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JD Vance

JD Vance Tells Republicans Who America’s Real Birthright Citizens Are

US President Donald Trump

Trump’s obsessions help bury GOP chances

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Consensus Without Power: How Sortition Could Break America's Legislative Gridlock

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The Questions We Should Be Asking About the Lindsay Clancy Case

New York Is Making Childcare Affordable. Don’t Forget the People Providing It.

New York Is Making Childcare Affordable. Don’t Forget the People Providing It.

Say hello to the Daily Centrist

The Fulcrum
By The FulcrumFeb 14, 2019
The Fulcrum
The Fulcrum staff.
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There's another entrant to the market of groups that believe they have the key to making American democracy work better.

The Daily Centrist is being launched to offer news and opinion "to serve the wide plurality of Americans who identify as political independents and the even larger numbers who, regardless of party affiliation, can be considered center-right and center-left Americans in search of solutions." The audience, the editors said, would be the plurality of voters who don't affiliate as either a Democratic Party that's moved to the left or a Republican Party that's moved to the right.

"We plan to be the water cooler for that great silent majority of Americans who are underserved by political opinion – or attitude – that speaks to their sensibilities," said the editor in chief, political analyst Rick Ungar. "And we will scrutinize and criticize commentators, personalities, politicians and candidates who embrace either extreme political pole."


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Economy

What's Good for the Blue Collar Worker is Good for America

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Environment

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Humans May Start Wildfires. Climate Change Makes Them Catastrophic.
A forest fire glowing with bright orange flames and smoke at night
Photo by Egor Vikhrev on Unsplash

Humans May Start Wildfires. Climate Change Makes Them Catastrophic.

The summer of 2026 once again saw wildfire smoke from the West Coast and Midwest blanketing East Coast skies. Smoke-filled summer skies now seem to be the norm across America, and wildfire season isn’t even close to over.

The public response is also becoming normal. When investigators determine that a person started a wildfire, online chatter usually centers on the idea that humans are the cause and that climate change could not have played a role. That argument confuses the ignition source with the complex conditions that contribute to wildfire. A spark may explain where a wildfire began. It cannot, on its own, explain why flames spread so far and devastate entire communities.

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​U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth

U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth testifies during a Senate Committee on Appropriations hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., on July 21, 2026. Hegseth is crafting a strong and masculine identity for his audience as he reportedly contemplates a presidential run.

(Alex Wroblewski/AFP/Getty Images/TNS)

Politicians Can’t Just ’Give the People What They Want’

For reasons that will baffle my many detractors, I am often asked for advice about being an opinion journalist. One of my standard responses is: You have to be willing to disappoint your biggest fans.

What I mean is that if you start to see your job as telling fans what they want to hear, you risk becoming an entertainer rather than a thinker, and eventually you become a caricature. I’ve seen it happen numerous times. Patrick Buchanan was a brilliant columnist and a serious person. But over the course of his career, he listened too much to the people who said, “Go Pat, go!” and too little to friends who said, “I think that’s taking it too far.”

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White marble exterior of the United States Capitol, often called the Capitol Building, is the home of the United States Congress and the seat of the legislative branch of the U.S. federal government

Congress approval is at a record-low 10%. Moderation and consensus-building, not partisan theatrics, are how Washington gets problems solved.

Richard Sharrocks / Getty Images

Reclaiming the Politics of the Possible

Washington is stuck in a cycle of performative conflict. The incentives seem to reward outrage, not outcomes that last; purity tests, not problem‑solving. So it’s no surprise that after three shutdowns in less than a year, public approval of Congress collapsed to just 10 percent this spring. (Gallup, April 2026.) But the country we live in — where many middle-income families report persistent financial strain and businesses are navigating unprecedented technological upheaval — cannot be governed by theatrics. Breaking this cycle requires moderation, consensus‑building, and a cooperative approach to governance.

This is not a call for centrism as an ideology. Instead, this is a call for transformative leaders to embrace moderation as their governing strategy, recognizing that in a pluralistic country of nearly 350 million people durable solutions require broad and stable alliances. Ultimately, this is a call for the 240 million of us who are eligible to vote in November to elect consensus-builders instead of bomb-throwers, and healers instead of arsonists.

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