By Celia Viggo Wexler

Last fall, I volunteered to teach English to immigrants. My class, sponsored by Catholic Charities, consisted mainly of Afghans and a smattering of  Haitians. They were wonderful students – patient with me as I struggled to teach them remotely — kind, polite, hard-working. I loved them all.

For the 2025 semester, I was offered the chance to teach a citizenship class. A year ago, I would have jumped at the opportunity. After all, I am the granddaughter of Italian immigrants, who immersed themselves in the American ethos, and helped their community adapt quickly to their new country. And half of my career was spent outside journalism as a nonprofit public interest advocate.

I wrote about the influence of campaign contributions on government policies for the good-government group Common Cause. My reports  helped prod Congress to enact bipartisan legislation that banned corporations and labor unions from spending unlimited amounts of money to influence federal elections. It was bipartisan legislation, sponsored by the late Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and former Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis). After the bill passed, Sen. McCain whisked a group of us to his favorite Italian restaurant to celebrate.

But then, in 2010, the Supreme Court overturned the McCain-Feingold law, enabling the wealthiest Americans to have the most influence on elections. Looking back, I was too sanguine about that defeat. Reformers lamented the decision, but we had no idea how far-reaching it would become. This wouldn’t be the last court decision that broke my heart, but I always believed bad decisions could, in time, be repaired, through state and federal laws or changes on the court itself.

I knew this was an imperfect country, with growing income inequality, still plagued by racism and sexism. But I always thought it could become more perfect.

There was a time, not so long ago, when the United States modeled democracy for the rest of the world, and I bought into that. 

I championed freedom of speech at the World Summit on the Information Society in Tunis, while it was still under the thumb of a dictator, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali. In the oldest public square in Stockholm, I spoke against trade agreements that harmed workers and the environment.

But my most memorable journey was to Kyiv in 2005. I met the whistleblowers in Ukraine, fresh from the Orange Revolution, who ousted a corrupt president. I taught them strategies to hold their government accountable.

A few years later, I described those remarkable days, and my gratitude for my own situation: The truth is, advocacy is not easy in much of the world. As much as we in the public interest community may complain about the obstacles in our path … we are the lucky ones.

In April of this year, like its earlier campaign finance ruling, another Supreme Court decision rocked the foundations of democracy. The court’s conservative justices ruled that presidents are immune from prosecution for any actions they take in their official capacity heading the executive branch.

 In her scathing dissent, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson predicted that “even a hypothetical President who admits to having ordered the assassinations of his political rivals or critics, or one who indisputably instigates an unsuccessful coup, has a fair shot at getting immunity under the majority’s new Presidential accountability model.”

Then came the 2024 election and its aftermath, and the true impact of the failed attempt to limit the role of big money in politics. It appeared that billionaires, who spent hundreds of millions on their favorite candidate, would have unprecedented influence on government. Likewise, the billionaires who owned news outlets and had multiple business interests, were wary of offending the new administration in any way, and would try to curry favor with those in charge. Many members of Congress, once proud of their independence from the executive branch, seemed cowed by the wishes of a president, even one yet to take office.

So I can no longer presume to speak as I once did, so confident in my own rights. How could I teach citizenship to these aspiring Americans? What would it mean to be a citizen in 2025?

Would we still have freedom of the press, and of assembly? Would our leaders respect the separation of powers among the executive, legislative and judicial branches, no one branch dominating the other?

Would critics of government policies, journalists, or members of the opposing political party be investigated, sued, or jailed for speaking freely?

I concluded that I no longer knew what it meant to be a citizen. I couldn’t expound about the promise of America if wasn’t sure those promises would be kept.

I signed up to teach English again. That’s a skill that will help my immigrants even if they find themselves confined to a detention center, awaiting deportation.