I love our country. I served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Africa in the 1970s. I served as a Foreign Service Officer (diplomat) for the State Department in assignments in the United Arab Emirates, Syria, Morocco, Lebanon, and Canada in the 1980s and 1990s. Because of that love and my sense of service to this country, I have now become an anti-government rebel. I take to the streets every weekend to protest the cruel and incompetent actions of the Trump administration. I don’t even recognize my country now. A government that is sloppy in rounding up supposed immigrants and entrapping American citizens in dark vans that transport them to hidden locations by masked men is not one I can honor today. A country that targets people because they “look like immigrants” is not one I can serve today.
How does this happen? How does patriotism and love for a country translate into a call to action to fight what is happening to our nation? Here’s my story.
My ancestors immigrated to this country in the early 20th century from Hungary and Italy. My Dad’s father was a gravedigger who never really mastered English. Fortunately, gravediggers don’t need to speak much. As the grandson of an illiterate gravedigger, I know how fortunate I have been to rise to become an official representative of this country abroad in American embassies. I loved that job. Diplomats do tough jobs in some dangerous corners of the world. Many Americans understand little of what diplomats do, but if you travel and lose your passport or get arrested, you will soon discover how vital the services of an American embassy officer are.
But our country has fired—without cause—thousands of American diplomats in a DOGE-inspired hacking away at the federal workforce under some misguided notion of rooting out waste. Robbing embassies of adequate personnel opens the door for China—already investing more in its foreign policy professionals than we do—to continue its move toward world domination. Do we really want to live in a world where China decides everything on the world stage? That’s where we are headed.
Foreign policy has always been crafted in our country by professionals who adhered to strict notions of being apolitical. Today, the State Department is full of Republican-approved diplomats who have to pledge allegiance, not to our Constitution, not to our country, but to the 47th president. The politicization of diplomacy reduces policy choices to only those approved with an eye to a certain groupthink ideology. This does not serve the national interest, as it shuts out other ways of sizing up a problem and deciding how best to preserve what is best for our country’s future.
In order to flatter Trump, diplomats are choosing what he deems best. This 79-year-old president shows daily how ill-informed he is about our country’s history. We are being led now by someone whose “maybe the people want a dictator” is undermining the very principles established by our Founders. Principles of three equal branches of government with a system of checks and balances to prevent the rise of a monarch. The attacks on judges who disagree with the president are likely to lead to more political violence. After the assassination of Democrat politicians in Minnesota and Charlie Kirk, do we really want this?
photo courtesy of Michael Varga.
The deference Republican politicians show toward Trump’s decisions is setting up our nation as a pariah on the world stage, now apparently allied with Russia and North Korea, and some of the despots ruling in the Middle East. The State Department’s decision to no longer report fully on human rights abuses means that people around the world who are suffering under autocratic regimes are likely to get much worse. Is this the profile we want for America in 2025?
This moment has compelled me to take to the streets to raise my voice against what I see as a dangerous attempt to remake our country according to the Project 2025 blueprint. For me, resistance means showing up, standing firm, and saying NO. But each American must decide for themselves how best to respond. Some may choose the ballot box, others may write, organize, or speak out in their communities.
Whatever your conscience calls you to do more, I honor that. Love of country requires each of us, in our own way, to defend the core democratic values that have guided our nation for 250 years.
Americans across the political spectrum have continued to ask about the late financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s connections among the political elite. (Angela Weiss/AFP)
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.