The Empty Chair at Thanksgiving: What No One in Washington Wants to Own
Thanksgiving is supposed to be about gratitude, family, and full tables. But this year, a lot of American families sat down to eat with empty chairs at their tables—chairs that should have been filled by loved ones who got up, went to work, went for a jog, or drove home from school and never made it back.
And the hardest part? Many of those losses trace back to decisions made by people in Washington who will never feel the consequences of the chaos they created.
I’m Beth, a naturalized American citizen, and I host Talking Purple. I came here legally, did everything by the book, and I love this country deeply. That’s why I refuse to just shrug and accept what’s happening as “normal.” Because it isn’t.
Today, I want to talk plainly about three big things:
- Our broken asylum and vetting system
- The scandal of government by autopen
- The way political games hurt real people—from border towns to nursing students to young women in sports
When “Likely Vetted” Means “Nobody Really Knows”
Recently, we learned that two National Guard troops were shot in Washington, D.C. while helping support law enforcement. The alleged shooter? A man who came into the United States during the chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal—the same withdrawal where people were literally clinging to airplane wings trying to escape.
We’re being told he was “likely vetted.” Let’s pause on that word: likely.
“Likely vetted” is not a process. It’s a shrug. It’s someone in an office saying, “Yeah, he probably went through something, somewhere,” but no one can actually tell you who looked at what, when, or how thoroughly. Some articles say he was “likely granted asylum” because of alleged CIA ties or some special status. All of this based on “three unnamed sources”—which often just means one outlet said something, and two others repeated it. Voilà, we have “three sources.”
This is not how you run a serious country.
We airlifted tens of thousands of people out of Afghanistan—around 76,000 by many counts—and we did it so fast and with so little documentation that even the media admitted we didn’t know who was on which plane. We didn’t know who was a U.S. citizen, who had a valid visa, who worked with us, and who just ran onto the tarmac. Try getting information from Afghanistan now that the Taliban are back in charge. You can’t exactly call up and say, “Hi, can you verify this guy’s identity?”
And yet, those same people are now walking around inside our borders. Some may be perfectly decent people. But some aren’t. And when one of those “some” kills an American citizen, who answers for that?
It’s not the politicians with armed security details. It’s not the commentators in D.C. bubbles.
It’s families in places like West Virginia who spend Thanksgiving holding their daughter’s hand as she dies in a hospital instead of passing the mashed potatoes.
The Duty to Provide for the Common Defense
We learned in basic civics—some of us even from Schoolhouse Rock—that the federal government exists, in part, to provide for the common defense and promote the general welfare.
Well, explain to me how:
- Letting tens of thousands of unvetted people into the country
- Losing track of who they are and where they are
- Allowing some to brutally murder American citizens
…checks either of those boxes.
You can be compassionate, you can support legal immigration, you can respect genuine asylum seekers—and still say:
“You don’t let people flood into your country when you have no idea who they are.”
But instead of fixing the problem, we get spin. We’re told that halting asylum processing is cruel or un-American. No. What’s un-American is refusing to protect the very citizens you swore an oath to serve.
Stopping a broken, abused system so it can be fixed is not cruelty. It’s basic responsibility.
Government by Autopen: Who Was Actually Running the Show?
As if the border and asylum chaos weren’t enough, we now have another scandal: government by autopen.
We’re finding out that somewhere in the ballpark of 92% of Biden’s orders, appointments, judges, and pardons were signed by an autopen. For those unfamiliar, an autopen is a device that reproduces a person’s signature. It’s been around a long time and used in limited contexts—but not to essentially outsource the responsibilities of the President of the United States.
Here’s the constitutional problem:
The Constitution vests certain powers in the President, not in “whoever manages the pen.” That includes things like executive orders and pardons.
If Biden wasn’t in the room, wasn’t aware, or wasn’t mentally capable of understanding what he was supposedly signing, then who was actually running the country? A staff committee? A spouse? A team of unelected insiders?
Trump’s response has been to cancel anything signed by autopen where the legality and awareness of the president can’t be clearly proven. And you know what? On a constitutional level, that makes sense. If you can’t even confirm that the person elected was truly exercising the power, then those acts deserve to be questioned.
This shouldn’t be a partisan issue. Whether you love Biden or can’t stand him, America is supposed to be a constitutional republic, not a government-by-group-chat with a robot pen.
The Senate, the Filibuster, and the Broken Machinery of Government
Then there’s the Senate—the chamber that seems to specialize in blocking everything and solving nothing.
Most Americans don’t realize this, but originally, Senators were not directly elected by the people. They were chosen by state legislatures. That meant they were supposed to represent the states as political entities, not become just another layer of national campaigning.
The 17th Amendment changed that, and now we’ve got a hybrid mess: a chamber that still has tremendous confirmation and oversight power, but functions like a never-ending election campaign.
The filibuster, confirmation battles, judicial appointments—they’ve all become weapons. And while they’re busy playing games, the courts are now behaving like a kind of unelected shadow presidency, blocking or delaying policies at the district court level just to slow everything down until a higher court can weigh in.
Meanwhile, the American people are stuck living with the consequences of paralysis.
Mark Kelly, Unlawful Orders, and the Danger of Political Theater
Let’s talk for a moment about Senator Mark Kelly. He’s a former pilot and astronaut—smart guy, accomplished résumé. But that doesn’t give him a free pass for reckless rhetoric.
He put out a video telling military members they don’t have to follow “unlawful orders.” On paper, that’s technically true; service members are not obligated to obey illegal commands. But here’s the problem:
- Most of the young men and women in uniform are 18 to 25 years old.
- They’re not lawyers.
- They are trained first and foremost to follow orders, because hesitation in combat can get people killed.
So when a sitting U.S. Senator goes on camera essentially implying that helping ICE or the National Guard enforce immigration law might be “unlawful,” he’s not just expressing an opinion. He’s sowing confusion in the ranks.
If he truly believes these laws are wrong, he has a simple solution:
Introduce legislation and change the law.
But grandstanding on social media is easier than doing the hard, messy work of legislating. So instead of using his power as a senator, he chooses to inflame tensions and undermine lawful authority—and then acts outraged when people call him out for it.
No, Nursing Wasn’t “Canceled” – But Women Are Being Undermined Elsewhere
Recently, social media exploded with claims that a “big, beautiful bill” had ended nursing as a profession. That’s not what happened.
What actually changed was the loan classification for advanced nursing degrees—mainly master’s-level programs and above. The concern is that when schools know they can charge sky-high tuition and students can still borrow enough to cover it, they keep raising prices. Then nurses graduate with massive debt their salaries can’t realistically support.
Reining in that classification is an attempt (whether perfect or not) to control costs, not erase the profession of nursing. We desperately need nurses—and educated ones at that.
But here’s where I get frustrated:
Some of the same people screaming that this is a “war on women” are totally silent about something that actually isdevastating to women:
- Biological males competing in women’s sports
- Men in women’s locker rooms
- Scholarships being taken from young women because they never had a fair chance to win against someone with male physiology
If we care about opportunities for women—education, athletics, scholarships—then we need to be honest about where the real threats are. It’s not a technical loan classification change. It’s policies that erase fairness for women and girls in the name of ideology.
A Thanksgiving Reflection and a Call for Accountability
As I record and write this, it’s the weekend after Thanksgiving. I’m headed to a wedding of one of my best friends, thankful for her happiness, grateful for my community, and proud of my city councilman who actually answers calls and works for the people he represents.
But I’m also deeply aware that for too many families, this season is filled with grief—empty chairs that didn’t have to be empty.
We can debate policy details all day long, but at the end of it, we owe American citizens some very basic things:
- Secure borders
- Honest government
- Leaders who sign their own orders
- A justice system that follows the Constitution
- Real protection for women, kids, and families
I may joke sometimes. I may use sarcasm to cope with the absurdity of what we see in the news. But underneath all that is something simple and serious:
I want America to be great—not as a slogan, but as a reality.
Safe streets. Honest leadership. Real accountability.
And that starts with refusing to accept chaos, shrugs, and “likely vetted” as a substitute for real governance.
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