Daulby is CEO of the Congressional Management Foundation.
As Mr. Rogers famously said, “Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.”
A few months ago, I became the new CEO of the Congressional Management Foundation with a renewed mission to lead the helpers back to the Capitol. After a career on Capitol Hill that started as a paid intern and ended after being the staff director for the House Administration Committee on Jan. 6, 2021, I have been called back to serve the institution. I agreed to do so because we are in desperate need of the helpers, and having been a doer for the last two decades, it is now time for me to be a helper.
In addition to the presidential election, all 435 seats in the House of Representatives were on the ballot Tuesday along with roughly a third of the Senate. Our institution is rapidly turning over and we will see hundreds of new staff come to Washington in January. I have watched with much joy and enthusiasm the progress that has been made on Capitol Hill, and particularly in the House. Staff have access to a team of bipartisan coaches and online resources from which to learn and grow in their current positions, thanks to the office of the Chief Administrative Officer. Staff retreats are now commonplace and offered by three entities in the House. While I was on the Hill, my team established the Congressional Excellence program that continues to provide individual leadership development and coaching to members of Congress.
We are making progress.
However, for outside organizations like the Congressional Management Foundation to move the needle on making Congress work more and squabble less, we need more helpers. With the growing popularity of the “fix Congress” movement and acceptance that we need infrastructure like the House Administration Committee’s modernization subcommittee, we started a trend … which has become a habit of telling Congress what it can do better. Most members and staff know that Congress needs improvement, but they need a helping hand.
Well-meaning organizations have sent letters, published op-eds and spoken on panels in a silo. So much of this important work never gets communicated effectively to the Hill and so few resources have been committed to directly sharing our work and executing programing that help the members of Congress achieve what we are publicly telling them to do. That is why CMF will continue to support leadership and professional development opportunities, building a community that strengthens bipartisan relationships and facilitating educational opportunities that leverage private-sector expertise.
CMF’s Revitalizing Congress program is just one example of the work we do to help Congress function more efficiently. This program works with members of Congress to:
- Improve staff work life.
- Transform constituent and public engagement.
- Provide professional development services to members.
- Encourage innovation.
- And much, much more.
So many American feel Congress is broken. These beliefs have become so embedded in our society that it seems most Americans have lost hope in an institution that seems ineffective, unresponsive and unable to address the challenges America faces. Most Americans see only examples of ineptitude, petty partisan politics and the occasional scandal on Capitol Hill.
But what if Americans got a glimpse of a different Congress? Americans' views might change if they saw examples of members of Congress employing innovative practices to engage with citizens, or congressional offices employing private-sector business practices to improve their operations. And what would other lawmakers do if they also saw how their colleagues enhanced their operations and citizen engagement?
In this spirit, CMF created a distinctive honors program — the Democracy Awards — to recognize non-legislative achievement and performance in congressional offices and by members of Congress.
And we do so much more.
In the coming weeks our congressional management guide, “Setting Course,” will be published and distributed to all new members of Congress and their staff. We will follow that publication with a series of workshops for new staff in 2025 that will help them onboard to these new positions. We will offer staff academies on pressing topics and cohort dinners with staff from both sides of the aisle with private-sector leaders. Staff are desperate for hard skills and professional development tools. We will continue to conduct retreats, offer webinars on office skills and run management classes.
The work of the helpers never ends. I hope you will follow us on our journey.
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.