On the part of the Rock Creek Trail that runs behind the Kennedy Center, there are two odd-shaped stones in two different spots in the wall that are my signals to look across Rock Creek Parkway at “Blue,” the 24-foot-high statue by Joel Shapiro. When the light hits the angles just right, Blue looks like a soccer player post-kick.

The Arts of War and Arts of Peace sculptures were another favorite visual. Their weathered bronze patina made every muscle in the horses and the figures mounted on them and marching alongside them appear to move, as if advancing on the Lincoln Memorial from their perches at the foot of the Arlington Memorial Bridge and at the end of Parkway Drive. The grimaces on the horses and warriors added to their sculptural drama.

The Reflecting Pool was a constant reminder of the 1963 March on Washington and the 250,000 Americans who gathered there to demand social and economic justice for Black Americans. And the White House viewed from the Washington Monument is a study in its intended modesty. A relatively small structure in the distance made remarkable by who lives there on a four- or eight-year lease determined by the American people.

All of this has been upended by President Trump, who is using the people’s property in the District of Columbia as his personal property. And doing with it what he will.

“Blue” was unexpectedly removed from the grounds of the Reach at the Kennedy Center on Wednesday by its Trump-dominated board. This comes amid Trump’s ongoing efforts to add his name to the building. More ominously, after a judge forced him to remove his name from the building, Trump’s board threatened to tear down the performing arts space and memorial to slain President John F. Kennedy if it didn’t get its way on proposed repairs and renovations. Renovations that would include putting his name back on the building and renaming the grounds of the Kennedy Center to “President Donald J. Trump Plaza.”

The Arts of War and Arts of Peace sculptures have now been slathered in 23.75-karat gold leaf. As Matt Viser notes in his critique in The Atlantic, they “now look a bit like oversized children’s trophies.” What used to evoke motion now looks tragically frozen in time, like the victims in Pompeii after the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD or Han Solo at the end of “The Empire Strikes Back.”

News yesterday from the Department of the Interior that it will soon break ground on his massive 250-foot-tall arch with more gold statues at a spot where it will overshadow the roadway to Arlington National Cemetery is hardly surprising. Folks will sue. He will countersue and keep constructing the monstrosity no matter how the courts rule. He might even get another assist from the Supreme Court. Demolition of the White House East Wing provided the template. The enormous ballroom going up in its place will dwarf the presidential residence. Trump is racing to complete it before the courts have a chance to rule the entire ugly enterprise illegal.

Meanwhile, the Reflecting Pool is now fenced off from the public. Painting it blue and the subsequent algae blooms and peeling paint became an apt metaphor for the Trump administration. Dumb ideas poorly executed with disastrous results.

Trump has ruptured my relationship with these iconic structures. But I believe all these efforts are meant to rupture the relationship Americans have with their capital. The land, its monuments and its structures don’t belong to Trump. They belong to the nation. They are a reflection of us, not of him. And yet with each new “improvement,” Trump replaces our collective small-d democratic values with his expressions of a gold-encrusted avarice that reflects his own greedy and gaudy sensibilities.

Two scholars of authoritarianism I contacted separately came to the same conclusion.

“The city was designed in a deliberately modest, classical style, to reflect the democratic values of the Republic,” staff writer for The Atlantic and Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Anne Applebaum told me. “The White House in particular was never supposed to be a palace. By changing these things, Trump is altering the nature and symbolism of our public buildings.”

And what Trump is doing is not unlike other authoritarians past and present. “From Hitler and Stalin to Erdoğan and Orbán, authoritarians always want to change the landscape and memorialize themselves, because it adds to the illusion that they will hold power forever, and that no one can replace them.”

Of all the presidents I have covered, Trump is the most transparent. Neither his goals nor his motives in meeting them are terribly complicated. This broken, mean-spirited man who is singularly focused on himself is desperate to be liked. And now that he has been elected twice to the most powerful perch in the world, despite being a convicted felon, he is desperate not to be forgotten. So rather than wait for history to render its judgment on his shambolic presidency, he is trying to indelibly etch himself into the American psyche.

“I think when Trump sits in the White House and looks out over Washington DC, it drives him crazy that it doesn’t ‘belong’ to him. It belongs to the American people,” said Barbara F. Walter, political scientist at the University of California, San Diego and author of “How Civil Wars Start: And How to Stop Them,” who writes the Substack “Here Be Dragons.”

“I think it also drives him crazy that it is filled with memorials to our heroes - true heroes - of which he is not one. That’s why he wants to erase Kennedy’s name from the Kennedy Center and replace it with his own. That’s why he wants to place his enormous triumphal arch at the entrance to Arlington, where it overshadows that sacred ground. These changes are his way of claiming ownership of the capital, elevating himself to the status of a hero, and making himself a permanent presence there long after he is gone.”

Trump would love for the nation to uniformly say nice things about him after he’s gone, but deep down, he must know we won’t. He would love for us to remember him fondly, but couldn’t care less if we do. He just wants to be remembered. And he will be: as a profoundly selfish man.

As you see, the largest export market for these states is Canada. Data from the Office of the United States Trade Representative shows just how important our neighbor to the north is to their trade economies. In 2025, Canada made up:

11% of the total goods exported by Georgia, the nation’s 9th largest state exporter.

20% of the total goods exported by North Carolina, the nation’s 16th largest state exporter.

30% of the total goods exported by Iowa, the nation’s 29th largest state exporter.

31% of the total goods exported by Ohio, the nation’s 11th largest state exporter.

36% of the total goods exported by Michigan, the nation’s 10th largest state exporter.

41% of the total goods exported by Maine, the nation’s 45th largest state exporter.

Each of those states has a competitive U.S. Senate race in November. Right now, Republicans have 53 seats. Democrats have 47 seats, which include the two independents who caucus with them. Democrats need to flip four Republican seats to take the majority, and Senate Majority Leader John Thune can only lose three seats to maintain Republican control of the chamber, with Vice President Vance as the tie-breaking vote in that 50-50 Senate scenario.

According to The Cook Political Report, Georgia and North Carolina are “Lean D.” Retention of the former is a seat Democrats already hold. A flip of the latter would net Democrats one seat, the first of four they need for the majority.

The same report classifies Iowa, Maine, Michigan and Ohio as toss-ups. Also in that category are Texas and Alaska. That Michigan is a toss-up should be concerning to Democrats. They must keep it if their majority math is to work. And Republicans should worry about the same designation for Iowa, Ohio and Texas. Not only do Republicans hold those seats, but President Trump won those states in 2024 by double digits. Maine should be especially worrisome because Republican incumbent Sen. Susan Collins is running for reelection in a state then-Vice President Kamala Harris won in 2024 by seven percentage points.

Last year, the Senate map for Democrats was abysmal. The assessment from Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball noted in February 2025, “Even if 2026 is an overall ‘blue wave’ environment, expecting Democrats to win back the Senate sets the bar too high—the seats just are not there, at least as we assess the map at the start of the cycle.”

Today, Democrats’ chances look a whole lot better. “Can Democrats Win Back the Senate? Why Their Chances Are Improving,” reported the New York Times last week. The subhead explained why: “Republicans still have some advantages on the map, but President Trump’s unpopularity has opened the door for an outcome that once seemed far-fetched.”

There are many reasons for Trump’s unpopularity: a war of choice with no strategy, an affordability crisis he says is “a hoax” and the fault of former President Biden, and his obsession with gaudy vanity projects around the nation’s capital, to name a few. But Trump’s “dumbest trade war” and its economic impact in key states could make him even less popular, and help deliver what was once thought impossible: a Democratic Senate majority.

I have something to admit. Ever since I left The Washington Post in July 2025, I have been in a bit of a writing funk. So many issues that I once thundered about in daily opinion pieces didn’t elicit enough passion to move me to write. For nearly 19 years, I never ran out of things to say. Then I did.

Yes, I could talk about them on television, but that’s relatively easy. Putting my thoughts on paper requires more work. The right words. The right phrasing. The right analogy. All with the goal of helping the reader understand the issue and where I was coming from. That was the hope, anyway.

But once I left The Post, my desire to opine on issues big and small was snuffed out. Surely I was tired. I joked that I was on sabbatical and was taking advantage of the rest such time off offers.

But, if I’m being honest, I was also overwhelmed by the onslaught of horrible from the second Trump administration. There were a few times when I was able to write about some outrage or something joyful. More often than not, though, I’d start something and nothing came of it. Either events overtook my opinion or I just couldn’t get out of my own way fast enough to prevent the former from happening. Heck, maybe I was even depressed on some level. How could I not be after nearly two decades at one institution came to halt? How could I not be when so much about my country was going so wrong?

Something changed this week after reading Skye Perryman’s book “Ordinary People, Extraordinary Times: How to Reclaim Your Power, Fight for Freedom, and Reimagine Democracy.”

In my last post, I told you about the first action item the president and CEO of Democracy Forward writes about entitled “Stop Spiraling and Pick Up a Shovel.” It begins with her telling a story involving her, her cousins, a terrifying snake and her grandmother’s shovel dispatching said snake. The TL;DR can be boiled down to what Michelle Obama told the 2024 Democratic National Convention: “Do something!”

The very last paragraph of Perryman’s book hit me like a thunderbolt.

When you are tired or overwhelmed, rest and restore yourself, but do not quit. Keep your shovel near; and then, when you are restored, pick it up….Find your courage, embrace joy, and remember our history. Now, pick up your shovel….Keep going. Just keep going.

I have counseled many people I’ve met along the way to be sure to take breaks from the news cycle and the crazy it chronicles. I’ve told them to find those moments of joy and the restoration they provide the soul. I’ve told them to not feel guilty about prioritizing themselves and their peace. And I’ve told them that when they are ready, they should jump back into the fight. Reading Perryman’s paragraph, I finally understood that my “funk” was my need for rest.

Since I left The Post, so many of you have told me that you hoped I would keep speaking out, that my voice was important to you. My shovel never left my side. I’ve been using it consistently on television. But writing is where I set it down. And now I’m ready to pick it back up. I feel restored. I’m finally ready to keep going.

Democracy Forward president and CEO Skye Perryman’s new book “Ordinary People, Extraordinary Times: How to Reclaim Your Power, Fight for Freedom and Reimagine Democracy” is a common-sense manual for taking action in these fearful times. The most important lesson is the first action item, and it comes from Perryman’s East Texas grandparents. They dispensed this advice to her and her cousins amid panic that bad weather would ruin whatever project they’d been working on outside.

One of them would look at us and, with their Texas drawl, say, “Kids, stop fretting and pick up a shovel,” and we’d start working together, digging ourselves out of whatever was happening.

One day, when my grandmother, sister, cousins, and I were walking through the woods, we saw a copperhead snake cross a trail and block our path. As usual, we kids panicked, freezing in our tracks. My grandmother went to get a shovel, came back to the woods, and while we stared at her with confusion, she cut the snake in two, burying its head. She then looked up and said, “When are you going to learn that being scared wasn’t going to do anything. The shovel did.”

(Full disclosure: I’m doing a book event with Perryman at Union Chapel on Martha’s Vineyard, Aug. 27.)

Perryman walks the reader through seven action items to achieve the goals of her book’s lengthy subtitle. Among them: “Achieve Information Sobriety” urges us to do an inventory of the sources of our news and information and “to become an active, purposeful seeker of information rather than passively absorb whatever comes our way.” Another action is “Practice Tailgate Accountability.” By this, Perryman means to move beyond the politics that divide us to see our common humanity. One of its commandments is “Choose being heard over being right.” Still, she says we shouldn’t be afraid to set and enforce boundaries. “No one -- whether a member of the public, your community, or a member of your family -- has the right to subject you to hate and demonization.”

Perryman’s first action — “Stop spiraling and Pick Up a Shovel” — resonated with me most because it reminded me of an analogy I’ve been using since January 2025. It’s not the same as “pick up a shovel,” but it rests on the same insight Perryman puts succinctly: “Action is an antidote.”

You’ll remember that immediately upon walking back into the White House, Trump made it rain with executive orders whose sheer scope had millions of Americans feeling overwhelmed and powerless to do anything about it. That was the entire point. The onslaught was quickly read as an application of what former Trump strategist Steve Bannon described in 2018 as a “flood the zone” strategy.

Not long after the inauguration, while talking with an exasperated Howard University student who was looking for ways to cope with what was happening, I landed on the stove analogy. I told him to imagine Trump’s executive orders and the chaos they unleashed as a 100-burner stove with a pot boiling over on each one. Of course, if you were standing in front of that disaster you’d freeze in fear. The key is to focus on the one, two or three issues that you care about. Other concerned Americans are tending to the rest. That would include Democracy Forward, which, as of this writing, has more than 220 federal court cases against the Trump administration on a range of issues, from reproductive rights and immigration to voting rights and freedom of the press.

People have realized that “action is an antidote” to the fear and powerlessness the Trump administration wants us to feel. As Perryman notes, “our task is to keep going. Every day, do the next thing. Do not let the size of our task deter you from pushing through, from taking the next step…” From picking up another shovel to tending another boiling-over pot.

If you followed my recent trip to Tuscany and Amalfi on Instagram, you know I had a grand old time. But what you probably don’t know is that my relationship with Italy, especially the Amalfi Coast, goes back more than three decades. I write about it in my memoir Yet Here I Am: Lessons from a Black Man’s Search for Home. In the excerpt below, I share a big event that took place in 2016 at an Airbnb in Positano: my proposal to Nick.

Despite taking an Ambien before going to bed on our first night in Italy, we both awoke just after the first light started streaking across the morning sky. The sun still had not crested the high rolling mountains of the Amalfi Coast when we made our way up to the terrace and I plotted the where and the when of the big moment. Then I took my leave of the terrace to get everything.

The handwritten proposal that I had drafted and futzed with every day over those months was sealed in its envelope and placed in my ubiquitous Moleskine notebook. The engagement ring was back in its red leather Cartier box after making its way undetected from its secret hiding spot in Washington to my carry-on luggage to the pocket of the sweatpants I wore. When Nick went back downstairs and inside to make coffee, I raced about the terrace scouting out various places until I settled on a spot. The two precious parcels were propped up on a wrought iron fixture on the terrace wall. The absence of wind kept the proposal from blowing into the sea. The waiting for Nick to return slowly driving me mad.

Upon his return, Nick greeted me with the same question he always asks when he’s been away from me for longer than five minutes. “What are you doing, Groover?” he said, employing his nickname for me ever since a trip to Los Angeles a few years back. A response to his daily query on this particular moment was the one thing I didn’t plan for. I expected him to see the red box. I expected him to save me from talking. That was what the card was for. So I said the first thing that came to mind.

“I’m waiting for you to look at what Santa Claus brought you,” I said, sitting inches away from what Nick didn’t see. It was an odd thing to say, especially because it was late May. Understandably confused, Nick said, “What?”

Through gritted teeth and with my index finger thrusting toward the impromptu display, I said, with exasperation because I was about to be consumed by my own anxiety, “Just look at what Santa Claus brought you!” He opened the envelope addressed to “Magoo,” my nickname given to him on that same Los Angeles trip and read the handwritten note. His face darted up and eyes immediately looked at me after reading the words “Marry me.” The series of photos I took during all this show that Nick didn’t fully grasp what was happening until he saw the engagement ring. His say-what-now expression after reading the proposal giving way to joy. Between the surprise and the Ambien haze, Nick didn’t say yes until I asked him panicked, “Well, what’s your answer?”

Nick is going to hate that I shared that photo collage. But it captures that morning perfectly.

I. STRUCTURE

In photos, the 225-foot museum tower designed by Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects looks foreboding and austere. As if the four hands that come together to form its silhouette will separate into a massive physical barrier between its complex and the surrounding South Side Chicago neighborhood. As I saw earlier this week, it is altogether different in person.

The museum tower is tall, but not much taller than the residential high-rises nearby. What looks in pictures like a gray aircraft carrier perpendicularly plunged into Jackson Park is, in person, a far more appealing structure. The granite becomes an invitation to come closer, to look deeper. The slabs are neither uniform nor monochromatic. They are a dance of white, gray and pink. They glisten in the sun. And the rain gives a sense of motion to the “Obamalisk.”

For me, the most electric moment came from a simple action: touching the granite.

The surface was not just smooth. It felt soft as my hand swept over it to the building’s edge. But there was no edge! No perpendicular meeting of two sides of the building. Instead, the edge was rounded and soft, like the roll of a cashmere sweater on a shelf. In that instant, my relationship with the museum changed. Something so monumental became so accessible. Even the human-scale bronze statues of the Obamas — not on pedestals but walking and waving — outside the museum compound the feeling.

That is the word that comes to mind when I think about my three-and-a-half hours at the OPC: accessibility. Accessible to visitors who will surely flock to it from all over the world. Most importantly, accessible to its neighbors. The playground, sledding hill, charcoal grills, NBA-regulation basketball court, 200-seat theater, free-standing branch of the Chicago Public Library (complete with a reading room filled with the former president’s favorite books and albums) beckon you to come in and stay a while. Yes, it costs $30 to see the four floors of exhibitions. But there are free and discounted days for Illinois residents. And the Museum’s ground floor and the top-floor Nelson Mandela Sky Room with views south and west of Chicago are free to all.

II. SUBSTANCE

This isn’t your grandparents’ presidential library. In fact, it’s not a traditional presidential library. Because the Obama administration is the first of the digital age, all of its documents will be available online in the future with the physical papers housed at a National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) facility in Maryland. Another distinction is that the OPC is owned and operated by the Obama Foundation, not NARA as is the case for its predecessors. This liberates the OPC from government shutdowns and the dictates of vengeful politicians.

Overall, there is a relative modesty to the exhibits on Barack and Michelle Obama’s years in the White House. Yes, there is a celebration of his two successful campaigns, his legislative achievements (passage of the Affordable Care Act), his foreign policy triumphs (the killing of Osama bin Laden). His setbacks — gun violence and immigration — aren’t airbrushed out. Mrs. Obama’s initiatives (Let’s Move! and Joining Forces) are spotlighted. As are many of her memorable dresses, swatches of which you can touch.

There is no jet, helicopter or limousine on display. The only tangible trapping of Obama’s presidential power is the replica of his Oval Office, a study in taupe understatement. And his voice. It is omnipresent and vital to the experience. Its tone and timbre serve as an aural time machine taking us back to a time when hope was real and positive change was possible. It’s the reason there are boxes of tissues throughout the second exhibit floor. The emotions come quickly and unexpectedly.

My favorite exhibit is an eight-minute film that focuses not on a particular policy but on a specific day. June 26, 2015.

The day started with the Supreme Court ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges that legalized same-sex marriage and was publicly celebrated by President Obama. By the middle of the day, he was in Charleston, S.C., eulogizing Clementa Pinckney, the state Senator and senior pastor of the historic Mother Emanuel AME Church, who was murdered along with eight others by a white supremacist hoping to ignite a race war. Obama’s spontaneous warbling of “Amazing Grace” that rippled with sorrow and resolve immediately went viral. By the end of that evening, he was back in Washington, where a setting sun revealed the White House glowing in the colors of the rainbow in a stunning celebration of the Obergefell decision and the end of LGBTQ pride month.

In a Washington Post column years later, I declared that day “America at its greatest” because our nation “hit its highest high-water mark in living out the ideals upon which it was founded.”

Hearing Obama recount that day brought tears to my eyes as I was carried back to a day symbolic of the hope and change he campaigned on. Little did we know then that 10 days earlier an avatar of backlash had arrived.

But as much as this is a museum about the Obamas, it is also about us -- as a nation and a democracy. At every opportunity, they remind us that we the people make this democracy and it cannot survive without us. Throughout the museum floors, there are kiosks that ask visitors to “Imagine your impact.” “Make meaningful change in participation.” “Share your story.”

“America has always been a work in progress,” Obama writes in the lead exhibition titled “Toward A More Perfect Union.” He goes on to write, “It is an experiment in self-government -- in the idea that democracy depends on each of us to strive to make the country better.” Or put more succinctly in another part of the exhibition, “America is not the project of any one person.”

If there is a consistent message from two successful campaigns, two terms as president and their public service activities since leaving the White House, it is this.

III. SYMBOLISM

While in Chicago, I finished reading Eddie S. Glaude Jr.’s scalding new book, America, U.S.A.: How Race Shadows the Nation’s Anniversaries. The Princeton University professor and political commentator argues that in a push for a sanitized storybook version of our history that ignores and papers over its flawed founding, there is one demand of Black people when our nation celebrates any major historical milestone.

“This storybook version of America, U.S.A., requires, as it did in 1876 and 1926, that Black people be made to play a minor role, if any, in the history of the country,” Glaude writes. Assessing the hostile climate in the country ahead of the semiquincentennial, Glaude later writes, “Gratitude is demanded, still — especially as the ‘true Americans’ celebrate 250 years of America, U.S.A. They just want us to shut up, smile, be grateful, and disappear.”

With the frontal assault on voting rights and diversity, equity and inclusion -- policies and initiatives that make this nation more just and fair -- we are back in that ugly historical loop of denial and enforced silence. And yet, on the eve of our 250th anniversary as a nation, rising out of Jackson Park is a feat of architectural and cultural defiance that breaks that loop. As if to say, “We’d like a word!”

We, being Barack and Michelle Obama and their ongoing contributions to the American experiment. And when you talk about them and their accomplishments, you must acknowledge and honor their pride in their people.

We, being Black Americans and the soulfulness we bring to all aspects of the American experiment. Every inch of the OPC is a celebration of Black excellence, from the art (like the giant Mark Bradford painting of the South Side) to the ubiquitous music playing throughout the museum. The OPC guarantees that the voice and presence of Black people will not be relegated to a silent corner of our nation’s history.

And we, being the American people. There is no U.S.A. without us. Reinforcing this point are the closing words of Obama’s stirring 2015 speech marking the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday and the Selma-to-Montgomery marches for voting rights.

You are America. Unconstrained by habit and convention. Unencumbered by what is, ready to seize what ought to be. For everywhere in this country, there are first steps to be taken, there is new ground to cover, there are more bridges to be crossed. America is not the project of any one person. The single most powerful word in our democracy is the word ‘We.’ ‘We The People.’ ‘We Shall Overcome.’ ‘Yes We Can.’ That word is owned by no one. It belongs to everyone. Oh, what a glorious task we are given to continually try to improve this great nation of ours.

Sitting atop the museum for all to see, the words are as much an affirmation as they are an exhortation. “Democracy,” “We the people” and “Yes we can” are stacked on top of each other. But it’s the first three words -- “You are America” -- that hit home as they are visible to the residents of Chicago’s South Side, particularly those who live in the apartments across the street. The message is a constant and powerful reminder that this country is theirs, too. That they belong, even when this nation gives them every reason to think they don’t.

In 1776, a group of very flawed men affixed their signatures to the Declaration of Independence that created a new nation. A nation that would eventually become an international beacon of liberty because of it. But we were and remain a nation hobbled by our ongoing inability to directly deal with the sin of slavery.

The OPC acknowledges that troubled past. But it also doesn’t dwell on it. The focus is on the long arc of the moral universe, its perpetual bend toward justice and the successive generations of Americans, especially Black Americans, who fought, bled and died in the effort to make this a more perfect union. And with the Obama Presidential Center, the former first couple is reminding us that they are but a piece of a story bigger than themselves.

Still, the Obamas are a major part of the American story. When future generations visit the OPC, the entire campus with its lush park and its striking museum tower will force them to think about the people -- the American people, and Black Americans in particular -- who made it possible.

“What’s past is prologue.” The Shakespearean phrase can be an omen for good or an omen for bad. So far, I’ve been focused on the former. But Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.) is urging everyone to pay attention to the latter.

Here’s how what’s past is prologue is good for Democrats. You may have heard me talk about how the narrative around the 2026 midterms takes me back exactly 20 years. In the run-up to the 2006 midterms, with an unpopular war, an increasingly unpopular president and a campaign against a “culture of corruption,” the talk was that Democrats were cruising to retake the House of Representatives, but the Senate map remained daunting for them to also flip the majority there. But as the calendar clicked closer to those November elections, folks openly talked about the possibility of a Democratic majority in the Senate.

By the end of Election Night 2006, both narratives became reality. May the same reality be ushered in on Election Night 2026. But Clyburn is worried. And after looking at the data, he’s right.

During a brief Q&A I moderated with Clyburn at the John & Lillian Miles Lewis Foundation gala on Tuesday, he talked fervently about the need for Democrats to show up at the polls in November. When I asked if he was concerned that they wouldn’t, he delivered his own “What’s past is prologue” warning.

Bill Clinton prevailed over incumbent President George H.W. Bush “because of massive turnout in [19]92. Democratic voters voted and he beat [him]. Two years later, Newt Gingrich became speaker of the House because we lost 54 seats,” Clyburn said. “The same thing happened in 2008. We elected Barack Obama because of this big turnout of voters. [In] 2010, we lost 63 seats. Why?”

“Our vote dropped each time,” Clyburn explained. “For some strange reason, we decided not to turn out for these midterm elections. This is a midterm election. If we turn out the vote we’re going to win big. If we don’t turn out the vote, we’re going to lose big time and for a long time.”

The chart above vividly tells the story. The massive Democratic turnout in the 1992 and 2008 presidential years that led to the elections of Clinton and Obama cratered just two years later in the midterms. In 1994, Democratic dropoff was 17.1 million voters. By 2010, the Democratic vote plummeted by about 26.3 million. But look at the Republican turnout. In both midterm election years, it dropped by about 7.5 million.

Here’s another data set to consider. Despite the wild gyrations in total votes, the share of votes cast for House Republicans in the 1994, 2010 and 2014 midterms remained virtually the same, slightly more than 51%. But the significance is the history made in each of those elections.

In 1994, Republicans won the House majority for the first time in four decades and retook the Senate. In 2010, just two years after Democrats took back the White House with the most votes cast in history at the time, Republicans won back the House majority. In 2014, Republicans picked up nine seats to retake the Senate and increased their House majority to the largest since 1928.

With a corrupt administration being aided and abetted by a compliant Congress and an enabling Supreme Court, the nation cannot afford a Democratic cratering in the 2026 midterms.

But there’s a difference this time. Democratic dropoff this go-round can’t be solely attributed to Democrats, particularly African Americans, simply staying home. We have seen state laws enacted that have the effect of suppressing the vote and now we have a Supreme Court decision that will diminish the impact of their vote. These actions have “awakened a sleeping giant.” Which is why the upcoming midterms demand that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) mount the most aggressive ground game in a generation to get the giant to the polls.

Whatever they do, they mustn’t focus solely on television to get out the vote. Their get-out-the-vote strategy must actually get out the vote. And you do that by not only knocking on doors, but also empowering organizations and entities with roots in the community to help ensure voters are registered and then get them to the polls on Election Day.

The folks at the DCCC assure me they are on it with millions being invested to engage communities of color. “The work to persuade and organize now is towards the net goal of then turning them out in October and November,” Viet Shelton, national press secretary for the DCCC, told me.

In June 2006, a USA Today/Gallup poll put President Bush’s approval rating at 36%. A poll from The Economist/YouGov completed this week (May 29-June 1) showed President Trump’s approval rating at 35%. That same survey showed that just 29% approved of his handling of the war with Iran. According to a Fox News poll in June 2006, approval of Bush’s handling of the war with Iraq sat at 37%.

If what’s past is prologue, Democrats will ride voter discontent with the president to retake the House and the Senate just as they did 20 years ago. But if what’s past is prologue, Democrats are on the cusp of a devastating defeat, just as they suffered in 2010 and 2014.

Here’s the thing about prologue: it isn’t destiny. Which past repeats itself in 2026 won’t be settled by the polls or the maps. It will be settled by who shows up — one registered, knocked-on, driven-to-the-polls voter at a time.

Anyone who cares about this country must do everything possible to make Election Night 2026 a repeat of Election Night 2006. This isn’t about the Democratic Party. This is about the fate of what’s left of our democracy.

The Democratic Party’s autopsy of its 2024 presidential election defeat — a disastrous trash can of warmed-over conclusions — doesn’t merit my attention. Not because I don’t think one is warranted, but because what was released lacks the deep introspection of the Republican Party’s autopsy of its 2012 presidential election defeat.

Instead, what I do care about is how elected Democrats (and those who want to be) are going to address the roiling anger among the rank-and-file at what’s happening to the country. They don’t just want policy papers and 10-point plans. What they really want is fight. An all-out effort to stop President Trump and his congressional Republican enablers from tearing down the foundations of this nation.

What they want is for Democrats to “put foot to ass.”

This is how a politically involved friend put it recently over a beautiful bowl of bolognese. He wants Democrats to stop trying to inflict paper cuts in the middle of a knife fight. He wants them to fight fire with fire. Metaphorically speaking, he wants Democrats to put their foot in the ass of Republicans wreaking havoc on the nation.

He’s not alone. My own mother was even more direct and pointed during a delayed Mother’s Day brunch earlier this month. “They’re afraid of upsetting someone. Forget folks’ feelings,” she said emphatically. “Republicans don’t give a shit. They’ll run over you and bury you at the same time.”

She went so far as to say that she thinks Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) should replace House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer should be replaced by one of “the Justins.” Mom means Tennessee state representatives Justin Jones of Nashville and Justin J. Pearson of Memphis. They burst onto the national scene in 2023 when they were temporarily expelled from the state legislature because they broke decorum after their microphones were turned off by joining in a protest in the chamber

by students reeling from a mass shooting in Nashville.

None of that is going to happen, of course, but you get where my mom is coming from. She wants Democrats, particularly Jeffries, to stop being nice. She was echoing the direct-to-camera message to Jeffries delivered by Don Calloway on my MS NOW show earlier that morning. “You have to be willing to, once you get the gavel in January, you have to be willing, brother Hakeem, to hold the chamber hostage, to say nothing moves until we pass the Voting Rights Act, the John Lewis Voting Rights Act,” the former Missouri state representative said. “Democrats have not been willing to burn it down ever.”

WATCH Don Calloway’s message to Hakeem Jeffries

I asked Jeffries about this on the sidelines of the Center for American Progress Ideas Conference on May 19.

“Well, we’re continuing to fight one battle after another. We’re battling them on the economy, battling them on terrorists, battling them on multiple government shutdowns, battling them on the reckless and costly war of choice. We battle them on ICE funding, you know, we’ll continue to battle them on health care,” Jeffries said. “We are in a more-is-more environment, and we just have to continue to do more to get the country through this extremism and get to a better place on the other side.”

Convinced?

Eugene Daniels, my MS NOW co-host, continually makes the apt observation that Democrats seem uncomfortable wielding power. And I have chafed at the party’s inability to adopt the single-minded ruthlessness of their Republican counterparts in pushing back against the excesses of Trump 2.0. Because they don’t, folks believe in their heart that Democrats will wimp out on whatever plans they have at the slightest hint of resistance.

Adam Serwer of the Atlantic nailed this point on the show on Sunday.

“Part of the issue here is that the Democratic Party seems to be a little bit ashamed of what it stands for, and rather than stand up for those principles of democracy and fairness and equality, they’ve sort of gotten intimidated into being really mealy mouthed about it, and makes it sound like they don’t believe in the things that they say they believe in.” Serwer said. “That’s actually probably more toxic than simply believing something unpopular, than believing things and not being willing to stand up for them.”

Amen! If Democrats want people to believe they are looking out for their needs and the needs of our democracy then they need to fight like they are. Don’t just talk about it. Do it. After all, it’s easier to “put foot to ass” when the rest of the body is determined to meet the intended target -- and unashamed about having done it.

On Aug. 6, true American democracy will be 61 years old. On that date in 1965, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law. For the first time in the nation’s history, ALL of the rights and responsibilities of citizenship outlined in the Constitution applied to African Americans. And no right or responsibility is more important to the health of a democracy than the right to vote.

But that right has been under a withering assault. Thanks to Supreme Court decisions in Shelby v. Holder (2013) and in Louisiana v. Callais (2026), the Voting Rights Act has been reduced to unenforceable words.

After Shelby, states and jurisdictions that had to get preclearance from the Justice Department before implementing any changes to voting laws or procedures raced to enact limits on access to the ballot box. And now, after Callais, states in the Old Confederacy are moving at breakneck speed to shove Democrats out of power by focusing on gerrymandering Blacks out of jurisdictions where they were the majority of voters or where their votes would sway the outcome.

So far, the conversation has focused on the number of seats Democrats could lose and the Black members of Congress endangered by all this. But in a speech at the National Equal Justice Awards dinner in New York City on May 14, Janai Nelson, president and 8th Director-counsel of the LDF, put the focus where it should be.

“We are not full citizens if our vote doesn’t carry equal power to elect our own representatives,” she said.

Black elected officials losing their seats because of this isn’t the primary outrage. Black people losing the power to elect someone who represents their interests is. As Nelson said, we are not full citizens if our vote essentially doesn’t count.

But I want to put a small asterisk on that point. While the gerrymandering frenzy unleashed by the Supreme Court will definitely impact House races, it will also impact statewide races. Perhaps in ways Republicans might regret.

“You may get rid of some congressional seats, but…at the end of the day, we are a large population in the South,” Melanie Campbell, president of the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation and one of the organizers of Saturday’s protests in Alabama against redistricting efforts throughout the South, said on my MS NOW show yesterday. “Last I checked, there are governors races, there are statewide races that are happening. They awakened a sleeping giant.”

A 2024 Pew report shows how big the giant is. “[M]ore than half of Black eligible voters (57%) live in Southern states,” the study notes. The Pew report also highlights this: Texas has the highest number of Black eligible voters (2.9 million), followed by Georgia and Florida (2.6 million). North Carolina comes in sixth with 1.8 million. Maybe even more important is the percentage of eligible voters who are Black.

Do you see what I see in the graphic above? The states with the highest percentages are among the states diluting Black votes through gerrymandering. But they are also states with statewide races where Black votes could be a determining factor this November.

A third of the eligible voters in Georgia are Black. Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) is running for reelection, and the governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general and secretary of state races are on the ballot, too. Those same offices are up for election in Alabama, where more than a quarter of the electorate is African American. Nearly a quarter of eligible voters in North Carolina is Black, which could be very helpful to former Gov. Roy Cooper (D), who is running for the U.S. Senate. And while eligible Black voters only comprise 13% of the electorate in Texas, a big turnout by them could be the boost state Rep. James Talarico (D) needs to beat whomever Republicans pick as their U.S. Senate nominee.

The question is: Will Black voters show up and in the numbers needed to swing races? Princeton University professor and political commentator Eddie S. Glaude Jr. has absolutely no doubt.

“We’re going to turn out for ourselves. We’re going to turn out in order to demonstrate that this country is ours,” Glaude told me on the show on Saturday. “They’re going to mess around and find out who we actually are in this moment. This is not 1965. This is 2026 and they’re going to see who the new Negro, Black folk, however you want to describe us, who we are in this moment.”

What they will see are full citizens exercising what remains of their right to vote.

There were two moments from the White House Correspondents’ dinner on Saturday night I won’t soon forget: The loud bangs of gunfire. The quiet that followed.

My first dinner was in 2000 and I have been at least a dozen times since then. While the president in attendance (or not) might change, the spectacle is always the same. Until it wasn’t.

I was seated with some of my MS NOW colleagues at table 125, set in the back of the ballroom near the central aisle. Very close to the doors that ushered in the sounds of danger. The POP, POP, POP, POP I wrote about for MS NOW just hours after leaving the ballroom at the Washington Hilton were more like bangs. That now unmistakable staccato of a mass shooting.

This was the first time I personally experienced anything like it. But after years of watching the terrifying videos of mass gun violence and then writing about the ensuing trauma, I now realize I internalized the lessons learned. Chief among them: drop to the floor and crawl under the table. My moves were scarily instinctive.

Read the full column here.

One of my favorite movies is “In the Line of Fire.” A 1993 movie starring Clint Eastwood as a Secret Service agent haunted by the assassination of President John F. Kennedy who is now trying to stop a would-be assassin played by John Malkovich. There’s a scene near the end when the Malkovich character attempts to kill the president, but the Eastwood character takes the bullet. What happens next is pure pandemonium with people screaming and running everywhere, tossing tables in the process as the president is hustled out of the room and away from the hotel.

That’s not what happened Saturday night just after 8:30 p.m. After the loud bangs, and everyone dropping to the floor, what rang in my ears next was -- the quiet. A silence that etched itself into my memory as permanently as the sapphire blue sky I walked under in New York City on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001.

Just as we New Yorkers lost our innocence on that terrible Tuesday, the White House Correspondents’ dinner lost its innocence on a rainy Saturday night in Washington. And with the conspiracy theories from all sides that what happened was “staged,” I think we all have lost something: Trust. Trump, characteristically, has only made it worse.

That the president immediately used the third assassination attempt against him to demand support for his monstrous ballroom at the White House contributes to the erosion of public trust. He did it during his press conference hours after the incident and again more emphatically the next morning on social media.

It does no good to wish that one day Trump would be the kind of president who appeals to our better angels or strives to be the exemplar of who we believe ourselves to be as Americans. He will never be that person.

Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network had its 35th anniversary convention in New York City last week. Most of the press about the annual gathering focused on the cavalcade of hopefuls for the 2028 Democratic nomination for president. But House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries was the one who caught my attention.

Among the first executive orders President Trump signed upon his return to the White House was ending “diversity, equity and inclusion” programs in the government and the private sector. He declared that they “undermine our national unity” and that they “undermine the traditional American values of hard work, excellence, and individual achievement….”

Trump called them “discriminatory” and hasn’t been shy about sloshing around in the racist notion that such programs gave jobs to undeserving people. Remember when he blamed the Jan. 29, 2025, plane crash in Washington, D.C., on the FAA’s DEI initiatives? “Only the highest aptitude, they have to be the highest intellect and psychologically superior people were allowed to qualify for air traffic controllers,” the president said at the White House the next day.

The way Trump and others talk about DEI, that dog whistle they are blowing says loudly and clearly that the only qualified person for any position anywhere is a white Christian straight cisgender man.

The assault on DEI has been so relentless that folks in education, at nonprofits and in corporate America either ran away from their own programs or ran to the Thesaurus to find synonyms for diversity, equity and inclusion that would cloak them from Trump’s attention. Saying the words or even the acronym can send a chill through a room. I did it once at an event and it was as if I cursed in polite company.

Jeffries isn’t running away. He willingly waded into the controversial topic by asking a simple question: “What makes America America?” And he answered the question by showing that diversity, equity and inclusion are the threads that make it so.

“Let’s just check the record. The motto of this great country, E Pluribus Unum….out of many, one. That’s diversity,” Jeffries told the gathered. “One of the most important constitutional amendments in this country,…the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution, contains the Equal Protection Clause, [which] promises equal protection under the law. That’s equity.

“And all across this country, from sea to shining sea, in the land of the free and the home of the brave, when people say the pledge of allegiance ‘to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all.’ That’s inclusion.

“So Diversity, Equity and Inclusion,…these aren’t foreign values. These are American values. And when you attack Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, you attack the United States of America.”

Jeffries isn’t running for president. The Brooklyn-born seventh-term congressman hopes to be the next Democratic speaker of the House after this November’s elections. But he has given those who are the rhetorical blueprint for how to answer the racist attacks against DEI. “We won’t let these extremists get away with lying to the American people,” Jeffries said.

While others ran to the thesaurus, Jeffries went to the Constitution. Truth has always been the best antidote to racism. When it comes to DEI, we just have to be unafraid to speak it.

President Trump this week released a video showing off renderings of his proposed presidential library. A glass tower with his name emblazoned at the top that will loom over the downtown Miami skyline, complete with a full-size Air Force One; a tall, golden statue of himself and a hotel.

It’s garish. It’s over-the-top. It’s so very Trump. And it’s about the one normal thing he’s done this week. This is the one naming opportunity this nation allows a sitting president to undertake himself without rancor or raised eyebrow. But we’re talking about Trump.

The Queens-born builder has been putting his name on everything for decades. It’s an obsession that has carried over to his second term in the White House. Trump has been slapping his name and face on buildings and seemingly everything else since Jan. 20, 2025.

There’s the Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace. He sacked the board, fired the employees and put his name on it despite legal challenges.

We now have The Donald J. Trump and The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts. Otherwise known as The Trump-Kennedy Center. In this case, he sacked the board in favor of loyalists, made himself the chair of the institution and then had the new board defy a law Congress passed two months after Kennedy’s assassination in 1963 — one that makes the Kennedy Center his sole national memorial in Washington and bars any other name from its walls.

If you walk down Pennsylvania Avenue towards the U.S. Capitol you’ll see his mug glowering at you from high above multiple entrances at the Department of Justice. This summer, Trump’s signature will appear on U.S. paper currency. The first president in American history ever to do this. And let’s not forget the gold coin with his grim “You’re fired!” visage embossed on it.

Trump is ignoring the chorus of outrage and the lawsuits trying to stop or reverse what he has already done. Senate Democrats have introduced the cleverly named SERVE Act or the Stop Executive Renaming for Vanity and Ego Act, which would prevent federal property from being named or renamed for sitting presidents and would restore the previous names of the Kennedy Center and the Institute of Peace. That this is necessary tells you how much of a sledgehammer Trump has taken to norms we had taken for granted.

In small-d democratic nations like this one, monuments to past leaders are honors earned long after they are dead. The passage of time and the judgment of history create the conditions for such glory. The Lincoln Memorial was dedicated 57 years after his death. The most recent presidential memorial in Washington, D.C., is to Dwight D. Eisenhower. Dedicated in 2020 and some 51 years after his death.

Neither time nor history will be kind to Trump. And I bet Trump knows this. He seems unwilling to put his fate in history’s hands. He wants to leave his mark now. He wants to be indelibly imprinted on the American psyche.

Trump seems fixated on his legacy and his place in history. But Princeton University professor and political commentator Eddie S. Glaude Jr. told me that he’s convinced history’s judgment is not what’s dogging the president. “Perhaps he is more concerned with his mortality — that the life he treasures will be over, and he doesn’t want to be forgotten [or] erased,” Glaude said.

“After he lost the election in 2020, I imagine he felt that people were trying to remove any trace of his presidency. Impeached, indicted, convicted. The country attempted to render his four years in the White House as aberrant, as a mistake,” Glaude continued. “Well, this time around he aims to make sure that he is not forgotten (no matter how he is judged). He has left his mark on the built environment of Washington, D.C. Future presidents may remove his name from the Kennedy Center and the dollar bill. But that money will still circulate and the coins with his image will remain.”

Everyone faces their own mortality and how they want to be remembered. Yet, when it comes to Trump, it all feels forced. Like one big “I’ll show you!” As if he’s trying to get back at everyone for a lifetime of snubs and slights. Now that he’s president of the United States, he’ll be damned if you don’t forget it.

“Even in death,” Glaude concludes, “Trump will have his revenge.”

If I have learned anything from President Trump’s decade dominating American politics, one truism stands out: He doesn’t care what you think, unless you’re Republican and especially if you’re a MAGA Republican. To him, holding his base is more important than governing for a majority. Once you internalize that fact, you are better able to understand many of his actions and decisions that defy logic and common sense.

A press release from the White House on March 19, which flatly declares “Americans agree that Operation Epic Fury is an overwhelming success,” is the latest example of this.

But, first, a little refresher.

During an Iowa campaign rally in January 2016, then-candidate Trump famously told his Sioux Center audience, “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters, OK?”

Ever since then, Trump has kept his gaze fixed on his voters and they have stood pretty much lockstep with him. Even though his approval rating among Republicans has slipped a bit from the mid- to high 90%, Trump still enjoys support well north of 70%.

But it is his MAGA base -- the folks who rallied around his promise of “no new wars” and to “stop racing to topple…foreign regimes that we know nothing about, that we shouldn’t be involved with” -- that he cares most about and pays the most attention to. That’s why it was significant that after the U.S. military plucked Nicolás Maduro out of Venezuela on Jan. 3, he felt compelled to prevent any daylight from growing between himself and his faithful.

“MAGA is me. MAGA loves everything I do,” Trump said in an interview with NBC News two days later. “MAGA is me. MAGA loves everything I do, and I love everything I do, too.” Eight weeks later, Trump went to war with Iran. And the latest polling is proving him right.

I had already seen the one from NBC News. The 90% of “self-identified MAGA-aligned Republicans” who support military action is a breathtaking statistic. But so are the stats from the other polls cited. And this, to me, explains why Trump seems impervious to the majority of Americans who are not on board with what he’s doing in Iran.

That same NBC News poll revealed that a majority of Americans (54%) disapprove of Trump’s handling of Iran and don’t think the U.S. should have taken military action against the Persian Gulf nation (52%). The CNN poll listed by the White House shows 59% disapproval of military action. The Economist/YouGov poll shows 56% disapproval.

Despite this, Trump continues his erratic threats against Iran and our allies, none of whom seem inclined to do whatever he demands to bring this ill-thought-out war of his choosing to an end. But the political reality those disapproval numbers reflect might explain why he continues to yo-yo between diplomacy and escalation. As of this writing, Trump appears to back to diplomacy. But whatever he does, no matter how foolish, MAGA will have his back. Majority opinion doesn’t move him — and never will.

When breaking news as big as the United States going to war with Iran happens, I wait a beat or two. I gather information. I talk to people who know what they are talking about. I see how the story advances. And then I think about how I might add to the conversation.

As I grope for words to make sense of President Trump’s war with Iran, I keep coming back to one word. A word that is small compared to the big emotions it can unleash. That word is “disrespect.”

The president disrespected Congress and the American people by announcing a war via social media in the dead of night wearing a baseball cap at his exclusive members-only club in Palm Beach. A war of choice with shifting rationales that remain unsatisfying. And I cannot express how appalling it was to hear Trump on Monday spend more time waxing excited about his still-under-construction ballroom than he did mourning the loss of four service members in his war of choice. More disrespect.

More alarming is how he completely sidelined Congress, which the Constitution gives the power to declare war. I guess they only have themselves to blame. For decades, the legislative branch has allowed the Executive branch to gobble up powers and prerogatives Congress once jealously guarded. But the current Republican majority in this second Trump term has turned itself into the staffing arm of the White House. Trump can do whatever he wants, even take us into a spiraling war in a region that has taught the United States tough and unheeded lessons.

The briefing Sec. of State Marco Rubio gave the Gang of Eight days before, which was by phone, was hardly adequate consultation. As ranking member on the House Foreign Relations Committee, Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.) is a member of the larger Gang of 20, which met after Saturday’s strikes. But Meeks informed me, “At the first Gang of 8 meeting there was no mention of an imminent threat and no detailed plans discussed for a protracted war.”

Gone are the days of the president actively seeking an Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) from Congress or Congress thoughtfully debating such a request. I remember falling asleep to the very serious speeches in the House and then the Senate for the 1991 AUMF that gave President George H.W. Bush the power to conduct Operation Desert Storm.

The New York Times described what happened then as “a remarkably full, thoughtful debate by more than 268 Representatives and 93 Senators, many of whom waited until the early hours this morning for a chance to go on the record.”

Rep. Charles E. Bennett (D-Fla.) was 80 years old when Congress was debating the Gulf War authorization in 1991. He voted against the measure, saying of his 17,000 votes, the only one he regretted was for the Tonkin Gulf Resolution. According to the New York Times, the World War II veteran “urged opposition to war, but told his younger colleagues ‘a vote ought to be cast on the basis of what you think is best for our country, not best for the Republican or the Democratic Party, not best for the President, not best for you, but what’s best for our country and what’s best for the world.’”

Much has changed in the ensuing 35 years. We now have a Congress unwilling to check a president who has already taken us to war.

Senate Democrats failed in their effort to pass a War Powers Resolution, 47 yeas to 53 nays. Meanwhile, the House is set to vote Thursday on a resolution sponsored by Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) that would end the military’s involvement and force the president to seek congressional approval to resume. Their effort is also doomed to fail, but the vote will get members on the record about who supports what Trump is doing.

Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.) is a member of the House Armed Services Committee. The perfect assignment for someone who represents San Diego, home to the largest military community in the country. When I told Jacobs what I was writing, seeking her thoughts, she was blunt.

“It’s disrespectful and offensive that some of my colleagues don’t think we owe it to our service members to debate whether or not we send them into harm’s way, where they could potentially die,” Jacobs told me. “I think anyone who votes against this war powers resolution should have to come to San Diego and explain their vote to my constituents’ faces.”

You can feel the heat in her response directed at her colleagues. But Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colo.), member of the House Armed Services Committee, set his sights squarely on the president.

“As a three-time combat veteran, I get pretty damn hot when a five-time draft dodger like Donald Trump bangs the war drums from Mar-A-Lago,” the former Army Ranger and Bronze Star recipient told me. “It’s not his kids, or his billionaire donors’ kids, who have to pick up a rifle, jump in a tank, and do the fighting. It’s working class kids from small towns like me that have to do the tough stuff. Trump doesn’t understand that, and never will.”

Given what the president has done since Saturday, Crow is absolutely right.

Answer: Rep. Angie Craig (D-Minn.)!

Craig represents the district my alma mater Carleton College is in and is a frequent guest on “The Weekend.” Not only did she print it out, but she also took it to the floor of the House of Representatives.

“I wanted to bring shots,” Craig told me, “but my team wouldn’t let me.”

Given the 107 minutes of OMGCHBSRNWTFIH, that was probably wise.

107. It is now a number that represents the longest and shortest time periods of our traumatized American lives.

The shortest U.S. presidential election in modern American history - the one between President Trump and former Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024 - was 107 days long. And we’ve been dealing with the consequences of his reelection ever since.

And last night, the longest State of the Union address in history clocked in at a lumbering 107 minutes. As I endured one excruciating minute after another, this aptly titled James Brown song kept coming to mind: “Talkin’ loud and sayin’ nothing.”

I will never get that time back. But I did have a few thoughts.

1. The headline on Tom Nichols’s SOTU reaction column for The Atlantic - “President Trump’s State of the Union Variety Show” - is exactly how I described it in a text message to a friend at what was near the spectacular’s merciful end.

2. Trump handed out medals like he was handing out handfuls of Halloween candy. The recipients were deserving, but only Trump could make something usually so dignified feel so cheap.

3. His lead-up to his announced surprise appearances, which were akin to “This is your life,” had all the creepy energy of an episode of “To catch a predator.”

4. Democrats succeeded in getting under his skin as he repeatedly expressed his annoyance that they wouldn’t heed his entreaties to stand in response to his well-worn shtick of lies.

The point of a variety show is not only to entertain, but also to give the viewer an escape from the reality of their daily lives. But once the show is over reality comes rushing back.

You can’t tell people everything is great, but their bills say otherwise. You can’t say we’re safe, but untrained masked federal agents are snatching people off the streets and killing U.S. citizens. And the president can’t insist the nation is with him when he’s getting basement-level bobbing poll numbers for him and his handling of, well, everything.

Each time he says something that’s in one of the spaces, put a big ol’ X in the square (and then maybe take a big ol’ drink). One thing to note: There is no overlap of the words and phrase in the 48 squares. Cheers!

Any speech by President Trump is a veritable smorgasbord of self-aggrandizement, grievance, personal insults and lies delivered with all the menace of a broken man devoid of empathy or care for anyone but himself. If you’ve heard one, you’ve heard them all. And his State of the Union address Tuesday night will be no exception.

The venue - the well of the House of Representatives - and the pomp and circumstance that go with it will not push him to moderate his tone or temper his remarks. If anything, the captive audience of allies and foes and all the eyeballs watching elsewhere will prove irresistible for a man who thrives on audience reaction and outrage.

We won’t get an address that waxes poetic about the American experiment in its 250th year. We won’t hear an oration that speaks to what unites us, our collective aspirations. We won’t hear a speech that upholds the United States as the bulwark of small-d democratic values at home and around the world. Instead, we will watch Trump use the bully pulpit of the presidency to bully the nation in primetime.

During a debate with Illinois Sen. Stephen Douglas in 1858, Abraham Lincoln said, “Public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail. Without it, nothing can succeed.” By that measure, success is eluding Trump. A raft of recent polls shows his overall disapproval rating clocking in above 60%. And, according to the latest ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos poll, he’s underwater on his handling of major issues.

About two-thirds of Americans disapprove of how Trump is handling inflation (65%) while over 6 in 10 disapprove of how he is handling tariffs on imported goods (64%) and U.S. relations with other countries (62%). Nearly as many disapprove of how he is handling immigration (58%) and the economy (57%).

So, when Trump addresses the nation Tuesday night, expect him to come in hot. Expect him to growl at us about how everything is fine and how you’re a loser if you disagree. In short, expect more of the same.

Like most African Americans, I regarded the man who was on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel with Martin Luther King Jr. that fateful day with a healthy dose of reverence. So as the taxi took the Triborough Bridge route to LaGuardia, I readied myself for my meeting with history.

Having flown the Delta Shuttle during my Today show researcher days, I knew there were conference rooms not too far from the gates, and I secured one upon my arrival. And then I waited. I scanned all the arriving passengers from the surrounding gates for Jackson’s familiar face. What I learned that day was that arriving shuttles let travelers deplane from the back and walk the tarmac to baggage claim on the lower level. That’s where I found Jackson. But he wasn’t alone.

The Reverend Al Sharpton was there with him. His James Brown–inspired hair was as impressive in person as it was on television. Sharpton looked and acted like the bull in a china shop. His every utterance on behalf of African Americans, the poor, victims of police brutality and racism—“No Justice! No Peace!”—was meant to rattle the status quo. Wherever the flames of racism licked in the five boroughs, Sharpton seemed to be there to watch them, fan them, tamp them. I wasn’t a fan. The interview was about a school initiative Jackson was proposing for New York City. One that a City Council staffer who’d lived in Chicago told me was a carbon copy of an unworkable plan he’d proposed there. Now was my chance to talk to him face-to-face.

But just as I was positioning my tape recorder in place, Jackson complimented my suit. I told him that it was the first designer suit I bought since graduating college. Then, Sharpton said something unintelligible that sounded like, “Whaaka na soooga waaaaa?” I asked him to repeat his query, in the hopes my ears would get accustomed to his rhythmic street-preacher cadence. “Whaaka na soooga waaaaa?” came the reply. What I heard was still unintelligible, but I took it to mean, “What kind of suit is that?”

I was so proud of that suit. A double-breasted navy blue with widely spaced pinstripes and peak lapels by Christian Dior, which I found on a rack at a Joseph A. Bank somewhere in New Jersey. Whenever I wore it, I felt like a million bucks. Whenever I wore it, people took notice.

“Oh! It’s a Christian Dior,” I told Sharpton in what I envisioned as the prelude to my going into all the details about what I liked about my purchase. Then, clearly and with precise diction, Sharpton said, “No. I asked you what college did you go to?” My face radiated with the heat of humiliation. My eyes were surely the size of saucers. My designer-clad body was frozen.

I broke the awkward silence when I replied, “Carleton College.” Sharpton and Jackson burst out laughing. Each tried to outdo the other with a joke at my expense. “I went to the college of Pierre Cardin,” said Jackson with a chuckle. “I went to the college of Yves Saint Laurent,” Sharpton said, as the two prominent preachers dapped, pointed fingers, and slapped the table which I prayed to disappear. “Ha! Ha! Very funny. Let’s get started,” I said as I pressed record.

Postscript 1: Here’s my conversation with Rev. Jackson as it appeared in the New York Daily News on Nov. 2, 1993.

Postscript 2: More than 30 years after our first meeting, Rev. Sharpton and I are great friends.

When I awoke to the news of the passing of the Rev. Jesse Jackson, I immediately thought of something another aide of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., told me years ago.

“[King] used to say, ‘Some of us are not going to make it to 40.’ He said, ‘But if we make it to 40, we can make it to 100,” said Andrew Young, one of King’s closest confidants who went on to become the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations under President Jimmy Carter. “Well, he didn’t make it to 40. So it becomes almost an obligation for me to keep doing whatever I can do as long as I can do it.”

Two things leapt out from my memory of Young’s quote. It was the age, 40, and it was the word obligation. Both explain why Young is still doing whatever he can at the age of 93. And both put into perspective Jackson’s incredible life after King’s death — a life lived like someone bound by that obligation.

Jackson was 42 years old when he announced his run for the 1984 Democratic nomination for president of the United States. Rep. Shirley Chisholm (D-N.Y.) was the first African American to have the audacity to run for the presidential nomination of a major party in 1972. A little more than a decade later, Jackson would follow in her footsteps. But in his improbable quest for the nomination, he would do what was then considered impossible: he won primaries.

All told, the Chicago-based son of South Carolina received more than 3 million votes, the third-highest vote getter. Even more remarkable, Jackson did even better when he ran again in 1988. He doubled his overall vote totals and tripled his take of the White vote.

Part of his appeal lay in the vision of America that he laid out in his 1984 Democratic convention speech in San Francisco. One that left no one behind.

Our flag is red, white and blue, but our nation is a rainbow - red, yellow, brown, black and white - and we’re all precious in God’s sight.

America is not like a blanket - one piece of unbroken cloth, the same color, the same texture, the same size. America is more like a quilt - many patches, many pieces, many colors, many sizes, all woven and held together by a common thread. The white, the Hispanic, the black, the Arab, the Jew, the woman, the native American, the small farmer, the businessperson, the environmentalist, the peace activist, the young, the old, the lesbian, the gay and the disabled make up the American quilt.

Jackson never won the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination, but he won major changes in the way the party chooses its nominee. Changes that included getting rid of the winner-take-all system and instead awarding delegates based on the percentage of votes a candidate receives. Big changes that went into effect in 1992 and allowed insurgent candidates to garner support, build momentum and win the White House.

“The Republicans still have winner-take-all…but the Democrats don’t, because of the Jackson campaign,” Minyon Moore says in For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Politics. That’s the 2018 book she co-authored with Donna Brazile, Yolanda Caraway and Leah Daughtry, which chronicles their rise through American politics and lauds Jackson’s role in changing their lives and American politics.

“He didn’t win the presidency, but he won by changing hearts, ushering in a new generation of political leaders at every level, and by changing the party rules to be more inclusive,” Moore said. “We got a seat at the table because of the Reverend. He opened the door for many of us in national politics.”

“It’s a fact that has often been lost in the skirmish of history, how Jackson’s run made the impossible seem possible, and in the process, he changed the game,” Caraway said.

Jackson changed the game because he acted on the obligation that came with being a Civil Rights leader who lived beyond 40 years old. With his passing may we fully appreciate all that he did in the long life he was able to live.