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Supreme Court’s decision on birthright citizenship will depend on its interpretation of one key phrase

Supreme Court’s decision on birthright citizenship will depend on its interpretation of one key phrase

This really may be the political end for Trump

This really may be the political end for Trump

Trump’s Rob Reiner Post Sparks Rare GOP Backlash

Trump’s Rob Reiner Post Sparks Rare GOP Backlash

California’s Governor Race Is a Democratic Nightmare, But There’s One Easy Fix

California’s Governor Race Is a Democratic Nightmare, But There’s One Easy Fix

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Just the Facts: Trump’s Mass Pardons Grab Headlines

The Fulcrum's new executive editor: Hugo Balta

Hugo Balta
By Kristina Becvar,
Kristina Becvar

In her role as co-publisher of The Fulcrum and Executive Director of the Bridge Alliance Education Fund, she is a driving force behind collaborative efforts to transform our democracy. Recognizing that no single idea or organization can address our complex challenges in isolation, Kristina excels in blending intuitive leadership with data-driven insights. Her extensive background in operations and change management, coupled with her M.S. in data analytics and research methods, equips her with a powerful skill set. Kristina brings a focused approach to the essential work required for a thriving democratic republic.

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David L. Nevins
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.
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Dec 20, 2024

As co-publishers of The Fulcrum, we are proud to announce that, effective Jan. 1, Hugo Balta, The Fulcrum’s director of solutions journalism and DEI initiatives, will serve as executive editor.

Hugo is an award-winning, 30-year multimedia journalism veteran with multiple market and platform experience, including leadership positions in NBC, Telemundo, ABC, CBS, and PBS, among other storied news networks. A nationally recognized diversity in journalism advocate, he is the recipient of the 2024 Cecilia Vaisman Award from Northwestern University Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications. Hugo is the only person to serve twice as president of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists. Hugo and his family live in Chicago.

He is currently the Publisher of the Latino News Network. LNN’s mission is to provide greater visibility and voice to the Hispanic, Latino community, amplify the work of others in doing the same, mentor and provide young journalists with real work experiences, and apply the principles of solutions journalism in producing stories focused on the social determinants of health, and democracy.

Hugo is also an adjunct professor at Columbia College Chicago, teaching journalism courses. He previously worked as executive editor at the Chicago Reporter, editor at WBBM News Radio, and news director at WTTW Chicago.

We’ve grown significantly in 2024 and, under Hugo’s leadership, we are confident that our growth will continue as we expand into new areas. We deliver more than 1.4 million web impressions monthly and roughly 380,000 page views per month through our daily newsletter, social media platforms, and numerous other national content-sharing relationships. In addition, in the first eight months of this year, our writings were picked up 3,549 times by local newspapers around the country, which added to our reach considerably.

The Fulcrum is now accredited by Apple News, MSN News, Smart News and the Latino News Network. They pick up our content daily, and we are working to expand our relationship with them and other national platforms in 2025 to engage more citizens on how our evolving democracy can better meet the needs of all the people. We do so by sharing many perspectives to build a pro-democracy constituency of millions of Americans by making it easier to find and act on local and national civic engagement opportunities.

In 2024, we strengthened our working relationship with the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, where young journalists regularly provided reporting for The Fulcrum We are also extremely proud of our working relationship with The OpEd Project, which offers The Fulcrum the opportunity to elevate the ideas and knowledge of underrepresented expert voices to accelerate solutions to the biggest problems facing our nation.

We’d like to give a special thank you to David Meyers, our current executive editor, who has been instrumental in the success of The Fulcrum. David’s vast experience after two decades at CQ Roll Call, a leading publisher of political news and information, was instrumental in guiding The Fulcrum team to the success we are now experiencing. David will be starting a new job in January with OpenSecrets as director of communications and marketing.

Despite our successes in 2024, we will not rest on our laurels. 2025 allows us to solidify further our position as a leading outlet for news and opinion so insiders and outsiders to politics are informed, meet, talk and act to repair our democracy and make it work in their everyday lives. Our dedication to a solutions journalism model will continue as we explore what is dividing us on the issues, what information can be trusted, what is oversimplified about the issues, and the nuances and complexities of the many problems facing our nation.

Please contact Hugo at hugo@thefulcrum.us to submit your op-ed proposal, suggest news stories and news or ask questions.

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

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As screens replace toys, childhood is being gamified. What this shift means for parents, play, development, and holiday gift-giving.

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The Christmas When Toys Died: The Playtime Paradigm Shift Retailers Failed to See Coming

Something is changing this Christmas, and parents everywhere are feeling it. Bedrooms overflow with toys no one touches, while tablets steal the spotlight, pulling children as young as five into digital worlds that retailers are slow to recognize. The shift is quiet but unmistakable, and many parents are left wondering what toy purchases even make sense anymore.

Research shows that higher screen time correlates with significantly lower engagement in other play activities, mainly traditional, physical, unstructured play. It suggests screen-based play is displacing classic play with traditional toys. Families are experiencing in real time what experts increasingly describe as the rise of “gamified childhoods.”

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Affordability Crisis and AI: Kelso’s Universal Capitalism

Rising costs, AI disruption, and inequality revive interest in Louis Kelso’s “universal capitalism” as a market-based answer to the affordability crisis.

Getty Images, J Studios

Affordability Crisis and AI: Kelso’s Universal Capitalism

“Affordability” over the cost of living has been in the news a lot lately. It’s popping up in political campaigns, from the governor’s races in New Jersey and Virginia to the mayor’s races in New York City and Seattle. President Donald Trump calls the term a “hoax” and a “con job” by Democrats, and it’s true that the inflation rate hasn’t increased much since Trump began his second term in January.

But a number of reports show Americans are struggling with high costs for essentials like food, housing, and utilities, leaving many families feeling financially pinched. Total consumer spending over the Black Friday-Thanksgiving weekend buying binge actually increased this year, but a Salesforce study found that’s because prices were about 7% higher than last year’s blitz. Consumers actually bought 2% fewer items at checkout.

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Censorship Should Be Obsolete by Now. Why Isn’t It?

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Greggory DiSalvo/Getty Images

Censorship Should Be Obsolete by Now. Why Isn’t It?

Techies, activists, and academics were in Paris this month to confront the doom scenario of internet shutdowns, developing creative technology and policy solutions to break out of heavily censored environments. The event– SplinterCon– has previously been held globally, from Brussels to Taiwan. I am on the programme committee and delivered a keynote at the inaugural SplinterCon in Montreal on how internet standards must be better designed for censorship circumvention.

Censorship and digital authoritarianism were exposed in dozens of countries in the recently published Freedom on the Net report. For exampl,e Russia has pledged to provide “sovereign AI,” a strategy that will surely extend its network blocks on “a wide array of social media platforms and messaging applications, urging users to adopt government-approved alternatives.” The UK joined Vietnam, China, and a growing number of states requiring “age verification,” the use of government-issued identification cards, to access internet services, which the report calls “a crisis for online anonymity.”

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Panic-driven legislation—from airline safety to AI bans—often backfires, and evidence must guide policy.

Getty Images, J Studios

Beware of Panic Policies

"As far as human nature is concerned, with panic comes irrationality." This simple statement by Professor Steve Calandrillo and Nolan Anderson has profound implications for public policy. When panic is highest, and demand for reactive policy is greatest, that's exactly when we need our lawmakers to resist the temptation to move fast and ban things. Yet, many state legislators are ignoring this advice amid public outcries about the allegedly widespread and destructive uses of AI. Thankfully, Calandrillo and Anderson have identified a few examples of what I'll call "panic policies" that make clear that proposals forged by frenzy tend not to reflect good public policy.

Let's turn first to a proposal in November of 2001 from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP). For obvious reasons, airline safety was subject to immense public scrutiny at this time. AAP responded with what may sound like a good idea: require all infants to have their own seat and, by extension, their own seat belt on planes. The existing policy permitted parents to simply put their kid--so long as they were under two--on their lap. Essentially, babies flew for free.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) permitted this based on a pretty simple analysis: the risks to young kids without seatbelts on planes were far less than the risks they would face if they were instead traveling by car. Put differently, if parents faced higher prices to travel by air, then they'd turn to the road as the best way to get from A to B. As we all know (perhaps with the exception of the AAP at the time), airline travel is tremendously safer than travel by car. Nevertheless, the AAP forged ahead with its proposal. In fact, it did so despite admitting that they were unsure of whether the higher risks of mortality of children under two in plane crashes were due to the lack of a seat belt or the fact that they're simply fragile.

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