• The New Ukraine Project is directed on the ground from Kyiv by Tamar Jacoby, a former New York Times editorial writer. Jacoby has produced a prolific series of deeply researched reports and vivid dispatches on why Ukraine fights, the staggering losses inflicted by Putin’s war machine, and the country’s internal battles to overcome the Soviet legacy of corruption. She has engaged in Brussels with officials overseeing Ukraine’s crucial accession to the European Union. Jacoby and PPI recently teamed up with the Hudson Institute to rally bipartisan support for U.S. aid to Ukraine’s fight for freedom and independence.

• The Project on Center-Left Renewal is headed by Claire Ainsley, formerly a top policy advisor to British Labour Party leader Keir Starmer. In April, Ainsley led a PPI delegation to Australia to glean useful lessons from the electoral and governing successes of that country’s Labor party. The project teamed up with Progressive Britain for a London conference in May featuring Starmer and other key Labour leaders. Ainsley and PPI also were highly visible at Labour’s Liverpool conference in October, releasing a polling and strategy document, Roadmap to Hope, on how Labour could begin to win back working-class voters who defected to the Conservatives in the 2019 election

• A new project on competition policy will be helmed by Diana Moss, a prominent economist who came to PPI after a long stint as president of the American Antitrust Institute. Looking beyond the ideological “techlash” fad, Moss has launched a systematic inquiry into economic concentration and monopoly across the U.S. economy. She has commented on the Federal Trade Commission's draft merger guidelines, and generated incisive analyses of the proposed JetBlue-Spirit merger airline, competitive in pharmaceutical markets and the Ticketmaster monopoly. 

In addition to these new projects, PPI expanded its work around creating robust alternatives to college for young Americans looking to acquire on-the-job training and skills; protecting the digital innovation ecosystem to ensure that the United States stays in the front in the race to develop frontier technologies; developing a fiscally responsible plan for public investment and closing America’s yawning revenue gap; promoting trade policies that eliminate the Trump tariffs, open markets to our exporters and resume U.S. economic leadership; advocating for a pragmatic clean energy transition that can win majority support; preventing a catastrophic decline in health care coverage; and combatting exclusionary zoning to bring down housing costs. 

Finally, expansion was also the key theme of PPI’s core political work. Throughout 2023, we pointed out that the Democratic coalition is actually shrinking rather than expanding. The party is hemorrhaging working-class Hispanic and Black voters as well as losing even more ground with their white counterparts. That is largely the result of the dominant role college-educated white progressives play in dictating the party’s economic policy and its leftist stance on cultural issues. 

To help Democrats understand what working-class voters actually want from their leaders, PPI commissioned a major survey, Winning Back Working America. Heading into the 2024 presidential elections, Democrats need to do a better job of listening to these voters and including them in a broader party coalition that spans America’s “diploma divide.”

Thank you to all our friends who supported PPI throughout 2023. Your support has helped generate pragmatic, commonsense solutions to America’s biggest challenges. As we gear up for a critical year for the Democratic Party — and the country — in 2024, your support could not be more important. If you’re interested in continuing to contribute to PPI’s mission, please donate or visit our website.

From our PPI family to yours, we wish you and your loved ones a joyous holiday season!

— Will Marshall and the team at PPI