As 2022 draws to a close, The Fulcrum has invited leaders of democracy reform organizations to share their hopes and plans for the coming year. This is the ninth in the series.
Zaidane is the president and CEO of the Millennial Action Project.
Empathy and humility are underrated attributes of great political leaders. In this era of historic polarization, different political tribes reward leaders for different reasons. What traits do we celebrate? Who are we spotlighting? How does this recognition influence the society we’re creating?
As a nation, our social contract has frayed. Trust is broken. We need a path to civic renewal. That path requires empathy for people not like us, and it will be charted by leaders, both in and out of office, who have the humility to understand they need their opponents to heal the divide. This is the type of leadership worth celebrating.
I have good news: there are people, even elected officials, who are working all throughout the country on mending divisions. Gen Z’ers and millennials in particular are dissatisfied with the divisive politics of our parents’ generation. They understand trust and relationships power good governance. Through my work with young state lawmakers, I see firsthand how the most productive and effective leaders are the ones willing to get to know their political opponents. They invest time in establishing trust with the other side so that they can work together to pass policies with real impact. And it works.
At the Millennial Action Project, we created the Rising Star Awards to celebrate incredible young state lawmakers who are bridging divides in their legislatures. Our fifth annual ceremony, held just last week, put a spotlight on remarkable leaders who can serve as the model for creating relationships and restoring trust in the political arena.
Aaron Pilkington was elected to the Arkansas House at 27 years old. He quickly rose in the leadership of his party, eventually chairing the committee charged with electing more Republicans to the Legislature. Even as a partisan whose job it was to score electoral victories for his own party, Pilkington forged creative policy alliances across the aisle. He met Democratic Rep. Jamie Scott through the Arkansas Future Caucus, and together they wrote legislation that would provide health screenings and prohibit solitary confinement for those who are pregnant while incarcerated. The effort passed with bipartisan support. This momentum created a runway for their next collaboration — legislation funding food pantries to tackle food scarcity on Arkansas campuses. Pilkington is an excellent example of how someone can stay true to their political beliefs while still working with the other side to get results.
Last week, the Millennial Action Project named Pilkington a 2022 Rising Star Award recipient for his work to transcend polarization. In his acceptance speech, he talked about his fellow young policymakers and how important it is to put resources toward civic renewal: “We’re better than where we were 50 years ago, and we’re going to be in a better place 50 years from today because of the young people in this room.The future depends on the success of these efforts that support leaders who may differ in ideology but work hard to find common ground to solve the issues that impact us all.”
Now entering his sixth year in the legislature, Rep. Aaron Pilkington remains committed to working with newly elected young legislators from both sides of the aisle. He’s training a new generation of leaders who govern better than their predecessors.
Rep. Jeremy Gray also received the 2022 Rising Star Award for his bipartisan leadership. In Alabama, a supermajority state controlled by Republicans, the Democratic Gray has to work with the other side to get anything done. But there’s a deeper motivation to his crosspartisan efforts as well. As an advocate for mental health and wellness, Gray is looking to make sustainable changes to the way his state supports these vital aspects of his constituents’ overall health.
In order to pass legislation that survives the long haul, he knows he needs buy-in from the other side. That requires building deep relationships with his colleagues in the state House to understand who shares his commitment to these goals and whom he can work alongside to move legislation past the finish line. Gray partners with his young Republican counterparts to help pass impactful policy, including legislation that lifted the 28-year ban on yoga in Alabama’s K-12 schools. He was recently nominated by Gov. Kay Ivey, a Republican, to serve on the Alabama Statewide Health Coordinating Council and Innovate Alabama, where he can work on health and wellness issues at a systemic level.
He is a model for how young leaders refuse to succumb to the temptation of political gridlock that characterized a previous generation of politicians.
The Rising Star awardees are just two examples of a trend we see throughout the country. Each of these crosspartisan wins build on top of one another. It makes the next win that much more possible. We’re creating a healthy civic flywheel between young people and the young elected leaders working on their behalf. As we show more cases of young elected leaders achieving tangible results for the next generation, we can inspire more young people to participate in the civic ecosystem. This leads to diversifying the electorate, strengthening the incentives for legislators to pursue good governance and reinforcing the bonds between the next generation of civic participants.
Celebrating stories of collaborative governance matters. And the trust and relationships being forged throughout the political system — both within legislatures and between elected officials and their constituents — is the groundwork we need for civic renewal. Change isn’t just coming, it’s here. Let’s take a moment to celebrate that change and the empathy and humility that makes change possible. And let’s share the good news with others, so we can continue making that civic flywheel spin.
A golden tray sits on the Resolute Desk as President Donald Trump speaks during an announcement on American nuclear innovation in the Oval Office at the White House on July 24, 2026, in Washington, D.C. Trump is signing multiple executive orders targeting the nuclear energy sector and easing rules for new reactors and nuclear fuel supply chains.
Trump’s hubris rivals the fallen heroes of ancient Greek mythology
In January, the New York Times asked President Donald Trump if there were any limits on his global powers.
“Yeah,” the president responded, “there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
That was eight months ago, but fortunately Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster adaptation of “The Odyssey” has made ancient Greek literature newly relevant. Before that window closes, I’d like to talk about hubris.
Today, the term mostly means excessive pride or arrogance. That’s part of what the Greeks meant by it too, but the meaning was a bit richer and more specific. Hubris was an insolent or outrageous act that offended the gods, often because the transgressor was claiming abilities or authorities that solely belonged to supreme beings.
Nolan renamed and slightly modified the concept of xenia for the film, calling it “Zeus’ law.” In the director’s telling, mortals should follow the rules laid out by the gods, specifically the requirement to treat strangers with respect lest they be gods in disguise.
In a sense, hubris is the opposite, or at least the rejection, of xenia. The hubris of the suitors, and at times Odysseus himself, invites punishment by the gods and their mortal instruments.
Which brings me back to Donald Trump. His claim that there are no constraints on his personal power to dictate events on the global stage was one of the greatest expressions of hubris ever uttered by a political leader.
Trump’s claim was obviously false when he made it.
He vowed that he could end the Russia-Ukraine war in 24 hours. He’s proved powerless to make that happen. If he had divine powers to work his will, why would he have balked at implementing his tariffs so often that Wall Street adopted the “TACO trade” term for his deals? “TACO” stands for “Trump always chickens out.”
And why would Trump have made so many embarrassing concessions to China — from rescinding tariffs on Chinese goods to allowing them to buy crucial and incredibly valuable computer chips?
But Trump saw his success at capturing Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro as proof of his ability to launch missiles to the same effect as Zeus’ lightning bolts. Trump believed he was the most powerful man who ever lived.
This is no exaggeration. In March, when the Iran invasion seemed successful, Trump gave a document penned by“Presidential Historian David King” to New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan purporting to prove that Trump was “the most powerful person to have EVER walked this planet.” King was, in fact, a businessman and occasional caddy for legendary golfer Gary Player.
King compared Trump favorably to many of history’s most powerful, and often heinous, figures: Alexander the Great, Attila the Hun, William the Conqueror, Napoleon Bonaparte, Joseph Stalin, Genghis Khan, Mao Tse Tung, Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin. Many of these men thought they were the most powerful person in the world, too. And many were defeated precisely because they believed it.
At least Napoleon and Hitler had a string of truly impressive victories before they learned the folly of hubris. The limits on Trump’s power have been exposed by far less august forces than the combined might of the allies in World War II or the fearsome Russian winter.
Iran is a comparatively middling power. But the regime’s ability to absorb punishment while imposing its will on the Strait of Hormuz has proved to be a greater constraint on Trump’s power than his morality or mind. We should note that, at least rhetorically, his morality has not proved much of a constraint. He has repeatedly promised to destroy Iranian “civilization” if the regime refuses to capitulate.
But they haven’t — and won’t anytime soon — because the regime’s tolerance for pain far outstrips Trump’s. The combined fear of skyrocketing oil prices, outrage of Gulf state potentates, diminishing weapon supplies and domestic unpopularity is doing the work that international law, congressional oversight and the collective opinion of foreign policy experts can’t or won’t do.
If I considered Trump more heroic than reason and facts could allow, I would say his Sisyphean predicament has the whiff of Greek tragedy to it. Trump is vexed by the fact that the Iranians won’t honor deals or ratify his countless premature claims of victory — giving new meaning to his vow that his presidency would make people tired of winning. It’s almost like they’re out-Trumping Trump.
Things might have gone better if he’d heeded that great Greek tragedian Sophocles: “For Zeus utterly abhors the boasts of a proud tongue.”
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Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.