Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Follow Us:
Top Stories

Project 2025: A C-SPAN interview

Beau Breslin on C-SPAN
C-CSPAN screenshot

Beau Breslin, a regular contributor to The Fulcrum, was recently interviewed on C-SPAN’s “Washington Journal” about Project 2025.

Breslin is the Joseph C. Palamountain Jr. Chair of Political Science at Skidmore College and author of “ A Constitution for the Living: Imagining How Five Generations of Americans Would Rewrite the Nation’s Fundamental Law.” He writes “ A Republic, if we can keep it,” a Fulcrum series to assist American citizens on the bumpy road ahead this election year. By highlighting components, principles and stories of the Constitution, Breslin hopes to remind us that the American political experiment remains, in the words of Alexander Hamilton, the “most interesting in the world.”


Most recently Breslin has also contributed to The Fulcrum’s 30-part series offering a nonpartisan counter to Project 2025, a conservative guideline to reforming government and policymaking during a second Trump administration. The Fulcrum's cross-partisan analysis of Project 2025 relies on unbiased critical thinking, reexamines outdated assumptions, and uses reason, scientific evidence, and data in analyzing and critiquing Project 2025.

While an in-depth analysis of what works and doesn't work in our democracy is a laudable and much-needed task, unfortunately Project 2025 is a biased political report designed to build a case for conservative solutions. The Fulcrum believes that a version of Project 2025 approached from a cross-partisan perspective, void of pre-determined left or right solutions, would serve as a guide for citizens and our elected representatives to ensure the healthy democratic republic we all desire.

Breslin’s interview on C SPAN offered an in-depth overview of the 990-page Project 2025 report and is a much-needed scholarly analysis of the Heritage Foundation’s comprehensive, far-reaching proposal.

In the interview, Breslin discusses the many controversial components of Project 2025, including its neo-isolationist and Christian nationalist temperament. He also discusses what Project 2025 would mean for America and how it promotes a degree of social, racial and religious intolerance. Callers to the show examined topics ranging from foreign aid to DEI policies, the proposed closing of the Department of Education and the reasons former President Donald rump might want to distance himself from the project. Consistent with the mission of The Fulcrum, Breslin tries to find common ground in a polarized and difficult political environment.


Read More

What Really Guides Lawmakers’ Decisions on Capitol Hill
us a flag on white concrete building

What Really Guides Lawmakers’ Decisions on Capitol Hill

The following article is excerpted from "Citizen’s Handbook for Influencing Elected Officials."

Despite the efforts of high school social studies teachers, parents, journalists, and political scientists, the workings of our government remain a mystery to most Americans. Caricatures, misconceptions, and stereotypes dominate citizens’ views of Congress, contributing to our reluctance to engage in our democracy. In reality, the system works pretty much as we were taught in third grade. Congress is far more like Schoolhouse Rock than House of Cards. When all the details are burned away, legislators generally follow three voices when making a decision. One member of Congress called these voices the “Three H’s”: Heart, Head, and Health—meaning political health.

Keep ReadingShow less
Illustration of someone holding a strainer, and the words "fakes," "facts," "news," etc. going through it.

Trump-era misinformation has pushed American politics to a breaking point. A Truth in Politics law may be needed to save democracy.

Getty Images, SvetaZi

The Need for a Truth in Politics Law: De-Frauding American Politics

“Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?” With those words in 1954, Army lawyer Joseph Welch took Senator Joe McCarthy to task and helped end McCarthy’s destructive un-American witch hunt. The time has come to say the same to Donald Trump and his MAGA allies and stop their vile perversion of our right to free speech.

American politics has always been rife with misleading statements and, at times, outright falsehoods. Mendacity just seems to be an ever-present aspect of politics. But with the ascendency of Trump, and especially this past year, things have taken an especially nasty turn, becoming so aggressive and incendiary as to pose a real threat to the health and well-being of our nation’s democracy.

Keep ReadingShow less
Silence, Signals, and the Unfinished Story of the Abandoned Disability Rule

Waiting for the Door to Open: Advocates and older workers are left in limbo as the administration’s decision to abandon a harsh disability rule exists only in private assurances, not public record.

AI-created animation

Silence, Signals, and the Unfinished Story of the Abandoned Disability Rule

We reported in the Fulcrum on November 30th that in early November, disability advocates walked out of the West Wing, believing they had secured a rare reversal from the Trump administration of an order that stripped disability benefits from more than 800,000 older manual laborers.

The public record has remained conspicuously quiet on the matter. No press release, no Federal Register notice, no formal statement from the White House or the Social Security Administration has confirmed what senior officials told Jason Turkish and his colleagues behind closed doors in November: that the administration would not move forward with a regulation that could have stripped disability benefits from more than 800,000 older manual laborers. According to a memo shared by an agency official and verified by multiple sources with knowledge of the discussions, an internal meeting in early November involved key SSA decision-makers outlining the administration's intent to halt the proposal. This memo, though not publicly released, is said to detail the political and social ramifications of proceeding with the regulation, highlighting its unpopularity among constituents who would be affected by the changes.

Keep ReadingShow less
How Trump turned a January 6 death into the politics of ‘protecting women’

A memorial for Ashli Babbitt sits near the US Capitol during a Day of Remembrance and Action on the one year anniversary of the January 6, 2021 insurrection.

(John Lamparski/NurPhoto/AP)

How Trump turned a January 6 death into the politics of ‘protecting women’

In the wake of the insurrection at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, President Donald Trump quickly took up the cause of a 35-year-old veteran named Ashli Babbitt.

“Who killed Ashli Babbitt?” he asked in a one-sentence statement on July 1, 2021.

Keep ReadingShow less