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Podcast: Why politics makes us depressed — and what we can do about it

Podcast: Why politics makes us depressed — and what we can do about it

Many of us can conjure moments when politics made us feel sad. But how often do those feelings translate into more serious forms of depression or other mental health issues? And if politics does make us depressed, what do we do about it?

Christopher Ojeda has spent the past few years exploring these questions and he joins the Democracy Works podcast to talk about the relationship between depression and democracy.


Ojeda is an assistant professor of political science at the University of California Merced and author of the forthcoming book The Sad Citizen: How Politics Makes Us Depressed. He visited Penn State to give a sneak preview of this important work on the relationship between democratic engagement and individual mental health. Ojeda discussed how to meet the demands that democracy places on us without sacrificing our mental health in the process.

Listen here.

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Project 2025: Anti-Abortion Blueprint Quietly Taking Hold

A stethoscope and gavel.

Getty Images, ATU Images

Project 2025: Anti-Abortion Blueprint Quietly Taking Hold

Last spring and summer, The Fulcrum published a 30-part series on Project 2025. Now that Donald Trump’s second term has started, Part 2 of the series has commenced.

While the national spotlight often falls on state-level abortion bans or Supreme Court rulings, a quieter but more transformative effort is underway in Washington. In his second term, President Donald Trump is not simply revisiting past culture war battles—he’s enacting a structural overhaul of federal reproductive health policy, rooted in a sweeping plan known as Project 2025.

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Chicago Head Start Programs Face Uncertainty After Regional Office Closure

Morning drop-off at the Carole Robertson Center for Learning.

Claire Murphy

Chicago Head Start Programs Face Uncertainty After Regional Office Closure

ALBANY PARK – The laughter of preschool children permeates the hallways of the Carole Robertson Center for Learning on a sunny Thursday morning in Albany Park.

Teachers line their students up outside classrooms, counting names off one by one. Children congregate by their playmats and colorful rugs, about to be served breakfast.

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Man looking at stocks on his phone. Stock market.

As Trump pushes disruption, the markets push back.

Getty Images, Alistair Berg

The Markets Strike Back: Why Trump’s Economic Fantasies Keep Crashing into Reality

Trump may have won the election, but he’s losing the markets. In just 100 days, Wall Street has erased nearly $6 trillion in global equity value, according to Bloomberg data cited in The Guardian. The S&P 500 has logged one of its worst openings to a presidential term since the Nixon years. And fund managers—the real-world referees of economic confidence—are sending a message Congress seems unwilling to deliver: enough.

While Trump’s second term has been marked by a tsunami of executive orders, tariff threats, and regulatory purges, the financial markets are refusing to play along. From panicked sell-offs to jittery consumer sentiment and retreating business investment, U.S. capital is staging its own quiet rebellion. Consumer confidence has dropped to its lowest level since 2020, with Americans’ outlook on jobs, income, and business conditions sinking to a 13-year low, according to The Conference Board.

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Who Really Pays for Congress? Local Donors All but Disappear in 2024

Hundred dollar bills.

Giorgio Trovato on Unsplash

Who Really Pays for Congress? Local Donors All but Disappear in 2024

WASHINGTON, D.C. - There is an old saying: All politics is local. However, many voters may get the impression this is becoming less and less a reality -- particularly in US House and Senate elections where candidates are elected to represent specific districts or states, but campaign to a national audience.

This is because local influence in the most contested races is dying out -- a statement not contrived from opinion, but fact.

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