How to End the Voting Wars

By Julia Baumel — September 23, 2021

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Policy Papers

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Governance

How Budget Reconciliation is Making Everything Worse in Washington

September 9, 2021

Congress is moving two ambitious domestic policy bills on two procedural tracks. And that small difference is a big deal. The $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill, aimed at repairing and replacing physical infrastructure such as roads, bridges, and waterways, is being advanced through (more or less) traditional legislative means. Alternatively, a $3.5 trillion social spending and climate...

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Governance, National Security

Where Did the Afghanistan “Intelligence” Come From?

August 26, 2021

A U.S. intelligence assessment from June 2021 estimated that the Taliban would capture Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, within six months of U.S. military withdrawal. In early August, American intelligence officials projected that the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan would occur in 30 to 90 days. Both estimates were catastrophically wrong. On August 15, two weeks before U.S. troops were...

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Economy, Governance, Social Policy

The 2020 Biden-Sanders Unity Task Force: Is It the Rosetta Stone for Biden’s 2021 Agenda and Beyond?

August 18, 2021

Was collaborating with Bernie Sanders merely a short-term maneuver for President Biden to secure support from progressives? Or was it a bellwether for the four years to follow? Here's what we...

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Social Policy

Police Reform: What’s the Holdup?

August 10, 2021

Earlier this summer, Senators Tim Scott (R-SC) and Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Representative Karen Bass (D-CA) appeared on the cusp of forging a bipartisan and bicameral agreement on reforming policing in America. But there are still a few outstanding issues, and one in particular—qualified immunity—appears to be the biggest hurdle left to clear. Qualified immunity has never been codified in law;...

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Social Policy

What is Critical Race Theory?

August 3, 2021

Over the past several months, state and local policymakers have been debating the contents of public-school curricula, and Critical Race Theory (CRT) has taken center stage. 26 states have recently proposed legislation that would ban school districts from teaching CRT. Supporters of these bans, such as Republican Senator Ted Cruz, say that the theory “teach[es] our kids that all white people...

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Governance

The Filibuster is a Guardrail, Not a Solution

July 26, 2021

With the Senate’s recent failure to advance a voting rights bill—in the wake of the Democratic led House passing the “For the People Act” (H.R.1)—many congressional Democrats are calling for abolishing the filibuster, which requires most legislation to meet a 60-vote threshold before it can pass. It is not hard to understand why. As the country has become increasingly polarized, both...

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The Big Issues

Climate and Energy

The fight against climate change is a multi-decade challenge, and must be sustained across many presidencies and sessions of Congress. For any solution to stand a chance, it must be forged in the center.

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