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Congress Bill Spotlight: Suspending Pennies and Nickels for 10 Years
May 02, 2025
The Fulcrum introduces Congress Bill Spotlight, a weekly report by Jesse Rifkin, focusing on the noteworthy legislation of the thousands introduced in Congress. Rifkin has written about Congress for years, and now he's dissecting the most interesting bills you need to know about but that often don't get the right news coverage.
Trump recently discontinued production of the one-cent coin. What about the five-cent coin too?
What the bill does
A new bill in Congress would suspend production of both the penny and nickel for 10 years. The bill also contains a provision clarifying that all existing pennies and nickels ever produced would continue to remain as legally usable money.
It was introduced on February 12 by Rep. David Schweikert (R-AZ1). The bill does not appear to have an official title.
Context
In fiscal year 2024, each penny cost 3.7 cents to produce, more than triple its face value. So on February 9, President Donald Trump announced that he was suspending the production of the penny for an indefinite period of time. (Again, existing pennies can still be used.)
“For far too long the United States has minted pennies which literally cost us more than 2 cents. This is so wasteful!” Trump posted on Truth Social. “I have instructed my Secretary of the US Treasury to stop producing new pennies. Let's rip the waste out of our great nation's budget, even if it's a penny at a time.”
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Even some congressional Democrats supported the move. Rep. Schweikert introduced his bill three days later.
However, some worry that suspending only the penny may inadvertently increase government losses on coin production, by deepening reliance on nickels. Nickels cost 13.8 cents each, so the government actually loses far more on each nickel than on each penny: about 8.8 cents versus 2.7 cents.
What supporters say
Supporters argue in part by citing history. The U.S. last discontinued a coin’s production due to low value with the half-penny or “haypenny” in 1857. However, adjusted for inflation, it was worth more than 17 cents today – the financial equivalent of discontinuing the penny, nickel, and dime due to low values.
Supporters now argue that we should discontinue the penny and nickel but keep producing the dime and quarter because those two actually earn money. Each dime currently costs 5.8 cents, while each quarter costs 14.7 cents – both well below their face value.
Treasury Secretary William E. Simon even advocated suspending the penny back in 1976.
Noting “the diminishing utility of the one-cent denomination in commerce,” Simon wrote, “the United States government is rapidly approaching a decision point concerning continuance of the one-cent coin.” He argued for doing so in the 1970s or 1980s: “Elimination of the cent at some later date would be a much more drastic action than elimination now.”
What opponents say
Opponents counter that the bill is self-serving.
Rep. Schweikert represents Arizona, which produces about 70% of U.S. copper. Only the penny’s razor-thin outer coating is made of copper, but the actual coin is 97.5% zinc versus only 2.5% copper. Vice versa, despite literally being named a “nickel,” the five-cent coin is only 25% nickel versus 75% copper.
In other words, switching from pennies to nickels would require considerably more copper production – primarily benefiting Arizona. Little surprise that Arizona politicians have historically ranked among the biggest proponents of ending the penny in years past.
In 2006, then-Rep. Jim Kolbe (R-AZ8) introduced the COIN (Currency Overhaul for an Industrious Nation) Act. In 2017, then-Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) introduced the similarly-named COINS (Currency Optimization, Innovation, and National Savings) Act. Neither received a vote.
Odds of passage
The new bill has not yet attracted any cosponsors, not even any Republicans. While lead sponsor Rep. Schweikert is a Republican, the bill isn’t particularly partisan in substance.
It awaits a potential vote in the House Financial Services Committee, controlled by Republicans. No Senate companion version appears to have been introduced yet.
Back in 2011, Rep. Schweikert also introduced a bill to replace the production of dollar bills with dollar coins within four years. (Currently, dollars are produced as both bills and coins.) The legislation never received a vote.
Jesse Rifkin is a freelance journalist with the Fulcrum. Don’t miss his weekly report, Congress Bill Spotlight, every Friday on the Fulcrum. Rifkin’s writings about politics and Congress have been published in the Washington Post, Politico, Roll Call, Los Angeles Times, CNN Opinion, GovTrack, and USA Today.
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Democracy on the Edge: Take Action Now To Maintain the Constitution
May 01, 2025
Democracy is in danger. Voter suppression efforts are once again on the rise, most recently embodied in the reintroduction of the “SAVE Act.” Initially passed by the House in 2024 and revived again in April 2025, the bill proposes new identification standards for voting.
It calls to eliminate the use of driver’s licenses and state IDs and require birth certificates instead. While billed as an election integrity measure, this legislation is a thinly veiled attempt to disenfranchise millions of eligible voters, particularly the elderly, minorities, and low-income Americans who may lack access to original documentation.
To be sure, this is not about protecting elections. It’s about controlling who gets to vote. It's about power.
Equally alarming are President Donald Trump’s recent comments suggesting he is seriously considering a third term as president, despite the explicit limits imposed by the 22nd Amendment. He even hinted at “methods” that could allow him to bypass constitutional constraints.
This is not harmless bravado or hypocritical hyperbole. These statements have prompted real political maneuvers. Representative Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.) has proposed an amendment to repeal the 22nd Amendment, allowing Trump to run again.
Others have floated legal theories and hypothetical scenarios in which Vice President J.D. Vance could be elected president and somehow cede power back to Trump. While such tactics may be legally dubious, the mere fact that they're being discussed at the highest levels of government signals a chilling disregard for constitutional norms.
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What the country is witnessing is an attempt to centralize power in defiance of democratic principles. It is an attempt to reshape the Constitution and the electoral system to serve a singular political and ideological interest. This movement does not seek to represent America; it seeks to dominate it. It trims the Constitution not for clarity but for control. It rewrites laws not for justice but for power. It appeals not to the collective good but to a narrow base of fervent loyalists.
Fealty is very real. This is not democracy. It is autocracy wearing a red, white, and blue mask.
The 50501 Movement—standing for 50 Protests, 50 States,1 Movement—organized 700 protests against Trump in cities across the country on Saturday, with hundreds of thousands turning out, some with signs, saying, “No Kings.”
This follows the April 5 protest in 1400 events where more than five million protesters attended the peaceful “Hands Off” protests against Trump and his administration.
These are signs that Americans know they cannot afford to be complacent. The defense of democracy requires more than voting every four years. It demands constant vigilance, civic engagement, and an unwavering commitment to the rule of law.
It is urgent to challenge legislation like the SAVE Act that disenfranchises voters under the guise of “integrity.” People must reject efforts to bend or break the Constitution to accommodate any leader’s ego. And it is critical to hold accountable those who seek to exploit our democratic institutions for personal gain.
But it was possible to see this all coming. In December 2022, Trump, then a former president preparing to reclaim power, posted a startling message on his social media platform, Truth Social.
Referring to the unfounded allegations of election fraud in 2020, he wrote that “a massive fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution.” His statement was a direct challenge to the rule of law and the very foundation of American democracy.
This was not just an impulsive remark. It was a declaration of intent. It was a glimpse into a worldview where the Constitution is conditional, elections are suspect, and power is the ultimate end. From that point onward, the president’s actions and rhetoric have increasingly demonstrated a systematic effort to undermine the democratic process in the United States.
Even before that, this erosion began with relentless attacks on the legitimacy of the 2020 election with the attacks that culminated in a deadly insurrection at the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
But the assault on democracy didn’t end there. President Trump and his allies have worked to impose restrictive voting requirements, weaken institutional safeguards, and sow doubt about the electoral system itself. These aren’t isolated incidents; they are coordinated maneuvers to make electoral outcomes more reflective of one man’s ambitions than of the will of the people.
Looking ahead to another presidential election cycle in less than four years, this dangerous trend is intensifying.
The strength of a democracy lies not in the power of its leaders but in the voice of its people. When that voice is silenced, whether through misinformation, voter suppression, or constitutional manipulation, democracy suffers.
The country is at a crossroads. One path leads toward authoritarianism dressed up in patriotic rhetoric. The other leads to a renewed commitment to liberty, justice, and representative government. The choice is ours, but only if we have the courage to make it.
To preserve democracy, the response must be as strategic and forceful as the threats it faces. One response is legislative actions. Congress must pass voting rights legislation that establishes national standards for voter access, including protections for early voting, mail-in ballots, and automatic voter registration.
The proposed John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act of 2025 and the Freedom to Vote Act of 2021 have not been passed into law but remain vital blueprints.
Another safeguard is the judicial system. Courts must remain a firewall against unconstitutional overreach. Lawsuits challenging voter suppression tactics and unconstitutional power grabs must be vigorously and continuously pursued. All judges must be held accountable to the law and not allowed to practice partisan ideology.
States and counties need to be resilient and should modernize voting systems to be secure, accessible, and verifiable. Paper ballots, audits, and strong cybersecurity protections must be a staple in a functioning democracy.
Protecting democracy requires more than just opposing bad policies; it requires building better systems, demanding accountability, and ensuring that the institutions meant to serve the people remain in the people’s hands.
It is unwise to wait for another constitutional crisis before taking action. Americans must be proactive not just reactive. Everyone must meet the threat head up and head on with clarity, unity, and resolve.
Our democracy is not a given but it is a choice. Choose America. Choose.
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Guatemalan workers farming tomatoes using tools provided by the UVG Climate Smart Agriculture Project.
Rolando Cifuentes Velásquez.
Seeds of Abandonment: How USAID Cuts Left Thousands of Farmers in Guatemala Struggling
May 01, 2025
Maria Lopez was thriving.
Her tomato farm in rural Guatemala was flourishing since a worker from the Universidad del Valle de Guatemala (UVG) came in to show her climate-smart agricultural practices in her drought-stricken community.
“Thanks to their help, the redemption of the tomato in my greenhouse was successful,” Lopez said.
The worker was funded through a United States Agency for International Development (USAID) program called the Feed the Future Initiative. Feed the Future has many programs, but the one Lopez benefited from was the Lab for Horticulture run by University of California, Davis (UC Davis). Specifically, the employee worked for a project called the UVG Climate Smart Agriculture Project to help farmers affected by climate change in the region.
This project helped Lopez and 3,000 other Guatemalan farmers revive their farms.
But recently, Lopez has found herself back at square one.
President Donald Trump in late February cut 90 percent of USAID foreign aid contracts, including the one helping Lopez’s farm.
USAID was established on Nov. 3, 1961, when President John F. Kennedy signed an executive order titled “Administration of Foreign Assistance and Related Functions.” Kennedy said USAID permits the U.S. to exert their influence to maintain freedom in countries under nondemocratic rule.
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“The people who are opposed to aid should realize that this is a very powerful source of strength for us,” Kennedy said in an address to the inaugural USAID Overseas Mission Directors.
President John F. Kennedy giving an address to Congress on May 25, 1961. | Permission for use granted via Creative Commons Licenses.
But the Trump administration undid Kennedy’s order by signing its own executive order, titled “Reevaluating and Realigning United States Foreign Aid,” on Jan. 20.
Trump has also remained skeptical on climate change, including calling it a hoax on many occasions. This contrasts the 97 percent of scientists who have concluded climate change is caused by humans.
“We don’t have a global warming problem,” Trump said at a campaign rally on Nov. 3, two days before the 2024 presidential election.
During his 2024 presidential campaign, Trump also pledged an “America First” agenda, now posted on the White House website. The agenda states it will make America safe again, make America affordable and energy dominant again, bring back American values, and drain the swamp, or work to make the government more efficient.
Previously, the State Department and USAID worked together to support U.S. national interests through hard and soft power. But the Trump administration’s dismantling of USAID has involved transferring some function to the State Department.
The State Department did not respond to a request to comment.
President Donald J. Trump signing an executive order on June 24, 2020. | Permission for use granted via Creative Commons Licenses.
Henry Lee is the Jassim M. Jaidah Family Director of the Environment and Natural Resources Program within the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School. He said the cut of USAID programs will have long-term impacts on various institutions and services and that more people will be affected as time goes on.
“It’s going to have large implications on a lot of the programs that have to do with basic human rights,” Lee said, adding the cut will also have an effect on those affected by climate change.
Lee said he cannot get into Trump’s head but his decisions so far suggest climate change is a “non-issue” for his administration.
The United States foreign aid industry and bureaucracy are not aligned with American interests and, in many cases, antithetical to American values. They serve to destabilize world peace by promoting ideas in foreign countries that are directly inverse to harmonious and stable relations internal to and among countries.
Back in Guatemala, the project was previously run by Rolando Cifuentes Velásquez, a soil science professor at UVG.
Cifuentes Velásquez said he met with officials from UC Davis in 2022 to discuss the UVG Climate Smart Agriculture Project. Eventually, he was given a grant of $750,000 to put his work on the ground, beginning in fall 2023.
With this money, Cifuentes Velásquez sends volunteers into the field to help people like Lopez revive their farms affected by climate change.
Flow chart of goals set by the UVG Climate Smart Agriculture Project. | Courtesy of Rolando Cifuentes Velásquez.
Cifuentes Velásquez said one method workers use to help revive farms is to put agrotextile sheets, held up by bamboo pools, over crops like tomatoes. The goal of this method is to get rid of insects that might kill crops and to control the growing temperature.
Research from American University states Guatemala is disproportionately affected by climate change as the country sees more frequent and intense droughts, floods, and other extreme weather events.
These events affect the amount of food grown in Guatemala as droughts can cause problems like food insecurity and malnutrition in children.
With projects like Cifuentes Velásquez’s coming in to assist farmers affected by climate change around the country, crop production has increased.
Between 2019 and 2023, Guatemala saw only 2,668 thousand tons of food grown. This number has increased between 2024 and the predicted number for 2025 is 2,709 thousand tons of food.
“The profitability of the innovation is really high,” Cifuentes Velásquez said.
First Picture: The agrotextile and bamboo poles set up in the tent just as the tomatoes were planted. | Courtesy of Rolando Cifuentes Velásquez. Second Picture: Tomato plants beginning to grow. | Courtesy of Rolando Cifuentes Velásquez. Third Picture: Tomato plants almost fully grown in the agrotextile tent. | Courtesy of Rolando Cifuentes Velásquez.
He also added that another goal of the project was to give more economic opportunities to Guatemalans so they would stop migrating to countries like the U.S.
“The rate of migration to the USA is really high,” Cifuentes Velásquez said.
Part of the Trump administration’s goals is to overhaul the U.S. immigration system, specifically to deport undocumented migrants in the country. A report from the BBC estimates that as of 2022, there are 675,000 undocumented Guatemalans in the U.S.
Since the volunteer who assisted Lopez in receiving her farm has left, she said her farm is not doing as well as before. Lopez also said she did not know it was the decision of the Trump administration to shut down the project but rather UVG.
Other farmers were more lucky. Miguel Santo Miculax, another farmer benefiting from the UVG Climate Smart Agriculture Project, said the worker who showed him agricultural techniques still comes to help him.
Although the worker is no longer being paid, he said the worker understands the importance of the project so he volunteers his time to the farmers who previously benefited from the program. Santo Miculax also said the worker informed him the project was shut down due to the Trump administration.
Santo Miculax added programs like the one helping him on his farm disincentives him and his family from migrating to places like the U.S. He also said migrating for Guatemalans is often very dangerous as people lose their lives while traveling.
"Every government has the right to look after its own interests. We can't blame them for that but rather be grateful for what they've already given us,” said Santo Miculax.
But USAID programs helping alleviate problems caused by climate change are not only happening in Guatemala but worldwide. A former USAID climate specialist said funding for climate projects were located in other places where extreme weather caused by climate change has affected agriculture.
The specialist said USAID mainly partnered with the country’s local or national governments to create projects catered to communities. But climate change is not only affecting agriculture as the climate specialist also said they worked on projects relating to combating climate change.
“Our agenda was really looking across all of our sectors, food security, water security, health education, across all of these issue sets, and ensuring that adaptation was built into those efforts,” the climate specialist said.
Even though the UVG Climate Smart Agriculture Project shut down, Cifuentes Velásquez said he is thankful for the work he accomplished with the help of the U.S. government but recognizes the country has their own interests they want to adhere to.
“We recognize the money that is used for foreign aid comes from the American people,” Cifuentes Velásquez said. “So we are really grateful for that.”
Tomatoes grown by Guatemalan farmers with help from the UVG Climate Smart Agriculture Project. | Courtesy of Rolando Cifuentes Velásquez.
Editor’s Note: Interviews with Maria Lopez and Miguel Santo Miculax were translated from Spanish to English by Valeria Garaycoa.
Maggie Rhoads is a student journalist attending George Washington University School of Media and Public Affairs. At The Fulcrum, she covers how legislation and policy are impacting communities.
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Defining the Democracy Movement: Aditi Juneja
Apr 30, 2025
The Fulcrum presents The Path Forward: Defining the Democracy Reform Movement. Scott Warren's interview series engages diverse thought leaders to elevate the conversation about building a thriving and healthy democratic republic that fulfills its potential as a national social and political game-changer. This initiative is the start of focused collaborations and dialogue led by The Bridge Alliance and The Fulcrum teams to help the movement find a path forward.
Aditi Juneja is the Executive Director of Democracy 2076, an organization dedicated to reimagining democracy for the next generation. Democracy 2076 is intentionally taking a long-range view of democracy, bringing together diverse stakeholders to explore what democracy should look like within a 50-year time horizon.
Through an exploration of challenges and opportunities through such a long-term lens, the hope is that the constraints of a constant focus on the five-alarm fire of democracy are removed. Aditi and her organization utilize strategic foresight tools to collaborate with organizations on longer-term visioning projects, including a project that involves bringing together constituencies from across the country to envision what the US Constitution should look like in 2076.
I feel that the tension of responding to short-term threats to democracy while also re-envisioning democracy itself is at the crux of nearly every conversation about democracy reform right now. It’s difficult to pinpoint exactly what that tension means. Through this conversation, Aditi provided answers, describing Democracy 2076’s concrete approach towards ensuring that individuals and organizations can think long-term and actually in concert with this line of imaginative thinking, rather than solely being theoretical.
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I think that sometimes in the pro-democracy sector, long-term thinking can be code for structural reform (such as changing electoral systems), but reimagining democracy itself requires much more. The notion of a 50-year time horizon allows for truly reconceiving what democracy can look like in the future, without the obvious constraints that come with the moment (the type of thinking that leads to cynicism about any substantive reform being achieved with a Congress or population so polarized, for example).
I found Aditi to be deeply candid in this interview about where the movement has gone wrong, while also being optimistic about what the future could hold.
Her main reflections included:
- The pro-democracy movement has continually failed to offer a compelling vision: One of the persistent challenges with the pro-democracy movement in this country, as conceived, is that it largely matured after the first election of Donald Trump in 2016. This means that much of the movement itself often involves organizing in opposition to Trump, rather than articulating a new vision of democracy.
As Aditi notes, after first getting involved in the field partially as a response to Trump, she began to realize that the deep frustration people held required “an alternate vision for the future- people needed to know that their problems could be solved in a pro-democratic way, and in the absence of that we were just going to be in the doom loop.”
Unfortunately, Aditi reflected, the time period during the Biden Administration was a lost opportunity, both for political leaders and the broader pro-democracy movement. “During the Biden Administration, there was definitely an opportunity when people were not actively on defense, to be thinking more about what a vision for the future of our democracy could be. I actually don't think that happened. I think that a lot of organizations in the pro-democracy space spent the 4 years of the Biden Administration preparing for a Trump 2.0.”
While acknowledging that these efforts were helpful to the extent that Trump 2.0 is now the world in which we find ourselves in, Aditi notes, “Part of me that wonders if it wasn't a self-fulfilling prophecy that in preparing for the worst outcome we didn't offer an alternate vision for the future that was pro-democratic.”
- Imagining a different democracy is more than just policy change: One of the important elements of Aditi and Democracy 2076’s work, and much of the future work that is now happening, is a recognition that much of our country may both look and act differently in the future. Much of the pro-democracy sector seems stuck in policy fights of the moment: how can we push forward on issues like climate change, fight for the rule of law, and construct a responsible immigration policy?
For Aditi, envisioning the future allows for reckoning with, for example, climate change projections show that “New York City will be underwater in 2070 if nothing changes. That’s a real different world you’re thinking about.”
The recognition that the world itself will look different prompts people to move beyond the rigid orthodoxy associated with current ideologies, which are typically mapped along a left-right continuum. Getting to a better place in our democracy most likely will not come specifically on the current contours of our continuum.
Aditi learned in her convenings and trainings that, “the biggest thing was thinking about how our values might be different, but also the context might be different.. Most people don't have a deeply held, ideologically driven view that is strongly left or strongly right on what we should do about climate migration. Most people don't have a preconceived notion of what we do when New York City is underwater. And so that creates a lot of openness and space for imagination.”
- Opportunity exists right now: While Aditi’s work is focused on a long-term vision for democracy, a push for more positive and opportunistic thinking was apparent throughout our conversation. This can be a difficult proposition in a moment in which so many are in pain. Aditi, acknowledging that reality, also reflects that while the common perception is that “the system is set, and it’s unmovable and unchangeable, what we’re seeing in the present is really disrupting that notion. It’s allowing people to really ask the question of “If you can cut half of Department of Education employees, why can’t you abolish the Senate?””
Aditi points to Universal Basic Income and immigration reform as specific ideas where there might be opportunity to get things done through unlikely coalitions, especially as the situation evolves rapidly and institutions are decimated “I have been trying to invite people not just to think about how things could get worse, which seems to be what people think scenario planning is for, but also where there might be opportunities.”
Aditi thinks differently about the democracy ecosystem and is not afraid to push. I really appreciated her candor and think we can all stand to learn a lot from pushing ourselves to imagine, get uncomfortable, and think differently.
Scott Warren is a fellow at the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University. He is co-leading a trans-partisan effort to protect the basic parameters, rules, and institutions of the American republic. He is the co-founder of Generation Citizen, a national civics education organization.
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