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Podcast: Democracy in danger

Podcast: Democracy in danger

Education is the subject this week on "Democracy in Danger." You’ve heard all about attacks on the teaching of racism and slavery, about the banning of books on the Holocaust and gender identity, about Florida’s “don’t say gay” bill. Public schools are ground zero in the battle over American civic life. But this is nothing new, historian Natalia Petrzela says. She locates the roots of such controversies in the cultural upheavals of the 1960s that continue to play out today, in a climate of discontent muddled by pandemic anxieties.


S4 E11. Learning Curbed

S4 E11. Learning Curbed

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Trump Administration Stifles U.S. Embassies Abroad
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Trump Administration Stifles U.S. Embassies Abroad

WASHINGTON – Since his return to office in January, President Donald Trump has ushered in an era of enormous upheaval in the federal government: from dismantling the U.S. Agency for International Development in early February to the recent announcement of extensive tariffs. But amid these sweeping changes, the quiet change in U.S. embassy policies is going largely unnoticed.

Since Trump’s inauguration, embassies have largely avoided drawing undue attention from the Oval Office. Under orders from Washington, they’ve avoided contact with the press and visiting Americans, and in at least one case, canceled a long-planned embassy appointment with visiting American students without explanation.

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Project 2025, Phase II: The Bureaucracy

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Project 2025, Phase II: The Bureaucracy

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

To no one’s surprise, President Trump reinstated his provocative “Schedule F”program as soon as he reentered the Oval Office. The policy that allows a president to redefine—and thus fire— executive branch personnel at will and replace them with loyalists, partisans, and patrons, was controversial when Trump first introduced it in October 2020. That was a mere two weeks before his failed reelection bid and only three months before his 2021 departure from the White House, scarcely enough runway to get the program off the ground.

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Complaint Filed to Ethics Officials Regarding Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick
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Complaint Filed to Ethics Officials Regarding Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick

On Friday, March 21, the Campaign Legal Center (CLC) filed a complaint with the Office of Government Ethics (OGE) related to U.S. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick urging the purchase of Tesla stock on March 19th.

CLC is a nonpartisan legal organization dedicated to solving the challenges facing American democracy. Its mission is to fight for every American’s freedom to vote and participate meaningfully in the democratic process, particularly Americans who have faced political barriers because of race, ethnicity, or economic status.

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Understanding the Debate on Presidential Immunity

The U.S. White House.

Getty Images, Caroline Purser

Understanding the Debate on Presidential Immunity

Presidential Immunity: History and Background

Presidential immunity is the long-standing idea that the president of the United States has exemption from liability or legal proceedings for acts related to the duties of presidential office. Contrary to popular belief, presidential immunity is not explicitly enumerated in the Constitution; only sitting members of Congress are explicitly granted judicial immunity through the Constitution’s Speech or Debate Clause. Rather, the concept of presidential immunity has arisen through the Department of Justice’s longstanding policy against prosecuting presidents in office and the Supreme Court’s interpretation of Article II, which has developed through a number of Supreme Court cases dating back to 1867.

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