Democratic political icon James Carville and former White House Chief of Staff (2017) and Republican National Committee Chairman (2011-2017) Reince Priebus sat down with USC students prior to the event, 'Finding Common Ground on the State of our Democracy' to answer questions, and share insights.
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Getty Images, grandriver
AmeriCorps Is America at Its Best
Jul 04, 2025
This spring, Brandon F. was rebuilding homes in North Carolina ravaged by Hurricane Helene. Brandon had committed to a year of service through AmeriCorps NCCC, a team-based service year program for young adults.
For decades, teams like Brandon’s have shown up in response to natural disasters and stayed long after news cameras and public attention moved elsewhere. Yet, just months after Brandon started his service year, he found himself back at home without a paycheck and looking for answers.
Brandon is one of nearly 33,000 Americans whose AmeriCorps service was abruptly terminated in April when the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) dismantled the program. As CEO of Service Year Alliance, I’ve spent months hearing hundreds of heartbreaking stories from corps members whose service year journeys were disrupted.
Since mid-April, more than 1,000 AmeriCorps grants have been terminated, impacting every state, Washington, D.C., multiple territories, and tribal nations. In 13 states, every AmeriCorps program was defunded.
This means fewer adults in classrooms to help students learn to read and write. It means food pantries without the help they need to cook, serve, and deliver hot meals to the elderly and those who experience food insecurity. It means homes damaged by natural disasters were left uninhabitable because the team responsible for the repairs was told they needed to go home within 24 hours of the notice.
While a recent court injunction calls for the reinstatement of grants in some states, uncertainty surrounding the release of funding and deep cuts to federal agency staff leave the programs and the corps members serving through AmeriCorps in limbo.
In Chattanooga, Tennessee, Angel T., a single mother serving with Housing First Service Corps, was working to prevent youth homelessness when her position was eliminated.
“AmeriCorps changed the trajectory of my life,” Angel told our team. “It gave me more than just professional development. It gave me a lifeline. Its sudden and unexpected termination threatens to push me back into the cycle of poverty and housing instability that I’ve fought so hard to escape.”
And in Carroll County, Georgia, Krystal Z. was mentoring youth with the local 4-H program when she got the news that her service was ending.
“It felt like a punch to the gut,” she shared. Like thousands of other AmeriCorps members, Krystal faced immediate uncertainty. During their service years, corps members like Krystal rely on a modest living stipend and benefits. They also serve with the promise of a post-service award that can be used for education-related expenses like tuition or to help pay down student loans.
The cuts to AmeriCorps extend across every sector where members serve, including schools, community health centers, and our national parks. The consequences are both immediate and long-lasting. Tens of thousands of Americans were suddenly left without paychecks, healthcare, and education awards. Communities have lost critical support systems overnight. And we're sending a devastating message to the next generation about whether their desire to serve even matters.
For more than 30 years, AmeriCorps has been a cornerstone of our civic life, engaging over 200,000 Americans annually. From high school graduates to senior citizens, service years are a proven pathway to develop leadership and workforce-ready skills while strengthening your commitment to our country along the way.
AmeriCorps has long enjoyed support across the political divide because it embodies values all Americans share: commitment to community, personal responsibility, and the belief that we're stronger when we work together.
This is the work that matters most—neighbors helping neighbors, strangers helping strangers. When our leaders decide that programs like AmeriCorps aren’t needed, we abandon the very values we claim to uphold as Americans.
AmeriCorps is America at its best. This Independence Day, we need more of it, not less.
Kristen Bennett is CEO of Service Year Alliance, a nonprofit working to make a year of service a common expectation and opportunity for all young Americans.
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Photo by Don Starkey on Unsplash
What Democracy Promised Us — and What We Got Instead
Jul 04, 2025
The Fulcrum is committed to nurturing the next generation of journalists. To learn about the many NextGen initiatives we are leading, click HERE.
We asked Lluvia Chavez, a Mexican-American bilingual journalist dedicated to amplifying the stories of underrepresented communities and a cohort member with the Fulcrum Fellowship, to share her thoughts on what democracy means to her and her perspective on its current health.
Here’s her insight on the topic.
Democracy promises a lot. It promises power to the people, protection, and accountability for the powerful. It promises fairness, transparency, and dignity. But lately, I’ve been asking myself: Who actually gets to experience democracy that way?
Because what we’re living through is a version of “democracy” that I feel like something else entirely.
In 2024, Donald Trump became the first former U.S. president to be convicted on 34 felony counts in a criminal trial. Yet despite that historic verdict, he faced no jail time, no fines, no probation. In 2025, he returned to office, proof that the rule of law does not apply equally. Meanwhile, thousands of ordinary Americans — disproportionately people of color — sit behind bars for far less. According to the U.S. Sentencing Commission’s 2023 report, over 5,200 individuals were sentenced for nonviolent property or financial offenses (like fraud, theft, and embezzlement) in federal court alone — without any violent element. That stark contrast highlights how democracy can fail when justice is not applied evenly.
Democracy also claims to protect freedom of speech, protest, and the press. But across the country, that freedom is under threat. At Columbia University, graduate student and green card holder Mahmoud Khalil was detained by ICE in March 2025 after participating in pro-Palestine protests. Though a federal judge ordered his release, citing First Amendment violations, the damage was done. Fear rippled through immigrant communities, especially students and scholars who once believed their legal status protected them.
The Trump administration’s Executive Order 14188 escalated that fear. It authorized federal agencies to monitor international students involved in protests, treating dissent not as a constitutional right but as a potential threat. That same administration moved to punish Harvard University by freezing over $2.2 billion in federal funding and threatening its ability to enroll international students, a clear retaliation against academic institutions that refused to silence student voices.
These are not isolated incidents. They are symptoms of a democracy drifting from its principles. And those very principles — fairness, equality, the idea that power rests with the people — are what this country prides itself on, and projects onto the rest of the world. It’s why immigrants from every corner of the globe come here chasing the American dream. As a Latina, I’m frightened by how my community is being treated in times when democracy seems to be fading. When hard-working people live under constant threat, it’s hard to believe those promises were ever meant for us.
I still believe democracy is attainable, but not in the version that has been corrupted by unchecked power and selective enforcement. I believe in a democracy where the law applies to everyone, not just the powerless. As a reporter, I also feel immense responsibility as Journalism plays a huge role in democracy — it demands truth, amplifies voices, and insists on transparency.
To me, democracy means a shared responsibility to protect not only our rights, but also those of others. This is evident in the thousands of protests taking place across the country, many under banners that read “No Kings,” a reminder that no one is above the law. It means creating systems that uphold dignity, inclusion, and truth.
Democracy is ever-changing, and change is only beneficial if it brings real progress. Today, it can feel as though the efforts of those who fought for human rights are being eroded. But that’s also why it matters so much to stay engaged, to exercise our First Amendment rights — to keep pushing so that each shift brings us closer to the fairness and dignity democracy promised in the first place.
Please help the Fulcrum in its mission of nurturing the next generation of journalists by donating HERE!
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Independence Day, in its best form, should be an act of collective remembrance and recommitment, not just a party.
Getty Images, Rebecca Nelson
Independence Day in an Unsettled America
Jul 03, 2025
Once again, the Fourth of July rolls around with its arsenal of rituals—flags whipped by summer wind, fireworks pulsing in the night sky, the smoky tang of barbecue curling above backyards and city parks. On paper, the day is pure celebration: independence won, liberty enshrined, a nation’s ongoing promise to itself. But if you look closely—if you listen to the conversations at the edge of the parade or watch who stands comfortably in the light and who lingers in the shadows—the holiday reveals something far more complicated.
One doesn’t have to look hard to see that our independence, while hard-fought, is also unfinished. The United States was born with a contradiction at its heart: the ringing declaration that “all men are created equal,” written and ratified by men who held others in bondage. Every July, we drape those words across our lawns and our hearts, but how often do we pause to grapple with their incomplete fulfillment?
In this peculiar season, when the country feels as fractured as I’ve ever seen it, the pageantry of the Fourth can feel almost surreal. The very notion of freedom is up for debate, its meaning stretched and battered by a thousand competing interests. Voting rights are being chipped away in some states, while the right to live free of violence is a daily struggle in communities of color. Even the simple act of teaching the truth about our past—about enslavement, displacement, and resistance—has become a battleground.
America continues to be a work in progress. Borrowing from Barack Obama, she is a nation that stumbles forward, never quite as good as its ideals, but never entirely giving up on them either. Sometimes, I wish we’d sit with that unfinishedness a little longer. Independence Day too often becomes a performance, a celebration that papers over the cracks. We tell ourselves stories about unity, about exceptionalism, about the slow but certain arc of justice. It’s impossible to ignore the way that arc keeps getting bent—sometimes backwards—by those who profit from division.
Our democracy, so often described as sturdy and enduring, is showing signs of fatigue. Laws meant to include are rewritten to exclude. Protesters are met with indifference or outright hostility. The language of “freedom” is used to justify the silencing of dissent and the erasure of inconvenient histories. The very systems that were supposed to safeguard our rights are now, in some places, being weaponized against them.
Personally, I’m drawn to the notion of bearing witness, not just to what is, but to what ought to be. Independence Day, in its best form, should be an act of collective remembrance and recommitment, not just a party. We need to remember that freedom is not static, nor is it evenly distributed. We need to recommit to the labor of making liberty real for everyone, especially those for whom the promise of independence still rings hollow.
Spiritually, we are called to a kind of holy unrest. Holy unrest is a refusal to accept the world as it is, when we know what it could be. In Christian tradition, Jesus didn’t hand out only comfort. Often, Jesus demanded uncomfortable truth. He called out the hypocrisy of the powerful, stood with the marginalized, and insisted on justice even when it cost him everything. That prophetic tradition asks something difficult of us: to look at our national story not with nostalgia but with honest eyes.
In my heart, I still love my country. I love its messiness, its stubborn hope, its capacity to surprise. To love America means abstaining from turning a blind eye to its wounds. Loving our dear republic means asking hard questions at the cookout. Above all, love of country requires telling the truth—about the people still locked out of the celebration, about the freedoms that remain unfulfilled, about the dangers of settling for easy myths.
This Fourth of July, I will sit with my family and watch the sky bloom with color. I will remember ancestors who waited for a freedom that was promised but delayed. I will think of the children growing up in a country that is theirs but doesn’t always act like it. Let us not mistake celebration for completion. Let us remember, and let us work.
Rev. Dr. F. Willis Johnson is a spiritual entrepreneur, author, scholar-practioner whose leadership and strategies around social and racial justice issues are nationally recognized and applied.
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A family together in their kitchen.
Getty Images, The Good Brigade
Tax Changes in the Federal Budget Bill Are a Disaster for Many American Families
Jul 03, 2025
Anyone raising children in the U.S. knows that it’s expensive. Many jobs – especially the service jobs that do essential work caring for our children and elders, bringing us food, cleaning our office buildings, and so much more – don’t pay enough to cover basic needs. From rising grocery costs to unaffordable housing, it’s becoming harder and harder for American families to make ends meet.
Unfortunately, if our leaders don’t step up, it will soon get even more difficult for families. That’s because the budget reconciliation bill passed by the U.S. Senate on Tuesday, now under consideration by the House of Representatives, includes critical tax changes that will leave many children, their families, and, ultimately, our communities in the lurch.
Helping families with childrearing costs is an investment in the next generation, making it an economic as well as a moral imperative. But the United States is an outlier here. Our public spending on families with children, as a percent of GDP, is lower than all but one peer nation. Similar wealthy nations usually provide families with a child allowance, which reduces child poverty and its related harms.
In the U.S., we have the Child Tax Credit, a tax refund of up to $2,000 per year per child for lower- and moderate-income households with children. But this credit leaves behind millions of children, with 17 million children nationwide currently excluded from the full credit because their parents’ income is too low. In Orange County, California, where I live and work, approximately 141,000 children are excluded.
Congress’s proposal would maintain these exclusions and lock even more children out of the full credit. That’s because new requirements would mean 2.6 million U.S. citizen children would lose their eligibility just because their caregiver lacks a social security number.
This is the complete opposite of what we should be doing. Expanding the Child Tax Credit is among the most effective ways we can direct public resources. After the American Rescue Plan expanded the Child Tax Credit in 2021, child poverty fell by 46 percent, to its lowest recorded level. The research is clear that the monthly payments helped families provide food and other day-to-day necessities for children. And supporting families in meeting their needs helps to prevent child abuse and neglect, keeping small setbacks from spiraling into crises.
Not only does expanding the Child Tax Credit pay off in improved child health and well-being – which benefits us all – it also boosts local economic activity. The expanded Child Tax Credit was poised to deliver $11.5 billion in economic benefits for California in the year after its passage.
It doesn’t end there. The federal budget bill would also impact the Earned Income Tax Credit, which goes to lower- and moderate-income working families and has long been one of the most vital, bipartisan anti-poverty programs in this country. Already, approximately 1 in 5 eligible families miss out on this tax credit because of difficulties filing for it. New, tedious paperwork requirements would mean even more eligible families would be left behind just because of red tape.
Child poverty spiked after the Child Tax Credit expansion expired. The budget bill’s tax proposals, in tandem with deep cuts to Medicaid, food assistance, housing assistance, and more, will accelerate that trend by keeping more families from receiving these vital supports.
But it doesn’t have to be this way. The Senate-passed bill is not yet law – it now heads back to the House, where these harmful proposals can still be changed. Our leaders must step up to protect children, or the affordability crisis will only get worse for many families across the country.
Kelley Fong is assistant professor of sociology at the University of California, Irvine, where she studies social policy and family life. She lives in Irvine.Keep ReadingShow less
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