You Follow the News. Then What?
Most of us have the same relationship with public life right now: we read closely, we feel worse, and we have no clear idea what to do next. The gap between caring about something and being able to act on it has gotten very wide.
Closing that gap is the whole point of Project 2026.
What it is
Project 2026 is a multi-year effort to figure out what citizenship actually asks of us in this era — and then to make that work doable by ordinary people with ordinary amounts of time.
It runs out of Moonshot Press, a small newsroom I started to do exactly this kind of reporting. Moonshot Press is the publication; Project 2026 is the work it's organized around. The name points to America's 250th year, which seemed like a reasonable moment to ask what the next 250 look like.
I should be honest about scale: this began as one person's attempt to build something useful, and it is meant to become a great deal more than that. That's not a modest way of saying we're bigger than we look. It's the actual invitation.
Four questions we're working on
What do we owe the next generation? Most of the human brain's architecture is built before age two. That makes the first 1,000 days of a child's life everyone's business, not just a family's.
Why are we so angry at each other — and what actually helps? Some Americans have started asking whether civil war is possible. We take the fear seriously without accepting the premise, and we're more interested in what works at a dinner table than in what trends online.
What do we owe the Constitution, and what does it still owe us? Why the republic was built the way it was, how it was designed to handle conflict, and why that design is under strain now.
Why doesn't the richest country on earth guarantee its citizens the care they need? And more usefully: what would it take to change that?
What you'd actually get
Reporting on these questions, published most weekdays. Beyond that, the part that makes this different from a newsletter: documents built to be used — briefs that turn a hard problem into a roadmap, discussion guides you can bring to a family or a congregation or a classroom, checklists for people who want to engage and don't know where to start. A Thanksgiving guide for talking across a political divide is coming in October.
Some of it will be good. Some of it won't be, and we'll say so and fix it. This is an experiment in public.
It's already happening somewhere real
Everything above is being tested first in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, with actual neighbors in actual rooms. A group of residents is working through what the county owes children in their first 1,000 days, and turning that into recommendations someone can act on. If you're local, that's a room you can walk into.
Two things you should know before you decide
We use AI, and we tell you when. One standing rule: AI recommends, humans decide. When AI meaningfully shapes something we publish, that's disclosed.
We're nonpartisan, but not neutral about everything. No party, no candidate, no tribe. But we do take sides in favor of constitutional democracy, equal human dignity, freedom of the press, government under law, and the flourishing of people who aren't born yet. Nonpartisanship means applying the same standard to everyone — not pretending every claim is equally supported.
One thing to do
If any of the four questions is one you can't stop thinking about, tell us which one.
It takes a minute. You can tell us you just want to read, or that you want to help with research, writing, organizing, or facilitation — or that you've lived some part of this and have something to say about it.
That's the whole ask. Pick one question, take one step.
Shimon Waldfogel, MD
Founder, Moonshot Press · Project 2026