BridgeUSA is an investment in the future of American democracy. We champion ideological diversity, promote a solution-oriented political culture, and teach responsible discourse in order to develop a generation of political leaders that value empathy and constructive engagement. Our organization works with America's future leaders on college campuses to foster spaces wherein a diverse range of ideas can engage one another through the practice of responsible discourse.
Site Navigation
Search
Latest Stories
Join a growing community committed to civic renewal.
Subscribe to The Fulcrum and be part of the conversation.
Top Stories
Latest news
Read More
Climate change is driving a hidden crisis: rising sexual and gender-based violence. This analysis explores how disasters, displacement, and resource scarcity are increasing risks for women and girls—and why climate policy must address it.
Why Earth Day 2026 Demands Joint Climate and Gender Justice Action
Apr 29, 2026
Climate change and sexual violence are interconnected crises
As the world marks Earth Day 2026 during Sexual Assault Awareness Month, the intersection between climate change and sexual violence has become impossible to ignore.
Climate change is intensifying the conditions in which sexual violence occurs worldwide. While climate advocates have focused on emissions and environmental protection, and gender justice advocates have focused on legal reform and survivor support, both movements are responding to the same underlying systems of inequality, resource scarcity, and governance failures.
When climate stress increases, so does the risk of sexual and gender-based violence. It’s time to work together to curb climate-related sexual violence.
What is climate-related sexual violence?
Sexual and gender-based violence linked to the climate crisis refers to any form of sexual, gender-based violence, including rape, sexual assault, harassment, or abuse, ranging from exploitation to forced marriage, that is exacerbated by climate change and environmental crises.
While sexual violence is a human rights violation in any context, the climate crisis intensifies the risks and exposes new vulnerabilities, creating situations where women, girls, and other marginalised groups are disproportionately harmed.
These forms of violence occur when climate impacts intersect with social, economic, and structural inequalities, including:
Extreme weather and environmental shocks
- Floods, droughts, fires, cyclones, and heatwaves often amplify risks of gender-based and sexual violence like assault, trafficking, and exploitation during and after disasters
- Displacement into crowded shelters with poor lighting and a lack of privacy increases exposure to harassment and abuse, while weak complaint systems let it go unchecked
- Economic losses push people toward harmful coping strategies such as early or forced marriage, transactional sex, or exploitative jobs. When men lose income or status, violence at home often rises
- Climate shocks disrupt health care, legal aid, and GBV services, cutting survivors off from contraception, post-rape care, or justice pathways. Lost documents make reporting and reparations more challenging
- Climate shocks can interrupt healthcare, legal aid, and protection services, leaving survivors without support, documentation, or pathways to justice
Slow-onset changes
- Over time, climate-related resource scarcity can disrupt livelihoods and can gradually fuel conflicts, where sexual violence can be used to control or displace communities
- As climate-related stressors accumulate over time, through displacement, economic instability, and reduced access to services, the risk of violence against women increases
Resource scarcity
- As water, firewood, and food get harder to find, women and girls travel farther through unsafe areas, increasing assault risks
- Competition over scarce land or work can escalate household and community violence, with men tightening control over women’s movements or choices
“Climate change is more than an environmental issue. It acts as a threat multiplier, interacting with existing social and economic systems in ways that deepen long-standing inequalities,” Nina Masore, Legal Advisor, End Sexual Violence at Equality Now of the impacts of climate change on women and girls in South Sudan.
Across regions: different climate disasters, similar risks
In drought and flood-affected communities, women and girls must often walk further to find clean water as nearby sources have dried up or been contaminated. Longer journeys mean greater risk of harassment and assault. Water scarcity also increases exposure to sexual exploitation and coercion by those controlling access to water sources.
In a displacement camp, a teenage girl may share a shelter with dozens of families, separated only by thin fabric, with no lock, no light, and no privacy.
A family facing crop failure or displaced from home due to an extreme weather disaster may decide to marry off their daughter early so they have one less mouth to feed, or in the hope that marriage may protect her from sexual violence and unwanted pregnancy while unwed.
These are not isolated problems. Instead, they reflect the consistent, systemic pattern of gender based violence being fuelled by the climate crisis in communities worldwide.
South Asia: After the storm
In parts of South Asia where flooding and cyclones regularly displace communities, women and girls report increased harassment in temporary shelters and heightened pressure to marry early as families struggle financially.
Research following cyclones in Bangladesh found increased reports of sexual harassment, sexual assault, and early marriage linked to displacement and economic stress, while disruptions to policing and legal services reduces justice system accountability.
Latin America and the Caribbean: Slow-onset displacement
Across the region, climate change looks like gradual displacement. Rising costs, land loss, and gentrification are pushing communities out of their homes.
The Inter-American Court of Human Rights has recognized the right to a healthy climate as a human right, affirming that climate responses must include gender and intersectional approaches. These include:
- Ensuring safe housing, even without formal land titles
- Integrating gender into climate policy
- Guaranteeing the participation of women and girls
However, while the Court acknowledges gender-based violence in disaster contexts, it does not yet provide detailed standards on preventing sexual violence in climate emergencies, leaving a critical implementation gap, particularly in addressing how climate-related displacement increases vulnerability to sexual violence.
North America: Disasters and disruption
In North America, wildfires and hurricanes often displace communities into emergency shelters where privacy is limited and support services are disrupted. After these emergencies, spikes in domestic and sexual violence have been reported in the shelters and temporary housing settings.
Even in well-resourced settings, systems are not always designed to prevent or respond to sexual violence during crises.
Climate change in Africa: Sudan snapshot
In Sudan, like many other conflict-affected settings, climate stress compounds instability. Resource scarcity and displacement increase the likelihood of sexual violence, including its use as a tactic of war, while weakening already fragile justice systems.
With nearly 900,000 people impacted by flooding and repeated cycles of drought and extreme heat, the country illustrates how climate instability translates into protection risks:
- Displacement into overcrowded shelters, sometimes housing up to 40 families in a single open space, creates environments where privacy and safety are severely compromised.
- School closures due to extreme heat (up to 45°C) increase girls’ exposure to early marriage and exploitation.
- Loss of livelihoods drives documented increases in transactional sex and forced marriage as survival strategies.
Climate change is also reshaping traditional transhumance routes in Sudan, as pasture and water sources shift or disappear, pushing herding communities into new or overlapping territories with farmers and other groups, including in areas bordering the Central African Republic. As competition over land and water escalates, communal clashes and militarized responses increase, and women and girls are exposed to sexual violence during attacks, along migration routes, and at contested grazing and water points. In these remote transhumance zones, where services are limited and oversight is weak, survivors face important barriers to reporting, and sexual and gender-based violence is often normalized and goes unpunished.
Eurasia: Increased vulnerabilities
Across parts of Eurasia, climate change is amplifying vulnerabilities for women and girls in both rural and urban areas. Extreme weather events, such as floods, droughts, and heatwaves, disrupt livelihoods, displace populations, and increase economic pressures, creating conditions where sexual and gender-based violence is more likely.
Regional experts in Azerbaijan stress that climate adaptation strategies must integrate gender-responsive protections, such as safe shelters, livelihood programs, psychosocial support, and inclusion in decision-making, to reduce compounded risks and ensure that responses to climate emergencies also uphold women’s safety and rights.
Across all regions
Ending climate-related sexual violence requires urgent, systemic change, starting with mapping global patterns to ensure no one is left behind.
Protection from sexual violence must become a standard component of disaster response, ensuring it’s addressed in both sudden disasters and slow-onset displacement in policy frameworks.
Stakeholders from across regions must work together to ensure continuity of survivor services during and after climate events and include women and girls in climate decision-making at all levels.
The United Nations Spotlight Initiative found that climate change could be linked to tens of millions of additional cases of gender-based violence by 2050 if no action is taken.
The law must catch up to climate reality
International frameworks like the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) have specific recommendations on the rights of women and girls to live free from gender based violence in disaster contexts and ensure access to justice and services.
But in practice, climate and legal systems operate in silos.
Few national climate policies explicitly address sexual violence. Few disaster response plans include clear accountability mechanisms for protection failures. And few justice systems are equipped to function effectively during climate disruptions, leaving critical implementation gaps.
What needs to happen
- Governments need to embed sexual and gender-based violence prevention and response into climate laws and policies
- Governments need to conduct gender and protection impact assessments for all climate-related programs
- Governments need to ensure justice systems operate during crises, including through mobile courts and remote reporting mechanisms
- International and regional human rights mechanisms need to develop clear international guidance on addressing sexual violence in climate emergencies
What is Equality Now doing to end sexual violence?
Equality Now is working to end sexual violence by transforming laws and improving their implementation to ensure that survivors have access to justice.
We partner with legal experts, activists, and policymakers to advance consent-based definitions of rape across jurisdictions and support the development and implementation of survivor-centred laws and protocols.
We also work to challenge stigma, stereotypes, and rape myths by equipping journalists, educators, and the public with the tools to change how sexual violence is understood and addressed in all contexts.
Our goal is clear: to build legal systems that protect survivors, hold perpetrators accountable, and ensure justice is accessible to all.
Why Earth Day 2026 Demands Joint Climate and Gender Justice Action was originally published by Equality Now and is republished with permission.
Keep ReadingShow less
Recommended
How political rhetoric, religion, and digital media are reshaping American democracy. From Trump’s rise to the erosion of civil discourse, Rev. Dr. F. Willis Johnson examines polarization, the power of language, and the urgent need to restore humane and ethical public speech.
Getty Images, stellalevi
Resurrecting Rhetoric and Restoring Democracy
Apr 28, 2026
To speak of rhetoric today is to speak of a force that shapes our politics and our identities. The main argument is that the American experiment relies on words, not just to persuade, but also to build public life and connect citizens. This is not the first time the nation has faced a rhetorical crisis. Previous eras, such as the McCarthy period or the Civil Rights era, were also marked by battles over public speech, truth, and belonging. Just as then, this foundation faces serious challenges today. Public language is destabilizing, personality cults are growing, and democratic norms are eroding. As a result, speech now serves mostly to confront, not to understand.
Trump as an instructive figure matters. He matters not just for what he has said and done. He matters for what his rise reveals about our collective appetites: a desire to use sacred language and symbols for political ends. Invoking sacred language for political aims is not new. Yet, today's openness blurs boundaries between state power and religious authority. Public rallies now look like religious ceremonies. They feature hymns of allegiance and faith in a leader. The use of theological symbols in politics shows how spiritual longing and public confession sanctify power.
This dynamic is not just due to the leaders above. It rests on anxiety below. People fear that institutions are rigged and enemies are everywhere. Salvation is now something to seize, not await. The administrative state used to concern policy wonks. Now it is cast as a cosmic adversary or an ever-present villain. Each bureaucratic decision and each judicial ruling is seen through a lens of persecution and deliverance. These views turn complex realities into mythic stories. They push us to see only us or them, righteous or wicked.
Here, rhetoric takes its most insidious turn. Language stripped of nuance becomes a weapon, not a bridge. Talking about "enemies within" and "taking our country back" affects more than politics. These words echo ancient patterns of scapegoating, which often come before violence. The danger is not just excess in speech. It is the creation of a climate in which cruelty is justified, and dissent is betrayal. In this context, humane engagement is urgent, not optional.
Digital technology makes the challenge harder. Social media was once seen as democratizing. Now it is a source of outrage and affirmation. Algorithms curate our feeds. They do not reward careful reasoning or honest doubt. They reward vivid loyalty and contempt. Performance and participation blur together. The loudest voices drown out quieter wisdom. Conflict is a spectacle, often confused with civic life. The digital square was imagined as a new commons. Now it often feels more like an arena. Here, the stakes involve not just ideas, but identities.
Against this backdrop, rhetoric informed by theology is not abstract. It is a call for rehumanization. We are urged to treat each person with respect and to remember their vulnerability. At their best, theological traditions teach that truth is not the property of any one group. The work of theologians like Reinhold Niebuhr, Martin Luther King Jr., and Dietrich Bonhoeffer illustrates how prophetic speech questions the powerful and avoids self-righteousness. Niebuhr emphasized humility and the limits of certainty in public life, while King drew on the tradition of love and redemptive suffering as a critique of injustice. Bonhoeffer, resisting totalitarianism, called for truth-telling and repentance even when it was risky. True prophecy means truth-telling and repentance. It resists the pull of certainty.
This work is slow and often lonely. It demands counter-cultural habits. Practice patience when provoked. Be curious about those you distrust. Show a willingness to change. Resist tribal loyalty and moral superiority. Cultivate silence not as escape, but as preparation. Employ it for honest, generous speech that faces reality’s complexity.
These practices do not happen by accident. They are taught, learned, modeled, and copied. Leaders in government, media, and the pulpit must show the virtues they want to see. This means doing more than denouncing others’ excesses. It includes facing our own faults and admitting our part in damaging patterns. We must name the idols in our own camp. Civic and spiritual reconciliation start with humility. Admit you might be wrong. See that opponents might teach you. The world is more complex than our slogans.
None of this is glamorous. It rarely goes viral. It will not please those who want quick victories or clear defeats. Some argue that strong, even divisive, rhetoric is necessary to rally supporters, build solidarity, and energize movements. Particularly when urgent injustices seem to demand bold action and clear lines. There is truth in the power of language to mobilize, and a longing for clarity when the stakes feel high. Yet, history shows that when confrontation becomes the norm, it often deepens polarization, hardens identities, and risks justifying cruelty in the name of righteousness. Even in moments that call for urgent action, we must ask what kind of public life we are creating. Only by pursuing a rhetoric that honors truth and love can we build politics that endure beyond momentary victories. Reviving rhetoric is not a return to any golden age. It means forging new habits in speech and listening. These habits can support our differences without leading to enmity.
Persisting in this work is an act of hope. Hope that words can still heal. Hope that public life can show neighborliness instead of animosity. Hope that dignity exists in others, never erased by political difference. Such hope is not naive, I believe. It is a radical kind of realism. If we lose humble speech and listening, we lose more than democracy. We lose our common humanity.
Rev. Dr. F. Willis Johnson is a spiritual entrepreneur, author, scholar-practioner whose leadership and strategies around social and racial justice issues are nationally recognized and applied.
Keep ReadingShow less
an american flag hanging from a pole in front of a building
Photo by Calysia Ramos on Unsplash
Democracy Requires Losing. Americans Are Forgetting That.
Apr 28, 2026
Americans believe in democracy. What they don’t believe in is losing.
That distinction matters. Democracy depends on its participants’ willingness to accept loss. Without that, elections stop resolving conflict and start producing it.
Over the past few elections, that willingness has eroded. The most visible example of this came in 2021, when supporters of President Donald Trump stormed the Capitol rather than accepting that he had lost the election. While one of its most visible expressions, the problem extends beyond a single event. Unfavorable court rulings are dismissed as illegitimate, elections are framed as either stolen or rigged, even when courts repeatedly reject fraud claims, and opposing victories are treated as injustices. Candidates cast doubt on election results before votes are even counted, and legal defeats become evidence of bias. What once was the language of fringe complaints has now become a normalized political strategy.
For most of this country’s history, the peaceful transition of power has been a longstanding democratic norm. They have relied not on agreement, but on restraint, the willingness of the losing side to concede even when they disagree with the outcome. That norm has never been automatic; it’s been maintained because the alternative would make governance impossible. This reflects not just a change in behavior, but a deeper erosion of restraint.
Americans expect democracy to deliver the “right” outcomes. When it “fails” to do so, the system itself is blamed. Losing is no longer seen as part of the process, but as evidence of a broken system.
This shift is the result of powerful incentives. Politicians gain support by framing defeats as fraud or corruption, thereby refusing to accept defeat. They retain supporters, gain attention, and stay relevant. Media outlets amplify the rage because it drives clicks and views, which generate ad revenue. In that environment, accepting defeat becomes costly, while rejecting it is rewarded. Claims of fraud generate attention, reinforce group identity, and insulate leaders from accountability. Over time, this shifts the baseline: what was once unacceptable behavior is now expected, and what was expected, conceding defeat, now looks like weakness.
The normalization of these behaviors even changes how political identity is formed. Loyalty to a side shifts from being about supporting policies to rejecting the legitimacy of the other side’s victories. Admitting defeat now risks social alienation in ideological communities that increasingly conflate concession with betrayal. The result is self-reinforcing: the more one side frames outcomes as illegitimate, the more supporters feel pressure to adopt that framing in order to remain in good standing. For some politicians, these claims are strategic. For many voters, they become sincere. What begins as a strategic political message becomes a shared belief system that is difficult to reverse.
Each contested outcome makes the next easier to reject. Every claim of illegitimacy lowers the threshold. Elections start to lose the ability to resolve disputes altogether.
This is not to say that some skepticism isn’t good, nor that we should avoid questioning these institutions. Challenging irregularities and demanding transparency are essential safeguards. But when skepticism becomes the default, it stops protecting the system and begins to undermine it.
Fixing this doesn’t require Americans to agree more; it requires them to lose differently. Political leaders must be judged not only by how they win, but by how they respond to defeat. Anyone who refuses to accept certified results should face consequences before election day, not after. As long as outrage is profitable, media outlets will continue to amplify these claims. Changing this dynamic demands not just editorial change but a shift in what audiences reward with their attention. Voters themselves must recognize that accepting loss is not surrender, but participation in the democratic system they claim to value. They cannot demand democratic results while rejecting democracy’s rules.
The greatest threat to American democracy isn’t disagreement. It’s the growing belief that losing is unacceptable. A system in which every defeat is treated as illegitimate cannot endure. If this continues, we risk escalation. A system that cannot produce accepted outcomes invites alternative ways of resolving conflict, none of which are democratic. When that belief takes hold, democracy doesn’t collapse all at once; it erodes, one rejected outcome at a time.
Max Drayer is a high school student who writes about politics, civic culture, and public debate.
Keep ReadingShow less
Congress advances a reconciliation bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security while passing key rural legislation. As debates over ICE funding, wildfire policy, and broadband expansion unfold, lawmakers also face new questions about the use of AI in government.
Getty Images, Bloomberg Creative
Starting Up the Reconciliation Machine
Apr 28, 2026
This week the Senate began the long, procedure-heavy process of creating and passing a reconciliation bill in order to enact Republican priorities without requiring any votes from Democratic legislators: funding the parts of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) whose funding remains lapsed and additional funds for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP). Also this week, the House agreed to two bills that next go to the President and voted on a number of bills related to rural areas.
Two New Laws Soon
Both of these bills go to the President next for signing:
- S. 98: Rural Broadband Protection Act of 2025 passed the House by voice vote.
- S. 1020: A bill to require the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to extend the time period during which licensees are required to commence construction of certain hydropower projects, passed the House 394-14.
House Votes on Rural-related Bills
These bills will go the Senate next. They are not close to becoming law.
- H.R. 2493: Improving Care in Rural America Reauthorization Act of 2025 passed 406-4.
- H.R. 5201: Kari’s Law Reporting Act passed 405-5. According to the FCC, “Kari’s Law requires direct 911 dialing and notification capabilities in multi-line telephone systems (MLTS), which are typically found in enterprises such as office buildings, campuses, and hotels.” This bill would require a report on how the implementation of Kari’s Law is going.
- H.R. 5200: Emergency Reporting Act, which would result in reports after activation of the Disaster Information Reporting System and to make improvements to network outage reporting, passed 386-7.
- H.R. 1681: Expediting Federal Broadband Deployment Reviews Act, which would establish an interagency group to ensure that certain Federal land management agencies prioritize the review of requests for communications use authorizations, passed 384-9.
- H.R. 5587: HEATS Act, which would amend the Geothermal Steam Act of 1970 to waive the requirement for a Federal drilling permit for certain activities and exempt certain activities from the requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, passed 231-186.
- H.R. 6387: FIRE Act passed 220-198. Per the site Legis1, “The FIRE Act addresses a long-standing tension between federal air quality enforcement and state-level wildfire prevention. Under the current law, states risk falling out of compliance with national air quality standards when they conduct prescribed burns, even though those controlled burns are designed to reduce the far more damaging emissions from uncontrolled wildfires. The bill amends Section 319(b) of the Clean Air Act to give states a clearer path to exclude wildfire mitigation activities from air quality compliance calculations.” As you can see from the vote totals, this bill has strong partisan divergence. Why? As Legis1 went on to say, it’s an open question “…whether the bill is a practical fix for wildfire-prone states or a backdoor weakening of air quality standards…”. Which way a member of Congress sees it is almost entirely determined by which party the legislator belongs to.
- H.R. 4690: Reliable Federal Infrastructure Act, which would amend the Energy Conservation and Production Act to repeal certain Federal building energy efficiency performance standards, passed 215-202.
Funding the Department of Homeland Security by Reconciliation
The Department of Homeland Security is, sort of, in a shutdown. When appropriated funds for fiscal year 2026 lapsed early this year because Congress did not reach an agreement on funding it, DHS agencies without multi-year funds including TSA and the cybersecurity agency CISA stopped paying its employees. (ICE and CBP, on the other hand, had more-than-sufficient multi-year funds from last year’s reconciliation bill, and did not shut down.) Then they re-opened — the Trump Administration dubiously reassigned money appropriated to other purposes (more on that next week) — but that money isn’t expected to carry the department through September, the end of the fiscal year.
Last year’s reconciliation bill provided four years worth of funding for DHS. But now at least one Republican is telling Migrant Insider that DHS is running out of all that money because they’ve repurposed it to pay staff during the shutdown. As Migrant Insider goes on to note in this post, it’s hard to know if these claims are true because DHS has stopped reporting how it’s spending its money.
Republicans want to use the reconciliation process to fund DHS, and potentially other policy changes, without any Democratic votes.
The budget reconciliation process is complicated. Step 1 is having either chamber of Congress come up with a “budget resolution”. The budget resolution sets the amount of money that relevant committees will have to allocate in the reconciliation bill itself. As noted by reporter Jennifer Shutt, it’s just a blueprint and nothing in it, even if both chambers agree to it, changes existing law or funding amounts.
The Senate passed its budget resolution on Tuesday, April 21, in a party-line vote of 52-46. The resolution now goes to the House. Just like any other piece of legislation, the House could amend it and if they did, it would bounce back to the Senate.
Legislator Use of AI
NOTUS published an interesting piece describing how some members of Congress are using AI, both personally and professionally. So far, as far as we’re aware, AI is not being used to draft legislation, but from the kinds of uses described in the article, you could see how legislators might want to go that way some day.
Something that caught our eye was a mention that Sen. Schiff (D-CA) used an AI tool to draft a living will. Given all the stories in the news about lawyers submitting legal documents with made up cases in them to courts (like this one), Schiff’s choice might be surprising.
But, in general, when the user has expertise in an area, some of the AI tools out there can be helpful. Mike Masnick of Techdirt wrote about how he uses AI tools to do his work and argues that, when the user has a specific task and enough expertise to assess the tool’s output, it can be helpful.
Now, Sen. Schiff is a former prosecutor. Does this make him expert enough in trusts to assess the quality of the draft he was given? We don’t know - your GovTracker is not a lawyer of any kind. But we do know that many professions have enough specialization that expertise in one area would not automatically confer expertise in another.
So while GovTrack doesn’t care about Sen. Schiff’s personal trust arrangements (unless it somehow turned out the trust was a vehicle to violate House Ethics rules), we do care about legislators becoming reliant on AI tools if they don’t have the relevant expertise to assess how well the tools are performing or demonstrated awareness of their own limitations.
Starting Up the Reconciliation Machine was originally published by GovTrack and is republished with permission.
Keep ReadingShow less
Load More