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China and Russia Condemn U.S. Strike on Iran—but Stay on the Sidelines

China and Russia Condemn U.S. Strike on Iran—but Stay on the Sidelines

Voter registration

With Ranked Choice Voting in NYC, Women Win

Just the Facts: Canadian Tariffs - June Update

Just the Facts: Canadian Tariffs - June Update

NextGen Initiatives: Fulcrum Fellowship

NextGen Initiatives: Fulcrum Fellowship

And the winner of the first Democracy Madness is ...

And the winner of the first Democracy Madness is ...
Tristiaña Hinton/The Fulcrum
The Fulcrum
By The FulcrumJun 08, 2020
The Fulcrum
The Fulcrum staff.
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The Democracy Madness champion has been crowned: Ranked-choice voting bested the Cinderella story of the tournament, a National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, to win our reader-driven challenge.

The winner, with 56 percent support, emerged over the weekend with the biggest burst of balloting since our contest started two months ago. That's when we asked you to start deciding which of 64 ideas for fixing the system would be the most transformative at ending the dysfunction and putting voters back at the center of things.

Ranked-choice voting is an alternative to the system used for most American elections throughout history — voters picking one candidate and the one with the most votes (even if it's only a plurality) winning.

Under RCV, voters list candidates in order of preference. If no one wins by securing a majority of first-place ballots, the candidate with the fewest No. 1 votes is eliminated and that person's ballots are redistributed based on their No. 2 rankings. These instantaneous runoffs repeat until one candidate emerges with majority backing.


The main benefit, proponents say, is to reward candidates who can capture the broadest coalition of support. Opponents fear RCV holds a high potential to incubate voter fraud.

The irony was not lost on some folks that RCV was fighting for the top prize in a single-vote contest.

The popular vote co mpact, which focuses on getting states to promise their electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote (not their own), had edged out a pair of No. 1 seeds to make it to the final round of the Democracy Madness tournament, but couldn't conquer RCV.

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Trump Shows That Loyalty Is All That Matters to Him

Guests in the audience await the arrival of U.S. Vice President Mike Pence during the Federalist Society's Executive Branch Review Conference at The Mayflower Hotel on April 25, 2023, in Washington, D.C.

Drew Angerer/Getty Images/TNS

Trump Shows That Loyalty Is All That Matters to Him

Last week, the Court of International Trade delivered a blow to Donald Trump’s global trade war. It found that the worldwide tariffs Trump unveiled on “Liberation Day” as well his earlier tariffs pretextually aimed at stopping fentanyl coming in from Mexico and Canada (as if) were beyond his authority. The three-judge panel was surely right about the Liberation Day tariffs and probably right about the fentanyl tariffs, but there’s a better case that, while bad policy, the fentanyl tariffs were not unlawful.

Please forgive a lengthy excerpt of Trump’s response on Truth Social, but it speaks volumes:

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U.S. Strikes Iran Nuclear Sites: Trump’s Pivot Amid Middle East Crisis

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Air Force Gen. Dan Caine discusses the mission details of a strike on Iran during a news conference at the Pentagon on June 22, 2025, in Arlington, Virginia.

(Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

U.S. Strikes Iran Nuclear Sites: Trump’s Pivot Amid Middle East Crisis

In his televised address to the nation Saturday night regarding the U.S. strikes on Iran, President Donald Trump declared that the attacks targeted “the destruction of Iran’s nuclear enrichment capacity and a stop to the nuclear threat posed by the world’s number one state sponsor of terror.” He framed the operation as a necessary response to decades of Iranian aggression, citing past attacks on U.S. personnel and Tehran’s support for militant proxies.

While those justifications were likely key drivers, the decision to intervene was also shaped by a complex interplay of political strategy, alliance dynamics, and considerations of personal legacy.

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What if We Fired the Parties?

"They want us divided sign" that represents partisanship among democrats and republicans.

Getty Images, Jena Ardell

What if We Fired the Parties?

Like many Americans, I have been increasingly disappointed by the candidates promoted by political parties because they tend to back candidates who are ultimately focused on personal gain and/or only advancing issues predetermined by party priorities while moving further away from responding to the needs of their constituents. According to The Guardian, in the 2024 election, the number of eligible voters who did not cast their ballot is more than the total of those who voted for either of the party candidates. So, maybe the real issue is that our political party system just isn’t working for most Americans anymore. Assuming this is even partially true, what if, instead of just complaining about the parties or holding our noses and voting for the "lesser evil" every November, we actually fired the parties—took away their grip on our democracy and built something better.

For decades, we've been told we only have two choices. But more and more Americans don't feel truly represented by either major party. We're exhausted by the noise, the blame games, the endless culture wars that solve nothing and only serve to increasingly marginalize portions of our citizenry. Americans want real solutions on housing, healthcare, education, wages, and the future we're leaving for the next generation. And we're not getting them. So, maybe it's time to ask a radical but necessary question: What if the problem isn't just the candidates but the political party system that keeps producing them?

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The Medical Community Tells Congress That Telehealth Needs Permanent Federal Support
person wearing lavatory gown with green stethoscope on neck using phone while standing
Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash

The Medical Community Tells Congress That Telehealth Needs Permanent Federal Support

WASHINGTON–In March 2020, Stephanie Hendrick, a retired teacher in Roanoke, Virginia, contracted COVID-19, a virus that over 110 million people in the U.S. would contract over the next couple of years.

She recovered from the initial illness, but like many, she soon began experiencing long COVID symptoms. In the early months of the pandemic, hospitals and medical centers prioritized care for individuals with active COVID-19 infections, and pandemic restrictions limited travel and in-person treatment for other medical conditions. Hendrick’s options for care for long COVID were limited.

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