Such talk has been particularly vigorous among key advisers to Donald Trump as he begins what he hopes will be his transition back to the White House. Of course, talk of mandated national service is one step away from that dreaded term — the draft.

But before any of my younger readers dash away to pack up for Canada, relax, at least for now. It would take an act of Congress to bring back the draft and we’re a long way from that happening. Yet, as crazy as our national politics sometimes is these days, it pays to be prepared for anything.

As The Washington Post reported this week, Christopher Miller, who led the Pentagon during the last tumultuous days of Donald Trump’s presidency, thinks a national service requirement should be “strongly considered.”  He detailed his vision for military and civilian readiness as part of Project 2025, the conservative Heritage Foundation’s latest book of federal policy recommendations that they have been publishing for presumptive Republican presidential nominees since Ronald Reagan.

Miller, a retired Green Beret, is among the most outspoken about mandating national service and taking other steps to improve military readiness. He sees a “crisis” facing our all-volunteer military. Although Trump has not formally endorsed this latest Heritage strategy document, he eagerly embraced the organization’s proposals in his first term.

At a time when just 1% of the nation’s population serves in the armed services, according to the Post, the big readiness challenge continues to be recruitment. The Pentagon fell short of its recruiting goal by about 41,000 last year, the Post reports. Only the Marines and the Space Force met their objectives.

In one startling explanation for the shortfall, the Army cited internal data indicating some 71% of Americans do not qualify for military service for reasons that include obesity, drug use and aptitude.

Yet, as one of the last draftees during the Vietnam War, I know that Washington and the Pentagon don’t want to go back to the days of draft cards except as a very last resort. Besides the problems of physical readiness, there are the morale issues tied to soldiers who don’t want to be there. Any commander, as I learned firsthand, would rather lead a platoon of willing recruits than resentful and begrudging draftees.

And the political impact back home can be a very real headache for local politicians, as I learned from some of Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley’s constituents in the Vietnam era. No politician wants to deal with the anguish of constituents’ sons and daughters coming home in body bags from a war hardly anyone understands.

Among Miller’s recommendations, he would like to see the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery, or ASVAB, taken in every high school. It’s a multiple-aptitude exam that helps predict future academic and occupational success in the military. More than a million military applicants take it every year.

I can also speak from personal experience about the personal value of the military experience. Besides the physical fitness — that has faded for me over time — I remain impressed and inspired by the level of personal sacrifice my fellow troops were willing to make without giving it a second thought.

The draft ended for Americans in 1973, two years before the war ended, after Congress cut off its funding. No one seems to have been in a hurry to bring it back ever since.

Still, there are some gung-ho MAGA Republicans who suggest a draft could toughen up a seemingly pampered generation of video game-playing softies. Maybe so, but let’s not press our luck. We’re better off with an all-volunteer military.

The irony of having a possible return of President Trump took on an ironic twist with the recent 80th anniversary of the D-Day landing. It brought back memories of how Trump’s role of commander in chief was compromised at times by his multiple deferrals from military service during the Vietnam era thanks to questionable medical claims. The controversy led Democratic Sen. Tammy Duckworth of Illinois — who lost both legs in combat — to rechristen Trump “Cadet Bone Spurs.”

Somehow I don’t think, despite the entreaties of those on the right who fret about the state of our military, that Trump would endorse something as politically unpopular as a return of the draft. But he’s not the most predictable of candidates.

The APSP was founded in 1972 by Yeshitela. It is an activist group in the Black radical tradition. The group is nonviolent and seeks to spark change through political speech, activism and its community work. The APSP is based in St. Petersburg, Florida; St. Louis; and Oakland, California, where it operates farmers markets, recreation programs and small businesses that benefit local communities. 

During its 50 years of existence, the APSP has earned a significant following. It publishes its own newspaper called The Burning Spear.

APSP’s political activism has not changed over its 50-year history. It opposes Western colonialism and the exploitation of resources that belong to the peoples of other nations. It sees NATO as a western military alliance designed to dominate the colonized peoples of the world. It opposed the U.S.-led NATO war on Libya in 2011, and it has consistently opposed NATOs expansion eastward toward Russia’s border, an expansion that began in the 1990s following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the reunification of Germany.  

The APSP has also long opposed U.S. interference in Ukraine. In 2014, the group publicly denounced U.S. involvement in the Maidan coup in which the CIA helped overthrow Ukraine’s Russia-friendly president, Viktor Yanukovych, and replace him with a “U.S./EU puppet regime.” 

The trouble began for the APSP in spring 2022 following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The APSP was one of the few prominent activist groups that publicly blamed the U.S. government for provoking the invasion, thus contradicting the official position of the U.S. that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was unprovoked. In public rallies, APSP leaders blamed the U.S. and NATO for creating the crisis in Ukraine by expanding NATO “800 miles toward the border of Russia” by helping overthrow Ukraine’s elected president and by arming Ukraine “to the teeth.”

Then on July 29, 2022, in what appears to be a direct effort to suppress dissenting speech, FBI SWAT teams raided the homes of APSP leaders, including its 82-year-old founder Yeshitela, and the group’s offices in St. Petersburg and St. Louis. Then in April 2023, the government formally charged Yeshitela, Hess and Nevel under an obscure federal statute that makes it a federal crime to act as an agent of a foreign government without registering with the attorney general. If convicted, the three defendants face up to 15 years in federal prison. 

To justify this charge, the indictment notes that the APSP received a small amount of financial support — about $7,000 —  in 2016 from a person whom the government alleges has ties to the Russian government. 

Many activist groups receive financial support from foreign nationals or even directly from foreign governments. This is perfectly legal, according to the U.S. Department of State website. For example, prominent Washington think tanks regularly receive tens of millions of dollars from foreign governments while pushing policies that reflect the priorities of their donors. None of the leaders of these groups are ever prosecuted as foreign agents. 

Many Americans will disagree with the APSP defendants’ view that the U.S. provoked Russia into invading Ukraine. But agree or disagree, we must support their right to speak out and to dissent. The right to criticize our government is the most fundamental value protected by the First Amendment. If we lose that right, our democracy cannot survive. 

Leonard C. Goodman is a Chicago criminal defense lawyer who is representing Penny Hess. 

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I also think about my daughter Braedyn. In particular, I think about a conversation we had when she was 7 years old. We were navigating life during the COVID-19 pandemic. I was trying to explain something to her and thought I was being clear when she suddenly said: “Daddy, you’re triggering me.”

At first, I was taken aback. I would have never thought to talk to my parents that way. But when I reflected on the interaction, I realized how important it was that she had the language to express how she was feeling in that moment. 

I believe my brother’s time on this earth would have been extended if he had the language to express what he needed, or the mental health care that he needed. Leon and Braedyn are why, for me, this work is personal.  

That is why a year ago, I made it a priority to assemble a working group of city officials, community organizers and mental health care advocates to put together a road map for how we can expand mental health care services in Chicago. I tasked them with putting forward a bold vision to transform Chicago’s mental health care infrastructure, while being mindful of the budgetary and operational constraints of our current system, which has been degraded after more than three decades of cuts, privatization and neglect. 

Like so many other problems that plague our city, these decades of neglect are felt the hardest in our most disenfranchised communities. More than 65% of Black and brown Chicagoans with serious psychological distress are currently not receiving any treatment in our city. We estimate the total number of Chicagoans experiencing serious psychological distress has jumped to upward of 239,000 in recent years. That is a crisis. 

June is Men’s Mental Health Awareness Month, and we recognize that this crisis hits men particularly hard. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that men make up almost 80% of all cases of death by suicide, and evidence suggests that men are more likely to engage in substance abuse and alcohol dependency. 

Every day, Chicagoans see our neighbors in need in our communities, on our public transportation and throughout our city without a clear, accessible pathway to get the care that they need.

The crisis is especially acute in our young people who are increasingly dealing with severe mental illness. A recent survey of 1,400 clinicians on the youth mental health crisis found that cost and insurance were the biggest obstacles to care. Providing free mental health care through city-run clinics would allow us to provide care for our young people in need. 

The need for this type of generational transformation in our mental health care infrastructure is long overdue. In 1987, under Mayor Harold Washington, Chicago had 19 city-run mental health centers and a Chicago alcohol treatment center. Today, we have five. We are a world-class city. Our people deserve a world-class mental health care system. 

It is with that vision in mind that I am proud to announce that my administration is taking the first step toward rebuilding our city’s public mental health care infrastructure by reopening the shuttered mental health care clinic in Roseland. By starting on the Far South Side, we are making clear to the people of Chicago that we are prioritizing those who have been left behind and discarded by previous administrations. 

Because of the urgency of this crisis, we are also taking immediate steps to expand access to mental health care to other parts of our city. We are adding mental health services at a city-run clinic in Pilsen, and adding services at the Legler Regional Library in West Garfield Park. The report issued by the Mental Health Service Expansion working group will act as our North Star as we work to expand services across our entire city. 

Our vision is clear: to provide care for those who need it. I will continue to keep the memory of my brother Leon in my heart this month and beyond as we work to rebuild our city’s mental health care infrastructure.

Brandon Johnson is the mayor of Chicago. 

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Large crowds of anti-abortion activists gather outside the health care clinic and use megaphones and microphones, harassing patients and employees and threatening their sense of safety.

FPA is one of the largest independent reproductive health clinics in the Midwest. FPA offers a range of services, including abortion. The patients coming to FPA are there to receive health care that can be at times lifesaving, often life-affirming or simply routine. 

Many who come to FPA for abortion care are local to Chicago, while others travel long distances from states in the South and Midwest where abortion care is banned or severely restricted. The staff members who work at FPA are there to perform their day-to-day work as health care professionals and provide compassionate care for everyone who walks through the door.

Patients and providers should be able to go about their days without extreme noise and harassment. 

Health care decisions are a private matter between a patient and their provider. The amplified noise right outside FPA is so loud that patients and providers cannot hear one another speak inside the building, and this excessive noise is putting everyone’s safety at risk.

The Chicago City Council will vote on Wednesday to extend the existing noise and vibration control ordinance to FPA. This ordinance designates certain noise-sensitive zones, such as schools, libraries, churches, hospitals and nursing homes. This ordinance recognizes that health care facilities need quiet to deliver essential care. Noise-sensitive zones are already established by this ordinance at Northwestern Memorial and Lurie Children’s hospitals.

This ordinance preserves the right to speech and assembly of demonstrators. What it limits is amplified noise that interferes with the practice of medicine.

Anti-abortion rights forces have already delayed the vote on this ordinance. We at Personal PAC and FPA, along with many of the volunteer clinic escorts with the Illinois Choice Action Team who deal firsthand with this noise and harassment, showed up to City Hall in May expecting a clear and decisive vote.

Ald. Bill Conway, 34th, the ordinance’s sponsor, and Mayor Brandon Johnson’s administration had put in months of work preparing the necessary findings. Extensive reports from the Chicago Department of Public Health and the Chicago Police Department were entered into record, establishing the public safety risk posed by excessive noise outside of FPA.

And yet one single alderman saw an opportunity to voice his anti-abortion rights views under the guise of free speech concerns, and another joined him in a parliamentary maneuver to delay the vote.

But we are not deterred. 

It has been nearly two years since Donald Trump’s handpicked justices on the United States Supreme Court ended the federal right to abortion with the overturning of Roe v. Wade. That decision emboldened anti-abortion rights extremists to unleash attacks on our health care across our country. There are many stories of people being forced to flee their home states for other states such as Illinois, a critical access point for abortion care, and cities such as Chicago, which defends and protects abortion.

We call on the City Council to swiftly pass the ordinance.  

Sarah Garza Resnick is CEO of Personal PAC, and Dr. Allison Cowett is the medical director at Family Planning Associates. 

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On Friday, Pranay Vaddi, a senior director of the National Security Council, outlined the Biden administration’s nuclear strategy during a speech at the Arms Control Association in Washington. The speech wasn’t surprising to anyone who has even a cursory understanding of U.S. nuclear weapons policy. Most of it was dedicated toward reiterating U.S. policy goals: getting more countries to decrease their nuclear arsenals, even as the U.S. ensures its own nuclear deterrent is updated. But the warning was as clear as day. “Absent a change in the trajectory of adversary arsenals,” Vaddi said, “we may reach a point in the coming years where an increase from current deployed numbers is required.”

Since the mid-1980s, successive U.S. administrations, Republican and Democratic, have largely based the country’s nuclear weapons policy on two pillars: capping and if possible reducing nuclear arsenals across the board and making sure America’s own is functional. U.S. officials have sought to discourage adversaries from attacking the U.S. and its treaty allies in Europe and Asia even as it gradually aspires toward a world in which nuclear weapons no longer exist. The proof is in the numbers: Since 1967, the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile has decreased by 88%, from 31,255 warheads to 3,750.

Yet in the eyes of U.S. officials in Washington, the state of affairs in the world is getting increasingly hairy. The kinds of arms control negotiations that were so prevalent since the latter years of the Cold War are all but dead. New START, the last major arms control accord signed between the U.S. and Russia, is essentially on life support after Russian President Vladimir Putin suspended it in 2023.

If anything, the war in Ukraine has only elevated the importance and value of nuclear weapons for Putin. With Russia’s conventional military battered and bruised, Russia’s strategic weapons systems are becoming much more important in Russian defense strategy. Moscow has not only moved tactical nuclear warheads to Belarus, next door to Ukraine, but also is pouring resources into diversifying its nuclear arms by adding more delivery systems. The Poseidon, a nuclear-armed intercontinental torpedo, is now one of Putin’s most cherished weapons systems. (Whether it actually works is another story.) According to the U.S. intelligence community, Russia is also testing components for a space-based nuclear anti-satellite weapon, which if used could wipe out hundreds of low-orbited satellites.

Russia is hardly the only country the U.S. is concerned about on this front. China is doubling down on its nuclear arsenal to strengthen its own deterrent power. The Pentagon’s most recent report analyzing Chinese military capabilities finds that “over the next decade, the PRC (China) will continue to rapidly modernize, diversify, and expand its nuclear forces.” China will have more than 1,000 operational nuclear warheads by 2030 — double its current arsenal.

And although Beijing continues to claim a “no first use” policy — i.e., China won’t be the first power to use a nuclear weapon under any circumstances — policies can change depending on the environment. Indeed, Chinese military documents leave open the prospect of junking this declaration in the event the Chinese People’s Liberation Army is at risk of losing a conventional war.

This is all quite concerning to U.S. officials, amplified by the fact that the United States has so many allies it has sworn to defend. Our extended deterrence commitments, in which Washington would theoretically escalate to the nuclear level to fight off an adversary who has attacked a U.S. ally, include most of Europe, Japan, South Korea and Australia. Extended deterrence, however, is a difficult promise to make credible: Would any U.S. president use nuclear weapons, for example, against Russia, China or even North Korea to defend an ally knowing that doing so would likely put American cities at risk of nuclear annihilation? Would the U.S. even fight a nuclear-armed country in these circumstances, knowing full well that a strictly conventional conflict could escalate to nuclear war? 

President Joe Biden’s administration has apparently calculated that a larger U.S. nuclear arsenal is the cure-all to these problems. The underlying logic is straightforward: By increasing warhead numbers, nuclear adversaries such as China and Russia will eventually come to the conclusion that they simply can’t outcompete the U.S. in this area and that throwing more money into a costly arms race is futile. If this sounds familiar, that’s because it is; part of the rationale behind the military buildup in the 1980s by Ronald Reagan’s administration was to bleed the Soviet Union financially.

There’s a cheaper and less risky way of accomplishing what the Biden administration wants to accomplish. But this would require U.S. officials to be self-reflective and recognize that adversary perceptions of U.S. motivations are driving much of Russia and China’s nuclear modernization. Russia, for instance, is compensating for its conventional struggles in Ukraine and views nuclear weapons as absolutely essential to combating what it sees (rightly or wrongly) as U.S. attempts to weaken it over the long term. China, in part, is embracing nuclear expansion to scare the U.S. away from defending Taiwan if Beijing decides to subjugate the island militarily. 

A larger U.S. nuclear weapons arsenal is likely to heighten those threat perceptions, not eliminate them.

Daniel DePetris is a fellow at Defense Priorities and a foreign affairs columnist for the Chicago Tribune.

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Unfortunately, when I walked in around 5 p.m., the market was relatively empty. In the bar, six of us predictably looked at our phones. In the large dining area, a few parties were considerately spaced apart, each group contained in their own bubble. 

And so was I — though I had wanted to be social. I felt ensconced in my own personal space. The market is a good place to write but a bad place to make friends. 

Nonetheless, I did two laps around the food vendors. The food sounded too heavy, big portions, lots of sauce and salt. Plus, an unappetizing smell of deep fryers and wood-burning grills kept my appetite at bay. 

I looked around the big room and up at what appeared to be kitchen hood exhaust vents, a pair above each food stall. It’s possible that the function of these cylinders is not to blow kitchen exhaust into the air above the dining room, but it doesn’t look or smell that way. 

I texted a friend, an architect, no less, to complain. Eventually, he sent me a link to a 2007 article by the Project for Public Spaces. The article “What is Placemaking?” states that “an effective placemaking process capitalizes on a local community’s assets, inspiration, and potential, and it results in the creation of quality public spaces that contribute to people’s health, happiness and well being.”

The Time Out Market is undeniably good enough — I’m sure it provides passable lunches to nearby workers on the days when they are too busy to bother enjoying lunch — but does it add to our “health, happiness, and well-being”?

My favorite people-watching spot in Los Angeles is the Farmers Market at The Grove. Granted, The Grove is outdoors, and in addition to the prepared food stalls, the market makes space for butchers, bakeries, produce stands, two candy shops and a French market. But far and away the best part of The Grove is that every demographic in Los Angeles passes through the place from time to time. It offers more than just simple, clean meals, but it offers those too.

I went back to the Time Out Market the following day to double-check my observations. It was more crowded at lunch, but the unpleasant smell was still there and so was the feeling of isolation. I didn’t notice anyone older than 60 or younger than 25, to say nothing of racial or economic diversity.

I sat in the center of the room. A passing diner carrying a tray of food skunk-eyed me. I wondered, why don’t I like this place? Then the obvious answer sauntered forth — it has no character, no identity. 

Back on the street, I thought about our city’s identity. It’s more difficult to define now than it was when the hogs were being butchered or the steel mills were producing or Michael Jordan was winning. 

But we’re kinder than New York and tougher than L.A. In the melting pot of America, we could be Goldilocks’ desired porridge. Not too hot, not too cold. Not too big, not too small. But somehow a sense of “less-than” and “good-enough” pervades our public spaces and undermines our urban identity.

One thing my life taught me is that identity comes most into being when we try to do something really well.

Charles Berg is a Master of Liberal Arts candidate in creative writing at Harvard Extension School. He has made films, staged plays and taught yoga.

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We’re now staring down the barrel of the next industry in dire need of stronger government guardrails: generative artificial intelligence, or GenAI. 

Over the past year and a half, federal agencies, among many others, have used GenAI models such as ChatGPT to generate text, images, audio and video, making GenAI a priority concern for the U.S. government. And while we may assume President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump are at opposite ends of the political spectrum on this issue, as they are on practically every issue, their approach to AI has actually been very similar. They have pampered AI developers with significant funding and deregulation, giving them global leverage, credit and visibility. 

While Biden and Trump have expressed concerns about citizens’ privacy, safety and security, the way they have regulated AI shows they’re actually on the developers’ side. That said, Biden and Trump diverge in their climate policies. Given the current stage of GenAI development and adoption and a dire need of data centers for more energy, it is the climate policy of the next president that will affect GenAI developers the most. It is worth exploring how GenAI has expanded under Biden and how it might be affected if Trump wins reelection this year.

GenAI developers have grown significantly during the Biden years, partly thanks to his administration’s various favorable policies. Last July, the Biden administration announced securing voluntary commitments from seven AI companies — Amazon, Anthropic, Google, Inflection, Meta, Microsoft and OpenAI — under the guise of underscoring “safety, security and trust.” But in reality, these so-called commitments were more like gifts because their scope is limited to GenAI tools that are overall more powerful than existing ones. For example, the commitments require public reporting of capabilities, limitations, areas of appropriate/inappropriate use, societal risks, effects on fairness and bias, but only for more powerful AI models, thus offering a carte blanche for existing models.

In September, the Biden administration announced new voluntary commitments with identical stipulations and scope for eight other AI companies — Adobe, Cohere, IBM, Nvidia, Palantir, Salesforce, Scale AI and Stability. One month later, Biden signed an executive order on AI, which offered GenAI developers even more favors, such as ordering federal agencies to support AI development and promote its use.

Perhaps the most compelling aspect of the executive order for GenAI developers is in Section 10.1(f)(i), which discourages federal agencies from “imposing broad general bans or blocks on agency use of generative AI.” This means that even in cases when an oversight agency has reasons to believe that using GenAI is harmful, it cannot ban the use. Given these supports, it is no surprise that GenAI developers have grown significantly during the Biden years, but if Trump is reelected, developers may have to adapt to a new regulatory and investment environment.

Trump is no stranger to AI. Like Biden, Trump emphasized that federal agencies should consider limiting regulatory overreach, thereby reducing barriers to innovation and growth regardless of the risks. In February 2019, Trump signed an executive order to maintain American leadership in AI and launched the American AI Initiative. Among other things, this executive order directed federal agencies to prioritize research and development in AI, enhance access to high-quality federal data and computing resources for AI researchers, set AI governance standards and build the AI workforce. In February 2020, Trump committed to doubling nondefense research and development investment in AI over two years. In December 2020, he signed an executive order on promoting the use of AI in the federal government. 

These examples show that Trump’s strategy toward AI was very similar to Biden’s, and one could even argue that Biden’s policies mirrored and continued those started by Trump, except Biden seems more lenient and has offered more specific favors. But other differences between Biden and Trump could affect AI developers, with the most notable being their disagreement regarding climate change. 

Just as Biden brought the U.S. back into the Paris climate accord on his first day in office, Trump could withdraw from the agreement after being reelected. Such an enormous shift in international commitments could alter the business environment for GenAI developers. Recall that in 2017, when Trump announced his plans to withdraw from the Paris agreement, 25 companies, including Apple, Google, Meta and Microsoft, published an open letter in newspapers urging the administration not to exit the agreement. 

The letter highlighted the negative impact of a withdrawal on competitiveness, jobs and economic growth, and risks over time including damage to facilities and operation, as well as competitive imbalance for American companies. However, at the current pace of development and deployment of GenAI — and the expected trajectory of a growing need for energy and, concurrently, a growing environmental footprint — remaining in the agreement could slow down the growth and uptake of GenAI.

GenAI developers may secretly hope for Trump to win to benefit from more lenient climate policies. Also, military use of GenAI may be affected by whether Biden or Trump wins. With the unrestricted use of AI during the Israel-Hamas conflict and successful applications by the Department of Defense, demand for these capabilities will grow.

If international conventions are drafted to regulate military use, the president’s endorsement, or lack thereof, will significantly affect developers’ global business.

Mohammad Hosseini is an assistant professor at Northwestern University. His research focuses on topics related to technology ethics, including artificial intelligence.

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Last month, Johnson succeeded in getting Illinois Senate President Don Harmon to stop a bill that would have stripped the Chicago Board of Education of its ability to close schools, including charters and selective enrollment public schools. Although Johnson reversed his and his allies’ prior statements in pledging not to touch selective enrollment schools until a fully elected school board assumes power in 2027, charters are still at risk. 

These alternatives to neighborhood schools have long been a lifeline for high-achieving students, especially those whose home addresses would otherwise trap them in failing schools. The mayor’s pledge to keep selective enrollment schools is welcome. However, the continued risk to charter schools and the fact that the issue reached the state legislature in the first place highlight a bigger-picture problem for Chicago: Leaders regularly side with progressive dogma over the well-being of their young residents. 

Charters and selective enrollment high schools have consistently outperformed the average among Chicago Public Schools. In the 2022-23 academic year, the district had a graduation rate of 85%. Of the city’s 42 charter schools, 28 beat the districtwide graduation rate, as did 10 out of 11 selective enrollment schools, according to the University of Chicago’s To&Through Project. Additionally, every selective enrollment school had a higher college enrollment rate than the citywide average.

Unsurprisingly, students who get into schools with higher admissions standards also have better academic outcomes. However, these schools’ resources and more challenging academics can prepare talented students from disadvantaged neighborhoods for longer-term success in ways that some neighborhood schools cannot. Cutting back on charters and selective enrollment schools would reduce options for parents concerned about the quality of their kids’ education.

Instead of mimicking doctrinaire progressive talking points or yielding to the demands of the Chicago Teachers Union, Chicago policymakers should learn from cities that have successfully tackled similar education challenges, even in progressive political environments.

Austin, Texas, has implemented specialized programs for high-achieving students and magnet schools for specific interests such as science, technology, engineering and math, or STEM, and the arts. These serve a similar role to selective enrollment and charters in Chicago, matching students to more challenging coursework and a wider range of resources than are available in neighborhood schools. Some of these even allow students to earn college credits while still in high school, increasing college readiness and reducing future costs. 

The Austin district’s emphasis on innovative models yielded a 96.3% graduation rate in 2021, putting Chicago’s graduation rate to shame. Further, inequality along racial lines was strikingly low in Austin: The lowest graduation rate for any group was 95.2% for Hispanic students. On the other hand, in Chicago, where traditional schools dominate, Black students lag the district graduation rate by nearly 5%. For all the talk from Chicago politicians about closing achievement gaps, Austin’s innovative schools are actually doing it, and Chicago should heed its example.

Since the early 2000s, Denver — also known for its progressive politics — has been an innovator in using charter schools to provide more options to families. Charters, then and now, have performed better than state and local averages. In 2023, a study by the University of Arkansas found stronger educational outcomes in both reading and math in Denver’s charter schools for a lower cost per pupil than traditional public schools. Looking at students’ lifetime earnings, the study estimated that charter school graduates had a 58% higher return on the cost of their education than traditional public school students. 

These more recent successes come in spite of the Denver school board’s vote to impose various district and teachers union rules on charters. Nevertheless, the schools’ academic independence has worked out in students’ favor, even with the district’s interference in bureaucratic matters. Chicago’s own education bureaucracy and teachers union are themselves forces to be reckoned with, but Denver is proof that educational innovation can overcome those obstacles.

Johnson’s reluctant pledge may take nontraditional schools out of the crosshairs briefly. However, this won’t last in the long term unless Chicago learns to put the party line aside and explore the effective education methods that have served other cities well — even progressive ones.

Mike Viola is a state beat fellow at Young Voices.

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The trial by political fire was on full display last week as the entire Democratic Party establishment seemed to rise up and pile on Rep. Byron Donalds of Florida, whom multiple news outlets have put on Trump’s short list of possible running mates.

His offense? He expressed what sounded to many ears, including mine, like nostalgia for the bad old days of Jim Crow segregation.

“During Jim Crow the Black family was together,” Donalds said during a Black GOP outreach event in Philadelphia on Tuesday, according to Politico. “More Black people were — not just conservative, because Black people always have always been conservative-minded — but more Black people voted conservatively.”

He also took a few shots at decades-old poverty-fighting policies from the days of Presidents Dwight Eisenhower and Lyndon Johnson, saying they promoted a culture of dependence, a defining critique for many of today’s conservatives.

Not surprisingly, media reports of his remarks were followed by blowback from allies of President Joe Biden, including the Congressional Black Caucus and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York.

“It has come to my attention that a so-called leader has made the factually inaccurate statement that Black folks were better off during Jim Crow,” he said in a posting on X, formerly Twitter, of his stinging remarks from the House floor Wednesday,

After listing some of the tragic aspects of that era — from lynching to the suppression of the Black vote — he concluded, “How dare you make such an ignorant observation?”

Devastating. But was he right? Different ears will hear his remarks through their varied experiences.

I’m old enough to remember the last days of Jim Crow as a Black child visiting relatives in the South and, take it from me, we’re better off now. I see nothing in the Jim Crow period to which I wish to return.

Yet, I know Donalds is right to extol the conservative values of family, faith and hard work that enabled Black American families to survive and succeed in that period — and the danger of excessive dependency on government programs.

Such dependency is easier to avoid when you also have the jobs and income that come with economic prosperity. (Affordable college tuition quickly comes to mind when I compare my generation with that of my son.)

Studies show there has been a slight closing of the racial income gap but there also has been a persistent class gap that crosses racial lines. I have long called for more attention to be paid to that gap through policies that recognize the economic struggles we all experience, regardless of race.

Unfortunately, some political leaders see short-term gains in using the gap to stir resentments between the classes instead of working together for mutual benefit.

For the young voters now rising, the memories of us old-timers have limited impact. They have concerns of their own that the veteran politicians must address.

That may help to explain why Joe Biden has been losing support among younger African Americans. Polls run by The New York Times and Siena College consistently have found support for Trump among more than 20% of Black voters in six critical battleground states.

That’s striking because Trump won only 8% of the Black vote nationally in 2020 and 6% in 2016, according to the Pew Research Center. A Republican presidential candidate has not won more than 12% of the Black vote in nearly half a century.

Those polls were before Trump’s conviction on 34 felony counts, and Democrats predict their voters will return to the fold by November.

In the meantime, I am encouraged to see both parties actively competing for the Black vote, which I think is still largely waiting to be energized in the post-Obama era. Choices are what democracy is all about or, at least, should be.

We can do without the nostalgia unless it helps us to deal with the challenges of today’s world.

Of course, history doesn’t repeat itself. Unlike the situation in 1968, with 500,000 combat troops on the ground in Vietnam, the United States is not conducting the war in Gaza. This may be one reason that today’s protests are smaller than those in 1968, and why Biden, unlike LBJ, has not felt the necessity of withdrawing from the presidential contest. But history does rhyme. Like Johnson, the current president faces anti-war demonstrations virtually everywhere he goes, and Biden is headed to a Chicago DNC that inevitably will conjure the ghosts of Chicago ’68. 

Most of the participants in that historic time have passed from the scene. As it happens, however, one salient witness recently marked his 90th birthday: Bill Moyers. In 1968, Moyers was publisher of the Long Island, New York, newspaper Newsday, having resigned the previous year as the Johnson administration’s White House press secretary, disillusioned by the war, among other things.

In June 1968, prior to the Chicago convention in August, Moyers was asked about the presidential contest in a television interview and intimated that the putative Democratic nominee, Vice President Hubert Humphrey, would soon begin to distance himself from the Johnson administration’s Vietnam policy. That turned out to be wishful thinking on Moyers’ part. We now know of Humphrey’s long-standing skepticism about U.S. military involvement in Vietnam, but he raised these questions only inside the White House privately, and despite Johnson’s unpopularity, Humphrey felt constrained from breaking with an administration in which he was still serving as the vice president. This constraint would contribute significantly to his narrow defeat to Richard Nixon. 

Moyers, for his part, would go on to a broadcast journalism career at CBS and, especially, at PBS, garnering more than 30 Emmys, along with the News and Documentary Emmy Lifetime Achievement Award. His landmark interviews ranged from conversations with presidents (of both parties) and other policymakers to poets and novelists to the Dalai Lama and other spiritual leaders to activists, grassroots organizers and ordinary Americans from many walks of life.  

In an interview with Moyers in 1976, Humphrey looked back on the 1968 convention. “I was heartbroken. It was the moment in my life … and all at once it was in total disarray,” he recalled. “At least I was able to speak to the convention. That to me was a great testament: to be able to put that convention back together. And I used the Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi.” Indeed, in his acceptance speech, in offering “words which I think may help heal the wounds, ease the pain and lift our hearts,” he quoted the following from that prayer: “Where there is hatred, let me sow love. Where there is injury, pardon. Where there is doubt, faith. Where there is despair, hope. Where there is darkness, light.” The candidate then added, “I accept your nomination in this spirit.”

In that interview with Moyers, the former candidate added an important point about 1968: “You know, I felt that we could put it all together — and we almost did (win)! We almost did!” 

Will Biden, if nominated for a second term, pull it off? 

The stakes could not be higher. After all, the presumptive Republican nominee, Donald Trump, famously supported the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by supporters of his who were attempting to overturn the 2020 election. Ahead of that election, Moyers had anticipated such a scenario, warning that Trump had publicly “declared himself above the law, preached insurrection by encouraging armed supporters to ‘liberate’ states from the governance of duly elected officials.”

As it happens, that prescient Moyers essay was posted on his birthday: June 5, 2020. This birthday gift to us concludes with an urgent call: “Democracy in America has been a series of narrow escapes,” he notes. “We may be running out of luck, and no one is coming to save us. For that, we have only ourselves.”

Julie Leininger Pycior, an emeritus professor of history at Manhattan College, is the author of the prize-winning “LBJ and Mexican Americans: The Paradox of Power,” among other books, and edited the bestselling book “Moyers on America: A Journalist and His Times,” by Bill Moyers.

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