To be sure, the move is a smart, financially responsible decision for Exxon and its investors. The company has maintained its operational headquarters in the Lone Star State for nearly 40 years. About three-quarters of its employees live and work there, including its executive leadership.

Then, of course, there is Texas’ business-friendly climate. Unlike New Jersey, where officials try to shake down companies for every penny they can, Texas has put out a welcome mat. It is no wonder the state has been voted the most pro-business state in the nation for over 20 years or that companies and workers are flocking there in droves.

Darren Woods, Exxon’s chairman and CEO, put it well: “Texas has made a noticeable effort to embrace the business community” and built “a policy and regulatory environment” that will allow the company to maximize shareholder value.

That Glass Lewis and Institutional Shareholder Services — the proxy adviser duopoly that control 97% of the market — recommended against the move speaks volumes. Institutional investors hold approximately 70% of the outstanding shares of U.S. publicly traded companies and often outsource corporate proxy decisions to the foreign-owned duopoly.

These proxy advisers engage in a purposely opaque process with a powerful result. A recent study found that Glass Lewis and ISS recommendations can swing a shareholder vote by as much as 30%. Another study found that 175 asset managers controlling over $5 trillion in value voted with ISS more than 95% of the time.

These proxy advisers use their extraordinary power to peddle left-wing dogma. In the Exxon shareholder vote, the devious duopoly supported a high-tax state over investors’ interests.

A company’s top priority should be to maximize shareholders’ returns, not to push kumbaya policies that come at the expense of hardworking families.

Unlike corporations, which have a fiduciary obligation to investors, the proxy adviser cartel operates in a regulatory Wild West. They provide “consulting services” to coach companies on how to sell the policies they concoct to shareholders. In other words, they spoon-feed businesses progressive policies and then direct them on how to spin it to investors.

What’s more, proxy advisers are not required to disclose conflicts of interest. They may be selling snake oil that’s good for their political agenda, even though it’s bad for investors.

During President Donald Trump’s first term, his Securities and Exchange Commission introduced new regulations that would have required more transparency from proxy advisers. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce called the Trump administration’s “middle-ground” approach a “step in the right direction.”

Yet the Biden administration gutted the rules, allowing proxy advisers to continue to run amok. And why not? These supposedly objective advisers hocked the left’s ideology and bullied businesses into adopting Democrats’ socialist agenda. Of course they were allowed to run amok.

It’s time the Trump administration and Congress finally rein in proxy advisers. Bills like the Protecting Americans’ Retirement Savings from Politics Act, which was introduced by Congressman Bryan Steil in April, would impose the kind of oversight that’s needed. This commonsense legislation should receive support from individual investors and institutional investors alike.

But the president shouldn’t wait for a legislative fix, which Democrats will undoubtedly fight tooth and nail. His SEC should revisit the regulatory framework introduced during Trump 1.0 to shine a light on this murky industry.

Exxon’s shrug-off of these proxy bullies’ recommendations is not only a prudent business decision, it’s proof that Trump’s end to his predecessor’s culture wars is working. Companies are bailing off the sinking ship of wokeism and getting back to the business of doing business. And they are putting proxy advisers’ directives where they belong: in the trash bin.

Like New Jersy politicians and their liberal allies — who tried to block Exxon’s move over phony claims it would reduce shareholder rights — the Glass Lewis-ISS proxy duopoly does not care about individuals and families who invest hard-earned money with companies to see it grow. They only care about promoting the left’s progressive ideology, even if it costs ordinary people.

Exxon’s courage to do right for its shareholders is a major indicator that the proxy advisers’ power is cracking. We should all hope that it shatters entirely.

Written by Ken Buck 

Official website; https://x.com/RepKenBuck

Elite and even above-average athletes have effectively become free agents, selling their services each year to the highest bidders. Every year, the school rosters are different, so there’s almost no team or university loyalty. It’s rent-a-player, and the big college teams are now effectively professionals playing in professional leagues. In some cases, players can be paid professionally and retain their “amateur” status. The NCAA actually and stupidly discriminates against American kids to the advantage of older foreigners.

I went to the University of Illinois, and this year our hoops team, loaded with Europeans, made it to the Final Four. Our joke was that we were the University of Serbia.

Yet the games on the field and the court are as popular as ever, and I, for one, believe it is proper and correct that “student athletes” be paid for making tens of millions of dollars for the university.

I’m not sure how to fix things, but I do know who won’t: Congress. A new bill making its way through the Senate is the Cantwell-Cruz “Protect College Sports Act.” It’s pitched as a compromise to save college athletics. But it’s filled with federal rules, regulations, and edicts, some of which make sense, while others are intrusive, unworkable, and potentially ruinous to the games.

It uses the threat of antiquated antitrust statutes as the hammer to force the leagues like the Big Ten, the Southeastern Conference, and the Atlantic Coast Conference to comply.

The bill does not formally create a government agency to negotiate college sports media rights, but it puts a figurative Mafia gun to their head to say that if they don’t comply, bad things will happen.

They must accept more than 150 pages of Byzantine rules governing media negotiations, revenue sharing, local broadcast access, conference transactions, and even the college football calendar. Believe it or not, Congress would tell schools who they must play each year, and that “traditional rivalries” must be maintained! Is this what Congress should be working on in Washington?

On pages 100-101, the bill requires certain schools to play at least two traditional rivalry games every four years and at least one annual game against an out-of-conference opponent that ranks among the school’s top five historic football opponents.

The bill dictates when college and professional football games can be played. For example, it rewrites the Sports Broadcasting Act window by extending the restriction affecting professional football telecasts from the second Friday in September through the second Saturday in December to the first Friday in September through the third Saturday in December.

The bill orders what games can be shown on which TV networks at what time. It restricts what schools can be added or deleted from certain conferences. It is meant to stifle the growth and money-making capabilities of the Big Ten and the SEC.

But it’s in the interest of the NCAA itself to make sure that the games are competitive and the same schools don’t dominate year after year. This past year, Indiana University, typically a losing team in college football, won the championship – partly by going into the portal and cherry-picking underrated and underpaid players.

Much of this has to do with the multibillion-dollar-plus broadcast contracts as college sports become ever more popular.

But for the students, spectators, and athletes, the current sports broadcasting system works well, thank you. Nearly every major football game is broadcast on some cable outlet, so fans can pick and choose from dozens of games every Saturday, and college basketball is on several stations nearly every night of the week.

In short, the Protect College Sports Act would make college athletics a fully regulated utility and risks ruining the joy, pageantry, and competitiveness of college sports. Do we really want Sen. Bernie Sanders deciding who Ohio State should put on their football schedule?

Reform is needed to stop treating universities as “nonprofit” educational institutions when it comes to athletics. The salaries, revenues, and administrative costs should all be taxed like a professional sports team. Then the NCAA and the major conferences – not professional politicians, lawyers, and lobbyists in Washington – should decide what’s in the best interest of the game and the schools.

Columnist; Stephen Moore

Official website; http://twitter.com/stephenmoore

So, it was refreshing to hear Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, the fourth richest man on the planet, offer unadulterated praise of the moral and economic superiority of capitalism in his recent interview with CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin.

You could practically hear progressives gasping when Bezos claimed that “the value to society and civilization from my for-profit companies will be much, much larger than the good that I do with my charitable giving.”

As we’ve seen, billionaires are far better at dispensing capital to productive sectors of society than charity or government. The United States is better off when Bezos keeps his wealth away from Congress or Zohran Mamdani. Amazon and other similar mega-corporations create more jobs, save people more money and foster more self-reliance than any government program.

The profit motive is much more effective at improving people’s lives than good intentions. This is not a moral judgment, merely reality. Bezos hatched a great idea at the right time, then parlayed and scaled that idea into a massive success. He’s probably created somewhere around $11 trillion in wealth for society since he started his company. He broke no laws doing it. If you don’t like it, don’t use or work for Amazon.

We don’t have the same luxury when it comes to the state. Leftists are convinced that bilking billionaires holds the key to solving all society’s tribulations. But if I said that confiscating all of Bezos’ wealth wouldn’t even be enough to keep the government going for a week, it would be an understatement. Confiscating all the wealth from every billionaire in the country would only fund the federal government for around a month, probably less.

Which is why, as history has aggressively demonstrated, sooner or later, the socialist definition of “the wealthy” will include you.

“They think there’s a fixed pie. One pizza and seven people, who’s going to get two slices? That is not how economies work,” Bezos told Sorkin. “It isn’t a fixed pie. It grows.” And by “they,” he means people like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, double Bachelor of Arts degree earner in international relations and economics cum laude from Boston University, whose entire economic agenda is predicated on juvenile zero-sum fallacy.

Though Bezos had many excellent things to say about the morality of free markets and wealth creation, he also proposed a well-intentioned but corrosive policy idea that’s gotten most of the media attention: zeroing out taxes for the bottom half of earners.

“Why is a nurse in Queens who makes $75,000 a year paying more than $1,000 a month in taxes, when the best way to put money in someone’s pocket is to not take it out in the first place?” Bezos asks, adding that while bottom earners only contribute around 3% of total revenue, keeping that money is “very meaningful” to an individual.

No doubt.

The contention that the wealthy don’t pay their “fair share” is probably the biggest myth in American politics. The United States has the most progressive tax system in the developed world. The top 1% taxpayers pay around 45% of all federal income taxes, while the top 10% pay around 75%. Whether you think the rich can afford it or not, it’s unhealthy and unstable for a country to rely on a sliver of people to prop up the government. That doesn’t sound like the workings of a healthy “democracy.”

The problem, though, with zeroing out taxes for around 70 million Americans isn’t only about balance sheets. It’s about feeding an existing moral hazard that reinforces the perception Bezos was decrying. We can’t tap the wealthy to foot the bill for everything.

We are already charging much of our spending to future generations through debt. But voters, need it be said, would be even more likely to support profligate spending knowing they didn’t have any federal tax bill.

Even in those Scandinavian welfare states that Sen. Bernie Sanders and other socialists mythologize and fantasize about, everyone pays. Virtually every Danish family, for instance, is on the hook for over 50% of their income in taxes — and that’s not even counting a 25% sales tax on everything they purchase. Do you want a welfare state? Fine. Pay for it.

If we flattened taxes so that everyone was compelled to cough up a “fair share,” we’d have revolution on our hands. It’s going to be virtually impossible to fix our progressive tax code. At the very least, we shouldn’t exacerbate the problem by detaching more citizens from the cost and scope of their government.

Columnist; David Harsanyi

Official website; http://twitter.com/davidharsanyi

All About Technology, a certified disability-owned minority business enterprise, has grown from a technology sales and service business into a trusted community resource for individuals, families, seniors, students, small businesses, and organizations seeking reliable, honest, and accessible technology support. The company’s milestone anniversary recognizes a quarter-century of helping people connect to opportunity through technology.

“Technology has the power to connect people to opportunity, independence, and community—but only when it is accessible to everyone,” said Brake. “At All About Technology, our mission has always been about more than computers. It is about helping people work, learn, communicate, and participate fully in today’s digital world.”

A refugee entrepreneur, published Personal Technology columnist, educator, nonprofit leader, and longtime community advocate, Brake is widely known for his patience, honesty, and deep understanding of his clients’ needs. His hands-on commitment to understanding and, most importantly, resolving technical challenges has positioned All About Technology as a dependable resource for those who need more than a transaction—they need guidance, trust, and support.

Before founding All About Technology, Brake, who was recently featured in Model D Media, spent more than 12 years in increasingly responsible roles with Fortune 100 companies across the automobile, consulting, education, and manufacturing industries, working in locations around the world. Those experiences helped shape his passion for problem-solving and his belief that technology should empower people, not exclude them.

Brake’s community leadership extends well beyond business. He serves as the Executive Director of a local nonprofit, is an adjunct faculty member at Wayne County Community College, and supports youth development through internships, job shadows, and employment partnerships that expose young people to meaningful workplace experiences.

As All About Technology celebrates its 25th anniversary, the company remains focused on closing gaps in access, affordability, digital literacy, and technology support—especially for individuals with disabilities, seniors, youth, and underserved communities. The company also continues to explore ways and seeks trusted, reliable partners to expand electronics recycling and redirect refurbished technology to people and organizations that need it most.

Brake is an active, duly initiated life member of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc., and an avid learner who earned credentials from Wayne State University, University of Phoenix, Harvard Business School, Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College, Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, and the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University. A native of Detroit, he is the proud father of one daughter, Olivia Madison.

“All About Technology’s 25-year journey is a Detroit story,” Brake added. “It is about resilience, service, innovation, and a belief that every person deserves access to the tools and support needed to thrive in a digital world.”

Learn more at All-About-Technology.com.

About
All About Technology is a Detroit-based certified disability-owned minority business enterprise providing computer sales, service, technical support, and community-centered technology solutions. For 25 years, the company has served as a trusted resource dedicated to bridging the digital divide and helping individuals, families, businesses, and organizations access and use technology with confidence.

For press inquiries, contact 313-218-4888 or press@all-about-technology.com.

This evening, I will be on the campus of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) to discuss topics of American exceptionalism, illegal immigration, and foreign policy. It is imperative that we do not stop bringing a constitutional conservative message to our American college and university campuses, as we cannot cede any ground to the Marxist left. Am I concerned about “protesters?” Nah, I am a combat veteran. As well, it would be quite interesting to have leftists seeking to shut down the free speech of a Black man who was born in a segregated hospital in Georgia 65 years ago.

Conservatives must indeed go where eagles dare, and challenge the most formidable bastions of Marxism. That was the essence of what Charlie Kirk did so very effectively. I recall meeting the young 19-year-old Kirk back in 2013 and being asked to be part of his Turning Point USA Board of Advisors as he was launching. His personal efforts will be missed, but we cannot focus on just a singular person. As in the movie Spartacus, we must all say, “I’m Charlie Kirk.” The message that our young people are receiving on college and university campuses is completely antithetical to the American ideal, that of individual sovereignty, rights, freedoms, and liberties. That is what America 250 is all about. However, when one ponders what we have devolved into since America 200, when I was fifteen years of age, it is quite telling.

Who in 1976 thought that we would have discussions about defining what a woman is? Or that we would be confused about two scientifically based sexes. Once upon a time, it would have been considered child abuse to recommend that minors undergo body-transforming surgeries and disturb their natural hormonal growth and adolescence. Let’s be real, little kids are not confused about whether they are a boy or a girl. Adults are injecting them with this poison. As a matter of fact, anyone under the age of eighteen is not allowed to have a tattoo, but we are supposed to believe that the removal of healthy body parts is normal?

I remember as a young fella the day when my Dad made his last house payment. It was a source of pride for the ol’ World War II Corporal, as well as for me. He gave me something to achieve: being a homeowner. We all know that our Declaration of Independence was built upon the Natural Rights theory of the English political philosopher, John Locke, called the father of classical liberalism. The three unalienable rights endowed, naturally, to all mankind are life, liberty, and property. Yes, we do need to ensure that the American dream of home ownership is attainable for current and future generations.

However, government-run housing and policies of rent control are not the answer. I got a unique opportunity to see what that looked like — not once but twice — when visiting East Berlin, and government-controlled transportation was ugly. The purpose of government is to protect our life, liberty, and property. French economist Frederic Bastiat wrote of such in his phenomenal essay of 1850 called The Law. It was an apparent direct response to a differing philosophy that was introduced in 1848, the Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. In Marx’s work, he advocated for heavy progressive taxation and the elimination of private property rights, two things that the Marxist/Islamist mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani, has made central to his policy.

I have no issue with those who say that they hate President Trump. I would suggest stopping shooting at him. Americans are free to have differing opinions. It was New York liberal Democrat Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan who once asserted, “You are entitled to your own opinions, but not your own facts.” The same can be said about the absurdity of claiming one’s own truth, which is rooted in situational morality and ethics.

It is therefore imperative that we go where eagles dare, and not confine ourselves to our respective echo chambers of adoration. I will never forget the young lady on the campus of Northwestern University some eight to 10 years ago who asked me, “Do you identify as Black?” It was a truly shocking inquiry, but reflective of the low standards of academic rigor and critical thinking that exist on many college and university campuses. Northwestern University is one of the top academic institutions in our country, yet someone had filled this young lady’s mind with the folly that one’s skin color should dictate how they think, totally bypassing the brain that God gave to each of us. As my Mom and Dad would say, “some folks got a lot of book learning but ain’t got the common sense to come in outta the rain.”

One of the world’s great minds, Albert Einstein, advocated on behalf of socialism in his 1949 essay Why Socialism? He believed that socialism would quell the “predatory phase” of human development caused by capitalism. As opposed to economic minds like Mises, Hayek, Friedman, and Sowell, Einstein believed that capitalism brought about “economic anarchy” and that the pursuit of profit was less admirable for individuals than a government-planned economic system that ensured social welfare. That sounds a lot like Marx’s “from each according to their ability, to each according to their need,” wealth redistribution schemes.

America has a clear choice in this election cycle, and future ones as well: shall we choose the philosophy of economic servitude and enslavement and collectivism, or do we still believe in the indomitable individual spirit that yearns for freedom, economic empowerment, and yes, rugged individualism? I dare to choose the latter over the former. As history has proven, the former never works out well. As Sir Winston Churchill said, “Socialism is the philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy.” He also affirmed that “The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings. The inherent virtue of Socialism is the equal sharing of misery.” And we know that socialism is the economic model of Marxism.

Go where eagles dare, spread the message of individual entrepreneurial economic achievement.

Columnist; Allen West

Official website; https://x.com/AllenWest

Staff Writer; Kris Allen

This man talks about money, tech, local happenings, and things people around the community deal with every day. Some pieces may focus on business or financial pressure. Other times he may touch on neighborhood issues, current events, or changes taking place in the world around us.

To reach him, email; KrisA@Akiit.com.

Staff Writer; Kris Allen

This man talks about money, tech, local happenings, and things people around the community deal with every day. Some pieces may focus on business or financial pressure. Other times he may touch on neighborhood issues, current events, or changes taking place in the world around us.

To reach him, email; KrisA@Akiit.com.

As Donald Trump meets Xi Jinping, the headline items are trade, Taiwan, and Iran. Artificial intelligence (AI) is on the agenda, too. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent named two key risks of powerful AI that demand the leaders’ attention: weaponization and runaway AI.

I went to China hesitantly, as a skeptic of broad cooperation with China. But cooperation on AI is not the goal. The goal is establishing a competition floor. Above the floor, America accelerates as hard as it can. Pax Silica stays untouched. Export controls tighten. We compete without restraint on market share, models, chips, and standards. We play to win. Below the floor, we coordinate on the narrow category of risk that does not respect borders.

Two years ago today, the Biden administration sat down with Chinese officials in Geneva for the first U.S.-China AI dialogue. It produced nothing because there was no leverage. There is now. The rapid pace of AI development means that this effort has come none too early.

In his opening remarks today, Mr. Xi told Mr. Trump that “the world has come to a new crossroads” and asked whether the two countries can “transcend the so-called Thucydides Trap and pioneer a new paradigm of major-country relations.” He called on the United States and China to be “partners, not rivals.” That is a false dilemma. Either the two countries transcend the Trap by easing pressure, the framing implies, or they fall into it. There is a third option: a competition floor with guardrails on the narrow set of risks.

Weaponization and runaway AI are exactly that category. Mythos showed the first risk in operational form. The second is no longer theoretical either. American frontier labs now publish safety evaluations in which their own models attempt to deceive evaluators, disable oversight mechanisms, or take unsanctioned actions to preserve their goals. These behaviors appear in controlled tests today. They are already starting to appear in deployed agentic systems.

Answering Mr. Xi with a competitive floor is the strongest position the United States can take. It accepts the seriousness of the risk he raised. It refuses the broader concession he is hoping for, and it rejects the false choice he is offering.

They listen to people like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who says, “Capitalism … is the absolute pursuit of profit at all human, environmental and social cost. That is not a redeemable system.”

Give me a break.

Yes, capitalism is often ugly. It brings out greed in some, exacerbates wealth differences, creates pollution (creating an actual need for government regulation, which capitalism funds) and leaves some people behind.

But nothing else works! Nothing else makes life better for most people, including the poor!

“Capitalism is moral, precisely because success comes from meeting the needs and wants of others,” says Steve Forbes of Forbes magazine. “Higher standard of living comes from trading, buying and selling with one another. Everybody gets something from a transaction.”

Everybody, because capitalism, unlike socialism, and most of government, is voluntary. Transactions happen only if both sides believe they won.

It’s why there’s often an odd double “thank you” moment when we buy something — both buyer and seller say, “Thank you.”

Why? Because the seller wants my money more than his product. I want his product more than the money I paid. Otherwise, the trade wouldn’t happen.

Millions of such voluntary transactions create wealth.

That’s capitalism.

The ignorant think rich people take from poor people. As the popular YouTube channel Secular Talk puts it, “Jeff Bezos … his wealth is making a lot of people poor … because we have a finite amount of money.”

Wrong! There is not a finite amount of money. That silly idea is the essential fallacy in attacks on capitalism.

Because capitalism is voluntary, it creates wealth.

For thousands of years, everyone but the nobility was poor. Then, when some countries tried capitalism, wealth skyrocketed.

When people are allowed to buy and sell things freely, everyone is better off.

Socialists don’t get that. AOC insists: “No one ever makes a billion dollars. You take a billion.”

But no billionaire showed up at my door demanding I give them money. Under capitalism, they can only get rich by offering people something we think is better than what we bought before.

Yes, Amazon’s founder is now absurdly rich, but consumers didn’t lose. Jeff Bezos got rich by inventing a way for us to shop efficiently and pay less.

And as Forbes points out, most billionaires weren’t born rich.

“What’s amazing about these individuals, they’re from the most unlikely backgrounds, and (they invented) things you don’t plan for.”

Margaret Rudkin, a housewife in Connecticut, noticed that bread worsened her son’s asthma.

She experimented with different recipes, came up with modern whole wheat bread and grew her business into the company we now know as Pepperidge Farm.

“What planner would have planned that?” laughs Forbes in my new video.

He uses the term “planner” because socialists claim government dictates will make our economy work better than letting individuals making our own choices.

They’re wrong. The failure of socialism everywhere should have taught us that!

But no. Politicians still think they can do better. “Capitalism has let a lot of people down,” says likely presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg.

Maybe, but capitalism also lifted more people out of poverty, created more opportunities and improved more lives than any other system.

Economist Thomas Sowell said, “I don’t ask, ‘What is the cause of poverty?’ Everybody is born poor and ignorant. The question is, what factors allow some groups to get from that position?”

“Sowell put it well,” concludes Forbes. “What is the difference between people today and people in the Stone Age? Difference is — we know more. That’s how you get a higher standard of living, from experiments in the marketplace, the laboratory, always trying to find new things. That’s why planning doesn’t work, because if we already knew it, we’d already be doing it!”

Only capitalism allows the experiments that create better lives.

Columnist: John Stossel

Official website; https://twitter.com/JohnStossel

But the anxiety many are carrying is not simply economic. It is emotional, psychological, and profoundly political. Conversations with activists, clergy, teachers, nonprofit workers, caregivers, journalists, and parents often arrive at the same conclusion. People are tired — not merely physically tired, but weary in a deeper sense, exhausted by years of instability, outrage, uncertainty, and struggle without resolution. Americans have lived through a pandemic, political upheaval, racial backlash, economic volatility, social isolation, and a digital culture that demands constant vigilance and immediate reaction. Before one crisis is fully processed, another arrives demanding attention.

The human spirit was never designed for perpetual emergency.

At the same time, exhaustion is not the only emotional current shaping American life. Many people are energized, alarmed, and newly engaged precisely because they believe democratic norms themselves are under threat. Across the country, people are organizing, protesting, voting, fundraising, and showing up at demonstrations proclaiming “No Kings.” Millions are turning out in protest. Yet even this activism often carries an undertone of strain, because much of today’s civic engagement is fueled less by optimism than by fear of what may happen if people disengage entirely.

Polls showing widespread dissatisfaction with the direction of the country reflect more than partisan division. Many Americans feel they are working harder, worrying more, and falling further behind, even as they are repeatedly told the economy is fundamentally sound, even as rising prices continue to outpace wages for many workers.

Reading The Fire Next Time today, one is struck not only by James Baldwin’s prophetic brilliance, but also by the exhaustion beneath his prose. Baldwin wrote as a man who deeply loved his country while watching it revisit the same moral failures over and over again. More than sixty years later, many Americans are asking some version of the same question: how many times must we fight the same battles?

That exhaustion is especially familiar within Black political life. More than 200 anti-lynching bills were introduced in Congress between the late nineteenth century and the early twenty-first century. Again and again, activists marched, testified, fundraised, wrote editorials, gathered petitions, and demanded federal protection, only to watch legislation delayed or blocked. Federal anti-lynching legislation did not finally become law until 2022.

The NAACP once hung a banner outside its headquarters reading, “A MAN WAS LYNCHED YESTERDAY.” The repetition itself became part of the tragedy, as generation after generation was forced to sound the same alarm while institutions moved slowly, if at all, to respond.

It took more than a century for anti-lynching legislation to become federal law. How long will Americans wait for meaningful affordability relief? The struggles are obviously not the same, but they are connected by a familiar frustration: ordinary people sound the alarm while institutions remain paralyzed, indifferent, or consumed by political calculation.

Exhaustion is not new in American life, but today it threatens to erode civic participation itself. People are withdrawing from public engagement not necessarily because they do not care, but because they are depleted. Democracy requires participation, but participation requires emotional, physical, and economic reserves that many Americans no longer possess.

An exhausted public becomes vulnerable to cynicism, resentment, manipulation, and authoritarian appeals that promise easy answers to complex problems. Exhausted people stop imagining alternatives and retreat into survival mode.

America is running on empty. The danger is not simply economic instability, but civic depletion — a public so exhausted that it loses the capacity to imagine, organize, or resist. Exhaustion may explain the national mood, but it cannot be allowed to become the nation’s destiny.

Columnist; Julianne Malveaux

Official website; https://www.juliannemalveaux.com/