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The Iran War’s Price Tag: Billions Lost While Americans Go Without

The Iran War’s Price Tag: Billions Lost While Americans Go Without

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Kick off 2025 at the ‘Faith in Democracy’ vigil

American flags fly with a beautiful bright blue sky
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David L. Nevins
By David L. NevinsDec 25, 2024
David L. Nevins
David L. Nevins serves as publisher of The Fulcrum. Additionally, Nevins serves as co-founder and Board Chairman of the Bridge Alliance. Nevins brings business acumen, vision and a tireless this-must-and-can-be-done zeal to the burgeoning movement to bridge divides to transform the political process. As a business leader, Nevins excels at building bridges between people and organizations from the right, left and center for civilized conversation and then action. He co-founded the Bridge Alliance because, as he says, “No matter how well managed and how well funded anyone organization is, significant political reform will not happen without an alliance to further collaborative interactions. Together we can and will raise the collective impact of all.” He is a member of the Aspen Institute Society of Fellows, with a focus on the Aspen Rodel Fellowship in Public Leadership, he established and continues to work with The Nevins Democracy Leaders program at Penn State University. Nevins graduated with honors in economics from Penn State in 1969 and received an M.B.A. in finance from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania in 1971.
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Every year during the holiday season, The Fulcrum publishes stories that reflect themes of the holiday season, with universal messages that are central to the holiday spirit — messages of love, kindness, hope and generosity that are universal values to peoples of all cultures and backgrounds.

This season is no different. On this Christmas day we have a special announcement: The fourth annual Faith in Democracy interfaith vigil will take place Jan. 5 on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. It will be led by the Franciscan Action Network, Sojourners, Faith in Peace Concerts, the Leadership Conference of Women Religious and many other partners that will bring together faith leaders and believers from a variety of traditions, all speaking from sacred texts that guide us to protect the rights of all and to resolve our differences without violence.

In the United States, our way of doing that is through a properly functioning and fully representative democracy.

You can join the vigil live and or on a livestream. Hear inspirational music and interfaith messages that unify Americans by emphasizing a strong commitment to, and concerns about, our democracy and our freedoms at this critical juncture.

“We believe that people of faith can be uniters, not dividers. We are relieved that the elections of 2024 have been accepted as free and fair. But we have real concerns about democracy, justice and freedom in America at this juncture. For our country to heal and unite, we must never forget what happened here four years ago, and we must hold those responsible accountable,” said David Searby, project director of Faith in Peace Concerts.

Franciscan Action Network Executive Director Michele Dunne said: “As Franciscans, we are called to act as peacemakers and bridge-builders as well as advocates, but not at the expense of justice. The legacy of January 6 continues to divide Americans and create concern about the health of our democracy as well as our ability to resolve political differences without violence.”

The Faith In Democracy vigil will take place Sunday, Jan. 5, 2025, at 3:30 p.m. ET on Seventh Street at the center of the National Mall between Jefferson Drive and Madison Drive, live and online. Organizers seek to flip the script on Jan. 6 to create a day of continual unity behind democracy, justice and peace. Let's come together to pray for democracy, peace, and unity as our newly elected officials take office.

Register to attend in person or via livestream.

Nevins is co-publisher of The Fulcrum and co-founder and board chairman of the Bridge Alliance Education Fund.


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Trump’s Anti-Latino Racism is a Major Liability for Democracy

Donald Trump’s second administration has fully clarified Latinos’ racial position in America: our ethnic group’s labor, culture, and aspirations are too much for his supporters to stomach. The Latino presence in America triggers too many uneasy questions (are they White?), too many doubts (are they really American?), and too much resentment (why are they doing better than me?).

Trump’s targeted deportations of undocumented Latinos, unwarranted arrests of Latino citizens, and heightened ICE presence in Latino neighborhoods address these worries by lumping Latinos with Black people. Simply put, we have become yet another visible population that America socially stigmatizes, economically exploits, and politically terrorizes because aggrieved White adults want to preserve their rank as our nation’s premier racial group. The cumulative impacts are serious: just yesterday, an international panel of investigators on human rights and racism, backed by the U.N., found that such actions have resulted in “grave human rights violations.”

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Earlier this year, the Bridge Alliance and the National Academy of Public Administration launched the Fellows for Democracy and Public Service Initiative to strengthen the country's civic foundations. This fellowship unites the Academy’s distinguished experts with the Bridge Alliance’s cross‑sector ecosystem to elevate distributed leadership throughout the democracy reform landscape. Instead of relying on traditional, top‑down models, the program builds leadership ecosystems: spaces where people share expertise, prioritize collaboration, and use public‑facing storytelling to renew trust in democratic institutions. Each fellow grounds their work in one of six core sectors essential to a thriving democratic republic.

Recently, I interviewed Joel Gurin, who founded and now leads the Center for Open Data Enterprise (CODE) and wrote Open Data Now. Before launching CODE in 2015, he chaired the White House Task Force on Smart Disclosure, which studied how open government data can improve consumer markets. He also led as Chief of the Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau at the Federal Communications Commission and spent over a decade at Consumer Reports.

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To this retired New York State judge, all hell seems to have broken loose in our federal government. Congress lies dormant when it is not enabling the chief executive’s misuse and personal acquisition of federal funds, and, notwithstanding its recent tariffs ruling, a majority of the Supreme Court generally rubber-stamps the administration’s actions through opaque “shadow docket” rulings. In doing so, SCOTUS abdicates its role as an independent check.

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Bravado Isn’t a Strategy: Why the Iran War Has No Endgame

People clear rubble in a house in the Beryanak District after it was damaged by missile attacks two days before, on March 15, 2026 in Tehran, Iran. The United States and Israel continued their joint attack on Iran that began on February 28. Iran retaliated by firing waves of missiles and drones at Israel, and targeting U.S. allies in the region.

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Bravado Isn’t a Strategy: Why the Iran War Has No Endgame

Most of what we have heard from the administration as it pertains to the Iran War is swagger and bro-talk. A few days into the war, the White House released a social media video that combined footage of the bombardment with clips from video games. Not long after, it released a second video, titled “Justice the American Way,” that mixed images of the U.S. military with scenes from movies like Gladiator and Top Gun Maverick.

Speaking to reporters at the Pentagon, War Secretary Pete Hegseth boasted of “death and destruction from the sky all day long.” “They are toast, and they know it,” he said. “This was never meant to be a fair fight... we are punching them while they’re down.”

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