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Surprise! This month, we’re releasing a second special print issue, the second of which we are rolling out on our website over the next two weeks.

Why are we releasing two issues? We believe the United States has a bad case of presidentialism; how media and much of the public treat the president as the government itself, and how billions of dollars are spent on the presidential election every four years with a steep drop-off in resources and attention every other year. We’re not denying that who wins in November isn’t important; that’s why we devoted our first issue to articulating the stakes of this election. But the president isn’t the only person on the ballot, and what happens on the state level has just as direct an impact on the lives of voters across the country.

At the Prospect, we tell the stories just off the radar of mainstream media, to get to the heart of how power really works in America. And while Project 2025’s vision for the federal government gets all the attention, it’s clear that the conservative movement’s locus of power is the states, and far-right policymakers in red states champion extremist policies that result in sharply different health and quality of life outcomes depending on where you live. And conservative activists aren’t content with leaving policy questions up to voters in each state; they want to impose their vision on the entire country. To kick off the issue, I wrote about how the divide between blue and red states on policy is larger than ever, and how blue states can fight back against GOP overreach and build power.

You can read my piece on the country’s ongoing cold civil war here.

Kalena Thomhave looks at Connecticut and Oklahoma in particular, and how public policy choices result in radically different outlooks for the people who live there. 60 years ago, residents in both states had a similar life expectancy. Today, Connecticut is among the ten states with the highest average lifespans, while Oklahoma ranks among the ten states with the lowest lifespans.

Connecticut is not immune from poverty or inequality—39 percent of residents struggle to meet basic needs—but in terms of health care access, Connecticut has one of the lowest rates of uninsured residents in the country. Thomhave dives into how policy choices made over the past several decades have resulted in stark disparities in income, life expectancy, child well-being and health outcomes, and the particular challenges of rural and Native communities and transitioning an economy built on resource extraction to one built on the tech and manufacturing sectors.

You can read Kalena Thomhave’s story here.