At seventeen, too young to vote but old enough to care, I scroll through The New York Times live updates, compulsively refreshing The Associated Press, watching the electoral map shape a future I didn’t ask for. States declare their allegiance in flashes of red and blue, colors and numbers filling my screen.
And here I am — powerless, unable to weigh in on the decision that will define the America I inherit.
I know the issues people vote on are complicated. Policies are nuanced, rooted in contexts and histories I’m still learning about. But despite my age, I can feel something fundamental shifting — and slipping away. As a young woman on the brink of adulthood, with dreams of journalism and college applications that mention the First Amendment as a protective safeguard, I worry: What will happen to truth, to freedom, to the progress we’ve fought for, as Donald J. Trump reclaims the White House?
This worry isn’t abstract. According to PBS News, During Trump’s first term, as protests against police brutality erupted across the country, he sought to deploy military personnel to restore “order” in American cities. To him, these demonstrations were not expressions of pain or demands for justice; they were merely “riots,” disturbances to be quelled by force — a show of state power against the very people it was sworn to protect.
Top military leaders, including then-General Mark Milley, resisted, with Milley issuing a rare memo reminding service members that their oath is to defend the Constitution, and the values enshrined within it — not to serve the whims of a single leader. Yet, that reminder feels more fragile now, with Trump once again at the helm, as though these foundational values are mere barriers to be stripped away.
Now, he returns to office with a government stacked in his favor: Republicans in the Senate, likely the House, and a Supreme Court poised to uphold a conservative agenda for decades to come. With such concentrated power, our government feels like a fortress barricaded against progress, a pillar indifferent to the America I hope to grow into.
They say history repeats itself, and I can’t help but wonder if this is the despair people felt during the Civil Rights Movement, or the anti-war protests of the ’70s. We fight and inch forward, only to be dragged back, forced to re-litigate the very rights and freedoms that should be settled by now. In this cycle, progress becomes a fragile thing — something gained in inches and lost in miles. Watching the America I know recede behind the results of a single election feels like mourning a future I haven’t even lived yet.
As I prepare to leave my home in California and step into a world beyond high school walls, I feel the weight of what this election means for me as a young woman, a prospective college student, and a future journalist. I’m entering adulthood at a time when my rights to healthcare, bodily autonomy, and free expression seem less certain than they were even four years ago. How do I explain to my parents, my teachers, or even myself, that I feel my voice shrinking before I’ve had the chance to use it?
I wish I could say I feel hopeful. That, like generations before me, I see a path forward through activism, through change, through the power of young voices. But I’m struck, at seventeen, by the weight of knowing that the America I hope for is not guaranteed, and that the rights I need may no longer be protected. Perhaps the greatest challenge we face is not only resisting the laws and policies that seek to control our bodies and our voices, but also resisting the despair that comes with realizing we are voiceless in the rooms where our future is decided.
When I can finally vote, will it even matter? Will I be able to write freely, or will my words be subject to oversight, confined to the margins? For now, I mourn the America I hoped would be waiting for me as I crossed the threshold into adulthood. And tomorrow, I will keep learning, questioning, and, above all, hoping that someday my voice might finally count.
Jeannine Chiang is an aspiring journalist and a senior at Burlingame High School in Burlingame, California where she is a reporter for the school paper, The Burlingame B.
Feature image published under Creative Commons license.
