Initiatives
Six inquiries, one method.
Moonshot Press works on a small number of public questions at a time, and works on each one the same way. We investigate until the problem is clear. We deliberate about it with evidence, lived experience, and the strongest version of each serious position. We turn what the deliberation produces into something a citizen can use. Then we come back afterward and ask what actually happened.
What changes from one initiative to the next is the domain. The method does not.
How an initiative works
Understand We investigate, report, explain, and build public-learning resources that make the issue, the system behind it, and the choices available clearer than they were.
Deliberate We bring together evidence, lived experience, professional knowledge, competing interpretations, and the values actually at stake — and we publish the disagreement rather than resolving it artificially.
Act We develop practical tools, policy alternatives, local demonstrations, and participation guides that let citizens contribute to decisions that are genuinely open.
Review We return after decisions are made to examine what happened, who benefited, who carried the burden, and what should come next — including an honest account of where we fell short.
Project 2026
The republic's 250th anniversary is the occasion for all of this work, and the frame that connects it.
We are treating the anniversary as a reason for civic diagnosis rather than celebration. Every initiative below asks a version of the same question: where is the distance between what this country promised and what it currently delivers, and what would closing that distance require?
Project 2026 is not a separate initiative. It is the name for the whole undertaking during this particular year.
The initiatives
01 — Technology and the American Future
What happens to a country when the technology reshaping its working life is designed without consulting the people who will live inside the change?
Work is not only a source of income. It is a health-creating institution — a source of identity, daily structure, social connection, and the sense that one's effort matters. AI displacement is therefore not only an economic event. It is a coherence crisis: it makes the future harder to understand, harder to manage, and harder to find worth investing in.
This initiative applies that standard to the disruption of work by artificial intelligence, across an eight-chapter civic curriculum and a citizen-led deliberative body examining how AI should serve democratic life.
Current work: The Technology Commission, the eight-chapter curriculum, Citizen Briefs on AI and work, and case presentations on specific deployments.
Status: Active — this is where the majority of our effort goes.
02 — The First 1,000 Days of Life
What does a child need in the first two years, what does the evidence actually support, and who is currently responsible for providing it?
The window from conception through age two shapes lifelong health, learning, and resilience more than any comparable period. It is also where public responsibility is most fragmented and least visible in ordinary political debate. A housing decision is an early-childhood decision. So is a transportation decision, a wage decision, and a childcare regulation.
The initiative examines what that window requires, what public infrastructure currently exists to meet it, and where the gaps sit.
Current work: The Head Start Citizen Deliberation — a public examination of proposed federal changes to the Head Start Performance Standards, helping citizens weigh the evidence, hear from practitioners and families, develop alternatives, and file substantive comments in the federal record. Also the Moonshot Class of 2026, Citizen Briefs, stakeholder maps, and the Montgomery County learning site.
Status: Active.
03 — Declaration to Constitution
What do we owe the Constitution, and what does it still owe us?
The Declaration named America's promise. The Constitution built the architecture of public power meant to deliver it. Whether those two remain aligned is not a settled historical question. It is something each generation of citizens has to determine.
This inquiry draws on history, political philosophy, psychology, systems thinking, and journalism to examine how constitutional democracy manages conflict, restrains power, protects pluralism, and depends on capable citizens.
Current work: An eight-essay series tracing Madison's diagnosis of faction through to the practical work of citizenship today, and The Case of the United States Political System — a clinical case presentation examining polarization, distrust, concentrated power, institutional strain, civic exhaustion, and the sources of democratic resilience, without treating disagreement itself as a disease.
Status: Active.
04 — From Contempt to Connection
What does rising polarization actually put at risk, and what can a person do about it?
Disagreement is unavoidable in a free society and mostly healthy. Contempt is a different thing. It converts disagreement into dehumanization and makes continued relationship appear impossible — which forecloses the deliberation democracy runs on.
This inquiry examines the psychological, relational, and civic practices that let people stay engaged across difference, combining inner resilience with the outward work of citizenship.
Current work: Building Arks, Weaving Bridges; the Civic Ritual for Thanksgiving; facilitated conversation guides; and practical tools for engaging disagreement without abandoning the relationship.
Status: Active.
05 — Healthcare Transformation
Why doesn't the richest nation on earth guarantee its citizens the healthcare they need?
Most healthcare debate begins with payment: who pays, how much, through what mechanism. We begin somewhere earlier. What is healthcare actually for?
A system organized around diagnosing and treating disease is a different institution from one organized around creating and maintaining health. This civic Grand Rounds asks what the second would require, and what it would cost to get there from here.
Current work: The Case of the United States Healthcare System, work on salutogenic healthcare, Citizen Briefs, stakeholder and system maps, and public deliberation about healthcare's purposes and responsibilities.
Status: In development.
06 — The New Middle East
What conditions would make a secure, dignified, and shared future possible?
The future of Israel, Palestine, and the wider region cannot be secured by military power alone, and no peace endures without credible security, accountable institutions, political legitimacy, and the recognition of human dignity.
This long-range inquiry examines what a durable future would actually require: security, mutual recognition, economic opportunity, trustworthy institutions, regional cooperation, belonging, and real prospects for the next generation.
Current work: Pathways to Dignity, the Dignity Doctrine, the Day After inquiry, the Middle East 2048 Moonshot, and civic case presentations on regional cooperation.
Status: In development.
Take part
You do not need to be a policy expert to contribute.
Read a Citizen Brief. Bring a question. Share what you know from your family, your profession, or your community. Suggest evidence we have missed. Join a public conversation. Help test a civic tool. Tell us which perspective is absent from something we published. Invite someone else into the work.
Public questions become democratic work when citizens take responsibility for pursuing them together.