Whitman is a former Republican governor of New Jersey and co-chair of the Forward Party.
The two dominant political parties in America don’t agree on much, but there is one thing they agree on: The system should be set up to help them maintain their power. From first-past-the-post voting and gerrymandering to limiting citizen-powered ballot initiatives, Republicans and Democrats have done their best to build a system that strips the power from the people and keeps it in the parties’ hands.
Voters are fighting back, however. And we will all be the better for it.
The headlines of the 2022 elections focused, of course, on control of the House, Senate and governors’ mansions. But the subhead — easy to miss — was a wave of reforms, particularly for ranked-choice voting. Nevada led the way, passing a ballot measure which will institute the practice across the entire state if it passes again in two years. Nine other cities and counties also voted on voting reform, with RCV passing in seven of them. If you factor in approval voting reforms that have passed — a similar change to our method of voting — more than 15 million Americans will be able to more freely express their politics through new and better election processes in the coming years.
With an 80 percent electoral success rate, it’s hard to imagine an issue more popular right now than citizen-powered reform. With all of the enthusiasm behind these reforms, you might think that the major parties would be clamoring to support them. Sadly, their desire to keep power to themselves is causing them to fight against these improvements. There’s only one national party working for reforms that empower the people and give them choice: the Forward Party.
In Connecticut, the Griebel Frank Party — part of the Forward Party Alliance — endorsed Democratic Gov. Ned LaMont after he came out in favor of RCV and said he’d support legislation implementing it in the state. In Nevada, a coalition of reformers, including many Forward in-state leaders, led the charge to pass the RCV ballot initiative.
Compare that with two states where the existing parties tried to use the initiative process itself to make electoral reform more difficult, or even impossible. In Arkansas, they tried to require a supermajority for ballot initiatives. In Arizona, the Legislature wanted the power to change or repeal these initiatives entirely. Both efforts were rejected by voters who cherish their right to self rule.
Unfortunately, in 24 more states — almost half the country — the parties have effectively ended the ability for citizens to lead reform through referenda or ballot initiatives. Reform is left entirely up to the people who are usually least interested in it — the elected leaders of the legacy parties.
Putting electoral reform on the ballot in those states means electing reformers to office. And to do that, we first must recruit them and put them on the ballot. Republican and Democratic leaders aren’t interested in that. The Nevada Democratic Party fought ranked-choice voting as stridently as the Alaska GOP has.
And so, if we want a new kind of politics across the country — a better politics — it can’t come from within the same staid parties that only work together when it protects their mutual power. They’ll band together to fight against returning choice and power to the American people. Reform has to come from outside the system — and that’s where the Forward Party comes in. The Forward Party will be the vehicle for true reformers to run for office.
And we will win.
We are building our state party infrastructures and getting access to the ballot in key states across the country. Forward candidates will be on the ballot in 2023, and we will embrace the reformers who get tossed aside by the existing parties as a threat to their stranglehold on our political processes.
Republican and Democratic party leaders would like you to think that there is no better way than the status quo. But America is waking up from that deterministic thinking. Many things define a Forward Party member, but perhaps the most fundamental trait is that we won’t stop looking for a better way to get things done.
That is our calling now: to take off the blinders and examine in earnest the system that has brought us to this era of discontent and discord. And then, just as countless brave Americans before us have done, get to the work of making a better, freer, more equitable system. Let’s undertake that patriotic work together, starting today.
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.