Debilyn Molineaux serves as the catalyst for the American Future project to help everyday Americans discover and believe in a future that will be "worth it" to work together for the sake of our nation.
My new weekly column, American Future, will report on the desired future of everyday Americans as I interview a few people each week from across the nation. The four week journey begins on November 9, 2023. Zoom interviews will be ongoing.
For a few years now, I’ve been wondering about the future of our nation. With alarm, I have experienced friends and family look at the same situation and come away with vastly different interpretations. As I flip through cable news channels or scroll through social media feeds, it’s like we are sharing the planet and only taking in dystopian possibilities. Are we heading towards fascism or socialism? Are we heading towards chaos or order? Will our elected officials ever work together again? (No, says the media.)
At the same time our divisions have (seemingly) deepened, I have witnessed an exponential increase in the number of people concerned about and working on our nation’s future. The Bridge Alliance was formed in 2015 with 30 organizational members and grew to 110 in 2022. A new project called Healthy Democracy Ecosystem has cataloged organizations working on democracy across the nation and identified over 6,000. In other words, Americans are already at work to correct or heal what ails the nation.
As I see levels of despair, resignation and tuning out amongst my friends and family, I also see amazing people doing extraordinary work. How then, can my friends and family, or any everyday American, get connected? And why would they want to? That is what the American Future project is all about. Helping people connect to what they want for their own future and consider steps they can take personally and in their community to make it happen. This is my thesis about how we co-create a better future for all of us.
First of course, we, the everyday people, need to know what we want, and what future will be “worth it” to work for it.
As I prepare to meet you and other everyday Americans, I’ve been conducting practice interviews. I’ve created and ordered some information cards to “leave behind.” I’ve set up an online interview tool. The AmericanFuture.us website is constantly being updated. I’m writing nearly every day.
Where I feel unready for this adventure is in how I will tell your stories. Should each person have their own story? Should I do composites? What form will it take - written, video, audio? How would videos and audio stories get produced? Who can help? What is the right balance of fixed locations yet allowing time for spontaneous and synchronistic meetings? How will I ask people to spend 30-45 minutes with me? Will there be too much background noise to record? And of course, how will this project be supported, financially?
I share these open questions with you, for the sake of transparency about my own insecurities. I’m as scared to take this journey as I am excited to meet you. Preparing for the journey is as daunting as the journey itself. I think you are worth it.
Let’s roll.
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a“ Steel Across America” event ahead of the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11th attacks on the Ellipse near the White House on Sept. 8, 2026 in Washington, D.C. President Trump welcomed 9/ 11 first responders to the Tunnel to Towers Foundation’ s“ Steel Across America” event featuring a 16,900- pound, 21- foot steel beam recovered.
For Trump, even 9/11 is an opportunity
There was a reason organizers of the 9/11 ceremony in Manhattan told President Trump he could not speak at this year’s memorial service.
A good one, it turns out.
Because in a speech he gave on Tuesday in Washington, he did exactly what they were presumably worried about — he made it about himself.
According to The New York Times, Trump had wanted a speaking role at the service, but the National Sept. 11 Memorial and Museum, which oversees the site, said no, as they’ve maintained for the past decade-plus that the venue and event should be nonpartisan.
Trump has long used awful tragedies to either puff himself up, trash political opponents, or sell lies to the American people.
He blamed a deadly plane crash at Washington National Airport last year on diversity, equity and inclusion policies. He blamed Puerto Ricans for the devastation they endured after Hurricane Maria in 2017. He reportedly considered withholding disaster relief after the California wildfires based on the way affected regions voted. In an interview on Fox News meant to commemorate the 75th anniversary of D-Day in Normandy, he used the occasion to slam former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi…with graves of the dead behind him.
And now, as we approach the 25th anniversary of what many New Yorkers consider the darkest day in modern history, Trump has done it again.
He told a rambling, nonsensical story — one he’s told before — about going to Ground Zero just after terrorists flew two commercial jets into the twin towers. In the story, which no one has been able to verify, despite multiple attempts, he says firefighters had to carry him out of One Liberty Plaza, also known as the U.S. Steel Building, because they thought it was about to collapse.
As CNN fact checker Daniel Dale notes, there’s no evidence Trump went into this building, especially at a time when NYPD and NYFD had locked down the area. There’s no evidence that building was collapsing — in fact, it was deemed structurally sound and reopened within two months of the attacks. There’s no evidence he was carried out of it by firefighters.
But the lie isn’t even the worst part. Pretend it was all true — why would the leader of our country, and a New Yorker, decide to make that tragic day about himself?
Because that’s who Donald Trump is. He’s a malignant narcissist.
He’s also, incidentally, a terrible and ineffectual president, who’s made ill-fated decisions that he has to keep defending, and there’s nothing he won’t do to make himself look and feel better.
Within the first two minutes of his speech, he was cravenly using 9/11 to justify and promote his dumb war in Iran — two events separated by 25 years and 6,000 miles.
“And I will tell you, we’re right now fighting because we have a certain nation that wanted a nuclear weapon, they were very close to getting it, and now they have no chance at getting it. They will never have a nuclear weapon. Iran will not have a nuclear weapon. And they’ve been punished greatly. As you know, we’ve really taken it to them.”
As a New Yorker who lived through 9/11, still one of the worst days of my life, I’m utterly sickened by Trump’s crass, political, and self-promotional framing of that awful day.
And I’m relieved he won’t be given a platform to do it again on Friday’s anniversary in lower Manhattan.
Because for Trump, everything is his for the taking, and absolutely nothing is sacred.
S.E. Cupp is the host of "S.E. Cupp Unfiltered" on CNN.