Congressional pages carry electoral votes into a joint session of Congress in January 2017.
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There is a major change in how students, schools, and educational programs can be funded, taking effect on January 1, 2027, with a small window of time to ensure the program is well managed. We have to move fast.
The Education Freedom Tax Credit (EFTC) creates a new federal tax credit for taxpayers who make qualified contributions to approved nonprofit Scholarship Granting Organizations (SGOs). SGOs, in turn, use that money to award scholarships for tutoring, tuition, or other qualified education expenses for students, regardless of whether they attend public, private, or charter schools. The money is contributed directly to SGOs by taxpayers, who can receive a dollar-for-dollar tax credit on their 2027 tax filing, up to $1,700 for individuals and $3,400 for married taxpayers filing jointly.
Students can only benefit if their state opts in, but taxpayers in any state can contribute because it’s a federal, not state, program. It could move billions of dollars into education, injecting new money into education programs and local education provider businesses at unprecedented levels – with families choosing how scholarship dollars are used. How can anyone not be excited by that?
The devil will be where it always is, though: in the details.
Wherever you may find yourself politically or on education funding policies and practices, no program with this much potential will work or even survive without oversight and compliance. Strict, transparent, clear, and obvious tracking, disclosure, and accountability aren’t nice-to-haves; they are essential.
History has taught us well that whenever money moves, misuse follows. Peddlers and pirates are, I am sure, already waiting to siphon money away from what could be a good thing – which is funneling more money directly to students for education, giving parents the resources and power to choose the services and supports their children need like never before.
Agreeing on this point feels easy because no one is in favor of fraud and theft. Stopping fraud before it starts ought to be the most common of all common grounds in education, a responsibility that falls to the states to provide oversight and fraud prevention. How states approve and oversee SGOs participating in the EFTC and how those SGOs approve and vet the credentials of education providers will form the firewall against misuse and abuse of the billions of dollars that may flow through the system.
Regardless of whether you love or hate this program, we can also agree that in addition to oversight, it's about high-quality, unbiased, agnostic information not driven by hype, philosophy, or profit. If we are going to be confident in where scholarship funds go, we must first design and steward a compliance system through which the funds flow.
Whether a taxpayer wants to support Jewish Day Schools in Denver, Colorado, or public reading enrichment programs in Raleigh, North Carolina, they need to have access to as much information as possible about the SGOs and their network of schools and providers. Good choices rest on good information, and with a new program such as this, one that’s had a history of hot rhetoric, good information will also be essential to any success or notion of fairness.
This will undoubtedly shake up how we fund students, schools, and support programs; however, we’re outside the debate-and-planning window and well into the preparation-and-implementation window. We need to address accountability and build robust information systems now. The window for doing this right won’t be open for much longer.
Cecilia Retelle Zywicki, Esq., M.Ed., is the CEO and co-founder of LearningSpring, which is partnering with states to implement the Education Freedom Tax Credit while helping districts, Scholarship Granting Organizations, and providers simplify and scale education freedom through a unified school choice platform.
A member of the audience wearing a 'Black Voters Still Matter' t-shirt from Georgia NAACP as Georgia Democratic Senate candidate U.S. Senator Raphael Warnock (D-GA) speaks during a Get Out the Vote rally December 3, 2022 in Hephzibah, Georgia.
Democracy cannot just be something Black Americans are asked to save every election. It has to be something we can see working in our lives between elections. Every election season, here it comes again. We are told how important this election is. We are told democracy is on the line. We are told to register, organize, bring somebody to the polls, and make sure our voices are heard. Candidates come into Black communities, sit down with Black leaders, show up at churches and community events, and remind us just how powerful our vote can be.
I believe in voting. I believe in democracy. I believe deeply in civic participation.
But Black folks do not need another lecture about the importance of the ballot. We need a government that gives people a reason to believe their participation matters after the election.
I grew up in Mississippi. Long before I studied public policy or earned a doctorate, I learned something about government that no textbook had to teach me: ordinary people know when government is working, and they know when it is not.
You can give people all the speeches you want about institutions and democracy, but they are looking at the road they drive down every morning. They are looking at the school their children attend. They are looking at whether the hospital is still open, whether good jobs exist nearby, whether they can afford a house, whether their paycheck stretches far enough to buy groceries, and whether somebody answers when they call a government office asking for help.
That is government to most people. That is also democracy.
Black Americans certainly do not need to be reminded about the cost of gaining access to the ballot. The history is written in blood. Black Americans faced literacy tests, intimidation, economic retaliation, and violence for attempting to register and vote. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 followed years of organizing and the brutal treatment of voting-rights activists, including the attack on peaceful marchers in Selma. So this is not an argument that voting does not matter.
It is an argument that voting cannot be the only time democracy comes looking for us.
This country has a trust problem, and we should stop pretending otherwise. In a September 2025 Pew Research Center survey, only 17% of Americans said they trusted the federal government to do what is right “just about always” or “most of the time.” Among Black adults, that number was just 14%. Fourteen percent. We can call that cynicism if we want. We can call it disengagement. We can complain that people have lost faith in institutions. But at some point, institutions have to ask themselves what they have done to earn that faith.
Trust is not built by a campaign ad. It is built when people can see results.
And those results do not have to come with somebody’s name plastered across them. People want basic things from government: competence, fairness, transparency, access, and some evidence that the system is not only paying attention when it wants something from them.
The economic reality many Black families are living through makes that conversation even more important. The Federal Reserve reported in 2026 that only 60% of Black adults surveyed said they were doing okay financially or living comfortably in 2025, down five percentage points from the year before. Across the country, rising prices remained Americans’ most commonly reported financial concern.
Housing tells another part of the story. Census Bureau estimates for the fourth quarter of 2025 put the Black homeownership rate at 44.2%, compared with 75.1% for non-Hispanic White householders. Those numbers do not mean government alone caused that gap. America’s racial wealth and homeownership disparities have complicated historical and economic roots. But those numbers are part of the real world people are living in while politicians ask them to get excited about another election.
That distinction matters. When somebody tells you groceries are too high, they are not necessarily saying they do not care about democracy. When somebody tells you they cannot afford a house, they are not saying voting does not matter.
When somebody says they are tired of politicians, that does not automatically mean they are ignorant, apathetic, or uninformed. Sometimes people are simply tired.
And I think our politics has become too comfortable blaming people for being tired instead of asking what made them tired in the first place.
Too often, Black political participation is discussed almost entirely through the language of turnout. Will Black voters show up? Are Black men going to vote? Are younger Black voters engaged? What will Black women do?
Those can be legitimate political questions, but Black Americans are more than a turnout number.
We are citizens.
We are parents trying to raise children. We are workers trying to make a living. We are small-business owners trying to keep the doors open. We are students carrying debt. We are veterans. We are teachers. We are homeowners and renters. We are people who take care of aging parents. We are people trying to build something we can leave behind.
And we are not a monolith.
Black voters do not all think alike, vote alike, or want the same things from government. No political party is entitled to our loyalty, and no candidate should treat our participation like something they can summon every two or four years and put back on the shelf afterward.
That is where I think our national conversation about democracy has to become more mature.
Democracy is not just a ballot.
Democracy is whether citizens can get information from their government. It is whether public officials explain the decisions they make. It is whether people have a meaningful opportunity to be heard before a decision is final instead of being invited to a town hall after everything has already been decided.
It is whether taxpayers can figure out where their money went.
It is whether government measures what works, admits what does not, and fixes it.
None of that belongs to one political party. Republican communities need government that functions. Democratic communities need governments that function. Rural Mississippi needs it. Washington, D.C., needs it. Small towns need it. Big cities need it.
Government competence should not be a partisan idea.
I will continue telling people to vote. I will continue believing in the power of civic participation. And I will continue honoring the people who fought so that a Black man born and raised in Mississippi could walk into a polling place and cast a ballot without having to count jellybeans in a jar, recite a section of the Constitution, or wonder whether exercising that right might cost him his job or his life. That history matters, and we should never minimize it.
But honoring that history also means expecting something from the democracy they fought to open to us.
Citizens have responsibilities in democracy. Government does, too.
So, when the next election comes around, come talk to Black voters. Ask for our votes. Make your case. Tell us what you believe and what you intend to do.
But understand something else.
Our citizenship did not begin when your campaign needed us, and it will not end when the polls close. If democracy only comes looking for Black folks when it needs turnout, we should not be surprised when people start asking whether democracy knows where we live the rest of the year. We do not need another election-year lecture. We need government that works when nobody is running for office.
Dr. Duvalier J. Malone is an author, political columnist, public policy and leadership scholar, and host of the Those Who Give a Damn podcast. A Mississippi native based in Washington, D.C., his work focuses on democracy, leadership, civic engagement, and the everyday impact of public policy on communities.
Construction on the proposed White House ballroom is seen from the Washington Monument on May 17, 2026 in Washington, DC. President Trump has initiated numerous construction projects on federal government properties in Washington, including demolition of the White House East Wing to build a ballroom and re-painting the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting pool blue.
Once a month, on the evening of the first Wednesday, I sit on an elevated platform behind a horseshoe-shaped desk in my role as a member of my community’s historic preservation commission in Urbana, Illinois.
On the lower level and at floor level, is a conference table and behind that a room filled with chairs that may all be full – but are more frequently close to empty.
This is the setting of public meetings, where the commission interacts with members of the community and fulfills its duties as supporters of community history and preservation.
The charge is to uplift local history and storytelling and to help preserve an indelible sense of place by creating historic landmarks and historic districts in collaboration with all the diverse people in the community. To do a good job, it is essential to know what places people care about and be open to learning new things.
But it is an awkward setting with artificial constructs around communication that limit who can speak when and for how long.
Those rules are created by local policy and Open Meetings Act guidelines and they put enormous distance – both physical and emotional – between the public and the commission appointed to represent them.
In this setting fulfilling these obligations is problematic. The difficulty is that this is how democratic public participation is designed to work.
The challenge of authentic public participation is not new and it is not confined to historic preservation. Since the 1960s, the Civil Rights era, scholars have studied democratic culture in the U.S. and identified best and worst practices.
Across the country, recent news coverage of public outrage over data center construction is one example of the way that citizens attempt to influence policy by attending official public meetings and making their views known.
But often, by the time an issue has reached an open meeting, a decision has already been made behind closed doors.
The Henry Luce Foundation has identified the “frayed fabric of democracy” as one of the essential issues of the present moment. Historic preservation advocates are left with an open question – how to support a public increasingly distanced from participation in official government policy and activity.
The federal Advisory Council on Historic Preservation recently advanced an agenda to all but eliminate public participation in what is called Section 106 Review. That’s a jargon term for a simple idea – the public should have a say in decision-making when federal dollars are involved in projects that affect historic places.
In October 2025, for example, the east wing of the White House fell to the wrecking ball without project review, infuriating preservation advocates. And again without project review, concrete is being poured for a 250-foot triumphal arch that would block the line of sight between Arlington National Cemetery and the Lincoln Memorial, a crucial memorial landscape reflecting both the enormous loss of life in the Civil War and the country’s reunification at its end.
From the beginnings of the preservation movement in the U.S., grassroots public participation has been foundational, not just in Washington, DC but in local communities across the country. Who knows a community better than the people who live in it? In a moment when public participation is being devalued and bypassed, it is critical to find ways to reconnect.
That can mean low-stakes community-building events, including organizing a neighborhood tour or open house; hosting a panel on community history and inviting city staff and officials to join. It can also mean rebuilding community investment in place and storytelling by creating platforms for communities to tell their own stories. Preservation is the most environmentally and culturally sustainable way to reinvest in cities and communities – but we need advocates at the table to help shape policy.
The Annenberg Institute for Civics invests in innovative ways of providing expanded civic education. Historic preservation advocates should take a cue from their successes. While a love for historic architecture and places is at the foundation of preservation, it cannot succeed without a deep sense of civic obligation.
It is not possible to build that civic culture by looking from the horseshoe down. We cannot protect historic preservation with Section 106 alone.
Preservation requires local communities who care about their neighborhoods and civic institutions and who are empowered to shape civic decision-making. Now is the time for preservation advocates to focus on breaking down barriers, reducing jargon, cutting through red tape, and supporting grassroots organizing from the ground up.
Kathryn Holliday is the inaugural Randall Biallas Professor of Historic Preservation and American Architectural History at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She is the author and editor of four award-winning books and is a Public Voices Fellow of The OpEd Project and the University of Illinois system.
Music in Common and The Black Legacy Project use song and conversation to bridge divides. See how pop culture can renew democracy and how you can join in.
Almost four years ago, I wrote a column in The Fulcrum titled A Democracy Roadshow. In it, I shared a belief that still guides me today: that the future of our democratic republic depends on everyday Americans perceiving the extraordinary power they already hold. I wrote then that more must be done — that we must think boldly and creatively to engage, excite, and involve more citizens in forming the country we all share.
Since then, something notable has happened. The pop culture section of The Fulcrum has become one of our most beloved features, proving what we believed from the start — that culture can be an impetus for civic renewal. Pop culture reaches people where they live, where they feel, and where they dream. It provides opportunities that politics alone cannot. And for four years, we’ve used that power to help spark a new civic voice rooted in connection, creativity, and hope.
Many of you have traveled this path with us through stories, music, poetry, and dance, which remind us of our common humanity. These cultural expressions have helped us imagine solutions, confront challenges, and call forth our better angels. And we are just getting started. The Fulcrum is committed to expanding the ways pop culture can help millions more Americans regain the joy, responsibility, and possibility of participating in our democracy.
If you feel inspired, you can take part in many ways. You can attend local cultural and musical events that bring communities together, or support organizations like Music in Common by volunteering your time or skills. Share your own stories, art, poetry, or music to spark conversations in your neighborhood or online. Invite friends and family to join you at performances or community discussions that celebrate creativity and diverse voices. By participating or spreading the word about these efforts, each of us can play an active role in renewing our democracy through culture.
Today, I want to highlight an organization that embodies this mission with extraordinary grace: Music in Common. Their work shows how music, perhaps the most global language we have, can dissolve barriers and heal divides that feel impossibly deep.
Founded in 2005 by singer‑songwriter and producer Todd Mack after the murder of his friend and bandmate Daniel Pearl, Music in Common began as an act of personal healing. Over time, it has grown into a global movement for connection, understanding, and action through music. Their performances, more than 400 across the world, combine storytelling, conversation, and artistry to create moments where unknown people become neighbors and audiences become communities. They’ve produced four albums, two documentary films, and engaged more than 100,000 people across continents.
A few weeks ago, I had the privilege of speaking with Todd Mack and Trey Carlisle about one of their signature initiatives: The Black Legacy Project. Launched in 2021, this musical celebration of Black history advances racial harmony and bridge‑building through 24 songs reimagined and written by Black and white artists during week‑long residencies across the country. Since its debut, the project has toured nationwide, curating experiences that help people across social divides find common ground through facilitated conversation and music.
The Black Legacy Project is a living example of what Todd Mack often says: that art possesses the power to break down boundaries and overcome distances between people. Music, theatre, poetry, and all forms of pop culture carry extraordinary healing and connecting powers. When people come together, their energy for good can be amplified and scaled. By focusing on what unites us — and the role music can play — we can activate millions of Americans in a movement for renewal.
The project was recently featured on CNN’s Champions for Change, where Victor Blackwell interviewed Trey Carlisle and Todd Mack about their work. It’s a clear reminder of how music can generate collaboration and bring communities together in harmony.
https://www.cnn.com/videos/tv/2022/09/16/cfc-blackwell-mack-carl.cnn
Now more than ever, we need music's healing force to drown out the divisive voices at the extremes. Music reaches people’s souls. It reminds us of who we are at our best, and who we can become together. But music is just one avenue. Film, visual art, literature, and theater can also spark conversation, expand empathy, and rally citizens around a common purpose. Each form of pop culture offers its own way to reach hearts and minds, inviting millions to join a grassroots movement that scales our victories, promotes our values, and strengthens our democratic republic.
Together, WE can make a difference.
David Nevins is the publisher of The Fulcrum and co-founder and board chairman of the Bridge Alliance Education Fund.
The President Invited Iran to Bomb My Home