In this edition of #ListenFirstFriday, the 17-year-old founder of YAP Politics discusses efforts to bridge the polarizations between political affiliations.
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US President Donald Trump arrives onstage for a campaign rally in the Mitchell Center at the University of South Alabama on Oct. 2, 2026, in Mobile, Alabama.
(Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images/TCA)
Trump’s obsessions help bury GOP chances
Oct 10, 2026
Maine Sen. Susan Collins is facing one of the toughest reelection battles of her lifetime. And at Tuesday night’s debate, she was clearly on the defensive.
This race should not have been this competitive. Collins has held this seat for five terms. And while Maine has voted for the Democrat in every presidential election since 1992, it still has a fierce independent streak, and a healthy Republican base.
But this year is different. President Trump’s approval numbers are abysmal, his tariffs and his war in Iran have tanked our economy, and he seems focused on things that would actively turn voters off — like spending taxpayer dollars on propaganda ads, vanity construction projects, fighting with journalists, and punishing his enemies.
And all the while, he’s telling voters that their affordability concerns are a hoax. It’s hard to run on two more years of…this.
In Maine, Trump’s trade war with bordering Canada is a particular pain point, evidenced by how badly Collins tried to distance herself from the tariffs during the debate.
She boasted that she fought to keep a few important items off of Trump’s tariff list, including concrete, pulp, and road salt.
Her Democratic opponent, Troy Jackson, a longtime Maine legislator, delivered a response that should become a mantra for every Dem running this cycle:
It was a simple and straightforward acknowledgment that most Americans are struggling to pay their bills, put gas in their cars, put food on the table, and meanwhile Trump’s tariffs are making all of that harder. Collins saving the road salt doesn’t help with any of it.
But it’s more than road salt…
So much of what Trump and Republicans are offering in this 11th hour of desperation won’t solve Americans’ affordability crisis either.
Trump’s obsession with building monuments to himself won’t help a farmer in Iowa put diesel in his tractor. We can’t eat ballrooms.
Trump’s cheerleading for AI while the rest of the world panics about the power-hungry tech bros leading the charge won’t put money in the pocket of a single mom working three jobs in Trenton, New Jersey. We can’t eat data centers.
Trump’s endless war and its global economic destruction isn’t helping the North Carolina apple farmer who lost it all in Hurricane Helene. We can’t eat Iran strikes.
Trump’s fixation with punishing political enemies, and Republican lawmakers’ preening efforts to oblige him in Congress, won’t help the laid-off auto worker in Pontiac, Michigan. We can’t eat Jack Smith hearings.
Trump’s constant grifts, self-dealing, and his family’s efforts to line their own pockets through crypto and billion-dollar Pentagon contracts aren’t helping the family in Ames, Iowa struggling to pay their cancer treatment bills. We can’t eat corruption.
Trump’s attacks on journalists, threats to sue over coverage he doesn’t like, and attempts at turning the press into his personal Pravda won’t convince the soccer mom in Bakersfield, California that $5 a gallon gas is somehow affordable. We can’t eat censorship.
Trump’s obsession with baseless election fraud claims and threats to rig or militarize our elections won’t help the recent college grad who’s sent out 300 resumes but can’t get a job. We can’t eat paranoia.
Trump’s preoccupation with authoritarian strongmen like Russia’s Vladimir Putin, China’s Xi Jinping, and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un is a slap in the face of a Cuban refugee trying to make a life for his family in Miami. We can’t eat jealousy.
Running the country in service of one guy’s megalomania hasn’t made America great again, and it hasn’t made life better for Americans.
We can’t eat Trump.
S.E. Cupp is the host of "S.E. Cupp Unfiltered" on CNN.
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Donald Trump with Brazil flag
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Trump Cannot Cry “Election Interference” in the US While Meddling in Brazil
Oct 08, 2026
Hugo Balta is currently traveling through Brazil, reporting on democracy, civic engagement, and the political dynamics shaping the South American country at a moment that offers urgent lessons for the United States.
SÃO PAULO—For years, the political mainstream in Washington has treated the sanctity of ballot boxes as an exceptional American virtue under siege from malicious foreign actors. Yet, look beyond the equator, and that high-minded rhetoric instantly dissolves into a dangerous hypocrisy. You cannot self-righteously decry the subversion of domestic voting systems while simultaneously pulling the geopolitical levers to distort someone else’s.
Yet, that is exactly what the Trump administration is doing in South America's largest nation. Following the highly polarized first-round vote on October 4, Brazil's presidential election is officially headed to a high-stakes runoff. Right-wing Senator Flávio Bolsonaro finished ahead with 47.03% of the vote, narrowly leading leftist incumbent President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who captured 45.16%. The domestic contest is tight, emotional, and deeply consequential. But reporting on the ground here from São Paulo, it is clear to me that the real story is being shaped by calculated operations engineered in Washington, D.C.
The footprint of foreign meddling is so pronounced that Brazil’s Federal Police chief, Andrei Rodrigues, recently confirmed that authorities have opened a preliminary investigation into outside electoral interference. The probe was triggered by a formal complaint from Brazil’s Attorney General’s Office following bombshell reporting from The Guardian. According to the report, the Trump administration actively explored redirecting roughly $1 million in U.S. State Department funds to right‑wing civil groups in Brazil. The program’s reported title—“Combating Lawfare and Censorship in Brazil”—was not subtle. Brazilian authorities state it was explicitly designed to destabilize domestic political debate and delegitimize the institutional framework of the Brazilian Supreme Court. If true, this is an aggressive attempt to rewrite another sovereign nation’s democratic architecture from the outside.
The interference didn’t stop at covert funding lines. Additional reporting from The Guardian reveals that the Trump administration weaponized international commerce, imposing a 25% tariff hike on select Brazilian goods to punish the judiciary for prosecuting former President Jair Bolsonaro. Then came the orchestrated political theater: a high‑profile White House meeting with Flávio Bolsonaro, followed by the U.S. designating several prominent Brazilian criminal syndicates as Foreign Terrorist Organizations. While the younger Bolsonaro immediately celebrated the move as a campaign victory, critics rightly argue the timing was engineered to artificially boost his tough‑on‑crime platform. This is not diplomacy. It is electioneering disguised as foreign policy.
Tensions escalated into a full diplomatic standoff when the U.S. State Department attempted to dispatch officials to Brazil under the banner of “electoral integrity.” Brazil’s government flatly denied their visas, calling it an intelligence overreach aimed at influencing the vote. Then, days before the first‑round election, the U.S. abruptly shut down consular services across Brazil, citing vague security concerns. Lula’s campaign blasted the shutdown as a manufactured crisis designed to project a false sense of domestic instability right before voters headed to the polls. Whether intentional or not, the effect was unmistakable: confusion, fear, and political distortion.
Trump has monitored Brazil’s election "very closely," publicly celebrating Flávio Bolsonaro’s lead as a "great victory." Yet, he strategically stopped short of an official endorsement. According to a report by The Washington Post, this silence was entirely tactical. Insiders note a loud, overt intervention from the White House would have backfired, playing directly into Lula’s campaign narrative of defending Brazil’s sovereignty against foreign colonization. In other words: the discretion was just as calculated as the economic coercion.
The Trump administration continues to deny all allegations, with White House spokesperson Anna Kelly calling them “nonsense” and insisting conservative leaders are winning on merit alone. But back in Washington, more than 30 U.S. Democratic lawmakers—including Senator Bernie Sanders—have demanded that the U.S. halt actions that threaten Brazil’s democratic institutions and commit to recognizing the certified winner of the October 25 runoff.
Their warning should be a wake-up call for the American public ahead of the U.S. midterm elections. You cannot destabilize foreign institutions while insisting your own are sacred. You cannot weaponize diplomacy, trade, and intelligence to tip the scales for a political ally abroad while claiming the moral high ground on election integrity at home. That profound hypocrisy is not just a threat to the 56 million Brazilians who just cast their ballots; it is a cancer on American democracy itself. Once a government normalizes the manipulation of democratic norms abroad, it inevitably imports those exact same tactics back to its own shores. Defending democracy requires absolute consistency—and Washington cannot expect integrity at home while actively exporting instability to Brazil.
Hugo Balta is the executive editor of The Fulcrum and the publisher of the Latino News Network, and twice president of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists.
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white concrete building during daytime
Photo by Ian Hutchinson on Unsplash
Congress Broke the Constitutional Order — And Now They Want Voters to Forget
Oct 07, 2026
How can leaders who broke the constitutional order, ignored their oath, weakened rights, and harmed the people now ask Americans to forget — and reward them with reelection? The question is not abstract — it goes to the heart of what the Constitution demands from those who swear an oath to uphold it.
The constitutional order is the framework that protects the Republic: three branches, checks and balances, oversight, limits on executive power, and the oath every member of Congress swears — to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. Yet in recent years, Congress has allowed that order to erode. Oversight collapsed. Guardrails bent. Silence replaced accountability. Loyalty to a president replaced loyalty to the Constitution.
But something else has changed too: voters.
Today, people are more politically literate — paying attention to promises made and unkept, roll‑call votes, and the policies that shape their daily lives. Millions have watched rights taken away, the ACA dismantled with nothing replacing it, corruption, executive overreach, and checks and balances ignored. Voters understand the stakes of reelecting leaders who have ignored their needs, weakened their rights, and abandoned their constitutional responsibilities.
The human cost of congressional neglect is nonpartisan — in every state. And the harm is lived. Families struggling with affordability. Communities harmed by compromised agencies. Public health systems strained. DEI protections rolled back. ICE abuses unchecked. The ACA dismantled with no replacement. Voting rights restricted. Election workers threatened. Foreign influence ignored. Inspectors general fired. Free speech attacked. Constitutional responsibilities treated as optional.
Today, Congress includes more than 100 documented election deniers — including a president who promotes it. Election denial and election interference deepen the damage. It rejects the constitutional process for transferring power. Leaders who deny certified results cannot claim loyalty to the Constitution. How can an election denier uphold an oath to the Constitution when election denial itself rejects the constitutional process?
The consequences of this broken order extend beyond domestic policy. The nation is living through a war Americans did not ask for — and Congress did not authorize. Congress failed to restrain unilateral military action, leaving the country in conflict without the constitutional safeguard of congressional approval. Reporters, veterans, communities of color, and entire states feel the weight of decisions made without oversight.
I have tried to hold leaders accountable. I have written to members of Congress across the country, asking whether they are honoring the oath they swore. I asked about rhetoric, the dismantling of the ACA, overreach, corruption, and ignored constitutional responsibilities. Each acknowledged my letters. None answered my questions. Citizens are entitled to answers. But Congress has learned that silence is easier than accountability — hoping voters will forget.
I hear the same frustration from relatives in Texas, who have watched their senator do little to help the people while repeating falsehoods that exhaust voters already overwhelmed by political deception. The pattern is familiar: leaders who break the constitutional order, ignore constituents, and then ask for votes as though the public has forgotten their record. It is exhausting to watch lies flood the airwaves while roll‑call votes and lived experience tell a different story.
It is even more exhausting to watch leaders look into cameras and repeat falsehoods while supporting policies that harm the people and weaken the Republic. Their public statements often contradict their votes, their silence in moments of crisis, and their unwavering support for a president whose overreach has broken constitutional guardrails. Yet these same leaders ask for votes as though their record does not exist. The gap between their words and their record is no longer a political problem — it is a constitutional one.
Americans should sense the desperation in these appeals. When the vice president asks for “one more chance,” and the president promises a $5,000 payment if his party keeps control of Congress, it reveals a troubling truth: they know the damage they have done. They know their record cannot stand on its own. Putting the president’s name on the COVID relief checks worked once. Now they hope money and manufactured loyalty will work again — that voters will forget the broken guardrails, the corruption, and the harm inflicted on the Republic.
This strategy is not new. It reminds me of the old proverb: “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.” Some supporters have voted multiple times for leaders who harmed them — and now openly express regret. They feel misled by promises that never materialized and policies that made their lives harder. Millions now ask: how can leaders who broke the constitutional order, ignored their oath, weakened rights, and harmed the people expect voters to forget — and reelect them? Leaders who did the most damage are counting on voters to forget, forgive, and — as the vice president asked — give them another opportunity to repeat the damage.
The Constitution gives power to the people — not to those who seek to manipulate them. And voters have more power than they realize. They can choose clarity over chaos, courage over intimidation, and truth over noise. They can remember the harm, who caused it, and why. They can refuse to be sidelined by party loyalty, pity, or lies. They can weed through conspiracies, do their research, seek the truth, and protect their voice, their power, and the Republic.
To protect the Republic, voters must vote with clarity — not confusion, not exhaustion, not fear. Clarity comes from political literacy, the civic skill the framers expected of the people. Political literacy means understanding political systems, constitutional responsibilities, and the difference between leadership and loyalty. It means developing critical thinking skills, evaluating media carefully, and recognizing when leaders distort reality to avoid accountability. It means knowing the record — not the rhetoric.
Even if Congress changes, citizens will have to work even harder to demand accountability. A new Congress does not automatically restore constitutional order. It will take determination and vigilance — especially when some say this president ignores accountability altogether. The framers never intended accountability to be optional. They intended it to be enforced by the people.
Someone once said that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. We must reflect on what happens when we repeatedly vote for leaders who denied elections, remained silent in moments of crisis, took away rights, dismantled healthcare, weakened DEI protections, ignored ICE abuses, and allowed corruption to flourish. We may not be able to control every storm around us. But we can decide whether we will surrender our humanity, our hope, our voice, or our joy to it.
Voters must make a plan to vote — and vote. We cannot vote for a leader merely because they ask us to, want us to, or share our party label. We must look at the record. We must remember our power to put the Republic back on course. Protect your voice. Protect your power. Protect the Republic.
George Santayana warned that “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Congress is counting on that. They want voters to forget the broken guardrails, the harm, the corruption, and the constitutional neglect. But forgetting is how democracies fail. Remembering is how democracies survive.
The founders warned us: A Republic, if you can keep it. Keeping it requires memory. Keeping it requires vigilance. Keeping it requires clarity. And keeping it requires refusing to forget what Congress hopes we will — because the survival of the Republic depends on what the people choose to remember.
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Carolyn Goode is a retired educational leader and former principal who has spent her career advancing civic responsibility, equity, and public engagement. She writes about democracy, leadership, and the values that strengthen American communities.
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U.S. President Donald Trump speaks from the Cross Hall of the White House on April 1, 2026 in Washington, DC.
Pool/Getty Images
How Presidential Primetime Addresses Shape Public Trust in Democratic Institutions
Oct 01, 2026
A question still being studied is the effects on public trust when the head of the Executive casts doubt on the institutions that run elections, enforce laws, and decide legal disputes. The President of the United States is arguably the most powerful man in the world. He is the commander in chief of a nation #1 in nominal gross domestic product as well as #1 in military power, budget, and spending as of 2026. The actions he takes spew ripple effects across the world and follow many generations. A way you can measure the executive's power can also be measured in how much influence his speeches have on the markets, opinions of the masses, news outlets, lawmakers, social media reactions, etc. His framing of an issue can shape the next day’s political conversation.
These conversations become extremely dangerous/consequential when discussing a principle as embedded in our country as Democracy. In his July primetime speech, Trump continued to pedal the claims about election security and argued for stricter voting rules. He continued to portray the country as facing a moment of corruption and uncertainty, followed by presenting himself as the one prepared to restore order. The address continued with repeated claims about his loss in the 2020 election that have not been supported by the evidence compiled over years of investigation by many parties. Professional reviews, audits, and courts have yet to find significant evidence of foul play substantial enough to influence the outcome of that election.
Despite the facts of the matter, Trump continues his assault on our institutions through his words and actions. For decades, Primetime presidential speeches have been used to speak directly to the public during wars, economic crises, and moments of national grief. These addresses can be reassuring. They can make government action easier to understand and give people a sense that their leaders are responding to an emergency.
Ronald Reagan used television to project optimism and national confidence during the Cold War, a period of large paranoia and uncertainty. George W. Bush’s speeches after the terrorist attacks of 9/11 helped create an early sense of unity even across the world, although later questions about the Iraq War damaged trust in government claims. Barack Obama often used his national addresses to explain major policy decisions and encourage civic participation.
Trump constantly fails to do many of those positives. His primetime speeches heavily deepen the division this country has been experiencing in the last 20 years in particular; the president encourages people to believe that elections, courts, or civil servants are inherently corrupt, which then closes the door for the public to accept outcomes they do not like. That problem has never been confined to one party or one president. Democratic principles depend on more than laws to keep them accountable. They depend on a shared belief that institutions can be challenged, criticized, and improved upon without being dismissed as illegitimate whenever they produce an unfavorable result. No, that does not mean presidents should avoid criticism.
Yes, government institutions should be questioned, investigated, and reformed when they fail. But mindful criticism is most useful when it is specific, evidence-based, and paired with a realistic solution. Trump leans more on cynicism, whereas he displays much more personal bias, ego, and mental rigidity.
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Historically, primetime presidential speeches strengthen democracy when they help Americans understand a challenging topic and encourage them to participate at the local and federal levels. They weaken democracy when they turn routine political disagreement into a reason to reject the legitimacy of systems and institutions altogether.
For voters, the goal to aspire towards is knowing the difference between hearing and listening. The care that you put into analyzing these speeches is what separates the two. A president’s words matter, but they should never be accepted without questions: What evidence supports this claim? Who can verify it? Does the proposed solution protect democratic participation, or does it make power less accountable?
Those questions are not partisan. They are part of what it means to be an informed citizen.
Shon Eric Hernandez is a Fulcrum fellow and MDC contributor. He can be reached at shondesil06@gmail.com
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The President Invited Iran to Bomb My Home