Skip to content
Project 2025
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories
Supreme Court

MAGA Supreme Court Justices Show Their True Colors by Joining Trump’s Attack on the Federal Judiciary

Charlie Kirk’s Death Sparks Martyrdom Narrative Amid Rising Political Violence

Charlie Kirk’s Death Sparks Martyrdom Narrative Amid Rising Political Violence

How To Fix Gerrymandering: A Fair-Share Rule for Congressional Redistricting

How To Fix Gerrymandering: A Fair-Share Rule for Congressional Redistricting

Examining Florida’s Controversial New Immigration Bills: SB 2-C and SB 4-C

Examining Florida’s Controversial New Immigration Bills: SB 2-C and SB 4-C

The silence is deafening

The silence is deafening

Justin Nelson, joined by fellow members of the Dominion Voting Systems legal team, speaks to members of the media outside the Leonard Williams Justice Center in Wilmington, Delaware, on April 18, 2023. - Vote machine maker Dominion and Fox News settled a defamation case over falsehoods about the 2020 presidential election aired on the conservative TV network, a US judge announced Tuesday.

Photo by ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images
David L. Nevins
By David L. NevinsApr 19, 2023
David L. Nevins
David L. Nevins serves as publisher of The Fulcrum. Additionally, Nevins serves as co-founder and Board Chairman of the Bridge Alliance. Nevins brings business acumen, vision and a tireless this-must-and-can-be-done zeal to the burgeoning movement to bridge divides to transform the political process. As a business leader, Nevins excels at building bridges between people and organizations from the right, left and center for civilized conversation and then action. He co-founded the Bridge Alliance because, as he says, “No matter how well managed and how well funded anyone organization is, significant political reform will not happen without an alliance to further collaborative interactions. Together we can and will raise the collective impact of all.” He is a member of the Aspen Institute Society of Fellows, with a focus on the Aspen Rodel Fellowship in Public Leadership, he established and continues to work with The Nevins Democracy Leaders program at Penn State University. Nevins graduated with honors in economics from Penn State in 1969 and received an M.B.A. in finance from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania in 1971.
See More Writings by author

Nevins is co-publisher of The Fulcrum and co-founder and board chairman of the Bridge Alliance Education Fund.

At first when I heard the news of the unprecedented settlement in the Fox News defamation case of nearly $800 million I hoped this was a victory for democracy.

This is the first time anyone has been held accountable for the lies and deception that has resulted in 70% of Republicans believing that the presidential election of 2020 was a fraud and that Donald Trump actually won.

Yet despite the financial accountability, costing nearly $800 million and the innocuous statement that Fox News made as part of the settlement deal stating that, “We acknowledge the Court’s rulings finding certain claims about Dominion to be false,” they are not required to make any retraction or apology, much less exhibit any remorse. Thus it is unlikely that the Fox News marketing strategy of spinning news to what their audience desires will change.

At 4:00 p.m. shortly after the settlement announcement, all the other networks and the news websites, not affiliated with Fox News reported on the settlement in great detail as the lead story. It wasn’t until several hours later that in what amounted to roughly 6 minutes of coverage that it was even mentioned on Fox News. At 4:00 p.m., The Five show on Fox News in one full hour didn’t even mention the settlement. At 5:00 p.m. during Bret Baier’s one hour show on Fox News the story was still not mentioned. It wasn’t until four hours after the announcement that Fox.news.com finally made mention of the settlement.

Fox News is the top-rated cable network, averaging 2.5 million viewers in prime time, yet these viewers will hear virtually nothing in what is a critically important story that impacts the future of our democracy. Unless, of course, they watch other news, too.

By definition failing to tell the full story about the largest public defamation case of all time, a settlement that paid Dominion six times the current value of the company, while technically not a lie, is a lie of omission with serious consequences for the future.

It is important for Americans to understand that there is no America without democracy, no democracy without voting, and no informed voting without respectful debate. Unfortunately, unless advertisers stop supporting Fox News a vast swath of the American public will not learn the truth about the election of 2020 and our democracy will suffer.

During this trying time for our democracy, The Fulcrum takes our responsibility more seriously than ever to keep our audience informed so they can collectively learn and then act to repair our democracy and make it live and work in our everyday lives. The people and organizations we cover represent all walks of life, political parties, races, identities, and religions. It is our responsibility to raise the voices of Americans who believe that what we have in common is stronger than what separates us, and to encourage them to act with conviction.

We, the people, are stronger if we work together with the full understanding that we won’t agree on everything. And that’s the point. Democracy is a process for managing disagreements, sharing power and providing consent of the governed. Fox News owes their viewers more.

Latest news

President Donald Trump standing next to a chart in the Oval Office.
Business & Democracy

Investor-in-Chief: Trump’s Business Deals, Loyalty Scorecards, and the Rise of Neo-Socialist Capitalism

Just the Facts: Congress at a Crossroads on Immigration—Legal Status, Secure Borders, and What Comes Next
Governance & Legislation

Just the Facts: Congress at a Crossroads on Immigration—Legal Status, Secure Borders, and What Comes Next

Conviction Is No Excuse: An Open Letter to My Fellow Leftists
Bridging & Common Ground

Conviction Is No Excuse: An Open Letter to My Fellow Leftists

Read More

Cuando El Idioma Se Convierte En Blanco, La Democracia Pierde Su Voz

Hands holding bars over "Se Habla Español" sign

AI generated

Cuando El Idioma Se Convierte En Blanco, La Democracia Pierde Su Voz

On Monday, the Supreme Court issued a 6–3 decision from its “shadow docket” that reversed a lower-court injunction and gave federal immigration agents in Los Angeles the green light to resume stops based on four deeply troubling criteria:

  • Apparent race or ethnicity
  • Speaking Spanish or accented English
  • Presence in a particular location
  • Type of work

The case, Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo, is still working its way through the courts. But the message from this emergency ruling is unmistakable: the constitutional protections that once shielded immigrant communities from racial profiling are now conditional—and increasingly fragile.

Keep ReadingShow less
A person sits in their kitchen, holding and looking at receipts in one hand, with a calculator in their other hand.

Rising debt, stagnant wages, and soaring costs leave families living paycheck to paycheck in 2025.

Getty Images, Grace Cary

Running on Empty: America’s Fragile Middle Class

The Vanishing Middle Class

In the late 1970s, my mom worked as a nurse and became the family's breadwinner after my dad developed serious heart disease. His doctors told him to avoid stress, even driving, for fear it would be fatal. Yet on her single income, we managed what was then considered a solidly middle-class life. Stability was assumed, even if one parent couldn’t work.

That assumption has vanished. Today, surveys show that roughly half to two-thirds of Americans live paycheck to paycheck (People’s Policy Project). A stricter Bank of America analysis finds that about one in four households spends nearly all their income on essentials (Axios). Whether the number is one-in-two or one-in-four, millions of Americans are financially on the edge.

Keep ReadingShow less
An oversized ballot box surrounded by people.

Young people worldwide form new parties to reshape politics—yet America’s two-party system blocks them.

Getty Images, J Studios

No Country for Young Politicians—and How To Fix That

In democracies around the world, young people have started new political parties whenever the establishment has sidelined their views or excluded them from policymaking. These parties have sometimes reinvigorated political competition, compelled established parties to take previously neglected issues seriously, or encouraged incumbent leaders to find better ways to include and reach out to young voters.

In Europe, a trio in their twenties started Volt in 2017 as a pan-European response to Brexit, and the party has managed to win seats in the European Parliament and in some national legislatures. In Germany, young people concerned about climate change created Klimaliste, a party committed to limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, as per the Paris Agreement. Although the party hasn’t won seats at the federal level, they have managed to win some municipal elections. In Chile, leaders of the 2011 student protests, who then won seats as independent candidates, created political parties like Revolución Democrática and Convergencia Social to institutionalize their movements. In 2022, one of these former student leaders, Gabriel Boric, became the president of Chile at 36 years old.

Keep ReadingShow less
© Copyright 2025