He wasn’t alone in this. Nearly everyone standing behind the podium, barring a city council member or two, held a similar picture. The early September sun made the crowd look sweaty and the speakers wan. Their gripes boiled down to a list of Arabic names, and their aim was clear: Mamdani, the city’s first Muslim mayor, should not be allowed near lower Manhattan’s “hallowed ground” on the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. According to the group, 100,000 people have signed a petition demanding this. 

Such a request would usually make listeners recoil instinctively. That’s not how we do things in America under normal circumstances. The big, green lady in the harbor and the melting pot and all that. But under the punishing sun, you could see that these are not normal times. 

At the most basic level, a fever is the body’s response to something unknown, the beginning of a complex process that targets an infection to ultimately kill it. You can see something similar in the body politic, when the sudden appearance of something new and confusing kicks societal defenses into overdrive. Talking heads get bilious. Policymakers overcorrect with cures that do real harm. Citizens spread the message to be on alert, attacking anything that feels out of the ordinary. 

In some ways, that’s what has been happening since Sept. 11, 2001, when al-Qaida militants killed nearly 3,000 Americans, including children, in New York City and Washington, D.C. It was the single deadliest attack on American soil in the country’s history, and the means were entirely unconventional. Eschewing the typical explosives and methods, Osama bin Laden masterminded a plan to turn commercial airliners into weapons. In addition to a catastrophic loss of life, landmarks in New York and Washington were either partially or entirely destroyed. The damage was not just physical or economic; it was psychic. Unlike the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor, the intent was unclear and the enemy was stateless. Not knowing what else to do, how to fight this unknown enemy, America got hot. 

In the days and weeks after the attacks, even as President George W. Bush made a point of visiting a mosque and proclaiming Islam a religion of peace, some conservative politicians and Americans turned to Islamaphobia. The bigoted attacks on Muslims that followed weren’t met in some quarters with the same horror they would have received before 9/11.

The Bush administration and Republicans in Congress, with the cooperation of many Democrats, began curtailing civil liberties in fear that robust privacy protections and criminal rights would leave America slow to respond to the adaptable pathogen of “radical Islamic terrorism.” The previously permeable borders of the U.S. tightened. New agencies were created out of whole cloth to fight the supposed invasion of enemies who didn’t bother to wear uniforms. Legal justifications were created for warrantless spying and torture. The paranoid body fought itself while seeking out danger, leaving lasting scars in the process.

Names of Arabic origin were increasingly met with suspicion. By 2007, six years after the attacks, some conservative politicians and commentators argued that Barack Obama’s middle name — Hussein —  disqualified him from becoming president. As the homefront became more cloistered, the Bush administration launched a wide-ranging war. It took two decades and over one million deaths for the U.S. to admit a fight against something as nebulous as “terror” was probably unwinnable.

The named wars eventually ended, but the fever never really broke. The people who gathered in Manhattan to ask Mamdani to skip the Sept. 11 commemoration at Ground Zero claimed their problems were with the mayor’s policies. But they were light on specifics. They have a problem with Mamdani because they have a problem with Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, Michigan’s Democratic nominee for Senate; and with Hasan Piker, the left-wing political commentator who has made and recanted provocative statements about 9/11; and with Ramzi Kazeem, New York City’s chief counsel. Laying these names out in a line, it’s hard to miss the connecting thread.

If this were the first anniversary of the terrorist attacks, such a request would be unfortunate, but at least somewhat easy to follow. Still caught up in thrashing grief and forced to encounter a raft of unfamiliar names from a part of the world most Americans can’t even point to, this kind of knee-jerk reaction would be viewed as a regrettable symptom. But with a quarter-century of hindsight, asking the mayor to remove himself from a solemn commemoration of the greatest tragedy to ever occur in his city is unfathomable. That the press conference was broadcast uncritically by Fox News, the largest news network in the country, is also inexcusable.  

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All these years later, America is still living with the lingering effects of 9/11 and the events that followed. The fever persists despite the fact there’s no antigens left to fight. The country’s overheated immune system has found new targets.

The executive branch was reorganized in the wake of 9/11 to create the Department of Homeland Security, along with a wholly new law enforcement agency in Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Trump has used this nebulous remit to unleash an unaccountable domestic police force against his perceived enemies.The gradual normalization of the surveillance state, unleashed by the Patriot Act, has led us to the point where the country is peppered with private-sector camera networks like Flock. 

Democrats have made pushing back against these oversteps a key part of the party’s midterm campaign strategy. But actually doing something about the problem itself will require clear-eyed conversations about how we got here. While the country can commemorate Sept. 11 and honor the innocent victims who died and were injured that day, changing policies that were created in the attacks will require pushing past the worshipful narrative of unity in the days that followed. 

For one, Democrats should explain that this great tragedy did not happen in a vacuum. To succeed at this, they will have to blow through the hagiography of a blameless United States that was attacked by terrorists who “hate our freedom.” Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida operatives were responding to U.S. foreign policy decisions in the most heinous way imaginable. Sept. 11 was an event of its time and deserves to stand in history, but not entirely outside of context.

Democrats should explain, patiently, that Sept. 11 was an incomparable tragedy that still can’t justify the resulting shifts in domestic and foreign policy. They will need to state, unblinkingly, that the attacks can’t be an excuse for militarism 25 years after they happened.

The government’s wide-spread spying networks, ad-hoc security apparatuses and domestic police forces will object the loudest to any changes. They will paint themselves as the thin grey line between the American people and another 9/11, because moving on is an existential threat to them. After all, if the infection’s gone, what use are the antibodies?

Democrats will need to lean again on reality instead of performative procedures. The theater of the Transportation Security Administration line robs us of our shampoos and goodbyes to family. ICE is a redundancy when U.S. Customs and Border Protection exists. While the inconvenience and brutality has certainly kept us angry and alert, there’s little proof it has made us safer.

Convincing individuals of this, particularly those personally affected like the petitioning New Yorkers, will be the hardest part of moving forward. They are still hurting, still missing the loved ones they lost, and they must surely be forever on alert for similar devastations that could come and upend their lives again. No one should have to endure such horrible, public pain, experienced simultaneously with a nationwide convulsion. 

But even that can’t excuse blindly lashing out at the world’s Muslim population for existing. America can’t properly memorialize the attacks if it never moves on from that initial white-hot rage, its psyche remaining in a permanent fight response.The raw sort of hurt that inspires people to look sideways at a Muslim mayor who was still a child in 2001 has to subside, and soon. We should never forget Sept. 11 and its victims, but America’s fever has to break.

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After Trump made this startling announcement, a Texas Republican I know texted me to say, “Tonight the United States of America is Dead. It is now the United Kingdom of Trump.” 

I think he was proud of that.  

Since the Hatch Act — which bars executive-branch employees from political activity — doesn’t apply to the president, and since the Supreme Court has ruled him immune for any actions he takes as president, nothing will happen to Trump for what ought to be a blatantly illegal action. I can only hope the American people recognize this for what it is, although many — including more than a few reporters — definitely won’t.

Earlier in the week, a wave of nostalgia washed over me as I walked away from the north gate press entrance to the White House before Trump left for his standup gig in Dallas.

Though I’ve been coming and going at the White House since the Reagan administration, it finally dawned on me how different things are today — and how many younger reporters have no idea how much we have lost. 

The first time I saw the White House I was just a wee lad riding in a car with my father, who was acting as a tour guide as he drove the family through D.C. traffic in our powder-blue Pontiac station wagon. Dad was a bit of a history buff and I was on my first big trip away from home.

Previous to that excursion, the biggest trip I can remember making was driving 90 miles from Louisville to watch the Cincinnati Reds play at Crosley Field. I’m told I also traveled to New York when I was an infant, but I don’t remember that — nor the stain on a family friend’s sofa of a family friend for which my micturition and leaky diaper were reportedly responsible.

As Dad drove past the White House that bright sunny day in the summer of 1969, I had a funny feeling. The president was always in the news. The White House and the people who lived and worked there were larger than life.  Then, suddenly, they were not. I waved as we drove by. There was the home and office of the man who ran the country. He worked from home, like my dad, an insurance salesman, did. The leader of the free world wasn’t all that different from us. He was just another guy living on a busy city street. My dad had just driven by his house. 

It was what made America great, my dad said. “Anybody can be president. “They’re no different from anyone else. They’re just public servants.”

After the Oklahoma City bombing in 1994, the government closed Pennsylvania Avenue to vehicle traffic. While that was good for pedestrians, it cut off the White House and symbolically severed it from public access — you could no longer drive by and wave. I thought that change would be only temporary. I was wrong.

More than half the people alive in this country never had the opportunity I did, of simply driving past the White House. Over the years, public access to what was once deemed the “People’s House” has become increasingly limited. John Quincy Adams used to walk from the White House down to the Potomac and go swimming — often in the nude. Andrew Jackson once threw a party at the White House, and 10,000 Washington residents showed up to help themselves to whatever they could carve from a 1,000-pound block of cheddar cheese. The place supposedly smelled of cheddar for weeks afterward.

Public access changed again after 9/11. Security concerns dictated some of these changes, but it certainly doesn’t explain all of them — especially not those recently made by Trump in his never-ending quest to turn the People’s House into the Palace on the Potomac.

That’s how I felt Tuesday. Government cars were parked on the former thoroughfare of Pennsylvania Avenue. Banks of cameras and microphones. Lafayette Park was closed. There were fences everywhere. I tried to take a picture of the north face of the White House, as I’ve done dozens of times before. I was shooed away by uniformed Secret Service agents. The area, I was told, is “off limits.” Today I can’t even take a picture of the place I waved at from the back seat of my dad’s car. 

Not too long ago Lafayette Park was alive with families, protesters, romantic couples, singers, mimes (shudder) and others. Now it’s “under renovation,” closed up and empty. It will soon get the same 13-foot-tall fence the White House got during the first Trump administration. 

Now the separation is essentially complete. We have severed the White House from the public. It is fenced in and gilded, with literal gold. The president is now an elected king who openly offers to pay voters for their support. He conducts tours of the White House helipad while promoting a fertilizer brand on national television. He demands that we stop doing business with certain companies from Canada, decrying “communism” while acting like an old-school Soviet leader.

There are reporters covering politics these days who find all this normal because they’ve never seen anything else. The lack of transparency, the minimal communication and the demand for fealty is all that younger reporters know — and those with experience who know better are slowly squeezed out. Soon, within the next year or so, no one will be left reporting from the White House who actually knows how a free press is supposed to act.  

If our current media knew that, we might question Trump’s dangerous and delusional rants about his actions on 9/11. His latest invented yarn of personal heroism places him in the dust of Ground Zero, putting his life on the line trying to save people before two firemen pulled him from the rubble and carried him to safety. Each telling of the story gets more dramatic. Soon he’ll tell us he carried dozens of people on his own back while personally defeating the terrorists. Or, more likely, he’ll just post an AI meme declaring it so. 

My aching nostalgia isn’t limited to how the White House used to operate. I’m also nostalgic for politicians who acknowledged facts and reality. 

Some say it was the 9/11 attacks that irrevocably changed America. But I don’t think the acts of terrorism did us in. It was our response to those acts. We’re less innocent, but we’ve become more brittle and more fearful. The hatred of Muslims in this country began after the Twin Towers fell, and has become so noxious today that people want to condemn the mayor of New York for wanting to attend the 9/11 commemoration. As an aside, I do like how Zohran Mamdani released documents showing that the administration of former Mayor Rudy Giuliani downplayed or withheld internal warnings about post-9/11 air quality, while publicly assuring residents and workers that the area was safe. Giuliani has been leading the charge to keep Mamdani from the commemoration. 

The roots of hatred run deep in our country, and always lurk just beneath the surface. Black people didn’t earn their freedom until the United States had existed for almost 90 years. Women couldn’t vote until the 19th Amendment was ratified in 1920. Prejudice and racism were ingrained in the system until the Civil Rights Act became law in 1964. 

That said, our social progress has been stymied since 9/11 as fear dominates every national action. Osama bin Laden knew he couldn’t defeat the U.S. outright. He wanted to turn us against each other. As we mourn the dead from 9/11 on the 25th anniversary of the worst terrorist attack to ever take place on American soil, we have to consider if he succeeded.

Trump learned from that event. He learned to use our fear against us.

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In 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. said that even with the passage of the Civil Rights Act, he still worried about America. “It’s sick with racism still. A nation founded on the idea that all men are created equal. We’re still arguing that color of his skin determines the quality of his character.”

We can say the same today, and worse.

On the day I rode with my dad past the White House for the first time, about 10 percent of all Americans lived below the poverty level. Today one man, Elon Musk, owns more wealth than the 10 percent who live in “poverty,” a term that’s now as questionable as anything Trump claims.  

Poverty in the “richest” nation on the planet is defined at an annual income of $32,000 for a family of four, and $16,000 for a single person. The average rent and grocery bill is higher than that. If you can’t afford a car, gas, lights, water, healthcare, childcare, clothes, education, entertainment and you have no savings, you’re still considered as living above the poverty level.

In the cheapest states the annual cost of living for a family of four — without counting savings or entertainment — is estimated at slightly more than $100,000. It’s above $300,000 in the most expensive parts of the country. Now you know why Trump believes that the average American voter will eagerly accept his $5,000 bribe. 

While we in the United States have never lived up to our ideals, we’ve always embraced the idea of progress. We wanted to get better. Often, we have tried.

But not anymore. Not now. With Donald Trump in the White House, we have abandoned any pretense of brotherhood and inclusion. We embrace greed, bribery, lies and bullying. We embrace racism and ignorance. Trump isn’t the problem; we are. If we didn’t buy it, he couldn’t sell it. 

So my nostalgia isn’t just for what the White House used to be, or what politicians used to be. It’s for what this country used to represent, what we strived to be. The White House is and was a symbol of who we are.

Today it is a symbol of a people who still seem poisoned and embittered by an attack that happened a quarter of a century ago. It is a cold and lonely palace stripped of its humanity and its beauty; a gilded cage inhabited by a delusional lunatic who doesn’t understand why a government of, by and for the people is an important idea.

As we commemorate those who died on 9/11, we should rededicate ourselves to the ideals upon which this country was based, face the future united and throw off the chains of oppression that have led an elected public servant to think he can offer us a bribe to keep him in power.

This is supposed to be the United States of America, even if it doesn’t always feel that way. It can never be the United Kingdom of Trump.

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As the descendant of Welsh coal miners singing as angels with black lung, I avoided the smoldering pile that was left by the terrorist attack. Like my colleague, former Daily News columnist Juan Gonzalez, I never trusted then-Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Christie Todd Whitman when she proclaimed the air in lower Manhattan was “safe to breathe.” As a 2003 EPA inspector general report documented, that fraudulent “all clear” from Whitman was traced back to the Bush White House that wanted Wall Street open at any price.

But the betrayal of first responders can be traced before the 2001 second attack on the Twin Towers.

As has been well documented by the International Association of Firefighters, on the day of the attack, scores of firefighters died because they did not hear the order to evacuate the towers. Rudy Giuliani’s mayoral administration had botched the upgrade process for new radios, so on that fateful day, firefighters were working with the very analog radios that had failed them during the World Trade Center attack eight years before. In fact, seven years later, bus loads of FDNY widows and grieving family members would shadow Giuliani’s presidential campaign.

On 9/11, 343 firefighters died in the fire and collapse. Since then 600 retired and active firefighters have died thanks to the toxic air and the EPA lie, reinforced by New York State and New York City officials, that the air was “safe to breathe.” What the officials told the world to do was to come shop” and support lower Manhattan to show the terrorists that the city — and America — had resolve. Incredibly, the “back to normal” stage managers sent close to 20,000 school kids back into schools located in the toxic zone. Nothing says “nothing to see here” more than photos of the kiddies back at school.

While close to 3,000 died in the terrorist attacks, close to 9,000 have died in the two-and-a-half decades since, most likely from one of the dozens of ailments that lingering cloud has caused. As with the U.S. government after Vietnam, when it denied Agent Orange was a problem, the City of New York for years denied claims from first responders that they were sick because of their exposure to the air in lower Manhattan.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg actually said that NYPD Detective James Zadroga, who had worked sorting for human remains at the Fresh Kills Landfill, and died a few years later, was not a hero but died because he was a drug addict. Of course, once an independent coroner from New Jersey confirmed what Zadroga and his family had said all along, Bloomberg apologized. 

In the quarter of a century since the attacks, through several city administrations, officials have refused to release the municipal files that show what the city knew and when it knew it. But this week, in a refreshing break with the past, Mayor Zohran Mamdani has started to release these documents on a universally available portal.

The day of the attack, my WBAI colleagues, led by Jose Santiago, the news director, fearlessly charged to the scene along with the police, firefighters and EMTs as civilians raced in the opposite direction away from the toxic cloud the fire and collapse had generated, which would linger for many months. WBAI was able to continue broadcasting that day because, unlike other broadcasters that had their transmitter atop the World Trade Center, our transmitter was way uptown on the Empire State Building. 

We recently recovered the air checks from that day, the actual tapes of the broadcast. On Sunday we will be rebroadcasting just some of what was broadcast that day for the first time since the Twin Towers fell and knocked the world off its axis, giving the U.S. cover to go on a global killing spree to “fight terror.”

WBAI is a non-profit community-informed and run radio station. Most of our producers volunteer. At 71, I am the general manager, my first management job. Under New York State’s 9/11 Notice Act, it’s my job to try and find all the people that worked or volunteered at the station and let them know about the Victims Compensation Fund and the 9/11 WTC Health Program. It’s sobering and painful work because people have died or are ailing.

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To date, just 145,000 of the first responders and survivors are enrolled in the World Trade Center Health Program, which has both extended life and the quality of that life for program participants. Experts estimated that close to 400,000 people remain at risk from a myriad of life altering ailments.

For several years, I worked for the Chief Leader, also located in lower Manhattan, which has covered civil service since 1897. It was there I encountered the stories about government workers being ordered back to their desks by the Giuliani administration in the hot zone. These were not first responders, but they kept the city running by doing things like making sure hungry people got their food stamps.

Under the health program, first responders, including reporters are fast tracked for health screening. Survivors, including tens of thousands of residents, non-emergency civil servants, commuters and students, have to display symptoms first. And with the latency of some of these Ground Zero cancers, that amounts to a death sentence.

Because the first responder cohort is so overwhelmingly male, it was only recently that female reproductive cancers were recognized as 9/11-related.

On its face, it was medically unethical to create a caste system for access to life-saving care based on your job title. But once we identified this massive risk to human beings, we owed it to cover them all — particularly 9/11’s children, who are only guilty of believing their parents when they said that the air was “safe to breathe.”

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The audit, which is dated Sept. 4 but has not been previously reported, found a lack of training for post office staff on how to properly and expeditiously handle mail ballots, deficiencies in how ballots were tracked and errors leading to delays, all of which risked ballots having incorrect postmarks or otherwise arriving late to election officials, which could lead to their rejection. 

The identified failures increase “the risk that Election and Political Mail is not handled, documented, monitored, and reported in accordance with Postal Service policy,” the audit said, though it noted that “most facilities we visited generally adhered to Postal Service’s election-related policies and procedures” and that nearly 99% of ballots reached election officials in a timely manner.

“While instances of non-compliance were low relative to overall volume, the presence of similar procedural gaps across multiple facilities indicates a need for improved understanding and increased enforcement of Postal Service policies among its employees,” it said.

The findings come as the Supreme Court weighs whether to allow the Postal Service to move ahead with new rules that would allow the agency to regulate mail voting, under a March executive order signed by President Donald Trump. The order requires states to give USPS a list of all voters eligible to receive a ballot in the mail and requires USPS to use those lists to determine which ballots get sent to voters. 

Top Postal Service employees, along with a whistleblower who filed a disclosure with U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., have expressed concern that the new system stands to disenfranchise large swaths of eligible voters, both by its design and lack of testing, ProPublica reported last week.

Election experts told ProPublica the new audit findings should be considered by the Supreme Court, as they make even clearer what election officials already know. 

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David Becker, executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research and a former Justice Department civil rights lawyer, said the audit confirms that USPS has “a long way to go to meet its core obligations of delivering election mail in a timely manner.”

“The administration and USPS are simply incapable of successfully meeting vast and radical new responsibilities under the president’s executive order,” Becker said.

Postal workers, through the American Postal Workers Union, also said Wednesday in a brief filed with the Supreme Court that it is not practical to implement the rules, which pose a “significant risk of wide swaths of Americans not being able to vote by mail.”

Even if the Supreme Court allows the new rule to move forward, some state election officials say the requirements would be impossible to meet for the November election, with mail ballots starting to go out this month.

Chelsey Wininger, executive director of the Democratic Association of Secretaries of State, said the audit shows the Postal Service “struggles to implement even basic changes to postal process consistently” and reinforces the organization’s opposition to any new rules this close to an election.

In a response included with the findings of the audit, the Postal Service wrote that “while we acknowledge that we can always reinforce and amplify our internal processes and procedures (and will continue to do so between now and November) — overall ballot mail performance is strong.” The agency acknowledged that there are some instances in which employees didn’t follow policies and procedures, but called other errors “isolated incidents,” such as when some New Jersey ballots were delivered to Tennessee before being sent back.

The Postal Service agreed with all recommendations on how to protect against future problems, except for one that suggested promptly notifying customers impacted by new regional transportation plans.

The Postal Service did not immediately respond to a request for further comment Wednesday evening. 

The Postal Service typically goes to great lengths to handle election mail in an expedited and careful manner. And overall, it delivered in this year’s primaries: Completed ballots from voters to election officials were processed “on time” nearly 99% of the time during the primaries, up from about 98% in 2024, for the about 6.3 million ballots that the Postal Service was able to track, according to the report. The definition of “on time” is not provided in the report. It refers to how quickly the ballot was handled by the Postal Service, not whether the ballot reached the election officials on time.

But when observing election mail at 14 processing facilities and 73 delivery units across eight states, the auditors found significant flaws in the handling of mail ballots.

There were no election-related training materials posted at 22 of 73 delivery units, or about 30%. In some locations, local management and employees weren’t familiar with requirements on how to process election mail, the report said.

In 14 states and Washington, D.C., election officials count ballots only when they are postmarked by the Postal Service by Election Day, making the correct postmark crucial for understanding which ballots to count and which to reject.

But the audit found that in 10 of 82 facilities, or about 12%, management wasn’t aware of the proper way to postmark a ballot. Some thought ballots should be postmarked at that time they go out to election offices instead of earlier on when they reach a processing facility or retail counter. 

Also, at five of nine mail processing facilities studied, retail clerks who were postmarking ballots by hand sometimes used stamps with inaccurate dates, according to the report. That included a facility in Pennsylvania on the state’s primary election day, which caused 56 ballots to be postmarked with the wrong date.

In 13 of 82 facilities, Postal Service workers didn’t complete proper procedures to make sure election mail had been sent out from the delivery units each day. In one instance at a Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, processing plant, 108 ballots were grouped with other mail and had to be expedited to Pittsburgh on the morning of the election so they would count.

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“We’re publishing this work because we believe we have a responsibility to disclose malicious misuse of our services,” the San Francisco company said in its 154-page report. “As models become increasingly capable, their risks will increase, unless AI developers and society’s defenders act to make them safer.”

For example, last May, Anthropic’s biological safety classifier blocked a request for Claude’s assistance in authoring a grant application for scientific funding. The reason was that the project was for research into the highly contagious virus known as chikungunya. So-called gain-of-function research can theoretically make viruses more transmissible or more deadly. 

“Similar research could certainly be used in the development of better vaccines and therapeutics for the virus — but it could also be used to make the pathogen more dangerous,” Anthropic wrote. To make matters more suspicious, the proposed research facility was a military research institute. 

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Even though Anthropic has released similar threat assessment reports in the past, the timing for this one comes just days after Jacob Coxon, an Anthropic researcher, resigned from the company, claiming they were not acting responsibly with AI development. 

“Do not underestimate the power of this technology,” Coxon said on X. “These will soon be superhuman systems that can hack anything, revolutionize any field overnight, and acquire real power and resources. We have all witnessed the progress in each of these domains, and progress is not slowing.”

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The CMS released draft star ratings, including the thresholds for reaching those ratings, to plans earlier this week. The grading sheet got stricter, which doesn’t bode well for insurers, one MA expert said.

Health Catalyst has cycled through three CEOs in eight months. The data analytics company is betting its newest chief can navigate an AI pivot and revenue headwinds.

It's another prong in the agency's digital health modernization project, which has faced setbacks and delays.

Nearly half of U.S. hospitals are now without obstetric services, according to a new report, and closures could worsen as Medicaid cuts threaten hospital finances.

The 2026 American Nurses Association (ANA) Membership Assembly in Washington, DC, was historic in many ways. As ANA celebrated its 130th anniversary, we had the honor of representing South Carolina nurses during several days that reminded us why it matters for nurses to show up, speak up, and help shape the future of our profession.

Membership Assembly is always a busy and meaningful experience. Nurses from across the country come together to discuss the most pressing issues facing our profession, advocate on Capitol Hill, and make decisions that help determine the direction of nursing. This year, however, felt different. There was a sense that we were not simply attending another annual meeting but witnessing history.

We began our first morning with a fireside chat between President Jennifer Mensik Kennedy and U.S. Representative Lauren Underwood of Illinois, a registered nurse serving in Congress. She spoke about the importance of nurses advocating for our profession and using our experiences to influence policy. Hearing from a nurse who has taken her voice from the bedside to the halls of Congress was a powerful reminder that nurses belong in every room where healthcare decisions are made. This year was also a milestone for South Carolina. We brought one of our largest groups to participate in Hill Day: SCNA Legislative Commission Chair Marissa Bartmess; APRN Chapter Vice Chair Nakisha Lee; Kim Tuemler and Tese Stephens from the Medical University of South Carolina; SCNA President-Elect Nakita Barnes; and SCNA President Jada Quinn. Together, we met with members of South Carolina’s congressional delegation to advocate for issues affecting nurses, the nursing workforce, and the patients and communities we serve.

Seeing such a strong South Carolina presence on Capitol Hill was meaningful to both of us. As President and President-Elect, we believe that advocacy is not separate from nursing; it is part of nursing. Decisions made in Washington affect our ability to educate future nurses, maintain a strong workforce, practice to the full extent of our education and training, and provide safe, high-quality care to the communities we serve. Our profession must be present when those decisions are made.

The most historic moment of the 2026 Membership Assembly came with the vote to expand ANA membership eligibility to include Licensed Practical Nurses and Licensed Vocational Nurses (LPNs/LVNs). To be in the room as delegates during this vote was an experience we will not soon forget. The decision came after thoughtful discussion, differing perspectives, and respectful debate among nurses from across the country. We witnessed firsthand what professional governance looks like as nurses bring diverse experiences to the table while remaining committed to the profession’s future. The vote opened the door for thousands of LPNs and LVNs to participate more fully in professional advocacy, leadership, and policy development through ANA.

For us, this moment was especially significant because it reflected a broader vision of nursing. LPNs and LVNs have always been an important part of the nursing workforce and the care of patients and communities. This historic decision recognizes the value of their contributions and creates new opportunities for nurses across educational pathways to strengthen our collective voice. As we sat in the room for this historic vote, we were reminded that change does not happen simply by hoping for it. Change happens because nurses are willing to show up, engage in difficult conversations, listen to different perspectives, and make decisions about the future of our profession. That is the responsibility and the privilege of professional nursing leadership.

The 2026 Membership Assembly was more than another annual meeting. It marked a defining moment in ANA’s 130-year history and a new chapter for the nursing profession. We returned to South Carolina proud of the nurses who stood beside us on Capitol Hill, honored to have represented SCNA during this historic vote, and even more committed to ensuring that South Carolina nurses have a strong voice in the conversations shaping healthcare. The horizon for change is before us. As nurses, we cannot wait for others to determine the future of our profession. We must be willing to act, advocate, and lead. South Carolina nurses were in the room, at the table, and on Capitol Hill, and we intend to keep showing up.