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Project 2025: The Department of Defense

John Roberts at the State of the Union

The supreme hubris of John Roberts

Democracy reform: Do you have a plan for that?

Our Staff
By Our StaffOct 23, 2019
Our Staff
The Fulcrum staff.
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Got a great idea for how to fix the electoral system? Now you can share your ideas with some of the reform community's leading researchers.

The newly created Electoral Reform Research Group put out a call this week for research papers "into how changes in electoral rules impact political participation, processes, partisanship, power, and policy outcomes."

Proposals are due Dec. 6 and selections will be discussed at a workshop in Washington in February. Chosen participants will receive a $500 honorarium and additional funds will be made available to run research programs based on the proposals.

The group is primarily focused on ranked-choice voting at this point, although its members acknowledge RCV is just one piece of the larger electoral reform debate.

"We're heavily focused on RCV because that's the live issue right now," said New America's Lee Drutman, one of the organizers of the research group. "It's getting a tremendous amount of momentum."

In addition to Drutman, this effort has been organized by Avi Green of the Scholars Strategy Network, Kevin Kosar of R Street Institute and Didi Kuo of Stanford University.

More details, including sample questions to guide proposal writing, are available here.

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George Washington
en.wikipedia.org

Can George Washington inspire Biden to greatness?

Clancy is co-founder of Citizen Connect and board member of the Bridge Alliance Education Fund. Citizen Connect is an initiative of the Bridge Alliance Education Fund, which also operates The Fulcrum.

King George III reputedly said George Washington was the greatest man in the world for voluntarily relinquishing power. The indisputable fact is that Washington’s action remains remarkable in human history. And he actually did it at least two times.

On Dec. 23, 1783, Washington resigned his commission as commander of the Continental Army and returned to Mount Vernon. He did it again when he declined to run for a third term as president by publishing his Farewell Address on Sept. 19, 1796. In June 1799 Washington was yet again urged to run for president and declined.

His reasoning on each occasion was a complex mix of the personal and political, but the bedrock was an unwavering commitment to put the good of the nation above personal gain and the factions that would ultimately become our toxic party system.

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Young girl holding a sparkler and wearing an American flag shirt
Rebecca Nelson/Getty Images

Three approaches to Independence Day

Anderson edited "Leveraging: A Political, Economic and Societal Framework," has taught at five universities and ran for the Democratic nomination for a Maryland congressional seat in 2016.

July Fourth is not like Christmas or Rosh Hashanah, holidays that create a unified sense of celebration among celebrants. On Christmas, Christians throughout the world celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ. On Rosh Hashanah, Jews throughout the world celebrate the Jewish New Year.

Yet on the Fourth of July, apart from the family gatherings, barbecues and drinking, we take different approaches. Some Americans celebrate the declaration of America's independence from Great Britain and especially the value of freedom. And some Americans reject the holiday, because they believe it highlights the self-contradiction of the United States, which created a nation in which some would be free and some would be enslaved. And other Americans are conflicted between these two points of view.

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Joe Biden at the debate

After his disastrous peformance at the debate, President Biden needs to exit the race, writes Breslin.

Kyle Mazza/Anadolu via Getty Images

Getting into the highest offices is hard. Getting out is harder.

Breslin is the Joseph C. Palamountain Jr. Chair of Political Science at Skidmore College and author of “A Constitution for the Living: Imagining How Five Generations of Americans Would Rewrite the Nation’s Fundamental Law.”

This is the latest in “A Republic, if we can keep it,” a series to assist American citizens on the bumpy road ahead this election year. By highlighting components, principles and stories of the Constitution, Breslin hopes to remind us that the American political experiment remains, in the words of Alexander Hamilton, the “most interesting in the world.”

Getting into America’s highest political offices is hard. Getting out is harder.

President Joe Biden’s disastrous debate performance has intensified calls for him to step aside. Not even 24 hours after his poor showing, The New York Times took the extraordinary and unprecedented position that the sitting president should immediately pass the torch to a more energetic and electable candidate. “The greatest public service Mr. Biden can now perform,” the editorial board declared, “is to announce that he will not continue to run for re-election.”

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Department of Energy building in Washington, DC
J. David Ake/Getty Images

Project 2025: The Department of Energy

Radwell is the author of“American Schism: How the Two Enlightenments Hold the Secret to Healing our Nation” and serves on the Business Council at Business for America.

This is part of a series offering a nonpartisan counter to Project 2025, a conservative guideline to reforming government and policymaking during the first 180 days of a second Trump administration. The Fulcrum's cross partisan analysis of Project 2025 relies on unbiased critical thinking, reexamines outdated assumptions, and uses reason, scientific evidence, and data in analyzing and critiquing Project 2025.

There are few better examples of recent generations’ malfeasance, indeed selfishness, than their failure to assume financial responsibilities. For most of my adult life, the federal government has run large deficits, but in recent decades those have ballooned to mind boggling heights — The New York Times reports that we will hit$56 trillion by 2034 given current trends.

Tolerating such as a normal way of doing business masks a simple and uncomfortable truth: We are passing the buck (and bill) to the next generations, who will be forced to pay for our profligacy. (Some call this borrowing from future generations, but I think the term “robbing” is more apropos.)

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Donald Trump on stage at the debate

Donald Trump's emphasis on the power of negative information gave him an advantage at Thursday's debate.

Kyle Mazza/Anadolu via Getty Images

How harnessing the power of bad helped Trump win the debate

Assari is an associate professor of public health and Internal Medicine at Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science. He is a member of the Scholars Strategy Network.

On Thursday, we witnessed a debate between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump. What captured most of the audience's attention were Biden's occasional stumbles and Trump's numerous statements inaccuracies. Biden appeared humble and policy-focused, while Trump was loud, assertive and well-spoken.

However, another significant aspect was Trump's rhetoric, which was often filled with threats, fear and loss, especially on topics like immigration and crime. In contrast, Biden's points were primarily centered around policies and statistics aimed at benefiting Americans overall, with a particular focus on the vulnerable.

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