Skip to content
Project 2025
Search

Latest Stories

Follow Us:
Top Stories
Osha Vaccination

Investigations Committee Releases COVID Vaccine Adverse Effects Report, Research Debated across Party Lines

Silver sign of Department of Justice on a classical concrete wall with plants as foreground.

The Ku Klux Klan Returns to Power

May 5 primary ballot issues affect Ohioans' daily lives

May 5 primary ballot issues affect Ohioans' daily lives

Independents and Republicans May Hold the Power in Los Angeles – If They Actually Vote

Independents and Republicans May Hold the Power in Los Angeles – If They Actually Vote

Medicare Health Insurance Card. Social Security Card with Stethoscope and pen

Saving Medicare Republicans Are Privatizing Medicare

N.C. legislators on course for on-time undoing of their partisan gerrymander

N.C. legislators on course for on-time undoing of their partisan gerrymander

This map, drawn by the state Senate for itself, is expected to win approval from the judges who demanded it.

North Carolina General Assembly
The Fulcrum
By The FulcrumSep 17, 2019
The Fulcrum
The Fulcrum staff.
See More Writings by author

North Carolina's new state legislative district lines are on pace to be finished by Wednesday's court-imposed deadline after versions of the maps passed both chambers of the General Assembly.

The Senate's bipartisan, 38-9 vote happened Monday night. The House and Senate are now reviewing each other's maps, potentially making additional tweaks to some boundaries before they are forwarded for final approval to the three state judges in Raleigh who ordered the redistricting this month.

The judges said the current maps were gerrymandered to ensure continued Republican control to the point they violated the state constitution. In reviewing the new lines for similar partisan bias, the judges will be assisted by Stanford University law professor Nathaniel Persily, who was appointed on Friday to referee the process.

The court has the ability to tweak the news lines, and House Democrats don't think districts covering Robeson, Columbus and Pender counties will pass the proverbial sniff test, according to WRAL. The state House maps were passed on Friday, but were more controversial, meaning the Senate maps will be the ones most likely passed on to the court.

These new maps will only be used for one election before they are redrawn using data from the 2020 census.


Latest news

A billboard that reads, "We've got your six," and "Confidential abortion support for service members, veterans, and their families. You make the appointment, we handle the rest."
Health

All Women Left Behind

Highschoolers in a classroom, sitting down at their desks and raising their hands.
Media & Technology

My School’s So Worried I Will Cheat With AI It Isn’t Teaching

Read More

From Colombia to Connecticut: The urgent need to end FGM in the Americas

Journalists gather in front of the Connecticut State Capitol Building during a press conference on SB259 and an anti-FGM art installation

Bryna Subherwal, Equality Now

From Colombia to Connecticut: The urgent need to end FGM in the Americas

Across the Americas, hundreds of thousands of women and girls are living with or have undergone female genital mutilation (FGM). These affected populations are citizens and residents of countries where protections are incomplete, entirely focused on criminalisation, inconsistently enforced, or entirely absent.

FGM is not a “foreign” issue. It is a human rights violation unfolding within national borders, one that all governments in the Americas have the legal and moral responsibility to address.

Keep ReadingShow less
Person holding a sign in front of the U.S. capitol that reads, "We The People."

The nation has reached a divide in the road—a moment when Americans must decide whether to accept a slow weakening of the Republic or insist on the principles that have held it together for more than two centuries

Getty Images

A Republic Under Strain—And a Choice Ahead

Americans feel something shifting beneath their feet — quieter than crisis but unmistakably a strain. Many live with a steady sense of uncertainty, conflict, and the emotional weight of issues that seem impossible to escape. They feel unheard, unsafe, or unsure whether the Republic they trust is fading. Friends, relatives, and former colleagues say they’ve tried to look away just to cope, hoping the turmoil will pass. And they ask the same thing: if the framers made the people the primary control on government, how will they help set the Republic back on a steadier path?

Understanding the strain Americans are experiencing is essential, but so is recognizing the choice we still have. Madison’s warning offers the answer the framers left us: when trust erodes and power concentrates, the Constitution turns back to the people—not as a slogan, but as a structural reality.

Keep ReadingShow less
Metula: A Border on the Brink

Debris from a missile‑struck home in Metula, Israel

Hugo Balta

Metula: A Border on the Brink

METULA — In the historic border town of Metula, the stillness of a fragile ceasefire is often punctured by the sounds of war drifting across the Lebanese border. After U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran in February, Hezbollah launched rockets and drones into Israel in early March in what it described as retaliation. Israel answered with a wave of airstrikes across Lebanon, and within days, Israeli forces had re‑entered southern Lebanon.

Founded more than 130 years ago, Israel’s northernmost community is famously surrounded on three sides by Lebanon. The town looks directly onto the remains of Lebanese Shiite villages that Hezbollah has used as launch sites throughout its campaign. Since October 8, 2023, enduring repeated barrages of anti‑tank missiles and explosive drones, leaving homes in ruins and most families displaced. Hezbollah began its attacks that day, calling it a “war of support” for Hamas following the October 7 assault in southern Israel.

Keep ReadingShow less
Senate Committee advances bill banning AI companions for children

Sen. Josh Hawley addresses the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary during a debate over the AI chatbot regulation bill he introduced in October, known as the GUARD Act. April 30, 2026.

Wisdom Howell // Medill News Service.

Senate Committee advances bill banning AI companions for children

WASHINGTON—A bipartisan bill that would ban minors from using AI companions, require all chatbots to verify a user’s age, and allow AI companies to be prosecuted for harming children was unanimously advanced to the Senate floor Wednesday by the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo. introduced “the Guidelines for User Age-verification and Responsible Dialogue Act,” (GUARD Act) in October as the Senate’s response to the rise in cases of children being groomed and driven to commit suicide by chatbots designed to replicate human interactions known as AI companions.

Keep ReadingShow less
© Copyright 2026