Molineaux is co-publisher of The Fulcrum and president/CEO of the Bridge Alliance Education Fund.
Over 60 years ago, the civil rights movement was only a dream. Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. continues to remind us our dream of America is unfulfilled and our work is unfinished. Today is for celebration and remembrance. It’s also a day of action, as we continue advocating for civil rights.
What civil rights are not yet assured?
- Full access to voting for all citizens.
- Equitable wages and worker protections.
- Equal access to resources like health care, financial services.
- Mutual respect and safety in community.
He spoke with a passion about the hypocrisy of our society and opened our eyes and our minds to see it for what it was: a failed dream of our founders. It wasn’t his fault that we had not lived up to the founding ideals. King accepted his turn in the story of America. And he continues to inspire us to take action and live into what we can become.
King was a man of great courage but he never gave in. He was jailed 29 times for acts of civil disobedience, most often on trumped-up charges, but he was not deterred. It took 13 years to build a movement, which resulted in the historic Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts.
He was a remarkable man indeed. In 1964, at the age of 35, he became the youngest person ever to win the Nobel Prize for peace.
It’s our turn now. What will we commit to do? What risks will we take?
As we lose the giants of the civil rights movement, like John Lewis, CT Vivian, Daisy Bates and others, we must accept the mantle of responsibility. It is my hope we do so with the same deep commitment to nonviolence as we live into the ideals of our (amended) founding documents.
Today, we have similar and dissimilar obstacles to the early civil rights activists. Similar and dissimilar biases. Similar and dissimilar motivations.
Our similarities are the embedded nature of white supremacy ideology, of defaulting to the human hierarchy that advantages one set of people over another and is often motivated by a desire for power. Another similarity is the discomfort we feel as Americans. It’s our turn to be uncomfortable with the status quo.
King referenced this discomfort specifically when he said, “the white moderate is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice.” If we are indifferent, if we remain on the sidelines, justice will never be achieved. Inaction supports the status quo. Yet America remains an unfinished story, and we are always evolving.
Today is dissimilar to the early civil rights era, as our challenges are exacerbated by rapidly changing technology. Social media allows disinformation to spread faster than wildfire. Friends and family have or can become radicalized, seemingly overnight. The challenges of today are fueled by conflict entrepreneurs, who have discarded truth as an inconvenience; their goals are to make money and gain power or influence. They serve only themselves at the expense of our nation.
On this day of celebration, remembrance and action inspired by MLK, let us take our turn. I extend this prayer and invitation to you and our nation.
We are connected, you and I. We welcome you to the beloved community. Will you grant yourself safe passage?
It’s not our fault that we live in these times. But it is our turn to pick up the mantle and live into a better and just America.
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.