May 14 @ 10:00 am – 11:30 am UTC-7
Session 1 of 3 | The Stakes & the System: Why This Moment Matters and Where to Act
Around the country, our communities are facing new challenges from federal actions — funding cuts, law enforcement campaigns, and attacks on civil society. In the face of these complex and fast-moving developments, people are turning to local news and information providers to understand what’s happening, how it affects them, and ways they can support their neighbors.
But in the current political climate, they are operating under extraordinary strain. And the upcoming midterms are going to test them in ways that go well beyond typical election coverage.
In this opening session, we’ll hold two realities at once: the baseline challenge of covering candidates, issues, and election administration in a hostile environment — and the worst case, a newsroom trying to do its job in the middle of community violence or federal intervention. That ceiling is no longer hypothetical.
We’ll hear firsthand from Minneapolis, Minnesota — a community that lived this when Operation Metro Surge, the largest immigration enforcement operation ever carried out, descended on the Twin Cities in late 2025.
May Yang will walk us through what happened on the ground, and the role of local news as a central infrastructure supporting rapid community mobilization and philanthropic response. We’ll use that as a starting point to understand this experience will be relevant in shaping how newsrooms and communities across the country can best prepare for the midterms — and where support, deployed now, can make a meaningful difference. Come ready to share your questions and what you’re seeing in your own communities.
The 2026 midterms are approaching — and what communities know, or don’t know, will shape what happens at the ballot box and beyond. Local newsrooms sit at the center of that: covering candidates, translating national issues to the local level, and holding power to account when it matters most.