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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky (L) speaks during a meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump (R), and European leaders at the White House on August 18, 2025 in Washington, DC.
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Standing With Ukraine: How American Ukrainians, Poles, and Others Can Still Play a Role
Aug 20, 2025
Volodymyr Zelensky has to flatter Donald Trump. It’s for his country’s survival. Americans, including Ukrainian Americans and others from frontline countries, can speak the truth: Trump’s actions have undermined Ukraine from his first cancellations of military support to his validating Vladimir Putin’s claims to Ukrainian territory and refusing to press for a ceasefire.
Those of us who want to stand with Ukraine can do more than just play the role of passive spectators. Imagine if Ukrainian Americans organized a nationally coordinated rally—calling on Trump to support Ukraine, not Putin. These demonstrations should be led by Ukrainian Americans, whose families and futures are most directly affected. But they could also prominently engage other Eastern European communities—Polish, Latvian, Finnish, and others—whose homelands are also threatened by Russian aggression. And who recognizes that Ukrainians are fighting not just for themselves, but for everyone who believes in democracy.
These communities bring powerful stories, deep networks, and shared stakes in the outcome. Demonstration organizers should invite them to speak, co-create messaging, and amplify the call across media and social platforms. Broader outreach—such as to the networks that mobilized an estimated 5 million people for No Kings Day—could expand the size and impact. But the core message should remain rooted in the voices of those on the front lines of this geopolitical struggle.
The slogans can be simple and direct: Don't Abandon Ukraine. Stand Against Putin. Stand with Ukraine and Democracy. The goal would be to pressure once-supportive Republicans to break their silence and restore at least baseline levels of aid. It would be about making the political cost of inaction too high to ignore.
These rallies would also send a message to Trump himself. He’s refused to authorize new U.S. support, alternately halted and resumed the delivery of previously committed air defense systems and artillery ammunition, and lamented Russia’s expulsion from the G8 for its 2014 Crimea seizure. Despite tough-sounding words, he’s given Vladimir Putin far more leverage both on the battlefield and at the negotiating table. Ukraine may still prevail with courage, persistence, creativity, and increased European support. But Trump’s general abandonment makes the Ukrainian situation far harder, even as the war-burdened Russian economy faces 20 percent interest rates, 10% inflation, and key labor shortages.
Could these rallies and marches make a difference? Ukrainian and other Eastern European communities have historically leaned Republican, giving them unique leverage. When economic interests have pressured Trump, he’s reversed course on tariffs and on immigration raids targeting farmworkers and hotel workers. Nixon-era anti-Vietnam demonstrations helped halt bombing raids and accelerated troop withdrawals—even as Nixon claimed they had no effect.
There are no guarantees. But coordinated, visible action could help put Ukraine—and Trump’s enabling of Putin—back on the national radar. At the very least, it would give Ukrainians and their allies a way to speak out while the fate of their country hangs in the balance. Hope alone is not a strategy. But when people organize with a common voice, they never know what they might achieve.
Paul Loeb is the author of Soul of a Citizen, The Impossible Will Take a Little While, and three other books on social change, totaling 350,000 copies in print. He’s written for the New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, Los Angeles Times, Atlanta Journal Constitution, Miami Herald, and AARP Bulletin
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Anti-gerrymandering protest
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The Gerrymandering Crisis Escalates: Can Reform Stop the 2026 Power Grab?
Aug 20, 2025
The battle over redistricting is intensifying across the country, with bipartisan concern mounting over democratic legitimacy, racial equity, and the urgent need for structural reform. Yet despite years of advocacy from cross-partisan organizations and scholars, the partisan battle over gerrymandering is accelerating, threatening to fracture the very foundation of representative democracy.
The Fulcrum has been watching closely. In our August 8th editorial, we warned of the dilemma now facing the reform movement:
“At The Fulcrum, we’ve consistently amplified voices advocating for structural reforms: eliminating gerrymandering, fixing campaign finance, opening primaries, and advancing ranked-choice voting. The leaders of national reform organizations we regularly feature view these changes not simply as policy adjustments, but as moral imperatives essential to ensuring citizens have a meaningful voice and agency in their governance.”
These reforms rest on a foundational assumption: that we operate within a functioning representative, democratic framework where voters ultimately shape the system rather than being shaped by it. But what happens when that assumption collapses?
In our February editorial, we reaffirmed our commitment to avoid reflexive partisanship while telling the truth about real threats to democratic governance. We acknowledged the complexity of our moment—and the need to distinguish legitimate political debate from norm-breaking behavior that corrodes democratic values. That balance between clarity and complexity, truth and transparency, remains our editorial compass. But as democratic backsliding accelerates, the terrain we navigate grows more precarious.
Now two weeks after our August column the crisis has deepened.
Gerrymandering battles are escalating in at least six states, with Texas and Florida leading a mid-decade redistricting push that critics call a raw power grab. In Texas, Governor Greg Abbott—backed by President Trump—is pursuing a plan to redraw congressional maps to add five Republican seats, bypassing the traditional post-census timeline. Democratic lawmakers fled the state to block the vote, triggering a constitutional standoff and national outrage. The proposed maps crack and pack minority communities, especially in Travis County (Austin), where five districts now dilute Democratic strength.
Meanwhile, Florida’s Republican-controlled legislature is launching a similar effort, despite the state’s Fair Districts Amendment banning partisan gerrymandering. Governor Ron DeSantis and House Speaker Paul Renner have formed a select committee to explore legal avenues for redrawing maps, potentially cementing GOP dominance ahead of 2026.
Other states are watching and preparing to retaliate. Democratic governors in California and New York have pledged to “fight fire with fire,” with plans to redraw their own maps to counter Republican gains. Indiana, Missouri, and South Carolina are also under scrutiny, as GOP leaders consider redistricting maneuvers to expand their congressional foothold. The result is a partisan arms race that threatens to destabilize electoral norms, with lawmakers representing ever-shifting districts and voters losing meaningful representation. Experts warn that without national redistricting standards, the U.S. could enter a cycle of perpetual map warfare undermining democratic accountability and fueling polarization.
And across the country reform leaders are sounding the alarm. As reported in the Fulcrum on August 18th Micahel Walman, President of the Brennan Center for Justice writes
“Voters should choose their politicians, not the other way around. The Texas gerrymander and the partisan war it has triggered signal an extraordinarily dangerous period for American democracy.”
In the writing, Walman calls for national redistricting standards and criticizes both parties for failing to act when they had the chance
Lee Drutman, senior fellow at New America a leading advocate for proportional representation, sees gerrymandering not as the root problem but as a symptom of a deeper structural flaw: the single-member district system. As long as congressional elections are winner-take-all contests in geographically drawn districts, politicians will have strong incentives to manipulate boundaries for partisan gain. Even independent commissions, he argues, are limited when the system itself rewards polarization and geographic sorting. Drutman’s solution is proportional representation which would allow multiple representatives per district and ensure that votes translate more fairly into seats. He frequently cites the Apportionment Act of 1842 as the moment that entrenched single-member districts, setting the stage for today’s redistricting wars. “The only way to end the gerrymandering wars,” he writes, “is proportional representation.”
In the coming weeks, The Fulcrum will be watching with laser focus as this battle intensifies. With President Trump openly backing mid-decade redistricting efforts in states like Texas, Missouri, and Florida, the stakes have escalated beyond partisan maneuvering into a full-blown campaign to consolidate power ahead of the 2026 midterms.
Reform advocates warn that artificially drawn lines are engineered to dilute the voting power of communities of color and entrench incumbents and threaten to turn representative democracy into a rigged game.
As protests erupt nationwide and governors from both parties prepare retaliatory redraws, the specter of “mutually assured gerrymandering” looms large. Citizens fear that Trump’s strategy, bolstered by executive orders and partisan commissions, could lock in minority rule and neuter electoral accountability for decades to come
The Fulcrum will continue to track these developments regularly. As partisan maneuvering intensifies and states test the boundaries of electoral norms, we remain committed to providing clear, nonpartisan coverage that distinguishes structural critique from political reaction. Our editorial compass remains focused on transparency, democratic integrity, and the evolving debate over how best to ensure fair representation in a rapidly shifting landscape.
David Nevins is co-publisher of The Fulcrum and co-founder and board chairman of the Bridge Alliance Education Fund.
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Rev. Laurie Manning shares her insights on speaking with political leaders about specific advocacy efforts. "Your senators' offices are waiting to hear from you," writes Manning.
Getty Images, Semen Salivanchuk
How To Rewire a Nation From a Single Seat
Aug 20, 2025
In politics, attention is drawn to spectacle. Cable news runs endless loops of red-faced lawmakers clashing in hearings, while pundits dissect every gaffe and polling shift. Every election season becomes a staged drama, parties locked in opposition, candidates maneuvering for advantage. The players may change, but the script stays the same. Those in power know that as long as the public watches the visible fracas, the hidden machinery of control runs quietly, unexamined and untouched.
We are told the drama hinges on which party controls which chamber, which map shapes the advantage, and which scandal sidelines a rising star. These are presented as the key moves in the political game, shifting the balance of power. Every election is declared the most consequential of our time. But these claims are, in reality, crude distractions—very much part of the performance—while the real levers of power turn behind the scenes, where laws and policies shift with the choices of a few hundred individuals, each capable of tipping the balance with a single vote.
That discretion is the engine through which corruption spreads. Party leaders seize it with threats and promises. Donors buy its flexibility. Mapmakers rig it toward predetermined outcomes before any votes are cast. Gossip corrodes it. Personal ambition spends it. Wedge issues pit neighbor against neighbor, fracturing coalitions that might challenge it. All these distortions rest on one premise: The assumption that a legislator’s vote is theirs to give.
Do away with that discretion, and the machinery that runs on it begins to collapse. Picture a representative with no personal agency over how they vote, their ballot nothing more than the precise reflection of their constituents’ majority position on each measure. In such an arrangement, the whip has no sting. In fact, the whip itself magically vanishes. The gerrymander becomes a joke if the mapped voters’ will is mirrored exactly. Smear campaigns waste their venom, for there is no “character” left to assassinate that could change the outcome. Lobbyists arrive with fat wallets and find nothing to buy. And wedge issues lose their power to split if the people’s views on one matter do not dictate their fate on another.
The elegance of such an intervention lies in its trifecta superpower: Its eminent doability, its disproportionate effect, and its robustness.
To become a reality, the intervention has no impossible hurdles to overcome. No constitutional overhaul. No sweeping amendment. No billion-dollar reform package. No term limit legislation. Just one person, elected on the simple promise to serve as a conduit rather than a decider.
Second is that power in this arrangement is not linear. In a closely divided chamber, even one such member could tip the balance of the national agenda. A handful could upend it entirely. A single vote, if placed at the precise intersection of forces, can redirect the course of legislation. And when it is done not behind closed doors but openly, with the explanation plain—“I voted this way because that is what the majority of my constituents told me”—it exposes the fragile justifications that traditional politicians hide behind.
Such clarity spreads. People watching this model in action will see not just a different style of representation but the fact that literal representation is possible at all. This is dangerous knowledge to those who thrive on the belief that politics must be an art of dealmaking, that governing is a chess game whose rules they alone understand. Once the illusion breaks, more candidates will emerge to run on the same premise. No billionaires needed, no party infrastructure—only the recognition that the game’s rules can be rewritten from inside the game, one piece at a time. And history shows that the system is not so impenetrable: The elevation of Lina Khan to chair the FTC under Biden—despite corporations fighting her nomination tooth and nail—and the 2025 victory of Zohran Mamdani in the mayoral Democratic primaries are proof. That said, Khan’s work is now being methodically undone, while Mamdani is receiving only tepid support from the DNC, with his win threatened by both Andrew Cuomo and incumbent Eric Adams, both Democrats. The change proposed here guards against such undoing and undermining.
And third, once in place, the arrangement resists reversal. To take it away, the establishment would have to strip a representative of the duty to mirror their constituents’ will, doing so in full view of the public. It would require saying, in effect, “We are removing your voice from the process so that your representative may again act on their own, without your consent.” Even the most shameless would hesitate to mount such an argument without fear of political immolation.
Yet, we remain stuck in the stale dialectic between grand revolutionary fantasy and meek mock incrementalism. But the truth sits elsewhere, hiding in plain sight. Complex systems—ecological, economic, political—are riddled with points where a precise intervention unravels entrenched arrangements. These points are not obvious. They are masked by the churn of surface events, by the noise of the spectacle. They require patience to locate, courage to act upon, and an indifference to the glamour of more visible battles.
Mine is not a call for purity or idealism. Instead, it is a call for political precision engineering. The engineer looks for the load-bearing beam, the point at which a modest force will achieve maximum effect. In politics, that beam is the individual legislator’s discretion over their vote. Remove it, and the structural incentives shift. Remove it in just one place, and others will begin to see the blueprint for removing it elsewhere. The change need not come from the center outward. It can start at the periphery, at the edges where attention is thinnest, where the establishment is slow to notice that something irreversible has begun.
Of course, those who profit from the current order will insist that such a model is naive, unworkable, or dangerous. They will claim that the people are too ill-informed, too distracted, too prone to whim to be trusted with direct input on every measure. But that is precisely the point: They are already trusted with electing the people who pass these measures. What they are denied is control over the substance of what those people do once elected. The change would not be in the level of trust but in the location of agency.
In the end, the proposal is disarmingly modest: Find one person willing to stand as a pure mirror, to forgo the seductions of influence and personal judgment in favor of perfect fidelity to their constituents’ will. Let them serve not as a leader, but as a conduit. Watch the shift in power ripple outward, the old incentives wither, the lobbyists circle in frustration, and the wedge merchants howl as their knives dull.
We often speak of butterflies in politics, the small moments that change the trajectory of nations—a debate line, a protest, a scandal. But here the butterfly is not a metaphor, nor is it an accident. It is deliberate, positioned exactly where the storm will begin, not to be carried by the wind but to direct it. A light touch in the right place, and the whole weather of the system changes.
Ahmed Bouzid is the co-founder of The True Representation Movement.Keep ReadingShow less
Protesters confront California National Guard soldiers and police outside of a federal building as protests continue in Los Angeles following three days of clashes with police after a series of immigration raids on June 09, 2025 in Los Angeles, California.
Getty Images, David McNew
Is Trump Normalizing Military Occupation of American Cities?
Aug 19, 2025
President Trump’s military interventions in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., foretell his plan for other cities.
The Washington Post recently reported on the Pentagon’s plans for a “quick reaction force” to deploy amid civil unrest. And, broad mobilization of the military on U.S. soil could happen under the Insurrection Act, which Trump has flirted with invoking. That rarely used Act allows troops to arrest and use force against civilians, which is otherwise prohibited by longstanding law and tradition.
These developments should sound alarms for all Americans. It is time to oppose such misuse of the military and emergency powers.
When an insurrectionist mob violently attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, then President Trump did not take emergency action to protect officials or federal property. The attack was a consequence of his call for protesters to march on the Capitol and “stop the steal”—part of the ongoing Big Lie campaign, denying his legitimate loss of the 2020 election. He is deviating from the truth again, this time to declare states of emergency where none exist in order to deploy the National Guard, first in Los Angeles and now in Washington, D.C.
On August 11, 2025, President Trump “federalized” the D.C. police department and ordered the National Guard to send 800 troops to the city. That’s in addition to some 500 federal law enforcement officers directed to D.C. the week before.
D.C. authorities did not request federal intervention. Trump justified the occupation with the false claim that city authorities lost control of violent crime. The facts show otherwise. Yes, D.C. has a serious crime problem. However, violent crime in Washington, D.C., is down 26% compared with this time a year ago. Last year, with a 35% drop from 2023, the city recorded a 30-year low.
In Los Angeles’ case, Trump’s deployment of the National Guard and active duty military troops in June was done under the false premise that protests there constituted “a form of rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States.”
While there had been peaceful demonstrations against ICE raids in L.A., fireworks, bottles, and other projectiles were thrown at ICE and L.A. police officers, and serious property damage occurred. However, there was not a rebellion. Local authorities were taking seemingly effective law enforcement actions and did not request federal assistance. In fact, they opposed the federal intervention.
Make no mistake, mobilizing the National Guard in L.A. and D.C. is a threat to other cities.
At his rambling August 11 press conference, Trump implied that New York, Chicago, Baltimore, and Oakland are among the cities on his list. The mayors of those cities are already opposing such federal military interventions. On August 12, Presidential Advisor Stephen Miller made clear on “X” that the attacks on “big blue cities” are part of an agenda, justified by the preposterous charge that “Democrats are trying to unravel civilization,” while “President Trump will save it.”
The issued presidential memoranda regarding L.A. and D.C. demonstrates both broad intent and overreach as local and state officials were bypassed and no clear “emergency” existed to justify their issuance.
The June 7, 2025, presidential memorandum used to send troops to Los Angeles is so vague that it could be invoked practically any time for deployments anywhere. Neither L.A. nor California is specifically mentioned. It allows the activation of other states’ National Guard for “military protective activities” that the secretary of defense determines “are reasonably necessary to ensure the protection and safety of Federal personnel and property.”
The August 11 presidential memorandum on D.C. parallels the June 7 document, stating:
“...I direct the Secretary of Defense to mobilize the District of Columbia National Guard and order members to active service, in such numbers as he deems necessary, to address the epidemic of crime in our Nation’s capital. The mobilization and duration of duty shall remain in effect until I determine that conditions of law and order have been restored in the District of Columbia. Further, I direct the Secretary of Defense to coordinate with State Governors and authorize the orders of any additional members of the National Guard to active service, as he deems necessary and appropriate, to augment this mission.”
As of August 16, it was announced that West Virginia, South Carolina, and Ohio were deploying hundreds of additional National Guard troops to D.C. In a further provocative escalation, the National Guard troops are to begin carrying weapons, even though no serious confrontations with them have taken place.
A president has broad discretion in deciding to declare a state of emergency, and once done, a president can employ more than 130 statutory emergency powers. The recent presidential memoranda set a precedent for unbridled interventions, sending National Guard and active military troops wherever the President claims an emergency exists. That applies even when governors object and to even use troops from other states.
To protect democratic governance, abuse of presidential emergency powers must be constrained by Congress and the courts and opposed by the public.
California is challenging the legality of the ongoing military intervention in L.A. In June, U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer issued an order restraining the deployment, but it was reversed on appeal. Judge Breyer conducted further hearings on August 13-15 on whether the troops’ activities have violated the 147-year old Posse Comitatus Act that blocks the military from civilian law enforcement. The outcome of the case will have national implications.
In D.C., the police are a focal point. Section 740 of the D.C. Home Rule Act allows a president, when “special conditions of an emergency nature exist,” to direct the mayor to order the D.C. police to provide federal “services.” Last week, Attorney General Pam Bondi wrongly attempted to place the police under direct federal command. D.C. challenged her order before District Judge Ana C. Reyes, and the order was rescinded under the judge’s watchful eye.
Under Section 740, the president’s initial D.C. police order may only last 30 days unless the U.S. House and Senate “enact into law a joint resolution” extending the time. Trump has stated that he will seek a long-term extension, which puts the onus on Congress to constrain that abuse.
More than 125 civil rights organizations are jointly calling on Congress to oppose federalizing D.C.’s police and deploying military forces for policing purposes in the U.S. Democrats have introduced a joint resolution to end the D.C. intervention because special emergency conditions do not exist.
The Limiting Emergency Powers Act of 2025, similarly to the ARTICLE ONE Act introduced in 2023, would place limits on presidential emergency powers, including requiring congressional approval for an emergency if it is to extend beyond 30 days. There is noteworthy bipartisan support for such measures. And groups like the Brennan Center for Justice and numerous other democracy advocacy organizations are working for related reforms, though reforms alone may be insufficient to constrain a president who acts beyond the law.
Members of the House and Senate need to hear forceful demands for the immediate enactment of effective limitations. Calling and texting them is in order. Related advocacy group reform efforts also deserve support. And, more than that is needed.
We may be headed to a circumstance where the military is deployed to one or more additional cities over local objections. L.A.’s mayor, police, and public managed to curtail violence without deadly confrontations between protesters and National Guard troops. That may not be the case in the future, and we cannot afford to play Russian roulette with military deployments.
That’s why the public should make clear that presidential deployment of troops to cities over the objections of state and local officials cannot be “normalized” and cannot stand.
Pat Merloe provides strategic advice to groups focused on democracy and trustworthy elections in the U.S. and internationally. He is a long-time resident of Washington, D.C.
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