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A Look Back At The Most Popular Stories of 2024

A Look Back At The Most Popular Stories of 2024
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The Fulcrum is a trusted platform where insiders and outsiders to politics are informed, meet, talk, and act to repair our democracy.

We amplify marginalized perspectives through news articles, opinion pieces, and investigative reports. Thanks to our contributors, we foster an inclusive dialogue vital for a thriving democracy.


Here are the most popular stores published on The Fulcrum:

"White" and "Colored" water fountainsKamala Harris is Black & Asian and Why Does Trump Care? kickstand/Getty Images

Kamala Harris is Black & Asian and Why Does Trump Care?

In 2024, 60 years after the passage of the Civil Rights Act, it is unfortunate that, because of statements made by a candidate for the presidency, we need to remind Americans that the color of one’s skin is a terribly unreliable indicator of one’s so-called racial heritage.

Department of Veterans Affairs buildingProject 2025: The Department of Veterans Affairs Air Force Reserve Command

Project 2025: The Department of Veterans Affairs

Project 2025, a conservative plan for a second Trump administration, aims to make the Department of Veterans Affairs more efficient and responsive, which is a commendable objective. But the focus on conservative political goals and extensive outsourcing risks politicizing the VA and potentially undermining its ability to serve veterans effectively.

John Roberts at the State of the UnionIn Trump v. United States, Chief Justice John Roberts produced an astonishing and convoluted treatise that denigrates a key principle of our jurisprudence championed by the founders, writes Toscano. Jacquelyn Martin-Pool/Getty Images

Conservatives will rue the day they compromised the rule of law

Defenders of democracy had hoped the Supreme Court decision in Trump v. United States would begin with the words “No man is above the law.” But Chief Justice John Roberts avoided the phrase entirely in his opinion. Instead, he produced an astonishing treatise that denigrates a key principle of our jurisprudence championed by the founders.

Mark Esper sitting next to Donald TrumpDefense Secretary Mark Esper (left) and other leaders stood up to Donald Trump when he was president. Trump would likely face similar resistance if he wins another term. Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images

What would really happen if Trump wins?

If Donald Trump wins, American democracy will undergo a severe stress test. Yet again. But it won’t plunge into dictatorship, authoritarianism or fascism. Instead, if Trump wins, America will have an incoherent and volatile mix of some government institutions that function democratically and some that don’t.

Joe Biden speaking in PennsylvaniaThe speech Joe Biden won’t give Anadolu/Getty Images

The speech Joe Biden won’t give

If President Joe Biden reached out to independent voters in a way that legitimized their concerns about the self-serving nature of the Democratic and Republican parties, he could probably win with 60 percent of the vote. But he won’t. And neither will Donald Trump.

If Donald Trump implements the Heritage Foundation's policy plan, he'll take us down the path of authoritarianism, writes Corbin. Jeff Bottari/Zuffa LLC via Getty Images

Project 2025 is a threat to democracy

On Jan. 20, 2025, will the duly elected and inaugurated president of the United States keep America as a democracy that dates back to the 1630s or will the commander-in-chief start changing the country to authoritarian-fascism? That depends on whether Trump wins and he follows the Project 2025 playbook.

People working in a grocery storeLatino-owned businesses, such as the Aztec Farmers Market in Houston, contribute billions of dollars to the economy each year. Raquel Natalicchio/Houston Chronicle via Getty Images

Trump's right! A massive invasion is happening at the southern border

Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed an invasion is taking place on the southern U.S. border. He is absolutely right. But it's not an invasion of people taking over cities and jobs, it's an invasion of communities playing a significant role in shaping the cultural, social and economic landscape of the United States.

White House with "stop" barrier in frontIf Trump wins, should Democrats turn over the keys to the White House? Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images

If Trump wins, should Democrats turn over the keys to the White House?

The Democrats, believing Donald Trump is a threat to democracy, have few options if he wins, and none of them are good. A Trump victory will force our leaders and all of us to confront a series of tragic choices.

Donald TrumpWas Trump right when he said he could ‘shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters’? MEGA/Getty Images

Has 'just about every law enforcement agency in the country' endorsed Donald Trump for president in 2024?

Former President Donald Trump claims he is “supported by just about every law enforcement agency in the country; I think, maybe every one.” But police unions — not law enforcement agencies such as police or sheriff’s departments — endorse candidates.

Tracy Chapman and Luke Combs on stageTracy Chapman and Luke Combs perform "Fast Car" at the Grammys. Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for The Recording Academy

Luke Combs, politics and healing our nation's divide

Today's pop artists can have tremendous influence on politics and poltiical divide, if only more of them were willing to speak out.


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The exterior of a home.

While en route to surrender his Army of Northern Virginia to General Ulysses S. Grant on April 9, 1865, General Robert E. Lee rode past Appomattox Courthouse in rural Virginia.

visionsofmaine / Getty Images

The Civil War Never Really Ended, But an American Union Could Finally Help America Truly Heal

In previous essays, I argued that the United States should seriously consider a new governing structure — an “American Union” — in which red and blue America peacefully separate into two sovereign nations while preserving a common military alliance, shared currency, and freedom of movement, with each new nation having its own constitution reflecting its own political consensus.

Simply put, the United States is too politically, culturally, and geographically divided to function effectively under the existing highly centralized, winner-take-all system in which every election determines how more than 330 million people must live.

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 Full length of man unloading cardboard box from van

America's moving season is slowing to a historic standstill. Discover how mortgage lock-in, housing shortages, and declining mobility threaten economic opportunity and the American Dream.

Maskot / Getty Images

America Has Stopped Moving

The arrival of early June traditionally signals the great seasonal stirring of the American demographic engine. As school districts wrap up and corporations align their fiscal calendars, hundreds of thousands of families pack up moving vans, pull up stakes, and chase opportunity across state lines. This radical freedom to move - to escape an economically stagnant region, abandon a declining industry, and claim a stake in a booming frontier - has long been the primary safety valve of American democracy. It is the literal mechanism of self-reinvention, an unwritten article of the national faith that promises that where you begin is not where you are destined to finish. It was this spatial fluidity that historically distinguished the American social hierarchy from the rigid, ancestral geography of Europe, where a family's prospects were bound to the soil of their birth for generations.

Yet, as the peak moving season gets underway this year, real estate data reveals an eerie, unprecedented stagnation: domestic relocation rates have plummeted to modern historic lows, with the Census Bureau reporting the lowest mobility rate since tracking began in 1948. The great continental migration that has defined American economic vitality and cultural mixing since the days of the frontier has ground to a sudden, structural halt. From abroad, the silence of this once restless internal movement is even more striking – a demographic engine that once roared now barely hums.

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