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The Abstract
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> By Evan Mintz, Arnold Ventures
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I have always thought there was something special about July Fourth. Not just because of the fireworks and barbecues—but because of the date itself. The United States doesn’t celebrate its independence when the first bullets were fired in the Revolutionary War or when the Treaty of Paris was signed. We trace our nation’s founding back to an assertion of universal rights—the Declaration of Independence.
Or, as Margaret Thatcher succinctly put it: “Europe was created by history. America was created by philosophy.”
Of course, none of us should have any illusions about the perpetual gap between our nation’s history and our ideals. But neither should we be so cynical as to turn away from the belief that all people are created equal and endowed with certain inalienable rights, that the government exists to protect these rights, and that we have a right to change a failing government.
But the work is never easy. Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta put it well in her closing remarks at this week’s Washington Post Live event on public safety.
“We can't sit around and hope that democracy will just protect itself or that it's an inevitable system that is centering our country. Our democracy has always required work. ... [W]e are going to fight for this beautiful country and for the people and values that we hold dear.”
Whether ending gerrymandering, implementing ranked-choice voting, demanding accountable policing, or reforming the criminal justice system, outdated systems that may seem deeply rooted in history and tradition are never beyond the reach of a motivated, engaged people. But it requires hard work, smart policy, and an unwavering focus on universal rights as a North Star.
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Independence Day in Tense Times
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Democracy activists are busy these days. From ranked-choice voting to inclusive primaries, work is happening to protect and improve our democracy. As the Fourth of July approaches, a few of them reflect for AV about the wisdom and instruction still to be found in the Declaration of Independence.
What’s Happening: Serious-minded people are sounding the alarm that democracy is in peril, but these experts find comfort and inspiration in the centuries-old text. “When conditions fall short, we have the right to reevaluate,” said Lee Drutman, a political scientist at New America, a think tank that strives “to realize our nation's highest ideals.”
Why it Matters: The Declaration of Independence was not just a founding document. It continues to influence Americans’ relationship with their government. The revolutionary statement of “self-evident” truths planted the seeds for the ongoing struggle for individuals’ rights.
What’s Next: “It’s one of those moments of reevaluation and reform that seems to happen every 60 or 70 years or so in America,” Drutman said, pointing to past periods such as the Revolution, the Progressive Era of the early 20th century and the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. “I think we’re increasingly ripe for some sort of really, truly transformational change that makes American democracy more representative and inclusive.”
Read the story >
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A Whole Government Response to Gun Violence
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As midterm elections loom, the debate over public safety continues to descend into partisan rancor that needlessly pits calls for police reform and accountability against investing in law enforcement to reduce gun violence. The Council on Criminal Justice and Washington Post Live worked to cut through this false dichotomy this week by convening activists, experts, and law enforcement leaders.
What's Happening: On Tuesday, Washington Post Live hosted a series of panels on improving safety, strengthening police accountability, and increasing public trust. Walter Katz, vice president of criminal justice at Arnold Ventures, joined Linda Harllee Harper, director of gun violence prevention for the Office of the City Administrator in Washington, D.C., and Chico Tillmon, executive director of READI Chicago, to discuss how justice and safety are intertwined.
Why It Matters: Amid a spike in homicide rates, tragic mass shootings, and the Supreme Court striking down long-standing concealed carry license laws, policymakers are struggling to effectively reduce violence and build safe communities.
“It's a question of how we properly calibrate,” said Katz. “The best way to do that is by bringing together policymakers, community leaders, and law enforcement to collaborate together, truly assess the problem, and then apply the right interventions in the right places.”
What's Next: Cooperation between law enforcement and community violence intervention programs is proving successful in places like Washington, D.C. and Newark, and other cities should begin to follow their example.
“It shouldn't matter whether a mayor is, for example, a Democrat, and a governor is a Republican," Katz said. "It's [a problem] that should require a whole government response.”
Read the story >
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Experts Unveil Recommendations For 911 Systems
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Transform911 is looking at ways to modernize and improve the system that responds before the first responders — our nation's 911 call centers.
What's Happening: Transform911, an initiative led by the University of Chicago Health Lab to rethink the nation’s emergency response system, released a comprehensive policy blueprint to modernize and strengthen America’s 911 system and change behaviors of those who both implement and rely upon it.
Why It Matters: The nation’s 54-year-old 911 system currently functions through a patchwork of thousands of locally operated emergency communications centers, with oversight and support split across a maze of federal, state, and local agencies. The lack of common standards and robust federal support means that responses to calls are inconsistent.
What's Next: Transform911 has issued a list of specific recommendations, such as setting national standards for 911 training, technology, and data-sharing.
“It’s clear that the times call for the most comprehensive overhaul of the nation’s 911 system ever, to ensure that the right professional responds to an emergency call at the right time,” said S. Rebecca Neusteter Ph.D., executive director of the University of Chicago Health Lab and principal investigator of Transform911.
Read the story >
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The Rise of Nonprofit News
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By Rhiannon Collette, journalism grants manager
An alarming study circulating this week found that the United States has been losing 1-2 newspapers per week since 2004. The disappearance of independent journalism — local news especially — has been linked to declines in voter participation, rise in government waste, and an increase in polarization. Yet amid the ashes of a commercial model dependent upon clicks, advertising, and paywalls has emerged a new nonprofit model, untethered from these financial pressures, racing to fill the gaps.
What's happening: This new wave of mostly small to midsized, hyper-focused, independent, nonprofits began to take off in 2015 as the local news crisis came into sharper focus. Today, there are 367 newsrooms that are members of the Institute for Nonprofit News, an organization that supports nonprofit news outlets. These digital nonprofit newsrooms are distinctly different from their for-profit counterparts. They survive on diverse revenue streams that include large philanthropic support from organizations like Arnold Ventures and others, as well as revenue from readers who want to contribute to their mission. Nearly all of these organizations provide their content for free to readers and to other news organizations who want to republish their articles, making their journalism more accessible to a wide swath of readers.
“We’ve set this up assuming that (readers) know good work, they know what they are missing because local newspapers don’t have the bandwidth to cover it, and if we show them that we’re producing that they’ll respond," said Christopher Baxter, executive director and founding editor of Spotlight PA, an independent nonprofit newsroom focused on covering Pennsylvania state government.
Why it matters: As commercial journalism continues its freefall, the rapid rise of independent nonprofit journalism provides optimism about an alternative path forward to sustain independent reporting. “Where things are going with these nonprofit newsrooms is really interesting," said Sue Cross, a former Associated Press reporter who is now executive director of INN. “The growth has actually accelerated over the past three years, and we expect that we’re going to see another wave of growth soon.”
Read the story >
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Data Dive:
Sick and Struggling to Pay
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$440 Billion
Dual-eligible individuals– the more than 12 million people who qualify for Medicare and Medicaid – account for a disproportionate share of those programs’ annual spending. Despite higher spending, dual-eligible individuals are 40% less likely than their Medicare-only counterparts to report excellent or very good health.
The Advancing Integration in Medicare and Medicaid Act (AIM) (S.4264) would require every state to have a plan to integrate its Medicaid program with the Medicare program for the people that are simultaneously enrolled in both, the so-called dual-eligible population.
Arnold Ventures along with 20 partners recently sent a letter to the Chairs of the Senate Finance and House Energy and Commerce Committee urging them to pass the bill.
“This bill marks an important step forward in the effort to ensure that every dual-eligible individual has access to a coverage option that integrates their Medicare and Medicaid coverage,” said Arielle Mir, vice president of the Complex Care team. “Today, fewer than 50% of dual-eligible individuals even have access to a meaningfully integrated coverage option.”
Read: AV and Partners Support Passage of the Advancing Integration in Medicare and Medicaid Act
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University of Pennsylvania law professor Kimberly Kessler Ferzan, who argues that courts need to end the routine and widespread practice of applying "time served" pretrial to a person's sentence. The practice of time served was widely adopted in the 1960s and '70s in an attempt to avoid disparate treatment between the wealthy, who could afford to pay cash bail, and the poor, who could not. However, this model does nothing to help anyone charged with a crime who is poor and later found innocent. She proposes that the criminal justice system compensate people for any time they unjustly spend in jail.
"If we had to actually pay for our decisions, we’d be more precise with our detention standards," Ferzan says.
Read the Q&A >
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Criminal Justice
Health
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Via a scoop in The Washington Post this week, historic legislation to lower the prices of prescription drugs is making headway.
“After years of effort, passing this legislation will fulfill a promise made to put the interests of taxpayers, employers, and patients over those who profit from excessive drug prices. It’s time to finish the job,” Mark E. Miller, the EVP of Health Care for Arnold Ventures, said in response to the news.
Read: AV’s statement here.
- “We support managed care as an option, we do not support overpaying for that option.” – Miller said in a statement in advance of a hearing called to explore oversight of Medicare Advantage plans.
Read: AV’s statement here and letter to leadership here
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Tens of millions of people carry medical debt, including an Arizona man denied care because he owed his doctor $100. Read more in the Kaiser Health News-NPR series Diagnosis Debt.
Related: Less Money in Our Wallets and Deeper in Debt
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Via Modern Healthcare, CMS approved Colorado’s 1332 waiver, which will allow the state to stand up its public option program in a way that maximizes the cost containment mechanisms in the policy, improving the program’s affordability.
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Via The Washington Post, mega health systems like North Carolina-based Atrium Health accepted $617 million in government COVID relief and raked in more than a billion dollars in 2021, all while rural hospitals struggled to make payroll.
Contraceptive Choice and Access
Journalism
- AV grantee Open Campus, a nonprofit newsroom covering higher education, examines the ongoing challenges of providing critically important internet access to children in rural areas.
Higher Education
- Shelbe Klebs at Third Way explains the Cohort Default Rate, a tool to look at school accountability via percentages of student loan defaults, how the student loan pause renders it useless, and how it could be reinvented. The National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators (NASFAA) offers additional commentary as well.
- Chris Quintana at USA Today reports on the Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools (ACICS), which is appealing the U.S. Department of Education’s attempt to limit its power to accredit schools like Corinthian Colleges and ITT Tech, both of which defrauded hundreds of thousands of students.
Related: Arnold Ventures’ Statement on the Recommendation to Strip ACICS of its Certification as an Accreditor
- The Chronicle of Higher Education interviews Jordan Matsudaira, deputy under-secretary and now the first chief economist at the U.S. Department of Education. With the Ed Department’s interest in economic outcomes in policy, Matsudaira and his team will analyze evidence-based policies that support students and borrowers.
- The U.S. Department of Education agrees to cancel $6 billion in debt for another 200,000 student loan borrowers, reports CNBC, due to a lawsuit brought by the Project on Predatory Student Lending in 2019.
Related: Student Debt: Why Is It Out of Control?
- Sharing Stories: Evidence in Action Across the Country recently published on Evaluation.gov highlighted the results from an AV Evidence-Based Policy-funded Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT) of Bottom Line.
Immigration
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- Life behind bars is dangerous not only for incarcerated people, but also for the people who work in these facilities. Yet few across the political spectrum talk about the hazardous working conditions for correctional staff. To remedy the unjust taboo, One Voice United assembled the first-ever Blue Ribbon Commission on correctional staff wellness. In this video, The Secret Is Out, officers, staff, and a distinguished group of Commissioners, including AV's Vice President of Criminal Justice Julie James, come together to shed light on a crisis that has largely gone unnoticed outside the four walls.
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This eerie, beautiful image of two coyotes
(on a twilight date?) by Andrew Interisano, an amateur photographer, won the inaugural Picfair Urban Wildlife Photography Award.
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The gorgeous, floppy, jowly, brilliant Trumpet was the first bloodhound to win the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show.
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With our usual Abstract pilot, Stephanie Getman, away this week, we'd be remiss if we didn't note Beyonce's new single that recently dropped. It's a dance club throwback earworm with a message that 9-to-5ers everywhere can take to heart.
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Our colleague is headed here next weekend. Don't be jealous, non-Texas people!
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Have an evidence-based week,
– Evan
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