One year ago, a small but ambitious group of journalists got up at the crack of dawn to start scanning news sources around the nation, lighting up the phones and learning as much as we could about what’s happening in the nation’s state legislatures. A few hours later, the first edition of Pluribus AM hit thousands of inboxes.
Over the following 12 months, we’ve published 236 more morning editions. We’ve posted about 800 stories, on every policy topic under the sun. And we’ve grown our audience more than 10 times over that initial day’s email list.
And boy did we pick a heck of a year to start off: The 7,386 lawmakers who sit in state houses across the country picked 2023 to be more active than any year in recent memory.
Waves of legislation rewriting transgender rights, abortion rights, education savings plans, technology and digital privacy, and the health care sector poured out of legislatures. Lawmakers cut taxes, addressed gun rights and gun safety, and came up with new ways to build workforce pipelines.
They all proved what we’ve been telling anyone who will listen: Congress may be broken, but the real action in public policy — and the genesis of the next big idea that will change the course of the nation — is happening in the states.
We expect the coming year to bring more action, especially on artificial intelligence, clean energy policies, the coming transition to electric vehicles, the culture wars and a new economic reality as pandemic-era funding runs out. Oh, and let’s throw in a national election for good measure.
We hope you enjoy reading our work as much as we enjoy producing it. And we hope you’ll support us, if you haven’t already, by becoming a Pluribus News member today, at a special anniversary price. The next 12 months are going to be just as eventful as the last 12.
Thank you for reading, and thanks for being a part of the community we’re trying to build.