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Video: Andrew Yang and Charlie Dent on the future of America's political parties

Andrew Yang and Charlie Dent on the future of America's political parties

Andrew Yang and Charlie Dent agree that something needs to change when it comes to America's political parties and its two-party system, but have different ideas about what that change should be. They discuss those ideas in a conversation moderated by McCourtney Institute for Democracy Communications Specialist Jenna Spinelle.

Charlie Dent is the McCourtney Institute for Democracy’s fall 2021 visiting fellow and spent seven terms in Congress representing Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley. Andrew Yang ran for president in 2020 and mayor of New York City earlier this year. Most recently, he founded the Forward Party, a movement that brings together people interested in solving America’s problems, debating ideas in good faith, and advocating for policies like open primaries and ranked-choice voting.

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A close up of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement badge.

As part of the Trump Administration's many moves toward tackling the United States’ ‘immigrant crisis,’ the DOJ recently announced a prioritization of denaturalization procedures.

Getty Images, Tennessee Witney

Maybe I Will ‘Go Back to Where I Came From’

As part of the Trump Administration's many moves toward tackling the United States’ ‘immigrant crisis,’ the DOJ recently announced a prioritization of denaturalization procedures, a move that some migrant support organizations recognize as setting a dangerous precedent. But that’s not all, the Trump administration has also requested over $175 billion, which will be divided between Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Customs and Border Protection (CBP), detention centers, courts, among other things.

It seems that even those of us who have gone through the naturalization process are at risk. No one is truly safe. It doesn’t matter if you are doing things “the right way.” They don’t want us here. It was never about legality.

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elections
Report: Party control over election certification poses risks to the future of elections
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The Trump Administration’s Efforts To Undermine Election Integrity

The administration’s deployment of the military in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., on a limited basis tests using the military to overthrow a loss in the midterm elections. A big loss will stymie Project 2025, and impeachment may perhaps loom.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and the president have said L.A. is “prelude to what is planned across the country,” according to U.C. Berkeley law professor Erwin Chemerinsky. Chemerinsky reports that on June 8, “Trump said, ‘Well, we’re gonna have troops everywhere.’” The Secretary of Homeland Security recently announced that in L.A., “Federal authorities were not going away but planned to stay and increase operations to ‘liberate’ the city from its ‘socialist’ leadership.”

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Is Trump the Wizard of Oz? Behind the Curtain of Power, Illusion, and a Constitutional Crisis
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Is Trump the Wizard of Oz? Behind the Curtain of Power, Illusion, and a Constitutional Crisis

“He who saves his Country does not violate any law.”

In February 2025, Donald Trump posted a quote attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte on Truth Social, generating alarm among constitutional experts.

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A Wealthy Congress Doesn’t Reflect American Constituents

US Capitol

Samuel Corum/Getty Images

A Wealthy Congress Doesn’t Reflect American Constituents

Imagine being told from a young age that your life is already written: the jobs you’ll hold, the obstacles you’ll face, the limits you’ll never cross. What you’re born into is what your life will be. For millions of Americans making a low wage, that’s the reality. Democracy, in theory, is supposed to offer a way out — a chance to shape your own future. That’s the “American dream.” But for too many, it remains just a promise, out of reach. When children grow up believing their circumstances are permanent, they inherit a cycle instead of a chance.

I know this tension firsthand. On paper, I might look like I fit the mold of opportunity: white-passing, educated, and building a career. But beneath the surface, my story goes beyond that. I grew up in a low-income, mixed-race household with a Hispanic father and a white American mother. In my family, the paths laid out were often blue-collar jobs, teen pregnancy, addiction, incarceration, or worse. None of my three sisters graduated from high school, and no one in my immediate family attended college. I became the exception — not because the system was designed for me but because I found a way through it.

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