Our mission

The Fulcrum is a digital news organization focused exclusively on efforts to reverse the dysfunctions plaguing American democracy. We are nonprofit and nonpartisan. Our original stories, the news we gather from across the country and our opinion forum are all tightly focused on money in politics, redistricting, voting rights, election access, government ethics, civic engagement and the imbalance of powers.

That's because our coverage is all about efforts to make our democratic republic less tribal, our elections more competitive, our politicians less beholden to moneyed interests, our officials more attentive to real evidence in their policy-making and our Congress more effective, ethical and civil.

We launched in December 2018 with an e-mail newsletter dubbed The Firewall. That title is gone, but if you like what you read on the site please sign up here for continued regular updates by email.

Dozens of political reform initiatives are being pushed all over the country. We want to explain why some are surging and some are stalling. We want to decode behaviors threatening – and protecting – the principles of the Constitution. Most importantly, we explain how you can get involved and why our democracy depends on it.

While rooting for our democratic institutions to get stronger, we have no rooting interest in any of the prescriptions out there. Our journalistic role is to help you by bringing a clear and unbiased eye to the debates.

Doing so requires us to be free of partisanship and journalistically independent from those supporting our mission. So while we are incubated by Issue One, which describes itself as "the leading cross-partisan political reform group in Washington," we have the independence and authority to cover the issues as we see fit. And we have the same arrangement with our generous funders.