Garson is legal counsel and chief of staff for the Bridge Alliance, which houses The Fulcrum.
A couple of weeks ago, on June 12, I watched Sachi Bajaj announce VoteAmerica as a winner of the 5th American Civic Collaboration Awards. It was the culmination of six months of hard work by the Bridge Alliance’s talented young intern (who was a college freshman when she joined us).
In many ways, Sachi’s work to revive the Civvys (which were last awarded in 2020) were worthy of a Civvy. At the heart of the award is the idea that together we can make a greater impact than we could ever make as individuals. That requires learning from each other and setting aside our egos for the greater good.
Sachi most certainly did that by:
- Following and adapting the template that Caroline Klibanoff of Made By Us created when she ran the Civvys.
- Using all of the Bridge Alliance’s communications tools to solicit a record-breaking number of nominations.
- Bringing the Bridge Alliance team together to winnow the nominees to 17 finalists.
- Recruiting leaders from throughout the democracy movement to choose winners among the finalists.
- Working with the Made By Us team to present the Civvys at the kickoff event for the first ever Civic Season in Atlanta.
Fortunately for the actual nominees, the Civvys can’t win a Civvy. Instead, we were treated to the inspiring stories of VoteAmerica (National category), Voters First Virginia (Local) and Kentucky YMCA Youth Association (Youth), as well as a touching message from Ellen Perry – the wife of Lifetime Achievement Award winner Rob Stein.
At a time when our nation’s future feels less certain than it has in decades, each of these organizations shows us that there is a growing segment of the American public ready and able to take our power back.
And the key word is “our,” as in all of us as Americans.
VoteAmerica is making it easier for every American to be an agent of change by incorporating civic engagement into our everyday lives. Whenever someone checks their credit score, files their taxes, changes their home address, or registers for classes, vital information about voter registration, vote-by-mail, early voting, voter ID, and more can be built directly into the platform’s user experience. More than 4 million Americans used VoteAmerica’s services in 2020 alone.
Voters First Virginia proved that we can make popular voting reforms happen, including in contested states like Virginia. They successfully led bipartisan coalitions that 1) instituted a citizen-led redistricting commission, 2) created a ranked-choice voting pilot, 3) made absentee voting improvements and 4) increased access to party nominating processes. The VFV model is now being used in Colorado and Arizona.
The Kentucky YMCA Youth Association is bringing together young people from throughout the Bluegrass State. The association has impacted tens of thousands of young men and women from nearly all of Kentucky’s 120 counties, and has sent a message by welcoming people of all backgrounds and experiences to its programs. Given the national footprint of the YMCA community, it isn’t hard to envision the team’s approach catching on across the country.
Finally, Rob Stein’s death was mourned throughout our movement. He helped set the tone for the democracy movement, and his positive impact will be felt for generations to come. When we received news of his passing, we knew we had to honor him, which we did with the first ever Lifetime Achievement Award.
As we honor and celebrate these incredible individuals and organizations, it’s important to remember why we’re doing this, and why the Bridge Alliance is a driving force behind two honors programs (the Civvys and the Democracy Awards). These award ceremonies provide roadmaps for success. By broadcasting the winners to a national audience, we are hoping to inspire people across the country to think big and understand that, together, we can help our beloved America better reflect the values and aspirations of we the people.
And so, as I watched Sachi leave the podium to catch a flight back home, I remembered that what we were doing that day wasn’t a vanity project. All of our work at the Bridge Alliance is driven by the idea that Americans can and will take back their power, and that young leaders like Sachi will be at the forefront of that effort in the years and decades ahead. The Civvys provide a piece of the map that they will use to get us there.
A view of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on June 25, 2026. President Donald Trump jolted Republicans during a fiery appearance at the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, scrapping a housing bill signing ceremony and clashing behind closed doors with a party rebel who challenged him over the Iran war. Trump had been expected to sign the bipartisan housing.
Only Trump doesn’t care about housing
It was August 15, 2024. Then candidate Donald Trump stepped out of his Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club’s columned clubhouse to a gaggle of reporters. He was flanked by tables of groceries and signs showing the rising cost of food. Also on one of the tables was a dollhouse, meant to represent the equally alarming rise in housing prices.
It was a speech about the economy, the single most important issue of the 2024 election cycle, full of promises that went right to the heart of Americans’ anxieties. While former President Joe Biden and then Vice President Kamala Harris were contorting themselves to posture a good economy that just needed more time to recover from the pandemic, Trump was preying on voters’ very real fears of unaffordable gas, groceries, and homes. It was obviously a winning message.
In that speech, Trump promised, “We’re going to open up tracts of federal land for housing construction. We desperately need housing for people who can’t afford what’s going on now.”
As of mid-2023, there had been a housing shortage of nearly four million homes, according to the National Association of Realtors. Americans all over the country were either priced out of buying new homes due to low inventory, trapped in their existing homes by sky-high mortgage rates, or facing exorbitant rent hikes thanks to corporate investors buying up rental properties. Americans needed help, and Trump promised it.
Cut to March of 2026, when Trump reportedly told House Speaker Mike Johnson, “No one gives a sh*t about housing.”
That kind of thinking may explain why Trump this week suddenly announced he was canceling a signing ceremony for the bipartisan “21st Century ROAD to Housing Act,” a housing bill co-sponsored by Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Tim Scott that passed the House 358-32 and was approved in the Senate on Monday.
Trump instead demanded Congress pass the SAVE America Act, his controversial election grievance bill that doesn’t have enough Republican support to get passed in the Senate.
It’s just the latest in a line of policy self-owns where Trump has seemingly intentionally made life more difficult for Republicans hoping to keep their majority. Despite midterm elections occurring in the midst of a blistering economy and an unpopular war, they were surely hoping the housing bill would give them something — anything — to brag about when they returned home to their districts.
And very much to the contrary, Americans do give a sh*t about housing. According to a recent survey by the Bipartisan Policy Center, a whopping 79% say the cost of housing is extremely or very important to them. Eighty-three percent say Congress should take action on the issue — like it just did. Eighty-nine percent say the House and Senate need to work together to pass affordable housing legislation — like they just did. And 63% say they would be more likely to vote for a lawmaker if they helped pass legislation to build more affordable homes and lower housing costs — like they just did.
There aren’t many issues that unite Americans like housing does, and very few bipartisan policy wins Congress can point to, and yet, Trump is holding that bill hostage in order to get his pet project — which doesn’t even have the support of his own party — pushed through.
If you’re trying to make sense of something so nonsensical, as I’m sure many Republican lawmakers are, it’s certainly sad but not actually all that complicated. Trump said what he needed to get reelected and then promptly abandoned his promises in order to pursue his own self-interests, even if those interests are bad for Republicans and bad for voters.
That’s just the kind of guy he is.
S.E. Cupp is the host of "S.E. Cupp Unfiltered" on CNN.