Some people find their calling in college. Take for example, Dakota Hall, who began organizing young people while a student at the University of Wisconsin. Hall used his experience mobilizing students to get engaged in the university’s budget process to launch a career helping the youth of Milwaukee, particularly helping people of color as executive director of Leaders Igniting Transformation. On Nov. 30, he took on a new position as executive director of the Alliance for Youth Action, which supports civic engagement through a network of local organizations. His answers have been edited for clarity and length.
What's the tweet-length description of your organization?
Building and sustaining youth power across the nation with an emphasis on BIPOC leadership.
Describe your very first civic engagement.
I ran for multiple club executive boards in high school and became president of our Green Club and Native American Student Association. Very proud of organizing to get recycling bins in my high school!
What was your biggest professional triumph?
Being a part of the amazing team with Leaders Igniting Transformation in Wisconsin that helped end the school resource officer contracts for Milwaukee Public Schools and got those dollars invested back into the classroom and futures of Black and Brown young people.
And your most disappointing setback?
I grew up politically in Gov. Scott Walker’s Wisconsin, and consistently saw cuts to my higher education institution including critical divestment from student services and support services for the most marginalized young people on campus. It took a while, but the same young people who saw cuts in their education were finally able to defeat Walker in the 2018 election. While we suffered setbacks under his leadership, we were able to do some deep organizing to remove him.
How does your identity influence the way you go about your work?
Being a Black and Indigenous male, I center the voices, stories and lives of BIPOC individuals the most. This country was born upon the sins, genocide, and slavery of Black and Indigenous peoples. Our resistance and resilience is the only thing that can set this country up for any sort of foundation that creates an environment for everyone to have the freedom to thrive.
What’s the best advice you’ve ever been given?
Set time to think about what you want, prioritize your visioning space, build your dreams, follow your heart and remember to center joy.
Create a new flavor for Ben & Jerry’s.
Banana ice cream with Reese's chunks and brownie bites.
What’s your favorite political movie or TV show?
“The West Wing.”
What's the last thing you do on your phone at night?
Check out the new Gen Z TikTok trends.
What is your deepest, darkest secret?
I am a triple Cancer zodiac sign and sometimes it shows, and I don’t like that.
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.