With the government in its second-longest shutdown on record and tensions running high under the Trump administration, it’s easy to feel like the country is in a bleak place right now. But former President Joe Biden says he hasn’t lost hope.
On Sunday, Biden returned to a place with deep personal ties: Boston. He accepted the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate — an honor named after someone who loomed large in his own political life. Biden and the late Democratic Sen. Ted Kennedy served together in the Senate for 36 years, working side by side on major legislation and navigating some of the country’s most pivotal political battles. So when Biden took the stage at the institute that bears Kennedy’s name, the moment carried a personal weight — one rooted in shared history, hard fights, and a long view of American democracy.
Speaking to a crowd of lawmakers, students, and community leaders, Biden didn’t mince words about those experiencing challenges under President Donald Trump’s administration. He pointed to attacks on free speech and growing tests of executive power. “I can’t sugarcoat any of this. These are dark days,” he admitted, before predicting that the country would “find our true compass again” and “emerge as we always have — stronger, wiser and more resilient, more just, so long as we keep the faith.”
The former president pointed to what he saw as signs of pushback — from federal employees resigning in protest to universities and comedians standing their ground after being targeted by Trump. In his telling, those acts of defiance reflect something larger: a long American tradition of resistance in uncertain times.
Biden also made it clear that moments like this are hardly new. “America is not a fairy tale,” he said. “For 250 years, it’s been a constant push and pull, an existential struggle between peril and possibility.”
From civil wars to civil rights, Biden suggested that the country’s defining trait has always been its ability to face turbulence head-on. But he also reminded the audience that the nation’s strength has always come from that very tension. “Since its founding, America served as a beacon for the most powerful idea ever in government in the history of the world,” Biden said. “The idea is stronger than any army. We’re more powerful than any dictator.”
Those words carried extra weight coming from an 82-year-old who’s just completed radiation treatment for an aggressive form of prostate cancer. This didn’t sound like political rhetoric, but rather a statement of faith in the country Biden has spent a lifetime serving. His presence at the Kennedy Institute underscored how much has changed since he first entered the Senate in 1973, and how deeply intertwined his career has been with moments of political upheaval.
Biden closed his remarks with a rallying cry meant to push through that uncertainty: “All of us who are dismayed by the present state of the union, this is no time to give up. It’s time to get up. Get up now, get up,” he said.
