Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

AOC makes Twitter history with ‘lightning round game’

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, whose assertive leveraging of social media has helped propel her to outsized notoriety for a congressional newcomer, appears to have made online history with a morality lesson about the campaign finance system's consequences.

A five-minute clip of the New York Democrat's pungent tongue-in-cheek questioning of witnesses at a House Oversight and Reform Committee hearing last week may have become the most viewed video of any politician in Twitter history. The video posted by NowThis broke the mark on Monday, the news site's deputy editor Jon Laurence says. As of this afternoon it had 38 million views, 125,000 likes and nearly 49,000 retweets, making it one of the 40 most viewed Twitter videos of all time.


At a hearing on HR 1, the Democrats' catch-all political process overhaul, Ocasio-Cortez used her time to conduct what she called a "lightning round game" with the ethics experts who were testifying. She aimed to demonstrate the ease with which a corrupt House member, senator or president could skirt accountability under current government ethics law, overtly do the quid-pro-quo bidding of campaign donors and profit from insider knowledge.

"It's already super legal, as we've seen, for me to be a pretty bad guy," she concluded.

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

Read More

Elderly woman on a train

A woman evacuating from Pokrovsk, Ukraine, in August looks out from a train car to say goodbye.

Oleksandr Magula/Suspilne Ukraine/JSC "UA:PBC"/Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images

On Ageism Awareness Day, consider the impact of war on older people.

Kilaberia is an assistant professor at New York University’s Silver School of Social Work and a public voices fellow with The OpEd Project.

We know the toll that war has on youth, but older adults are suffering displacement, too.

We have talked about age-friendly cities, age-friendly health care systems, age-friendly universities, age-friendly workplaces dementia-friendly communities. We are not talking about age-friendly or dementia-friendly humanitarian responses.

Tomorrow is Ageism Awareness Day and it offers us the opportunity to draw attention to the impact of ageism, particularly in the many war zones around the world.

Keep ReadingShow less
Latino couple

"Women's rights are super important to me because women raised me. Women brought me into this world,” said Rico Cortez, with his mother, Rebececca Guerrero.

Courtesy Rico Cortez

Latino families in Nevada are a deciding factor this election cycle

Couraud is a bilingual multimedia journalist.

The Fulcrum presents We the People, a series elevating the voices and visibility of the persons most affected by the decisions of elected officials. In this installment, we explore the motivations of over 36 million eligible Latino voters as they prepare to make their voices heard in November.

According to the NALEO Education Fund,Latinos make up 28 percent of Nevada's population, and one in every five registered voters in the state is Latino. With Nevada being a crucial swing state in November's election, the Latino vote has become increasingly important.

Although Nevada has a sitting U.S. senator who is Latina (Catherine Cortez-Masto), Latino political representation still lags. This could explain why some Latino voters feel discouraged or why — despite such high population numbers — Latino voter turnout is lower than that of other demographics in the state.

Keep ReadingShow less
Where young voters can have the greatest impact in 2024

Liz Michalkiewicz was 29 when she voted in Milwaukee in 2022. Wisconsin is among the states where voters under age 30 can have the biggest impact this year.

Sara Stathas for The Washington Post via Getty Images

Where young voters can have the greatest impact in 2024

Meyers is executive editor of The Fulcrum.

It’s common knowledge among the politically engaged that the presidential election is going to come down to a handful of states. The same goes for control of the Senate, while just a couple dozen districts will determine which party wins a majority in the House of Representatives.

But which voters will decide the winner in each of those states and districts? While there may not be one, across-the-board answer, researchers at Tufts University have identified the places where young voters (ages 18-29) can have the most influence on electoral outcomes this year.

Keep ReadingShow less
Mark Zuckerberg holding a pair of glasses

Mark Zuckerberg, who is now worth more than $200 billion, shows off new wearabel tech at the Meta Connect developer conference in September.

Andrej Sokolow/picture alliance via Getty Images

We have extreme inequality in America, and it’s getting worse

Cooper is the author of “How America Works … and Why it Doesn’t.

Bloomberg recently reported that Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg is now worth over $200 billion. He’s not alone. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Tesla founder Elon Musk, and LVMH founder Bernard Arnault are also worth north of $200 billion.

The news is a searing reminder of the uneven distribution of wealth in America. In the same country as Zuckerberg, Bezos, and Musk reside millions of people without a reliable source of food. (Arnault lives in France.) Redistributing just a small portion of the richest Americans’ wealth could alleviate tremendous human suffering.

Keep ReadingShow less
A roll of stickers that read "I registered to vote today!"
Bloomberg Creative/Getty Images

Become an informed voter – it’s the best way to fight voter suppression

Harris is director of media engagement at Stand Up America.

This is National Voter Education Week, when activists and organizations across the country mobilize to educate voters on how to make their voices heard in November. This year, that mission is more important than ever. While voting rights advocates are hard at work helping voters find their polling location and voting options, learn what’s on their ballot, and make a plan for voting, MAGA politicians are ramping up efforts to make it more difficult to vote and even purging voter rolls in battleground states.

Keep ReadingShow less