare, or tax breaks) have largely failed to reverse the downward trend in countries that have tried them, indicating that financial fixes cannot solve a deeper societal shift in values and lifestyles.

If technology is impairing your relationships and if your constant need to check texts and social media is hurting the depth and empathy in conversations with friends and families, take a deep breath and assess how this effects your future and that of others!

From the mid-1980s to the early 1990s, Democratic centrists complained that Jesse Jackson and his progressive allies were pushing the party too far left.

Using the leverage of his Rainbow Coalition, Jackson pushed the party conventions to adopt more liberal stances than the nominees wanted. Now, some 40 years later, the racial and ideological split in the Democratic Party has been flipped on its head.

White, well-educated liberals are the proponents of cultural and identity policies that often alienate swing middle-class voters. Black and other minority Democrats are a strong force for moderation.

This results from the changing demographic characteristics of white Democrats, especially whites with college degrees, and the shifting focus of the liberal agenda from racial and economic equality to culture war issues.

Black voters today are no longer on the party’s left flank. Since the late 1990s the share of white Democrats identifying as liberal roughly doubled, from about 30 percent to 61 percent, while Black Democrats moved only modestly.

White voters without college make up about a quarter of the Democratic coalition. White college graduates are now more liberal across the board.

Black Democrats are more religious and more traditional on cultural issues than white Democrats.

The moral and cultural gulf between Black and white Democrats has grown steadily.

Along similar lines, a 2022 American Enterprise Institute study found that white liberals favored “cutting some funding from police departments in your community and shifting it to social services” by 71 percent to 27 percent; Black voters were much more closely split, 53 percent to 44 percent; and Hispanic voters were opposed, with 40 percent for shifting funds to social services and 57 percent against doing so.

White Democrats are significantly more likely than Black Democrats (52 percent vs. 26 percent) to believe that societal acceptance of gay, lesbian and bisexual people has not gone far enough.”

These differences are part and parcel of a larger ideological shift among Democrats over the past 26 years.

There are four major issues on which “Black voters have indeed become a moderating force compared with white liberals”:

Crime: A 2024 American Enterprise Institute survey found that nonwhite working-class voters opposed reducing police budgets by a 30-point margin, while white liberal college graduates favored reducing police budgets by a 20-point margin.

Patriotism: Some 62 percent of Asian Americans, 70 percent of Black Americans and 76 percent of Hispanic Americans said they were “proud to be an American,” compared with just 34 percent of progressive activists.

Racial preferences: When asked if Black people should work their way up “without special favors,” white liberals were about 12 points less likely to agree than Black voters.

The pro-affirmative action stance among many white liberals, in contrast to the moderate positions of Black Democrats, is striking.

In an attempt to discern what might make skeptical voters consider choosing Democratic candidates. polls found that moving to the center on racial preferences in college admissions was the most electorally fruitful move Democrats could make and that doing so on racial preferences in government contracting was the second most important.

The reversal of ideological positioning of white and minority Democrats is closely connected to the class conversion of the Democratic Party from the party of the working class to the party of well-educated whites.

Today’s white Democratic voters are wealthier, more highly educated and more socially liberal. Meanwhile, the Black voters who make up the consistent base of the party have held steady while the rest of the coalition has shifted around them.

At the same time, Erickson’s analysis points to a Democratic split with the so-called post-material wing dominated by white liberals and a Black-Hispanic minority wing more concerned with bread-and-butter issues:

According to 2024 A.P. VoteCast Data, when asked to rank their level of concern on top issues in the 2024 election, white progressives expressed the most concern about “the effects of climate change,” at 75 percent, while nearly 70 percent of Black, Latino and white non college voters were most concerned about the cost of food and groceries.

The racial, ideological and class alterations of the Democratic Party have created a damaging dynamic both internally and in competition with the Republican Party.

The white working-class voters who favor Republicans are struggling economically but don’t feel that their struggles are given the same attention as racism and other cultural issues. They are a large group that feels disrespected, distrusts government and feels like their own economic challenges are being ignored.

The ascendance within Democratic ranks of culturally liberal well-educated whites has, in turn, intensified tensions with Black, Hispanic and other minority Democrats, Sawhill wrote

Democrats, have a huge opportunity to unite the working class across racial lines, but to do so, I believe they will have to focus much more on inequalities of wealth and power, and put a stronger emphasis on economic issues such as work, wages and the cost of living while simultaneously embracing more mainstream or less-contentious cultural values in many areas.

Over the last two decades, Democrats essentially have been trading working-class voters for white college grads.

The nonwhite working class has emerged as a force for moderation in U.S. politics. They are leery of the left’s cultural agenda — open borders, permissive prosecutors, the obsession with identity politics and “equity.” They express higher levels of national pride and patriotism. And they aren’t agitating for the replacement of a market economy with democratic socialism.

The problem for those who would like to shift power within the Democratic Party from liberal white elites to more moderate constituencies is that the white elites hold power and won’t give it up without a fight.

They vote, donate and participate heavily in party organizations more than any other major bloc. They dominate or exert disproportionate influence among party activists, primary voters, campaign staffs, advocacy organizations, the media, nonprofit leadership and donor networks.

It may well be that the internal power lies with those who are happy campers just where they are, and that the party as currently constructed cannot and will not dig itself out of the hole it’s in.

Those who have tried to inspire the next generation of graduates have used their speeches as opportunities to extol the limitless possibilities that artificial intelligence will bring.

But they’re speaking to graduates who are entering a shaky job market and are already burdened by tens of thousands of dollars of student debt. However, companies of all stripes are using A.I. as an excuse to slow entry-level hiring and lay off workers. Tech executives have been warning that their technologies will be job destroyers.

In many cases, the students expressed their displeasure at the speakers’ blatant A.I. boosterism the best way they could: with loud boos.

When Eric Schmidt, a former chief executive of Google, told graduates at the University of Arizona about their A.I.-shaped future, the shouting got so intense that he paused and said that graduates feared “that the future has already been written, that the machines are coming, that the jobs are evaporating, that the climate is breaking, that politics are fractured, and that you are inheriting a mess that you did not create.”

Mr. Schmidt of Google fame, told graduates to make the best of it. “The question is not whether A.I. will shape the world. It will. The question is whether you will help shape artificial intelligence.”

What? Pull yourself up by your bootstraps? His approach is peak billionaire brain, directed at the young people who have, for the better part of a decade, been treated as woke, and lazy.

The problem isn’t woke; the problem is work. It’s a lack of social mobility. It’s that college may no longer elevate a graduate to the middle class. It’s that nobody even bothers to pretend that a house, a good job and the ability to start a family are at all guaranteed.

Think of this from the graduates’ perspective:

Wealthy old people telling you your future is being pulped by electricity-sucking, water-guzzling data centers. Companies are trying to automate your future away. No wonder you’re furious.

According to a recent working paper from researchers at Harvard, hiring for entry-level roles at companies that have adopted generative A.I. has dropped each quarter since 2023. What is not clear is whether A.I. is taking people’s jobs or if companies are using A.I. as an excuse for not hiring.

Even in the best of times, commencement speeches are uncomfortable: The kids you’re speaking to are basically hostages; they can’t leave without their diplomas.

Tell the graduates getting a degree is a bit of a foundation, but tell the kids the truth of the messiness of one’s 20s!

One is right to be worried. But none of this is as inevitable as it seems. Remember putting everything on the blockchain? Remember NFTs? Hell, some of us are old enough to remember that the world was supposed to end in the year 2000.

Right now, A.I. is in its dark hype period — but who knows how useful any of this actually will be in the end in creating efficiencies (as in, replacing the young with bots).

It’s within young people’s power to stop. Demand regulation of tech companies. Elect people who will legislate that regulation. Organize against data centers in your hometowns.

Don’t just boo A.I. — do something.

A new national poll from the Harvard Kennedy School finds young Americans under intense economic pressure and increasingly losing faith in the political system. The 52nd Harvard Youth Poll shows that for many 18- to 29-year-olds, the cost of living — especially inflation and housing — defines what they see as a true crisis.

Also. trust in government, elections, and national leadership remains strikingly low. Even as young voters lean Democratic, uneven turnout, low enthusiasm, and widespread skepticism about the fairness of elections suggest that participation in the 2026 midterms may be shaped as much by doubt as by political preference.

The most defining shift among young Americans is a loss of perceived agency — a growing belief that what they do no longer shapes what happens next. Half now say people like them have no real say in government. Trust in the federal government has fallen to 15 percent, and confidence in the military has dropped sharply, from 51 percent to 39 percent.

Political engagement is still present, but its meaning is changing. Fewer young Americans believe participation delivers results, and most see elected officials as driven by self-interest.

What once converted concern into action is becoming something more conditional — a generation still paying attention, still showing up, but increasingly unsure that their voice carries weight.

Economic pressure defines this moment for young Americans: Inflation and housing drive both lived experience and urgency, alongside widespread financial strain and a sharp decline in long-term optimism.

Military action in Iran is seen as not in the best interests of Americans: A majority say military action is not in the U.S. interest.

The country feels off track: Only 13% say the U.S. is headed in the right direction, while 59% say it’s on the wrong track, and approval remains low for President Trump (25%) and both parties in Congress (26% Democrats, 25% Republicans).

Young voters favor Democrats: Democrats lead 45% to 26% among young registered voters in the generic ballot. While Democrats say they are more likely than Republicans to vote in November (Democrats 55%, Republicans 35%, Independents 25%), a plurality remain cynical about the system as a whole.

A pervasive sense of threat is defining everyday life for young Americans, and they are increasingly losing faith in fundamental systems of democracy and political participation/

Findings from the 52nd poll in the biannual series are below.

A clear Democratic advantage is offset by weak trust in election fairness and uneven enthusiasm, raising early questions about turnout in 2026.

While Democrats hold an advantage, majorities of young voters believe both parties prioritize elites over people like them, fueling demand for candidates who are younger and more aligned with their values.

While many young Americans recognize the need for government action during emergencies, they express clear limits on how much power leaders should have. There is broad concern that emergency powers could be overused or abused, reflecting deep skepticism about unchecked authority.

For example, A majority of young Americans (53%) say it would be unacceptable for a president to bypass Congress after declaring a national emergency.

President Kennedy once said, “It is a time for a new generation of leadership to cope with new problems and new opportunities.”

The moment we are living through is looking ever more like the 1970s — in the depth of the crises we face, and in its potential to create a genuine rupture with what came before. I remember Ronald Reagan in the United States and Margaret Thatcher in Britain.

Iran has reoccupied center stage and fears of stagflation looms again. In the late 1970s, Americans sensed that their country was growing weaker in the world, (Vietnam, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the Iranian hostage crisis.

Today there is a war and an economy without a coherent strategy or clear objectives.

The University of Michigan’s consumer sentiment hit its lowest point in more than 70 years, and the International Monetary Fund warned on Tuesday that war in the Middle East could slow growth and fuel inflation, risking a global recession.

Voter discontent is a normal part of a democracy. But what we saw in the 1970s and what we are seeing now is distinctive: a comprehensive loss of faith in the future, a collapse of respect for our governing institutions and alarm that American influence in the world is doomed to diminish.

The Democrats are called upon to make the leap past our problems. Perhaps they need to ask themselves: What would Reagan do? Anyone seeking to change our trajectory can learn a lot from his understanding of the political imperatives and possibilities of his moment.Democrats can’t win by just opposing the president.

Specific proposals grow out of what needs fixing. A place to start: commitments to end corruption of the current administration, its favoritism toward a select group of very wealthy people. The success of the opposition to Viktor Orban in Hungary’s election on Sunday suggests the power of these issues when they’re linked to economic discontent.

Reagan was shrewd about turning a specific problem that was on voters’ minds into a rationale for policies he wanted to pursue anyway. He made the gas lines Americans hated into a case for deregulating the fossil fuel industry. While this may not work now it should be a winning point.

Like now Reagan used stagflation to argue for tax cuts tilted toward the wealthy. Neither policy was necessarily popular then and now , the way inflation was driving people into higher tax brackets and rising property taxes helped make his supply-side approach sound positively populist.

Reagan noted that in a time of crisis, the public is inclined to say: Above all, try something.

In Democratic campaigns last year, they used public concerns about higher prices to make a case for government action in areas such as health care, child care, housing and electricity prices.

Voters don’t usually make foreign policy a priority, but they do sense when the country is in trouble in the world. That’s how they felt in 1980, and it’s how they feel now.

American should vote after asking: Is the United States stronger and more respected now than it was three and a half years ago? Is the world today a safer place in which we live?” Then ask: are you spending more on essentials than before?

With more than 5.5 billion people online – and nearly as many on social media – digital spaces have become central to how we learn and connect. But alongside its benefits, the internet is also being used to spread hate, abuse and misogyny.

The “manosphere:” a loose network of communities that claim to address men’s struggles – dating, fitness or fatherhood, for example – but often promote harmful advice and attitudes. These groups are united by an opposition to feminism and misrepresent men as “victims” of the current social and political climate.

Two-thirds of young men regularly engage with masculinity influencers online. Experts are finding that the popularity of extreme language in the manosphere not only normalizes violence against women and girls, but has growing links to radicalization and extremist ideologies.

These communities promote the idea that emotional control, material wealth, physical appearance and dominance, especially over women, are markers of male worth.

The manosphere targets male audiences on social media, podcasts, gamer communities, dating apps and just about all digital spaces. Many participants engage with it while searching for forums to openly discuss or learn about men’s issues. But while content may appear focused on men’s self-improvement, many of these groups promote unhealthy behaviors, like instructing boys and men to build themselves up by putting others down.

It is normal to seek community in digital spaces. Many of us build a sense of identity, nurture interests and find like-minded people online.

But, the manosphere’s lifestyle coaches have drawn young men in by claiming to teach personal responsibility. But ironically, instead of encouraging the self-exploration that can get to the heart of men’s challenges, they suggest men are victims of society’s prejudice against men.

While groups within the manosphere do not all share the same beliefs, many are united in their misogyny – a prejudice and resentment of women and girls. In many ways, the manosphere is descended from a long line of anti-feminist movements.

Involuntary celibates (incels): believe that men are entitled to sex, and women purposefully deprive them of it. This culture promotes rape and assault and brings together other ideologies, including racism and homophobia.

There is a real-world impact: gender stereotypes harm everyone

In the manosphere, everyone loses. Misogyny and gender inequality are harmful to men, as well as women. Incels are also more prone to depression and suicidal thoughts.

If boys and men aren’t encouraged to speak openly about their emotions or issues, they may gravitate towards these online communities as a place to get advice on topics like relationship struggles, fatherhood, anxiety and sexual health.

Meanwhile, younger men today are more likely to hold regressive ideas about gender roles than older men, representing a backlash that could reverse hard-won gains in gender equality.

Im addition, some of the men and boys who enter manosphere forums feel alienated by mainstream society. Even if relatively few users travel down rabbit holes to more extremist content, research suggests the pathway is there.

Standing up to the manosphere requires we challenge the harmful beliefs and social norms that perpetuate gender inequality. In our social circles and communities, this work often begins and grows with conversation. It’s also helpful to talk to kids about gender equality and stereotypes.

We need to promote healthy masculinity in the digital age and

value empathy and communication, as opposed to stoicism or isolation.

We need to build relationships based on trust, not dominance or status

We need to normalize emotional expression and show that it’s safe to be vulnerable.

Finally let’s model respect and ways to have healthy disagreements and point out and discuss gender stereotypes in the media

61 years ago when President Lyndon B. Johnson called on Congress to pass the Voting Rights Act, which empowered millions of people of color to vote.

Yet, when a war is raging in the Middle East and an affordability crisis is brewing at home, the Senate is poised to begin what could be a marathon debate on the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, a bill that would block millions of eligible American citizens from voting — reversing decades of progress.

And now, Florida passed a bill on Thursday that would require voters to verify their citizenship when registering and limit which forms of identification they can present at the polls.

The new requirements would result in the removal of perhaps thousands of voters from the rolls and in the disenfranchisement of young voters.

The votes in both Florida chambers were along strict partisan lines, with all Democrats against the measure. Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican has supported the legislation.

The bill’s enactment would make Florida the most populous state in the country to impose proof-of-citizenship requirements on voters. But the Florida requirements would take effect next year, not before this year’s midterm elections.

“This is about the integrity of our elections,” one of the bill’s sponsors, State Senator Erin Grall, a Republican from Vero Beach, said on the Senate floor on Wednesday. “It is something that puts greater trust into our system.”

Under the bill, Floridians would have to provide proof of citizenship, such as a birth certificate or passport, when they register to vote. Every existing voters’ citizenship would be verified against government databases, such as Real ID, when the bill goes into effect.

If no citizenship document came up, the local elections supervisor would notify the voter by mail; to stay registered, the voter would have to bring proof of citizenship, such as a passport or a birth certificate, to his or her county elections office.

About 98 percent of Floridians have Real IDs, about 872,000 residents still do not.

Separately, the bill would no longer allow voters to use either college IDs or those provided by retirement homes to identify themselves at polling places. Republicans said those types of ID were too easy to fake.

Banning student IDs drew especially strong opposition from Democrats, who accused Republicans of trying to disenfranchise voters on a partisan basis.

Young voters often lean Democratic. Eight states have banned student IDs for voting, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, a nonpartisan organization, but six of them still allow voters to cast provisional ballots.

The Florida bill was modeled in part after the SAVE America Act that would impose strict voter ID and proof-of-citizenship requirements nationally. That legislation has become so important to the president that he has said he will not sign any other bill until it passes.

But studies have shown that requiring proof of citizenship across the country may end up affecting more Republicans states Mr. Trump won handily in 2024 have the largest percentage of citizens without valid passports, according to an analysis last year by the Secure Democracy Foundation, a nonpartisan organization that studies and analyzes voting policy.

This is creating an issue where there are going to be a lot of impacted voters that are going to need to produce a passport or a birth certificate and on the margin, you’re going to have eligible citizens who are not going to be able to vote.

Federal law is clear that only American citizens can vote in federal elections, and evidence suggests that noncitizen voting is exceptionally rare.

Also, in Arizona, voters passed a ballot initiative in 2004 that required proof of citizenship for registering. That law created a bifurcated system, in which any state election required proof of citizenship, but voters without such proof could still participate in federal elections.

In 2024, nearly 100,000 potential voters were at risk of losing their registration because of a glitch in Arizona state data: Voters who were issued driver’s licenses before 1996 might not have proof of citizenship on file. A court granted those voters relief before the 2024 election.

In Kansas, 31,089 potential voters had their registrations rejected or denied because they had failed to produce documents proving their citizenship, according to federal court records.

The court also found that almost all of the affected voters were citizens. The law was ruled unconstitutional and has not been enforced since 2018.

In 2024, New Hampshire passed a law requiring all first-time voters in the state to prove their citizenship in order to vote. The law is being challenged in federal court.

Louisiana also passed a law in 2024 requiring voters to provide proof of citizenship when registering.

This year, legislatures in South Dakota and Utah passed proof-of-citizenship laws that are awaiting signature by each state’s governor.

Don’t forget this reminder that the stakes are immensely high. As the 2026 midterms fast approach, we see renewed efforts to control or undermine our elections on Capitol Hill and in States!