What does our democracy actually rest on, and which of those supports are being weakened right now?

With less than a month to go before the midterms, Heather breaks down four load-bearing walls of American democracy, a decade of wins and losses for LGBTQ families, and where your dollars and time can make the biggest difference this November, wherever you live.

In this episode, you'll learn how to:

• Recognize the specific ways free elections, checks and balances, and the rule of law are being tested right now
• Track the decade of LGBTQ rights rulings from Bostock to this year's sports and conversion therapy decisions
• Find the races and tools where your vote, donations, or time will have the most impact, no matter where you live

Press play to see exactly what's at stake this November and where to put your energy.

Links referenced in this episode:

• votingrights.org
• allsides.com
• oath.vote
• votesaveamerica.com
• movement advancement project
• heatherhester.net/starthere

Hi, I’m Heather Hester, and I’m so glad you’re here!

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This is a place to feel messy while you're figuring it out.

At the heart of my work is a deep commitment to compassion, authenticity, and transformative allyship, especially for those navigating the complexities of parenting LGBTQ kids. Through this podcast, speaking, my writing, and the spaces I create, I help people unlearn bias, embrace their full humanity, and grow their capacity for courageous connection.

For parents, allies, and those pioneering a way to lead with love and kindness, I’m here with true, messy, and heartwarming stories, real tools, and grounding support to help you move from fear to fierce, informed action.

Whether you’re listening in, working with me directly, or quietly taking it all in, I see you. And I’m so glad you’re on this journey with me.

More Human. More Kind. formerly Just Breathe: Parenting Your LGBTQ Teen is a safe and supportive podcast in a heartfelt and empowering space where a mom and advocate offers the wisdom of lived experience and practical guidance and education to parents and allies, teaching empathy, kindness, love, and strong boundaries while supporting LGBTQ teens and the diverse LGBTQ community, including gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans, transgender, and queer individuals, through conversations about mental health, grief, gender identity, sexual orientation, human rights, social justice, parenting, parent support, and meaningful LGBTQ allyship and allyship in action.

In today's episode, you'll learn what LGBTQ allies need to know before you vote.

Welcome to More Human, More Kind, the podcast for parents of LGBTQ kids and anyone trying to stay human in a world that keeps hardening.

I'm Heather Hester, and here we talk about fear, belonging, boundaries, courage, love, and what it means to protect what matters without losing yourself in the process.

Your child doesn't just need a parent who's informed.

They need a parent who is grounded and strong.

Let's take a breath and let's begin.

Welcome to More Human, More Kind.

I'm Heather Hester.

Depending on how online or plugged in you are, you may have varying levels of concern or interest in the upcoming midterm elections.

There is a lot going on and a lot at stake, so I thought it might be helpful to touch on a few topics that are more applicable to being a parent or an ally to LGBTQ kids.

And honestly, they're all helpful if you're just wanting to stay human in this very complicated world.

In today's episode, you will discover what our democracy actually rests on and the specific ways those foundations are being weakened right now.

You'll discover the turning points of the last decade for LGBTQ families, specifically from the rights we've won to the ones that we are losing.

And you'll discover where your vote, your dollars, and your time can make the biggest difference this November, even if you do not live anywhere near the closest races.

In my lifetime, there has not been a moment like this one.

Corruption is happening in plain sight.

The Constitution is being ignored.

Our viability as a democratic republic is teetering on complete failure every day.

I listen to a wide range of podcasts, and I read a number of thoughtful substacks and other publications, staying away from anything that remotely resembles click or rage bait.

And while the style of storytelling may vary, the facts remain the same.

And underneath this unprecedented mess are two constants.

Chaos and cruelty.

There are many, many things that have contributed to us standing at this precipice of losing our democracy.

And I want to name that first, because no single person, party or court decision got us here on its own.

Money in politics, the way our maps are drawn, the news that we do and do not see, decades of choices by people in power.

It's a lot.

And I'm not going to pretend one episode can hold all of it.

So today, we're going to look specifically at four things.

What our democracy actually is and how we're losing it.

How we got here, what the last decade has meant for LGBTQ families and the races where your vote, your dollars and your time can make the biggest difference even if you don't live anywhere near them.

We use the word democracy a lot, so let's be clear about what we mean.

The United States is a constitutional democratic republic.

We elect people to represent us and they govern within the limits set by the Constitution.

It rests on a few load bearing walls.

The first is that we have free and fair elections where every eligible vote counts equally.

The second is that we have three equal branches of government, the Executive branch, the Legislative branch, and the Judicial branch, meaning the President, the Congress, the Supreme Court, and their job is to be a check and balance system to each other so no one holds unchecked power.

Third, we have different levels of courts whose rulings should be followed.

And fourth, we have the rule of law, meaning the law applies equally from the most powerful to the least.

Democracies rarely collapse in a single day.

They erode when those walls are weakened one at a time, often in ways that are technically legal or just quiet enough to be ignored.

I imagine you may have several examples that have popped into your head.

As I was saying each one of those.

Here are a few that I want to highlight right now.

The first is that court orders are not being followed.

An Associated Press review found that Since February of 2025 federal judges have ruled the this administration was violating a court order and at least 31 different lawsuits on everything from funding cuts to mass layoffs to deportations.

That's in addition to more than 250instances of non compliance judges have flagged in individual immigration cases.

In April 2025, a federal judge found probable cause to hold the administration in criminal contempt for defying his order to turn around deportation flights to El Salvador.

When the Executive branch stops following the courts, one of those load bearing walls is gone.

The second is journalists being banned for their coverage.

Just a few weeks ago the president banned CNN, Ms. now and Politico from the White House and the next morning their reporters press passes were seized at the gate of the White House.

This is a very clear first Amendment violation.

Legal experts across the board have called it unconstitutional and the three outlets have sued.

I imagine by the time this episode posts that there will be even more information one way or another on these cases.

But the point of me bringing this up is that a free press is how we find out what our government is doing.

It is their job to report on the facts and the actual events.

When the government decides which reporters get in the door based on favorable coverage or The President's feelings.

That's another wall coming down.

The third is voting protections being dismantled.

In April of this year, 2026, the Supreme Court decided Louisiana vs Calais 6 to 3, making it far harder for voters of color to challenge discriminatory voting maps under the Voting Rights Act.

Days later, Louisiana's governor suspended the state's primary so the legislature could redraw its congressional map after more than 100,000 people had already voted early.

This is just one example of the way voting protections are disappearing.

There's a really, really cool website out there that's tracking this, called voting rights.org check it out to learn more and to track what is happening regarding voting rights across the United States.

And then the fourth one that I want to talk about today is the clear profiting from the presidency.

Presidents of both parties have traditionally sold their businesses or put them in blind trusts, so no one would have to wonder whose interests they were serving.

This president has done the opposite.

By every major estimate, he and his family have made billions of dollars since his second inauguration, much of it through a family crypto company.

Just before he took office, a member of the United Arab Emirates royal family bought nearly half of that company for a half a billion dollars dollars.

Later, an Abu Dhabi investment firm used the family's cryptocurrency to make a 2 billion dollar investment in the crypto exchange Binance.

And a few months after that, the President pardoned Binance's founder.

The administration also accepted a $400 million luxury jet from the government of Qatar.

The Constitution forbids federal officeholders from accepting gifts or payments from foreign governments without the consent of Congress.

And many legal scholars say these deals, all these deals cross that line.

Congress has never given its consent.

No court has stopped it, and the Congress hasn't tried.

That's what I mean by corruption in plain sight.

None of it is hidden.

It just hasn't been stopped.

This didn't start in 2016.

The Citizens United Supreme Court decision opened the door to unlimited outside spending in our elections, which is a big part of why a handful of billionaires now have such an outsized voice.

In 2013, Shelby county versus Holder struck down the part of the Voting Rights act that required certain states to get federal approval before changing their voting rules.

And many of those states changed their rules almost immediately.

In 2019, the Supreme Court said federal courts can't stop partisan gerrymandering, leaving it to the very politicians who benefit from it.

And this year's Calais decision gutted much of what was left of the voting rights act.

Each of these on its own might look like a technical legal question.

Together, though, they changed who gets heard.

So what does this mean for LGBTQ people and their families?

I've put together a full timeline of the last decade with links to every ruling and policy for this week's Substack post.

So go check that out here, though, I want to give you the turning points because they tell a story.

In 2020, the Supreme Court ruled in Bostock vs Clayton county that it's illegal to fire someone for being gay or transgender.

In 2022, Congress passed the Respect for Marriage act, requiring federal and state recognition of same sex marriages with bipartisan votes.

Those were real wins, and they happened because people organized and voted.

But here's what we've lost or what we're losing.

In June of 2025, the Supreme Court upheld Tennessee's ban on puberty blockers and hormone therapy for transgender teenagers.

In March of this year, in Chiles vs Salazar, the court ruled 8 to 1 that Colorado's ban on conversion therapy for minors has to be reviewed under the strictest free speech standard, which will likely mean the law falls.

Every single major medical and mental health organization in this country considers conversion therapy to be harmful.

And on June 30, the court ruled 6 to 3 that states can ban transgender girls and women from girls and women's school sports.

More than two dozen states already have those bans.

According to the ACLU, lawmakers have introduced more than 2,000 anti LGBTQ bills in state legislatures since 2023, and roughly 211 of them have become law this year alone.

Hundreds more have been introduced, most of them targeting transgender people, and marriage equality itself has been challenged.

Last year, the Supreme Court was asked to revisit Versafal and declined.

It declined this time.

That's not the same as it being safe.

So here's how to track what's happening in your state.

There are three trackers that are updated constantly and that are really worth marking.

If you are interested in following these things, I'll put the links in the show notes.

The first is the ACLU legislative attacks on LGBTQ rights.

The second is the Trans Legislation Tracker.

And the third is Movement Advancement Project Equality Maps.

So there are three things I hear from voters that I want to either debunk or highlight and kind of bring up as conversation.

The first is my vote doesn't count.

What's the point?

Why should I vote?

In 2024, California Congressman Adam Gray won his seat by fewer than 200 votes.

Ohio Congresswoman Marcy Kaptor held hers by about 2,400.

In 2017, a Virginia state House race ended and an exact tie and was decided by drawing a name out of a bowl.

Yeah, you heard that right.

A name drawn out of a bowl and that one seat determined which party controlled the chamber.

I know that sounds absolutely insane in this day and age, but.

But look it up.

There's plenty about it out there.

The point is, your vote isn't just one tiny drop in a vast ocean.

Sometimes it can be the whole margin.

So get out there and let your voice be heard.

The second is something that I want to highlight, and that is information silos.

Most of us get our news from sources that we agree with.

And our algorithms and our social media specifically are designed to keep it that way.

That means all of us on every side are missing facts.

If you want to see how the same story is covered across the spectrum, across the board, the site allsides.com puts left, center and right coverage side by side.

It is the most simple way that I have found to step outside of this information silo the bubble and check what you think you know.

I have really found it helpful over the past few years to use this as a tool to understand the many different angles a story is told from.

Truth and facts usually emerge as a common thread.

And the third thing that I hear and have been hearing recently is that I'm not political.

And this one actually makes me really, really mad.

Because perhaps once this was a luxury, a pina or a luxury thought to have, but it is no longer an option.

Our kids don't get to opt out.

They don't get to decide whether their health care, their sports teams, their classrooms, or their families are up for debate.

So neither do we.

Finally, let's take a few moments here to talk about the races to watch and how you can help the people in those races.

From anywhere, no matter where you are in the country, it is important to remember that this country, the United States of America, belongs to every one of its citizens, not just the few billionaires and those with power.

As much as they would like for us to think that, and as much as they would like for us to just give up, Republicans currently hold the Senate 53 to 47, so Democrats would need to gain four seats to take control.

The House is almost evenly divided, with 218 seats needed for a majority.

Here are the Senate races that analysts are watching most closely.

North Carolina.

Roy Cooper, the Democrat, versus Michael Whatley, the Republican.

This is an open seat race in Maine.

Senator Susan Collins, Republican versus Troy Jackson, Democrat In Ohio, Senator John Husted, the Republican versus Sherrod Brown, the Democrat In Alaska, Senator Dan Sullivan, Republican versus Mary Patola, the Democrat In Texas, Ken Paxton, the Republican, versus James Talarico, the Democrat this is an open seat in Iowa, Ashley Henson, the Republican, versus Josh Turek, the Democrat this is an open seat in Georgia, Senator Jon Ossoff, Democrat vs. Mike Collins, Republican in Michigan, Abdul Al Said, the Democrat versus Mike Rogers, the Republican, this is another open seat.

And in New Hampshire, Chris Pappas, the Democrat, versus John Sununu, the Republican, an open seat in the House There are dozens of close races, so way too many to mention right now in this podcast.

Many are in districts that were just redrawn.

Rather than list them all here, I will point you to two tools that do the hard work of figuring out where your help goes the furthest.

The first is Oath Dot Vote.

They analyze races from the Senate all the way down to school boards and recommends where donations will have the most impact.

It does not they do not sell your information so you will not be flooded with texts afterward, which for me was a huge selling point.

Vote Save america, which is votesaveamerica.com helps you find volunteer shifts that you can do from your kitchen table like phone banking, text banking, letter writing, all for the races that need it the most.

I know that this was a lot of information today and I know that it can feel very overwhelming.

I follow this stuff every day and there are days where I just feel completely wrung out by the end of the day.

But this is exactly the time to not give up.

Taking a moment to be kind, whether to someone else or to yourself, is one of the most hope renewing things that you can do right now at a time that dehumanizing rhetoric is part of our daily media experience.

Practicing kindness is the perfect reminder that we are all human beings.

Finding an ecosystem of support is another gift you can give yourself.

Go to heatherhester.net starthere or click the link at the top of the Show Notes to access free guides and connect with the type of support you most need.

Until next time, keep choosing to be a little more human and a little more kind.

Sa.