CHANGE Illinois is a nonpartisan, nonprofit leading systemic government and election reforms. CHANGE (the Coalition for Honest and New Government Ethics) champions ethical and efficient government and democracy and includes a diverse group of civic, philanthropic, business, labor, professional, and nonprofit organizations representing millions of Illinoisans. CHANGE Illinois works in collaboration with like-minded reform organizations, playing a leadership role in convening and facilitating efforts around shared policy agendas. The coalition works to improve challenges that undermine our democracy, including gerrymandering, restricted ballot access, voter suppression, uncompetitive elections, corruption, lack of government transparency and unethical lobbying, all of which have led to disillusionment and a decrease in civic participation.
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Diversity Equity and Inclusion Text on Wood Block
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Advance DEI, do not retreat from it
Jan 26, 2025
- President Donald Trump has directed that employees of federal offices focused on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) be placed on paid administrative leave.
This action is part of a broader initiative led by Elon Musk, who heads the newly established Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Musk has previously criticized DEI initiatives, labeling them as detrimental.
The ongoing debate around DEI laws and programs has seen significant opposition from some Republican leaders, who argue that these initiatives may undermine merit-based systems in hiring and education, particularly for white individuals.
Trump's stance on DEI programs is having a significant impact not only within the federal government but also on American business practices, state policies, and higher education institutions.
In It is time to rethink DEI, Fulcrum co-publisher David Nevins wrote: In the coming months, The Fulcrum will reexamine the complexities of DEI. We must ask ourselves if diversity means a granting of privileges to those who are not deserving or whether it means an equality of opportunity so that our nation can merely live into the diversity that is America. As politicians will use fear to appeal to the hearts and minds of Americans, The Fulcrum will instead lead through deep inquiry and analysis.
Nevins, Kristina Becvar (co-publisher, Fulcrum), and I discussed the challenges and opportunities of diversity, equity, and inclusion in a recent episode of the Fulcrum Democracy Forum.
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- YouTubeyoutu.be
“The piece that David wrote; I saw what he saw,” said Becvar. “Instant reaction to words, and that is to me the crux of the whole debate around DEI because the term has been used by those that are looking to sew conflict and benefit from it. And we’ve gotten away from the discussion of what that (DEI) even means.”
As the persons charged with the editorial focus of the Fulcrum, we firmly believe this isn’t a time to cower to political pressure and retreat from programs necessary to ensure that institutions meet the needs of increasingly diverse populations. This is the time to advance on DEI initiatives.
I am a diversity, equity, and inclusion trainer and practitioner. As such, I share in the support and criticism of programs that, while well-intentioned and necessary, have often missed their goal. It’s been my experience that this is largely due to the short-sightedness of C-suite decision-makers who see DEI as a problem to be solved rather than an opportunity to be realized. A negative rather than a positive.
When faced with a problem, people tend to rush to fix it. That’s when mistakes are made. The intent is far from the impact. When faced with an opportunity, people tend to take a step back to strategize on how to acquire it. They invite others to do the same.
Also, initiatives fail when they’re conceptualized as superficial corporate marketing; “lipstick on a pig.”DEI initiatives should be transformative workplace culture tools examining if the status quo is reflective of and relevant to our ever changing society.
The Fulcrum welcomes the discussion and debate on redefining DEI to serve all communities best, leveraging the rich complexity of their diversity, and not just the optics of it.
David Nevins is co-publisher of The Fulcrum and co-founder and board chairman of the Bridge Alliance Education Fund.
Kristina Becvar is co-publisher of The Fulcrum and executive director of the Bridge Alliance Education Fund.
.Hugo Balta is the executive editor of the Fulcrum and a board member of the Bridge Alliance Education Fund, the parent organization of The Fulcrum. He is the publisher of the Latino News Network and a trainer with the Solutions Journalism Network.
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American at a polling booth
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To Counter Trump’s Election Denial, We Need Nonpartisan Reform
Jan 26, 2025
January 20 marked the 26th time in U.S. history that the ultimate position of power in the country transferred from one party to another. This is an awesome and unparalleled track record. The peaceful transfer of power could well be America’s greatest innovation, fundamental to our liberty and our prosperity.
But this time, power passed to a man who tried to sabotage the 2020 elections and then pardoned the massive assault on January 6th. On his first day in office, Trump paid homage to the denial of the rule of law, the essential element to the peaceful transfer of power.
It should not need saying, but the verdict of the 2020 election is absolutely clear. 63 out of 64 court challenges, along with recounts in every battleground state, all confirmed the legal certainty: Trump lost.
Insistence to the contrary projects dangerous disrespect for the law. JD Vance told the New York Times, “I think the entire post-2020 thing would have gone a lot better if there had actually been an effort to provide alternative slates of electors and to force us to have that debate… You can’t litigate these things judicially; you have to litigate them politically.” (Emphasis added.)
“Litigate politically” is an invitation to mob rule and massive disenfranchisement. As January 6, 2021, made clear, no gentlemanly debate ensues when who won an election is stripped of its legal grounding.
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The continued insistence that 2020 was stolen puts our election system under clouds of unjustified suspicion, sows discord in hundreds of communities and falsely mobilizes well-meaning citizens against a nonexistent threat. The precedent for unmitigated refusal has now been set, for the Republican Party at least, and that puts in doubt the peaceful transfer of power the next time a presidential election is close and contested.
What do we do about this now? We can start by recognizing that our election rules already involve many dangerous elements of “litigating politically” that make us a complete outlier compared with other democracies, and that must be changed.
One example is the certification of results, which in every state relies on individuals with a direct political interest in the outcome, such as secretaries of state, governors, or party-nominated canvass board members. What used to be a proforma ritual is now a target of political hijacking. In seven Colorado counties this year, Republican canvass board members voted against certifying results to score points against the secretary of state, a likely candidate for governor.
Refusal to certify happened in six states in 2020 and five in 2022.
A study of certification internationally released in 2022 found that none of the 12 peer democracies studied involved partisans in finalizing election results. Instead, these countries give courts the job of judging elections. In a disputed election, no institution is better suited to weigh evidence and render judgment.
The US is also unique in using partisan elections to choose top election officials in most states, an approach that creates at least the appearance that officials will favor their party. Every other democracy has figured out how to put neutral professionals in charge of elections; we can, too, and good ideas are already in place for doing so.
The time is right for a whole new approach to the governance of elections in America. We have a system dominated by the two parties when most voters no longer affiliate with either. We have a structure that relies on political insiders putting “country before party” when the prevailing ethos has become “to the victor belong the spoils.”
The good news is that voters from all sides strongly support less partisanship in managing elections. A 2022 MIT survey found that more than 70% of Republicans and Democrats support “only selecting election officials on a nonpartisan basis.”
Backed with this kind of bipartisan support, governance initiatives can provide a new focus for reform, rebuilding fairness and trust in elections, and fortifying the rule of law. States like Michigan and Minnesota have already passed laws that prevent potential abuse by canvass boards in the certification process, and others should follow suit.
State laboratories of democracy can explore more politically neutral ways to select chief election officers and state supreme court justices. Governance reform should also end manipulative partisan control of state ballot measures.
These efforts should take guidance from the recently celebrated life of President Carter, whose career began with a battle against ballot-stuffing Democratic party bosses in Jim Crow, Georgia. This is a reminder that the potential for abuse exists in whoever has power, from whatever party. Reform efforts must be anchored in that reality.
And it is important to acknowledge that the Harris and Biden campaigns failed in their strategy of making the 2024 election a referendum on Trump’s handling of 2020. But that fact does nothing to change our need for a system of the rule of law in elections that is protected from political manipulation. The peaceful transfer of power, so important to all Americans, now depends on it.
Kevin Johnson is the executive director of the Election Reformers Network, a national nonpartisan organization advancing common-sense reforms to protect elections from polarization. Keyssar is a Matthew W. Stirling Jr. professor of history and social policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. His work focuses on voting rights, electoral and political institutions, and the evolution of democracies.
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Group of people waving small American flags at sunset.
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Independents as peacemakers
Jan 26, 2025
In the years ahead, independents, as candidates and as citizens, should emerge as peacemakers. Even with a new administration in Washington, independents must work on a long-term strategy for themselves and for the country.
The peacemaker model stands in stark contrast to what might be called the marriage counselor model. Independent voters, on the marriage counselor model, could elect independent candidates for office or convince elected politicians to become independents in order to secure the leverage needed to force the parties to compromise with each other. On this model, independents, say six in the Senate, would be like marriage counselors because their chief function would be to put pressure on both parties to make deals, especially when it comes to major policy bills that require 60 votes in the Senate.
This pressure could even apply in the House, where the Republican Freedom Caucus may not support Speaker Johnson and mainstream Republicans on any number of the 13 appropriations bills that constitute the annual budget and where the reconciliation process enables the majority party to pass legislation with a mere majority. Still, the marriage counselor model envisions independents as using their leverage to achieve bipartisanship on Capitol Hill and with the White House.
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The peacemaker model is more ambitious. It envisions independents using leverage (via their votes), but it also involves independents inserting their own concepts, values, and feelings into the legislative process. Their goal is to be a third force on Capitol Hill and Washington in general because they would seek to forge not just a compromise between the Democrats and the Republicans -- say on climate change, guns, entitlement reform, immigration or childcare and parental leave -- but a synthesis of three distinct points of view.
The marriage counselor model of independents conceives of the independents like therapists who get the married couple to work out their difficulties with new plans, proposals, and attitudes. It is not the role of the therapist to insert his or her or their values into the therapeutic process. The peacemaker model, however, goes further. It absolutely does seek to insert the concepts, values and feelings of the independents into the legislative process. It is a peacemaker model not just in what scholars in Peace Studies call "negative peace," namely peace in the negative sense of avoiding conflict and even violence between the two major parties.
It is a peacemaker model in the positive sense of forging bills that will create new laws that will be satisfactory to all three sides and that represent a unique synthesis of three points of view. A positive peace and not merely a negative peace is, therefore, the goal of a new model in Washington that aims to substitute the goal of tripartisanship for the goal of bipartisanship. Tripartisan deliberations and decisions in Washington and not bipartisan deliberations and decisions represent the ten-year goal for the nation's capital and the country itself.
This process of societal transformation will be the final step of a 250-to-260-year process of closing the gap between the United States and the rest of the free world, where almost every democratic country has three or more political parties that have significant power -- notably in France, Germany, Italy, Japan, South Korea, the UK, and Israel. Australia, in particular, has witnessed the rise of the "Teal Independents" in recent years, providing the United States with a model to generate the rise of the "American Independents."
How precisely independents are to organize and reconcile differences amongst themselves and elect independents is an open question. I favor a view that focuses on a decentralized rather than a centralized approach. Independents need to be elected one at a time in a small number of national races -- or converted in Washington -- to create a critical mass with sufficient leverage.
The Dartmouth economist Charles Wheelan was right in "The Centrist Manifesto" that we needed a "Fulcrum Strategy" to overcome the dysfunction in Washington. But he was too ambitious to propose that a Centrist Third Party could supply the leverage. Power and ultimately positive peace will come if Americans use some of the political and military ingenuity the American Revolutionaries used to take power away from the British Crown.
In our case, the independents do not have to defeat all or even the majority or even huge numbers of Democrats and Republicans. They only need to defeat enough of them in order to have the leverage to create positive peace in Washington and the country overall.
Dave Anderson edited "Leveraging: A Political, Economic and Societal Framework," has taught at five universities and ran for the Democratic nomination for a Maryland congressional seat in 2016.
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United States trade cargo container hanging against clouds background
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Tariffs: Not a tax, and not free money
Jan 25, 2025
During the recent election season, there was much talk of Trump’s plan to lay tariffs on the importation of foreign goods. Pundits, politicians, and journalists to the left of center consistently referred to them as a tax on the American people. Many of those to the right of center, especially those of the MAGA contingent, seemed to imply they are a pain-free way for the federal government to raise money.
Some correctly said that the country essentially ran on tariffs in its early history. Alexander Hamilton, the first Treasury Secretary and arguably the godfather of our initial financial system, successfully proposed and implemented a tariff system with two goals in mind. Fund the young American government and protect young American businesses against competition from established foreign companies. The second bill signed by President George Washington was a broad tariff bill.
While an income tax was imposed during the Civil War and repealed in 1872, the Supreme Court eventually ruled it unconstitutional in 1895. The modern income tax did not come into effect until after the 16th amendment to the Constitution was ratified in 1913, granting Congress the power to levy and collect taxes on incomes without apportioning it among the states or basing it on the U.S. Census. Until then, for over 120 years, tariffs had been the federal government's primary source of income.
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While the concept of free trade and the related idea of each nation pursuing its own “comparative advantage” has been around for a long time, it did not become normalized in the United States until the mid-20th century.
Trump’s tariff proposals obviously have some protectionist sentiment about them and thus are contrary to the idea of free trade. However, he has also suggested extreme tariff proposals intended to influence the behavior of other countries, including on issues such as immigration control, and in retaliation for unfair trade practices.
Tariffs require approved legislation, but there are laws on the books that would allow Trump 47 to increase tariffs. These same laws were used by Trump 45 and Biden to impose tariffs on specific goods.
Perhaps I missed it, but I never heard a pundit, politician, or journalist providing basic information and understanding about tariffs and how they work. Contrary to those on the left, tariffs are not a direct tax on Americans, and contrary to the MAGA element of the right, they are not pain-free. Taken to an extreme, they would likely provoke similar tariffs by other countries in retaliation and could ultimately cause a global depression.
But where do they fall on that current political spectrum of being a direct tax on you versus a pain-free revenue source?
Tariffs are not a direct tax on the American consumer. They are a government-imposed cost to doing business with foreign producers. They are paid directly by the importer of applicable products, typically an American company, and not the foreign producer. At extreme levels (not just the 100% level Trump has mentioned in some cases, but even at lower rates, depending on the product), the importer will simply stop bringing the product in because it will be too expensive.
If the foreign company was able and willing to sell the affected product to the importer for, say, $100 and make a reasonable profit, while the domestic distribution system (importer, transportation, warehousing, retailing, etc.), was able to also make a reasonable profit with that core cost of $100, the entire scenario breaks down if the importer must suddenly pay $200.
If those foreign products are no longer imported, the American consumer demand will shift to competitive and substitute products made here in America. This demand applied to a lower supply will, in the short term, cause an increase in the price. It is not a tax on the consumer, but it is not pain-free either. Over time, some of this price increase will be tempered because American producers will increase their volumes in response to the higher price (and by extension, new jobs may be created). However, in the end, American consumers will pay more. [Note that essentially all government activity increases costs to the consumer, be it taxing, spending, regulating, or levying tariffs.]
What would happen with a less extreme increase in the tariff rate on a particular product? If Trump implements a 10% tariff on all foreign-produced “widgets” (or on particular widgets produced by one particular foreign country), what will happen?
Within economics, there is a concept called the price elasticity of demand. Very simplistically stated, the idea is that changes in price cause changes in consumer demand. Those changes in demand range from highly inelastic (a relatively small change in demand relative to the change in price), to highly elastic (a relatively large change in demand relative to the change in price). A product would have “unitary” elasticity if a given percentage change in price (say 10%) would cause a similar percentage change in demand. This measure is different for each product depending on its nature and depending on other market conditions. And, of course, price increases result in demand decreases (and vice versa).
It is hard to say what will happen with any given product but let’s look at a highly simplified hypothetical for a particular widget that has unitary elasticity if a 10% tariff is applied. Assuming the importer and the rest of the domestic distribution system, including the retailer, pass this increase in cost along to the consumer, demand will decline by 10%. However, foreign manufacturers do not like how this affects their volumes and profits. They may reduce their price to the importer by 3%, resulting in a net increase of 7% to the importer.
If this is passed on to the consumer, the demand now will only decrease by 7%. But the importer and the rest of the distribution system are not happy with this either and they collectively reduce their prices by 4% such that the net increase to the consumer is only 3%. Consumers then buy 3% less product, while paying 3% more for it. None of the participants in these adjustments are happy. But they all share in the cost, and yes the government collects that 10% in revenue. Domestic producers also likely increase their prices a bit and make a little more profit. We might like to think the government will reduce our taxes accordingly but don’t count on that.
In the end, reasonable tariffs are neither a direct tax on you nor a pain-free way to protect domestic companies and raise money for the government. They are a tool used by nation-states for several purposes. Any given tariff can have both positive and negative impacts.
Let's not let pundits, politicians, or journalists on either side of the aisle force their narrow views on us.
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