Free Speech For People (FSFP) works to renew our democracy and our United States Constitution for 'we the people'. Founded on the day of the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling, FSFP envisions a democratic process in which all people have an equal voice and an equal vote. FSFP is a leading force in the country for defending our Constitution and reclaiming the basic promise of democracy and American self-government: of, by, and for the people. FSFP advocates for a new constitutional amendment to limit campaign spending and to repeal the doctrine of corporate personhood.
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Nearly 40% of Maryland newspapers question whether they will be able to operate without more funding within the next two years.
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MD Bill To Support Local News Appears Unlikely To Pass This Session
Apr 24, 2026
As Maryland’s legislative session winds down, a bill in the General Assembly intended to support local newspapers across the state appears unlikely to pass.
The Local Newspapers for Maryland Communities Act would have required the state government to spend 50% of their print and digital advertising budget on local outlets in the state. The bill does not favor any particular news outlets, rather stipulating that organizations must produce original local content and have at least one reporter in or around Maryland.
Daniel Trielli, an assistant professor of media and democracy at the University of Maryland, said that type of support has been done in many communities.
"It might seem like a weird mechanism to support local news," he said, "but the reality is that this is a very traditional way that societies and communities have found, throughout history and throughout many countries, to support local news."
Maryland counties each have at least one newspaper, according to a 2025 report by the Northwestern University Local News Initiative. Nine Maryland counties, though, only have one news outlet covering their respective regions.
Trielli said the financial outlook for local newspapers across the state and country is dire. A 2024 report from the University of Maryland at College Park found nearly 40% of local publications in the state weren’t confident they could continue operating in two years without increased revenue.
"Often it is the case that local news is surviving by very little day by day," he said. "Just a little boost in their finances can make a real big difference in the survival of these news organizations."
Similar policies have been tried at the municipal level in major cities. New York City allocated more than $70 million over the first five years of its program.
MD Bill To Support Local News Appears Unlikely To Pass This Session was originally published by The Public News Service and is republished with permission.
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Formerly incarcerated leaders are driving criminal justice reform, from Clean Slate laws to community healing—proving that lived experience is key to safer, stronger communities.
Getty Images, Adene Sanchez
Second Chance Month: What’s Possible When Formerly Incarcerated People Lead
Apr 23, 2026
As a formerly incarcerated person, Second Chance Month is personal. For generations, folks directly impacted by our criminal justice system have driven movements for reform in America. Our determination has pushed this country closer to its ideals of a free and fair democracy, even when its systems have failed us. From a ballot measure campaign in Florida that restored voting rights to nearly 1.4 million people with felony convictions to a national “Ban the Box” movement that encouraged employers to remove arrest history questions from job applications for fair employment practices, formerly incarcerated people have proven that we can make history. But far too often, people like me are excluded from conversations on public safety policies. All of us want to live in safe, just, and prosperous communities—but that’s only possible if we center the leadership of those most impacted by our criminal justice system, and advance policies that prioritize redemption over retribution.
My incarceration became a turning point in my life, forcing me to reimagine my purpose and the kind of man I wanted to become. Today, I lead a Community Healing Resource Center in Morgan Park, where I convene a men’s group for people affected by gun violence and trauma. My work is rooted in a truth I’ve lived, and it’s why leaders like me matter: when we are given the chance to lead, we don’t just rebuild our own lives—we strengthen entire neighborhoods.
Recent legislation passed in my home state of Illinois provides a roadmap for what is possible when formerly incarcerated people are given the opportunity to lead. Last year, after years of lobbying, the state legislature passed the passage of the Clean Slate Act, which automatically clears old criminal records and removes barriers to jobs, housing, and education. At the heart of the campaign for Clean Slate were leaders whose lives had been touched by the injustices of our criminal justice system.
Organizations like my own, Live Free Illinois, brought both formerly incarcerated people and organizers whose family members had faced incarceration together for near-daily strategy sessions, organized listening sessions, expanded coalitions, and engaged directly with those whose lives would be changed by this policy. We hosted teach-ins, organized canvasses, led peace pop-ups, and mobilized hundreds to take action through witness slips and outreach efforts. We featured stories like mine every step of the way, ensuring lawmakers understood the real human cost of outdated record‑keeping laws. It was the perspectives of formerly incarcerated people that shaped and protected the storytelling of this movement, ensuring that system-impacted leaders spoke from an authentic place of truth, dignity, and power—not surface-level, feel-good narratives.
What we achieved in Illinois is part of a much longer tradition. Directly impacted leaders have always been at the forefront of efforts to transform public safety and advance justice. Their expertise comes not from theory, but from navigating and surviving the very systems we seek to change. And it shows that when people like me are given a real opportunity to lead, we can implement meaningful public safety reforms like Clean Slate that benefit our economy, disrupt cycles of crime and violence, and ensure every Illinoisian can contribute to our state.
This is the deeper lesson of Second Chance Month. It’s not simply about celebrating individual transformation. It’s about recognizing that our communities are safer and more stable when people with lived experience shape the policies that govern reentry, public safety, and justice.
Yet our leadership is still routinely undervalued or underfunded. Too many decision‑making spaces exclude the very people who understand the consequences of our laws most intimately. That must change. That means funding community-rooted organizing, supporting coalitions that center the voices of those most impacted by harm, including gun violence and mass incarceration, and recognizing that directly impacted leaders are not just storytellers—they are decision makers who should shape what comes next.
If we want a justice system that actually delivers justice, we need to invest in the leaders who have been doing the work for decades. Illinois showed what’s possible when we do. The question for Second Chance Month is whether the rest of the country is ready to follow the same path.
Marvin Treadwell is a Decarceration Fellow with Live Free Illinois. He credits his love of chess for his aptitude in community organizing strategy.
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An in-depth analysis of the U.S. economy reveals how federal budget priorities—shifting toward defense spending and away from domestic programs—are quietly increasing financial pressure on middle-class families despite strong headline numbers.
Getty Images, Maskot
The Math Isn’t Working: More for War, Less for America’s Future
Apr 23, 2026
On paper, the economy’s numbers look robust. But for many Americans, the math isn’t working.
A family like Mike and Lisa Hernandez, a middle-class couple in suburban St. Louis, is doing everything right. He manages a warehouse. She works part-time as a dental assistant. They have employer-sponsored insurance, a new house, and two kids. They’re living the American dream.
That is, until a medical issue hits, such as a surgery, a chronic condition, or an unexpected trip to the emergency room. Even with insurance, they are left with thousands of dollars in out-of-pocket costs. The choices are stark: delay care, take on significant debt, or pare back spending in an already stressed household budget.
These trade-offs don’t appear in federal budget tables. But they are shaped by them.
At first glance, the federal budget tells a very different story. The indicators are moving in a positive direction. The deficit has edged down. Revenues are up. It appears Washington is holding the line economically.
But that stability is misleading; It masks a deeper shift.
The pressures facing households like the Hernandez family are not disconnected from federal policy. They reflect a dramatic shift in how the government raises money and where it chooses to spend it.
That shift is now explicit. The administration’s latest budget proposal calls for roughly $1.5 trillion in defense spending alongside deep cuts to domestic programs, targeting areas such as education, housing, and health-related initiatives.
The Trump administration has effectively abandoned efforts to shrink the deficit. Instead, it is reshaping what government does, shifting resources toward the military and immigration enforcement while pulling back from education, health care, and social support.
This is not fiscal discipline. It is fiscal sleight-of-hand—a shell game with the nation’s economy.
The Illusion of Improvement
The numbers, for now, appear to reinforce the narrative of a stable, growing economy.
Federal revenues have risen, helping to narrow the deficit modestly. But those gains are driven by factors that are unlikely to hold.
A surge in capital gains has boosted tax receipts, fueled by a strong stock market over the past two years. As investors cash out, they generate taxable income, temporarily swelling federal revenues. But markets do not move in one direction indefinitely. The law of gravity applies to markets as it does elsewhere. If—and when—momentum slows or reverses, so too will the revenue.
Tariffs have also played a role. The administration has relied on import duties as a substitute for more traditional sources of revenue, projecting trillions in collections over the next decade. But those projections rely on over-optimistic assumptions about trade flows and enforcement, and they rest on policies that will likely be reversed by future administrations and have already been challenged in court.
Tariffs cannot replace income taxes, even under favorable conditions. The numbers simply do not add up. The United States does not import enough goods to generate that level of revenue without imposing costs that ripple through the broader economy.
Meanwhile, the costs of last year’s sweeping tax cuts are only beginning to take effect. Many of the most expensive provisions were delayed, masking their full impact on the deficit. As those costs phase in, the gap between revenue and spending will widen again.
Strip away these temporary supports, and the underlying picture becomes crystal clear: a structurally high deficit, driven by permanent tax cuts and rising spending commitments.
The shell game works—until it doesn’t.
A Government Reoriented
While the deficit hasn’t changed much, the purpose of federal spending has changed dramatically.
Trump’s latest budget proposal makes that shift unmistakable. It calls for a dramatic increase in defense spending—roughly $1.5 trillion—paired with deep reductions in nondefense programs. The cuts target areas that shape long-term economic security: education, housing, public health, and environmental programs.
This is an all-guns, no-butter budget. There is no trimming at the margins. It is a stark redefinition of federal priorities.
In the opening phase of the war in Iran, the United States committed billions in a matter of days to military operations and deployment. That pace of spending stands in sharp contrast to domestic programs, where funding has been constrained and often reduced over time.
The contrast is structural: rapid, large-scale funding for military action alongside sustained pressure to reduce domestic investment.
War spending arrives immediately and in full. Cuts to health and education accumulate slowly—but their effects last longer.
The consequences are uneven. Households like the Hernandez family face rising costs and reduced support. At the same time, defense contractors and security-linked industries see increased investment and opportunity. This is where rapid growth offsets slow or no growth elsewhere in the economy.
That imbalance is not accidental. It reflects a deliberate shift in what the federal government prioritizes and who it is designed to serve.
Not Smaller Government—Different Government
One of the most persistent claims surrounding the administration’s budget is that it represents a move toward smaller government.
It does not.
Despite headline-grabbing cuts and workforce reductions, overall federal spending remains high. Many proposed domestic cuts have failed to gain traction in Congress, and the largest drivers of long-term spending—Social Security and Medicare—have been left untouched.
What has changed is not the size of government, but its function.
Resources are being reallocated away from programs designed to support long-term economic mobility and social stability, and toward those tied to national power, security, and enforcement.
This is an important distinction.
A government can remain large while becoming less fair, less developmental, and less oriented toward broad-based growth. It can spend heavily while investing less in the conditions that allow households like the Hernandez family to remain economically secure.
In that sense, the current budget is not reducing the government’s role in the economy. It is narrowing it by concentrating public resources in areas that project power, while scaling back those that build opportunity.
The result is a different kind of state: one that spends aggressively, but less on the foundations of long-term prosperity.
Conclusion
For now, the numbers suggest stability, even growth. But that appearance rests on temporary supports, optimistic assumptions, and a budgeting process that is becoming less transparent and less accountable.
What matters more is the direction of policy beneath those numbers. The current budget does not meaningfully alter the nation’s fiscal trajectory; instead, it redirects federal resources toward military expansion and enforcement while backing away from investments that shape long-term economic security.
Households like the Hernandez family do not experience the federal budget as a set of aggregate figures. They experience it in the choices they are forced to make when rising costs collide with shrinking supports and the margin for absorbing risk grows thinner.
The federal budget increasingly reflects a different set of priorities. One that places greater emphasis on projecting power than on the economic foundations of broad-based prosperity. The math, in other words, still adds up, but what it adds up to is changing, but not to the benefit of middle-class families like the Hernandezes.
Robert Cropf is a Professor of Political Science at Saint Louis University.
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Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band perform during Land of Hope & Dreams American Tour at Target Center on March 31, 2026 in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
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It’s All About Soul — And the Future of American Democracy
Apr 23, 2026
American democracy is experiencing an unparalleled stress test. The headlines churn, the rhetoric hardens, and the daily spectacle can make it feel as if the country is losing its footing. The deeper danger, many observers note, isn’t simply that a political figure says outrageous things — it’s that the public grows accustomed to them. When shock becomes routine, the unacceptable becomes normalized. And once that happens, the standards that define who we are as a nation begin to erode.
When we get used to being shocked, things that should be unacceptable start to seem normal. When that happens, the values that shape our nation begin to fade.
Our democracy relies not just on laws and institutions, but on our shared effort to recognize from show, real leadership from force, and order from chaos. These aren’t just big ideas—it defines who we are as a people.
More than ever, we must hold fast to our core values—truth, dignity, and a shared belief in the Constitution. Without that grounding, political power can be used for advantage rather than stewardship, weakening the democratic principles that sustain us. This could mean checking facts before sharing them, speaking up when someone twists the truth, or encouraging fair and respectful conversations, even when it’s hard. Democracy needs us to be brave and ethical, not just in public, but in small, everyday ways that remind us, and those around us, of who we want to be.
We’ve faced tough times before, and during those moments, music has often helped us remember what matters most. Not just protest songs or campaign tunes, but the lasting pieces that remind us of what’s left when everything else is gone.
- Simon & Garfunkel’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water” is one of those songs. It isn’t about politics; it’s about the responsibility to help steady each other when the world feels unstable. Its gentle promise, “I will lay me down,” reminds us that integrity starts with being there for one another, especially in hard times.
- Bruce Springsteen’s “The Rising” shares a similar message. Written after 9/11, it honors resilience and civic courage. The song shows that a nation’s strength isn’t about bravado, but about ordinary people choosing to rebuild with dignity and determination. It urges us to rise above fear and cynicism, not give in to them.
- Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song” goes even further, asking us to break free from the mental traps that harm public life—like resentment, hopelessness, and thinking things can’t improve. Marley’s call to “emancipate yourselves from mental slavery” isn’t about politics; it’s about doing what’s right. It’s about finding the inner freedom that lets us choose decency over division.
- Bill Withers’ “Lean on Me” reminds us that democracy is really about trust. It works only when we believe in each other enough to lean and to let others lean on us. When trust fades, the system weakens. When trust grows, the country gets stronger too.
Then there’s Billy Joel’s “All About Soul.” Joel says the song is about the inner strength people rely on when everything falls apart. The song describes a place where “many have fallen” and “some still survive,” and says that real survival depends on more than just being tough. You might need to be “hard as the rock in that old rock ’n’ roll,” but that’s only part of it. What matters most, Joel writes, is the part “you know in your heart.” The part that lasts. The part that is all about the soul.
This isn’t just a personal truth; it’s about the soul of our nation. Just as people rely on honesty, integrity, humility, and a commitment to truth even when it’s hard, our democracy needs those same qualities.
Power and policy can’t replace what a nation loses when it lets its soul slip away.
These songs last because they remind us that character isn’t a luxury—it’s the foundation.
In these chaotic times, these songs give us a clear and urgent message. Only by choosing courage, honesty, and care for each other, again and again, can we protect what matters most.
Now is the time to stand up for the values that define us, so the soul of our democracy lasts. It’s time to “come on up for the rising” and meet this moment with courage.
David Nevins is the publisher of The Fulcrum and co-founder and board chairman of the Bridge Alliance Education Fund.
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