We were founded to provide neutral, easy-to-understand overviews of government information.
Increasingly, we also offer nonpartisan analyses, debate summaries, and other content formats. Our Perspective explains why this is important to us and why you see this content on our website.
Our Beliefs
Government matters. From schools and police to roads and healthcare, government is so deeply a part of our lives that its role can become invisible to most of us. This role should be made visible.
Government is not perfect. To make it better, we need to understand when government has succeeded and when and how it has not.
Beware of simple problems and easy solutions. Want to blame the other political side for the way things are? Almost always, the core issues we all care about are more complex and structural in nature than we see in political soundbites.
Government gets better through informed citizens. It’s important that we all know how government works and why, and that we work to always critically evaluate what we read and hear about the policy issues of our time (and not just look for confirmation of our own beliefs).
Our Content
Tackle topics that matter. Beyond our explainers on how government works, we want to bring context to the issues related to what government does—or could do. Some of the most important policy topics are the ones that we disagree on most strongly.
Go deeper. To help you better understand a topic, we might cover a rich set of statistics and studies, explain the main debates and arguments from the different sides of an issue, or provide historical context for current events. We want to offer context and depth that others do not.
Make it clear but don’t dumb it down. There is nuance in government. Sometimes, it can be important to understand the details.