Zaidane is the president and CEO of the Millennial Action Project.
History favors the brave – or so the saying goes. From a young age, we are taught of historical heroes, people who stepped out against the status quo and followed their convictions. These acts of bravery transformed the world: advances in civil rights, technological breakthroughs like electricity and the internet, and so much more.
Today, we must summon that bravery once more as Americans pursue one of our biggest, most important challenges yet: building the largest, multiracial, multiethnic, multireligious democracy in the history of the world.
That undertaking is a moonshot. And while history teaches us how to look back and link certain moments or courage else we risk missing out on favorable outcomes, it’s a whole different story when that bravery is for a yet unwritten future.
Luckily for all of us, there are courageous leaders all across the country already writing that future — and a few weeks ago I got to spend a full weekend with many of them, recommitting to the notion of a more inclusive democracy.
At the Millennial Action Project’s sixth annual Future Summit, young state legislators from across the country set aside differences to listen, learn and laugh with one another. The summit focuses on collaborative policy solutions, but also on the collaborative policy makers who lead these solutions, and the ways in which they must navigate a toxic culture in order to build new governing coalitions. In conversations with many of them, I heard firsthand the burdens they carry in doing this work:
“I receive death threats daily.” “I get harassed online.” “I’m the first in my family to get a diploma, let alone be elected into public office.” These are just a sliver of the comments I’ve heard about what it’s like being a young person in elected office. The conditions are tough to say the least: These lawmakers often have little to no support, and they are frequently on the receiving end of hate and criticism.
Burnout is a common risk among these leaders — and who could be surprised? According to the National Conference of State Legislators, the average pay of a state legislator is $33,000, and most have no full-time staff. Many legislators must take on a second job or side gigs in order to make ends meet. One legislator shared at the Future Summit: “When I first ran for office, I knew we were going to have to pinch pennies. We’d essentially have to live off my wife’s salary.” For many young legislators, a reality of their public service is they are underpaid, understaffed and overworked.
Access to forums like the Future Summit, where young legislators can relate to one another around the shared challenges and joys of their roles as elected officials, can be deeply reenergizing. These moments help show these courageous leaders that they are not alone in doing the work of building a more functional democracy; events like the Future Summit also provide unique and meaningful opportunities for learning across lines of political, ideological and geographical difference. Take it from Arkansas state Rep. Aaron Pilkington, who remarked: “MAP has been a resource to me. ... The most important thing has been facilitating the conversation across party lines and having a space where people can be genuine and vulnerable.”
Kansas Rep. Jo Ella Hoya had a similar takeaway: “My sense of the room and the people at the Future Summit ... we all felt a calling and we wanted to serve. And seeing that genuine desire to make our states a better place, to make our country a better place, to make the world a better place is inspiring.”
The summit was a deeply needed recharging moment for these brave leaders. To be brave is not to be without fear or discomfort — it is to press forward in spite of it. By building a strong and diverse network of their peers, young elected leaders are developing the resiliency to buck the status quo, and lead our country into an era of democratic renewal.
The future is still uncertain. Luckily, the young legislators in MAP’s network are not discouraged by uncertainty. The yet unwritten future is their opportunity, their call-to-action and their collective mission. While the saying goes, “history favors the brave,” that doesn’t quite capture the full truth. From where I sit, the future favors the brave.
Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Graham Platner speaks to voters at a town hall at the Elks Lodge 188 on June 7, 2026, in Portland, Maine.
McConnell and Platner both feel entitled
The two men could not be more different. One, a Republican, octogenarian, seven-term Southern senator, the other a progressive, millennial Maine oysterman who’s never spent a day in elected office.
But Mitch McConnell, the senior senator from Kentucky who’s been MIA for the past few weeks and Graham Platner, the Maine Senate candidate who’s facing calls to drop out of his race against Sen. Susan Collins, apparently do have something in common: an outsized sense of entitlement.
McConnell, who is 84 and not running for reelection, has been hospitalized for three weeks, and yet we still don’t fully know what he was admitted for or what his condition is. Per CNN, “his office has not disclosed a medical reason for the hospitalization or provided specifics on his health status beyond saying last week that he ‘continues to improve’ and ‘is working closely with his staff on Kentucky and Senate matters.’ ”
While several legislators have said they’ve talked to him and insist he sounds strong, others have said they are completely in the dark. One MAGA influencer, Laura Loomer, posted ”High level source close to the White House tells me ‘Mitch McConnell is officially brain dead. He’s not coming back.’ ”
Meanwhile, up in Maine, Platner has been artfully dodging calls from his own party to drop out of his race after several allegations of misconduct from women, including a sexual assault allegation from a former girlfriend, came to light. While Platner, who has managed to survive a Nazi-tattoo scandal, a sexting scandal, and several old tweets scandals, denies the allegations, he has not quit.
High-profile Democrats including Sens. Bernie Sanders and Chuck Schumer, the latter of whom had unsuccessfully hand-selected Maine Gov. Janet Mills to face Collins instead of Platner, have urged Platner to drop out, while other Dems have accused him of trying to influence the picking of his replacement.
Maine Democratic Party Executive Director Devon Murphy-Anderson released a statement Tuesday, which said in part:
“Unfortunately, Graham Platner’s team has repeatedly reached out to us in an attempt to put their thumb on the scale of what this process looks like. We have repeatedly reiterated to Graham Platner’s team that they have no role in determining our next Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate nor in determining what this process looks like.”
Both incidents show a deep lack of accountability to voters, who in one case deserve to know whether their senator is capable of performing his duties, and in another deserve a candidate who isn’t being accused of crimes, bigotry and deception.
The offensive and odious entitlement of both McConnell and Platner stands out not because it is particularly unique among today’s political class. Tom Kean, the New Jersey GOP congressman, missed more than 100 votes, only sharing after a three-month mystery absence that he was dealing with depression.
Former President Joe Biden’s Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin failed to disclose a hospitalization for prostate cancer surgery, flouting the established rules for Cabinet members and senior U.S. officials.
From Biden’s insistence on running for reelection despite his obvious cognitive and political weaknesses to Trump’s brazen flouting of laws and norms, few politicians seem to appreciate that their public service job comes with responsibilities to constituents, including transparency and honesty.
But both parties increasingly justify the chicanery, because the stakes of winning elections and keeping power are simply too high. But that’s no excuse. If we’ve learned anything over the past decade, it’s that character and accountability do, in fact, matter. And when we, the voters, stop caring about it, well, so do they.
S.E. Cupp is the host of "S.E. Cupp Unfiltered" on CNN.