Skip to content
Project 2025
Search

Latest Stories

Follow Us:
Top Stories
Francesca Hong Gains Momentum in Wisconsin Democratic Governor’s Race

Francesca Hong Gains Momentum in Wisconsin Democratic Governor’s Race

Lawyering in a Good Cause Can Go Bad and Threaten the Rule of Law

Lawyering in a Good Cause Can Go Bad and Threaten the Rule of Law

Travis Scott, Benny Safdie, Elliot Page, Corey Hawkins, Tom Holland, Emma Thomas, Christopher Nolan, Matt Damon, Anne Hathaway, Lupita Nyong'o, Charlize Theron, John Leguizamo, Zendaya, Samantha Morton, Himesh Patel, Jon Bernthal, and Logan Marshall-Green attend the premiere of "The Odyssey" presented by Universal Pictures on July 14, 2026 in New York City.

The Odyssey Isn’t Real, But American Diversity Is

Children holding hands, walking down a school hallway with backpacks on.

After School, Before It’s Too Late for Texas Students

Why America Needs Its Nonprofits to Manage Disasters

Why America Needs Its Nonprofits to Manage Disasters

Meet the reformer: Gilda Daniels, voting rights advocate and chronicler

Gilda Daniels book launch

Gilda Daniels (right) reads from a passage of her book "Uncounted: The Crisis of Voter Suppression in America" during a launch event Jan. 28.

Tristiaña Hinton/The Fulcrum
The Fulcrum
By The FulcrumMar 20, 2020
The Fulcrum
The Fulcrum staff.
See More Writings by author

Gilda R. Daniels has spent almost three decades at the intersection of law and voting rights. Currently litigation director at the Advancement Project, a liberal nonprofit focused on advancing racial justice, she's also interim director of the group's voting rights efforts. A law professor at the University of Baltimore, she was a senior Civil Rights Division official at the Justice Department in both the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush administrations. She's become best known to the general public, though, with this year's publication of "Uncounted: The Crisis of Voter Suppression in America" (NYU Press). Her answers have been slightly edited for clarity.

What's democracy's biggest challenge, in 10 words or less?

Voter fatigue and voter suppression.

Describe your very first civic engagement.

My father was the first African-American elected to our parish's police jury, which is a governing body in Louisiana similar to a county commission. He demonstrated public service. His slogan was "A public servant, not a politician."

What was your biggest professional triumph?

Writing "Uncounted: The Crisis of Voter Suppression in America."

And your most disappointing setback?

A miscarriage in 2015.

How does your identity influence the way you go about your work?

As an African-American female who grew up in the South, I view the world through multiple intersections.

What's the best advice you've ever been given?

Don't pray and worry.

Create a new flavor for Ben & Jerry's.

Democracy's Destiny: chocolate ice cream, nuts, marshmallow cream and dark chocolate chips.

West Wing or Veep?

I have never watched an episode of Veep.

What's the last thing you do on your phone at night?

Turn it off.

What is your deepest, darkest secret?

I can SANG!


Latest news

Rebuilding America’s Federal Data System for Trust and Accuracy
Media & Technology

Rebuilding America’s Federal Data System for Trust and Accuracy

Woman struggling to pull blue donkey with rope
Ethics & Leadership

Can the Democratic Party Still Lead?

Old engraved illustration of Ulysses defying the Cyclops.
Opinion

Odysseus Reimagined: Nolan’s Epic Explores What Makes a True Hero

The Enduring Illusion of Article the first
Governance & Legislation

The Enduring Illusion of Article the first

Read More

The Democrat Is Out in Idaho Senate Race. Now It’s Independent Todd Achilles vs. Jim Risch

Todd Achilles

Obtained from Achilles' Facebook post.

The Democrat Is Out in Idaho Senate Race. Now It’s Independent Todd Achilles vs. Jim Risch

BOISE, Idaho—David Roth, the Democratic nominee for US Senate in Idaho, ended his campaign Tuesday evening, leaving independent Todd Achilles as the only well-funded challenger to Republican Sen. Jim Risch.

Roth's statement did not mention Achilles. It did not mention Risch either. Instead, the Idaho Falls consultant said he had "concluded that I can make the greatest difference by focusing my time and energy on helping Democrats win up and down the ballot."

Keep Reading Show less
Military education. Student in soldier uniform learning at wooden table indoors, selective focus

Millions join the military to afford college. This essay examines military education benefits, student debt, and why higher education shouldn't depend on military service.

Liudmila Chernetska/Getty Images

You Shouldn't Have to Go To War to Go To College

There are many reasons to join the military, but one of the most enticing is education. Indeed, a 2017 poll conducted by the Department of Defense found that 49% of Army recruits signed up to pay for their education. It makes sense. Military education packages are incredibly attractive, which is quite the recruitment carrot. For a huge number of recruits, joining the military means finding a way to pay for school they couldn’t otherwise afford. That may say less about the luster of military benefits and more about a problem in our public policy. As education scholar William Ayers wrote back in 2006, as recruitment fell short of quotas, “High schools have thus become battlefields for the hearts and minds of young people…recruiters dangle gifts and promises of future benefits before teenagers in an effort to fill the ranks of an all-volunteer military.” Is our country making it hard to get an education on purpose?

Some critics suggest military recruitment strategies have sought to weaponize poverty. By the 1980s, the term "poverty draft" had gained traction, articulating the idea that the enlisted ranks of the military were composed of young people with limited economic opportunities. There is speculation that the Pentagon even embraced programs like No Child Left Behind as part of a broader strategy to improve recruitment by targeting low-income youth. Though these may be cynical perspectives on a simple matter of correlation, it does appear that the military struggles to draw youth to join the ranks whenever more attractive alternative economic pathways emerge. After a long recruitment drought, last year’s numbers finally climbed, but Army officials link it to “a higher unemployment rate among people aged 16 to 24…” In other words, if the economy is depressed enough, as long as the military is one of the few employers still hiring, a recruitment drought won’t be so obvious.

Keep Reading Show less
Two people sitting next to each other as one person works with clay.

Global civic education helps students build trust, navigate ambiguity, and work across differences. Research shows it can strengthen civic leadership and reduce polarization.

Photo Courtesy of Tilting Futures

Why Fixing Polarization Requires Students to Cross Borders

I've been running global civic education programs for twelve years, and I keep seeing the same pattern: college-age students arrive believing they know how the world works and that their perspective is fact. Months later, after sustained global engagement, they return home fundamentally different, with their walls down and having gained a visceral understanding that their perspective is just that: a perspective, not the truth.

There's a reason this transformation matters so much at this age. This is the moment when mental models solidify into frameworks about how the world works, about who deserves trust, and about what's possible across difference. But without exposure to people and cultures that have alternative perspectives, those frameworks harden into us-versus-them certainties rather than nurture curiosity, further entrenching the polarization that is fracturing our country. Too often this polarization is framed as a knowledge problem rather than a moral perception problem.

Keep Reading Show less
Voter receives a pen from poll worker at polling station.

A civic petition calling for constitutional restraint, civil discourse, bipartisan cooperation, and equal justice to strengthen American democracy and national unity.

SDI Productions/Getty Images

A Contemporary Olive Branch Petition

To the President of the United States, the Leaders of the Congress, and Our Fellow Americans Entrusted with the Powers of Government:

When, in the ordinary course of a free republic, disagreements arise among citizens concerning the proper exercise of power, it is neither unusual nor dishonorable that earnest convictions should differ. Such diversity has long been the strength of our nation, for liberty has never depended upon unanimity of opinion, but upon mutual respect under a common Constitution.

Keep Reading Show less