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Protesters gather at the Wisconsin State Capitol, holding signs.

Trump's Water Policies Put America's Drinking Water at Risk

America at 250: A Country in Distress

America at 250: A Country in Distress

Spectators on a stadium with USA playing.

Democracy Needs Citizens, Not Fans

a house made of brown cardboard in a person's hands.

Homelessness Just Declined in the U.S.–Trump’s Plans Will Take Us Backwards.

Video: SNF Agora Symposium on Civic Health Part 1: Keynote by Audrey Tang

Video: SNF Agora Symposium on Civic Health Part 1: Keynote by Audrey Tangplay icon
2022-06-22 Keynote at SNF Agora Symposium on Civic Health
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The Fulcrum
By The FulcrumJul 12, 2022
The Fulcrum
The Fulcrum staff.
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Audrey Tang is Taiwan’s digital minister in charge of social innovation. Tang served on the Taiwan National Development Council’s Open Data and 12-year Basic Education Curriculum committees and led the country’s first e-Rulemaking project. Tang worked as a consultant with Apple on computational linguistics, with Oxford University Press on crowd lexicography, and with Socialtext on social interaction design. Tang also contributes to g0v (“gov zero”), a vibrant community focusing on creating tools for the civil society, with the call to “fork the government.


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“A Huge Grab of Power”: Trump Is Defying Congress on Foreign Aid
Photo illustration by Mark Harris for ProPublica. Photos by Getty Images.

“A Huge Grab of Power”: Trump Is Defying Congress on Foreign Aid

After the Trump administration upended the world’s largest foreign aid provider last year, terminating thousands of programs and firing nearly all of its staff, its plan for the agency was clear: Eliminate it entirely.

But because it is a congressionally created agency, President Donald Trump needed lawmakers’ permission to do so. So this year, Trump officials asked Congress for permission to shutter the U.S. Agency for International Development and dramatically reduce federal spending on food, medicine and lifesaving work around the world.

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President's Trump National Address On Iran Is Watched By New Yorkers In Manhattan

People watch as US President Donald Trump makes a national address on television at Brooklyn Diner Times Square on April 1, 2026 in New York City. US President Donald Trump's address to the nation is expected to lay out the framework for ending the conflict in Iran.

Adam Gray / Getty Images

When Duty Isn’t a Priority: A Megalomaniac President Abuses the Nation

What does it mean when the presidential oath becomes a performance instead of a promise? It means the nation is left vulnerable to a leader whose actions suggest that personal power may matter more than the Constitution he swore to defend.

He raised his right hand and swore to “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution.” Yet millions of Americans have watched a president whose conduct repeatedly raises doubts about his commitment to that oath. His attacks on constitutional limits, his hostility toward oversight, and his tendency to treat institutional constraints as obstacles to personal objectives have led many to conclude that constitutional duty is no longer his governing priority. When the oath becomes symbolic rather than binding, the consequences are carried by the public.

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Why Democrats Are Running Against the ‘Epstein Class’

Graham Platner, the Democratic Senate nominee, is running a populist campaign with a focus on corruption and influence.

CJ Gunther/Getty Images

Why Democrats Are Running Against the ‘Epstein Class’

After Graham Platner secured the Democratic nomination for Senate in Maine, his first ad of the general election didn’t mention his opponent, Sen. Susan Collins, or the Republican Party. It focused on the late disgraced financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, and who he called the “Epstein class” of elites in both parties.

“Some of the most powerful Democrats and Republicans in the country were on Epstein island,” Platner said in the ad, referring to Epstein’s former residence in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Platner, whose economic-populist campaign combined with controversial online statements and a since-removed tattoo of a Nazi symbol have drawn national attention, framed himself in opposition to this elite class.

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Trump’s second term is a murky, embarrassing and costly spectacle

U.S. President Donald Trump displays a graph entitled "Our Pool is Bigger than Skyscrapers" as he speaks on his renovations to the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool during an event in the Oval Office of the White House on June 3, 2026, in Washington, D.C.

(Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images/TNS)

Trump’s second term is a murky, embarrassing and costly spectacle

Every time I get asked by a TV anchor what I think about the drama of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, my favorite “historical” headline from the Onion comes to mind: “World’s Largest Metaphor Hits Ice-Berg.”

And every time I do, I hear from defenders of the Trump administration complaining about the disproportionate media coverage of what should be a very minor story in the grand sweep of things. They have a point. President Trump has done some good work rehabbing Washington, D.C., where I live. But the Reflecting Pool has bedeviled him. Algae keep returning to the pool, despite the administration’s best efforts, and attempts to remedy the problem have yielded further problems.

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