At 1:59 this afternoon, Donald J. Trump walked toward a makeshift stage with his head down, climbed the platform steps, and stood at the podium inside a square of bulletproof glass right in front of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. He spoke for nearly an hour, struggling to read his notes, keep his eyes open, and even get through his prepared remarks, but it was one single line that seemed to sum up the entire event. “For some reason, the sitting president doesn’t win the midterms, but we gave this a very strong shot.” The sitting president himself seemed to be admitting defeat before a single vote was even counted.
With just a single day left before one of the most consequential midterm elections of our lives, Donald Trump decided to spend it celebrating the reopening of a project that has become the greatest visual failure of his second presidency, but he couldn’t even stick to that topic. He also had to talk about himself. “Now, we’re giving serious thought to changing the name to the Trump reflecting pool. We’ll announce that sometime tomorrow.” He then added, “I’m only kidding. I’m only kidding. Please don’t report it.”
In front of the very small gathered crowd, made up of mostly park rangers, he also attacked Democrats, called their candidates “jihadists” and “Muslim Brotherhood members,” and then brought up his war in Iran, once again declaring that victory had already been achieved. “We had a war with Iran we won; we had a war with, and you know I don’t know if you even call it a war because we haven’t been doing any fighting for months.”
Except that wasn’t true. Donald Trump declared that America had already won the war and that the fighting had essentially stopped months ago, yet we learned later in the day that American forces had carried out another round of airstrikes against Iranian targets. Today, the Wall Street Journal reported that the United States had been conducting smaller military strikes for weeks without publicly disclosing them. On the eve of an election that could strip Republicans of their control of Congress, Donald Trump was once again caught lying to the American people.
As he stood in front of the Reflecting Pool, Donald Trump also described his plans for the massive triumphal arch near the Arlington Memorial Bridge, which he said would now include “tremendous drone capability” and “sniper or shooter capability.” And then he spent several minutes showing photographs of damage to the National Mall that he blamed on “sick” and dangerous vandals. The entire press conference was erratic and once again showed how diminished Donald Trump is.
While the president was making a spectacle of himself in Washington, his Justice Department was attempting something far more consequential at the Supreme Court. Trump’s Justice Department had filed an emergency request to force California to set aside roughly 20,000 mail-in ballots from voters the administration claimed were noncitizens. They based the claim on evidence that lower courts rejected as unreliable. They demanded that the state stop counting ballots and segregate the votes of people who, in all likelihood, are American citizens. And they brought this case on the eve of a national election, asking the highest court in the country to intervene in the final hours before the votes were cast.
The Supreme Court responded with a single sentence: “The application for injunction pending appeal presented to Justice Kagan and by her referred to the Court is denied.”
That was all they said. There was no further explanation, and no dissents were noted. Not a single conservative justice publicly objected, and they didn’t even ask to hear the other side before ruling. They looked at what the president was trying to do, and they refused to dignify it with anything other than the most basic response.
Tonight feels like the calm before the storm in so many ways, both good and bad. I keep thinking back to other times in our history when Americans have stood on the verge of something that could change their country forever, wondering what would happen next, whether their country would survive what was coming, and if it did, what would be left of it when the storm finally passed. The words of Francis Scott Key keep playing in my mind from that night in Baltimore Harbor in 1814, when the British refused to let him leave as they began bombarding Fort McHenry, and there was nothing he could do except watch and wait. I keep thinking about those 25 hours of bombardment and what it must have felt like to sit there in the darkness, wondering whether our country, barely 38 years old, would survive the night.
The song that was born from that experience, the one we stand for and sing before ballgames and on the Fourth of July, was just as much a question as it was a celebration: “O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave, o’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?” He wasn’t proclaiming victory when he wrote those words. He was asking whether the flag was still there. He spent the night in the dark, on a ship he couldn’t leave, watching a war he couldn’t fight, with no way of knowing whether the country he loved would still be standing when the sun came up. All he could do was watch and wait for dawn.
When the sun finally rose, and he saw that the American flag was still flying over Fort McHenry, he put into words the fear, the hope, and the uncertainty of everything he had just witnessed. And tonight, as we sit here wondering what tomorrow will bring for our own country, I can’t help but think about how much of that same fear and hope we are carrying with us. We don’t know what tomorrow will bring, or what our country will look like when this is over. We can only do what generations of Americans before us have done, hold on to our hope, refuse to give up on our country, and wait for the dawn.
Two years ago, when many of us woke up in the middle of the night and saw that Donald Trump had won, it felt like something had broken inside of us, and we have still not healed from it. That healing can hopefully start tomorrow. No matter what happens, we need to remember that even through every attempt to silence us, we are still here, and we are still resisting. No matter what Donald Trump says or does, he will never be able to stop us from doing that.
Tomorrow is the start of a new chapter for our country, and we still have the power to make sure that it is one our founders would be proud of. If you haven’t voted, please make a plan to do so, and please get there as early as you can. Consider also reaching out to your friends and family to remind them to vote if they haven’t already. That is the most important thing we can do right now. This is the moment we have been working toward for two years. This is the reason we marched and called and donated and refused to be silent.
212 years ago, a man sat on a ship in the dark, watched the sky light up with explosions, and asked a question he didn’t know the answer to. Tonight, we are asking that same question, and over the next couple of days, we will find out the answer. By all indications, there is still every reason to believe that our flag will be flying when the sun comes up, just as it was all those years ago. That’s why I still have hope for America. And you should, too.
I’ll see you tomorrow,
Heather
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This commentary represents my personal opinions and analysis of matters of public concern, informed by publicly available information. Any references to individuals constitute opinion and commentary protected under the First Amendment.
Picture of the day: I’ve resorted to changing my screensaver to puppy pictures. This is our youngest one when she was barely six months old. I’ve had so many people reach out from near and far, checking in to see how we are surviving and offering words of hope. I’m back up to over 900 emails, so it will take me some time to respond. I think I’m still working through May’s emails, but I took a quick look at a few, and I can’t express how much I appreciate all the kind words. I wish I had a bit more time so I could respond more quickly, but hopefully I will get caught up and be able to respond to everyone the way I would like to. As for the elections, I’m doing surprisingly well. I’m nervous because there is so much on the line, not just for us here in the States, but for everyone around the world. My heart aches for the destruction that has been caused and the lives lost because of his leadership, or shall I say lack thereof. But the hope is strong. We are in this together, and we will get through whatever comes next, just as we have gotten through every single day of these past two years. And I truly believe that better days are ahead of us.
Links to sources used in writing this article:
President Trump Delivers Remarks, Nov. 2, 2026: YouTube Video
https://www.cbsnews.com/live-updates/2026-elections-monday-november-2/
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/11/03/iran-us-vance-trump-strikes.html
https://www.rferl.org/amp/33889371.html
https://www.yahoo.com/news/politics/articles/wsj-us-strikes-irans-qeshm-010725189.html
https://amhistory.si.edu/StarSpangledbanner/francis-scott-key.aspx
https://home.nps.gov/fomc/learn/historyculture/the-negotiation-for-dr-beanes.htm
In two and a half hours I have to get up and go to my local polling place to be an election judge. It's going to be a 14-hour day for me and I need my sleep, but I just haven't been able to get it tonight. I voted myself on October 17th, the first day the polls were open in Kansas. May all of us be safe and well no matter how the day turns out politically. Thank you for your daily voice of reason, Heather. You Are appreciated.
Bless you, Heather; you're an inspiration to this 70 y/o man in SC. I'm hoping that Dr. Annie Andrews & Admiral Nancy Lacore can pull out victories in this beautiful state, nearly ruined by decades of Republican "leadership." Please stay safe, and keep sharing the truth with your beautiful prose and heartfelt conviction.