Congressional pages carry electoral votes into a joint session of Congress in January 2017.
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Arguments or debates, disputes or conflicts, verbal clashes. Angry men and women roar at each other
I just listened to political scientist Lilliana Mason challenge one of the most familiar explanations of what is wrong with American politics.
We are constantly told that America suffers from polarization. Republicans and Democrats have moved too far apart. They distrust each other, increasingly regard one another as enemies, and have lost the ability to compromise. The prescribed remedies are familiar: more civility, more dialogue, less hostility, and a return to the political center.
But what if polarization is not the underlying problem?
In her October 2026 Journal of Democracy essay, “Polarization Is Not the Problem,” Mason argues that America’s political divisions reflect a deeper struggle over who belongs in the country, who exercises power, and who deserves equal rights.
If we diagnose the wrong problem, we are unlikely to find the right solutions.
The political change behind the division
Mason’s argument draws on years of research into political identity, racial attitudes, and partisan behavior.
In 2021, Mason and political scientists Julie Wronski and John V. Kane published “Activating Animus: The Uniquely Social Roots of Trump Support” in the American Political Science Review.
The researchers examined survey responses collected in 2011, years before Donald Trump announced his presidential candidacy. They measured respondents’ attitudes toward African Americans, Hispanics, Muslims, and gay and lesbian Americans, then examined how those earlier attitudes related to subsequent political preferences.
The researchers found that people who expressed hostility toward these minority groups in 2011 were more likely to support Trump years later, regardless of their earlier party affiliation. Those prejudices did not similarly predict support for other Republican politicians or for the Republican Party itself. The finding suggests that Trump drew support from people whose hostility toward minority groups was a stronger predictor of their support for him than their earlier party affiliation.
The study does not establish the precise size of that constituency or that every Trump supporter shared these prejudices. But it provides evidence for Mason’s recent argument: Trump helped mobilize people whose hostility toward minority groups had not previously translated into the same kind of partisan allegiance.
Mason argues that this mobilization helped give an ethnonationalist movement disproportionate influence within the Republican Party.
Her concern is not simply that Americans disagree about taxes, spending, or government regulation. It is that an influential political movement seeks to reverse gains in equal citizenship made by racial minorities, women, and LGBTQ Americans.
Racism in American politics is hardly new. Nor is the influence of racial resentment on Trump’s political movement. Mason highlights how a faction organized around those attitudes gained disproportionate power within a major political party, and why describing the resulting struggle as polarization misses what is at stake.
Balance can become distortion.
The second implication of Mason’s argument concerns journalism.
A familiar account of polarization portrays two parties that have become equally extreme, equally intolerant, and equally responsible for the breakdown of democratic norms.
That framing can sound objective. But objectivity does not require treating opposing sides as equivalent.
Journalists should scrutinize Democrats and Republicans alike. Neither party deserves immunity from criticism. But equal scrutiny does not require equal conclusions.
If one political movement challenges equal rights or democratic institutions, while another resists those challenges, describing their disagreement simply as mutual polarization leaves readers without essential information.
Journalists have an obligation to establish what is happening. What rights are being challenged? What policies are being advanced? What have political leaders said and done? How do those actions measure against constitutional protections and democratic principles?
These questions require evidence, not a predetermined distribution of blame.
A report can appear balanced while leaving readers with a fundamentally misleading picture of the conflict.
Mason’s essay suggests that the familiar language of polarization has become a way to avoid precisely that examination.
Asking the right question
I have spent much of my professional life working on complicated problems involving security, energy, environmental protection, and institutional decision-making.
One lesson carries across these fields: the way we define a problem determines which solutions we are prepared to consider, encouraging the audience to reflect on how they understand political issues.
If we mistake a symptom for a cause, we may devote enormous resources to interventions that leave the underlying system unchanged.
Consider what follows when polarization becomes our primary diagnosis. We look for ways to reduce partisan hostility, encourage compromise, and bring the country together.
Those may be worthwhile activities. But they do not answer Mason’s central question: What happens when the political conflict itself concerns whether every American should enjoy equal standing in our democracy?
A call for compromise cannot substitute for examining what is being compromised.
Nor should journalism’s commitment to fairness require neutrality about the democratic principles against which political conduct is judged.
Mason is asking us to stop measuring how divided we are and start examining why.
That deserves serious consideration, particularly from those of us who have grown accustomed to describing every new political confrontation as another example of polarization.
The question we should be asking is not why Americans are so divided.
It is what they are divided about, how those divisions gained political power, and what they mean for American democracy.
Until we answer that question, we may continue searching for solutions to the wrong problem.
Edward Saltzberg writes The Stability Brief, is the Executive Director of the Security and Sustainability Forum, and is a visiting scholar at George Washington University.
HHS and the American Heart Association gave opposite dietary advice. Here’s a three-step test to separate real skepticism from cynicism.
This year, Americans got two opposite sets of instructions for the same dinner plate. Many of us responded the way we now respond to almost everything: we picked a team.
In January, the Department of Health and Human Services released new federal dietary guidelines built around red meat and full-fat dairy. Less than three months later, the American Heart Association issued guidance pointing close to the opposite way: build meals around plants and plant protein, choose unsaturated fats over saturated ones, and cut back on red meat and full-fat dairy.
Two credentialed bodies, opposite advice. The obvious question is which one to believe. The more common answer, from left and right alike, is neither. That answer feels like skepticism. It is something else, and the difference matters well beyond nutrition.
A disclosure first. I direct clinical research at the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, a nonprofit that advocates plant-based nutrition. In January, we petitioned HHS to withdraw the guidelines, arguing that many of the outside scientists who shaped them had financial ties to the beef, dairy, and pork industries. I am not neutral, and you should weigh my argument with that in mind.
But the funding question, important as it is, does not settle the scientific one.
Whether an institution’s process was compromised and whether its conclusion is correct are separate questions. Financial disclosures answer the first. Primary data answer the second. A conflicted panel can still cite findings that hold up. An independent one can still get things wrong.
Treating who paid as the answer to what is true is the most common mistake thoughtful people make when two authorities collide. I hear it from readers who distrust the AHA as an establishment body and from readers who distrust anything connected to HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Both instincts are understandable. Both skip the step that would actually settle the question. And because each side skips it in mirror image, the dispute stops being about food and becomes one more marker of political identity.
There is a better approach, and the order matters.
First, narrow the claim. The statement that red meat is bad cannot be tested. It has no comparison, no dose, no outcome, and no time frame, which is exactly why it travels so well in press releases and on social media. Research asks something smaller. A 2024 analysis of 31 cohort studies, for example, linked each daily 50-gram serving of processed meat, about two slices of ham, to roughly 15% higher risk of Type 2 diabetes. That is a claim you can check.
Second, check the narrow claim against the primary studies. Not against either institution’s summary, and not against the commentator or podcaster vouching for one side. This is the step almost everyone skips, because deciding in advance whom to trust is far easier.
Third, notice what actually changed. Run this test on the guidelines dispute and the narrow findings mostly agree, even though the institutions do not. Diets built around vegetables, legumes, whole grains, and minimally processed foods have been consistently linked to lower rates of heart disease, Type 2 diabetes, and early death for well over a decade. What changed this year was not the data. It was which parts of it were emphasized, and with how much confidence.
That is a fact about influence and access. It is not proof that nutrition science is unknowable.
Apply the test to a few disputes and two postures that look alike from the outside come apart. A skeptic runs the test and is willing to land somewhere unexpected. A cynic reaches the same verdict every time: nothing can be trusted.
Cynicism passes for rigor because it is triggered by the same event that should prompt a real update, an authority visibly serving someone other than the public. But it lacks the one property that makes rigor worth anything, a willingness to be proven wrong. The simplest way to tell the two apart is to ask what would change the person’s mind. A cynic usually has no answer. A skeptic does: a well-powered trial, a replication, a finding that holds up after adjusting for the factors they already suspected.
None of this argues for trusting institutions by default. Industry funding measurably shapes which questions get asked and which conclusions get drawn. That is the basis of my organization’s complaint about the January guidelines, and it rests on specific evidence: a particular disclosure, a particular financial tie, a particular recommendation, checked against the record. A documented problem with specific relationships is not a license to stop checking claims about food and health altogether. That is a far bigger claim than the evidence supports, and one no evidence could ever correct.
Federal agencies and professional societies will keep issuing advice that conflicts. That is what happens when contested science runs through politics, industry money, and genuine scientific disagreement at once, and no election in either direction will end it.
That makes the habit more important than any single verdict. Self-government depends on citizens who can hold an institution accountable without writing off the possibility of knowing anything. Reflexive trust hands that job to whoever holds power. Reflexive dismissal abandons it. Checking the claim keeps it with us.
The next time two authorities collide, picking a side will feel like the sophisticated response, and withholding judgment will feel naive. It is the reverse. Running the test is slower and less satisfying, and it does not come with a team. But it is the only response that keeps the pressure where it belongs: on whoever is writing the guidance.
Hana Kahleova, MD, PhD, is a physician board-certified in internal medicine, endocrinology, and lifestyle medicine, and director of clinical research at the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, a nonprofit that advocates plant-based nutrition and petitioned HHS to withdraw its January 2026 dietary guidelines.
Investigations, indictments, dismissals, convictions: what each means and the questions to ask before judging claims of political weaponization of the law.
The Fulcrum approaches news stories with an open mind and skepticism, presenting our readers with a broad spectrum of viewpoints through diligent research and critical thinking. As best we can, we remove personal bias from our reporting and seek a variety of perspectives in both our news gathering and selection of opinion pieces. However, before our readers can analyze varying viewpoints, they must have the facts.
The legal battles involving the Trump administration have become a constant feature of American politics and governance. Supporters often argue that many lawsuits and investigations are politically motivated attempts to block the administration's agenda. Critics contend that certain actions by the administration and the Department of Justice are themselves politically motivated or represent an improper use of government power.
Before examining those competing perspectives, it is important to understand what the facts actually show.
A key challenge in assessing allegations of political weaponization is distinguishing among accusations, investigations, indictments, prosecutions, and convictions. People often use these terms interchangeably in political debate, but they represent different stages of the legal process and carry different legal meanings.
Before reaching conclusions about whether legal actions are justified, politically motivated, or improperly pursued, citizens should ask several important questions:
The answers often provide a more accurate picture than political rhetoric from either side.
What is the difference between a civil lawsuit and a criminal prosecution?
A civil lawsuit typically seeks money damages, compliance with a law, or a court order. The government may sue an individual, organization, state, or business to enforce federal statutes or regulations.
A criminal prosecution seeks penalties such as fines, probation, or imprisonment and requires prosecutors to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
What role does a grand jury play?
A grand jury determines whether prosecutors have established probable cause to bring criminal charges. Unlike a trial jury, a grand jury does not decide guilt or innocence.
Instead, grand jurors review evidence prosecutors present and decide whether sufficient grounds exist to issue an indictment.
Does a grand jury indictment mean someone is guilty?
No. An indictment means only that a grand jury found sufficient evidence to allow criminal charges to proceed. The accused remains presumed innocent unless proven guilty in court or until entering a guilty plea.
What percentage of federal prosecutions result in convictions?
The overwhelming majority of federal convictions occur through guilty pleas rather than jury verdicts. As a result, conviction statistics alone do not determine whether prosecutions were justified, politically motivated, or improperly pursued.
What happens if prosecutors do not obtain an indictment?
If a grand jury declines to issue an indictment, criminal charges generally cannot move forward based on that presentation of evidence. For many observers, the number of investigations that do not result in charges can be as important as the number that do.
What does it mean when a court dismisses a case?
Courts can dismiss cases for many reasons. A judge may conclude that prosecutors failed to state a valid legal claim, lacked sufficient evidence, violated procedural requirements, or brought a case in the wrong venue. A dismissal does not necessarily mean the underlying allegations were false.
What makes a lawsuit "frivolous"?
Courts generally consider a claim frivolous when it lacks a reasonable legal basis or factual support. Importantly, losing a case does not make it frivolous. Courts routinely decide difficult legal disputes in which both sides present legitimate arguments.
Can a government legally investigate political opponents?
Yes. Federal authorities may investigate anyone when they have legal authority and sufficient evidence to begin an inquiry. The controversy usually centers not on whether investigations are permitted, but on whether authorities apply the same standards equally to all individuals, regardless of political affiliation.
How can citizens evaluate claims of political weaponization?
The most reliable indicators include:
Political speeches, campaign advertisements, and social media posts often tell only part of the story.
What questions should citizens ask when evaluating controversial cases?
Citizens should consider:
Why should Americans care?
The federal government's power to sue, investigate, prosecute, and seek imprisonment is among the most significant authorities granted by the Constitution and federal law.
Whether one believes that government uses those powers appropriately or excessively, understanding the facts behind investigations and prosecutions is essential to evaluating claims of fairness, accountability, equal justice, and the rule of law.
Ultimately, the most important measure of the justice system is not how many accusations are made but how many allegations withstand scrutiny by grand juries, trial courts, appellate courts, and, ultimately, the rule of law itself.
David Nevins is the publisher of The Fulcrum and co-founder and board chairman of the Bridge Alliance Education Fund.
Ice Police Law Enforcement Investigation and Department of Justice Customs Immigration Enforcement
TK was born in Guatemala in 1962. He arrived in the United States in 1965, at the age of three, as a lawful permanent resident with his immigrant mother and American stepfather. For the next 61 years, he lived what most people would recognize as an American life.
TK grew up in American schools, graduated from a Texas high school and attended college. As a child, his classmates struggled to pronounce his given name, Enrique. They began calling him “Keke,” a nickname that eventually became “TK”—the name he has been known by ever since. He married, raised three daughters, divorced, and eventually remarried, all in the US. Today, he is a grandfather and a successful businessman whose life has been rooted in this country since the age of three.
English is his first language. America is not simply where he resides. It is where his life happened.
Today, TK is in federal immigration detention, facing possible deportation to a country he left six decades ago and has only returned to a handful of times.
TK's history is not without complications. He was arrested in 2003, an event whose legal consequences deserve appropriate consideration. But so do the 23 years that followed.
He overcame personal obstacles, rebuilt his life, and built a successful business that requires frequent international travel. Over the past decade, TK has traveled between the United States and the Caribbean dozens of times without difficulty. I was fortunate to accompany him on one trip earlier this year. We returned without any issues.
About a month ago, his permanent resident card was renewed without incident.
Then, after returning from another routine business trip this month, he was referred for secondary inspection, found inadmissible, and taken into federal custody.
What followed has been as disturbing as the detention itself.
TK was permitted one telephone call. After his transfer to another facility, communication effectively disappeared.
TK initially appeared in ICE's online detainee locator, but only briefly. Following his transfer, however, I could no longer establish his whereabouts through the system. Nearly 24 hours passed before TK managed to borrow telephone access from another detainee, for a price.
He told me where he was and asked for help.
I called the detention facility twice. Both calls were answered dismissively. I was instructed to call during normal business hours or told that the person answering was not employed by ICE and could not address my questions since TK was brought in by ICE.
I was not asking difficult questions or requesting preferential treatment. I was trying to assist someone in federal custody and get basic information: how do I obtain his belongings, visitation, etc.
Next, I tried to deposit money into his commissary account so he could buy basic necessities like toothpaste and food beyond the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches he was being provided. I tried two online systems, two separate accounts, and two different credit cards. Every transaction failed. Eventually, the accounts were locked, “Too Many Attempts”.
The solution? Call Customer Service during normal business hours.
It was Saturday. Monday was a holiday.
Four days before I could even seek assistance with a failed payment system. Now Tuesday and seven calls later. Nobody available. Every call went to voicemail. Imagine a facility that is designated as “Undercapacity,” and everyone is busy?
Consider the situation: A person is detained by the federal government, transferred without reliably accessible location information, afforded extremely limited communication, and left dependent on administrative systems that cannot be corrected over a holiday weekend.
In the American criminal justice system, even individuals accused of serious offenses, murder, sex trafficking, generally have established procedures for prompt judicial oversight and consideration of pretrial release. Immigration detention operates differently, and access to bond or prompt judicial review is restricted.
These legal distinctions are important. But they do not eliminate the fundamental question of what procedural safeguards and basic standards of treatment should accompany government detention.
There is another question worth examining.
People who enter the United States unlawfully generally understand that apprehension may lead to detention and deportation. But does that understanding prepare their families for the experience of losing contact with someone in federal custody?
What happens when a spouse, parent, or child is detained, transferred between facilities, and becomes difficult to locate? When families cannot obtain reliable information, when calls go unanswered and when uncertainty extends for days, weeks or longer?
Could some of the anger and confrontation surrounding immigration enforcement stem not simply from opposition to deportation, but from fear about the whereabouts and treatment of loved ones?
That possibility deserves examination. Understanding the sources of public distrust does not require excusing threats or violence.
I experienced less than 24 hours of that uncertainty before TK contacted me. For families who endure it much longer, the consequences may be profound.
I have experienced firsthand individuals entering the US illegally across the southern border. They were generally arrested (because they surrendered), processed, and released with a court date several years away in a matter of days. TK, a lawful permanent resident for over 60 years... detained indefinitely.
I support immigration enforcement unequivocally. A sovereign nation has the right and responsibility to protect and control its borders and enforce its laws. What I question is whether our immigration detention system operates with the transparency, proportionality, and accountability we should expect from the federal government.
I also recognize that lawful permanent residence does not confer citizenship, and that immigration law may impose consequences for conduct that occurred decades ago. TK's legal status and eligibility for release must be determined under the applicable law. That is the law.
But the legality of detention and the administration of detention are separate matters.
Perhaps each failure has an explanation: a database that updates slowly, a contracted facility with limited authority, a payment vendor closed for the weekend. But this is 2026, not 1982. Imagine your phone or your tablet “updates slowly,” or a payment vendor is “closed for the weekend.” The frustration you feel from such a mundane service is something you've grown to feel entitled to. Individually, these explanations are barely reasonable. Collectively, they reveal a system in which responsibility is fragmented, and those seeking answers have few places to turn.
I believe that immigration laws should be enforced. I also believe that the authority to deprive someone of liberty carries an obligation to ensure meaningful communication, access to basic necessities, and accountable treatment, even for those who entered the US illegally.
TK's case will ultimately turn on the facts and the law. It should.
But his experience leaves a question that should concern Americans regardless of their views on immigration:
If the federal government has the power to take away a person’s freedom, shouldn’t it also be responsible for ensuring that person can be found, contacted, and treated with basic dignity? Even Amazon can track a package.
Spencer Ross is the Chief Operating Officer (COO) of TerraKross Building Contractors & Developers, LLC.
