Do Americans want an education system in which the quality of children’s schools depends largely on their family’s wealth?
Not likely. Yet in Republican-dominated states, that’s exactly what the future holds. This is arguably the most profound change in American education since the development of universal public education over a century ago.
Over the past five years, 14 states have passed laws creating universal vouchers, often known as Education Savings Accounts — public money families can use to pay private school tuition. All are Republican states: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Iowa, Louisiana, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, West Virginia and Wyoming. Two more, Oklahoma and Idaho, have passed refundable tax credits available to all families.
It’s rare that Newt Gingrich and Chris Van Hollen agree, particularly on funding topics, but pigs must be flying, as there’s widespread outrage in light of the 50% cut proposed to NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in the President’s Budget Request.
These cuts are distressing on their face, as they represent our nation walking away from investments in scientific discovery and technological advancement with the associated economic boost that comes from these investments. But they’re even more concerning when considered against the backdrop of a rising global power: China.
NASA is the main agency that funds space science — and the agency primarily invests in basic research with no direct applications to specific components of the economy.
We have no illusions about the brutal regime that rules Iran. It has repressed the Iranian people for more than four decades and declared itself the sworn enemy of the United States and Israel — and acted accordingly. Tehran’s incessant proxy wars against Israel, the United States, and other nations — typically carried out via terrorist groups like Hamas in the West Bank and Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, and Shia extremists in Iraq — are the chief source of the Middle East’s convulsive violence today.
The air campaign Israel launched against Iran on June 12 appears to primarily target Tehran’s ability to project power throughout the Middle East, including both its nuclear program and larger security apparatus. But an increasing rhetorical focus on regime change by Israeli political leaders risks trading the tactical gains Israel has made against the regime and its nuclear program for an open-ended military effort with an unclear strategic endgame.
Announcing the start of the air campaign against Iran, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed that Tehran “has taken steps that it has never taken before, steps to weaponize this enriched uranium.” But while Tehran had steadily increased its stockpile of highly enriched uranium in recent years, and the International Atomic Energy Agency passed a resolution declaring Iran to be in breach of its obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty the day Israeli strikes commenced, neither the IAEA nor American intelligence agencies assessed that Iran was nearing nuclear breakout capacity. Indeed, American and Iranian negotiators were slated to meet in Oman over the weekend to further discuss a de facto return to the 2015 international nuclear deal that President Trump withdrew from during his first term.
Across his two terms in office, President Trump’s Iran and Israel policies have been a disaster: his first term withdrawal from the original nuclear agreement left Iran free to pursue a nuclear program effectively unconstrained, while his administration consistently catered toward the Israeli right. In his second term, Trump’s unconditional support for Prime Minister Netanyahu in Gaza, the West Bank, and elsewhere was unsurprisingly interpreted in Jerusalem as a green light to launch the ongoing air campaign against Iran.
Trump’s apparent diffidence to his own preferred policy of negotiation and passivity in the face of an apparent Israeli determination to strike Iran left him unwilling or unable to insist that diplomacy be allowed to play out before Israel embarked upon any military action.
Nor is it at all clear what American policy toward the war is now. Secretary of State Marco Rubio issued an initial statement seemingly distancing the United States from the Israeli air campaign, but President Trump himself later sent a number of different signals on the war via social media posts and interviews. As a result, the United States has positioned itself as an unassertive bystander to the conflict. No matter what policy one might prefer going forward, however, there’s no good reason to believe the Trump administration could or would execute it with a modicum of competence.
That makes it difficult to recommend any course of action that goes beyond relying on the U.S. Central Command’s well-developed reflexes and muscle memory to prevent the conflict from expanding to include the United States, its allies, and its regional partners. American missile defense batteries deployed to Israel last year by President Biden have already helped defend Israelis and Palestinians against Iranian retaliatory missile attacks. The same goes for defending American and allied troops as well as Arab partners across the region against possible Iranian strikes.
It’s also hard to see what influence Trump has with either Israel or Iran at this point. From artificial intelligence-generated fantasies of a Trump-run Gaza to the removal of sanctions against Israeli settlers illegally grabbing Palestinian land in the West Bank, Trump has repeatedly given Netanyahu and his far-right coalition partners carte blanche to pursue whatever policies they see fit and abdicated America’s traditional role as an honest broker of peace negotiations — not to mention making the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians all the more difficult to solve. Nor is it likely the Iranians see Trump as a reliable interlocutor: he pulled out of the original nuclear agreement, then failed to restrain Israel while attempting to broker a return to the deal he once scorned, and now proclaims a lack of interest in peace talks.
Tehran may indeed offer to return to the table in order to relieve Israeli military pressure, but it’s uncertain whether Trump can restrain Israel now that it is in the midst of an air campaign against its chief regional rival — or whether Trump will stick to any deal he himself strikes. As usual, he has been incoherent and inconsistent in his public statements since the start of the conflict.
Whatever successes the Israeli air campaign may achieve in the near term — and they could be considerable — the United States and the world may well find themselves confronted with an Iran more determined than ever to acquire nuclear weapons over the medium-to-long term and few good options to prevent it from doing so. Trump’s diplomatic failures on Iran and Israel will haunt the United States, the Middle East, and the world for years to come.
WASHINGTON — Amid escalating global tensions, fractured alliances, reckless leadership, and a weakened domestic economy, a new report from the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) calls on Democrats to lead the charge for a strategic and sustainable increase in U.S. defense spending to reach $1 trillion annually by 2029. The report argues that a stronger military is essential to safeguarding American interests in a more dangerous world and to counter rising threats from Russia, China, and Iran.
Titled “An Affordable Necessity: The Case for a Larger Defense Budget,” the report by PPI National Security Policy Director Peter Juul critiques the Trump administration’s defense posture as strategically incoherent and fiscally misleading. Despite rhetoric touting military strength and claiming to undo Biden’s “woke” policies, the administration’s budget proposals would underfund key capabilities while overinvesting in ill-conceived projects such as the $175 billion “Golden Dome” missile defense initiative.
“President Trump’s policies are not only misaligned with real strategic needs — they are driving up costs while undermining America’s alliances and industrial base,” said Juul. “Democrats must break from old habits and reclaim their heritage as the party of national security.”
The report recommends a phased increase of $37.5 billion annually over the next four years to rebuild naval and airpower capacity, modernize the nuclear deterrent, and expand munitions production. It also lays out a vision for a notional Democratic defense program focused on deterring authoritarian aggression, supporting allied nations like Ukraine and Taiwan, and securing U.S. technological leadership in military systems.
Key takeaways from the report include:
A $1 trillion defense budget by 2029 remains below Cold War-era levels as a share of GDP and is fiscally sustainable within PPI’s broader deficit reduction plan.
The U.S. military lacks sufficient capacity — including ships, bombers, and air defense systems — to meet global security commitments.
Targeted investments can close gaps in naval shipbuilding, bomber forces, and munitions while avoiding waste on initiatives like the “Golden Dome.”
Democrats should reject reflexive budget cuts and instead pursue strategic increases that strengthen alliances and national defense.
Curbing the influence of partisan tech moguls and restoring professional leadership at the Pentagon is essential to sound defense policymaking.
Democrats face not just a security imperative but a political opportunity. By advancing a credible, cost-conscious plan to modernize the U.S. military and restore global leadership, they can reestablish public trust and define a forward-looking defense agenda rooted in democratic values and strategic realism.
Founded in 1989, PPI is a catalyst for policy innovation and political reform based in Washington, D.C. Its mission is to create radically pragmatic ideas for moving America beyond ideological and partisan deadlock. Find an expert and learn more about PPI by visiting progressivepolicy.org. Follow us @PPI.
To protect its essential interests around the globe and defend freedom in the world, the United States needs to devote more resources to its military. Democrats should lead the charge for the required increase in defense spending — and make sure it goes to the right places.
President Trump and his Republican Party talk a very big game when it comes to defense spending, but their own priorities remain unrealistic and misplaced. Despite their proposed funding increase, the Trump administration looks set to slash core military capabilities — including a possible 90,000-soldier cut to the Army — in order to pay for fantasies such as the so-called Golden Dome missile defense system. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has made his focus on fighting domestic culture wars crystal clear and appears to believe that logistics contribute little, if anything, to successful military operations. Meanwhile, Elon Musk has expressed public antipathy toward weapons like the F-35 stealth fighter and favors replacing them with hypothetical drone swarms presumably built by new defense firms founded and owned by Silicon Valley venture capitalists.
Worse, Trump’s foreign policy threatens America’s own defense industry, which likely means each U.S. dollar will buy less in terms of defense. With his threats to Canadian and Danish sovereignty as well as his attempts to push Ukraine into an effective capitulation while offering unilateral concessions to the Kremlin, he has alienated America’s long- standing NATO allies in Europe — to the point where these traditional friends and allies question whether or not they can or even should rely on American military support. Trump’s blunderbuss tariffs, moreover, threaten American industries that depend on global supply chains and relationships with manufacturers among America’s allies in Europe and Asia. Fewer overseas sales and higher costs for industrial materials and inputs mean the Department of Defense will likely pay more for the weapons it buys for itself from U.S. defense firms. Even worse, ruptured alliances mean the United States will have to shoulder more of the burden for its own national security and spend more on defense than it would need to otherwise.
For their part, Democrats must reject predictable, knee-jerk calls from the left to cut the defense budget as well as claims that even modest increases in defense spending will prove unaffordable. In reality, a steady and significant rise in defense spending up to $1 trillion by 2029 is both warranted and within America’s means. A defense budget that sees an increase of roughly $37.5 billion a year over the next four years would provide the U.S. military with the resources it requires to secure American interests while remaining well within the lower bounds of historical defense spending — no matter the metric chosen to measure it.
It’s hard to make solid policy recommendations given the extraordinary uncertainty the United States and the world face over the next four years — to say nothing of the damage President Trump, Elon Musk, and others in the Trump administration have already done to the U.S. government. But even if it underestimates the scope of the defense policy challenges that will confront the next Democratic administration a modest increase in defense spending dedicated to the right priorities could still yield national security dividends well beyond the initial investment and plant the seeds of a robust national defense program.
As PPI previously argued, a Democratic defense program should pursue three main goals:
Deter and defend American allies in Europe and
the Pacific against aggression from the likes of a belligerent Russia and an increasingly well-armed China.
Produce arms, ammunition, and equipment in sufficient quantities to supply the United States, its allies, and nations on the frontlines of freedom like Ukraine and Taiwan.
Maintain and modernize America’s aging nuclear deterrent.
Without increased investment in defense, however, America’s military will not be able to attain these three goals. Indeed, the military has too few combat ships and aircraft available to meet the demands placed upon it — and many of these ships and planes have been in service for decades. What’s more, Russia’s war against Ukraine has revealed the limits and weaknesses of America’s own modern defense industry that have only begun to be addressed. Money alone cannot safeguard American national security, of course, but a defense budget that rises to $1 trillion by 2029 will certainly help do so.
A strong defense program along the lines proposed below can help Democrats reclaim their rightful place as the party of national security. It was Franklin D. Roosevelt, after all, who called on the United States to become “the great arsenal of democracy,” and John F. Kennedy who welcomed the responsibility of “defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger.” At a time when gangster powers like Russia, China, and Iran press their geopolitical advantage — including through force or its threat — Democrats can and must summon the same spirit today.
A quiet shift is underway in K-12 education that is democratizing the types of credentials awarded to students and educators. Increasingly, K-12 is using micro-credentials to verify and document what students and educators know and can do when assessed on particular learning outcomes.
The effect is potentially profound. Journalist Sara Weissman says that young people’s use of micro-credentials is creating “The micro-credential generation, a fast-growing number of traditionally college-age students [who] are bypassing degrees to pursue cheaper and faster alternative credentials.”
What follows examines the emerging use of micro-credentials in K-12 student learning and teacher professional development, the challenges involved in implementing this approach, and the lessons learned along the way.
Centre-left parties the world over are lamenting the loss of their heartland, as low paid, working-class and non-graduate voters defect to the right.
Claire Ainsley was a key aide to the UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer and is now part of the Progressive Policy Institute, a US-based group with close links to the former US president Bill Clinton. She’s been in Australia speaking to voters about Labor’s election victory.
Undaunted by his predecessor’s failure to spark a manufacturing renaissance, President Trump also dreams of reindustrializing America. He won’t succeed either, because no president has the power to undo a half-century of post-industrial evolution.
Why have our two oldest presidents fixated on “bringing back” factory jobs? Both grew up in the ‘50s, when the United States bestrode a war-ravaged world like an industrial colossus. But the answer isn’t just nostalgia for a lost “golden age.”
There’s also a pervasive feeling that our country owes a promissory note to working families hit hard by deindustrialization. The disappearance of manufacturing jobs with decent pay and benefits — traditionally their ticket from high school to the middle class — has undermined their living standards and social standing.
As Senate Republicans work to develop their own version of the “One Big Beautiful Bill” (OBBB) passed by the House last month, one of their biggest priorities is making temporary tax provisions permanent. In a recent interview, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Mike Crapo argued that “certainty in the tax code” is essential for businesses to plan their operations. Senate Majority Leader John Thune also recently said that his conference “believe[s] that permanence is the way to create economic certainty.” But there can be no certainty in any tax policy so long as there remains an unsustainable mismatch between federal revenue and spending levels — which the OBBB would make significantly worse.
The United States is already on anincreasingly unsustainable fiscal path. The national debt today is almost the same size as the country’s gross domestic product (GDP), while annual interest payments on that debt are bigger as a percent of GDP than at any other point in American history. If the OBBB becomes law, the government will be on track to borrow another $2 trillion to cover the difference between spending and revenues every single year going forward. But debt cannot grow faster than our economy forever because, at a certain point, there will not be enough economic activity for the government to tax or borrow from to continue paying ballooning interest costs. The policies in OBBB would only increase the probability that our economywill experience such a fiscal crisis within the next few decades.
Whether they do it to prevent a crisis or react to one, lawmakers will inevitably have to change fiscal policies that result in unsustainable deficits. So if Senate Republicans were truly interested in using permanent policy to provide certainty to taxpayers, they would prioritize policies that reduce the budget deficit over those that increase it.
Fortunately, there have been many policy options discussed in recent months that the Senate could adopt to bring down the OBBB’s costs. Lawmakers could tighten the deduction for state and local income taxes paid by businesses — as PPI suggested in our last Budget Breakdown. Preventing wasteful overpayments in Medicare Advantage, which the Senate considered this week before backing off, could reduce spending by hundreds of billions of dollars without cutting benefits. The Senate could also incorporate tax changes previously considered by their colleagues in the House, such as increasing the excise tax on stock buybacks to create parity with dividends or further limiting the business deduction for employee compensation. President Trump has proposed several possible offsets of his own that were omitted from the bill, such as closing the carried interest loophole or introducing a new top income tax bracket for households with the highest incomes. And lawmakers can find even more possible offsets in the budget blueprint published last year by PPI, which includes enough savings to put the budget on a path back to balance by 2050.
If Senate Republicans refuse to incorporate any of these common-sense proposals to mitigate the OBBB’s deficit impact and put the nation on a more sustainable fiscal path, whatever tax provisions they enact would be permanent in name only. Under pressure from out-of-control debt and interest costs, future Congresses will inevitably have to revisit the policies put in place by today’s. Senate Republicans must remember that the only way to truly provide tax certainty is by building a sustainable fiscal foundation.
According to new analysis from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, passing the OBBB would cause the bottom 10% of American households to lose roughly $1,600 per year, while the top 10% would gain $12,000 per year.
Colleges and universities have had to adjust their admissions processes after the Supreme Court struck down race-based affirmative action a couple of years ago. Author Richard Kahlenberg argues that schools should turn to class-based affirmative action, which he says will also increase diversity.
For Democrats, it’s a concern rooted in Trump’s historic strength on immigration with voters not in Los Angeles, but watching on social media and TV in swing states and districts across the country.
“There’s a background and a history, and so that limits the sympathy of lots of fair-minded Americans watching this spectacle unfold,” said Will Marshall, founder of Progressive Policy Institute, a center-left think tank.
WASHINGTON — As skepticism grows over the value of traditional four-year degrees, a new report from the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) highlights an innovative, upwardly mobile alternative: apprenticeship degrees that blend paid, work-based learning with college credit, helping Americans advance their careers without taking on crushing debt.
The report is an output of PPI’s Campaign for Working America, launched last year in partnership with former U.S. Representative Tim Ryan (D-Ohio). The Campaign aims to develop and test new themes, ideas, and policy proposals that help Democrats and other center-left leaders make a compelling economic offer to working Americans, bridge divides on cultural issues like immigration and education, and rally public support for the defense of democracy and freedom globally.
“Apprenticeship degrees represent the kind of common-sense innovation we need to rebuild the American Dream for working families,” said Ryan. “They combine real-world work experience with a college degree, making higher education more affordable and more relevant. If we want to compete with China and restore economic dignity in the American Heartland, this is the kind of policy we ought to be championing.”
“Millions of young people and workers are being forced to choose between a job they need now and a degree that may — or may not — pay off later,” said Ross, PPI’s Director of Workforce Development Policy. “Apprenticeship degrees eliminate that false choice by integrating work and education into a single, debt-free path to upward mobility.”
The report reveals growing skepticism about the value of traditional college degrees and presents apprenticeship degrees as a promising, debt-free pathway to economic mobility. Key takeaways from the report include:
Rising Doubts About College Value: 56% of Americans believe a four-year degree is not worth the cost — especially among younger graduates.
A New Pathway: Apprenticeship degrees offer students the opportunity to earn wages, gain experience, and receive academic credit — all while avoiding student debt.
Economic Mobility: Over 70 million Americans are “Skilled Through Alternative Routes” (STARs) but lack credentials to access higher-wage jobs.
Policy Support: The report outlines a blended funding model and urges Congress to include apprenticeship degrees in new workforce and higher education legislation.
Institutional Innovation: Reach University and Western Governors University are among the institutions pioneering this model, particularly in education and health care.
“Apprenticeship degrees are a bipartisan, practical solution to the intertwined problems of upward mobility, college affordability, and labor market readiness,” said Manno, Senior Advisor at PPI, who leads the What Works Lab. “With smart public investment and stronger employer partnerships, apprenticeship degrees can become a mainstream option across the country.”
Founded in 1989, PPI is a catalyst for policy innovation and political reform based in Washington, D.C. Its mission is to create radically pragmatic ideas for moving America beyond ideological and partisan deadlock. Find an expert and learn more about PPI by visiting progressivepolicy.org. Follow us @PPI.
Each year, millions of America’s high school graduates face a difficult choice: Should they follow the pathway to a traditional university degree and hope it yields long-term financial stability and upward mobility? Or should they enter the workforce in an entry-level job and hope it yields long-term financial stability and upward mobility?
A traditional degree doesn’t guarantee financial freedom. Many graduates are burdened by student loan debt and underemployment. The median student loan debt ranges from $10,000 to $14,999, though a quarter of borrowers owe at least $25,000. Additionally, research from the Burning Glass Institute and the Strada Institute for the Future of Work indicates that 52% of bachelor’s degree graduates are employed in jobs that typically don’t require a college degree. Ten years later, that figure only drops to 45%. Meanwhile, many employers no longer regard a college degree as a gatekeeper credential for jobs, shifting from degree-based to skills-based hiring.
Clearly, college alone doesn’t guarantee labor market success. Furthermore, the idea that all high school graduates should attend college is no longer widely accepted. The 25-year mantra of “college for all” has lost its luster. According to the nonpartisan think tank Populace, when Americans ranked their priorities for K-12 education, “being prepared to enroll in a college or university” plummeted from the 10th highest priority (out of 57) in 2019 to 47th in 2022. After all, 62% of Americans don’t have a four-year degree.
Other surveys reveal a growing skepticism about the value of a four-year degree.8 More than half of Americans (56%) think a degree is not worth the cost, with skepticism most pronounced among college degree holders ages 18 to 34.
This situation has many interrelated causes, but policymakers’ chronic underinvestment in career education, workforce training, and alternative pathways to good jobs tops the list. Simply put, high school graduates and working-class Americans lack opportunities to access quality employment outside the traditional two- or four-year degree path.
All of this is a loud call for U.S. political leaders to reorient economic policy around the aspirations and values of America’s non-college majority. Americans want and need new pathways to financial prosperity and upward mobility. Polls and studies indicate that they view work-based learning, such as apprenticeships, as a promising solution to their current workforce challenges.9 The apprenticeship degree model is one of these emerging solutions.
Apprenticeship degrees anchor postsecondary education to paid workplace learning under the guidance of experienced mentors, establishing paid employment as a key component of the degree. The wages offset college expenses, enabling students to graduate with little to no debt, making the degree affordable. Students also receive academic credit for their on-the-job experiences and related classroom instruction, which leads to a degree over a period of two to six years, depending on the program.
The apprenticeship degree model is based on a new public-private partnership that positions apprenticeships as a new higher education pathway, expanding access to postsecondary education for individuals seeking alternatives to the traditional college experience. It also provides a talent pipeline for employers eager to hire candidates with real-world experience.
This report provides an overview of the American public’s demand for alternative pathways to a traditional college degree, with a focus on preparing individuals for the workforce. It then describes the emerging apprenticeship degree model as a compelling way to meet the demands for alternative pathways to workforce preparation. Finally, it proposes a variety of ways to sustainably finance this model, suggesting a blended funding approach.
There were clear winners and losers in Rachel Reeves’s spending review yesterday but some of her announcements around capital spending and investment saw her dubbed the ‘Klarna Chancellor’ by LBC’s Nick Ferrari for her ‘buy now, pay later’ approach. Clearly trying to shake off the accusations of being ‘austerity-lite’, Labour point to longer term decisions made yesterday, such as over energy policy and infrastructure. But will voters see much benefit in the short-term? And, with the news today that Britain’s GDP shrank by 0.3% in April, will the decisions Rachel Reeves have to make only get harder before the October budget?
Lucy Dunn speaks to Michael Simmons and Claire Ainsley, former director of policy to Keir Starmer and now at the Progressive Policy Institute.
Richard Kahlenberg has been enthralled with the multiracial, working-class coalitions envisioned by Robert F. Kennedy and civil rights activist Bayard Rustin since he was an undergraduate student at Harvard University. Decades later, Kahlenberg says those ideals led him to an unexpected alliance with conservatives in their fight to end race-based affirmative action.
Kahlenberg, a policy scholar who is currently director of housing policy at the Progressive Policy Institute, was an expert witness for Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) in its lawsuits against Harvard and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Ultimately, the Supreme Court two years ago struck down race-based affirmative action programs in most college admissions.
