This episode of Meeting in the Middle is a moment of pause—a space to grieve, to reflect, and to ask how we’ve let cruelty take root in our politics. In the aftermath of the tragic shooting of Minnesota leaders Melissa and Mark Hortman, and the near loss of Senator John Hoffman and his wife Yvette, the conversation turns inward. It’s not a debate. It’s a reckoning. With quiet urgency, this episode wrestles with what we’ve become, how anger has replaced empathy, and what it would mean to choose compassion anyway. Not because it’s easy, but because it’s the only way forward.