- - Maria Shriver Opens Up About 'Tumultuous' Year Under Trump and Urges Unity amid 'Scary' Times

Greta BjornsonJanuary 20, 2026 at 7:24 AM

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Gabe Ginsberg/Getty; Chip Somodevilla/Getty

Maria Shriver (L) and President Donald Trump (R) -

Maria Shriver wrote an essay ahead of Martin Luther King Jr. Day urging Americans to unite despite trying times

Shriver challenged her readers to take 20 minutes in the next few weeks and write a letter to America as a "manifestation for our country"

"My friends, this is not a moment for spectators," she wrote. "This is a moment for engaged, informed, brave citizens"

Maria Shriver is urging Americans to come together despite challenges within the country and abroad.

Shriver, 70, reflected on the state of the U.S. in an essay shared in her publication The Sunday Paper, where she looked ahead to the nation's 250th birthday this summer and marked Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

Shriver specifically challenged her readers not to fall into despair looking at the world around them, but rather "come together to create a new vision for who we are and what we want to stand for."

Her Saturday, Jan. 17, message also included a call to action. The former first lady of California urged her readers to take 20 minutes out of their day in the next few weeks and write a letter to America.

"Write what has broken your heart and where you still see the light. Write what you hope for America’s values, her leaders, her character, and her future," Shriver encouraged. "Write not only what you are asking of America, but what you are willing to give to her as well. Make it your manifestation for our country."

Shriver added, "Share it with your family. Share it with your friends. Share it with us in the comments below. Then speak it out loud and manifest it into existence. This is how we make the country ours again. This is how we rise—not as factions, not as parties, but as people."

She then invoked her uncle, the late former President John F. Kennedy, and quoted the speech he was prepared to give before he was assassinated in 1963.

She quoted Kennedy: “There will always be dissident voices heard in the land, expressing opposition without alternatives, finding fault but never favor, perceiving gloom on every side, and seeking influence without responsibility. Those voices are inevitable. … We cannot expect that everyone, to use the phrase of a decade ago, will ‘talk sense to the American people.’ But we can hope that fewer people will listen to nonsense.”

Shriver then wrote, "My friends, we are better than the nonsense spewing out at us today. We deserve so much better. I hope that we can transcend the prevailing nonsense and ask more from those who want to lead us forward—and expect more from ourselves as well."

Also in her post, Shriver mentioned her late friends, Rob Reiner and Michele Reiner, who were found dead in their home last month. Before their deaths, the Reiners worked for years to advance progressive causes. Shriver wrote that the couple had "imagined a campaign unlike any other—one in which America herself was the candidate" just before their deaths.

"They dreamt of that because they believed America belonged to all of us and that we can all get behind her," she wrote. "I loved that idea then, and I believe in it even more now."

JB Lacroix/Getty

Maria Shriver in March 2025

She added, "I have friends who are Republicans, Democrats, and Independents, but they are first and foremost Americans. And they know deep in their hearts that division, contempt, fanaticism, and fear are weakening the very thing that makes America strong and beautiful."

Shriver's message comes not long after she and other Kennedy relatives spoke out against President Donald Trump's renaming of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts to the Trump-Kennedy Center.

Shriver said Trump, 79, was being "weird" by adding his name to the building, which is a a living memorial to Kennedy.

"C’mon, my fellow Americans! Wake up! This is not dignified. This is not funny. This is way beneath the stature of the job. It’s downright weird," she wrote on Instagram last month. "It’s obsessive in a weird way. Just when you think somone [sic] can’t stoop any lower, down they go…"

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Shriver and her family also recently experienced a tragedy with the loss of Tatiana Schlossberg, the daughter of Caroline Kennedy. Shriver, who is the daughter of Eunice Kennedy Shriver and Sargent Shriver, was the first cousin once removed of Schlossberg, who died Dec. 30, 2025, after being diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia.

In an Instagram post the day of Schlossberg's death, Shriver sent her love to Caroline and remembered her daughter, who wrote about the environment, as "a great journalist" who "used her words to educate others about the earth and how to save it."

"I cannot make sense of this. I cannot make any sense of it at all," Shriver wrote. "None. Zero."

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Source: “AOL Entertainment”