A quality that’s often missing from community youth services is coordination among programs. This is where Sacramento, California, excels, working as a region to coordinate youth-serving organizations regarding both advocacy and services.
Sac Kids First is a coalition 36 youth-serving organizations that was formed in 2017, with the original impetus coming from a group of young Hmong leaders active in the East Bay Asian Youth Center. These leaders surveyed youth to identify their concerns and needs and to build a coalition with the goal of establishing a dedicated funding source for children and youth.
Sac Kids First worked during the COVID-19 epidemic to persuade the City Council to invest federal stimulus funding in youth services, with a focus on serving youth and families impacted by the pandemic. As a result, the City Council dedicated over $8 million to youth services from the federal allocation.
Youth Forward serves as the coordinating entity of Sac Kids First, with a goal of increasing the wellbeing of children and youth in the Sacramento region, particularly children and youth most affected by poverty, violence and trauma. Youth Forward also works on youth leadership and mental health programs, including work during the pandemic to produce a series of virtual training sessions in youth mental health for youth development workers.
In 2022, Youth Forward and Sac Kids First led a campaign to create a children’s fund in the city budget, which was placed on the ballot that July and adopted November 8th with support from 62% of the voters. Under this measure, the city spends the equivalent of 40% of the tax revenues from cannabis sales on child and youth services (about $9 million annually, in addition to what the city currently spends on youth services).
The fund, which is overseen by an advisory commission funds services in the following areas:
- To prevent and reduce child and youth homelessness
- To support the mental and emotional health of children and youth
- To prevent youth violence
- To prevent and reduce youth substance abuse
- To support the healthy development of children ages 0 to 5
Sac Kids First, is also working at the state level to generate revenue for kids’ programs.
In other work by Youth Forward, youth leaders, won a commitment from the City Board of Education during the 2022-2023 school year to ensure that all middle schools and high schools in the district will have safe spaces on campus for LGTBQ students. During the 2024-2025 school year, Youth Forward organizers led the development of Schools as Centers of Wellness, which included placement of mental health clinicians at schools in Sacramento County.
In its presentation to the jury as part of winning designation as an All-America City in 2022, Sacramento also highlighted youth programs related to literacy, helping kids in housing developments, and support for post-secondary education.
Sacramento’s Literacy Coalition brings together local and statewide organizations, non-profits, education administrators, government officials, funders and like-minded individuals in monthly meetings to advance literacy by raising awareness, increasing out-of-school time literacy programming, including tutoring, summer reading, book giveaways, and advocating for the Science of Reading in all classrooms.
Another community effort is the city’s Promise Zone, which was the highlight of the city’s application for this year’s All-America City award. As one of the hundreds of cities working with the Campaign for Grade-Level Reading, Sacramento has focused much of its attention on assisting youths in public housing and has served more than 14,000 kids in all through partnerships with the library and other organizations.
The city also began a new effort to serve young people at the other end of the spectrum—teenagers, mostly—through a project sponsored by the National League of Cities called Youth Excel. This program will help youths with access to quality postsecondary education and career pathway opportunities that lead to higher wage jobs. Each of the six cities involved in the program formed a cross-sector team and is connecting with city cohort peers to share and refine promising approaches to overcoming barriers to accessing quality jobs in STEM fields.
Literacy and other services to improve youth well-being are a way of life for city leaders in Sacramento. As former mayor Darrell Steinberg said about literacy efforts during his presentation at City Hall of the All-America City award, “We haven’t solved this problem, but at least we’re making progress.”
The National Civic League (NCL) is a nonpartisan organization dedicated to advancing inclusive civic engagement and strengthening democracy by helping communities build more equitable, participatory, and effective local governance.
A golden tray sits on the Resolute Desk as President Donald Trump speaks during an announcement on American nuclear innovation in the Oval Office at the White House on July 24, 2026, in Washington, D.C. Trump is signing multiple executive orders targeting the nuclear energy sector and easing rules for new reactors and nuclear fuel supply chains.
Trump’s hubris rivals the fallen heroes of ancient Greek mythology
In January, the New York Times asked President Donald Trump if there were any limits on his global powers.
“Yeah,” the president responded, “there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
That was eight months ago, but fortunately Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster adaptation of “The Odyssey” has made ancient Greek literature newly relevant. Before that window closes, I’d like to talk about hubris.
Today, the term mostly means excessive pride or arrogance. That’s part of what the Greeks meant by it too, but the meaning was a bit richer and more specific. Hubris was an insolent or outrageous act that offended the gods, often because the transgressor was claiming abilities or authorities that solely belonged to supreme beings.
Nolan renamed and slightly modified the concept of xenia for the film, calling it “Zeus’ law.” In the director’s telling, mortals should follow the rules laid out by the gods, specifically the requirement to treat strangers with respect lest they be gods in disguise.
In a sense, hubris is the opposite, or at least the rejection, of xenia. The hubris of the suitors, and at times Odysseus himself, invites punishment by the gods and their mortal instruments.
Which brings me back to Donald Trump. His claim that there are no constraints on his personal power to dictate events on the global stage was one of the greatest expressions of hubris ever uttered by a political leader.
Trump’s claim was obviously false when he made it.
He vowed that he could end the Russia-Ukraine war in 24 hours. He’s proved powerless to make that happen. If he had divine powers to work his will, why would he have balked at implementing his tariffs so often that Wall Street adopted the “TACO trade” term for his deals? “TACO” stands for “Trump always chickens out.”
And why would Trump have made so many embarrassing concessions to China — from rescinding tariffs on Chinese goods to allowing them to buy crucial and incredibly valuable computer chips?
But Trump saw his success at capturing Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro as proof of his ability to launch missiles to the same effect as Zeus’ lightning bolts. Trump believed he was the most powerful man who ever lived.
This is no exaggeration. In March, when the Iran invasion seemed successful, Trump gave a document penned by“Presidential Historian David King” to New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan purporting to prove that Trump was “the most powerful person to have EVER walked this planet.” King was, in fact, a businessman and occasional caddy for legendary golfer Gary Player.
King compared Trump favorably to many of history’s most powerful, and often heinous, figures: Alexander the Great, Attila the Hun, William the Conqueror, Napoleon Bonaparte, Joseph Stalin, Genghis Khan, Mao Tse Tung, Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin. Many of these men thought they were the most powerful person in the world, too. And many were defeated precisely because they believed it.
At least Napoleon and Hitler had a string of truly impressive victories before they learned the folly of hubris. The limits on Trump’s power have been exposed by far less august forces than the combined might of the allies in World War II or the fearsome Russian winter.
Iran is a comparatively middling power. But the regime’s ability to absorb punishment while imposing its will on the Strait of Hormuz has proved to be a greater constraint on Trump’s power than his morality or mind. We should note that, at least rhetorically, his morality has not proved much of a constraint. He has repeatedly promised to destroy Iranian “civilization” if the regime refuses to capitulate.
But they haven’t — and won’t anytime soon — because the regime’s tolerance for pain far outstrips Trump’s. The combined fear of skyrocketing oil prices, outrage of Gulf state potentates, diminishing weapon supplies and domestic unpopularity is doing the work that international law, congressional oversight and the collective opinion of foreign policy experts can’t or won’t do.
If I considered Trump more heroic than reason and facts could allow, I would say his Sisyphean predicament has the whiff of Greek tragedy to it. Trump is vexed by the fact that the Iranians won’t honor deals or ratify his countless premature claims of victory — giving new meaning to his vow that his presidency would make people tired of winning. It’s almost like they’re out-Trumping Trump.
Things might have gone better if he’d heeded that great Greek tragedian Sophocles: “For Zeus utterly abhors the boasts of a proud tongue.”
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Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.