A backroom deal for redrawing Michigan's state legislative districts has been rejected by a panel of federal judges, who will instead hear the case as a trial starting Tuesday.
The judges said the Democratic secretary of state had no authority to make the pact with fellow Democrats in the Legislature, who argue the current maps were an unconstitutionally partisan gerrymander at the hand of the majority Republicans in the state House. The Democratic plaintiffs say that about a dozen of the 110 districts ought to be redrawn to give them a fair shot.
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Voters line up at the Oak Lawn Branch Library voting center on Primary Election Day in Dallas on March 3, 2026. Republicans' decision to hold a split primary from the Democrats and to eliminate countywide voting forced Dallas County voters to cast ballots at assigned neighborhood precincts, leading to confusion. Republicans have now decided to use countywide polling locations for the May 26 runoff election.
Shelby Tauber for The Texas Tribune
Dallas County GOP Will Agree To Use Countywide Voting Sites for May 26 Runoff Election
Mar 30, 2026
Dallas County Republicans will agree to allow voters to cast ballots at countywide voting sites for the May 26 runoff election after a switch to precinct-based voting sites caused chaos, the county party chair said Tuesday.
Dallas County Republican Chairman Allen West supported the use of precinct-based sites earlier this month, but said using precincts again for the runoff would expose the county party to “increased risk and voter confusion” because the county is planning to use countywide sites for upcoming municipal elections and early voting.
“To then shift for the one day runoff election to precincts would bring about large scale disruption,” West said in a statement.
That’s what critics say resulted from the Dallas GOP’s decision to use precinct sites on Election Day for the primary on March 3.
Under Texas state law, county political parties have the authority to choose how they administer their elections. During the primary, Dallas County Republicans wouldn’t agree to participate in the countywide polling place program, which the county has used for years.
Because both parties must agree in order for countywide sites to be used, both Democrats and Republicans in the county instead had to cast ballots at assigned neighborhood precincts on the day of the election, though the county was still able to offer countywide sites during the early voting period.
Experts and election officials warned the change was likely to confuse voters, and on Election Day, hundreds, potentially thousands, of voters had to be redirected after finding out they were at the wrong polling locations. As polling hours were extended in the wake of the confusion, at least 1,756 Democratic primary voters in Dallas cast late ballots that ultimately weren’t counted. It’s not clear how many Republican primary voters were impacted by the shift. West did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Republicans still want a separate primary — which means the parties won’t share poll workers and voting equipment — so runoff voters will likely still see separate lines for Republicans and Democrats, according to West’s statement. West said he plans to sign a contract with the county elections department this week to make the change official. He also signaled it isn’t permanent, saying the party successfully executed the primary and can assess lessons learned “and improve upon the process and procedures for March 2028.”
The move by Dallas Republicans and other county parties to eliminate the countywide polling place program for the primary follows a years-long push by Republicans to ditch it entirely.
Republican critics of countywide voting claim it makes elections less secure because it could allow people “to double or triple vote,” though there’s no evidence that countywide voting is less secure. In addition, Texas election officials have procedures in place to prevent double voting, including the use of technology that helps officials know in real time who has voted and where.
The countywide voting program, which has been in use in Texas for more than 20 years, has allowed counties to save money by using fewer polling locations (and fewer workers and equipment) that are centralized for all voters to use.
Dallas County GOP Will Agree To Use Countywide Voting Sites for May 26 Runoff Election was originally published by Votebeat Texas and is republished with permission.
Natalia Contreras is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with The Texas Tribune. She is based in Corpus Christi. Contact Natalia at ncontreras@votebeat.org.
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Close-up of American Dollar banknotes with stethoscope
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Profits over Patients
Mar 29, 2026
The U.S. is entirely alone among major developed countries, its healthcare system functioning like a business.
- Berkeley Economic Review, 2025
Profit maximization has become a dominant organizing principle in U.S. health care.
- HealthCare, 2026
A stunning 77% of Americans believe it is harder now than a generation ago to maintain a middle-class lifestyle, and 65% are so pessimistic that they believe a middle-class lifestyle is “out of reach for most people,” and the American Dream is dead. These grim sentiments primarily reflect the nearly half-century-long stagnation of inflation-adjusted wages and benefits for 111 million working- and middle-class employees - stagnation that has sharply redistributed incomes upward. It has caused the middle class to shrink from 61% of all families in 1971 to just 51% in 2023, while the share of upper-income households nearly doubled from 11% to 19%. Some 30% of all American households are now considered low income, with America’s income disparity more severe even than Russia.
Coupled with inflation, the struggle to achieve a middle-class lifestyle has made affordability a major household concern, especially the cost of health care. Kaiser polling finds that 36% of Americans delayed or skipped needed health care in 2025 due to high costs. And at least before the Iran war spiked gasoline prices, 66% consider health costs more concerning than groceries, housing, or gasoline.
Health care is expensive – embarrassingly expensive. The U.S. is an international outlier. At $14,885 per capita (2024), it is by far the most expensive care on earth, double the $7,371 average of the next 14 richest nations like Australia, Canada, Japan, France, and Germany. Its high cost reflects high prices, not better care – American patients actually average shorter hospital stays and fewer physician visits per capita than abroad.
The U.S. has a few strengths, such as medical research. Yet, despite spending twice as much, the U.S. rationed health care implicitly by cost, resulting in mediocre national outcomes. It is 47th in life expectancy, nearly 4 years shorter on average than other rich nations.
Strong Democracies = Strong Health Systems
While foreign health systems vary in structure, all provide relatively inexpensive, generally high-quality, near-universal public health care. Their lower costs and superior outcomes reflect four seminal differences with America: they do not ration health care by price, they do not trust profit-maximizing firms to supply health care, they have uniform, rigorous regulation of health providers, and their public policies treat health care as a basic human right akin to safe food and water or fire stations. These four differences are a consequence of the higher quality of their democracies - higher quality because their political systems respond effectively to public desires.
In contrast, donor-dominated pay-to-play American politics means policy goals of wealthy elites unsympathetic to workers or government are disproportionately reflected in law. Unlike other rich nations, pay-to-play tarnishes the U.S. as a low-quality, faux democracy on a par with India, Oman, Panama, or Namibia. It is what economists call a Functional Oligarchy.
Opposition from wealthy conservatives, health care providers, and the Republican Party is why America rations health care – why it does not acknowledge health care as a basic human right. This is why 26 million Americans lack health insurance at any point in time, and 100 million lack it at some point every year. That same market ideology is why weakly regulated profit-maximizing corporations provide a majority of America’s health care. It also explains why Republicans fetishize abolishing Obamacare, reject Medicaid expansion at the state level in ten states, are privatizing swaths of the Veterans Administration, and are loosening antimonopoly laws in health care.
Profits over Patients
Profit-maximizing American health providers exhibit behaviors not found in superior health care systems. American providers and insurers, for instance, can profit by overbilling, by refusing claims and pre-authorizations for insubstantial reasons, by charging administrative costs five times higher per capita than in Europe, and by paying executive compensation fourfold higher than in Europe. And they exploit weak regulations to commit fraud and seek oligopoly power to create scarcity.
As the Brookings Institution notes, these rent-seeking, monopoly power, and other flaws in America’s health care markets “have contributed to rapidly rising costs in recent decades.”
In the hospital sector, horizontal consolidation of hospitals has been rapid, raising prices without improving the quality of care. Mega hospital systems now control over 90% of all U.S. hospital beds and 68% of local community hospitals. A 2025 Federal analysis found that such mergers resulted in lower wages for nurses and skilled workers but raised prices from 6% to 65%.
Vertical mergers are also commonplace, with hospitals and insurance companies like UnitedHealth acquiring physicians’ practices. The General Accountability Office (GAO) found that such mergers increased the share of doctors working for hospitals from 30% in 2012 to 47% in 2024. And such consolidation increased physicians’ service fees by 14% on average after acquisition.
Mergers have also created vast hospital deserts. Some 81% of all American counties are officially designated health professional shortage areas, with their 120 million inhabitants lacking proximity or “proper access” to health care providers.
Moreover, America has just 2.7 practicing physicians per 1,000 population compared to an average of 3.8 in Europe. The reason is a residency requirement bottleneck created by law in 1997 that constricts the number of new doctors (while raising their compensation). These pressures are predicted to persist, with estimates of a nationwide doctor shortage within the next decade ranging upward from 86,000.
Private Equity: Buy and Bust
The combination of robust profits on offer and weak regulation has led to a surge in private equity (PE) buyouts in health care. PE firms have been aggressively acquiring hospitals, emergency rooms, physician practices, nursing homes, and hospices, but also less prominent sectors, including veterinary practices and even funeral parlors.
The PE business model focuses on immediately improving profit margins following debt-heavy acquisitions. It prioritizes rapidly compensating limited partners by cost-cutting, reducing staffing, and quickly shedding or mortgaging acquired assets. Critics label the model “Buy and Bust” because acquisitions are typically downsized, dissolved, or rapidly resold – diminishing the quality of patient care in the process. The median holding period for physician practices acquired by PEs is three years.
Analyses find that when the local market share for physician specialties owned by a single PE tops 30%, prices increase an average of 18% for gastroenterology procedures, 13% for dermatology, and 16% for obstetrics and gynecology. And a JAMA article by Harvard and University of Chicago physicians found that hospitals purchased by PEs experienced a 25.4% increase in hospital-acquired adverse medical events (falls, infections), “suggesting poorer quality of inpatient care.”
The elections of 2026 and 2028
The American Health industry delivers inadequate care at exorbitant prices. That extra cost reflects its profit-maximization ethos, fundamentally at odds with superior systems abroad. Those foreign systems (and Medicare) provide lessons for reform. But first, the barrier posed by America’s pay-for-play politics must be overcome – an issue that can only be addressed at the ballot box. Americans are frustrated with their health care system. But reform hinges on the Democratic Party effectively translating that sentiment at the polls in 2026 and 2028.
George Tyler is a former deputy assistant treasury secretary and World Bank official. He is the author of books including Billionaire Democracy and What Went Wrong.
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U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to reporters before boarding Air Force One at Palm Beach International Airport on March 23, 2026 in West Palm Beach, Florida.
(Photo by Roberto Schmidt/Getty Images)
Trump Administration’s Escalating Attacks on Media Raise Concerns about Trust in Media, Self-Censorship
Mar 29, 2026
WASHINGTON – Independent journalist Georgia Fort filmed federal agents outside of her home on Jan. 30. They were coming to arrest her in connection with reporting and filming at an anti-ICE protest in Minneapolis, Minn., almost two weeks prior.
“I don’t feel like I have my First Amendment right as a member of the press,” said Fort in video footage shared with CNN.
She added that “it’s hard to understand how we have a Constitution, constitutional rights, when you can just be arrested for being a member of the press.”
Don Lemon, a former CNN host, was arrested in late January in connection with the same protest. Junn Bollman, an independent photographer, was also arrested in Los Angeles on Feb. 27, according to reporting by the Committee to Protect Journalists.
Arresting journalists escalated the Trump administration’s consistent attacks against the media. Experts warn that these attacks could have a chilling effect on the press, which the public relies on for information and to hold government officials accountable.
“You need the press to find out about your neighbors being abducted if it doesn't happen in front of your eyes, and it usually won't happen in front of your eyes,” said Seth Stern, chief of advocacy at the Freedom of the Press Foundation. “Whatever it is that you are most concerned about and that you want to resist during this administration, you know you're going to need a free press to give you the information you need in order to advocate effectively for your priorities.”
THE PRESIDENT AND THE PRESS
The executive branch needs some amount of secrecy, which means the president and the press have “always been at odds with each other,” said Matt Carlson, professor at the University of Minnesota’s Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communication.
“Journalists' job is to bring all these things into the public eye,” said Carlson. “Even presidents who seem supportive of the press are always unhappy when what they're doing is reported into everyone's living rooms or everyone's computers or everyone's newspapers.”
Historian Harold Hozner said Trump is not the first president to criticize the media.
“The first president who talked about fake news was the first president, George Washington,” Hozner said.
Other presidents, including Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, attempted to limit the freedom of the press. However, Hozner noted that previous administrations implemented restrictions during genuine national emergencies.
“The difference is that Donald Trump has done this without a national emergency,” Hozner said. “There has been no declaration of war. There has been no insurrection, except when Donald Trump was leaving the presidency in 2021.”
Since Trump became the Republican presidential nominee in 2016, he has regularly attacked journalists, Carlson said.
According to Reporters without Borders, in the two months before the 2024 presidential election, Trump verbally attacked the media over 100 times, not including social media posts. Trump has also insulted female reporters using sexist language and demeaning comments, while others in his administration have publicly argued with journalists.
Carlson said Trump has challenged the legitimacy of journalism as a whole.
“It tears down confidence in the press as an honest broker in seeking the truth. And I think that's the goal,” said Hozner. “I think it's a very purposeful, long-range way to tear down the reputation of the press.”
ESCALATION AFTER ESCALATION
In addition to verbal attacks on the media, the Trump administration has tried to restrict reporting.
In the first few months of the second administration, the White House took over deciding who would make up the press pool, a job previously handled by the White House Correspondents Association.
The Trump administration tried to ban the Associated Press from White House coverage after the publication refused to change its style guide on the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. The Pentagon also restricted access to only allow journalists who agreed to various reporting restrictions. On Wednesday, they also banned press photographers from briefings on the Iran War.
The administration’s actions against the press have escalated in recent months, with the arrests of three journalists in connection with their reporting at a protest in Minnesota and the raid of a Washington Post journalist’s home.
Previous presidents, including former President Barack Obama, have used tools like the Espionage Act to go after sources that leaked confidential information, said Gabe Rottman, the vice president of policy at the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.
Arresting journalists for their work at protests is an attempt to “criminalize very routine newsgathering practices,” Stern said.
Fort, Pullman, and Lemon were each charged with two crimes. The first was conspiring to deprive people of their civil rights, and the second was violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, which prohibits interfering with access to reproductive health clinics and places of worship.
The journalists’ arrests were "unprecedented" and a “really dramatic overcharge,” Rottman said.
Charges are usually brought at the local or state level, and it is very rare for journalists to be charged, let alone convicted, for covering a protest, Rottman said.
In January, FBI agents executed a search warrant on Washington Post reporter Hannah Natson’s home. Her phone, a watch, a personal laptop, and a work computer were seized. Natson was not the target of the investigation. Authorities were investigating a government contractor accused of possessing classified documents.
Prior to the raid, journalists had some assurance they could publish leaks without retribution, Stern said.
“Now, any journalist who wants to publish a government leak has to consider the possibility that their home might be raided,” Stern said.
Stern added that government leaks have been crucial to some of the most important news in American history.
“If you see these instances in isolation, you can point to precedent for them under administrations of both parties,” said Rottman. “When you put them all together, it's escalation after escalation.”
A CHILLING EFFECT
By going after independent journalists, the Trump administration is trying to “intimidate” reporters everywhere, Stern said. He added that it makes journalists “second-guess whether they can safely do their jobs without getting arrested” and creates a landscape where people are unsure how laws are enforced.
“Nobody knows what routine conduct the administration is going to figure out a way to go after next,” Stern said. “The only discernible rule that you can figure out if you're a journalist trying not to be targeted by this administration is to self-censor, to not report things that the administration doesn't want you to report.”
Stern added that people do not always know when publications are self-censoring.
“We will never know how many stories we didn't read about because a journalist decided to self-censor, or a news outlet decided to self-censor,” Stern said. “We know what news we do read. We don't know what we don't know. So it's entirely possible that some really significant news has not come across our radars because of fear of retribution.”
Despite the Trump administration’s wide variety of attacks, great journalism and reporting critical of the administration has still continued, Stern said.
“From the most powerful to, you could argue, the most vulnerable, the administration is coming up with tactics to suppress news gathering and chill reporting,” Stern said. “The media hasn't rolled over and died.”
According to reporting by PBS, after Lemon’s arrest, he said he would continue reporting.
"I have spent my entire career covering the news. I will not stop now,” Lemon said. “In fact, there is no more important time than right now, this very moment, for a free and independent media that shines a light on the truth and holds those in power accountable."
Marissa Fernandez covers politics for Medill on the Hill.
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The 50: Delaware
Building Affordability and Economic Opportunity in Delaware’s Changing Communities
Mar 29, 2026
Delaware’s rapid demographic and economic shifts have placed affordability and equitable development at the center of public debate. As housing costs rise and immigrant communities grow—particularly in Sussex and Kent Counties—local organizations are stepping in where traditional systems fall short. Supported by the Delaware Community Foundation (DCF), groups like La Esperanza and NeighborGood Partners are demonstrating how community-led strategies can strengthen economic mobility, stabilize neighborhoods, and expand opportunity for families who have long been excluded from mainstream pathways to prosperity.
"We have a fund called the Arsht-Cannon Fund, which has for 15 years been funding Latino serving organizations in the state of Delaware and really putting on the map that these are our neighbors," said Stuart Comstock-Gay, President and CEO of DCF. These are people who are creating businesses, and going to our schools and really creating communities that are great. And that fund and the people who lead that fund are constantly looking for which are the organizations that are serving people while listening to the community and how can we help them be stronger."
The Fulcrum spoke to Comstock-Gray and other members of his team for an episode of The 50: Delaware.
- YouTube youtu.be
Sussex County has experienced one of the fastest-growing immigrant populations in the region. Since its founding in 1996, La Esperanza has evolved into a multiservice nonprofit dedicated to helping Latino and immigrant families achieve stability, integration, and success through bilingual, bicultural support services. Their work reflects a broader truth: economic development is not only about infrastructure and investment—it’s about people having the tools, rights, and stability to participate fully in their communities.
"That entrepreneurial spirit really grew in the Latino community out of both necessity, but also because this is a community that has always been resilient and has always found ways to continue to thrive and move forward. I think more than anything that’s a testament to just how resourceful and resilient the community is," said Bryant Garcia, Executive Director of La Esperanza.
In Kent and Sussex Counties, NeighborGood Partners (formerly NCALL) has spent nearly 50 years tackling affordability from multiple angles—housing counseling, financial education, lending, and community development. Their mission to strengthen communities through housing, lending, and education has shaped a comprehensive model that addresses affordability not just as a housing issue, but as a driver of economic opportunity. Their work spans affordable housing development, foreclosure prevention, financial coaching, community development financing, and resident-driven revitalization efforts such as Restoring Central Dover.
Will Grimes, Executive Director of NeighborGood Partners, emphasized that the strength of local economies comes from within the neighborhoods themselves. "The entrepreneurs are within the community. Inevitably, they have a vested interest in their community. So many of our entrepreneurs are reinvesting into the community... it just builds a better community. They're investing in their community and building up their community, he said.
The Delaware Community Foundation’s support for both organizations reflects a strategic approach to economic development—one that prioritizes local leadership, culturally competent services, long-term community capacity, and systems-level change through grassroots empowerment. DCF’s investments help ensure that organizations like La Esperanza and NeighborGood Partners can scale their impact, innovate, and respond to emerging needs—from immigration legal services to small-business development.
"The Arsht family felt as a family of immigrants themselves that they wanted to support newcomers in the state of Delaware. And when they were creating their fund and establishing what its purpose would be, they saw that they wanted to support the newcomer and Hispanic Latino community of Delaware. And so I think that really the philanthropy is driving what we think is important," said Dr. Jennifer Fuqua, Director of Community Partnerships and Hispanic Initiatives at DCF.
La Esperanza’s bilingual staff helps families navigate complex systems—legal, educational, financial—ensuring that immigrant communities are not left behind. By helping families secure legal status, access education, and build economic stability, La Esperanza strengthens the workforce and contributes to the region’s long-term economic resilience. Their vision of an inclusive and thriving community where hope is fulfilled resonates deeply in a region undergoing rapid demographic change.
"It is helping me to learn and do things the right way," said Oralia Morales Gonzales about La Esperanza's Opciones College and Career program. "I know that in order to reach goals, one never stops learning something new, something better," she said in Spanish. Gonzales is working to earn a GED (General Educational Development), the high school equivalency credential for adults who did not complete a traditional high school education. She aspires to be a psychologist.
NeighborGood Partners approaches affordability as a community-wide ecosystem. Their homeownership counseling, financial education, real estate development, self-help housing programs, and CDFI lending all work together to create pathways to stability and wealth-building. Their Launcher program, supporting small-business entrepreneurs in Dover, shows how economic development can be rooted in local talent and community voice.
As an instructor in NeighborGood Partners’ Launcher program, Janaid Kareem sees firsthand how access—or the lack of it—shapes an entrepreneur’s future. He stresses that opportunity isn’t evenly distributed, and that his classroom is designed to close those gaps. "I'm adamant about the resources because a lot of times... throughout my 34 years, I've realized that there's a lot of things that I have access to because I'm able to navigate through certain rooms. But everybody doesn't have access to that. So I take pride in my classroom. I take pride to bring those people into the classroom. You're hearing it from the horse's mouth. We can help you with this. We can help you with that. We can help you with this," said Kareem, who is a Barbershop owner in Dover.
The stories emerging from these communities in "The First State" reflect a broader national conversation about who benefits from economic development, what affordability means in communities undergoing rapid change, and how local organizations can build trust where institutions have historically failed. Delaware’s answer—through the work of La Esperanza, NeighborGood Partners, and DCF—is that sustainable economic development must be rooted in equity, cultural competence, and community voice.
Together, these organizations demonstrate that affordable housing is economic development, immigrant integration is workforce development, financial education is community development, and local leadership is democracy in action. Their work offers a blueprint for other states grappling with affordability crises and shifting demographics.
Hugo Balta is the executive editor of The Fulcrum and the publisher of the Latino News Network, and twice president of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists.
The 50 is a four-year multimedia initiative led by The Fulcrum, traveling to communities in every state to uncover what motivated Americans to vote in the 2024 presidential election. Through in-depth storytelling, the project examines how the Donald Trump administration is responding to those hopes and concerns—and highlights civic-focused organizations that inform, educate, and empower the public to take action.
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