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Modernizing Plastic Recycling: The Key to Unleashing American Manufacturing

Modernizing Plastic Recycling: The Key to Unleashing American Manufacturing

Disinformation Wins: Justifying ICE Murders through Transphobia

Disinformation Wins: Justifying ICE Murders through Transphobia

A stethoscope on top of the uniform a U.S. military solider.

Trump Has Betrayed the Troops Again

Trump’s claims versus reality on the economy and tariffs

Trump’s claims versus reality on the economy and tariffs

Republican scheming backfires in Texas election

Republican scheming backfires in Texas election

What you need to know about the Voting Rights Advancement Act

The Fulcrum
By The FulcrumAug 23, 2021
The Fulcrum
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News

The Voting Rights Advancement Act will be voted on soon. Here's what to know.

Sara Swann

As the House returns from recess this week, Democrats will make their latest push for a major upgrade to voting rights protections nationally.

The long-awaited John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act was introduced by Rep. Terri Sewell of Alabama last week, and House Democratic leaders say a vote on the bill is imminent.

Voting rights advocates believe the VRAA would provide critical protections for minority voters at a time when many states are enacting new limits on voting access. But like the For the People Act, it's unclear how the VRAA will overcome a Republican filibuster in the Senate.

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Debate

Why colleges should invest in civic engagement

Higher education institutions are in a unique position to engage young people, but civic engagement is often seen as beyond the purview of colleges and universities. This is a massive missed opportunity, for both higher ed institutions and our democracy, argues Rachel Konowitz, co-founder and chief operating officer of Motivote.

Podcast: America's foreign policy challenges are evolving rapidly

The takeover of the Taliban in Afghanistan; a more aggressive China and Russia; and a newly-elected hardline president in Iran are all major challenges facing President Joe Biden and his administration. On this episode of Let's Find Common Ground, Ned Temko, who writes the weekly international affairs column "Patterns" for The Christian Science Monitor, and Scott Peterson, the Monitor's Middle East bureau chief, discuss the challenges and implications of America's foreign policy.

Community

We the People's Forum: How Can We Fix America's Immigration System?

Join Braver Angels tonight for a fascinating conversation with two immigrants and friends who have much in common -- but also differing perspectives on immigration. During Discussion, anyone with direct experience on this issue may comment, and anyone may ask a question.


Latest news

What the Oscars can teach us about democracy
Pop Culture

What the Oscars can teach us about democracy

A child holding a basket full of colorfully painted eggs.
Governance & Legislation

Congress Bill Spotlight: Easter Monday Act, Federal Holiday

An illustration of a person standing on a giant robotic hand.
Media & Technology

We’ve Been "Preparing" for the Future Since 1991—It Hasn't Worked

Brothers Born to Opposite Sides of War Show What Humanity Requires
Community

Brothers Born to Opposite Sides of War Show What Humanity Requires

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Making parties great again, early election results, and timely links

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Vox

Making parties great again, early election results, and timely links

#1. Deep Dive: Is it Realistic to Make Parties Great Again?

There’s intriguing new energy for advancing party-based forms of proportional representation (PR) in the United States, along with substantial legal efforts to win fusion voting where candidates earn the right to be nominated by more than one party. The underlying theory of the case for this new energy is that American political parties should be both strengthened and allowed to multiply. But is that what either the voters or elected leaders want? Here’s a longer “Deep Think” than usual to explore that question.

First, here’s new evidence of this energy and the intellectual case around stronger parties behind it:

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A person at a voting booth.

Independent voters now make up the largest voting bloc in the U.S., yet many are excluded from primaries and debates. Why reforming primary elections requires empowering independents.

Getty Images, LPETTET

Empowering Independent Voters Can Fix Primary Elections

Not long ago, almost no one talked about the rules and culture of primary elections. Today, there is a growing recognition that the way we run primary elections isn’t working. They’re too partisan. Too low turnout. Too dominated by ideological activists. My organization, Open Primaries, has spent years pushing this conversation into the mainstream.

But we won’t fix primaries purely by tweaking rules. Their dysfunction is a symptom of a larger problem: the systemic exclusion of independent voters from our political life. To truly reform them, we have to start with an honest discussion about why so many Americans are leaving the parties- and what it would take to empower them as full participants in our democracy.

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Liberty and Justice for Some

Stephanie Toliver examines book bans, transgender rights in Kansas, the impacts of ICE detentions, and the history of conditional equality in America’s schools, libraries, and churches.

Getty Images, Catherine McQueen

Liberty and Justice for Some

Late February brought two stories that most Americans filed under separate categories. In Kansas, the state government invalidated the driver's licenses and birth certificates of transgender residents, erasing legal identities with the stroke of a pen. In New York, a Columbia University neuroscience student named Ellie Aghayeva was taken from her campus apartment by federal agents who misrepresented themselves to get through the door and held by ICE until the city's mayor personally petitioned for her release. Different people, different states, different mechanisms. The same message: for some of us, the promises of this nation were always conditional.

And yet, many Americans hold onto the lie of equality because acknowledging the truth would mean that the foundational promise we have repeated since childhood — liberty and justice for all — was never meant for all of us. It is far easier to accept comfortable fictions than to reckon with a truth that destabilizes everything you thought you knew. That meritocracy is real. That all are equal. That the documents we carry and the institutions we enter will protect us the same way they protect everyone else. But for many of us, there was never a fiction to hold onto. We were born into the conditions the lie was designed to obscure.

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Michael B. Jordan standing next to Delroy Lindo

Michael B. Jordan and Delroy Lindo at the 41st Annual Santa Barbara International Film Festival.

Getty Images, Phillip Faraone

Not OK: Curb Slurs and Hate Speech To Avoid The Monstrous

John Davidson shouted out the n-word while Michael B Jordan and Delroy Lindo presented a prize recently at the British Academy Film Awards.

Was it hate speech or a mistake made due to a disability?

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