After her quarterfinal loss at the Australian Open, 21-year-old American tennis phenom Coco Gauff walked briskly off the court at Rod Laver Arena. She waved to the crowd. She nodded. She looked composed, resigned to the upset.
The cameras followed her into the tunnel, where she kept it together until she turned a corner and, believing she was finally out of sight, erupted. Gauff smashed her racket, again and again, pounding it into the ground in a raw release of anger. It was caught on camera. Of course it was. In minutes, it raced through social media.
Gauff explained herself plainly: “I just felt like all the things I do well, I just wasn’t doing well today.”
She could have been speaking for America.
We used to do a lot of things well. We used to do democracy well, protecting our Constitution, respecting elections, valuing the rule of law. Now, that racket is being smashed. And it makes me angry.
We used to take care of the world’s sick and poor. We used to work with our allies, not threaten them. We used to keep our military and federal agents off suburban streets. We used to speak about peace instead of flirting with imperialism. We used to admire the soaring words of our presidents, even when we disagreed.
Not anymore.
As Donald Trump attacks Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), calling her “garbage,” a “fraud,” “anti-American,” “disgusting,” mocking her “little turban,” demanding she be “sent back to Somalia,” calling for baseless federal investigations — what happens next?
What do people steeped in that language do with it? They smash a metaphorical racket — at Omar.
Trump has spent years filling his supporters’ minds with vengeful, dehumanizing rhetoric. He taunts. He smears. He invites backlash. It was only a matter of time before someone took him literally. Thank God that when Omar was attacked in Minneapolis on Tuesday, it wasn’t with a gun, a knife, or a fist.
Instead, she was sprayed with a foul-smelling liquid. Rather than retreat, her anger rose. She raised her fists. She was ready to smash her racket.
Then came the truly grotesque moment. The President of the United States did not condemn the attack. He said Omar probably “staged” it.
Another log on the intense fire of hate, burning through America.
How do you think Trump’s millions of followers reacted? With restraint? With reflection? Or with a fresh surge of fury?
That anger boils over. Trump’s rage, embedded in the GOP, has spread, infecting the rest of the country.
The deployment of ICE in Minneapolis has swollen the anger of people in cities, townships, and suburbs. Everywhere. Anger is the sentiment of 2026.
The killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti have poured gasoline on a raging blaze. The violence. The kidnappings. The break-ins at homes, schools, and stores. All of it has made America furious. Social media feeds are exploding.
Trump is the lead — but not sole — accelerant.
We’re angry at grocery prices that never come down. Angry at health-care costs. Angry at housing prices that have turned stability into a luxury. Angry that powerful CEOs attend black-tie screenings of Melania Trump’s vanity documentary while staying silent as someone is gunned down in Minnesota.
Angry that the rich enjoy every advantage while the rest are told to be patient, grateful, and quiet.
Boy, does that make me angry.
We’re angry at the talk of attacking Greenland. Angry at brutal cold snaps, snow and ice storms, power outages, and a government that seems unable or unwilling to respond. Angry that Congress does not speak for us, act for us, or help us.
An old saying: feces slides downhill. Odorous rage does too.
It starts at the top, with a president who stokes fury daily, who boils blood hourly. It flows through a Congress paralyzed by cowardice and messaging wars, incapable of addressing the conditions that make people desperate.
The Senate may block funding to rein in the thuggery of ICE. It should. It will probably trigger another government shutdown. Republicans and Democrats will go to war over the blame, over who broke which rule, screaming at each other again.
Congress used to do things well. Not anymore. Not for a long time. When I worked on the Hill in the late 80s and 90s, bipartisanship was taken for granted. Comity was the order of the day.
Some say Congress is beyond repair. Perhaps they’re right.
When Coco Gauff smashed that racket, when Ilhan Omar raised her fists, they weren’t just reacting to personal moments. They were channeling something collective, something millions of Americans feel but have nowhere to put.
You could feel your heart race, watching Gauff pound that racket. She may have felt momentary relief. The rest of us did too. For a brief second, her anger became ours.
Then the clip ended. We scrolled. And there was Omar. And the anger returned.
So where now?
What happens to a country with this many boiling points and no pressure valve? For people like the man who attacked Omar, for ICE agents who pull the trigger without thought, for those indulging in nurtured, biased, and bigoted resentments with top-down approval, the answer is obvious: it gets worse before it gets better. Anger simply doesn’t just vanish. It burns.
So how bad can it get?
How long until the next racket shatters — not metaphorically, but in a moment of violence caught on camera to mortify us all?
America is smashing its racket. The question is whether anyone in power is willing to stop the match before we are beyond repair. And that makes me angry.
- John Casey was most recently Senior Editor, The Advocate, and is a freelance opinion and feature story writer. Previously, he was a Capitol Hill press secretary, and spent 25 years in media and public relations in NYC. He is the co-author of LOVE: The Heroic Stories of Marriage Equality (Rizzoli, 2025), named by Oprah in her “Best 25 of 2025.”
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