IRA SHAPIRO - What Has Happened to America in the Past 18 Months?
Event Date: July 17, 2026
Time: 4:00 pm
Ira Shapiro is the co-editor and author with Anne Tam of Betrayed: America Didn’t Vote for This, published May 2026. The book is a report from several contributors who are offering both a damage assessment of where we are and the importance of the 2026 midterm elections in November. The goal is a well-informed electorate that better understands how this administration has taken — and continues to take — America down a dark and perilous road. We will explore both the dangers and the opportunities and the important of being super engaged in the November election.
An excerpt from the book explains their goal: “We hope that our report will make it comprehensible. The midterm elections, less than six months away, provide a crucial opportunity for the American people to pass judgment on the Trump administration. We believe that our report is in the best American tradition of vigorous political debate. We call on the American people to elect a Congress that will hold this administration accountable for its abuses of power and its betrayal of the interest and hopes of the public. Let us be unmistakably clear: America’s problems did not begin with Donald Trump. We are a quarter of the way through a century in which our country’s steep decline can be charted in striking contrast to China’s extraordinary rise.”
Ira Shapiro is a lawyer, a longtime senior Senate staffer, and former U.S. trade official. He served as general counsel in the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative and then as chief U.S. negotiator with Japan and Canada with the rank of ambassador. He is the author of a trilogy of narrative histories about the Senate, starting with The Last Great Senate: Courage and Statesmanship in Times of Crisis (2012), which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. Earlier, he was legislative council to Senator Gaylord Nelson, the founder of Earth Day.
Program on Zoom
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