Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

Minnesota National Guard looks to an election security deployment

Minnesota National Guard cyber protection team

A Minnesota National Guard soldier at work on the new assignment.

Minnesota National Guard

Minnesota's top election official has an outside-the-box plan for protecting the state's 2020 election against hackers, social media disinformation and other threats: Call in the National Guard.

The Democratic secretary of state, Steve Simon, is negotiating an agreement so election administrators statewide could collaborate with the new "cyber protection team" of the Minnesota National Guard. Revelations about Russian interference in 2016 promoted the team's creation, and it was deployed in time to work with the Minnesota Department of IT Services during last year's midterm campaign to probe for election security vulnerabilities.


But for next year, Simon's office is pitching a broader collaboration, with guard officers trained as coders and hackers doing scenario role playing for the county and local administrators who run the balloting, plus "threat hunting" for sources of misinformation – a far cry from the guard's usual work responding to natural disasters and boots-on-the-ground protests.

"This is a security issue," Simon told the state's largest paper, The Star Tribune. "It isn't just about bullets or boots on the ground, it's about this cyber realm and the fact that adversaries try to expose or exploit weaknesses in the cyber world just as they would in other areas as well."

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

Minnesota is among just four Army National Guard states with fully staffed cyber protection teams. "Nobody has gotten worse at this activity than they were four years ago — everybody's gotten better," said Lt. Col. Daniel Cunningham, the unit's commander.

Read More

The Evolving Social Contract: From Common Good to Contemporary Practice

An illustration of hands putting together a puzzle.

Getty Images, cienpies

The Evolving Social Contract: From Common Good to Contemporary Practice

The concept of the common good in American society has undergone a remarkable transformation since the nation's founding. What began as a clear, if contested, vision of collective welfare has splintered into something far more complex and individualistic. This shift reflects changing times and a fundamental reimagining of what we owe each other as citizens and human beings.

The nation’s progenitors wrestled with this very question. They drew heavily from Enlightenment thinkers like John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who saw the social contract as a sacred covenant between citizens and their government. But they also pulled from deeper wells—the Puritan concept of the covenant community, the classical Republican tradition of civic virtue, and the Christian ideal of serving one's neighbor. These threads wove into something uniquely American: a vision of the common good that balances individual liberty with collective responsibility.

Keep ReadingShow less
We’ve Collectively Created the Federal Education Collapse

Students in a classroom.

Getty Images, Maskot

We’ve Collectively Created the Federal Education Collapse

“If we make money the object of man-training, we shall develop money-makers but not necessarily men.” - W.E.B. Du Bois

The current state of public education has many confused, anxious, and even fearful. Depending on the day, I feel any combination of the above, among other less-than-ideal adjectives. Simply, the future is uncertain. Schools are simultaneously cutting budgets and trying to remain relevant, all during an increasingly tense political climate.

Keep ReadingShow less
Recent Republican policies and proposals limiting legal immigration and legal immigrants' benefits and rights

An oversized gavel surrounded by people.

Getty Images, J Studios

Recent Republican policies and proposals limiting legal immigration and legal immigrants' benefits and rights

In a recent post we quoted a journalist describing the Republican Party as anti-immigration. Many of our readers wrote back angrily to say that the Republican party is only opposed to immigrants who are present illegally.

But that's not true. And we're not shy of telling it like it is.

Keep ReadingShow less
The Importance of Respecting Court Orders
brown wooden chess piece on brown book

The Importance of Respecting Court Orders

The most important question in American politics today is whether Donald Trump will respect court orders. Judges have repeatedly ruled against his administration.

But will he listen?

Keep ReadingShow less