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The Abstract
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> By Torie Ludwin, Arnold Ventures
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“I don’t regret standing up for choosing governance over grievance. It is my responsibility. It is my job. I do not regret negotiating; our government is designed to find compromise.”
Former Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy uttered those words at a press conference following his ouster orchestrated by members of his own party — a first in U.S. history.
However you may feel about Congress lately, let’s focus on the sentiment of McCarthy's statement and his last sentence: “Our government is designed to find compromise.”
The ideals of the nation’s founders were to create a system of inclusion and representation, one standing in stark contrast to the monarchy they left behind. As James Madison wrote in the tenth of the Federalist Papers, an overarching goal of the U.S. Constitution was to “break and control the violence of faction.” His vision was a vast republic of diverse interests, where the healthy push-and-pull of disparate groups would ensure one sect never became too powerful, and no majority could form to override the rights of fellow citizens.
Over the years, policymakers have expanded the legal understanding of inclusivity. They’ve also worked to jerry rig the system and create an imbalance in power.
Redistricting, the system by which districts are drawn for representation in the U.S. House of Representatives based on the U.S. Census, has now become a ferocious tussle — to “crack and pack” districts through gerrymandering, weakening the voting power of the people who live there. It has rewarded deeply partisan behavior by candidates and elected officials in an effort to scoop up votes in sparsely attended primaries — part of what AV grantee Unite America calls “The Primary Problem.”
During the 2022 elections, Unite America found that 83% of the U.S. House was elected by only 8% of Americans. This is hardly representation.
Rather than containing or diluting factionalism, we’ve empowered it. This week, one of those factions ousted the Speaker — with no clear plan in place. The government is funded only through November 17 because this faction refused to pass the budget. One of the three federal branches of the government is no longer functioning — not metaphorically, but literally.
Any serious politician knows that governance works only through compromise and reaching across the aisle. It should not be hijacked by a handful of elected officials — that’s exactly the opposite of the system originally envisioned in 1787.
A voting system that elects candidates who appeal to the full electorate, not just those who show up for the primaries of a single party, has the potential to bring together representatives more open to compromise and collaboration — the characteristics about which McCarthy spoke so passionately upon his exit from the Speakership.
Learn more about open, nonpartisan primaries>
Related: Who Elects These Clowns, Exactly? It Turns Out, Almost None of Us. (free link)
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Gainful Employment
Finally Finalizes
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By Evan Mintz, director of communications
New federal rules will help ensure that students don’t spend their time and money on educational programs that fail to deliver on their promises.
What’s Happening: Last week the Biden administration released final regulations that will hold career-training programs accountable for demonstrating they lead to an adequate return on investment. These regulations will also ensure that all students in all programs funded with federal aid dollars will have access to high-quality information about the financial returns on their educational investments.
Why It Matters: Education may be the path up the economic ladder, but not all programs offer the same results. By one model, more than a quarter of bachelor’s degree programs leave students with a negative return on investment, and more than 30 percent of for-profit certificate programs fail to provide adequate earnings for graduates.
What’s Next: The Biden administration still needs to finalize additional regulations improving college oversight — and Congress needs to work across the aisle to strengthen protections for students and taxpayers, and ensure educational institutions are held accountable for their outcomes.
Read our story>
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Required Reading on the
First Step Act
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(Image credit: UNE Center for Global Humanities)
By Thomas Hanna, communications manager
The First Step Act, signed by President Trump in December 2018, brought together actors from across the political spectrum and was a historic achievement for bipartisan criminal justice reform.
What’s Happening: To mark the five-year anniversary of the First Step Act, AV sat down with Colleen Eren, an associate professor of sociology and criminal justice at William Paterson University and author of Reform Nation: The First Step Act and the Movement to End Mass Incarceration. In the interview, Eren reflects on the unusual and sometimes uneasy coalition that led to passage of the First Step Act.
Why It Matters: At a time when the political appetite for criminal justice reform appears to be weakening, Reform Nation provides an important roadmap not only to the strategies that have worked in the past but also to where the reform movement must go in the years to come. In particular, Eren suggests that all sides must make compromises and can’t let “the perfect be the enemy of the good.”
Reform Nation is available now from Stanford University Press.
Read our interview with Colleen Eren>
Related: On December 4, 2023, the UNE Center for Global Humanities will hold a lecture, viewable online, by Colleen Eren on Reform Nation.
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Wayne Brough, policy director for R Street's Technology and Innovation team, who is calling for reforms to our nation’s broken patent system. Brand drug makers are exploiting loopholes in our nation’s patent system to stifle competition and keep drug prices high.
“There’s a long, complicated process to create a patent, and lots of steps along the way where mistakes can be made,” Brough says. “I’m trying to reframe the debate, at least among those on the right of center, and remind them that this is a government program. If it’s not working, let’s look at it and make it work better.”
Read our interview>
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Criminal Justice
- In an op-ed carried by the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Micah Derry suggests that in order to secure support in both primary and general elections Republican candidates “must be able to articulate broader evidence-based policies to solve complex criminal justice issues.”
- In a column in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Tony Messenger discusses how the local conviction of a bail bondsman for kidnapping shines a spotlight on the many problems associated with money bail. Messenger points to New Jersey as a model of how bail reform can be successfully implemented.
- An article in Crime and Justice News describes how Virginia Commonwealth University Medical Center’s hospital-based violence intervention program (HVIP) has successfully reduced re-admissions for gun injuries as well as drug and alcohol use among the program’s participants.
- The New Yorker profiles Partners for Justice, an AV grantee, and its innovative approach to transforming the public defense system by embedding “a cohort of advocates in each office to take on tasks that would boost a client’s chances for a good outcome, not just in court but in life.”
Health Care
- A Trump-appointed federal judge rejected one of Big Pharma’s key arguments in its lawsuit against Medicare drug price negotiations, Axios reports.
- Health insurer Cigna is paying more than $172 million to settle allegations that it fraudulently submitted inaccurate diagnoses of its Medicare Advantage members, in STAT News.
- The Washington Post published an astounding series on declining U.S. life expectancy due to the rise of chronic disease, gaps between wealthy and poor communities, and the lasting consequences of toxic public policy decisions. (free link)
- A ProPublica investigation reveals how a pharmaceutical giant stalled work on a potentially lifesaving tuberculosis vaccine and instead prioritized more profitable products.
Public Finance
- AV grantee the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget published a report on the potential impact of a bipartisan fiscal commission.
- Bill Gale of AV grantee the Tax Policy Center writes for Econofact about the damage caused by government shutdowns and discusses potential ways to avoid these crises in the future.
- Richard Rubin of The Wall Street Journal writes that federal prosecutors charged an IRS contractor for stealing the tax returns of wealthy Americans. This appears to be the tax data used in both a 2021 ProPublica article on the tax liabilities of the wealthy Americans and a 2020 New York Times article on Donald Trump’s tax payments. (free link)
Higher Education
- Forbes contributor Preston Cooper calls on college rankings to focus more on individual programs than institution-wide ratings.
Infrastructure
- A new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that 17 percent of U.S. wind energy projects faced significant opposition between 2000 and 2016, largely in wealthy neighborhoods.
- CNET reports on the renewable energy industry’s challenge of bolstering its perception in rural communities.
Journalism
- AV grantee Public Health Watch has been recognized for its reporting on a cluster of deadly lung disease cases among California countertop cutters. The Reynolds Center for Business Journalism at Arizona State University awarded Public Health Watch and its collaborators the gold medal in the regional/local category.
- Congratulations to AV grantees Arizona Luminaria, Block Club Chicago, Bridge Michigan, Montana Free Press, New Mexico in Depth, Outlier Media, VT Digger and Wisconsin Watch for their recognition by LION Publishers for excellence and transformational impact.
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In a pair of newly debuted short films, CatchLight pulls back the veil on a powerful photo essay featuring two women — dually enrolled in Medicare and Medicaid — as they navigate the daily challenges and benefits of health care in America. "In the U.S., people with the most significant care needs are often covered by two separate government healthcare programs, Medicare and Medicaid. These disjointed systems are difficult to maneuver and can lead to poorer health, great frustration, and high healthcare costs," CatchLight noted. The accompanying photo essay and extended interview by photographer Isadora Kosofsky provide an intimate and powerful portrait of life as dual-eligible enrollees. Watch here. |
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- NPR recently aired a segment covering the state of public defense in Oregon featuring Jon Mosher, Deputy Director of the Sixth Amendment Center (6AC). The segment highlights the struggles of public defenders in Oregon who face overwhelming caseloads that make it difficult for them to provide constitutionally required defense to indigent clients.
- Tangle hosted a podcast episode on fixing our broken elections, featuring an interview with Nick Troiano of AV grantee Unite America.
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On October 16-17, 2023, Arnold Ventures will partner with the Center for Justice and Human Dignity (CJHD) to present the " Rewriting the Sentence II Summit on Alternatives to Incarceration" in Washington, D.C. The Summit will convene judges, prosecutors, and other key stakeholders to expose participants to effective alternatives to incarceration and build sustained networks for their expansion throughout the country. Learn more and register here. |
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- She's not just any genius, Andrea Armstrong is a MacArthur genius. The Dr. Norman C. Francis Professor of Law at Loyola University, Armstrong is also the creator of Incarceration Transparency, a site holding the first publicly available database that tracks the deaths in every prison, jail and youth detention facility in Louisiana and South Carolina since 2015, and in Alabama since 2018. Take two minutes to hear her speak about her work and the critical importance of shining a light on people's lives — and deaths — behind bars.
- Dorothy Hoffner is proof that you’re never too old to have fun. At 104, Dorothy is aiming to become the world’s oldest skydiver.
- Afghans who fled the Taliban are adjusting to their new lives in America and finding community in a Houston sewing class.
- It's not too late to get your vote in for Fat Bear Week. Katmai National Park and Preserve in Alaska has a gallery of especially cute ones as well as a livecam.
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The National Collaborative on Gun Violence Research will be awarding more than $3 million in funding, provided by AV, to study extreme risk protection orders (ERPOs). Access the RFP here.
The Pretrial Justice team has released a request for proposals that will help inform and advance the field’s collective understanding of the policies and practices related to pretrial release decisions, pretrial release conditions, and pretrial services.
The Higher Education and Evidence-Based Policy teams have created a request for proposals for rigorous impact evaluations of programs and practices (“interventions”) to promote college success in the United States.
The Criminal Justice and Evidence-Based Policy teams at Arnold Ventures are teaming up to learn more about what works in criminal justice reform in an ongoing request for proposals for randomized controlled trials (RCTs) that will test programs and practices. There is no deadline for submissions.
The Evidence-Based Policy team invites grant applications to conduct randomized controlled trials (RCTs) of social programs in any area of U.S. policy. Details are here.
View our RFPs here.
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Have an evidence-based week,
– Torie
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Torie Ludwin leads digital, multimedia, and print branding projects for Arnold Ventures, including the Abstract.
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