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A woman timing another women in the military as she does push ups.

Hegseth Made the Fitness Test Harder for Women in Combat Roles. Most Female Marines Are Passing.

​Paintings of Stalin

The Stalinization of America

American Flag, Capitol building and the United States Constitution

Lawyers Must Reaffirm Their Oath to Defend the Constitution

Historical documents representing founding principles of United States on flag backdrop

Why the Constitution Remains Our Defense Against Tyranny

U.S. economic crisis as markets crash. Concept showing a slowing market behind a black and white United States Capitol

Our National Debt Won’t Bankrupt Us. It Can Still Paralyze Us.

Podcast: Misinformation, hate and accountability

Podcast: Misinformation, hate and accountability
The Fulcrum
By The FulcrumApr 12, 2022
The Fulcrum
The Fulcrum staff.
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The Anti-Defamation League has a long history of countering hate, bias, and harmful misinformation, which is to say the organization has some strong opinions about what happens on social media. Continuing our exploration of digital disinformation and free speech, Civic Genius chatted with Lauren Krapf, Technology Policy & Advocacy Counsel at the Anti-Defamation League, about how the ADL thinks tech companies can do better and what misinformation looks like in the real world – both online and off.

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Elections

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Media & Technology

When AI Screens the Resume, Who Gets a Fair Shot at Work?

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Economy

The Genesis of America’s Debt Problem

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President Trump answers questions from reporters.

U.S. President Donald Trump answers questions from reporters before boarding Air Force One on August 21, 2026 in Joint Base Andrews, Maryland.

(Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

Trump’s White House Press Ban Violates 1st Amendment

The principle is simple. Just like politicians are not supposed to pick their voters, government officials don’t get to pick the reporters who cover them.

If they did, the First Amendment would be meaningless. and we would no longer live in anything resembling a constitutional republic. That is why President Trump’s September 18 announcement that he is banning reporters from CNN, MSNow, and Politico from the White House is so dangerous.

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A person interacts with an AI chatbot on a smartphone. The screen displays a conversation interface with the text "Hi, may I help you?" suggesting the use of an AI assistant app. A laptop is visible in the background, emphasizing a tech-savvy environment.

A 2026 study found AI beat elite debaters, until it was slowed to human speed. Why persuasion throughput matters and how to make chatbot tempo transparent.

Chong Kee Siong/Getty Images

Political Chatbots Should Not Be Allowed To Set the Pace

A political chatbot can answer before a citizen has finished reading its previous message. It can add statistics, historical examples, causal claims, and links at a rate no human campaign volunteer could match. That does not necessarily make its case wiser. It changes the contest by allowing one speaker to control the tempo.

A June 2026 preprint offers unusually direct evidence of this problem. Across four preregistered experiments involving 18,978 conversations from 6,923 people, frontier AI systems were more persuasive than laypeople, tournament winners, professional canvassers and elite competitive debaters. The human experts were not casual opponents: the study included world and continental champions, paid preparation, live practice and substantial performance incentives.

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Camera pointing at Donald Trump

U.S. President Donald Trump is seen in the electronic viewfinder of a television camera in the Oval Office at the White House on September 18, 2026, in Washington, DC.

(Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

How Democracy Dies Alongside a Constricted Press

The Fulcrum is committed to nurturing the next generation of journalists.

We asked Malory Shaw, a Fall Fulcrum Fellow, to share what democracy means to her and how she sees its current health.

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Hasan Piker

Influencer and left-wing political commentator Hasan Piker is introduced during a campaign rally for Wisconsin Gubernatorial candidate Francesca Hong on Aug. 2, 2026, in Milwaukee.

(Joshua Lott/Getty Images/TNS)

While the world is on fire, the media are still obsessed with Israel

No one likes to think they’re being hysterical. And nothing makes hysterical people angrier than being described as such. So, let me offer my apologies in advance for what follows.

Jeremy Musighi, an independent researcher, recently released a study analyzing 14.7 million news articles published across 65 languages over the last decade. He found that, in 2024, news outlets published “more than twice as many stories about Israel as about all 48 countries of sub-Saharan Africa combined.”

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