MEASURES OF WHAT WE’VE LOST

MAY 22, 2026 – Yesterday, I attended a quarterly board meeting of a non-profit organization, with which I’ve been involved for some years, the World Press Institute. Its 65-year (thus far) mission is to promote free and open journalism around the world. The founding concept was an annual fellowship program anchored here in the U.S. whereby 10 or a dozen journalists from outside this country could gather and travel to learn “best practices” according to the gold standard, that being the American standard, of free, open and probative journalism. Many alumni are now wondering, “Whatever happened to America?”

At yesterday’s meeting, we learned more about what’s changed in this country; change that ironically, doesn’t receive meaningful journalistic coverage.

First, we learned of the hurdles now faced by fellows in obtaining non-immigrant visas to the United States. This situation is exacerbated by the fact that 80 American ambassadorships around the world remain unfilled—14 months into Trump’s four-year term. These are among the many signs of American disengagement with the rest of the world. In a world that is otherwise shrinking, our retreat from diplomacy will deprive us of the critical stabilizing effects of person-to-person interaction.

On the heels of this news about open ambassadorships and challenges in obtaining even temporary non-immigrant visas, comes the news that green card (permanent residency) applicants must exit the U.S. pending processing of their applications. The disruptive effect of this rule on businesses and universities will cause significant, if not yet calculable, damage to enterprises and institutions that draw heavily on skills, know-how and other material contributions from foreign nationals living here.

But here’s the bottom line: our mounting xenophobia and bureaucratic barriers to entry will not only halt the labor supply for much of our agricultural, home/nursing home care and construction industries, but these retrograde policies will kill the desire of educated and aspiring scientists, engineers, innovators, and critical healthcare providers to live, study, and work here. Such people will not simply disappear. They will go elsewhere—where they will thrive, along with the societies they join. And America? Its light will dim in direct proportion to its vanishing allure.

Second, as is the case with every non-profit organization in America, we talked about our finances—and the perennial need for fund-raising. Many of us sit on other non-profit boards. With the sudden—you could say, impulsive—and almost universal cutback in federal government grants, thousands of American non-profit organizations are now scrambling to address unanticipated budgetary shortfalls. As was reported at our meeting, private foundations are now flooded with grant applications. With foundation resources stretched to the limit, few grant applicants will receive what they seek. Fortunately, WPI can weather the storm—to a point—but many non-profits have been placed in immediate financial crisis. Many won’t survive, and the people and needs those organizations serve, will be put at considerable risk.

Conservatives celebrated DOGE’s slash-and-burn approach to government spending. I can still hear the echo of their refrain: “This country got so used to government hand-outs at all levels, nothing was going to change incrementally. It was time for drastic action to shake people up; shake the whole system up—to make sure it would no longer be, ‘business as usual.’”

If the logic had an appeal, the premise was flawed. The destroyers assumed—to the extent they cared about the intrinsic value of what they were wrecking—that people’s charitable giving would sustain the worthy causes, offsetting government grants dollar-for-dollar. The taxpayer would get to decide what causes to fund and to what extent. The market, not government, would be the grand arbiter of success and failure in the non-profit world.

Except, when the “plug is pulled” and the room goes dark on a black, moonless night, a lot of bad stuff can happen before a match is struck and a candle wick is lit—from stubbing your toe on a table leg to falling clear down the stairwell you mistook for a closet.

Yet again, the high price of gas and groceries isn’t the only basis for vehement disapproval of the current regime.

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© 2026 by Eric Nilsson