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Trump’s Plan to Gather Data on Every Voter Will Cripple Democracy

Trump’s Plan to Gather Data on Every Voter Will Cripple Democracy

​Performer Bad Bunny on stage.

Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl Halftime Show Sparks National Controversy As Trump Announces Boycott

The Insurrection Act, Revisited: Power That Waits in the Margins

The Insurrection Act, Revisited: Power That Waits in the Margins

Trump, Greenland, and the Alarming Silence in Congress

Trump, Greenland, and the Alarming Silence in Congress

Is the U.S. Better Off Today Than a Year Ago?

Is the U.S. Better Off Today Than a Year Ago?

Republicans Now Are More Open to the Idea of Expanding Presidential Power

Support for expanding presidential power rises among Republicans

Republicans Now Are More Open to the Idea of Expanding Presidential Power
The Fulcrum
By The FulcrumAug 20, 2019
The Fulcrum
The Fulcrum staff.
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Republicans Now Are More Open to the Idea of Expanding Presidential Power

A growing number of Republicans support expanding the power of the presidency, according to a survey by the Pew Research Center.

More than 40 percent of Republicans surveyed in July said presidents would be more effective if "they didn't have to worry so much about Congress or the courts." That was up from 26 percent who supported the idea in February 2017, according to the survey.

The change was primarily driven by those identified as "conservative Republicans," whose support for expanding presidential power rose to 52 percent compared to 26 percent in March 2018. Less than a third of moderate and liberal Republicans supported the idea then and now.

While only 16 percent of Democrats believed in expanding presidential power in the July survey, 29 percent had supported the idea in August 2016, when Barack Obama was president.

Overall, 66 percent of Americans said it would be "too risky" to give presidents more power to deal with the country's problems, down from 76 percent who held the view a year ago.

The survey also found a change in favorability of Congress among Republicans and Democrats.

Forty-three percent of Democrats had a favorable view of Congress, up from 24 percent in March 2018. But the share of Republicans with a favorable view was 27 percent, down from 37 percent a year ago.

Overall, just over a third of Americans viewed Congress favorably versus 59 percent who viewed it unfavorably.


Republicans Now Are More Open to the Idea of Expanding Presidential Power

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Virginia voters will decide the future of abortion access

Virginia has long been a haven for abortion care in the South, where many states have near-total bans.

(Konstantin L/Shutterstock/Cage Rivera/Rewire News Group)

Virginia voters will decide the future of abortion access

Virginia lawmakers have approved a constitutional amendment that would protect reproductive rights in the Commonwealth. The proposed amendment—which passed 64-34 in the House of Delegates on Wednesday and 21-18 in the state Senate two days later—will be presented to voters later this year.

“Residents of the Commonwealth of Virginia can no longer allow politicians to dominate their bodies and their personal decisions,” said House of Delegates Majority Leader Charniele Herring, the resolution’s sponsor, during a committee debate before the final vote.

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What Really Guides Lawmakers’ Decisions on Capitol Hill
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Photo by Adam Michael Szuscik on Unsplash

What Really Guides Lawmakers’ Decisions on Capitol Hill

The following article is excerpted from "Citizen’s Handbook for Influencing Elected Officials."

Despite the efforts of high school social studies teachers, parents, journalists, and political scientists, the workings of our government remain a mystery to most Americans. Caricatures, misconceptions, and stereotypes dominate citizens’ views of Congress, contributing to our reluctance to engage in our democracy. In reality, the system works pretty much as we were taught in third grade. Congress is far more like Schoolhouse Rock than House of Cards. When all the details are burned away, legislators generally follow three voices when making a decision. One member of Congress called these voices the “Three H’s”: Heart, Head, and Health—meaning political health.

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Illustration of someone holding a strainer, and the words "fakes," "facts," "news," etc. going through it.

Trump-era misinformation has pushed American politics to a breaking point. A Truth in Politics law may be needed to save democracy.

Getty Images, SvetaZi

The Need for a Truth in Politics Law: De-Frauding American Politics

“Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?” With those words in 1954, Army lawyer Joseph Welch took Senator Joe McCarthy to task and helped end McCarthy’s destructive un-American witch hunt. The time has come to say the same to Donald Trump and his MAGA allies and stop their vile perversion of our right to free speech.

American politics has always been rife with misleading statements and, at times, outright falsehoods. Mendacity just seems to be an ever-present aspect of politics. But with the ascendency of Trump, and especially this past year, things have taken an especially nasty turn, becoming so aggressive and incendiary as to pose a real threat to the health and well-being of our nation’s democracy.

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Silence, Signals, and the Unfinished Story of the Abandoned Disability Rule

Waiting for the Door to Open: Advocates and older workers are left in limbo as the administration’s decision to abandon a harsh disability rule exists only in private assurances, not public record.

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Silence, Signals, and the Unfinished Story of the Abandoned Disability Rule

We reported in the Fulcrum on November 30th that in early November, disability advocates walked out of the West Wing, believing they had secured a rare reversal from the Trump administration of an order that stripped disability benefits from more than 800,000 older manual laborers.

The public record has remained conspicuously quiet on the matter. No press release, no Federal Register notice, no formal statement from the White House or the Social Security Administration has confirmed what senior officials told Jason Turkish and his colleagues behind closed doors in November: that the administration would not move forward with a regulation that could have stripped disability benefits from more than 800,000 older manual laborers. According to a memo shared by an agency official and verified by multiple sources with knowledge of the discussions, an internal meeting in early November involved key SSA decision-makers outlining the administration's intent to halt the proposal. This memo, though not publicly released, is said to detail the political and social ramifications of proceeding with the regulation, highlighting its unpopularity among constituents who would be affected by the changes.

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