Welcome to Project 2026
Our launchpad for a thriving democracy
This month: The First 1,000 Days of Life—and the “Trump Babies” born into our choices
Dear friends,
Thank you for being here at the beginning. This month we’re launching a new pillar of our work: The First 1,000 Days of Life Initiative—because the American story doesn’t begin at voting age. It begins long before a child can speak.
A note of transparency: until now, Moonshot Press and Project 2026 have been largely a solo effort, aided by AI. That’s not a boast—it’s an invitation. This project needs to become something bigger than one person’s vision. Your feedback, your participation, and your honest pushback will make it more effective.
If you can join us in any way—reading, sharing, contributing, researching, building partnerships, or helping us test early tools—we’d be grateful. This is a civic project built for participation.
In This Issue: First 1,000 Days Initiative • Meet the Trump Babies • Whole Person Salutogenic Assistant • People’s Commission • Election 2026: AI & the Social Contract • Shrink Notes: America Is a Tinderbox
Why Project 2026. Why Now. Why the First 1,000 Days.
As we approach the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence—a radically hopeful claim about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness—the democratic experiment it launched feels newly fragile.
Polarization is escalating. Trust is collapsing. Many Americans—serious people, not provocateurs—speak openly about the risk of civil conflict. Meanwhile, digital systems and AI are accelerating change while widening inequality and deepening the sense of marginalization in everyday life.
So the question driving Project 2026 is practical and personal: What can citizens do—now—to rebuild the conditions for a functioning democracy?
One part of our answer: if we want a democracy capable of self-governance, we must build the human capabilities that make self-governance possible. And the foundations of those capabilities are laid early—starting in pregnancy and extending through a child’s second birthday.
This is where democracy begins. This is where Project 2026 starts.
Featured This Month: The First 1,000 Days of Life Initiative
Project 2026 emphasizes that what children experience in their first 1,000 days—from conception through age two—shapes their health, learning, resilience, relationships, and lifelong agency. These early conditions also shape something we rarely name: future civic capacity—the ability to participate, deliberate, work with others, and build a life with dignity.
This month, we’re launching:
A narrative framework to make the First 1,000 Days visible and discussable
A set of “citizen briefs” parents and neighbors can use (not just experts)
The start of a tool-building effort that treats parenting support as civic infrastructure
Learn About The First 1,000 Days of Life Initiative →
Introducing the Trump Babies (Born January 20, 2025)
On January 20, 2025, as Donald Trump took the oath of office, thousands of babies across the country took their first breaths. They entered the world not as partisans—but as human beings filled with potential.
In late January 2026, the administration launched “Trump Accounts,” a policy that provides a $1,000 Treasury-funded investment contribution for eligible children born between January 1, 2025, and December 31, 2028, invested in broad index funds and generally accessible starting at age 18.
It’s a gesture toward the future—an acknowledgment that we owe something to the rising generation.
But it also raises a deeper question: What, exactly, do we owe them?
And is a financial stake at age 18—however welcome—enough to meet that obligation?
Project 2026’s answer is simple to say and harder to deliver:
We owe every child the capability to flourish.
Which means: not only financial capital later, but human foundations now—secure relationships, safe environments, responsive care, healthy development, and community conditions that buffer stress and expand opportunity during the very window when the brain and body are most shaped.
This month we begin telling that story through the lives of five AI generated representative babies—five Americas—so citizens can see the stakes clearly and argue about solutions constructively.
Read: The Manifesto of the Trump Class of 2026 →
AI for Democracy: Building the Whole Person Salutogenic Assistant
We’re beginning development of the Whole Person Salutogenic Assistant (WPSA)—a an AI platform, practical, strength-based guide for the First 1,000 Days, from conception to the second birthday.
The WPSA is built on the salutogenic idea that the job isn’t only to treat illness—it’s to grow the conditions of health and well-being: clearer understanding, stronger supports, better choices, and a sense of meaning and agency.
In plain terms, the WPSA aims to help families navigate:
Health and development milestones
Stress and mental well-being
Social supports and community resources
Environmental risks and protective factors
The “whole life” realities that shape parenting
And it will be designed to strengthen relationships—not replace them.
Learn About the Whole Person Salutogenic Assistant →
Coming Soon: The People’s Commission to Make Our Children Healthy
Later this Month, we are launching a citizen-led People’s Commission to address America’s child health challenges and opportunity—rooted in science, democracy, and civic responsibility.
This will not be a report written behind closed doors. It will be a public process, open by design.
Learn About The People’s Commission →]
Election 2026: What Are We Not Talking About?
As we approach the midterms, we’ll spotlight issues that may not dominate headlines—but will decisively shape the next generation.
AI & the Social Contract: It’s Changing Everything. Will We Keep Up?
The Challenge: AI is transforming work, education, media, and public life—often without our input. From deepfakes to automated decision-making in courts, schools, and hiring, we are racing toward a future shaped by algorithms few understand and fewer still regulate.
Why It Matters in 2026: We’re approaching a critical inflection point. The decisions we make today about AI governance will define the rules of the digital age. Will we allow automation to concentrate power—or will we democratize innovation?
The questions we’ll be asking:
Who governs AI—and in whose interest?
How do we protect dignity, privacy, and opportunity as systems accelerate?
How do we ensure AI strengthens families and communities rather than surveils or replaces them?
What values should guide the development and deployment of artificial intelligence—and who gets to decide?
250 Years Later: Reclaiming the Promise for the Trump Class of 2026
What Else We’re Working On
Getting Political: The Administrative Procedure Act & Citizen Power
The Administrative Procedure Act gives public participation real weight in federal rulemaking. We’re helping citizens use that lever—turning participation into power—especially where AI and health policy intersect.
Shrink Notes: Politics, Psychology, and the Human Condition
This month we launch Shrink Notes, a recurring column that brings a psychiatrist’s lens to the forces shaping our democracy. Because the threats to self-governance aren’t only structural—they’re emotional. And emotions are something we can understand, and work with.
Chapter One: America Is a Tinderbox
Ray Dalio puts the probability of serious civil conflict at 35–40 percent. David Friedberg reports that everyone he talks to is “activated emotionally.” These aren’t fringe voices—they’re sober analysts whose profession demands calibrated risk assessment.
Their economic frameworks matter enormously. But they miss something critical: passion is the ignition.
Debt and inequality create the conditions for conflict. What lights the match is the emotional quality of our disagreements—the moment fellow citizens become enemies. Fear contracts thinking. Anger demands action. Contempt dehumanizes. And AI-driven algorithms amplify all three, every hour of every day, because outrage is good for engagement.
Here’s what my clinical work has taught me: we are not prisoners of our passions. We have the capacity to recognize when our emotions are being manipulated, to pause before reacting, to seek understanding before condemning. These capacities can be cultivated—in individuals, in families, in communities. That cultivation is civic work, and it’s central to everything Project 2026 is building.
Read: America Is a Tinderbox: The Passions That Could Ignite Civil War—and How We Can Prevent It
Coming Soon: Building Arks, Weaving Bridges
How You Can Get Involved
Subscribe – Stay informed and engaged
Follow – Connect on social media
Participate – Join a commission, contribute to case presentations, use the Citizen Toolbox
Contribute – Write, research, propose projects, pilot tools
Share – Forward this to fellow citizens
Help Us Improve – This is your platform
A Closing Thought
As we approach America’s 250th birthday, let’s recommit to the revolutionary idea that legitimate government depends on the active consent and participation of the governed—and that preparing citizens is not a side issue. It is the main event.
With hope and resolve,
Shimon Waldfogel Founder & Publisher, Moonshot Press Director, Project 2026
“The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only legitimate object of good government.” — Thomas Jefferson
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