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.
Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Graham Platner speaks to voters at a town hall at the Elks Lodge 188 on June 7, 2026, in Portland, Maine.
McConnell and Platner both feel entitled
The two men could not be more different. One, a Republican, octogenarian, seven-term Southern senator, the other a progressive, millennial Maine oysterman who’s never spent a day in elected office.
But Mitch McConnell, the senior senator from Kentucky who’s been MIA for the past few weeks and Graham Platner, the Maine Senate candidate who’s facing calls to drop out of his race against Sen. Susan Collins, apparently do have something in common: an outsized sense of entitlement.
McConnell, who is 84 and not running for reelection, has been hospitalized for three weeks, and yet we still don’t fully know what he was admitted for or what his condition is. Per CNN, “his office has not disclosed a medical reason for the hospitalization or provided specifics on his health status beyond saying last week that he ‘continues to improve’ and ‘is working closely with his staff on Kentucky and Senate matters.’ ”
While several legislators have said they’ve talked to him and insist he sounds strong, others have said they are completely in the dark. One MAGA influencer, Laura Loomer, posted ”High level source close to the White House tells me ‘Mitch McConnell is officially brain dead. He’s not coming back.’ ”
Meanwhile, up in Maine, Platner has been artfully dodging calls from his own party to drop out of his race after several allegations of misconduct from women, including a sexual assault allegation from a former girlfriend, came to light. While Platner, who has managed to survive a Nazi-tattoo scandal, a sexting scandal, and several old tweets scandals, denies the allegations, he has not quit.
High-profile Democrats including Sens. Bernie Sanders and Chuck Schumer, the latter of whom had unsuccessfully hand-selected Maine Gov. Janet Mills to face Collins instead of Platner, have urged Platner to drop out, while other Dems have accused him of trying to influence the picking of his replacement.
Maine Democratic Party Executive Director Devon Murphy-Anderson released a statement Tuesday, which said in part:
“Unfortunately, Graham Platner’s team has repeatedly reached out to us in an attempt to put their thumb on the scale of what this process looks like. We have repeatedly reiterated to Graham Platner’s team that they have no role in determining our next Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate nor in determining what this process looks like.”
Both incidents show a deep lack of accountability to voters, who in one case deserve to know whether their senator is capable of performing his duties, and in another deserve a candidate who isn’t being accused of crimes, bigotry and deception.
The offensive and odious entitlement of both McConnell and Platner stands out not because it is particularly unique among today’s political class. Tom Kean, the New Jersey GOP congressman, missed more than 100 votes, only sharing after a three-month mystery absence that he was dealing with depression.
Former President Joe Biden’s Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin failed to disclose a hospitalization for prostate cancer surgery, flouting the established rules for Cabinet members and senior U.S. officials.
From Biden’s insistence on running for reelection despite his obvious cognitive and political weaknesses to Trump’s brazen flouting of laws and norms, few politicians seem to appreciate that their public service job comes with responsibilities to constituents, including transparency and honesty.
But both parties increasingly justify the chicanery, because the stakes of winning elections and keeping power are simply too high. But that’s no excuse. If we’ve learned anything over the past decade, it’s that character and accountability do, in fact, matter. And when we, the voters, stop caring about it, well, so do they.
S.E. Cupp is the host of "S.E. Cupp Unfiltered" on CNN.