IVN is joined by Nate Allen, founder and Executive Director of Utah Approves, to discuss Approval Voting and his perspective on changing the incentives of our elections.
Podcast: Seeking approval in Utah

IVN is joined by Nate Allen, founder and Executive Director of Utah Approves, to discuss Approval Voting and his perspective on changing the incentives of our elections.
Photo illustration by Alex Bandoni/ProPublica. Source images: Chicago History Museum and eobrazy
Some 4 million people could lose federal housing assistance under new plans from the Trump administration, according to experts who reviewed drafts of two unpublished rules obtained by ProPublica. The rules would pave the way for a host of restrictions long sought by conservatives, including time limits on living in public housing, work requirements for many people receiving federal housing assistance and the stripping of aid from entire families if one member of the household is in the country illegally.
The first Trump administration tried and failed to implement similar policies, and renewed efforts have been in the works since early in the president’s second term. Now, the documents obtained by ProPublica lay out how the administration intends to overhaul major housing programs that serve some of the nation’s poorest residents, with sweeping reforms that experts and advocates warn will weaken the social safety net amid historically high rents, home prices and homelessness.
“These are rules that are going to cause an enormous amount of hardship for millions of people in communities across the country,” said Will Fischer, director of housing policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a nonpartisan think tank. “It’s going to cause people to become homeless, kids to be pulled out of their schools, people to lose their jobs.”
A spokesperson for the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which drafted the rules, declined to comment.
The two rules obtained by ProPublica are labeled as drafts and could change before they are officially proposed. At a meeting at HUD headquarters this month, Ben Hobbs, who heads the agency’s public housing office, said the rules were under review at the Office of Management and Budget, according to a HUD official in attendance. (OMB typically reviews proposed rules for compliance with federal standards and consistency with the president’s policies.)
The push to adopt the rules is part of a broad effort to roll back federal housing programs under the current administration. Trump’s budget proposal called for cutting funding for public housing, housing vouchers and other rental assistance by 43%. In March, HUD and the Department of Homeland Security announced a data-sharing agreement targeting so-called mixed-status families, in which some family members are eligible for housing assistance and others are not because they are in the country illegally or have another immigration status that makes them ineligible. More recently, HUD reportedly planned to require all local public housing authorities to identify such families to the federal agency.
Work requirements impart a “renewed sense of purpose for millions of Americans,” in the view of HUD Secretary Scott Turner. Calling welfare a “lifelong trap of dependency” for many, Turner and other senior Trump officials wrote in a joint op-ed, “for able-bodied adults, welfare should be a short-term hand-up, not a lifetime handout.”
Federal housing assistance programs support more than 8 million people by providing units in public housing or subsidies that help cover the cost of rentals on the private market. Under these programs, participants pay a percentage of the rent — generally 30% of their adjusted income — and the government covers the rest. Most of those assisted are elderly, disabled or children. The average family that lives in public housing or receives housing vouchers makes less than $20,000 annually and receives benefits for 10 to 12 years, although non-elderly, non-disabled families typically stay far shorter, according to HUD data.
The first rule would not mandate work requirements and time limits; instead, it permits local housing authorities and landlords to implement them. Hobbs originally wanted the rule to require those policies, but career staffers at HUD persuaded him to make them voluntary, according to a HUD official familiar with the matter. The rule would allow local housing authorities and private landlords to impose work requirements and time limits in four major federal housing programs: public housing, Housing Choice Vouchers, Project-Based Vouchers and Project-Based Rental Assistance (the latter three are part of what is commonly called Section 8). Residents, including both parents in two-parent households, could be required to work up to 40 hours a week. The time limits could be as short as two years, after which residents would lose assistance.
The time limits would apply to any family in which the household heads are not elderly or disabled, with few exceptions. Similarly, the work requirements would apply to residents ages 18 to 61 who are not disabled, pregnant, primary caretakers of young children, college students or in other exempted categories. Housing providers may allow them to perform job training or community service instead of traditional work. Housing providers implementing work requirements would have to offer support services to residents, but what those services are would be up to the providers. HUD expects 750 public housing authorities and 3,500 landlords to implement work requirements or term limits in response to the new rule. Such provisions will likely be adopted first in more conservative parts of the country, Fischer said.
The new regulation asserts that it will promote economic self-sufficiency and free up subsidized housing for millions of people who qualify for assistance but cannot receive it because of the limited amount of housing aid that the government provides.
Housing advocates and researchers expressed a different view. “It’s disguised as work requirements and term limits, but in reality it’s a way to strip families of their benefits,” said Deborah Thrope, deputy director of the National Housing Law Project, an advocacy group. “This is a huge departure from how the HUD programs have been run since their inception.”
Some 4 million people could lose housing assistance, estimated Fischer, Thrope and Katherine O’Regan, a former HUD official and now a professor at New York University. Many of those people could become homeless as a result.
Fischer noted that most non-elderly, non-disabled households receiving assistance already include one or more people who work. But their jobs often come with limited hours and pay, so even working families could lose their assistance as a result of the rule.
There is little evidence that work requirements increase economic self-sufficiency among recipients of housing assistance, according to researchers at NYU. Studies of other welfare policies such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program have largely found that work requirements do not notably increase employment but do cause people to lose assistance.
The second proposed rule targets mixed-status households. Under long-standing HUD regulations, such families are permitted to live in public housing or receive vouchers, but their benefits are prorated so that the ineligible members receive no assistance and the family pays a greater share of the rent. The proposed rule would change that by making mixed-status families ineligible for assistance, with few exceptions. It would also require U.S. citizens applying for or currently receiving housing assistance to provide documents proving their citizenship, such as birth or naturalization certificates. The authors of the rule argue that it would bring HUD regulations into “greater alignment” with federal law.
The rule could affect 20,000 mixed-status families that receive housing assistance, according to a HUD analysis of the rule obtained by ProPublica; 16,000 of those families include children. They live mainly in California, Texas and New York; the average income of a mixed family of four is below the federal poverty line of $32,000.
The rule would allow the families to keep their assistance if the ineligible member moves out. But, as most of them are families with children, HUD expects virtually all of them to give up assistance out of “fear of the family being separated,” the analysis reads.
HUD’s analysis anticipates that public housing units may initially be left vacant as a result of the proposed rule. Because the regulations would kick out households receiving prorated assistance and replace them with fully eligible households, it will increase the government’s rental assistance costs by up to $370 million each year, according to the analysis. But HUD will not initially increase funding to the local public housing authorities that distribute assistance, so those authorities may have to offer fewer vouchers or leave units unoccupied, HUD expects.
The requirement that residents and applicants prove their citizenship — and that housing providers verify it — could create $100 million in new costs, HUD expects. This new obligation will be especially difficult for homeless and low-income people to fulfill even if they are eligible for assistance, said Sonya Acosta, a senior policy analyst at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. “It is very likely that people who need assistance the most are not going to be able to receive it because of these additional documentation barriers,” she said.
The first Trump administration proposed a similar rule in 2019 but then received more than 30,000 comments in response, the vast majority in opposition. HUD ultimately did not complete the adoption process before Trump left office. The administration of President Joe Biden withdrew that rule proposal in 2021.
When, or if, HUD publishes the proposed rules, they would then be subject to public comments, which the agency must consider before adopting them — a process that can take months or years. The HUD spokesperson did not respond to questions about when the agency expects to publish and adopt the rules.
Millions Could Lose Housing Aid Under Trump Plan was first published on ProPublica and was re-published with permission.
Jesse Coburn covers housing and transportation, including the companies working in those fields and the regulators overseeing them.
On Friday, October 3rd, President Donald Trump issued a dramatic ultimatum on Truth Social, stating this is the “LAST CHANCE” for Hamas to accept a 20-point peace proposal backed by Israel and several Arab nations. The deadline, set for Sunday at 6:00 p.m. EDT, was framed as a final opportunity to avoid catastrophic consequences. Trump warned that if Hamas rejected the deal, “all HELL, like no one has ever seen before, will break out against Hamas,” and that its fighters would be “hunted down and killed.”
Ordinarily, when a president sets a deadline, the world takes him seriously. In history, Presidential deadlines signal resolve, seriousness, and the weight of executive authority. But with Trump, the pattern is different. His history of issuing ultimatums and then quietly backing off has dulled the edge of his threats and raised questions about their strategic value.
Is this calculated brinkmanship, or improvisation masquerading as policy? No one can say for sure.
Deadlines can be powerful tools in negotiation—but only if they’re enforced. When they’re repeatedly ignored or abandoned, they lose their potency. And when the person issuing them is known for moving goalposts, the credibility of the office begins to erode.
Trump has a history of missing deadlines and issuing empty ultimatums. Here are just a few:
Members of Congress have responded with varying degrees of concern and contempt. Senator Susan Collins warned: “Deadlines are useful only if they’re backed by real policy. Otherwise, they’re just noise.”
Former Congressman Adam Kinzinger, a member of the January 6th Committee, was more direct:
“Trump’s latest threat is nothing more than the desperate howl of a man who knows history will regard him with shame." I’m not intimidated by a man whose actions on January 6th showed a cowardly disregard for democracy and the rule of law.”
Yet among Trump’s MAGA base, missed deadlines rarely matter. His supporters see him not as a policy technician but as a symbolic warrior—someone who speaks their grievances aloud, even if he doesn’t always act on them. When deadlines pass without consequence, they blame the institutions he’s vowed to disrupt, not the man himself.
This dynamic reveals something more profound: a shift from accountability to performance, from governance to spectacle. In a healthy democracy, deadlines are not just rhetorical devices—they are commitments.
When they become theater, the cost is not just political. It calls into question Presidential leadership
If presidential ultimatums are to mean anything, they must be grounded in real intent, real consequences,
and real follow-through. Otherwise, we risk normalizing a politics of bluff—where power is measured not by what leaders do, but by how loudly they threaten to do it.
And in that vacuum, the very idea of presidential seriousness begins to fade. Not with a bang. But with a shrug.
David Nevins is the publisher of The Fulcrum and co-founder and board chairman of the Bridge Alliance Education Fund.
This series began with a simple but urgent question: What’s gone wrong with America’s economic policies, and how can we begin to fix them? The story so far has revealed not only financial instability but also deeper structural weaknesses that leave families, small businesses, and entire communities far more vulnerable than they should be.
In the first two articles, “Running on Empty” and “Crash Course,” we examined how middle-class families, small businesses, and retirees are increasingly caught in a web of debt and financial uncertainty. We also examined how Wall Street’s speculative excesses, deregulation, and shadow banking have pushed the financial system to the brink. Finally, we warned that Donald Trump’s economic agenda doesn’t address these problems—it magnifies them. Together, these earlier articles painted a picture of a system skating on thin ice, where even small shocks could trigger widespread crisis.
Now comes the hard part: finding a path forward.
In the late 1970s, a nurse’s income could support a household of five—my own family lived that reality. Today, even two incomes often fall short. Half of Americans live paycheck to paycheck, and one in four spends nearly all their earnings on essentials. Credit card delinquencies have climbed to a 13-year high, while the costs of food, housing, and childcare continue to rise faster than wages.
Crushing student debt postpones homeownership and family formation, medical bills overwhelm households, and retirees confront shrinking safety nets as Social Security and Medicare edge closer to insolvency. Many who trusted these programs would always be there, failed to save enough, and now face retirement with too few resources. These pressures hint at a deeper crisis shaping daily life, where families are running harder to stay in place and the promise of upward mobility grows weaker with each passing year.
Small businesses and farmers are also paralyzed, with many farm families facing their gravest crisis since the 1980s. Tariff threats and congressional stopgaps make planning impossible. Instead of hiring or innovating, many hold back. As economist Hyman Minsky warned, what appears to be stability is often fragility in disguise. The same holds true for small towns hollowed out by decades of disinvestment: resilience on the surface but deep vulnerability underneath.
These household pressures connect directly to Wall Street’s excess. Federal deficits hover around 7 percent of GDP, interest payments on the national debt have tripled since 2021, and major banks carry dangerously thin cushions. Shadow banking, hedge funds, private equity, and crypto platforms operate with little oversight, creating risks that can spill over into the real economy. The concentration of risk in just a few giant institutions leaves the broader system exposed, and the lessons of 2008 seem to have faded too quickly.
The slide from safe finance into speculation and finally Ponzi finance is clear. Meme stocks, shaky AI startups, and commercial real estate burdened with debt all reflect this pattern. Deregulation, political pressure on the Federal Reserve, and tolerance for corporate leverage accelerate the cycle. If unchecked, these vulnerabilities could escalate into a crisis more damaging than the last, leaving policymakers scrambling once again to bail out the powerful while ordinary families bear the brunt of the pain.
Taken together, the warning signs are unmistakable: households weighed down by debt, businesses and farms in survival mode, and financial institutions skating on the edge of collapse. The system is brittle, and the cracks are widening.
If "Running on Empty" diagnosed the household squeeze and "Crash Course" exposed systemic fragility, this final part turns to solutions. The fixes are not quick or painless, but they are possible if we summon the political will. And if pursued together, they could mark a turning point toward a more balanced, resilient economy.
At the broadest level, three priorities stand out, each of which deserves deeper attention. First, the nation must make rebuilding middle-class security a top priority by addressing the core costs of housing, education, healthcare, and retirement so that families can achieve stability once more. This means targeted investments in affordable housing, serious reforms to student debt, measures to control medical costs, and a long-term commitment to protecting Social Security and Medicare, ensuring that seniors are not left facing poverty in old age. Policymakers must also think about the next generation, ensuring that early childhood education, childcare support, and training programs are funded as essential public goods.
Second, financial excess must be contained through stronger oversight of banks, hedge funds, and shadow finance, along with a renewed commitment to institutional independence at places like the Federal Reserve. Restoring robust regulation would not only reduce the risk of another financial collapse but also rebuild public trust that the rules of the economy work for everyone, not just for the wealthiest institutions and investors. Transparency requirements, stronger enforcement powers, and coordination with international regulators are all necessary if the U.S. is to avoid repeating past mistakes. Limiting corporate leverage and addressing the risks posed by speculative markets, such as crypto, would also help stabilize the system.
Third, democracy itself requires repair. Congress must reclaim its budgetary authority by ending its reliance on continuing resolutions, and state and local governments need renewed support so they can act as meaningful counterweights to federal power. Just as important, civic life must be strengthened through education and reforms that encourage compromise rather than zero-sum politics, helping citizens see that government can still deliver for ordinary people and not just for partisan advantage. Ranked-choice voting, independent redistricting, and broader civic education could gradually shift political incentives toward problem-solving rather than permanent brinkmanship. Campaign finance reform is also vital. The Supreme Court should revisit Citizens United and restore reasonable limits on political spending so that democracy reflects the voices of citizens rather than the power of money.
None of these measures will be easy. All require political courage, a willingness to challenge entrenched interests, and an honest conversation with the public about costs and trade-offs. However, without such reforms, the system will remain brittle, and democracy will remain vulnerable. These reforms will take time. Citizens must be patient but also persistent in demanding them.
This series began with families stretched to the breaking point, followed Wall Street’s dangerous gambles, and ends with a call to repair the foundations. Fragility is not destiny; the cracks are visible and can be repaired if leaders choose long-term stability over short-term spectacle.
Rebuilding middle-class security, restoring guardrails on finance, and renewing democratic institutions—from congressional responsibility and institutional independence to stronger civic life—are not partisan luxuries but democratic necessities.
The stakes extend beyond economics. They reach into the legitimacy of government, the cohesion of communities, and the public’s trust that tomorrow can be better than today. Yet too often leaders and the media fixate on short-term political theater instead of the deeper reforms required to secure the nation’s future.
If every election continues to feel like a cliffhanger for the republic, the system itself may not be able to withstand the strain. Strengthening institutions and pursuing reform is not optional; it is the only way forward. Moving from fragility to resilience will require patience, persistence, and vision—and it remains within reach if leaders and citizens alike demand it.
Robert Cropf is a Political Science Professor at Saint Louis University.
There may be no greater indication that voters are not being listened to in the escalating redistricting war between the Republican and Democratic Parties than a new poll from NBC News that shows 8-in-10 Americans want the parties to stop.
It’s what they call an "80-20 issue," and yet neither party is standing up for the 80% as they prioritize control of Congress.
The NBC News poll, conducted from August 13 to September 1, surveyed respondents on a variety of topics, including President Donald Trump’s approval, the top issue for voters right now, and even what voters think about vaccines.
These things have been broadly covered in the press. But what has received less coverage now that the focus has shifted away from what is happening in Texas, California, Missouri, New York, and more is the threat mid-decade redistricting poses to voters.
The poll found that 82% of respondents said they want redistricting done by a nonpartisan commission, not the party in power. Even most members of the majority party in their state do not think politicians should be picking their voters.
For example, 71% of Republicans in GOP-controlled states say they would prefer redistricting done by a nonpartisan commission. Yet in the same week as the poll’s release, Missouri’s Republican-majority advanced their own mid-decade gerrymander.
This, of course, follows a new map approved in Texas, which is ground zero for this tit-for-tat redistricting fight. Texas did it, so California did it. Missouri is doing it, so New York or Maryland or Illinois may do it.
And yet, 88% of Democrats in states controlled by their party also prefer a nonpartisan redistricting commission over legislative-drawn maps. The No on Prop 50 campaign in California sent out the NBC News poll results over email.
Proposition 50 will be on a November 4 special election ballot, where voters can approve or reject a new congressional map drawn by the legislature.
If approved, the map could give the Democratic Party over 90% representation in the state’s congressional delegation.
Those responsible for the proposition, including Governor Gavin Newsom, know how their voters feel about legislative gerrymandering. He says he wants to see independent redistricting commissions used at a national level but insists that his party must “fight fire with fire.”
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In fact, Proposition 50 includes a section in its summary that says it “[e]stablishes state policy supporting use of fair, independent, and nonpartisan redistricting commissions nationwide” – even as it will do exactly what most voters say they don’t want.
In other words, it will implement a partisan gerrymander approved by the Democratic majority in the legislature. It will sidestep the state’s independent redistricting commission, approved by voters in 2008 and 2010.
Prop 50 does not abolish the independent commission. It says the new congressional map will be in place until the commission redraws and approves new maps after the 2030 census. However, it is worth noting that this means 3 congressional election cycles under the new map.
Whether it is Texas or California, the question to ask is: What happens to the trust and confidence of the political minority when the majority says to them that on a whim, they will take away their opposition’s representation all but completely?
Texas’ maps will have to be struck down in court while California voters are left to wonder what happens the next time the Democratic majority decides they need to “fight fire with fire” again.
The answer to the question is: The partisan majority doesn’t care. When the system puts the self-serving interests of private political parties over meaningful and accountable representation, it all becomes a game to Republican and Democratic leaders.
“They did it, so we have to do it.” Then the other side will turn around and say, "They cheated first."
Even now, 82% of voters say they want politicians out of the business of choosing whose vote matters. Yet, Texas and California were only the beginning. More states are trying to expand the controlling party's majority in Congress or nullify the other side’s gains, completely ignoring what voters want.
Poll: 82% of Americans Want Redistricting Done by Independent Commission, Not Politicians was first published on IVN and re-published with permission.
Shawn Griffiths Is An Election Reform Expert And National Editor Of IVN.us.