Nevins is co-publisher of The Fulcrum and co-founder and board chairman of the Bridge Alliance Education Fund.
As we approach the upcoming midterm elections, I am stunned when I think about how little we learn from history. Both Democrats and Republicans believe if their nominees get elected, the serious problems our country faces will be tackled with a new vigor, and real change will actually occur.
So often in our history a new Congress convenes with newly elected representatives who have lofty ideals, only to be stymied by the system. It just might be that we all overplay the importance of the outcome of presidential elections in determining the direction our country will take in the four years following the election. More often than not our national elections merely validate an establishment that never really changes.
Something new is needed — a new paradigm in advance of midterm elections that changes the way citizens think about and participate in our democracy.
One such effort is Bridge Alabama, a program inviting citizens under the age of 40 to join a series of three conversations to decrease polarization, build community, and support community-led storytelling and news in advance of the state and midterm elections.
A diverse group of participants will join conversations with other Alabamians about the issues that matter to them, build relationships and have their voices heard. The goal is for this to be more than just a three-day event but to provide ongoing support and tools to make it easier for folks to continue collaborating, connecting or supporting each other moving forward.
This project will help address three timely and essential needs in states across the Deep South between now and the 2022 election. First is the need to create spaces for engagement with younger people in the South to tell new stories and create new possibilities for community and civic engagement. Bridge Alabama is focusing on people and places often invisible to national and state policymakers — and among a demographic with increasing political power, creating new ways to come together to talk about what matters most, then translate those conversations into news stories and collective action.
The program is predicated on the belief that we will be strengthened by more pluralistic community conversations. Bridge Alabama will inclusively bring people together to collectively understand the problems and issues that are most important to address in advance of the 2022 election and decide together what happens to their communities.
As we approach the 2022 midterms our nation needs more productive ways by shifting media coverage, deliberation and polarization to combat the division and dysfunction that defined 2020. Bridge Alabama is a grand experiment aiming to foster inclusion, pluralism, community and civic engagement in new ways for new times.
The nonprofit Essential Partners will design and facilitate the conversations and local partners will help with outreach. Cortico will record the discussions and produce transcripts, which will be accessible to participants and our partners. The nonpartisan Bridge Alliance will provide access to resources and support. Journalists from The Fulcrum (which is operated by the Bridge Alliance) and Reckon will then be empowered to tell new stories that raise up the concerns and hopes of Alabamians under 40.
America doesn’t just need new people in office. We need a new commitment to a new politics of problem-solving and citizen involvement and collaboration. Bridge Alabama is a step toward an election process that values a core belief that the search for solutions should be based on reason, logic and inquiry, where a conclusion follows from a set of premises, not the other way around. Bridge Alabama will allow room for people from different parties and with different beliefs to sit around a table to collaborate on tough issues facing our nation.
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.