Skip to content
Project 2025
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories
USA Presidential voters on electoral college map

The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact Federalism at Its Best

​People arrive at a polling location on the first day of early voting in Texas

Early voting records should scare GOP

​Border patrol SUV

How Border Policies Are Reshaping South Texas Politics

Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico

Are Independent Voters About to Flip Texas?

US Senate candidate Dan Osborn

7 Independent Campaigns to Watch in the Final Days of the Midterms

Ed Helms wants to save the ... gerrymanderers?

Ed Helms gerrymandering video
The Fulcrum
By The FulcrumMay 03, 2021
The Fulcrum
The Fulcrum staff.
See More Writings by author

As states begin to map out congressional and legislative district lines based on the new census data, the topic of gerrymandering will take center stage in the coming weeks.

With that in mind, we wanted to share this satirical two-minute video, "Save The Gerrymanderers," courtesy of RepresentUs. The video features actor Ed Helms from "The Office" as he highlights the serious threat gerrymandering poses to voters nationwide.

Ed Helms: Gerrymandering is like... really badwww.youtube.com

RepresentUs is the nation's largest grassroots anti-corruption campaign, bringing together conservatives, progressives, and everyone in between to pass anti-corruption laws in cities and states to stop political bribery, end secret money, and fix our broken elections.


Latest news

woman enters a building to vote
Elections

Political Accountability Begins Before Election Day

Nigeria flag, elections, ballot box, casting vote.
Elections

As Nigeria Prepares to Vote, Years of U.S. Democracy Support Face a New Test

Headshots of people
Elections

Taxpayer-Funded, Closed to Millions: The Growing Push to Reform Kentucky’s Primaries

Read More

A male senior stands in the shadow of a Social Security card with bite missing.

Social Security faces automatic cuts in 2032 and Medicare in 2033. New polling suggests that gives Democrats a powerful election issue. Here’s the case.

DNY59 / Getty Images

Will the Debt Crisis Engineered by Republicans Succeed in Cutting Social Security and Medicare?

Overview

The Republican Party’s long game to reduce administrative state entitlement spending centers on creating a debt crisis to provide an excuse for limiting such spending. It may soon pay off. That strategy involved a quarter-century of engineered tax cuts responsible for the stunning rise in sovereign U.S. debt, threatening an eventual economic crisis.

Social Security benefits are projected under current law to be automatically cut in 2032. And Medicare benefits are projected to be automatically cut in 2033. Congressional Republicans intend for those automatic cuts to occur, opposing new taxes to prevent cuts. And they are using the ballooning national debt as an excuse to also oppose new general revenue spending to prevent benefit cuts.

Keep ReadingShow less
​Chinese President Xi Jinping (L) and U.S. President Donald Trump followed by Chinese first lady Peng Liyuan and U.S. first lady Melania Trump arrive for a state dinner at the White House.

Chinese President Xi Jinping (L) and U.S. President Donald Trump followed by Chinese first lady Peng Liyuan and U.S. first lady Melania Trump arrive for a state dinner in the East Room of the White House on September 24, 2026 in Washington, DC.

Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

When Leaders Disagree, Ceremony Plays an Important Role

When Chinese President Xi Jinping arrived at the White House on 24 September, the U.S. welcomed him with an elaborate display of ceremony. The Army Herald Trumpets sounded a fanfare, the Chinese and American national anthems were played, and the Old Guard Fife and Drum Corps performed. A military review was followed by a flyover involving a B-2 bomber and four F-22 fighter jets, according to the White House. It was an extraordinary production for two countries that still disagree on some of the most important issues in international politics.

Talks between President Donald Trump and Xi touched on trade, artificial intelligence and Taiwan. The visit was marked by warm words and some signs of cooperation, but it did not erase the fundamental competition between the United States and China. So why was all this ceremony staged? It is tempting to dismiss political pomp as mere window dressing: an expensive historical relic surrounding the serious business taking place behind closed doors. As a music historian, however, I think this misunderstands what ceremony does. Ceremony can become particularly valuable when words alone are not enough.

Keep ReadingShow less
Americans Voting in an Election

Americans Voting in an Election

Getty Images

Voting Is Not Just a Privilege It Is Every Citizens’ Responsibility

Despite the consistent determinations that US elections are secure across the country and there is virtually no evidence of non-citizens voting, in reports released as recently as September 2026; President Trump has doubled down on his claims that voter fraud is a major problem in America and on October 20th, he announced a new $25 Million Fraud Whistleblower program to be administered by the Department of Justice.

This announcement achieves a variety of the president’s goals: (i) It intentionally perpetuates the misinformation, that voter fraud is a serious problem in the United States; (ii) it undermines the trust in the voting systems, as well as in the states administering the elections; (iii) it fosters distrust amongst neighbors, who are more likely to suspect people of color and report them for a reward. This has the concomitant benefit of (iv) intimidating people who are in fear of going to the polls and (v) It gives the illusion that the federal government is prepared to give away more free money (along with the Tariff rebate checks, the Trump Accounts, the DOGE dividend, the direct payments for healthcare and the $5,000 for supporting GOP midterm candidates.)

Keep ReadingShow less
Capitol building with American flag behind it

Political Polarization and Extremism

Getty Images

Both Parties Have Forgotten How to Lose: It’s Time for Guardrails

On November 3 Americans vote in the midterm elections, and the most important question may be whether the losers accept the result. A Pew survey this summer found that just 55 percent of Americans are confident the midterms will be run fairly and accurately, down from 64 percent in 2022. The partisan detail is more revealing. Since 2024, Republican confidence has risen and Democratic confidence has fallen from 77 percent to 58 percent. Trust in the referee now depends on who holds power.

Democracy rests on a kind of sportsmanship agreement. The theologian Reinhold Niebuhr put it well: man’s capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but his inclination to injustice makes it necessary. B. R. Ambedkar, the chief architect of India’s constitution, called democracy a method of bringing revolutionary change without bloodshed. Both understood that the system works only if the losing side agrees to try again next time instead of burning down the field. Americans in both parties are forgetting how to do that.

Keep ReadingShow less
© Copyright 2026