What are the three branches of the federal government? It's a question nearly 75 percent of American adults cannot correctly answer. A lack of formal civic education could be part of the problem.
The CivXNow Coalition – a bipartisan group of 90 educational, philanthropic and good-government organizations – urged the legislatures in all 50 states on Wednesday to undertake a broad and ambitious program for bolstering young Americans' understanding of how representational democracies and governments work. While most states require some form of civics, the details vary widely, meaning that millions of students who may have learned adequate United States history may nonetheless lack the skills or understand the behavior necessary to participate as active citizens in adulthood.
An understanding of civics is widely understood to be a prerequisite for the sort of political participation that boosts faith in the system. The coalition proposed 10 items that each state should mandate in the cause of boosting civic education beyond the basics – understanding that the legislative, executive and judicial branches are the three parts of the federal system, for example. The most important ideas include:
- A semester of civics education for middle schoolers and one full year for high schoolers.
- The setting of precise targets for the number of students who are at least "proficient" on end-of-course civics exams.
- Requirements to assure that students in poor and minority communities get the same access to civic education as others.
- Professional development for civics instructors similar to that of math or reading teachers.
- Giving students opportunities to help govern their school systems in order to give them real-world exposure to civic activism.
"Our American democracy is at risk. Schools play a critical role in preparing young people as responsible and engaged members of our community. Yet, graduating students who know and care about our democracy has not been a priority for decades," said Louise Dubé, the executive director of iCivics, which founded CivXNow. "We see the results."
Fewer than a quarter of students were "proficient" in civics on the the 2014 National Assessment of Educational Progress, the most recent congressionally mandated test to measure how eighth graders perform on a variety of subjects. Black and Latino students scored even worse than their white peers.
The policy menu was crafted by a task force of policy makers and experts on civic education including David Skaggs, a former Democratic congressman from Colorado and now chairman of the board of the Office of Congressional Ethics.
The group says it will provide resources and support to state and local advocates who are trying to implement the suggested policies.
image of U.S. President Donald Trump is displayed on a digital billboard in Times Square in New York on April 8, 2026.
Trump is stuck between two realities. Neither serves the American people
Normally, I worry that events may overtake a column. But not so with the Iran war.
I don’t worry about running afoul of a headline or Truth Social post from the president because what is said about the situation is no longer very relevant to the reality.
On April 8, Nick Catoggio, my Dispatch colleague, dubbed an earlier stoppage with Iran “Schrödinger’s ceasefire.” This was a reference to the famous thought experiment by the physicist Erwin Schrödinger, who was trying to explain the weirdness of “superpositionality” in quantum physics. A cat in a box is both dead and alive at the same time until you open the box. Schrödinger meant to illustrate the absurdity of the idea that particles aren’t any one thing, but a “cloud of probabilities.”
The Trump administration is stuck in a word cloud of probabilities of his own making. The war is over. The war is on. The war isn’t a war. We have a deal, but we don’t have a deal, but we’re about to have a deal. We destroyed Iran’s military. No, we left it intact. We want regime change. No we don’t. We already accomplished it. We “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program a year ago. We had to go to war in February to prevent nuclear war. The Strait of Hormuz is open, closed, or something in-between. No deal without “unconditional surrender.” Let’s make a deal!
This everything-all-at-once vibe can be disorienting, particularly since most Americans didn’t have a war with Iran on their bingo cards until the shooting had already started. President Trump didn’t prepare the country or consult with Congress beforehand because he thought it would all be a smashing success in a matter of weeks.
The miscalculation that started it all: killing Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and much of Iran’s senior leadership, on the first day of the war. To “the great proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand,” Trump announced on Feb. 28. “When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations.”
I support regime change in Iran and shed no tears for Khamenei or his goons. But when you start a war by killing the regime’s top leaders, it’s not unreasonable for the remaining ones to conclude that you really intend regime change.
Khamenei was a murderous fanatic, but he was a fairly cautious one. He liked to threaten closing the Strait of Hormuz or attacking our regional allies, but he was reluctant to actually do it, fearing it would invite a regime change war. The mullahs and IRGC goons believed, not unreasonably, that if they lost their grip on power, they’d be lynched by the Iranian people they’ve brutalized for decades.
By starting with a regime change war, Trump removed any reason for the regime not to go for broke. When you have nothing to lose — particularly when you are a millenarian religious fanatic — a Persian Alamo strategy makes a lot of sense.
So Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz and attacked its neighbors.
But it turns out this wasn’t the Alamo. In the contest of wills, Trump blinked. The Iranian regime’s tolerance for punishment proved — so far — to be greater than Trump’s and that of our gulf allies. Militarily we could finish the job, but that would require ground troops and much greater economic turmoil. In a conflict Trump launched unilaterally without the prior support of Congress, NATO or the American people, Trump doesn’t have the political capital for that.
But that’s only half the problem. Trump wants the war over, but he doesn’t want to pay — militarily, economically, politically — what that would cost. So he wants to make a deal that ends it. But there is no deal available that wouldn’t come at an equally undesirable cost. Any deal that looks like what President Obama struck with the Iranians would be too embarrassing to bear. But the Iranians are convinced that they can get just such a deal, and they’re willing to drag things out as long as it takes.
The result: Trump’s in a box of his own making. He thinks he can talk his way out by simply asserting a reality that doesn’t exist. When the financial markets get nervous, he announces a breakthrough that is, at best, a possibility. When the Iranians agree to a deal that looks similar to one Obama might negotiate, Trump goes back to his threats.
It can’t go on forever. But I’m sure it’ll last until long after this column is forgotten.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.