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Democracy 21

Democracy 21 and the Democracy 21 Education Fund work to strengthen the integrity and fairness of our democracy and to increase the role of citizens in our political process. The organization brings unique policy and litigation experience and expertise to campaign finance and democracy issues, and to related government integrity, transparency and accountability issues. Since we began in 1997, the organization has played a leading national role in the efforts to address the nation's campaign finance problems through public education, litigation, and other efforts. D21 President Fred Wertheimer has played a key role in every major campaign finance reform and ethics battle in Congress since the post-Watergate reforms in the 1970s and has participated as a lawyer in every major Supreme Court campaign finance case during this period. Democracy 21 manages a coalition of reform groups that meet regularly to develop approaches and strategies for promoting democracy reforms.


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America at 250 Needs a First-Rung Compact

A country asking what it wants to become over its next 250 years should pay close attention to the first opportunity it gives its young adults to become useful, trusted and independent.

The Fulcrum’s Letters to America project has deliberately elevated voices ages 14 to 30 as the generation carrying the American story forward. That civic invitation deserves an economic counterpart: a credible path into the work where young adults gain responsibility, judgment and a stake in institutions.

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Diverse People At Voting Booth. Vote Here Elections Sign

A political scientist examines how automatic voter registration is quietly turning non-affiliation into America's largest voting bloc.

AndreyPopov/Getty Images

When Neither Party Is the Default: Rethinking Representation As America’s Electorate Changes

For most of my career as a political scientist, representation was the central theme of my teaching and research. Early on, I studied how legislators understood their responsibilities to constituents — whether they saw themselves as delegates carrying out constituent mandates, trustees exercising independent judgment, or politicos combining both. That work asked a question that still matters: What does it mean to represent the public in a changing democracy?

Today I find myself asking a related question: What happens when the electorate changes but the institutions built to represent it do not?

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“We Will Not Let This Destroy Our Sacred Sites”: Indigenous Leaders Fight Trump Administration’s Border Wall

Lorraine Marquez Eiler, a Hia-C’ed O’odham elder, listens as Tohono O'odham Chairman Verlon Jose speaks during a news conference at the Quitobaquito Springs site on Monday, Aug. 24, 2026.

Stephanie Casanova

“We Will Not Let This Destroy Our Sacred Sites”: Indigenous Leaders Fight Trump Administration’s Border Wall

Standing near the pond at Quitobaquito Springs, Lorraine Marquez Eiler, a Hia-Ced O’odham elder, shared how her ancestors held ceremonies at the sacred site — a desert oasis in a national park that the federal government is set to bulldoze for a new border wall.

She pulled out a photo of her great-great grandparents and her great-grandparents, who would walk about 50 miles through the Sonoran Desert to the springs. The O’odham call the water flow A’al Vaipia. She showed the image of her ancestors to a group that included Indigenous leaders and a U.S. congressional representative — all there on Monday to condemn the border wall construction.

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