IVN recently published an article that cited a Rasmussen poll referencing heightened voter interest in President Trump’s State of the Union address (Poll: Nearly 3 in 4 Voters to Follow Trump’s State of the Union).

Millions of people are expected to tune in Tuesday night to watch President Donald Trump's first State of the Union address before a joint session of Congress. But according to a new Rasmussen poll, there is also an increased interest in the opposing party's response.

The theme will be “building a safe, strong and proud America" when President Donald Trump takes the stage to deliver the State of the Union Address Tuesday.

The word “building” in the literal sense is what a significant focus of his speech will be on, according to the White House. The trillion-dollar pitch to rebuild the nation’s roads, bridges, and transit systems is an area that has proven to be surprisingly bipartisan.

Your current lease with the

Hello fellow independent voters! This is your weekly Independent Thought Alarm: Hashtag Russian Bots Edition. In case this is your first time reading Independent Thought Alarm:

These are thoughtful missives about controversial subjects with some thoughts that are so novel, independent, and outside the mainstream of acceptable opinion, that repeating them might trigger a call to security to have you escorted off the premises!

Will the government shut down again in 2018? IVN readers took our Facebook poll on this exact question and most said yes, they believe it will.

Congress allowed the government to shutdown for a couple of days last week as Senate Democrats and many Republicans argued over the future of immigration reform and the fate of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and the nearly 800,000 DACA recipients.

Did the shutdown accomplish anything?

Over 5 years of researching the financial mess familiarly known as “Social Security,” I have found one constant. At some point in the discussion, opposing sides will be reduced to labels. The program is either a “Ponzi scheme” or “the greatest invention of government.”

When these tags come out, it is time to go home. Trust me, the discussion is over. These labels are less about adding insight to the debate, and more about getting people to forward the emotion with someone else.

Read about what really matters from the news last week. We provide you the least-biased news about current events so you can go about your day informed, not brainwashed.

Virginia Independent Voters Association Director Steve Richardson wrote an op-ed in The Virginian-Pilot Thursday in support of a new bill that would reform state primaries to a nonpartisan, top-two open primary similar to California and Washington state.