Meeker is the director of special initiatives for the Popvox Foundation. Harris is a member of the organization’s board.
With the passage of the fiscal 2023 omnibus appropriations bill and a wave of congressional press releases touting new spending in lawmakers’ states and districts, it is official: “Earmarks” are back.
The decades-old practice of members of Congress securing money for local projects has been reformed and reinstated after a 10-year ban. The new system limits recipients of “congressionally directed spending” to nonprofits or government entities and the maximum amount available to less than 1 percent of discretionary spending. New requirements prohibit any connection with lawmakers or their families, prioritize community input, and mandate disclosure and transparency at every step — as recommended by bipartisan organizations, congressional experts and the House Select Committee on Modernization.
The new program was announced last year as the appropriations process began, giving congressional offices a very short window to share information about the opportunity to apply for funding and set up their systems for receiving inquiries. Despite this, 332 House members and 64 senators submitted requests in the fiscal 2023 cycle, and the vast majority made it into the final bill.
With the bipartisan success of the first year of “Earmarks 2.0” and longer lead time for getting the word out, it is likely that many more eligible organizations and governments will submit projects for consideration this year. Is earmarked funding right for your organization? The information below will help you decide. And if you choose to submit, the three-step “D-I-Y Earmarks” guide from Popvox Foundation and the Bipartisan Policy Center will help you design your application and outreach for success.
About the new earmarks:
- Limited: They are only available to nonprofits and government organizations.
- Targeted: They are awarded for specific projects and locations, and only awarded for one fiscal year at a time.
- Transparent: Members must disclose their requests to the public and certify that neither they nor their immediate families have any financial stake in their chosen projects.
- Accountable: A selection of projects will be reviewed by the Government Accountability Office.
- Narrow availability: Funding is limited to specific areas of federal spending, including education, health care, economic development, conservation, agriculture, transportation, rural connectivity, law enforcement, STEM research, energy, tribal affairs, historical preservation and entrepreneur support.
If you decide to submit a project, keep three things in mind:
1. Don’t be intimidated.
Even if you have never applied for federal funding or reached out to your member of Congress, this is the perfect opportunity to start. This “D-I-Y Earmarks” guide and other resources from Popvox Foundation and the Bipartisan Policy Center will walk you through what to expect.
2. Do your homework.
Congressional offices receive many applications and not every worthy project will receive funding. Familiarizing yourself with your lawmaker’s priorities can be a good way to figure out how to “pitch” your project.
3. Approach the process for long-term success.
Applying for earmarked funding is a great way to build or strengthen relationships with your local members of Congress, even if the project is not funded. The process will draw attention to the issue, raise awareness of your organization’s work, and give you practice navigating federal funding requirements. Keeping these long-term goals in mind will help you get the most out of participating in this process.
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.