Two small knots of people—fatigue-clad soldiers and unaccompanied women—gathered in the spring sunshine on the south side of the iconic bridge. Few spots in Ukraine are better known in the West than the span that connects Kyiv with its northern suburbs, Irpin and Bucha. This is the bridge Ukraine destroyed in February 2022 to stop Russian tanks from reaching the capital, forcing tens of thousands of fleeing residents to cross the river on foot. Three years later, the bridge has been repaired, and simple as it is—an unremarkable stretch of urban roadway—there is something miraculous about it, smooth and unbroken across the flat marshland.
The Ukrainians huddled near the old crossing last week are there to celebrate the third anniversary of the liberation of Irpin—the end of the opening battle of the war. It’s a simple ceremony, the first of several marking the day. Attendees stand for a moment of silence for fallen fighters; a small band plays the national anthem. There are short prayers and speeches. Then the mayor, also in fatigues, hands out the little plastic boxes with Ukrainian flags, one for each tearful widow. “We can fix the buildings,” wounded veteran Andrii Rizhov, a compact man with a graying beard, tells me. “Most of the physical damage and destruction has been repaired. The souls are different. Nothing can repair these widows’ shattered lives.”
This is a time of swirling emotions for most Ukrainians. Three years of war—nightly bombardments, power outages, unrelenting mobilization, and mounting casualties—have left citizens exhausted and yearning for peace. Few expect much of the ceasefire being negotiated by Washington and Moscow.
Now that the Supreme Court has made racial preferences in college admissions illegal, can class-based affirmative action promote equity? Washington Monthly Editor-in-Chief Paul Glastris and Contributing Editor Anne Kim speak with Richard Kahlenberg, the nation’s most prominent advocate of economic affirmative action.
“U.S. tariff rates are somewhat lower than tariff rates in other countries,” said Ed Gresser, the vice president and director for trade and global markets at the Progressive Policy Institute, a think tank. “But vis-à-vis other rich countries, it’s not a lot.”
“Artificial intelligence snaps up good entry-level positions [so] entry-level jobs start to look like today’s mid-levels, which demand years of experience,” writesRyan Craig, Managing Director at Achieve Partners. The result for college graduates who are career beginners is an experience gap, where requirements for good entry-level jobs are higher than in the past.
In cybersecurity, for example, Tier 1 entry-level jobs that involve detection and response are now automated. This creates new entry-level analyst jobs requiring at least four years of experience, placing a higher premium on demonstrated experience or knowing what to do with the skills individuals have.
Another example comes from OpenAI researchers, who showed how ChatGPT could perform thousands of tasks that cover more than 1,000 occupations defined by the U.S. Department of Labor. The effect is to “sever the career ladder of industries like finance and law,” writes Molly Kinder of the Brooking Institution. The problem will worsen as industry-specific language models develop, with employers adding years of job experience to entry-level job descriptions.
Can a new class-based approach to college admissions produce economic and racial diversity alike—and greater fairness? For decades America’s colleges and universities have been working to increase racial diversity. But Richard Kahlenberg argues that they have been using the wrong approach. He makes the case that class disadvantage, rather than race, should be the determining factor for how a broader array of people “get in.” While elite universities claim to be on the side of social justice, the dirty secret of higher education is that the perennial focus on racial diversity has provided cover for an admissions system that mostly benefits the wealthy and shuts out talented working-class students. Kahlenberg says that by fixing the class bias in college admissions we can begin to rectify America’s skyrocketing economic inequality and class antagonism, giving more people a better place at the table as they move through life and more opportunity to “swim in the river of power.” Kahlenberg, author of the new book Class Matters, has long worked with prominent civil rights leaders on housing and school integration. But his recognition of class inequality in American higher education led to his making a controversial decision to go over to the “other side” and provide research and testimony in cases that helped lead to the controversial Supreme Court decision of 2023 that ended racial preferences. That conservative ruling could, Kahlenberg says, paradoxically have a progressive policy outcome by cutting a new path for economic and racial diversity alike—and greater fairness.
In November 2020, with the Covid-19 pandemic raging, I took off my mask and sat down nervously in the witness stand at the federal district courthouse in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
I was there to testify as an expert witness for Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA), a conservative group challenging racial preferences at the University of North Carolina. (SFFA and I were also involved in a parallel suit against Harvard University.) I would be testifying that racial student body diversity is very important to achieve on college campuses, but that, according to my research, UNC-Chapel Hill could create an integrated campus without using race — if it jettisoned its preferences for privileged children of alumni and faculty and gave a meaningful admissions boost to economically disadvantaged students of all races.
This was a very unusual position for me to be in. Over the years, I’d allied myself closely with civil rights groups and leading Black officials — from civil rights activist and attorney Maya Wiley to politicians like Sen. John Lewis (D-Ga.) and President Barack Obama’s Education Secretary John B. King — on issues of schooling, housing and employment. But on the issue of whether preferences at elite colleges should be based on race or class, I was on the opposite side from many of my friends — and I had joined with an unlikely group: the deeply conservative attorneys of the law firm Consovoy McCarthy. A few had clerked for Justice Clarence Thomas, and one was representing Trump to keep his tax returns private. Students for Fair Admissions was the brainchild of conservative activist Edward Blum, who had challenged a key section of the Voting Rights Act — litigation with which I strongly disagreed. Many of my liberal friends were mystified, even appalled, that I decided to help them.
Legacy preferences are a sordid business, which began in the early 20th century as an effort to cap Jewish enrollment at selective college. I had a chance to observe closely how these preferences work when I served as an expert witness in lawsuitsagainstHarvard and the University of North Carolina for using race in admissions. As I outline in my new book, “Class Matters: The Fight to Get Beyond Race Preferences, Reduce Inequality, and Build Real Diversity at America’s Colleges,” I testified that racial diversity is important for college campuses, and that universities could create that diversity without racial preferences if they eliminated favoritism for wealthy (mostly white) applicants and boosted the admissions chances of working-class students of all races.
Harvard had longclaimed that legacy preferences were a mere “tiebreaker” among equally qualified candidates, but an internal study I cited as part of my court report found that legacies received a 40% boost in admissions, meaning a student with a 15% chance of admissions as a nonlegacy had around a 55% chance if he or she were a legacy.
From our Budget Breakdown series highlighting problems in fiscal policy to inform the 2025 tax and budget debate.
Two reports published within the last week by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) highlight the explosive growth of our national debt and the economic harm it is likely to cause.
On Thursday, CBO published its long-term budget outlook, which projects the federal budget out 30 years with the assumption that current laws remain unchanged. Under this scenario, the national debt as a percent of gross domestic product (GDP) would surpass the all-time high of 106% it reached at the end of World War 2 by the time President Trump leaves office. Between then and 2055, the debt would then grow another 50% relative to GDP.
These projections would be alarming enough on their own. But even more alarming was a special report CBO published the week before in response to an inquiry from Rep. David Schweikert (R-Ariz.), who co-chairs the Congressional Joint Economic Committee. Schweikert asked CBO to project what would happen if Republicans made the expiring provisions of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) permanent without offsetting the cost, which President Trump has made his top political priority. CBO’s answer: debt would more than double relative to GDP within the next 30 years. The annual budget deficit would also grow to 12.3% of GDP, which is nearly twice today’s level and four times the level it was when President Trump took office in his first term.
Schweikert also asked CBO to model a scenario under which interest rates were higher than expected, which could very well happen given that 1) the Trump administration’s tariffs and other misguided economic policies are keeping inflation above the Federal Reserve’s target and 2) our country has never experienced debt or chronic deficits anywhere close to the levels currently projected. Under a scenario in which average interest rates are just one percentage point above current projections scenario, CBO projects debt would grow to more than 250% of GDP — a level so high that the agency’s models ceased to function.
Republicans have argued that they must extend the expiring TCJA provisions because they would boost economic growth. But CBO estimates that doing so would actually shrink the economy by nearly 2 percentage points over the 30-year window. And in the “higher interest rates” scenario, the damage would be roughly double (before CBO’s model crashes). CBO’s reports make clear that slowing the unsustainable rise of our national debt — not accelerating it with unfunded tax cuts — is the key to economic growth.
CBO projects the Social Security trust funds will be exhausted in just 9 years. If no action is taken before 2034, benefits will automatically be cut across the board by at least 21%.
On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, Richard Kahlenberg, author of Class Matters: The Fight to Get Beyond Race Preferences, Reduce Inequality, and Build Real Diversity at America’s Colleges, joins Mike and David to discuss how Democrats can move beyond DEI and embrace “integration, equal opportunity, and belonging.” Then, on the Research Minute, Amber examines a study on the relationship between standardized test scores, high school GPA, and first-year college performance at Ivy-Plus universities.
On this episode of Radically Pragmatic, PPI’s Senior Advisor and Director of the What Works Lab, Bruno Manno is joined by Rebecca Winthrop, Senior Fellow and Director of the Center for Universal Education at The Brookings Institution.
Winthrop discusses the motivation behind and premise of her and Jenny Anderson’s new book, “The Disengaged Teen: Helping Kids Learn Better, Feel Better, and Live Better.” She touches on the growing teen disengagement problem and explains her four modes of student engagement. She also discusses practical strategies for how parents and educators can engage students in learning.
FACT:The Trump administration is trying to find foreign eggs to lower prices, then immediately tax them to raise prices.
THE NUMBERS: Egg prices,* per dozen large Grade A –
February 2025:
$5.90
December 2024:
$4.15
February 2024:
$3.00
* National averages, via. St. Louis Federal Reserve’s “FRED” Economic Data system.
WHAT THEY MEAN:
Quick followup to our look at public opinion on tariffs last week: A poll released by Fox News (on Friday, two days after our piece) matched the four-fathoms-underwater responses to CNN/SSRS and Reuters/IPSOS: 28% thought tariffs would be good for the economy and 53% bad. More generally, this poll finds “inflation, prices, and the cost of living” the top public concern, cited by 27% of all respondents. “Economy and jobs” is next at 16%. And those thinking of inflation this year often envision an egg.
Eggs are one of those common products, like gasoline or fresh vegetables, where very visible price hikes make people sensitive. Among the apparently sensitized is the Secretary of Agriculture, Brooke Rollins, who is cajoling South Korea and Turkey this month to sell us more eggs. Here’s a passage from Hoosier Ag Today:
“[Rollins] says USDA is also working to temporarily increase the import of eggs in order to increase the supply available for consumers. “Turkey and South Korea have both confirmed they will be increasing breaker egg imports into the U.S. …USDA continues conversations—in fact, I was on one earlier today regarding another country who’s ready to import a significant amount of eggs in the short term, but we continue to work that issue very, very aggressively—again, just for the short term, to keep getting the price of eggs down.”
Two points on this:
1. “Autarkic” economies often suffer shortages and price shocks: Economies with tight import limits, whether whole countries or individual ‘sectors’, suffer price shocks and shortages more frequently than “open” economies with more diversified sources of supply. As the U.S. infant formula crisis was the 2022/23 example, eggs are this year’s, with prices doubling since the outbreak of avian flu last spring.
The lost output is hard to replace because only a few countries can sell eggs to Americans. Policy is jointly and fiercely patrolled by USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, the Food and Drug Administration, and the Agricultural Marketing Service, for “high path avian influenza” and “virulent newcastle.” The three agencies, for understandable reasons, require countries hoping to sell eggs to American grocery stores to have food-safety systems comparable to that of the United States, and the individual poultry operations hatching them out to pass FDA inspection.
In principle this is correct — health and safety first; set policy through science and medicine rather than through responses to fears or price concerns. And in contrast to infant formula, where strict quotas and high tariffs make it very hard for American groceries to buy, eggs don’t have especially high import barriers. (Egg tariffs, HTS 04072100, are now 2.8 cents per dozen, or a quarter of a cent per egg.) But in practice, the regulatory gauntlet is so costly and difficult that egg trade is very small. USDA’s “Global Agricultural Trade System” database reports only two countries — Canada and Turkey — selling us any significant quantity, and even they don’t do much. (Canada shipped about 2.7 million dozen fresh eggs last year, Turkey 5.7 million dozen, and the rest of the world a few thousand dozen more.) The U.S. egg industry, by comparison, shipped about 53,000 million dozen to groceries each year, which puts imports below 1% of egg sales.
In such circumstances, as with infant formula three years ago, domestic problems bring swift consequences and they tend to last. When last fall’s avian flu outbreak slashed U.S. production, shortages and price spikes followed immediately. So a dozen eggs now cost twice what they did last spring. Ms. Rollin’s Easter weekend egg hunt, like the Defense Department’s infant formula airlift two years ago, illustrates the effect of tough import limits even when the rationale for them is understandable.
2. The Trump administration is trying to simultaneously lower and raise egg prices: Meanwhile, the rest of the administration is trying to make eggs cost more. As Ms. Rollins looks for ways to bring egg prices down, Mr. Trump has spent the past month hyping a plan to personally impose tariffs of 10%, 25%, or some yet-to-be-decided random level, on eggs and other products from Canada, the European Union, Mexico, China, and maybe every other country in the world.
Supposedly these tariffs, on chicken eggs and the other 11,413 additional “tariff lines,” will hit next week. Courts may well declare this plan unconstitutional: Congress, not presidents, has the power to set rates for “Taxes, Duties, Imposts, and Excises.” But if courts allow it on the basis of vaguely written statutes and precedent from case law, the new tariffs will put a heavy tax on all the eggs Ms. Rollins can find, and cancel much, or all, or “more than all” of whatever egg price relief she may achieve.
FURTHER READING
PPI’s four principles for response to tariffs and economic isolationism:
Defend the Constitution and oppose rule by decree;
Connect tariff policy to growth, work, prices, and family budgets, and living standards;
Mr. Kennedy, the Health and Human Services Secretary, has suggested just letting avian flu spread around so that, eventually, hopefully, chicken populations gain immunity to it. Scientific American points out that encouraging the unchecked spread of disease is unwise, and new strains of flu virus rapidly replace old ones.
ABOUT ED
Ed Gresser is Vice President and Director for Trade and Global Markets at PPI.
Ed returns to PPI after working for the think tank from 2001-2011. He most recently served as the Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Trade Policy and Economics at the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR). In this position, he led USTR’s economic research unit from 2015-2021, and chaired the 21-agency Trade Policy Staff Committee.
Ed began his career on Capitol Hill before serving USTR as Policy Advisor to USTR Charlene Barshefsky from 1998 to 2001. He then led PPI’s Trade and Global Markets Project from 2001 to 2011. After PPI, he co-founded and directed the independent think tank ProgressiveEconomy until rejoining USTR in 2015. In 2013, the Washington International Trade Association presented him with its Lighthouse Award, awarded annually to an individual or group for significant contributions to trade policy.
Ed is the author of Freedom from Want: American Liberalism and the Global Economy (2007). He has published in a variety of journals and newspapers, and his research has been cited by leading academics and international organizations including the WTO, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund. He is a graduate of Stanford University and holds a Master’s Degree in International Affairs from Columbia Universities and a certificate from the Averell Harriman Institute for Advanced Study of the Soviet Union.
The Trump administration’s decision will test whether its embrace of bank deregulation extends to consolidation that might harm financially strapped Americans, an antitrust lawyer and economist told The Deal.
“Ongoing moves to loosen regulation in the banking sector signal less oversight,” said Diana Moss, vice president and director of competition policy at the Progressive Policy Institute and the author of a detailed analysis of the merger.
Another wild card is how the new administration would handle investigations initiated under President Joe Biden, whose antitrust team preferred to challenge transactions it considered problematic.
“Like other cross-over mergers, strategy moving forward could be complicated. Trump 1.0 enforcers settled a lot of deals that raised competition issues, as opposed to blocking them,” Moss said.
Though Trump has threatened to halt mergers involving other companies he’s accused of wrongdoing, it’s unclear whether he’d take that approach here.
“It’s entirely possible, as we saw during Trump 1.0, that antitrust will be weaponized by the Trump administration, used to air political grievances and retaliation,” Moss warned.
Politics is about changing the world. To change the world, you need power so you can implement the policies you think will help people. And to win power, you need to be able to get votes.
All this is fairly obvious, but we live in a political era where obvious and true things bear repeating. So allow me to state the obvious once more: To win votes, you can’t have wildly different views from the public. That’s a lesson Democrats seem to have forgotten.
In the wake of their 2024 loss, a significant portion of Democratic leadership seems to believe that what the party really needs is to change the messaging. They need more aggressive PR, better catchphrases, more viral stunts. They need to go on more podcasts!
Better PR and messaging strategy would help. But the core thing that held Democrats back in 2024 wasn’t PR strategy. It was the party’s beliefs and policies. If Democrats want to win the kind of large and durable majorities that will allow them to really govern, they’re going to have to rethink those policies.
Donald Trump’s abandonment of Ukraine in favor of Russia and Vladimir Putin threatens to upend the global order. Will Europe emerge as a unified force to defend Western democracies in the absence of American leadership? Washington Monthly editor-in-chief Paul Glastris speaks with Tamar Jacoby, Director of the New Ukraine Project at the Progressive Policy Institute; and Mike Lofgren, author, historian and a leading expert on military weapons systems.
IT’S “UNFORTUNATE” THAT EUROPEAN LEADERS think Vladimir Putin isn’t interested in peace, U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff told CBS News last week. “I know what I heard,” Witkoff insisted, recalling his latest visit to Moscow, “the body language I witnessed.” It was a frightening echo of George W. Bush, who declared after meeting Putin in 2001 that he had “looked the man in the eye,” got “a sense of his soul,” and “found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy”—a hopeful take Bush later came to regret as he learned from bitter experience how duplicitous and aggressive an adversary he faced in the Kremlin.
This is a lesson Donald Trump and team have yet to learn, but it’s only the beginning of what the 47th president doesn’t understand about his Russian counterpart. Even more dangerous, Trump doesn’t grasp that his vision of peace in Ukraine—a compromise requiring concessions on both sides—is fundamentally at odds with Putin’s vision. Russia’s ambitions in Ukraine center on one goal and one goal only, and it’s not something that can be split 50–50. Putin is determined to end Ukrainian sovereignty—its very existence as a freestanding, independent nation.
This mismatch doesn’t bode well for ceasefire talks continuing this week in Saudi Arabia. As long as one man seeks a deal—even a lopsided deal—and the other wants capitulation, they will inevitably talk past each other. Worse still, only Putin sees the skew, and he wants to prolong it. It serves his interest.
The longer he can keep Washington and Kyiv tied up in talks, the more time the Kremlin has to accomplish its aims militarily—seizing more Ukrainian territory, undermining Ukrainian morale and running out the clock on European war fatigue. Meanwhile, the longer the game goes on, the more desperate Trump becomes and the more he gives away—slice after slice of American power and Western leverage over Russia.
On this episode of RAS Reports, Curtis Valentine, the Director of PPI’s Reinventing America’s Schools Project, and Naomi Shelton, CEO of the National Charter Collaborative, sit down with Dr. Yolanda W. Page, the President of Stillman College in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.
They discuss Dr. Page’s journey in becoming the 8th President of Stillman College, as well as how she sees the role of HBCU administrators in higher education evolving in today’s environment.
Watch on YouTube.
