Zaidane is the president and CEO of Millennial Action Project.
Today, Sept. 28, is National Voter Registration Day. On this day, people from all walks of life across the United States will come together toward one simple goal: to make sure as many people as possible can participate in our democracy.
Civic engagement is a pillar of democracy in the United States. By casting a ballot in any election — whether for local, state or federal government — we get to make our voices heard and our communities more reflective of the world we wish to live in.
Millennial and Generation Z voters are now the largest voting bloc in the United States — we can no longer be pushed to the side on the campaign trail. What's more, getting the younger generation civically engaged may actually be the key to defeating toxic polarization from which our nation is suffering.
After all, young people are the least inclined to register with either party; the most rapidly growing political affiliation for young people is independent. Young voters are increasingly more diverse, and continue to bring fresh, new perspectives to our political climate. The result of this trend is that, rather than a contest about which party has the largest voter base, candidates become politically incentivized to compete on the merits of their policy solutions. The best policy solutions don't have to be red or blue or even purple. The winning candidate is the one who proposes solutions that most resonate with the largest and most powerful bloc of voters: the youngest generation, who demand progress on improving the economy, climate, education and more, because we will be the ones to live through it all.
Republicans and Democrats alike should encourage young people's civic engagement and create policy solutions that reflect their will. This can not only build their own voter bases, but will aid in renewing public faith in our political system, inspire new participation and deepen participation from those already civically engaged.
By investing time and energy into registering young voters, our country stands on the precipice of defeating toxic polarization. Candidates will be forced to engage with new perspectives and solutions that do not necessarily fit into our current political binary, thus propelling us towards a new political era of post-partisanship.
National Voter Registration Day is our chance to create a more perfect union — a government for the people and by the people. Let's do our part. Let's register our young people to vote.
You can register to vote or check your registration status at vote.gov.
image of U.S. President Donald Trump is displayed on a digital billboard in Times Square in New York on April 8, 2026.
Trump is stuck between two realities. Neither serves the American people
Normally, I worry that events may overtake a column. But not so with the Iran war.
I don’t worry about running afoul of a headline or Truth Social post from the president because what is said about the situation is no longer very relevant to the reality.
On April 8, Nick Catoggio, my Dispatch colleague, dubbed an earlier stoppage with Iran “Schrödinger’s ceasefire.” This was a reference to the famous thought experiment by the physicist Erwin Schrödinger, who was trying to explain the weirdness of “superpositionality” in quantum physics. A cat in a box is both dead and alive at the same time until you open the box. Schrödinger meant to illustrate the absurdity of the idea that particles aren’t any one thing, but a “cloud of probabilities.”
The Trump administration is stuck in a word cloud of probabilities of his own making. The war is over. The war is on. The war isn’t a war. We have a deal, but we don’t have a deal, but we’re about to have a deal. We destroyed Iran’s military. No, we left it intact. We want regime change. No we don’t. We already accomplished it. We “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program a year ago. We had to go to war in February to prevent nuclear war. The Strait of Hormuz is open, closed, or something in-between. No deal without “unconditional surrender.” Let’s make a deal!
This everything-all-at-once vibe can be disorienting, particularly since most Americans didn’t have a war with Iran on their bingo cards until the shooting had already started. President Trump didn’t prepare the country or consult with Congress beforehand because he thought it would all be a smashing success in a matter of weeks.
The miscalculation that started it all: killing Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and much of Iran’s senior leadership, on the first day of the war. To “the great proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand,” Trump announced on Feb. 28. “When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations.”
I support regime change in Iran and shed no tears for Khamenei or his goons. But when you start a war by killing the regime’s top leaders, it’s not unreasonable for the remaining ones to conclude that you really intend regime change.
Khamenei was a murderous fanatic, but he was a fairly cautious one. He liked to threaten closing the Strait of Hormuz or attacking our regional allies, but he was reluctant to actually do it, fearing it would invite a regime change war. The mullahs and IRGC goons believed, not unreasonably, that if they lost their grip on power, they’d be lynched by the Iranian people they’ve brutalized for decades.
By starting with a regime change war, Trump removed any reason for the regime not to go for broke. When you have nothing to lose — particularly when you are a millenarian religious fanatic — a Persian Alamo strategy makes a lot of sense.
So Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz and attacked its neighbors.
But it turns out this wasn’t the Alamo. In the contest of wills, Trump blinked. The Iranian regime’s tolerance for punishment proved — so far — to be greater than Trump’s and that of our gulf allies. Militarily we could finish the job, but that would require ground troops and much greater economic turmoil. In a conflict Trump launched unilaterally without the prior support of Congress, NATO or the American people, Trump doesn’t have the political capital for that.
But that’s only half the problem. Trump wants the war over, but he doesn’t want to pay — militarily, economically, politically — what that would cost. So he wants to make a deal that ends it. But there is no deal available that wouldn’t come at an equally undesirable cost. Any deal that looks like what President Obama struck with the Iranians would be too embarrassing to bear. But the Iranians are convinced that they can get just such a deal, and they’re willing to drag things out as long as it takes.
The result: Trump’s in a box of his own making. He thinks he can talk his way out by simply asserting a reality that doesn’t exist. When the financial markets get nervous, he announces a breakthrough that is, at best, a possibility. When the Iranians agree to a deal that looks similar to one Obama might negotiate, Trump goes back to his threats.
It can’t go on forever. But I’m sure it’ll last until long after this column is forgotten.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.