Given the recklessness and lies of Signal-gate, highly choreographed and questionable mass deportations, the global dumpster fire that President Trump’s on-again, off-again tariffs have ignited and all of the other insanity of the last few weeks, the president’s State of the Union address last month seems like ancient history.

A forgettable and predictable speech filled with Trump’s greatest hits of grievances, insults and boasts, it will be remembered mostly for Texas Rep. Al Green’s outburst and exit from the chamber. But give the man credit for speaking truth to power: Trump received no mandate.

The presidential election of 2024 was one of the closest in recent history. More than half the country voted for someone other than Trump, and if just 115,000 votes in three states (out of 155.2 million cast nationally) had gone the other way, Kamala Harris would be president, and we would still be enjoying the global stability and robust economy that the Biden/Harris administration left us.

The extremely close margins in the House and Senate also fail to support any claims of a mandate, so let’s get real.

There was no mandate to pardon 1,500 criminals who, with Trump’s encouragement, attacked our Capitol and the brave police officers who protected the lawmakers inside, many of whom have since turned their backs on the very people who saved them from harm that shameful day in 2021.

There was no mandate to give Elon Musk, an unaccountable, unelected billionaire immigrant, who has enriched himself with taxpayer subsidies and contracts, unprecedented and likely illegal authority to gleefully take a wrecking ball to our federal government in the name of efficiency. In doing so, he is destroying vital services and the lives of thousands of experienced, dedicated public servants, many of whom are veterans who served this country in ways that Trump and Musk can’t even begin to understand.

There was no mandate to fill cabinet and other high-level positions with people whose main qualifications are denying the outcome of the 2020 election and unquestioning fealty to a wannabe dictator.

There was no mandate to fire all the inspectors general and independent watchdogs and to fill the Justice Department and FBI with people who will hunt down Trump’s perceived enemies and look the other way for his friends.

There was no mandate to abandon the people of Ukraine bravely fighting for their freedom by cutting off assistance, attacking their courageous leader and cozying up to the murderous dictator who invaded their homeland three years ago and has wantonly killed thousands upon thousands of children and adults as he continues to destroy schools, hospitals and critical infrastructure in a war that Trump said he could end in one day.

There was no mandate to remove anyone from the top leadership of our military who happened to be Black or female or to erase the historic struggles and triumphs of minorities from our government websites.

There was no mandate to wreck our economy by imposing tariffs and picking fights with vital economic partners around the world, many of whom have been trusted friends and allies for generations. Nor was there any mandate to conquer Greenland, bomb Mexico or insult our Canadian neighbors with a preposterous and wholly unwanted quest to make them the 51st state.

And there certainly was no mandate to ignore our Constitution, violate our laws and shred the norms that have bound us together since the earliest days of the republic.

Trump and the neutered Republicans in Congress who bark and clap like trained seals at his every utterance can say mandate over and over again to justify the carnage that is taking place here in Maine, across the nation and around the world, but the numbers don’t lie. They may have won a close election, but they received no mandate.

If anything, a closely divided election is a plea for our leaders to find common ground and work together to solve our problems. Since that clearly isn’t happening, it’s going to be up to the rest of us to continue to speak out, stand up and fight back — and to get ready to demonstrate what a real mandate looks like in next year’s election and the presidential contest that follows.