america's promise essay

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Lyndon B. Johnson

Special message to the congress: the american promise.

Mr. Speaker, Mr. President, Members of the Congress:

I speak tonight for the dignity of man and the destiny of democracy.

I urge every member of both parties, Americans of all religions and of all colors, from every section of this country, to join me in that cause.

At times history and fate meet at a single time in a single place to shape a turning point in man's unending search for freedom. So it was at Lexington and Concord. So it was a century ago at Appomattox. So it was last week in Selma, Alabama.

There, long-suffering men and women peacefully protested the denial of their rights as Americans. Many were brutally assaulted. One good man, a man of God, was killed.

There is no cause for pride in what has happened in Selma. There is no cause for self-satisfaction in the long denial of equal rights of millions of Americans. But there is cause for hope and for faith in our democracy in what is happening here tonight.

For the cries of pain and the hymns and protests of oppressed people have summoned into convocation all the majesty of this great Government--the Government of the greatest Nation on earth.

Our mission is at once the oldest and the most basic of this country: to right wrong, to do justice, to serve man.

In our time we have come to live with moments of great crisis. Our lives have been marked with debate about great issues; issues of war and peace, issues of prosperity and depression. But rarely in any time does an issue lay bare the secret heart of America itself. Rarely are we met with a challenge, not to our growth or abundance, our welfare or our security, but rather to the values and the purposes and the meaning of our beloved Nation.

The issue of equal rights for American Negroes is such an issue. And should we defeat every enemy, should we double our wealth and conquer the stars, and still be unequal to this issue, then we will have failed as a people and as a nation.

For with a country as with a person, "What is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?"

There is no Negro problem. There is no Southern problem. There is no Northern problem. There is only an American problem. And we are met here tonight as Americans--not as Democrats or Republicans--we are met here as Americans to solve that problem.

This was the first nation in the history of the world to be founded with a purpose. The great phrases of that purpose still sound in every American heart, North and South: "All men are created equal"--"government by consent of the governed"--"give me liberty or give me death." Well, those are not just clever words, or those are not just empty theories. In their name Americans have fought and died for two centuries, and tonight around the world they stand there as guardians of our liberty, risking their lives.

Those words are a promise to every citizen that he shall share in the dignity of man. This dignity cannot be found in a man's possessions; it cannot be found in his power, or in his position. It really rests on his right to be treated as a man equal in opportunity to all others. It says that he shall share in freedom, he shall choose his leaders, educate his children, and provide for his family according to his ability and his merits as a human being.

To apply any other test--to deny a man his hopes because of his color or race, his religion or the place of his birth--is not only to do injustice, it is to deny America and to dishonor the dead who gave their lives for American freedom.

THE RIGHT TO VOTE

Our fathers believed that if this noble view of the rights of man was to flourish, it must be rooted in democracy. The most basic right of all was the right to choose your own leaders. The history of this country, in large measure, is the history of the expansion of that right to all of our people.

Many of the issues of civil rights are very complex and most difficult. But about this there can and should be no argument. Every American citizen must have an equal right to vote. There is no reason which can excuse the denial of that right. There is no duty which weighs more heavily on us than the duty we have to ensure that right.

Yet the harsh fact is that in many places in this country men and women are kept from voting simply because they are Negroes.

Every device of which human ingenuity is capable has been used to deny this right. The Negro citizen may go to register only to be told that the day is wrong, or the hour is late, or the official in charge is absent. And if he persists, and if he manages to present himself to the registrar, he may be disqualified because he did not spell out his middle name or because he abbreviated a word on the application.

And if he manages to fill out an application he is given a test. The registrar is the sole judge of whether he passes this test. He may be asked to recite the entire Constitution, or explain the most complex provisions of State law. And even a college degree cannot be used to prove that he can read and write.

For the fact is that the only way to pass these barriers is to show a white skin.

Experience has clearly shown that the existing process of law cannot overcome systematic and ingenious discrimination. No law that we now have on the books--and I have helped to put three of them there--can ensure the right to vote when local officials are determined to deny it.

In such a case our duty must be clear to all of us. The Constitution says that no person shall be kept from voting because of his race or his color. We have all sworn an oath before God to support and to defend that Constitution. We must now act in obedience to that oath.

GUARANTEEING THE RIGHT TO VOTE

Wednesday I will send to Congress a law designed to eliminate illegal barriers to the right to vote.

The broad principles of that bill will be in the hands of the Democratic and Republican leaders tomorrow. After they have reviewed it, it will come here formally as a bill. I am grateful for this opportunity to come here tonight at the invitation of the leadership to reason with my friends, to give them my views, and to visit with my former colleagues.

I have had prepared a more comprehensive analysis of the legislation which I had intended to transmit to the clerk tomorrow but which I will submit to the clerks tonight. But I want to really discuss with you now briefly the main proposals of this legislation,

This bill will strike down restrictions to voting in all elections--Federal, State, and local--which have been used to deny Negroes the right to vote.

This bill will establish a simple, uniform standard which cannot be used, however ingenious the effort, to flout our Constitution.

It will provide for citizens to be registered by officials of the United States Government if the State officials refuse to register them.

It will eliminate tedious, unnecessary lawsuits which delay the right to vote.

Finally, this legislation will ensure that properly registered individuals are not prohibited from voting.

I will welcome the suggestions from all of the Members of Congress--I have no doubt that I will get some--on ways and means to strengthen this law and to make it effective. But experience has plainly shown that this is the only path to carry out the command of the Constitution.

To those who seek to avoid action by their National Government in their own communities; who want to and who seek to maintain purely local control over elections, the answer is simple:

Open your polling places to all your people.

Allow men and women to register and vote whatever the color of their skin.

Extend the rights of citizenship to every citizen of this land.

THE NEED FOR ACTION

There is no constitutional issue here. The command of the Constitution is plain.

There is no moral issue. It is wrong--deadly wrong--to deny any of your fellow Americans the right to vote in this country.

There is no issue of States rights or national rights. There is only the struggle for human rights.

I have not the slightest doubt what will be your answer.

The last time a President sent a civil rights bill to the Congress it contained a provision to protect voting rights in Federal elections. That civil rights bill was passed after 8 long months of debate. And when that bill came to my desk from the Congress for my signature, the heart of the voting provision had been eliminated.

This time, on this issue, there must be no delay, no hesitation and no compromise with our purpose.

We cannot, we must not, refuse to protect the right of every American to vote in every election that he may desire to participate in. And we ought not and we cannot and we must not wait another 8 months before we get a bill. We have already waited a hundred years and more, and the time for waiting is gone.

So I ask you to join me in working long hours--nights and weekends, if necessary--to pass this bill. And I don't make that request lightly. For from the window where I sit with the problems of our country I recognize that outside this chamber is the outraged conscience of a nation, the grave concern of many nations, and the harsh judgment of history on our acts.

WE SHALL OVERCOME

But even if we pass this bill, the battle will not be over. What happened in Selma is part of a far larger movement which reaches into every section and State of America. It is the effort of American Negroes to secure for themselves the full blessings of American life.

Their cause must be our cause too. Because it is not just Negroes, but really it is all of us, who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice. And we shall overcome.

As a man whose roots go deeply into Southern soil I know how agonizing racial feelings are. I know how difficult it is to reshape the attitudes and the structure of our society.

But a century has passed, more than a hundred years, since the Negro was freed. And he is not fully free tonight.

It was more than a hundred years ago that Abraham Lincoln, a great President of another party, signed the Emancipation Proclamation, but emancipation is a proclamation and not a fact.

A century has passed, more than a hundred years, since equality was promised. And yet the Negro is not equal.

A century has passed since the day of promise. And the promise is unkept.

The time of justice has now come. I tell you that I believe sincerely that no force can hold it back. It is right in the eyes of man and God that it should come. And when it does, I think that day will brighten the lives of every American.

For Negroes are not the only victims. How many white children have gone uneducated, how many white families have lived in stark poverty, how many white lives have been scarred by fear, because we have wasted our energy and our substance to maintain the barriers of hatred and terror?

So I say to all of you here, and to all in the Nation tonight, that those who appeal to you to hold on to the past do so at the cost of denying you your future.

This great, rich, restless country can offer opportunity and education and hope to all: black and white, North and South, sharecropper and city dweller. These are the enemies: poverty, ignorance, disease. They are the enemies and not our fellow man, not our neighbor. And these enemies too, poverty, disease and ignorance, we shall overcome.

AN AMERICAN PROBLEM

Now let none of us in any sections look with prideful righteousness on the troubles in another section, or on the problems of our neighbors. There is really no part of America where the promise of equality has been fully kept. In Buffalo as well as in Birmingham, in Philadelphia as well as in Selma, Americans are struggling for the fruits of freedom.

This is one Nation. What happens in Selma or in Cincinnati is a matter of legitimate concern to every American. But let each of us look within our own hearts and our own communities, and let each of us put our shoulder to the wheel to root out injustice wherever it exists.

As we meet here in this peaceful, historic chamber tonight, men from the South, some of whom were at Iwo Jima, men from the North who have carried Old Glory to far corners of the world and brought it back without a stain on it, men from the East and from the West, are all fighting together without regard to religion, or color, or region, in Viet-Nam. Men from every region fought for us across the world 20 years ago.

And in these common dangers and these common sacrifices the South made its contribution of honor and gallantry no less than any other region of the great Republic--and in some instances, a great many of them, more.

And I have not the slightest doubt that good men from everywhere in this country, from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico, from the Golden Gate to the harbors along the Atlantic, will rally together now in this cause to vindicate the freedom of all Americans. For all of us owe this duty, and I believe that all of us will respond to it.

Your President makes that request of every American.

PROGRESS THROUGH THE DEMOCRATIC PROCESS

The real hero of this struggle is the American Negro. His actions and protests, his courage to risk safety and even to risk his life, have awakened the conscience of this Nation. His demonstrations have been designed to call attention to injustice, designed to provoke change, designed to stir reform.

He has called upon us to make good the promise of America. And who among us can say that we would have made the same progress were it not for his persistent bravery, and his faith in American democracy.

For at the real heart of battle for equality is a deep-seated belief in the democratic process. Equality depends not on the force of arms or tear gas but upon the force of moral right; not on recourse to violence but on respect for law and order.

There have been many pressures upon your President and there will be others as the days come and go. But I pledge you tonight that we intend to fight this battle where it should be fought: in the courts, and in the Congress, and in the hearts of men.

We must preserve the right of free speech and the right of free assembly. But the right of free speech does not carry with it, as has been said, the right to holier fire in a crowded theater. We must preserve the right to free assembly, but free assembly does not carry with it the right to block public thoroughfares to traffic.

We do have a right to protest, and a right to march under conditions that do not infringe the constitutional rights of our neighbors. And I intend to protect all those rights as long as I am permitted to serve in this office.

We will guard against violence, knowing it strikes from our hands the very weapons which we seek--progress, obedience to law, and belief in American values.

In Selma as elsewhere we seek and pray for peace. We seek order. We seek unity. But we will not accept the peace of stifled rights, or the order imposed by fear, or the unity that stifles protest. For peace cannot be purchased at the cost of liberty.

In Selma tonight, as in every--and we had a good day there--as in every city, we are working for just and peaceful settlement. We must all remember that after this speech I am making tonight, after the police and the FBI and the Marshals have all gone, and after you have promptly passed this bill, the people of Selma and the other cities of the Nation must still live and work together. And when the attention of the Nation has gone elsewhere they must try to heal the wounds and to build a new community.

This cannot be easily done on a battleground of violence, as the history of the South itself shows. It is in recognition of this that men of both races have shown such an outstandingly impressive responsibility in recent days--last Tuesday, again today,

RIGHTS MUST BE OPPORTUNITIES

The bill that I am presenting to you will be known as a civil rights bill. But, in a larger sense, most of the program I am recommending is a civil rights program. Its object is to open the city of hope to all people of all races.

Because all Americans just must have the right to vote. And we are going to give them that right.

All Americans must have the privileges of citizenship regardless of race. And they are going to have those privileges of citizenship regardless of race.

But I would like to caution you and remind you that to exercise these privileges takes much more than just legal right. It requires a trained mind and a healthy body. It requires a decent home, and the chance to find a job, and the opportunity to escape from the clutches of poverty.

Of course, people cannot contribute to the Nation if they are never taught to read or write, if their bodies are stunted from hunger, if their sickness goes untended, if their life is spent in hopeless poverty just drawing a welfare check.

So we want to open the gates to opportunity. But we are also going to give all our people, black and white, the help that they need to walk through those gates.

THE PURPOSE OF THIS GOVERNMENT

My first job after college was as a teacher in Cotulla, Tex., in a small Mexican-American school. Few of them could speak English, and I couldn't speak much Spanish. My students were poor and they often came to class without breakfast, hungry. They knew even in their youth the pain of prejudice. They never seemed to know why people disliked them. But they knew it was so, because I saw it in their eyes. I often walked home late in the afternoon, after the classes were finished, wishing there was more that I could do. But all I knew was to teach them the little that I knew, hoping that it might help them against the hardships that lay ahead.

Somehow you never forget what poverty and hatred can do when you see its scars on the hopeful face of a young child.

I never thought then, in 1928, that I would be standing here in 1965. It never even occurred to me in my fondest dreams that I might have the chance to help the sons and daughters of those students and to help people like them all over this country.

But now I do have that chance--and I'll let you in on a secret--I mean to use it. And I hope that you will use it with me.

This is the richest and most powerful country which ever occupied the globe. The might of past empires is little compared to ours. But I do not want to be the President who built empires, or sought grandeur, or extended dominion.

I want to be the President who educated young children to the wonders of their world. I want to be the President who helped to feed the hungry and to prepare them to be taxpayers instead of tax-eaters.

I want to be the President who helped the poor to find their own way and who protected the right of every citizen to vote in every election.

I want to be the President who helped to end hatred among his fellow men and who promoted love among the people of all races and all regions and all parties.

I want to be the President who helped to end war among the brothers of this earth.

And so at the request of your beloved Speaker and the Senator from Montana; the majority leader, the Senator from Illinois; the minority leader, Mr. McCulloch, and other Members of both parties, I came here tonight--not as President Roosevelt came down one time in person to veto a bonus bill, not as President Truman came down one time to urge the passage of a railroad bill--but I came down here to ask you to share this task with me and to share it with the people that we both work for. I want this to be the Congress, Republicans and Democrats alike, which did all these things for all these people.

Beyond this great chamber, out yonder in 50 States, are the people that we serve. Who can tell what deep and unspoken hopes are in their hearts tonight as they sit there and listen. We all can guess, from our own lives, how difficult they often find their own pursuit of happiness, how many problems each little family has. They look most of all to themselves for their futures. But I think that they also look to each of us.

Above the pyramid on the great seal of the United States it says--in Latin--"God has favored our undertaking."

God will not favor everything that we do. It is rather our duty to divine His will. But I cannot help believing that He truly understands and that He really favors the undertaking that we begin here tonight.

Note: The address was broadcast nationally. See also Items 108, 109, 409.

Lyndon B. Johnson, Special Message to the Congress: The American Promise Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/242211

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Johnson, special message to the congress: the american promise, 1965.

President Johnson delivered a speech titled “The American Promise” to a joint session of Congress on March 15, 1965. In the speech, Johnson outlined his plans for supporting voting rights, stating, “There is no moral issue. It is wrong—deadly wrong—to deny any of your fellow Americans the right to vote in this country. There is no issue of states’ rights or national rights. There is only the struggle for human rights.”

Lyndon B. Johnson, Special Message to the Congress: The American Promise, 1965. Photograph by Cecil Stoughton. Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library and Museum.

The American Promise: History

Introduction.

The American comprehension of liberty has become the guiding light for the majority of countries. Thousands of people from all over the world come to the United States every year, hoping to pursue a better future for themselves and their families. However, Americans have come a long way to find themselves in the place they are now. Major milestones following American history are inscribed in the number of documents, to which people refer in pursue of freedom and happiness. Some of the most significant of them is the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States (Roark et al.).

The first document, catalyzing creating the American nation in 1776, is a splendid example of celebrating freedom. While it was not common for people in the 18th century to talk about equality, the Declaration of Independence introduced this notion to the broad public (Roark et al.). However, while millions of people across the globe look up to the American Promise, Americans themselves cannot cope with this belief.

The American Promise is attractive not only to the residents of small countries but to those of big nations as well. Citizens of China and Russia are sometimes obsessed with America’s interpretation of liberty. The major reason behind this lies in the fact that these counties have risen as a result of continuous formation and dynasty ruling. America, in its turn, has initially derived from several ethnicities and beliefs. Thus, the diversity celebration was the only way to unite such a big and varied nation.

Historically, since the exploration of American lands, the territory of the United States was divided between various European colonists. Hence, Native Americans did not have a chance to experience the feeling of individual freedom due to slavery and constant humiliation. With the emergence of the United States of America, both the Declaration of Independence and the first-ever American constitution estimated the formation of a free state on the lands of hundreds of colonies (Roark et al.). To men and women of that time, such a step meant the possibility to fulfill their deepest desires after years of discrimination.

To keep the American Promise, Americans have been fighting for human freedom for centuries. The US is one of the few countries where people can live their fullest regardless of skin color, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or gender. As the main gist behind the American Promise was to celebrate diversity while remaining a united nation, it might be said that this objective has failed over the years. Although any discrimination in terms of human diversity is now prohibited by law, the notion of unity is still alien to US residents. News is now replete with reports concerning mass shootings on the grounds of racial and sex discrimination.

The history and development of each nation depend highly on ideas and beliefs that unite the state. In the case of the United States, the American Promise has become the primary goal behind the nation’s existence. However, while this promise has become crucial for other countries to follow, Americans themselves fail to bring it to life. Such dissonance is caused by capitalistic social gaps, inappropriately high levels of individualism, and political ignorance. Thus, current Americans’ objective is to unite to empower the country without breaking their individualistic borders, as it was intended by the original American Promise.

Roark, James L., Johnson, Michael P., Cohen, Patricia Cline, Stage, Sarah, and Susan M. Hartmann. The American Promise: A Concise History, Volume 1: To 1877, (6th edition). Kindle ed., Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2017.

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The American Promise: Documents Review Essay

The two documents, namely the U.S constitution with amendments and the articles of confederation several distinct differences although they are both political entities meant for smooth running of states and governments through various legislative provisions.

To begin with, it is important to note that a constitution is a set of laws and regulations adopted by a state or government for the purpose of smooth governance. On the other hand, a confederacy is a union of persons, states, governments or political parties who come up together to pursue a common goal or objective. Members within a confederacy have to stick to certain rules which are used as baselines for governance. Moreover, the language at the start of each document tends to signify the dignity, sovereignty and the power which is endowed in people to which the articles or constitution concerns.

One of the remarkable differences appears on the legislative structure. Whereas the Articles of Confederacy proposes only a single legislative house called the Congress, the Constitution provides for a two houses namely the Senate and House of Representatives. Each state is supposed to have at least two members and not exceeding seven according to the Articles of Confederacy. As per the U.S constitution, each state should have two senators. It is the number of people in any given state which determines the actual number of represents to be awarded. On a similar note, the Articles allows only a single ballot power within a federation or state while a Senator or Representative is allowed by the constitution to give a single vote during all ballot processes in Congress. Furthermore, the articles states that members can only be selected by the legislature while the constitution states that it is the Senators who can be picked by the legislative body while Representatives go through an electoral process through a majority vote.

The office tenure in the articles of confederacy is only twelve months while Senators can be retained in office up to six years and Representatives two years according to the constitution. However, the constitution does not have a limitation in office tenure for members of the legislature contrary to the articles which puts a limitation of three years or less within a given six year term. These legislative members are paid differently as well; the states cater for members’ remuneration according to the Articles of Confederacy while the constitution stipulates that Congressional payment is the duty of the government at the federal level.

During recess period, the Articles of Confederacy legally allows committee members within each region to take control of the Congress. However, the constitution notes that when the Congressional sessions are not on, the President has the power to order the Congress back.

He is also the head of the Congress according to the provisions of the Articles of confederacy although the Vice-President and the Speaker chair the Senate and House of Representatives respectively as per the constitution. The President is the chief executive office of the country as provided for in the constitution in contrary to the articles which does not specify such a provision.

New member states can only be admitted when there is a unanimous approval by the Congress as the U.S constitution. However, a total nine states, upon striking a common balance, can allow new members into the union according to the Articles of Confederacy. Nevertheless, Canada is excluded in this clause.

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Home — Essay Samples — Literature — Enrique's Journey — A Look at the Reality of the American Promise

A Look at The Reality of The American Promise

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The Reality of the American Promise

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Preface: Why This Book This Way - Concise Edition

W hat is the best way to engage and teach students in their history survey course? From the beginning, The American Promise has been shaped by our firsthand knowledge that the survey course is one of the most difficult to teach and, for many, also the most difficult to take. From the outset we have met this challenge by providing a story students enjoy for its readability, clear chronology, and lively voices of ordinary Americans. The American Promise: A Concise History preserves the alread y- brief narrative and the full map program of the parent text, The American Promise , in a smaller, more affordable trim size with selected features and photos from the comprehensive edition. We remain committed to making the book the most teachable and readable introductory American history text available.

With LaunchPad we have made meeting the challenges of the survey course a great deal easier by providing an intuitive, interactive e- Book and course space with a wealth of primary sources. Ready to assign as is with key assessment resources built into each chapter, LaunchPad can also be edited and customized as instructors’ imaginations and innovations dictate. Free when packaged with the print text, LaunchPad grants students and teachers access to a wealth of online tools and resources built specifically for our text to enhance reading comprehension and promote i n- depth study. With LaunchPad, Concise users have access to the full art and feature program from the comprehensive book. LaunchPad is loaded with the ful l- color e- Book plus LearningCurve, an adaptive learning tool; the popular Reading the American Past primary documents collection; additional primary sources ; special skill s- based assessment activities ; videos ; chapter summative quizzes ; and more.

What Makes The American Promise Special

Our experience as teachers and our frustrations with available textbooks inspired us to create a book that we could use effectively with our own students. Our knowledge of classroom realities has informed every aspect of each edition and version of The American Promise . We began with a clear chronological, political framework , as we have found that students need both the structure a political narrative provides and the insights gained from examining social and cultural experience. To write a comprehensive, balanced account of American history, we focus on the public arena — the place where politics intersects with social and cultural developments — to show how Americans confronted the major issues of their day and created fa r- reaching historical change.

The unique approach of our narrative is reflected in our title, The American Promise . We emphasize human agency and demonstrate our conviction that the essence of America has been its promise. For millions, the nation has held out the promise of a better life, unfettered worship, equality before the law, representative government, democratic politics, and other freedoms seldom found elsewhere. But none of these promises has come with guarantees. Throughout the narrative we demonstrate how much of American history is a continuing struggle over the definition and realization of the nation’s promise.

To engage students in this American story and to portray fully the diversity of the American experience, we stitch into our narrative the voices of hundreds of contemporaries . We further animate this story with a vivid art and map program . Visual and map activities in each chapter prompt students to think critically about what they see. To help students of all levels understand American history, we provide the best in primary sources and pedagogical aids . To help instructors teach important skills and evaluate student learning, we provide a rich assortment of assignments and assessments in both the print and LaunchPad formats. While this edition rests solidly on our original goals and premises, it breaks new ground in addressing the specific needs of today’s courses.

A New Skills Focus for the Special Features

For this revision we focused our attention on The American Promise ’s acclaimed feature program by looking for ways to make the features more useful, skill s- oriented assignments. In print, the features offer primary sources, visuals, essays, and discussion questions; in Launchpad, the feature program comes fully to life with both shor t- answer and multipl e- choice questions that test students’ critical reading skills. Making Historical Arguments (formerly Historical Question ) now offers active, skill s- based activities that demonstrate to students how historians make and support historical arguments. Analyzing Historical Evidence (formerly Documenting the American Promise ) then gives students the opportunity to practice the skills introduced in Making Historical Arguments through analysis of text and visual sources. An enhanced Beyond America’s Borders continues to offer students a global perspective on the narrative’s themes with essays that connect U.S. history to developments around the globe. Those using LaunchPad will have access to Experiencing the American Promise , which offers essays that illuminate the stories of individuals who sought their dream in America, helping students evaluate to what extent individuals make history.

Collectively these features provide a range of new topics and content that includes a new focus on the weak opposition to the African slave trade in the eighteenth century; a nuanced look at reactions to the Boston Port Act outside Massachusetts; an examination of the nation’s first formal declaration of war; attention to Ida B. Wells and her campaign to stop lynching; a spotlight on Franklin D. Roosevelt’s use of New Deal programs to rebuild the navy during the 1930s; an exploration of the failure of the Equal Rights Amendment; and much more.

Evaluation of Primary Sources

Primary sources form the heart of historical study, and we are pleased to offer the new Analyzing Historical Evidence feature, which asks students to use historical thinking skills to consider a range of documents . Each feature juxtaposes two to four primary documents to reveal varying perspectives on a topic or issue and to provide students with opportunities to build and practice their skills of historical interpretation. Because students are so attuned to visuals and instructors deeply value their usefulness as primary sources, we have included both text and visual sources in this new feature. Images including artifacts of daily life in Chaco Canyon, examples of early photojournalism, political cartoons, and more show students how to mine visual documents for evidence about the past.

In Analyzing Historical Evidence , feature introductions and document headnotes contextualize the sources, and shor t- answer questions at the end of the feature promote critical thinking about primary sources. New topics have been added that are rich with human drama and include “The Nation’s First Formal Declaration of War” and “Americans Encounter the New Deal.” These features are available both in print and online and are easily assigned in LaunchPad, along with multipl e- choice quizzes that measure student comprehension.

In addition, more than 150 documents in the accompanying collection Reading the American Past are available free to users who package the reader with the main print text, and they are automatically included in the LaunchPad e- Book. Not only can the shor t- answer questions be easily assigned from within LaunchPad, but multipl e- choice questions are also available for assignment to measure comprehension and hold students accountable for their reading.

LaunchPad for The American Promise also comes with a collection of more than 135 additional primary sources that instructors can choose to assign. These sources include letters, memoirs, court records, government documents, and more, and they include items by or about such people as John Smith, William Penn, Anne Hutchinson, Jonathan Edwards, Mary Jemison, Black Hawk, John C. Calhoun, Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, Mary Elizabeth Lease, William Jennings Bryan, Theodore Roosevelt, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, Huey P. Long, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, Paul Robeson, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and more.

To give students ample opportunity to practice thinking critically about primary source images, one picture in each chapter includes a special visual activity caption that reinforces this essential skill. One set of questions in these activities prompts analysis of the image, while a second set of questions helps students connect the image to main points in the narrative.

Distinctive Essay Features Practice Historical Thinking Skills

To demonstrate and engage students in various methods of historical thinking, our new Making Historical Arguments feature essays pose and interpret specific questions of continuing interest, such as “Why Did Cortés Win?,” “Was the New United States a Christian Country?,” “Did Westerners Really Build It All by Themselves?,” and “Why Did the ERA Fail?”

Shor t- answer questions at the end of the features prompt students to consider things such as evidence, beliefs and values, and cause and effect as they relate to the historical question at hand. Available both in print and online, these features can be easily assigned in LaunchPad, along with multipl e- choice quizzes that measure student comprehension.

Helping Students Understand the Narrative

Every instructor knows it can be a challenge to get students to complete assigned readings and then to fully understand what is important once they do the reading. The American Promise addresses these problems hea d- on with a suite of tools in LaunchPad that instructors can choose from.

To help students come to class prepared, instructors who adopt LaunchPad for The American Promise can assign the LearningCurve formative assessment activities. This online learning tool is popular with students because it helps them rehearse content at their own pace in a nonthreatening, gam e- like environment. LearningCurve is also popular with instructors because the reporting features allow them to track overall class trends and spot topics that are giving their students trouble so they can adjust their lectures and class activities.

Encouraging active reading is another means for making content memorable and highlighting what is truly important. To help students read actively and understand the central idea of the chapter, instructors who use LaunchPad can also assign Guided Reading Exercises . These exercises appear at the start of each chapter, prompting students to collect information to be used to answer a broad analytic question central to the chapter as a whole.

To further encourage students to read and fully assimilate the text as well as measure how well they do this, instructors can assign the multipl e- choice summative quizzes in LaunchPad, where they are automatically graded. These secure tests not only encourage students to study the book, they also can be assigned at specific intervals as highe r- stakes testing and thus provide another means for analyzing class performance.

Another big challenge for survey instructors is meeting the needs of a range of students, particularly the students who need the most support. In addition to the formative assessment of LearningCurve, which adapts to the needs of students at any level, The American Promise offers a number of print and digital tools for the underprepared. Each chapter opener includes Content Learning Objectives to prepare students to read the chapter with purpose. Once into the heart of the chapter, students are reminded to think about main ideas through Review Questions placed at the end of every major section. In print and LaunchPad these questions can be assigned as a chapter review activity. Key Terms are defined in the margins, giving background on important ideas and events. Some students have trouble connecting events and ideas, particularly with special boxed features. To address this, we have added a set of Questions for Analysis to the end of each feature to help students understand the significance of the featured topic, its context, and how it might be viewed from different angles. These questions are also available in the print and LaunchPad versions of the book.

With this edition we also bring back two popular sets of en d- o f- chapter questions that help widen students’ focus as they consider what they have read. Making Connections questions ask students to think about broad developments within the chapter, while Linking to the Past questions cros s- reference developments in earlier chapters, encouraging students to draw connections to the modern world and consider how the issues addressed in the chapter are still relevant today. Both sets of questions are assignable from the print and LaunchPad versions.

Helping Instructors Teach with Digital Resources

With requests for clear and transparent learning outcomes coming from all quarters and with students who bring increasingly diverse levels of skills to class, even veteran teachers can find preparing for today’s courses a trying matter. With LaunchPad we have reconceived the textbook as a suite of tools in multiple formats that allows each format do what it does best to capture students’ interest and help instructors create meaningful lessons.

But one of the best benefits is that instructors using LaunchPad have a number of assessment tools that allow them to see what it is their students do and don’t know and measure student achievement all in one convenient space. For example, LearningCurve , an adaptive learning tool that comes with LaunchPad, garners more than a 90 percent student satisfaction rate and helps students master book content. When LearningCurve is assigned, the grade book results show instructors where the entire class or individual students may be struggling, and this information in turn allows instructors to adjust lectures and course activities accordingly — a benefit not only for traditional classes but invaluable for hybrid, online, and newer “flipped” classes as well. In addition, not only can instructors assign all of the questions that appear in the print book and view the responses in the grade book, but they also have the option to assign automatically graded multipl e- choice questions for all of the book features.

With LaunchPad for The American Promise we make the tough job of teaching simpler by providing everything instructors need in one convenient space so they can set and achieve the learning outcomes they desire. To learn more about the benefits of LearningCurve and LaunchPad, see the “Versions and Supplements” section on page xvii.

The Century Foundation The Century Foundation The Century Foundation

How America’s College Promise Would Reshape the Free College Landscape

The past several decades have seen college grow less affordable at every level, spurring public consensus that families need better options. 1

Congress has done little to remedy this crisis. States, for their part, have enacted a growing number of “free college” programs, including the Tennessee Promise, signed into law in 2014, and others modeled after it. In just the five years from 2015 through 2019, fifteen states created scholarships that guarantee all qualifying families pay no community college tuition after aid has been applied. 2 As a form of cost containment, they are all limited to certain subsets of students, some more limited than others.

Building on this momentum, many have argued for a nationwide “promise” to eliminate community college tuition , which would bring the United States into the fold of many other developed nations that make workforce training cost-free. 3

In his 2015 State of the Union address , President Obama announced a proposal to eliminate community college tuition nationwide, a plan called America’s College Promise (ACP). 4 A version of this proposal has been introduced every session of Congress since, and it was included as a banner provision of President Biden’s Build Back Better agenda . 5 President Biden proposed the plan again this year as part of his Fiscal Year 2024 budget proposal . 6

While there is across-the-aisle agreement that tuition-free community college is good for American families and students, ACP has not yet passed Congress. As the momentum for ACP has gone through cycles of starting and then stalling, some have argued that free college is best advanced by states. 7 Others have suggested that the states are increasingly nearing that goal themselves. 8

But lost in the debate is a crucial detail: America’s College Promise is not a fifty-state version of the state promise model. In fact, it goes significantly farther, setting community college tuition at $0 before other aid is factored in, contrasting with the “last-dollar” nature of most state promise scholarships. This makes the total aid received by students greater than what they would receive from a state promise program, especially for working-class families. This “first-dollar” quality of ACP’s tuition benefit is a feature, not a bug, and it gives ACP a fundamentally different structure than most state promise programs. In addition, ACP is for all students, not only recent high school graduates or those who are enrolled in certain programs of study. 9

In this report, I leverage survey data from the U.S. Department of Education to show how key design differences between state promise programs and America’s College Promise yield strikingly different benefits for students. When compared with a sample aggregated from six states with active last-dollar promise programs, ACP would deliver 56 percent more total combined federal and state aid for promise-eligible students, potentially more depending on whether states turn existing promise dollars into non-tuition stipends. Recipients would see their grant aid available for non-tuition expenses by $2,800 on average, more than doubling the typical aid for housing, food, child care, and health care that the typical community college student currently receives in a promise program state.

Even if all fifty states enacted a last-dollar promise program, ACP would still deliver five times as much funding per year to reduce students’ costs of attendance. 10 But the greatest benefits to students would come if ACP is passed and states rework their promise programs as non-tuition stipends, helping students cover their living costs, transportation, child care, and more.

Even if all fifty states enacted a last-dollar promise program, ACP would still deliver five times as much funding per year to reduce students’ costs of attendance.

In the eight years since President Obama first proposed ACP, a growing number of states have enacted their own statewide promise programs. However, a federal plan remains badly needed, and overstating states’ progress risks jeopardizing support for Congressional action that would combine the financial might of the federal government with states’ existing efforts to eliminate tuition and put a workforce-ready credential within every American’s reach.

The next time ACP is under consideration by Congress, the bill’s authors should strengthen the incentives that already exist in the bill to ensure states do not scrap their promise programs—or worse, view membership in the federal–state partnership as a binary choice between state-based free college and federal free college.

Where the Status Quo Has Gotten Us

In the United States’ federalist system of governance, higher education has been largely left to states. States charter public universities, many states set parameters for tuition pricing through legislation, and college presidents are hired by boards filled through state-level appointments or elections. This extends to the community college level, where counties and cities also play key roles.

The federal government steps in only within a limited capacity, mainly through the provision of aid directly to students: the Pell Grant, federal student loans, federal work-study, and targeted programs, such as grants for veterans. 11 Although the federal government can cut off an institution from the flow of federal student aid, there is no existing lever in statute or regulation that allows the federal government to limit or curb the cost of college placed on families . 12 In brief: the federal government plays virtually no role in the setting of prices families must pay.

This is the federal–state governing balance that has brought us where we are, with large shares of Americans expressing dissatisfaction with the cost of college, and many choosing not to enroll in the first place. At public institutions, net tuition per full-time student (i.e. tuition after financial aid) has grown 62 percent over the past twenty years, from $4,452 to $7,244 in constant 2022 dollars. 13 Over the same period, education appropriations per full-time student have fallen and slowly recovered, but new growth in college costs have been entirely shouldered by the student and their family. 14 This may help explain the persistent gaps in educational attainment by race , with just 34 percent of Black adults, 28 percent of Hispanic adults, and 25 percent of Native American adults holding a college degree. 15 Racial gaps in degree attainment are no better among young people. Absent change, the status quo is here to stay, and it entrenches pre-existing inequality.

A bipartisan array of state leaders have now taken action, passing last-dollar tuition scholarships, or “promise” scholarships. State promise programs offer students a good deal: if a student enrolls and stays in-state, the student will not pay out-of-pocket for tuition, because the state government will pick up the remaining tab after all aid is factored in.

The announcement of a promise program is usually a political win, and rightly so. But there are also important points of nuance that we must note.

First, some state promise programs are narrowly tailored to small subsets of students. Eligibility criteria based on time out of high school, GPA, and full-time enrollment status reduce the number of students who qualify. So do bottlenecks such as income and transcript verification, and in one state, applicants must even pass a drug test , paid for by the student. 16

These factors make programs easier to fit within constrained state budgets, but they also push participation rates downward. Consider these examples:

• The Work Ready Kentucky Scholarship only applies to five approved areas of study. 17 In the 2020–21 award year, 3,033 students received the grant, out of 61,000 degree/certificate-seeking community college students in Kentucky. 18
• Only 2,025 Maryland community college students out of 120,000 degree/certificate-seeking community college students received the Community College Promise Scholarship in the program’s second year; families reported confusion about paperwork requirements and the state cut the program’s funding . 19
• Arkansas Future Grant is only available on a first-come first-served basis. In the 2020–21 award year, 604 students received the grant, out of roughly 38,000 Arkansas community college students seeking a certificate or degree that year. 20

By some counts , nearly two-thirds of state governments offer promise programs. 21 But the share of community college students who receive grants from a promise program, or would be if they met income limits, is far lower.

Moreover, some promise programs shift to a “first-come, first-served” allocation system when demand exceeds funding. For example, the statewide promise programs in New York, Oregon, Nevada, and Maryland all include procedures for triaging applicants under certain budgetary circumstances, resulting in waitlists and temporary income limits . 22 These can also limit the number of participating students, in ways that the students and families may not be able to predict.

Figure 1 shows state promise programs and their reported counts of promise program recipients, 23 compared to total community college students seeking a certificate or degree in the 2020–21 award year. 24 Aggregated together, 31 percent of students enrolled in one of these states’ community colleges that year received a state promise grant, a percentage that is driven upward by high shares in three large states (Tennessee, California, 25 and Washington). 26 In the median states, West Virginia and New Jersey, 9.0 and 8.1 percent of community college students received a promise program scholarship, respectively.

Of course, it is commendable that states offer these programs, even as limited as some of them are. Every financial aid program a state legislature enacts is an important contribution to the great project of making upward mobility in the United States attainable for all. 27

But how we talk about these existing state programs matters. We cannot assume that the general public knows the nuances of these programs’ designs. Voters may misinterpret well-intentioned headlines, such as “ Is Community College Free? Yes, in These 31 States ,” taking the message to mean that most people can already enroll in community college tuition-free. 28 This is not only a messaging problem in terms of adequately informing prospective students and their families: it also jeopardizes the success of proposals that would supplement and improve on existing promise efforts. Unless the nuance of promise programs is understood, the public may believe federal action to eliminate tuition would be overkill.

This is not only a messaging problem in terms of adequately informing prospective students and their families: it also jeopardizes the success of proposals that would supplement and improve on existing promise efforts.

The reality is just the opposite: a federal free college program such as ACP is badly needed for low-income students to afford college. This holds true even for students who already receive a state promise grant, as I show in the next section.

Comparing the Federal First-Dollar Plan to Last-Dollar State Grants

If enacted by Congress, the America’s College Promise Act would establish a federal–state partnership through which the federal government sends block grants to states on the condition that they charge community college students $0 in tuition and fees. For qualifying students–roughly three out of every four students who apply for federal aid 29 –tuition simply ceases to exist. 30

ACP’s “first-dollar” benefit covers tuition before other aid is factored in. Most state promise programs contrast with ACP in that they cover tuition after other aid, making them “last-dollar” programs. 31 Under a last-dollar promise program, a low-income student whose Pell Grant exceeds tuition receives no promise dollars. At the same time, someone whose family does not receive any federal assistance would receive a promise grant equal to tuition, minus other state aid if applicable.

The “first dollar” versus “last dollar” design choice has a strong influence on who receives money from the program. Scholars have observed that middle- and higher-income students benefit the most from last-dollar awards. 32 Due to its last-dollar design, New York’s Excelsior Scholarship has been found to predominantly serve students with family incomes above the median for New York City, and who would be in the top 20 percent among applicants to the City University of New York (CUNY). 33 Other analysis has found that last-dollar programs deliver grants to more white students, and fewer to Black or Latino/a students, than what would be expected based on enrollment. 34

Others respond that the simple guarantee of enrolling without having to pay out-of-pocket for tuition breaks through to low-income students who would otherwise be on the fence about enrolling, and who would otherwise only learn about their net tuition cost after completing substantial paperwork. 35 In other words, the indirect benefits of last-dollar programs are greatest for low-income students. However, it remains true that the direct beneficiaries of last-dollar programs are often higher-income.

It is also important to note that roughly half of state promise programs have income caps, and that students from high-income families tend not to enroll in community college. 36 Last-dollar programs seldom “waste” money on well-resourced students. At the same time, low-income students are often left needing more assistance.

Figure 2, below, shows combined Pell Grant and last-dollar promise aid for community college students enrolled full-time who applied for federal aid, grouped by their family’s adjusted gross income (AGI). 37 As a student’s income decreases, combined grant aid remains roughly the same.

America’s College Promise maintains all the upside of last-dollar programs while creating a progressive system of college costs, where no student pays tuition and the Pell Grant and state financial aid offset low- and middle income students’ non-tuition expenses. Freeing the Pell Grant for non-tuition costs is no trivial matter: the maximum Pell Grant is $7,395 for the 2023–24 award year, and non-tuition costs contribute 60 percent to 80 percent of the total cost of attendance at community colleges, depending on the student’s living arrangement. 38

Figure 3, below, shows how a first-dollar program, such as ACP, delivers more than $8,000 in combined grant aid for the average community college student from the lowest income bracket. 39 By comparison, combined grant aid for that same student under a last-dollar program is under $5,000 (Figure 2 above).

A first-dollar program, such as ACP, delivers more than $8,000 in combined grant aid for the average community college student from the lowest income bracket.

Students Everywhere Stand To Gain from ACP, Including Those with State Promise Grants

In 2021, researchers at the Urban Institute examined how ACP would affect community college students who already have no net tuition from Pell Grants and/or state grants. They found that America’s College Promise would reduce the average amount students would pay out-of-pocket for living expenses by 33 percent, from $10,661 to $7,193. 40 Combining the ACP benefit, the Pell Grant, and other aid, students who currently pay no net tuition would see their total grants rise from $7,258 to $10,725, a 47 percent increase in total grants. 41 The subject of the Urban Institute’s analysis is not exactly the same as the population that receives a promise program: a maximum Pell Grant will exceed community college tuition in most states, whether the student is in a promise program or not. But the analysis demonstrated how ACP would improve affordability by cutting down students’ unaided living costs.

Since then, new survey data allow us to look within specific states’ community college sectors. 42 In this analysis, I examine how ACP would change how promise-eligible students pay for college in a sample of six states with active last-dollar promise programs: Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Tennessee. A full description of the methods of my analysis can be found in Appendix B.

Total Grant Aid Received

Figures 4 and 5 show how students’ total grant aid would increase through ACP: specifically, for those who are already eligible for their state promise program. Orange bars indicate the estimated total grant aid under the status-quo of each state promise program, gray under ACP, and yellow under ACP if state promise programs are converted into non-tuition stipends.

Among promise-eligible students, increases to total grant aid would range from 39 percent (Nevada) to 74 percent (Oregon). (See Figure 4 below.)

When we aggregate by enrollment, the typical promise-eligible student in one of the sample states would see their total grants increase by 56 percent, from $5,714 to $8,926. 43

Importantly, ACP incentivizes states to maintain their existing need-based financial aid by converting it to non-tuition stipends. The yellow bars show the estimated total aid students would receive if states maintained their promise programs as non-tuition aid, assuming no change in which students receive state promise program dollars. 44

Comparing the yellow bars (ACP plus state promise program stipends) to orange bars (state promise alone), the average student across these six states would see their total grant aid increase 85 percent, from $5,714 to $10,581.

Figure 5 below shows the same estimates for the Promise-eligible Pell recipient population in each state. The bars are higher than in Figure 4 by about $1,000, but it remains true that the bars reflecting ACP (gray) and ACP plus state promise (yellow) are the highest.

Among promise-eligible students who receive Pell, increases to total grant aid range from 39 percent (Nevada) to 67 percent (New Jersey) with the enactment of ACP. Aggregated by enrollment, the typical promise-eligible Pell recipient in one of the sample states would see their total grants increase by 51 percent, from $6,970 to $10,574.

The typical promise-eligible Pell recipient in one of the sample states would see their total grants increase by 51 percent, from $6,970 to $10,574.

If states convert their promise programs to non-tuition stipends, then the typical Pell recipient would see their total grants increase 72 percent, from $6,970 to $11,973.

This confirms what we would expect: ACP makes a sizable difference in the financial means of students, even those who already qualify for free college through a last-dollar promise program.

Grants for Non-Tuition Expenses

For three states, we can calculate the expected change in the grant aid available for students’ non-tuition costs in each scenario: state promise alone (orange), ACP alone (gray), and ACP with state promise as stipends (yellow). 45

Among promise-eligible students, increases to non-tuition grant aid would range from 51 percent (Nevada) to 283 percent (Michigan). In the aggregate, a typical promise-eligible student would see their non-tuition grant aid more than double, a 226 percent increase from $1,239 to $4,035, a gain of about $2,800. (See Figure 6 below.)

Figure 7 below shows the same analysis for promise-eligible Pell recipients. Again, Pell grant recipients would have a large amount of non-tuition grant aid, as much as $7,700 in Nevada. The percentage increase from the state promise to ACP ranges from 63 percent (Nevada) to 270 percent (Michigan).

For many students in the United States today, the concept of receiving substantial government assistance with living costs is unthought of, though it is a reality in many other countries with fewer resources than ours . 46 When it comes to students’ and families’ pocketbooks, the greatest shift ACP ushers in may be how it reduces under-resourced students’ the struggle of living and learning at once.

“Stacking” Promise Programs to Offset Living Costs: The Politics and the Policy

The prior sections of this report have argued that lawmakers and the public must recognize the need for a federal plan to achieve nationwide free community college on a first-dollar basis, such as America’s College Promise. Even the states that have promise programs face limits of breadth and depth. Cost constraints force many states to limit eligibility to certain subsets of students by age, enrollment intensity, or occupation (a breadth problem), and the last-dollar design limits how much these programs can help students cover their living costs (a depth problem). ACP would facilitate major strides forward along both of those axes.

But the existence of a large number of statewide promise programs also enables a golden opportunity: if ACP is enacted, states can stack their existing promise aid 47 on top of the first-dollar ACP benefit to offset students’ living costs. The combination of ACP, the Pell Grant, and state grants can, beyond simply eliminating tuition, deliver students critical financial assistance for books and supplies, housing, food, transportation, and more: the exact costs that so often impede students’ progress from matriculation to degree completion.

The combination of ACP, the Pell Grant, and state grants can, beyond simply eliminating tuition, deliver students critical financial assistance for books and supplies, housing, food, transportation, and more.

As a federal–state partnership, ACP does not mandate states to convert state financial aid for community college students into stipends, but it incentivizes them to do so. Specifically, the text of the America’s College Promise Act states the following:

• States must provide a sum of money called a “state share” to join the federal–state partnership. 48 The state share must be used to eliminate tuition at the state’s community colleges, except that leftover funds after eliminating tuition can be allocated towards other educational purposes. 49
• States must also adhere to maintenance of effort provisions which prohibit states from cutting other spending on higher education. 50 Specifically, states must maintain their levels of fiscal support for higher education per full-time equivalent student, support for the operating expenses of public four-year institutions, and support for need-based financial aid. These three “maintenance of effort” requirements (MOEs) are all calculated separately, and each year they are indexed to the prior three years’ average. 51
• A state can count in its state share the state financial aid it provides to ACP participants. 52 In addition, state financial aid does not need to be included in the MOE requirement for fiscal support for higher education, even while it can still be counted in the MOE requirement for need-based financial aid (if it is in fact based on need). 53 I will call this the “Section 786 Exemption,” after the bill section where the rule is located.

In other words, the text of the America’s College Promise Act incentivizes states with promise programs to keep providing these grants—and to keep providing them to community college students.

But there’s more to the story. Even if states maintain their promise programs and allocate them as stipends, will they do it equitably? How likely is it that states can claim the Section 786 Exemption? And how can governors who are reluctant to join ACP be further incentivized to join, given that they can tell voters, “We have free community college already”?

The following sections unpack these questions that, far-off as they may seem, could one day become battlegrounds and may determine whether states can capitalize on the opportunity to harness the power of both federal- and state-based free college.

Stacking Equitably

The Section 786 Exemption incentivizes states to continue giving the same level of financial aid to community college students, but it does not require states to distribute that financial aid in any particular way. (The only requirement is that the aid not be awarded predominantly based on merit.) 54

Every state that joins ACP will have to rewrite its formulas for which community college students get financial aid and how much, be it a promise program or not. This marks a fork in the road for states. On the one hand, a state can allocate the most funding to students with the greatest financial needs, such as by making their award amount a function of the student’s Student Aid Index. 55 (See Figure 8 below.)

But, as a technical matter, such a distribution would be regressive. Furthermore, students on the high-income side of the distribution would be paid to go to college: it is not simply that they will not pay out-of-pocket, but also that money would go into their pocket.

To garner political support in Congress and statehouses around the country, we should ensure that states invest in the students most in need—and with the most potential to create better economic opportunities for their families.

To garner political support in Congress and statehouses around the country, we should ensure that states invest in the students most in need—and with the most potential to create better economic opportunities for their families. The text of ACP should require states to submit the allocation formulas of the state financial aid for which they claim the Sec. 786 Exemption to the Department of Education. 57 Moreover, the secretary of education should be permitted to withhold the exemption from financial aid programs that skew too heavily towards upper-income students.

To some, such a decision may seem like federal overreach. But the passage of America’s College Promise would mark the single greatest advancement since the 1960s towards ensuring a college degree is attainable for every American across the socioeconomic spectrum. The lowest-income students, especially those in high-cost-of-living areas, should not still be working thirty hours a week or taking out debt to earn an associate’s degree under ACP. While federal lawmakers have the tools to promote affordability for working-class families, they should use them to the fullest.

Enabling Stacking in High-Tuition States

Some states will find it difficult to claim the Section 786 Exemption, limiting their ability to stack aid and posing a question about how the federal government should step in to help high-tuition states maintain their financial aid programs.

States receive federal funding under ACP under one condition above all others: that they charge participating students $0 in tuition. 58 That tuition must be replaced, or else community colleges will become revenue-starved. 59 The replacement of that revenue comes primarily from the federal share and the state share. 60 For every state alike, the federal share is four or more times larger than the state share; during the economic nadir of severe recessions, the federal government will step in to cover the entire state share. 61

The mandated amounts of the federal and state shares are calculated using the state’s full-time equivalent community college enrollment and the national median in-state community college’s tuition charge. That last factor, the median in-state community college tuition charge nationwide, is the same for every state’s calculation. 62

Roughly half of states’ community colleges fall below the median, and they will have an easier time eliminating tuition. Roughly half of states’ community colleges fall above the median, and they will have to add in additional money beyond their state share to participate.

The Section 786 Exemption makes sense for a state only if it does not need to spend its entire state share on covering lost tuition: in other words, a low-tuition state.

However, many promise programs are in states on the high-tuition side of the scale, meaning they can’t claim the Section 786 Exemption. When they join ACP, they will have to cover the cost of tuition, and because of the MOE requirements, they will also need to continue their promise programs (plus all other financial aid), without assistance from the federal government for those costs. 63

TCF’s projections in Table 1 below shows that only a handful of states with promise programs would be able to claim the Section 786 Exemption to count their promise program spending towards their required state share while delivering those dollars to students as stipends.

Based on projections using 2020–21 data, only five of the fifteen states with promise programs (and sufficient data for calculations) could at least partially cover the costs of their promise program through the Section 786 Exemption.

The design of ACP clearly signals that its authors want state financial aid programs to persist as non-tuition assistance for community college students. However, states may need more federal help following through.

A revision to ACP could establish a “State Financial Aid Continuation Fund,” whereby the federal government would refund states $1 for every $2 they spend on need-based state financial aid for ACP recipients. 69 Restrictions could apply, such as limiting the eligible student population to Pell Grant recipients or another indicator of financial need. By adding this fund to ACP, the federal government can make sure that the decision to join the federal–state partnership will not be framed as a choice between the free college program state lawmakers created and the free college program Congress is establishing. 70

Easing the Political Choice to Join ACP

State promise programs are political achievements. Governors, including liberal governors, may be reluctant to join ACP if their promise program will no longer keep credit for covering tuition. Lawmakers will not want one of their signature legislative accomplishments to become an add-on to someone else’s bigger, better win. Even if they like Joe Biden, they don’t want Joe Biden to eat their lunch.

As a workaround, a revision to the text of ACP could specify that states can label the elimination of tuition on financial aid award letters and promotional materials with the name of their promise program. 71 For example, a student in Tennessee would not see “America’s College Promise” on their award letters, but instead, “Tennessee Promise.” To a state’s residents, it would be as if the federal–state partnership is supercharging their state promise program, not replacing it, similarly to how the exchanges created by the Affordable Care Act increased their uptake on the exchanges by using names like “Kynect” in Kentucky or “CoverME” in Maine. 72

Allowing states to rename ACP within their borders may also make the program more intuitive for students and their families. A student in Rhode Island cannot take their federal ACP benefit into Massachusetts or Connecticut, and it may help a Rhode Island family understand the plan if it is called “Rhode Island Promise,” the name of the state’s current promise program.

Both the federal government and the states have duties to ensure their residents can afford the education that is needed for participation in the economy. In the absence of Congressional action, states have blazed a path forward through promise programs. However, a rising recognition of students’ challenges covering non-tuition expenses underscores how the wave of last-dollar programs linked to tuition can only carry the nation so far. 73

For sixteen states with promise programs and sufficient public reporting, Figure 10 compares current annual promise program expenditures for community college students versus projected funding for America’s College Promise. These programs deliver $1.1 billion per year to students; America’s College Promise would fund first-dollar free college in these same states at a level of $5.6 billion per year. 74

If states had the deep pockets of the federal government, they would not have to make the tradeoffs that can be found in state promise programs’ designs. Every promise program is an honest attempt made with limited resources. The aim of this research is not to point out the limitations of state promise programs, but rather, to quantify what would be newly possible if Congress activated the power and weight of the federal government to do what few states can do alone and eliminate community college tuition for good and for all.

It follows that, even if every U.S. state adopted a last-dollar promise program in the vein of existing programs, community college students would receive only 19 cents for every dollar that America’s College Promise would make available.

States would still decide their own destinies if Congress passes the America’s College Promise Act. Under ACP’s federal–state partnership, states must apply to join, committing to certain rules affecting state funding for public four-year colleges, transfer pathways, alignment with K-12 education, and more. 75 States can simply decide not to join, as was true with the expansion of Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. But if that federal–state partnership is any indication, many states that initially hold out could eventually join, with the number of nonparticipating states approaching zero.

This report has proposed ways to improve states’ ability to join ACP while maintaining the political and affordability upsides of their homegrown promise programs. It need not be an either-or choice, and the combination of the two can create a stronger pathway to a college degree than either can create alone.

Appendix A, containing the data and methods for Figures 1 and 10, can be found here .

Appendix B, containing the data and methods for Figures 4 through 7, can be found here .

The code used for the original analysis in this report can be found at this GitHub repository .

This research was generously supported by the Kresge Foundation. Thanks to Michelle Miller-Adams and Tom Harnisch for feedback on the research in this report, and thanks to Mary Rauner for feedback on an early draft of the report.

• Hannah Hartig, “Democrats overwhelmingly favor free college tuition, while Republicans are divided by age, education,” Washington, DC: Pew Research Center, August 2021. In addition, recent polling by the New America Foundation finds that 82 percent of respondents agreed with the statement, “States should spend more tax dollars on education opportunities after high school to make them more affordable,” with a similar share saying the same of the federal government. See Figure 9, “Varying Degrees 2023,” Washington, DC: The New America Foundation, August 2023.
• Jen Mishory and Peter Granville, “Policy Design Matters for Rising ‘Free College’ Aid,” Washington, DC: The Century Foundation, June 2019.
• Peter Granville, “President Biden’s Free Community College Plan Matters Now More Than Ever,” Washington, DC: The Century Foundation, September 2021.
• “FACT SHEET – White House Unveils America’s College Promise Proposal: Tuition-Free Community College for Responsible Students,” Washington, DC: The White House Office of the Press Secretary, January 2015.
• “FACT SHEET: How the Build Back Better Plan Will Create a Better Future for Young Americans,” Washington, DC: The White House Office of the Press Secretary, July 2021.
• “Budget of the U.S. Government: Fiscal Year 2024,” Washington, DC: The White House Office of Management and Budget, March 2023.
• Beth Akers, “Free College Movement Will Likely Head Back to the States — Where it Belongs,” Real Clear Politics , October 2021.
• Eric Kelderman, “Free College Is Dead in Congress, but It’s Alive and Well in the States,” Chronicle of Higher Education , November 2021.
• A student must enroll at least half-time to qualify for America’s College Promise. This is also a feature of state promise programs, and many state programs require full-time enrollment.
• See Figure 10 for details and methods.
• Exceptions include emergency stimulus, such as HEERF funds passed in 2020 and 2021, and targeted funds for certain categories of colleges, known as Title III.
• Carolyn Fast, Bob Shireman, and Alex Edwards, “College Tuition Is Out of Control. Voters Want Government to Do Something,” Washington, DC: The Century Foundation, July 2023.
• See Figure 2.1: “2022 State Higher Education Finance (SHEF) Report,” Boulder, CO: The State Higher Education Executive Officers Association, June 2023.
• “Stronger Nation: Progress toward Racial Equity,” Indianapolis, IN: The Lumina Foundation, n.d., accessed June 2023.
• “Drug Screening,” Charleston, WV: West Virginia Higher Education Policy Commission, n.d.
• These are Advanced Manufacturing, Business/Information Technology, Construction, Healthcare, and Transportation/Logistics.
• See Appendix A.
• See Appendix A. See Danielle Douglas-Gabriel, “Why 3,000 people are still waiting for Maryland’s community college scholarship,” Washington Post , October 2020, and Danielle Douglas-Gabriel, “Maryland’s free community college initiative gets off to a slow start,” Washington Post , September 2019, and
• See Appendix A. See Ashley A. Smith, “A Promise With Limits,” Inside Higher Ed , March 2017.
• Map of statewide promise programs, The Campaign for Free College Tuition, n.d., accessed August 2023.
• Danielle Douglas-Gabriel, “Why 3,000 people are still waiting for Maryland’s community college scholarship,” Washington Post, October 2020. Sami Edge, “Lawmakers poised to keep Oregon Promise for now, but could limit it to low-income students,” Oregon Live , April 2023.
• See Appendix A for data sources.
• Students not seeking a degree or certificate were excluded from enrollment totals to avoid counting dual-enrolled high school students.
• I include California as a promise program state, but its tuition-free model differs from other states’. California’s public universities and community colleges charged no tuition until the 1970s and 1980s, respectively. When the state’s community colleges started charging tuition in 1985, a waiver was introduced for families below a specified poverty-level threshold. This waiver has been continued since and operates as an entitlement for qualifying families, but it was renamed the California College Promise Grant (CCPG) in 2017. In 2017 and 2019, state legislation allocated funding to create the California College Promise, a separate program that is state-funded but administered by individual community colleges. Community colleges are permitted to spend their College Promise funds in different ways. Some reduce tuition and fees for students who don’t receive the CCPG; others offset students’ non-tuition costs, such as books as supplies. Eligibility criteria may also vary. In this report, I treat the CCPG and the College Promise as a combined program for interstate comparisons, though they are separate in practice. For further details on the state’s tuition-free programs, see Mary Rauner and Sara Lundquist, “College Promise in California: Recommendations for Advancing Implementation, Impact, and Equity,” San Francisco, CA: WestEd, November 2019.
• If California were removed from the calculations, only 15 percent of eligible students participate.
• That said, increases in state financial aid sometimes accompany cuts to state fiscal support for public colleges and universities, which contributes to a “high-tuition high-aid” financing model that carries negative implications for upward mobility.
• In fact, these lists often include state programs that are not free college programs at all. For example, the MassGrant Plus program in Massachusetts covers the balance of tuition after all other grants and the family’s Expected Family Contribution (EFC). For all families except those with an EFC of $0, out-of-pocket tuition payments must be made. The MassGrant Plus program is often included in these lists.
• I estimate that 56 percent of community college students would qualify for ACP based on current enrollment factors, after meeting qualifications for enrollment intensity, in-state residency, and FAFSA completion. However, the free college incentive could lead to more students enrolling at least-half time, enrolling in-state, or completing the FAFSA. If FAFSA completion rates were not a factor, then this figure would rise to 76 percent. Source: author’s analysis of data from the National Postsecondary Student Aid Study: 2015-16, via NCES Datalab.
• See Section 791(5) for the definition of an eligible student under ACP. To receive the benefit, students must be an undergraduate enrolled at least half-time, qualify for in-state or in-district tuition (or would if not for immigration status), not be a dual enrollment or early college high school student, and if they are a U.S. citizen, complete the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA).
• A third formula, “middle-dollar,” largely resembles the last-dollar formula but sets minimum award amounts that ensure qualifying students receive a nonzero amount of financial assistance from the program. The Oregon Promise Scholarship is regarded as a middle-dollar scholarship. For the purposes of this report, I group middle-dollar scholarships with last-dollar scholarships.
• Meredith Billings, “Understanding the design of college promise programs, and where to go from here,” Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, September 2018.
• Judith Scott-Clayton, CJ Libassi, and Daniel Sparks, “The Fine Print on Free College: Who Benefits from New York’s Excelsior Scholarship?”, Washington, DC: The Urban Institute, May 2022.
• Anthony P. Carnevale, Jenna R. Sablan, Artem Gulish, Michael C. Quinn, and Gayle Cinquegrani, “The Dollars and Sense of Free College,” Washington, DC: The Georgetown Center on Education and the Workforce, October 2020.
• Sara Goldrick-Rab and Michelle Miller-Adams, “Don’t Dismiss the Value of Free-College Programs. They Do Help Low-Income Students,” The Chronicle of Higher Education , September 2018.
• Jen Mishory and Peter Granville, “Policy Design Matters for Rising ‘Free College’ Aid,” Washington, DC: The Century Foundation, June 2019. In 2019-20, only 5.7 percent of dependent community college students came from families making above $150,000, compared to 9.4 percent of public four-year students and 10.9 percent of students in all other sectors. Source: author’s analysis of data from the National Postsecondary Student Aid Study, 2019-20, accessed via NCES Datalab using retrieval code uqtwcw .
• The distribution of students by AGI category is as follows: 18.5 percent have AGIs of $0 to $15,000, 24.7 percent have AGIs of $15,000 to $30,000, 16.5 percent have AGIs of $30,000 to $45,000, 9.9 percent have AGIs of $45,000 to $60,000, 12.4 percent have AGIs of $60,000 to $90,000, 8.8 percent have AGIs of $90,000 to $120,000, and 9.3 percent have AGIs over $120,000. See NCES Datalab, retrieval code arydlu .
• Table 330.40, Digest of Education Statistics, Washington, DC: National Center on Education Statistics, n.d., accessed June 2023.
• Jason Delise and Jason Cohn, “What Free Community College Means for Students Who Already Have It,” Washington, DC: The Urban Institute, September 2021.
• Specifically, the National Postsecondary Student Aid Study: 2017-18 Administrative Collection.
• Weighting by enrollment means this estimate is driven disproportionately by New York (39 percent of students) and New Jersey (25 percent of students), the two largest states by degree/certificate-seeking community college enrollment in the sample of six states.
• However, a state could choose to deliver those stipends in a way that favors low-income students. This is unpacked further in the next section of this report.
• This is not feasible for the three states that had active promise programs in 2017-18, the award year reflected in our data source, NPSAS:18-AC. The problem this poses is that we cannot distinguish between state promise dollars and non-promise state financial aid.
• Lara Takenaga, “4 Years of College, $0 in Debt: How Some Countries Make Higher Education Affordable,” The New York Times, May 2019.
• And other state-funded scholarships.
• Section 786 . The amount of the state share is a function of the number of the state’s full-time-equivalent community college students, the nation’s median in-state community college full-time tuition charge, and the percentage of total partnership costs that will be covered by the federal government. See Section 786(b) .
• Section 789 .
• Section 788(c) .
• Section 786(b)(2)(A) .
• Sections 786(b)(2)(A) and 791(10)(b)(iii) .
• The Student Aid Index replaces the Expected Family Contribution measure, a change made through the FAFSA Simplification Act starting in the 2024-25 award year .
• If no new money is allocated to the program, the state could peg this amount to the pre-ACP full-time tuition charge.
• That is, the allocation formulas that would be implemented once ACP takes effect in the state: not the allocation formulas of programs as they are currently written.
• Section 788(a) .
• That is, any more than they already are revenue-starved . See “Recommendations for Providing Community Colleges with the Resources They Need,” Washington, DC: The Century Foundation, April 2019.
• I say “primarily” because high-tuition states will need to supply additional resources beyond the federal and state shares to replace the totality of tuition revenue.
• Section 790 .
• This value falls between $4,000 and $5,000, depending on what you count as a community college and what year you use as the reference point.
• It is also worth noting that states that cannot claim the Section 786 Exemption are not incentivized to commit their MOE-mandated financial aid to community college students.
• Assuming an 80 percent federal share of costs, California’s state share is $607 million, all of which can be put towards the Section 786 Exemption. However, the total cost of its promise program is $654 million, which means only about 93 percent of the promise program’s cost can be accounted for by the exemption.
• Using 2020-21 data, New Mexico’s remaining balance after tuition would be sufficient to cover its entire promise program using the Section 786 Exemption. However, New Mexico has greatly expanded its promise program since then, meaning these projections are likely off by a meaningful margin.
• Nevada can fully claim the Section 786 Exemption for its promise program, using its leftover $18.3 million. Nevada’s state share is $20.3 million, greater than the $2.8 million cost of the promise program in 2020-21.
• Oklahoma has a leftover balance of $4.3 million. If it devotes all of that leftover balance to its promise program through the Section 786 Exemption, it will cover about 42 percent of the promise program costs.
• Washington State has a leftover balance of $18.3 million. If it devotes all of that leftover balance to its promise program through the Section 786 Exemption, it will cover about 15 percent of the promise program costs.
• This is a lower federal share of costs than the federal government’s contributions toward eliminating community college tuition, which is 80 percent in the final year of the program under the Build Back Better Act’s text. Supporting students’ non-tuition costs is a lower priority goal of America’s College Promise than the elimination of tuition, hence the lower share (50 percent) through the State Financial Aid Continuation Fund.
•  It would also have the benefit of helping states satisfy the maintenance of effort requirement for need-based financial aid, especially those that cannot claim the Section 786 Exemption.
• Other federal-state partnerships demonstrate this. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and Medicaid are often named something other than SNAP and Medicaid within a state: for example, “CalFresh” and “MediCal” in California and “FoodShare” and “BadgerCare” in Wisconsin. Of course, it may be warranted for the text to also require the state to receive the Secretary’s approval before changing the program’s name.
• Jon R. Gabel, Heidi Whitmore, Sam Stromberg, and Matthew Green, “Why Are the Health Insurance Marketplaces Thriving in Some States but Struggling in Others?”, New York, NY: The Commonwealth Fund, November 2018.
• For a review of this issue, see Ann Coles, Laura Keane, Brendan Williams, “Beyond the College Bill: The Hidden Hurdles of Indirect Expenses,” Boston, MA: uAspire, June 2020, and Sandy Baum and Jason Cohn, “Nontuition Expenses: Implications for College Affordability and Financial Aid Policies,” Washington, DC: The Urban Institute, June 2022.
• See Appendix A for details.
• For more about those rules, see Section 788(b) of the 2021 bill text.

Tags: college affordability , higher education

Peter Granville, Fellow

Peter Granville is a fellow at The Century Foundation, studying federal and state policy efforts to improve college access and affordability.

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Tv/streaming, collections, great movies, chaz's journal, contributors, american promise.

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An extraordinary documentary about race, family and education that's at once epic and intimate, "American Promise" took 14 years to complete since its premise is to follow two boys from kindergarten through high school. Actually, co-directors (and spouses) Joe Brewster and Michele Stephenson initially set out to film the scholastic careers of several children, including girls, but when all the subjects dropped out except for their own son, Idriss, and his best friend, Seun Summers, they were left with a film about two African-American boys entering a privileged, predominantly white academic environment – a focus that is essential to the film's provocative fascinations and cultural importance.

When we meet them at age five, in the late '90s, Idriss and Seun are as fortunate as they are cute. The eldest sons of stable and motivated black professional couples in Brooklyn, the boys are selected to attend Manhattan's tony, private Dalton School, an opportunity that evidently stems both from the school's new commitment to "diversity" (which involves trying to mirror the city's racial makeup) and their parents' desire to give their sons the best educations possible. Although "American Promise" wasn't the project's initial title, it perfectly captures the feeling of hope that both families evince as the boys embark on their big educational adventure.

But achievement doesn't follow opportunity as readily as one might hope. Both the lithe, delicate-featured Idriss and shy, husky Seun, in addition to being very likable kids, are smart and articulate, and their teachers and counselors seem to go out of their way to help them. Yet from early on, they seem unable to match or surpass their classroom peers, mostly kids from well-to-do white families. It's almost as if there's some invisible cultural barrier holding them back. Idriss, who slips into hip-hop patois when he goes out to play basketball with boys from the projects lest he be accused of "talking white," also perceives that he's punished at school more readily than the white kids. Is it because as a black kid he's expected to cause problems?

By middle school and the onset of adolescence, the challenges have multiplied and the parents' frustrations mounted accordingly. While Idriss and Seun seem to feel that their folks are pressuring them too relentlessly about schoolwork, the Brewsters and the Summerses say that they don't think they are being tough enough. After arriving late for a martial arts ceremony and being told by his dad that he's screwed up due to being given too much freedom, Seun turns to the camera and smirks, "They think waking up by yourself is freedom." Falling further behind academically toward the end of middle school, he leaves Dalton and moves over to Benjamin Banneker Academy, a distinguished Brooklyn public school with a mostly black student body.

The central perplexities here are summed up by a Dalton administrator who says that at their school "African-American girls do okay. But there seems to be a cultural disconnect between independent schools and African-American boys, and we see a high rate of the boys not being successful. And the question is, why? What are we doing as a school that is not supporting these guys?" Another angle on that question, meanwhile, comes from a teacher at Benjamin Banneker, who suggests that diversity itself may be a misguided goal, pointing to his school's success rate as an indication that black students often do better academically among their fellows than in situations where they feel isolated and constantly compared to more privileged classmates.

While they didn't set out to make a film about what newspaper columnists refer to as the "black male achievement gap," Brewster and Stephenson have done just that, and it's hard to imagine a more penetrating and powerful one. Since it's filmed in direct-cinema style (Michael Apted's " Up " series was an inspiration) there are no interviews with experts mulling the reasons for this gap. But that's no doubt for the best. Rather than pretending to offer any encompassing explanations or solutions for what is obviously a very complex and multi-faceted problem, the filmmakers explore it in the intimate context of two families. Seeing it that up-close and personal provides a vivid and immediate basis for discussion, and indeed, it's easy to believe that "American Promise" will be the basis for many discussions in U.S. homes and schools for years to come.

Yet as illuminating as the film is regarding one crucial issue, it is also much more than that. Watching Idriss and Seun from the time they enter school till they set off for college (a happy-enough ending for their arduous academic journeys) is a rich and rewarding experience, one that will surely make most viewers reflect on their own lives and family situations. In the cases of the families here, the challenges are sometimes overwhelming. Hit by unexpected tragedy in the latter stages of filming, the Summerses dropped out of the project for a while, but later returned, perhaps sensing that telling Seun's story in this way might well benefit others. One can only admire the courage of their decision.

A film of this scope is obviously a monumental undertaking, yet it's one that Brewster and Stephenson managed to complete while negotiating several technological changes that led documentary filmmakers from shooting on tape to digital. For all that, "American Promise" is beautifully shot (by several camera operators) and assembled. Credited editors Erin Casper, Mary Manhardt and Andrew Siwoff obviously deserve kudos for a film that is eloquently structured and consistently engaging.

Godfrey Cheshire

Godfrey Cheshire is a film critic, journalist and filmmaker based in New York City. He has written for The New York Times, Variety, Film Comment, The Village Voice, Interview, Cineaste and other publications.

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America Had a Good Run

The politics of pessimism

It had been clear for years that China was rising and rising—building rail lines and airports and skyscrapers at a rate that put the United States to shame, purchasing the favor of poorer countries, filling the world with its wares—when, in April 2014, I happened upon a bit of news. CNBC , citing a “new study from the world’s leading statistical agencies,” reported that China’s rapidly growing economy would rank first in the world, surpassing the United States’, by as soon as the end of the year. Our century-plus reign as the world’s wealthiest nation was over, or about to be. What a run we’d had!

But the study, which used debatable methodology, turned out to be wrong. It interested me less than something else I learned when I began poking around the internet to put it in some sort of context. I discovered that most Americans thought that China already had become our economic superior. And they’d thought that—erroneously—for several years.

In 2011, Gallup polled Americans on the question of whether the United States, China, the European Union, Japan, Russia, or India was the leading economic power in the world. More than 50 percent answered China, while fewer than 35 percent said the United States. Those numbers held when Gallup did the same polling the next year and the next and in 2014, when the portion of Americans choosing China rose to 52 percent and the portion choosing America dipped to 31 percent. That’s a whopping differential, especially considering its wrongness.

China’s economy still lags behind ours, although Americans have been reluctant to recognize that. In 2020, when China was pilloried as the cradle of the coronavirus pandemic, 50 percent of Americans indeed saw our economy as the mightier of the two. But that rediscovered swagger was short-lived. In 2021, 50 percent gave the crown back to China. Last year, Americans saw the economies as essentially tied.

From the May 1888 issue: What is pessimism?

A fundamental misperception of global affairs by Americans isn’t surprising. Too many, if not most, of us are disinclined to look or think beyond our shores. But this particular misperception startled and fascinated me: We’d traditionally been such a confident, even cocky, nation, enamored of our military might (and often too quick to use it), showy with our foreign aid, schooled in stories—true ones—about how desperately foreigners wanted to make new lives here and what extraordinary risks they took to do so. We saw ourselves as peerless, and we spoke a distinctively American vocabulary of infinite possibility, boundless optimism, and better tomorrows.

American dream. American exceptionalism. Land of opportunity. Endless frontier. Manifest destiny. Those were the pretty phrases that I grew up with. We were inventors, expanders, explorers. Putting the first man on the moon wasn’t just a matter of bragging rights—though it was indeed that, and we bragged plenty about it. It was also an act of self-definition, an affirmation of American identity. We stretched the parameters of the navigable universe the way we stretched the parameters of everything else.

That perspective, obviously, was a romanticized one, achieved through a selective reading of the past. It discounted the experiences of many Black Americans. It minimized the degree to which they and other minorities were shut out from all of this inventing and exploring. It mingled self-congratulatory fiction with fact. And it probably imprinted itself more strongly on me than on some of my peers because of my particular family history. My father’s parents were uneducated immigrants who found in the United States exactly what they’d left Southern Italy for: more material comfort, greater economic stability, and a more expansive future for their children, including my father, who got a scholarship to an Ivy League school, went on to earn an M.B.A., and became a senior partner in one of the country’s biggest accounting firms. He put a heated in-ground pool in the backyard. He put me and my three siblings in private schools. He put our mother in a mink. And he pinched himself all the while.

It was nonetheless true that the idea of the United States as an unrivaled engine of social mobility and generator of wealth held sway with many Americans, who expected their children to do better than they’d done and their children’s children to do even better. That was the mythology, anyway. Sure, we hit lows, but we climbed out of them. We suffered doubts, but we snapped back. The tumult of the late 1960s, Richard Nixon’s degradation of the presidency, and the gas lines, international humiliation, and stagflation of Jimmy Carter’s presidency gave way, in 1980, to the election of Ronald Reagan, who declared that it was “morning again in America” and found an abundance of voters eager to welcome that dawn, to reconnect with an optimism that seemed more credibly and fundamentally American than deviations from it.

I don’t detect that optimism around me anymore. In its place is a crisis of confidence, a pervasive sense among most Americans that our best days are behind us, and that our problems are multiplying faster than we can find solutions for them. It’s a violent rupture of our national psyche. It’s a whole new American pessimism.

Well, maybe not entirely new. In Democracy in America , published in 1835, Alexis de Tocqueville noted a perpetually unsatisfied yearning in Americans, who, he wrote, “are forever brooding over advantages they do not possess.” He found Americans unusually attuned to their misfortunes, and that made (and still makes) sense: With big promises come big disappointments. Boundless dreams are bound to be unattainable.

Even in periods of American history that we associate with prosperity and tranquility, like the 1950s, there were rumblings and disenchantment: Rebel Without a Cause , The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit . And the late 1960s and early ’70s were an oxymoronic braid of surgent hope for necessary change and certainty that the whole American enterprise was corrupt. There were headstrong and heady demands for dignity, for equality, for justice. There were also cities on fire and assassinations. But the overarching story—the general trend line—of the United States in the second half of the 20th century was progress.

Read: The patron saint of political violence

Then, in 2001, the Twin Towers fell. In 2008, the global economy nearly collapsed. By 2012, I noticed that our “shining city on a hill,” to use one of Reagan’s favorite terms for the United States, was enveloped in a fog that wouldn’t lift. In June of that year, Jeb Bush visited Manhattan; had breakfast with several dozen journalists, including me; and mused about the country’s diminished position and fortunes. Perhaps because his political life was then on pause—he’d finished his two terms as Florida governor and his 2016 presidential campaign was still years away—he allowed himself a bluntness that he might not have otherwise. “We’re in very difficult times right now, very different times than we’ve been,” he said, and while that was already more downbeat than mainstream politicians’ usual prognostications, his following words were even darker: “We’re in decline.”

In the years that followed, I paid greater and greater heed to evidence that supported his appraisal, which mirrored my own. I was struck by how tempered and tentative President Barack Obama seemed by the second year of his second term, when he often mulled the smallness, not the largeness, of his place in history, telling David Remnick, the editor of The New Yorker , that each president is just “part of a long-running story. We just try to get our paragraph right.” “Mr. President,” my New York Times colleague Maureen Dowd wrote in response, “I am just trying to get my paragraph right. You need to think bigger.”

Of course, when Obama had thought bigger, he’d bucked up against an American political system that was polarized and paralyzed—that had turned “hope and change” into tweak and tinker. Obama’s longtime adviser David Axelrod told the Times ’ Michael Shear: “I think to pretend that ‘It’s morning in America’ is a misreading of the times.”

That was in 2014, when I registered and explored the revelation that so many Americans thought China was wealthier than we were. Around the same time, I also noticed a long memo by the prominent Democratic political strategist Doug Sosnik in Politico . He observed that for 10 years running, the percentage of Americans who believed that the United States was on the wrong track had exceeded the percentage who thought it was on the right track. “At the core of Americans’ anger and alienation is the belief that the American dream is no longer attainable,” Sosnik wrote. “For the first time in our country’s history, there is more social mobility in Europe than in the United States.”

That “first time” turned out to be no fleeting aberration. Since then, the negative markers have multiplied, and the negative mood has intensified. The fog over our shining city won’t lift. Almost every year from 2000 to the present, the suicide rate has increased. A kind of nihilism has spread, a “rot at the very soul of our nation,” as Mike Allen wrote last year in his Axios newsletter summarizing a Wall Street Journal /NORC poll that charted both the collapse of faith in American institutions and the abandonment of tradition and traditional values. Only 38 percent of respondents said that patriotism was very important, in contrast with 70 percent of respondents from a similar Journal /NBC survey a quarter century earlier, in 1998.

To recognize those dynamics is to understand America’s current politics, in which so many politicians—presidential candidates included—whip up support less by talking about the brightness of the country’s future than by warning of the apocalypse if the other side wins. They’re not clarions of American glory. They’re bulwarks against American ruin.

This essay was adapted from the forthcoming The Age of Grievance .

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America’s Young Farmers Are Burning Out. I Quit, Too

I n 2023, Scott Chang-Fleeman—a young farmer like me—put down his shovel. A post on his Instagram read, “Shao Shan Farm, in its current form, is going on indefinite hiatus.” From the outside, the burgeoning farm had the makeup of one that could stand the test of time. In reality, his experience of farm ownership was wrought with challenges.

A farmer in his late 20s, Chang-Fleeman started Shao Shan Farm in 2019 to reconnect with his roots and provide a source of locally grown heritage Asian vegetables to the Bay Area. He quickly secured a clientele and fan base—two of the greatest hurdles of starting a farm—and became the go-to for San Francisco’s high-end Asian eateries.

But after four years of creative pivots to withstand unexpected hurdles that included financial stress, severe drought, and a global pandemic, Chang-Fleeman made a choice that many young farmers are considering: to leave farming behind. Why he left and what could have kept him on the land are critical questions we must address if we are to have a sustainable and food-secure future.

The USDA Census of Agriculture reported that in 2017, nearly 1 in 4 of the 3.4 million agricultural producers in the US were new and beginning farmers. Many of these new farmers are doing exactly what it seems American agriculture needs: starting small farms. According to the most recent data from the Agricultural Resource Management Survey (ARMS) in 2019 , farms with annual sales of less than $100,000 accounted for about 85% of all U.S. farms. And though not all of these small-scale farms are necessarily organic, small farms are more likely to grow a diversity of crop types, use methods that reduce negative impacts on the climate, increase carbon sequestration, and tend to be more resilient in the face of climate change.

Read More: How Extreme Weather Is Affecting Small Farmers Across the U.S.

There has been a growing interest among younger people in recent years in sustainable and organic farming practices, as well as in local food systems. This interest has led people in their 20s and 30s to enter into small-scale farming, particularly in niche markets such as organic produce, specialty crops, and direct-to-consumer sales.

As a result, both congressional Democrats and Republicans have maintained that encouraging young people to farm is of utmost importance in ensuring the stability of our food system. But getting young people into farming may not be the problem. Keeping them on the farm may be the hardest part.

I should know. I quit too.

Chang-Fleeman got his start in agriculture right out of college, where he spent several years working at the on-campus farm. As a third-generation Chinese American, he noticed a distinct lack of Asian vegetables at local farmers markets, particularly those that were grown organically, and suspected there would be a demand should a supply exist. He started trialing some varieties, and his suspicions were quickly affirmed when samples of his choy sum caught the attention of chef Brandon Jew of Mister Jiu’s, a contemporary Chinese eatery with a Michelin star in the heart of San Francisco’s Chinatown. Jew provided some seed funds for what was to become Shao Shan Farm in 2019.

During the first year running his farm, Chang-Fleeman focused his sales on his relationships with local restaurants, while attending some farmers' markets sales to supplement income. But when the COVID-19 pandemic hit in early 2020, he lost all of his restaurant accounts overnight.

Like many farmers at that time, he pivoted to a CSA model, offering farm boxes that provide a household with an assortment of vegetables for the week.

“So literally over a night, I reworked my crop plan” he told me. “Just to get through that year, or through that season, not knowing how long [the pandemic was going to] last.”

As if a global pandemic wasn’t enough, in 2021, California entered a drought, and he lost the ability to irrigate his crops come mid-summer, which meant a hard stop for production.

“I was hoping to hit some sort of a rhythm, and every year felt a bit like starting from scratch,” Chang-Fleeman reflected.

Throughout farm ownership, he worked side jobs to compensate for the slow build of business income and the fact that he could only afford to pay himself a monthly salary of $2,000. He regularly worked 90 hours a week. At the same time, farm expenses were on the rise.

“The cost of our packaging went up like three times in one year and the cost of the produce didn't change,” he explained. “Our operating expenses went up like 30%, after COVID.”

In four short years, Chang-Fleeman experienced an avalanche of extenuating circumstances that would bring most farm businesses to their knees. But the thing that finally catalyzed the closing of his business was burnout. He relayed the experience of the exhaustion and stress building over time until he reached a breaking point. “If I don’t stop now, it’s going to kill me,” he recalled thinking.

Chang-Fleeman’s burnout reminded me of my own story. In the fall of 2018, I took what ended up being a two-month medical leave from an organic farm I managed in Northern California in order to try to try to resolve a set of weird symptoms that included dizzy spells and heart palpitations. If you know anything about farming, fall is not the time to be absent. It’s peak harvest time and the culmination of all of your work is underway. But as my medical anomaly continued to worsen, I came no closer to getting back to work. After many doctor visits, several trips to the specialist, a flurry of blood tests, and a week of heart monitoring, it took one Xanax to solve the mystery.

Read More: ‘ They’re Trying to Wipe Us Off the Map.’ Small American Farmers Are Nearing Extinction

The prolonged physical stress that I had been harboring at work had triggered the onset of panic disorder, a nervous system affliction that had led me into a near-chronic state of fight or flight mode, causing a swath of physical symptoms not typically associated with “anxiety.”

For me, this was a wake-up call. I turned to a slew of Western and naturopathic remedies to alleviate my symptoms, but ultimately, removing the stressors of farm management was the thing that allowed me to, mostly, reach a nervous system balance. Even still, six years later, I’m constantly navigating the ‘new normal’ of this diagnosis.

A pilot study conducted by agriculture researcher Josie Rudolphi and her colleagues in 2020 found that of 170 participants, approximately 71% met the criteria for Generalized Anxiety Disorder. By comparison, in the US, an estimated 18% of adults experience an anxiety disorder. Rudolphi’s work indicates that these disorders maybe three times more prevalent in young farmer and rancher populations.

This rang true as I went from farm to farm trying to figure out what so often goes wrong in a new farm operation. Again and again mental health was a through-line. Collette Walsh, owner of a cut-flower operation in Braddock, PA, put it to me bluntly: "I usually get to a point in late August or early September, where there’s a week where I just cry.”

How can we build a farming economy that helps young farmers not only stay, but also thrive on the land? The Farm Bill , a federal package of legislation that provides funding for agricultural programs, is one route. As the reboot of the Farm Bill approaches, it’s a critical time to ask these questions and advocate for policies that support young farmers and the barriers they’re facing in maintaining a long-lasting career in agriculture.

Take for instance, Jac Wypler, Farmer Mental Health Director at the National Young Farmer Coalition (Young Farmers), who oversees the Northeast region’s Farmer and Rancher Stress Assistance Network (FRSAN). The organization was established by the Farm Bill in 2018 to develop a service provider network for farmers, ranchers, and other agricultural workers that was dedicated to mental well-being. Through the network of service providers she directs, called “Cultivemos,” Wypler and her colleagues utilize a multi-tiered approach to address mental health in farming spaces. Cultivemos partners provide direct support in moments of stress and crisis as well as peer-to-peer support spaces.

An expanded (and subsidized) program that scales efforts like Cultivemos to a size commensurate with the young work force is clearly needed. But it’s only part of the picture.

“While we believe that it is important to make sure that farms, farmers, and farmworkers are getting direct support around their mental health,” Wypler explained. “We need to alleviate what is causing them stress.” 

Cultivemos works to address the structural root causes of stress which can include climate change, land prices, and systemic racism, to name a few. They focus on communities that are disproportionately harmed by these structural root causes, specifically Black, Indigenous, and other farmers of color. Finally, they seek to make this impact by regranting funding directly into the hands of these farmers.

“The way I think of regranting is that the USDA and these large institutions are the Mississippi River of funding.” Wypler says. “We’re trying to get the funding into these smaller rivers and tributaries to disperse these funds and shift that power dynamic and leadership dynamic.”

The next Farm Bill cycle will be critical in ensuring this work is continued. In November of 2023, lawmakers signed a stopgap funding bill that allows for a one-year extension on the 2018 Farm Bill. Lawmakers are currently in deliberations over the bill until September when it will be up for a vote. Young Farmers underscores the importance of the appropriations process, which is when program areas that are authorized in the farm bill are allocated funding.

Back-to-the-landism has waxed and waned throughout the last hundred years, booming in the pre-Depression years of the 1930s, dying in the war years and then storming back in the 60s and 70s. When my generation’s own farming revolution came along in the early 2000s, I was similarly swept up. I imagined when I chose to farm that the path would be lifelong. What I hadn’t accounted for, as a determined, starry-eyed changemaker, was the toll that a decade of farming through wildfires, evacuations, floods, power outages, and a global pandemic would take on my mental health.

Don’t get me wrong:  I was happy working hard with my two feet planted firmly on the land. In a better world I and people like Scott Chang-Fleeman would have kept getting our hands dirty, making an honest, if modest, living providing good and wholesome food in synch with the rhythms of the planet.

But to borrow a word from the world of ecology, being a young farmer in today’s economy is “unsustainable.” The numbers don’t work economically and, eventually, any mind trying to square this un-squarable circle is going to break. The economic, physical and mental challenges are all interconnected.

It’s hard to find an American, Republican or Democrat, red or blue state resident that doesn’t want more young hands on the land. We all rightly see agriculture as a pathway to personal fulfillment and a way to make our food supply healthier and more secure. But words and intentions can only do so much. We must answer these very real problems with very real subsidy.

If we don’t, my generation might be the last to think of going “back-to-the-land” as something actually worth doing.

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NPR suspends veteran editor as it grapples with his public criticism

David Folkenflik

NPR suspended senior editor Uri Berliner for five days without pay after he wrote an essay accusing the network of losing the public's trust and appeared on a podcast to explain his argument. Uri Berliner hide caption

NPR suspended senior editor Uri Berliner for five days without pay after he wrote an essay accusing the network of losing the public's trust and appeared on a podcast to explain his argument.

NPR has formally punished Uri Berliner, the senior editor who publicly argued a week ago that the network had "lost America's trust" by approaching news stories with a rigidly progressive mindset.

Berliner's five-day suspension without pay, which began last Friday, has not been previously reported.

Yet the public radio network is grappling in other ways with the fallout from Berliner's essay for the online news site The Free Press . It angered many of his colleagues, led NPR leaders to announce monthly internal reviews of the network's coverage, and gave fresh ammunition to conservative and partisan Republican critics of NPR, including former President Donald Trump.

Conservative activist Christopher Rufo is among those now targeting NPR's new chief executive, Katherine Maher, for messages she posted to social media years before joining the network. Among others, those posts include a 2020 tweet that called Trump racist and another that appeared to minimize rioting during social justice protests that year. Maher took the job at NPR last month — her first at a news organization .

In a statement Monday about the messages she had posted, Maher praised the integrity of NPR's journalists and underscored the independence of their reporting.

"In America everyone is entitled to free speech as a private citizen," she said. "What matters is NPR's work and my commitment as its CEO: public service, editorial independence, and the mission to serve all of the American public. NPR is independent, beholden to no party, and without commercial interests."

The network noted that "the CEO is not involved in editorial decisions."

In an interview with me later on Monday, Berliner said the social media posts demonstrated Maher was all but incapable of being the person best poised to direct the organization.

"We're looking for a leader right now who's going to be unifying and bring more people into the tent and have a broader perspective on, sort of, what America is all about," Berliner said. "And this seems to be the opposite of that."

Conservative critics of NPR are now targeting its new chief executive, Katherine Maher, for messages she posted to social media years before joining the public radio network last month. Stephen Voss/Stephen Voss hide caption

Conservative critics of NPR are now targeting its new chief executive, Katherine Maher, for messages she posted to social media years before joining the public radio network last month.

He said that he tried repeatedly to make his concerns over NPR's coverage known to news leaders and to Maher's predecessor as chief executive before publishing his essay.

Berliner has singled out coverage of several issues dominating the 2020s for criticism, including trans rights, the Israel-Hamas war and COVID. Berliner says he sees the same problems at other news organizations, but argues NPR, as a mission-driven institution, has a greater obligation to fairness.

"I love NPR and feel it's a national trust," Berliner says. "We have great journalists here. If they shed their opinions and did the great journalism they're capable of, this would be a much more interesting and fulfilling organization for our listeners."

A "final warning"

The circumstances surrounding the interview were singular.

Berliner provided me with a copy of the formal rebuke to review. NPR did not confirm or comment upon his suspension for this article.

In presenting Berliner's suspension Thursday afternoon, the organization told the editor he had failed to secure its approval for outside work for other news outlets, as is required of NPR journalists. It called the letter a "final warning," saying Berliner would be fired if he violated NPR's policy again. Berliner is a dues-paying member of NPR's newsroom union but says he is not appealing the punishment.

The Free Press is a site that has become a haven for journalists who believe that mainstream media outlets have become too liberal. In addition to his essay, Berliner appeared in an episode of its podcast Honestly with Bari Weiss.

A few hours after the essay appeared online, NPR chief business editor Pallavi Gogoi reminded Berliner of the requirement that he secure approval before appearing in outside press, according to a copy of the note provided by Berliner.

In its formal rebuke, NPR did not cite Berliner's appearance on Chris Cuomo's NewsNation program last Tuesday night, for which NPR gave him the green light. (NPR's chief communications officer told Berliner to focus on his own experience and not share proprietary information.) The NPR letter also did not cite his remarks to The New York Times , which ran its article mid-afternoon Thursday, shortly before the reprimand was sent. Berliner says he did not seek approval before talking with the Times .

NPR defends its journalism after senior editor says it has lost the public's trust

Berliner says he did not get permission from NPR to speak with me for this story but that he was not worried about the consequences: "Talking to an NPR journalist and being fired for that would be extraordinary, I think."

Berliner is a member of NPR's business desk, as am I, and he has helped to edit many of my stories. He had no involvement in the preparation of this article and did not see it before it was posted publicly.

In rebuking Berliner, NPR said he had also publicly released proprietary information about audience demographics, which it considers confidential. He said those figures "were essentially marketing material. If they had been really good, they probably would have distributed them and sent them out to the world."

Feelings of anger and betrayal inside the newsroom

His essay and subsequent public remarks stirred deep anger and dismay within NPR. Colleagues contend Berliner cherry-picked examples to fit his arguments and challenge the accuracy of his accounts. They also note he did not seek comment from the journalists involved in the work he cited.

Morning Edition host Michel Martin told me some colleagues at the network share Berliner's concerns that coverage is frequently presented through an ideological or idealistic prism that can alienate listeners.

"The way to address that is through training and mentorship," says Martin, herself a veteran of nearly two decades at the network who has also reported for The Wall Street Journal and ABC News. "It's not by blowing the place up, by trashing your colleagues, in full view of people who don't really care about it anyway."

Several NPR journalists told me they are no longer willing to work with Berliner as they no longer have confidence that he will keep private their internal musings about stories as they work through coverage.

"Newsrooms run on trust," NPR political correspondent Danielle Kurtzleben tweeted last week, without mentioning Berliner by name. "If you violate everyone's trust by going to another outlet and sh--ing on your colleagues (while doing a bad job journalistically, for that matter), I don't know how you do your job now."

Berliner rejected that critique, saying nothing in his essay or subsequent remarks betrayed private observations or arguments about coverage.

Other newsrooms are also grappling with questions over news judgment and confidentiality. On Monday, New York Times Executive Editor Joseph Kahn announced to his staff that the newspaper's inquiry into who leaked internal dissent over a planned episode of its podcast The Daily to another news outlet proved inconclusive. The episode was to focus on a December report on the use of sexual assault as part of the Hamas attack on Israel in October. Audio staffers aired doubts over how well the reporting stood up to scrutiny.

"We work together with trust and collegiality everyday on everything we produce, and I have every expectation that this incident will prove to be a singular exception to an important rule," Kahn wrote to Times staffers.

At NPR, some of Berliner's colleagues have weighed in online against his claim that the network has focused on diversifying its workforce without a concomitant commitment to diversity of viewpoint. Recently retired Chief Executive John Lansing has referred to this pursuit of diversity within NPR's workforce as its " North Star ," a moral imperative and chief business strategy.

In his essay, Berliner tagged the strategy as a failure, citing the drop in NPR's broadcast audiences and its struggle to attract more Black and Latino listeners in particular.

"During most of my tenure here, an open-minded, curious culture prevailed. We were nerdy, but not knee-jerk, activist, or scolding," Berliner writes. "In recent years, however, that has changed."

Berliner writes, "For NPR, which purports to consider all things, it's devastating both for its journalism and its business model."

NPR investigative reporter Chiara Eisner wrote in a comment for this story: "Minorities do not all think the same and do not report the same. Good reporters and editors should know that by now. It's embarrassing to me as a reporter at NPR that a senior editor here missed that point in 2024."

Some colleagues drafted a letter to Maher and NPR's chief news executive, Edith Chapin, seeking greater clarity on NPR's standards for its coverage and the behavior of its journalists — clearly pointed at Berliner.

A plan for "healthy discussion"

On Friday, CEO Maher stood up for the network's mission and the journalism, taking issue with Berliner's critique, though never mentioning him by name. Among her chief issues, she said Berliner's essay offered "a criticism of our people on the basis of who we are."

Berliner took great exception to that, saying she had denigrated him. He said that he supported diversifying NPR's workforce to look more like the U.S. population at large. She did not address that in a subsequent private exchange he shared with me for this story. (An NPR spokesperson declined further comment.)

Late Monday afternoon, Chapin announced to the newsroom that Executive Editor Eva Rodriguez would lead monthly meetings to review coverage.

"Among the questions we'll ask of ourselves each month: Did we capture the diversity of this country — racial, ethnic, religious, economic, political geographic, etc — in all of its complexity and in a way that helped listeners and readers recognize themselves and their communities?" Chapin wrote in the memo. "Did we offer coverage that helped them understand — even if just a bit better — those neighbors with whom they share little in common?"

Berliner said he welcomed the announcement but would withhold judgment until those meetings played out.

In a text for this story, Chapin said such sessions had been discussed since Lansing unified the news and programming divisions under her acting leadership last year.

"Now seemed [the] time to deliver if we were going to do it," Chapin said. "Healthy discussion is something we need more of."

Disclosure: This story was reported and written by NPR Media Correspondent David Folkenflik and edited by Deputy Business Editor Emily Kopp and Managing Editor Gerry Holmes. Under NPR's protocol for reporting on itself, no NPR corporate official or news executive reviewed this story before it was posted publicly.

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Liz Truss Is Coming for America

By Tanya Gold

Ms. Gold is a British journalist who has written for Harper’s Magazine, The Spectator and UnHerd.

Liz Truss was the prime minister of Britain for 49 days in 2022, an interregnum between Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak that was so short it was outlasted by a lettuce . In the annals of British decline, Ms. Truss will be remembered for being in office just 3 days when Queen Elizabeth II died, and her plan for an enormous and apparently unfunded tax cut, which she abruptly dropped after a run on the pound.

If this were the 19th century, Ms. Truss would have perhaps exiled herself to a country estate where peacocks roamed the grounds or fought her enemies with pistols. (In 1809 the foreign secretary, George Canning, was wounded in a duel with the war minister.) But this is not a time of penance or honor. Instead, Ms. Truss has reinvented herself as a populist and has a new book, “ Ten Years to Save the West : Leading the Revolution Against Globalism, Socialism, and the Liberal Establishment,” which is part memoir, part pitch to the American right: She has seen the deep state up close and knows what needs to be done.

This is not Ms. Truss’s first political transformation. She began her career as an anti-monarchy member of the centrist Liberal Democrats, before transmogrifying into an uneasy Margaret Thatcher tribute act. She voted to remain in the European Union and then remade herself as a champion of Brexit. She survived every government from 2012 until her own. As environment secretary she got memorably angry about cheese — “We import two-thirds of our cheese. That. Is. A. Disgrace” — but was never really considered a likely leader of the Conservative Party until her predecessor Mr. Johnson almost burned the party down .

When she did get her turn and tried to execute her vision of a low-tax, low-regulation, high-growth Britain, it did not go well. After she announced her economic program, the pound sank, interest rates shot up and the Bank of England had to intervene . Abandoning a central plank of the plan was not enough to mollify her critics, and she resigned soon after. (Even Mr. Canning, who survived his wounds and eventually became prime minister, lasted longer. He died of pneumonia after 119 days.)

People deal with public failure in different ways. For Ms. Truss, the method seems to be twofold. First, to insist that she was and is right but was foiled by the deep state. Second, to see if America might buy what she’s selling.

Last April she gave the Margaret Thatcher Freedom Lecture at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C., where she sketched out how she was foiled by the establishment. “I simply underestimated the scale and depth of this resistance and the scale and depth to which it reached into the media and into the broader establishment,” she said. The anti-growth movement, in which she seems to include President Biden, the I.M.F., the British Treasury and the Bank of England, among others, is “focused on redistributionism, on stagnation and on the imbuing of woke culture into our businesses.”

This year, in February, she told the Conservative Political Action Conference in Maryland that “the West has been run by the left for too long and we’ve seen that it’s been a complete disaster.” (The Conservatives have governed Britain for 14 years.) Real Conservatives, she said, “are now operating in what is a hostile environment. We essentially need a bigger bazooka in order to be able to deliver.” While at CPAC she also spoke to Steve Bannon, whom she invited to “come over to Britain and sort out Britain,” and told Nigel Farage that she “felt safer for the West” when Donald Trump was president.

And now here is “Ten Years to Save the West,” which in title seems squarely aimed at America but in content often feels oddly parochial. Ms. Truss writes of traveling to Balmoral to accept Elizabeth II’s invitation to form a government. Here, Elizabeth II is a soothsayer. “She warned me that being Prime Minister is incredibly aging. She also gave me two words of advice: ‘Pace yourself.’ Maybe I should have listened.”

She is not sure that the flat above Downing Street “would be rated well on Airbnb.” It felt “a bit soulless,” she writes. It was apparently infested with fleas. And she couldn’t sleep because of the noise, including the clock at nearby Horse Guards, which chimed every quarter-hour. Picturing her flea-bitten and exhausted made me think of a line from Thackeray’s “Vanity Fair” — “Which of us has his desire? or, having it, is satisfied ?”

By the time she got to her resignation, she writes, it “seemed like just another dramatic moment in a very strange film in which I had somehow been cast,” which, to me, felt like truth.

It’s unclear whether Ms. Truss will be able to read an American room any better than a British one. In the book, she describes America as Britain’s “proudest creation, albeit an unintentional one,” and she is critical of Mr. Biden, who called her tax cuts for the wealthy a “ mistake .” “This was utter hypocrisy and ignorance,” she writes. She notes, on the other hand, that she was an early fan of “The Apprentice” and enjoyed Mr. Trump’s “catchphrases and sassy business advice.”

But Americans who fear the deep state aren’t necessarily the ones who want a small one, and Ms. Truss is a poor public speaker. I’d expect conservative Americans to see her as a curio and move on to more familiar and charismatic icons. But one never knows.

Who is to blame for Liz Truss? Maybe it was the winds of history. Or a political system that rewards risk-takers and narcissism. Or it was 14 years of one party in power, at the end of which are the people who hung on long enough.

Or it was Boris Johnson, who made her foreign secretary in his own government. (Mr. Johnson is now a tabloid columnist writing about his late-night chorizo binges and how much he loves his lawn mower , so he has nothing to laugh about either.)

The Conservative Party is packing for the wilderness. Many lawmakers are not even standing in the forthcoming election, which must be held by January. And Ms. Truss herself may lose her seat, in Norfolk, to James Bagge, who is standing as an independent. Mr. Bagge is part of a local cohort concerned about issues like the National Health Service and the cost of living, and unimpressed by Ms. Truss’s globe-trotting. “Truss says she has ten years to save the West,” he recently told The London Times. “Well, we have six months to save Norfolk.”

I wonder whether Ms. Truss is coming for America because her enemies in Norfolk are coming for her. The Conservative endgame is here. The land of opportunity beckons.

Tanya Gold is a British journalist.

Photographs by Jose Luis Magana/Associated Press and RunPhoto, Issaraway Tattong, Cathering Fall Commerical, Flashpop, posteriori, and Carl Court/Getty Images

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Hedge fund Mountaineer Partners is urging discrete electronic components maker Vishay Intertechnology to buy back $600 million worth of stock this year, citing the company's "irrationally low valuation," according to a letter reviewed by Reuters.

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TSX opens lower as miners weigh

Canada's main stock index opened lower on Monday, dragged down by materials stocks, as global markets aim to recoup some losses triggered by Middle East tensions in the previous week.