Bradley Tusk is the founder of Mobile Voting Project working to use technology to make voting more accessible for many voters. The interview is part of a collaboration between Bridge Alliance and CityBiz entitled Repairing America's Broken Democracy.
DC voting rights advocate Lisa D.T. Rice criticized the DC City Council for failing to fund Initiative 83’s semi-open primary system, leaving 85,000 independent voters unable to participate in taxpayer-funded primaries despite overwhelming voter approval in 2024.
WASHINGTON, D.C. - Lisa D.T. Rice spoke before the DC City Council during a Budget Oversight Hearing on May 1 to talk about Initiative 83, the semi-open primary and ranked choice voting measure she proposed that was approved by 73% of voters in 2024.
- YouTube youtu.be
Two years later, as DC residents prepare to vote in the 2026 primaries, 85,000 independent voters are still locked out of these taxpayer-funded elections because the city council decided the will of the people didn’t matter.
A semi-open primary would allow registered independents the opportunity to pick a Republican or Democratic ballot while registered party members would have to vote in their respective party’s primary.
Instead, the Democratic majority voted only to fund ranked choice voting. DC voters took note of this slight against their vote, as did major news publications like The Washington Post, which continues to criticize council members.
Just check out the opinion piece where the Post’s editorial board asks, “Why are DC Dems afraid of independent voters?”
“When I became an independent, I didn’t realize I would be disenfranchised,” said Rice. Our friends at Open Primaries posted her testimony on YouTube (see above).
“Nowhere in the Constitution does it say that to exercise the sacred right to vote, you must belong to a political party. The Republican and Democratic Parties didn’t even exist at the founding of our nation, and yet they have made a fundamental American right contingent on joining one of these private clubs.”
One of the main excuses the council has made for not funding open primaries is the cost. Rice explained that it would cost $1 million to implement a semi-open primary, most of which would go toward paper (i.e. mailers, ballots, and voter registration cards).
For context, $1 million represents not even a percent of the city’s multi-billion-dollar budget.
“We would not tell people with disabilities that it is too expensive for them to vote,” Rice remarked. “We would not accept it if someone told us they could not afford enough ballots for black voters, and we should not accept that excuse for Initiative 83.”
She added that the irony is not lost on her that while Democratic leaders across the country decry the Supreme Court’s recent decision to limit section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, DC Democrats are “fighting tooth and nail” to keep her from voting.
Rice closed out her testimony challenging members of the Council to stand by their words when they say they will defend DC voters and their right to vote. “Which is it? Are the outcomes of our local elections sacred and worthy of respect from elected officials – or not?”
Check out her full testimony above.
“We Can’t Afford It” Is Never an Acceptable Excuse To Deny Independents a Vote was originally published by Independent Voter News and is republished with permission.
Americans are questioning whether they have enough resources and support to raise a family in the nation's current political landscape. Julie Roland examines the contradictions of "pro-family" politics in America today and the kind of care mothers are owed to safely and successfully raise children.
My mother, who died of breast cancer when I was 18, had me when she was 32. This past Sunday, I turned 33, childless. As I officially fall behind her timeline, with no plans to have kids anytime soon, I look at the landscape of 2026 America and have to ask: Who can blame me?
The decision to start a family is a difficult one. J.D. Vance said on his first day as Vice President that he wants “more babies in America,” but many Americans simply can’t afford to have kids anymore. Perhaps that’s one reason why this administration is offering $5,000 “baby bonuses” just to incentivize birth, while also banning abortion in every way they can. But becoming a mother should be a choice. I was the result of an unplanned pregnancy–and I’m lucky my mom decided to have me and that she turned out to be the best mom ever–but as Miriam Rabkin, MD, MPH, put it: “if you want mom to be happy and healthy, she needs access to contraception so she can choose if and when to get pregnant!” Instead, this administration seems to think that if women won’t elect to have children, they should try paying them, and if that doesn’t work, then they should just force them.
The hypocrisy of the administration’s “pro-life” stance is made plain in the federal budget. While the administration ignores calls for federally mandated paid family leave (a basic standard in almost every other developed nation), it has found $38.3 billion to acquire and retrofit warehouses into massive immigration detention centers. We are told there is no money to support the 40% of American births covered by Medicaid, which faces $1 trillion in proposed cuts, yet there is an endless well of funding for a $170 billion immigration enforcement machine, where pregnant women have been thrown behind bars under terrible conditions.
Since July 2025, the administration has been funneling all pregnant unaccompanied minors—some as young as 13—into a single facility in San Benito, Texas. Internal whistleblowers and journalists have revealed that at least half of these girls are pregnant as a result of rape. Instead of receiving trauma-informed, specialized obstetric care, they are being held in a facility that lacks a single on-site doctor or OB-GYN, located hours away from specialized medical centers. The U.S. already ranks 55th in maternal mortality, the worst among wealthy nations. By sending these girls to Texas, where abortion is banned even when the mother’s life is at risk, the administration is effectively forcing children to carry the pregnancies of their rapists to term in cramped, ill-equipped warehouses, in a state where maternal deaths have spiked by 56%.
The Trump regime’s pro-family rhetoric masks a brutal reality for those actually bearing and raising children. Even outside of detention centers, motherhood in this country is a more harrowing experience than it has been in a long time. For Black mothers, maternal mortality is a catastrophe, with Black women three times more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than white women (Trump has moved to cancel NIH grants researching these very disparities). On Mother’s Day, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) launched Moms.gov, a digital portal promising to make moms healthy again that reads more like an attempt to distract from a lethal policy record. But surely, deporting breastfeeding mothers and ignoring the 16 known miscarriages that occurred in ICE detention just last year is making America neither healthy nor great.
MAHA’s virtue-signaling website pretends to celebrate motherhood while Trump sabotages the care that keeps them and their children alive. Secretary of HHS Kennedy has personally overseen the exclusion of healthy pregnant women from COVID-19 booster recommendations and has convinced expecting mothers to avoid Tylenol by lying to them about its connection to autism. He’s also behind the decisions that have put the U.S. on the verge of losing its 26-year-old measles elimination status. When asked at a Senate committee hearing if he agreed that “89% of children who died from flu were unvaccinated,” Kennedy replied that he didn’t know the exact number. 89% is the exact number. But don’t worry, moms, they made you a website.
Speaking of people misusing their unearned platforms, what was up with Melania’s op-ed in the Washington Post? Most readers have called the First Lady’s words a disgrace; she essentially called for the restoration of a time before feminism, criticizing mothers who prioritize their careers over family. Apparently, the White House thought it was a good idea to have a billionaire’s wife attempt to shame working mothers.
If the Trump regime truly valued mothers, it would invest in their survival, not their detention. It would fund parental leave, not cages. Until then, Moms.gov and Melania’s manifesto are reminders that we have a government that loves to hype up the idea of a mother (as a caretaker, a woman “whose unconditional love steadies us through every season of life,” and a supplementary character), but has total contempt for the person and the reality of the role.
Policy reform that prioritizes moms prioritizes our nation’s future. Moms are on the front lines, raising the next generation, and our country should be supporting women in this critical mission. Instead, this government’s agenda has been more of an assault. We as a community must call out the hypocrisy and not become desensitized to the abuse. We must organize and fight back. We have the numbers—the only people on this planet are mothers and their children. We wouldn’t be here without moms. Let’s pay it forward.
Julie Roland was a Naval Officer for ten years, deploying to both the South China Sea and the Persian Gulf as a helicopter pilot before separating in June 2025 as a Lieutenant Commander. She has a law degree from the University of San Diego, a Master of Laws from Columbia University, and is a member of the Truman National Security Project.
Religious leaders hold a press conference at the Episcopal Church Center to outline plans for implementing the recommendations of President Johnson's riot commission. From the left are Rabbi Marc Tanenbaum, president of Inter-Religious Foundation for Community Organizations; Rev. Albert Cleage Jr., pastor of Detroit's Central Congregational Church; Rev., John Hines, co-chairman of Operation connection, and Rabbi Abraham Heschel, of New York's Jewish Theological Seminary.
An aggressor shouting “Free Palestine” choked a 32-year-old Jewish man near Adas Torah synagogue recently in the Pico-Robertson neighborhood in LA.
This episode, following on the heels of thousands more, is a stark reminder that the surge of antisemitism in the U.S. continues unabated.
On the same day, the Supreme Court of the United States rolled back a major tenet of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that had supported Black voters' rights in Louisiana.
The surge in racism and antisemitism is discouraging after all the efforts to bring together the Black and Jewish communities, a movement championed by the late Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr., who died earlier this year.
I saw Jackson’s allyship with Jewish leaders up close. My late husband, Rabbi Marc Tanenbaum, was then Director of Interreligious Relations at the American Jewish Committee. He was among those with whom Jesse Jackson engaged in the wake of the “Hymietown” scandal.
Rather than retreat into their corners, hurling accusations at each other, they shared a stage at the Queens College People-to-People program. Ignoring violent threats and unruly demonstrators outside, they each acknowledged the issues that divided them and affirmed the importance of the Black-Jewish allyship, which both deeply valued. Both had walked the walk in support of each other’s communities, and that strong foundation held, despite the controversy.
Unfortunately, that foundation seems to be crumbling–at least among younger Blacks and Jews. Yet, that allyship is more urgently needed than at any time since the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.
Today, old and new issues threaten both communities: voting rights, white supremacy, hate speech, hate crime, replacement theory, immigration, gerrymandering, minority status, reproductive health and rights, and Christian nationalism.
There are far fewer issues that divide us: white privilege, affirmative action, antisemitism, and Israel/Palestine.
The first divisive factor ignores the fact that as much as 15% of the Jewish community in America is comprised of Jews of color. Valid research has yet to be done outside the U.S., but an educated guess is that there are hundreds of thousands of additional Jews of color worldwide. As such, Blacks and Jews are bound together by intermarriage, conversion, and ethnicity.
Affirmative action quotas can evoke opposite responses in Jews and Blacks. For Jews, quotas have historically meant exclusion. For Blacks, they are the road to inclusion.
Nevertheless, when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down race-based admissions in a 2023 ruling, Jewish organizations, such as the Anti-Defamation League, American Jewish Committee, and the Reform movement’s Religious Action Center, condemned the decision; and Jews have generally favored affirmative action.
As for antisemitism, many Jews tend to forget that Black Americans endorsed the United Nations resolution calling for the establishment of the State of Israel in 1947. Harvard University Professor Ralph Bunche won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1950 for his mediation efforts following Israel’s War of Independence in 1948. He was the first Black American to win the prize.
When Israel airlifted to safety 14,000 Black Jews from Ethiopia in Operation Solomon in 1991, 36 Black mayors across the U.S endorsed that effort.
Black organizations joined the fight to free three million oppressed Jews in the Soviet Union.
The National Urban League supported the repeal of the “Zionism is racism” resolution at the United Nations in 1991.
In 1999, Jesse Jackson worked for the release of 13 Iranian Jews who had been arrested and charged as Zionist spies.
All of these acts of support for Jews and Israel were done by older generations of Blacks. It’s quite a different story for the younger generation.
A 2023 study by Eitan Hersh and Laura Royden in the Journal of Race, Ethnicity and Politics, with an oversample of 18–30-year-olds, revealed that younger Black adults are a particularly high-risk subgroup for antisemitic attitudes, relative both to white youth and to older Americans. Unlike many other prejudices, antisemitism is not lower among younger minority cohorts.
Earlier studies showed similar results, attributed to the rise of Black nationalist and Third-Worldist ideologies that cast Jews/Zionism as colonial or racist forces. This led to binary thinking that cast people as either pro-Israel or pro-Palestine, as if they were mutually exclusive. And it denied the indigeneity of Jews to Israel.
This brings us to the elephant in the room: Israel.
Israel has been weaponized as a wedge issue to separate the Black and Jewish communities. But Israel is not relevant to the domestic issues that threaten it. To the extent that it has become a litmus test for mutual support, the obsession with Israel undermines both groups’ interests.
Jews need to stop demanding that Blacks loudly proclaim their support for Israel in order to gain Jewish support. And Blacks need to stop expecting Jews to renounce their Zionism in order to deserve their support.
As painful as it is for each side to put these litmus tests aside, they are beside the point when it comes to dealing with urgent domestic issues that threaten both communities.
Blacks and Jews are both under attack by haters and extremists. But if both groups remain in their silos, each is vulnerable to forces that divide them in pursuit of agendas that undermine all.
There is a different model for allyship. Put aside litmus tests on issues that disrupt the ability to work together.
Instead of advocating for each other, focus on issues that impact both communities in common. The former has led to each community feeling abandoned by the other at key moments. If people coalesce around issues in which both have a big stake, they will be helping everyone by working together on shared interests.
Dr. Georgette Bennett is the founder and president of the Tanenbaum Center for Interreligious Understanding and founder and Chair of the Multifaith Alliance. She is the author of Thou Shalt Not Stand Idly By, and Half-Jew Full Life, and co-author of Religicide.
The skyline of Austin, Texas.
America’s long-standing political conflicts increasingly carry an economic cost that is rarely discussed. Research on economic policy uncertainty suggests that sustained political instability can readily reduce national economic output by 1–2 percent or more of GDP through reduced investment, hiring delays, and lower productivity.
In an economy the size of the United States, that represents hundreds of billions of dollars every year — roughly the economic output of an entire mid-size U.S. state.
In prior essays, I argued that America’s political division has become so deep that a peaceful separation into two sovereign nations — one broadly red and one broadly blue — is something Americans should start to discuss and consider seriously.
I also argued that fears of mass migration in an American Union are overstated. If two successor nations were able to govern themselves according to their own political preferences, each would likely move toward its own political center, which would make it easier — not harder — for most Americans to remain where they are.
The United States has long been a complicated political marriage — one held together more by history and economic benefit than any truly shared political vision.
This essay focuses on the economic damage caused by that reality, arguing that 330 million people living under constant political and policy whiplash destroys economic value that could otherwise be created.
A peaceful transformation into a cooperative American Union — two sovereign countries sharing a currency, integrated markets, free movement of people and goods, and a unified defense — could preserve the economic strengths that have made the United States prosperous while reducing the political instability that increasingly undermines that prosperity.
The Cost of Policy Uncertainty
A large body of economic research shows that policy uncertainty discourages investment, distorts hiring decisions, and reduces economic output.
Economists have developed widely used measures of economic policy uncertainty and found that spikes in uncertainty are associated with measurable declines in investment, output, and employment.
When businesses face a substantial risk that major policies may reverse every four to eight years, they behave as any rational actors would — namely, they delay investment, demand higher returns to compensate for risk, and focus on shorter-term strategies, all of which reduce economic efficiency.
These costs are not theoretical or far-fetched. They appear repeatedly in American economic life.
Climate regulation expands, contracts, and expands again. Tax regimes swing sharply. Immigration rules shift repeatedly. Each major reversal forces businesses to cancel projects, redirect capital, and retrain workers — often at enormous cost.
Economic modeling suggests that uncertainty shocks can reduce output by around one percent of GDP or more in the years following a shock, largely through reduced investment and slower productivity growth.
In effect, the American economy operates below its potential because long-term planning is impossible.
Behind institutional uncertainty lies a quieter but also meaningful cost — the effect of constant political conflict on individual productivity. Public health and labor economics research shows that chronic stress impairs cognitive performance, decision-making, and workplace productivity.
Modern political polarization — amplified by social media and 24-hour news cycles — exposes Americans to a near-constant stream of political outrage and perceived threat. In a knowledge economy like that of the U.S., mental bandwidth matters. Time and attention consumed by political anxiety are resources not devoted to innovation, problem-solving, or leadership. Political stress also disrupts sleep, increases burnout, and reduces the mental clarity required for creative work.
In a cooperative American Union, much of this chronic stress would dissipate. Citizens in each country would no longer feel that distant and adverse political majorities control their lives.
Political conflict would still exist — but its scope would be narrower and healthier, and its stakes lower.
Every political conflict generates economic costs. Businesses and institutions devote enormous resources to less productive activities such as lobbying, litigation, and contingency planning in response to unstable policy environments.
Consider health policy since 2010. Businesses spent years adapting to the Affordable Care Act, then preparing for repeal efforts, then adjusting again to regulatory changes. Similar cycles have occurred in environmental regulation, financial policy, and immigration.
These activities keep lawyers and consultants busy, but they often produce little real economic value.
A more stable political structure could dramatically reduce these wasteful transaction costs.
Another economic cost of political polarization is the erosion of social trust, with scholars having documented the long decline in American civic participation and social capital. Further, economists have since shown that interpersonal trust plays a measurable role in economic performance.
Cross-country research finds that higher levels of social trust are strongly associated with higher GDP per capita and faster economic growth. Trust lowers transaction costs, simplifies contracts, and facilitates knowledge sharing. Political polarization undermines that trust. When citizens increasingly view neighbors and colleagues as ideological enemies, cooperation declines and partnerships fracture.
Those micro-level breakdowns eventually show up as macro-level economic underperformance.
A political reorganization into two coherent democratic communities could allow social trust to rebuild within each society while allowing relations between them to become less hostile and more pragmatic. When people believe their neighbors share basic values, engagement rises.
Modern economic growth depends heavily on regional ecosystems — networks of specialized firms, skilled workers, and supporting institutions. Economists have shown how these ecosystems generate powerful economic spillovers and productivity gains.
But such ecosystems depend on stable rules. Silicon Valley, for example, depends on consistent policies governing capital gains taxation, intellectual property, immigration, and bankruptcy law. Sudden policy reversals disrupt those systems and reduce efficiency.
The current American political system increasingly oscillates between incompatible policy visions: Blue America tends to favor aggressive climate policy, industrial policy, and social welfare programs; Red America tends to favor lower regulation, fossil fuel development, and smaller government.
Both approaches have internal logic and can make economic sense. The problem is that neither is implemented consistently. In an American Union, each nation could pursue a coherent strategy that provides clearer long-term signals to markets.
Even after a peaceful separation, each successor nation would remain a major global economy.
Based on Census and Bureau of Economic Analysis data, an illustrative “Red America” would have roughly 170 million people and GDP exceeding $13 trillion, while an illustrative “Blue America” would have roughly 165 million people and GDP exceeding $14 trillion.
Both would remain among the largest economies in the world.
Economists routinely find that uncertainty reduction and institutional stabilization alone can raise growth by 0.5 to 1.0 percentage points over sustained periods, with conservative projections suggesting that reduced policy uncertainty, improved productivity, stronger social capital, and more coherent policy environments could increase annual economic growth by roughly 0.3 to 0.5 percentage points.
Even small improvements in growth compound dramatically over time. Over 20 years, a 0.3 percentage point increase in annual growth produces roughly 6 percent higher GDP, while a 0.5 point increase produces 10 percent or more.
Applied to an economy the size of the United States, those differences translate into trillions of dollars in additional economic output. Spread across American households, the implications are substantial. For typical households, this implies roughly $100,000 to $175,000 in additional lifetime income, depending on how much of the additional national output ultimately flows to wages and household income.
Economic history provides examples of similar growth accelerations following institutional stabilization. Sweden’s structural reforms in the 1990s were followed by stronger economic performance. Ireland’s “Celtic Tiger” period combined policy reform with rapid growth. And the peaceful separation of Czechoslovakia was followed by major economic restructuring and recovery in both successor states.
A common objection to the idea of an American Union is that today’s “blue states” subsidize today’s “red states” through the federal budget.
While there is some truth to this claim, it’s not nearly as one-way as many think and would largely offset by the increased economic growth of an American Union structure.
Under the current system, federal taxes are collected nationally while federal spending flows back to states through programs such as Social Security, Medicare, federal grants, and government procurement.
For fiscal year 2024, estimates show that 19 states paid more to the federal government than they received, while the remainder received more than they paid. Even in the most extreme donor and recipient states, recent balance of payments estimates show net flows on the order of only a few thousand dollars per resident per year — significant for state budgets, but modest relative to overall state level income and output.
Many blue states are net contributors under these measures, while many red states are net recipients — though the pattern is not absolute. Large red states such as Texas and Florida also send more to Washington than they receive.
If the United States were reorganized into two sovereign nations, these cross-state transfers would stop. Each nation would operate its own fiscal system.
Programs heavily dependent on federal grants — particularly Medicaid — could face the greatest adjustment pressures. However, much of the spending counted in these analyses consists of payments to individuals — such as Social Security and Medicare — rather than subsidies to state governments. And the potential growth dividend from reducing policy instability is large by comparison.
Even a 0.3 to 0.5 percentage point increase in annual growth implies tens of thousands of dollars in additional cumulative income per resident over a few decades, far exceeding the typical per capita net transfer implied by current federal balance of payments data, and even modest increases in economic growth would expand the tax base available to both nations.
America’s economic underperformance increasingly reflects political dysfunction. Businesses hesitate to invest because policy environments are unstable. Workers devote mental energy to political conflict rather than productive activity. Transaction costs accumulate as laws and regulations oscillate.
An American Union could preserve the institutions that have long made the United States economically successful — strong property rights, entrepreneurial culture, integrated markets, and free movement of people and capital — while reducing the political instability that increasingly undermines those advantages.
The economic case for such an arrangement is not ideological. It is practical. Americans likely would become wealthier, more productive, and less politically hostile in a cooperative American Union than under the current system of perpetual policy warfare.
America's Political War Is Costing Trillions: An American Union Could Fix It was first published by The Western Journal and was republished with permission.
Jordan Karp is a lawyer and writer based in New York with a keen interest in American political culture, institutional reform and civic life.
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