CBS Sunday Morning,

Our CBS Sunday morning podcast is sponsored by Edward Jones. College tours with your oldest daughter. Updating the kitchen to the appropriate decade. Retiring on the coast. Life is full of moments that matter, and Edward Jones helps you make the most of them. That's why every Edward Jones financial advisor works with you to build personalized strategies for now and down the road. So when your next moment arrives, big or small, you're ready for it. Life is for living.

Let's partner for all of it. Learn more at edwardjones.com. In the nation's capital yesterday, an acquittal at the close of a historic second impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump.

The Senate judges that the respondent, Donald John Trump, former President of the United States, is not guilty as charged in the article of impeachment. Ahead, we'll tell you what happened and what it might mean. Good morning, and happy Valentine's Day. I'm Jane Pauley, and this is Sunday Morning. Today is the day for proclaiming love and commitment, and for honoring those who search for love and purpose didn't come easily. The story of a woman who found comfort and strength in the kindness of strangers is the story our Jim Axelrod will be telling. She beat cancer, but Sohlega Jawad still didn't feel quite right.

I need to find my place among the living again. So she hit the road, 15,000 miles, 33 states, to visit 22 strangers with thoughts on healing. But it was also an act of imagination and hope. Discovery. Yeah. Lessons on life and loving.

Ahead, on Sunday Morning. Then it's on to a walk on the beach with actor Kate Winslet. Mark Phillips joins her for the stroll. Kate Winslet has spent a lot of time on the beach lately, not just getting her daily lockdown exercise.

I do stare at the ground all the time. Winslet spent months staring down at the beach in her latest role, a fossil hunter named Mary Anning. But why does Kate Winslet know so much about more recent events? We're isolating the sick and quarantining those who we believe were exposed. Let's say, guys, it's coming. Please, here's a mask, here's some spray. Kate Winslet, the things you need to know to keep yourself safe.

Kate Winslet, the things you learn about life from the movies. Later, on Sunday Morning. Rita Braver talks with America's first transgender state senator, Sarah McBride of Delaware. Major Garrett has the latest on yesterday's Senate impeachment proceedings. Plus, a love story from Steve Hartman and more. It's a Valentine's Day Sunday morning, February 14th, 2021.

And we'll be right back. We've just been through quite a week in Washington, followed by quite a day yesterday. A rare Saturday session of the Senate in which former President Donald Trump was acquitted after a historic second impeachment trial. He's not guilty, he was charged in the article of impeachment. The vote was 57 guilty, 43 not guilty, short of the two-thirds majority required.

Here's Major Garrett to sum things up. The yeas are 57, the nays are 43. The final vote on acquittal came 10 votes short of the 67 required to convict former President Donald Trump of inciting the January 6th riot at the U.S. Capitol.

We fight like hell, and if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore. That assault by flag-waving armed Trump supporters came shortly after the president spoke and followed months of him spewing the so-called big lie that he had been fraudulently denied re-election. Democratic impeachment manager Jonah Goose of Colorado. He assembled the mob, he summoned the mob, and he incited the mob. Seven Republicans voted to convict, not among them, Kentucky's Mitch McConnell. Yet the Senate minority leader later excoriated Mr. Trump's election fraud lies and the violence that he said flowed from them. There's no question, none, that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day.

History will record this impeachment process, both in the House and the Senate, as the most bipartisan exercise of its kind. Acquittal, as we know, was almost always seen as a acquittal, as we know, was almost always certain. But the trial was about much more than the verdict. It established a historical record about what happened that horrible day. New video released during the proceedings revealed the mob beating and bludgeoning law enforcement. At least one officer pinned in agony between doors. More than 130 officers were injured, many seriously.

One died, two committed suicide in the immediate aftermath of the onslaught. Impeachment manager David Cicilline of Rhode Island praised the police. They showed up here to serve, to serve the American people, to serve their government, to serve all of us. For the first time, we saw Vice President Mike Pence and his entourage exiting the Senate chamber seeking safety. Senator Mitt Romney running from marauders guided by Capitol Police Officer Eugene Goodman. And this, Senate Democratic Leader Charles Schumer, led by his armed security, retreating down a basement hallway.

Is this America? Lead impeachment manager Jamie Raskin of Maryland. Can our country and our democracy ever be the same if we don't hold accountable the person responsible for inciting the violent attack against our country? The trial exposed Republican divisions over Mr. Trump's offenses and their gravity, and affirmed the former president's powerful sway over the GOP. The specter of a 2024 Trump bid for the presidency hung over the proceedings. House manager Ted Lieu of California. You know, I'm not afraid of Donald Trump running again in four years. I'm afraid he's going to run again and lose, because he can do this again. House managers argued President Trump spent months spreading disinformation that culminated in an ugly spectacle.

Delegate Stacey Plaskett of the Virgin Islands. And he had a pattern and practice of praising and encouraging that violence, never, ever condemning it. The insurgents believed that they were doing the duty of their president.

They were following his orders. The former president's legal team knew they'd likely prevail and mounted a defense based on complaints about partisanship, process and First Amendment protections for political speech. Attorney Michael Vander Veen. No thinking person could seriously believe that the president's January 6 speech on the ellipse was in any way an incitement to violence or insurrection.

Attorney David Schoen. You get more due process than this when you fight a parking ticket. Mr. Trump's lawyers accused Democrats of using language similar to their clients to fight.

Suddenly, the word fight is off limits. Spare us the hypocrisy and false indignation. Left unsaid, none of those examples were followed by armed insurrection. The president's attorneys did not attempt to counter the accusation Mr. Trump did nothing to stop the violence once it started, nor did they deny the election was fair and accurate. This trial in the final analysis is not about Donald Trump.

The country in the world know who Donald Trump is. This trial is about who we are. Who we are. At one point in the trial, Congressman Raskin quoted French Enlightenment philosopher Voltaire. Anyone who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. Another of Voltaire's observations might also apply. Every man is guilty of all the good he did not do. Never underestimate the strength a person in need can find thanks to the kindness of strangers.

Jim Axelrod has one woman's remarkable story. On her graduation day from Princeton in 2010, Suleikha Jawad's future seemed luminous and limitless. At that age, time feels infinite. It feels like, you know, you'll figure it out.

You have time to try things, to experiment. But as it turned out, I didn't have time. Eleven months later, a leukemia diagnosis robbed her of that time.

All that promise, replaced by a brutal chemo regimen that would only provide a one in three chance of survival. I remember going on social media and seeing photographs of my friends going to parties and starting, you know, new jobs and traveling. It really felt like my life was over before it had really begun. Rare moments of joy, like when an old pal from Music Camp showed up at her cancer ward with his band, were overwhelmed by her new reality. What do you remember about how you were able to process it as it was happening?

I'm not sure. I did a lot of processing. The overwhelm was so great that I was in a state of total shock. Isolated, disoriented, and voiceless, Suleikha began to write, finding something steadying in her daily journal entries. An act of affirmation. It was also an act of imagination. And what I realized in that writing is that really, survival is its own kind of creative act.

Posting them on a blog, she caught the eye of a New York Times editor, who offered her a column and video series, Life Interrupted. My priorities are different. My goals for the future are different. I see the world differently. I see myself differently. My column launched while I was in the bone marrow transplant unit, and I remember waking up the next morning and opening my inbox and seeing hundreds of emails from strangers all around the world. Overnight, Suleikha had what she had yearned for most, purpose. There's a photograph of me in the transplant unit where I have a vomit bucket under one arm, I have my laptop on my knees, and I'm crying, not because, you know, I'm about to have a bone marrow transplant, but because I've missed a deadline. Setting a standard of multitasking. Yeah, there you go.

Or workaholism, I don't know. Can you tell me your name and date of birth? Abdel-Jawad Suleikha, 7-5-88. After a traumatic three-and-a-half-year ordeal of treatment, including that last-chance bone marrow transplant that carried a life-threatening risk of heart failure and organ damage, Suleikha beat the odds. She was cancer-free, no longer sick, but not exactly well, either.

I never felt more lost. I couldn't return to the person I'd been pre-diagnosis. I was no longer a cancer patient, but I had no idea who I was. But you knew that you didn't want your life to be defined by the worst thing that had ever happened to you.

Yeah. I would have to figure out a way not to move on, because I don't think that's possible, but to move forward. I found myself returning to this big wooden box. That was filled with letters that I'd received from all kinds of people over the years.

From that chest, she chose 22 letters and hit the road with her dog Oscar for a 100-day, 15,000-mile reset ritual. Meeting strangers she felt had something to teach her about healing, like a professor named Howard in Ohio. You get immersed in life again. Let's face it, life can be good. A joyful, fearless teenage survivor in Florida named Unique.

I want to go on a food binge and just eat crazy things like octopus. To imagine yourself in the future is a radical act of hope. And I want to be more like that girl. An inmate in Texas named Little GQ, who'd written from death row and affirmed the power of connection. One of the first things he said to me was, you know, what did you do during all those years in the hospital? And I said, I got really, really good at Scrabble.

And he looked at me, and he kind of laughed, and he said, me too. Her struggle to heal is the subject of her new book, Between Two Kingdoms. The title of the book is a reference to the brilliant Susan Sontag, who talks about how we all have dual citizenship in the kingdom of the sick and the kingdom of the well, and it's only a matter of time before we use that other passport.

But the place that I found myself at was neither. A crippling limbo, especially when it came to love, which is where that band camp buddy comes in, who kept at it with his music and got himself a pretty good job years later. Hey, everybody, welcome back. Say hi to Jon Batiste.

It was really hard for me to imagine a future with Jon when I couldn't imagine myself existing in the future yet. What has she given you in terms of lessons about life and love? You have a limited time.

Get to it. I think that that is the biggest lesson. Embrace the imperfection. Their history was just what her heart needed to trust again. And at every turn when I thought, you know, there was some aspect of this illness experience that was going to scare him away, he was right there.

You're like a Renaissance woman. Saleka Jawad's road trip may have ended, but her journey has not yet been the same. And she knows that struggle will always be along for the ride. Are you healed? To say that I'm healed would be to imply that there's an end point.

And I think healing is something that we all do, that we'll all continually do for the rest of our lives. The swearing-in of a state legislator doesn't usually get national attention. Usually. Here's Rita Braver. Hi Sarah McBride, do you proudly swear? When Sarah McBride was sworn in as a Delaware state senator last month, she made history.

So help me God. Congratulations, Senator McBride. You are now the country's highest-ranking elected official who is also a trans person.

What's that like? I think it's awe-inspiring. I feel a deep sense of responsibility. In fact, this is not the first time Sarah McBride has made history. My name is Sarah McBride and I am a proud transgender American. So stay tuned for the story of a person who has packed ages of experience in life and love into just 30 years. She's the strongest, most resilient person I know. But Sally and David McBride did not know for many years that the child they thought of as their youngest son had a secret.

From my earliest memories, I remember lying in my bed at night praying that I would wake up the next day and be myself, that my family would be proud of me and judge me on my merits and see you as a girl and see me as myself. But even then, McBride had a passion for politics. But at the same time, it did not seem like it was possible to be out and trans and to be involved in politics, whether that's running for office, serving in government, you know, even being on a campaign. Still, McBride worked on the attorney general campaign of Beau Biden, the president's late son, and that of former Delaware Governor Jack Markell. I knew this young person had something very special, a number of things that were very special.

One, unbelievably articulate and a great orator. Still struggling to fit in as a male, McBride attended American University in D.C. and was elected student body president. But finally, by Christmas 2011, the pain could not be denied. And it wasn't until I was student body president that I had the experiences and the courage and the confidence and the insight that showed me that the things I told myself would heal that pain wouldn't. When Sarah comes to you and says, Mom and Dad, I've got something to tell you, your immediate response? I would say, I was devastated. You fell on the floor, fell on the floor and started weeping because because I felt that she wouldn't be discriminated against at every turn. But despite the initial shock, I knew we were going to be supportive of her the minute she came out to us.

Absolutely. I mean, there was never a doubt in my mind. And as the student body president term ended, McBride published this op-ed in the university newspaper. What did it feel like for you to finally be able to say, hey, guess what? This is who I am.

Complete and utter relief. The next year, Sarah McBride would make history, joining the Obama-Biden administration as the first openly transgender female White House intern. And it was at a White House event that she first encountered a handsome young attorney, a trans man named Andrew Cray.

Andy was the kindest, funniest, smartest person that I had ever met. The two became a couple, even as McBride started working in Delaware. With her parents by her side at just 22 years old, she led the fight to pass the state's first law that protects transgender people from discrimination. But just as life was looking sunny, Sarah McBride's partner, Andrew Cray, got sobering news. I think everyone fears hearing that word in particular, cancer. It was a sad and scary year-long battle with McBride acting as Cray's caregiver. I remember breaking down and selfishly saying, I can't do this.

And what I meant was I can't, I need help. To this day, what makes me feel guilty is that in that moment of complete fear for him, he was trying to comfort me. Finally, when they learned Cray's cancer was terminal, they decided to marry. And then four days after our wedding, he passed away. How hard was it for you to go on and go back to living some sort of a life?

Incredibly difficult. But then again, I also felt like I saw how precious life was. And I felt closer to Andy going back to work. McBride's work as an advocate for LGBTQ rights helped earn her another historic role. Will we be a nation where there's only one way to love, only one way to look and only one way to live? In 2016, at the invitation of the Clinton campaign, she became the first transgender person to speak at a national political convention.

Thank you all very much. 99% of people in that arena didn't know anything about me. They did know, though, that this was a moment. Winning a state Senate seat was also a moment, but she says her life is still not complete. Do you hope you'll find a partner, someone who you enjoy sharing the rest of your life with?

I do. There are so many instances, there were so many moments during this campaign, where I thought about Andy, where I wished I could have him comfort me. And it really reinforced for me how eventually I would like to have a partner in life. I've spent the last two months meeting with constituents. Meanwhile, Sarah McBride is well aware that being the highest elected transgender official in U.S. history has cast her into a bright spotlight. I feel a responsibility to ensure that while I may be the first, that I'm not the last, and so the more examples we have in more communities and in more states across the country, the more people we'll see step up, and inevitably the more people we'll see win. This is Intelligence Matters with former acting director of the CIA, Michael Morell. Bridge Colby is co-founder and principal of the Marathon Initiative, a project focused on developing strategies to prepare the United States for an era of sustained great power competition. The United States put our mind to something we can usually figure it out.

What people are saying and what we kind of know analytically and empirically is our strategic situation, our military situation is not being matched up with what we're doing. Follow Intelligence Matters wherever you get your podcasts. It happened this past week, the passing of three American originals, two phenomenally musical, one deeply controversial. Larry Flint died Wednesday of heart failure at his Los Angeles home. The publisher of Hustler Magazine, Flint gleefully challenged taboo after taboo. His raunchy and demeaning depictions of women were widely denounced. While Flint's ultimate Supreme Court victory against a libel suit brought by the late Reverend Jerry Falwell, won Flint a reputation as something of a free speech champion.

He spoke with Aaron Moriarty in 2014. Would I do all that stuff over again? Of course not. You would? But I'm glad I did it.

Hell yes. Paralyzed from the waist down after a 1978 shooting, Flint spent the rest of his life in a wheelchair. Larry Flint was 78. Mary Wilson died Monday at her home in Nevada. A founding member of the Supremes along with Diana Ross and Florence Ballard, Wilson was part of a Motown Records powerhouse. The Supremes had a dozen number one hits in the 1960s.

Along with success came stresses and changes. Florence Ballard was replaced by Cindy Birdsong in 1967. And Diana Ross left in 1970, leaving Mary Wilson as the sole original member when the group broke up for good in 1977. She went on to a long solo career and published an autobiography in 1986. Two years later, the Supremes were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In a statement, Diana Ross said, the Supremes will live on in our hearts.

Mary Wilson was 76. And jazz rock fusion pianist Chick Corea died Tuesday at his Florida home. The son of a trumpeter and band leader, Corea forged his own course in music, dropping out of both Columbia and Juilliard to pursue his passion on his own terms. In 1968, he joined the Miles Davis Quintet as a pianist.

And in 1971, formed his own group, Return to Forever. Corea declined to be pigeonholed into any one category, as he told Sunday morning's Dr. Billy Taylor back in 1990. If I can conceive of something with my imagination, why can't I do it? I should be able to do it. Why can't I do it?

I should be able to do it. Corea recorded nearly 90 albums and was named a National Endowment of the Arts Jazz Master in 2006. He won 23 Grammys and four Latin Grammy Awards and could win a Posthumous Grammy next month. Chick Corea was 79. Can an international border, in this time of COVID, stop the course of true love? A question for Steve Hartman. Scott Myers of Detroit, Michigan, and Carolyn Gagne of Windsor, Canada, are in one of the shortest long distance relationships in North America. We could literally wave at one another.

Wave at her and she would see me. Scott and Carolyn have been dating a couple of years. They used to see each other all the time, but when COVID closed all land border crossings to non-essential travel, this mile-wide waterway became an ocean. So what does it take for you to see him? Here we go. Right, so I get in my car, drive four and a half hours to the airport in Toronto, got on an airplane, flew literally back to where I had started to surprise him at work. That's how much I love him.

They've gotten together a few other times, but flights are expensive, so most of their visits are decidedly less intimate. Scott? I'm getting my binoculars out as we speak. This past week, they came to the river at our request. I see you!

To show just how close, but yet so far, they are. My eyes are all watery. I know.

I miss our normal. You know there are other fish in the Detroit River. So you're the 451st person, I believe, that's asked that question in the last year. Scott is my person. Along our borders, there are thousands of couples like Carolyn and Scott, stranded on separate shores, waiting for land crossings to open. And I share their story today, in hopes that their curse illuminates your blessing.

To be stuck at home with the one you love on Valentine's Day sounds pretty perfect to them. And Carolyn says, well worth waiting for. We had a trip planned last March, where Scott was going to ask me a very important question. What's your favorite color?

Exactly. So I'm very much looking forward to Scott and I being able to finally travel, where he can ask me in a very romantic manner what my favorite color is. And what will the answer be?

Yes, and red. Open your eyes. I'm flying. That's Kate Winslet in Titanic, one of the most successful movies of all time. Her latest performance finds Winslet firmly on solid ground.

And talking with Mark Phillips. A day at the beach isn't what it used to be in these COVID times. But as places to be stuck during lockdown go, you could do worse than the windswept strip of sand just up the lane from Kate Winslet's place.

Although Kate can no longer just walk along the shore. I know there are no fossils here. This is not a part of the world. This is not the Jurassic Coast. No, and I'm still like this.

I do it. Winslet's habit comes from spending a lot of time looking down while shooting her latest movie on a beach not far from her home on England's south coast. Ammonite, which had a recent theater run and is now streaming, tells the story of Mary Anning, a fossil hunter in the 1800s. Anning was a real person who scoured the shoreline on what's known as Britain's Jurassic Coast, which because of a quirk of geology is laced with fossils.

Anning, it turns out, made several major discoveries, including the fossilized skeleton of what we now call the pterodactyl, the flying dinosaur. But being a woman, she wasn't credited at the time. Only men could be scientists.

And she was a real person. At the time, only men could be scientists in the 1840s. Your reputation is something I've often heard discussed in the Geographical Society in London.

All boys together. Yes, well, quite. I knew who Mary Anning was, but I knew, shamefully, very little about her. She was living in a patriarchal society. The world of geology and science was entirely dominated by men who would re-appropriate her work and claim it as their own. And some pretty significant work.

Yeah, yeah. In the movie, Winslet's Mary Anning is not only a repressed paleontologist, she's a repressed lesbian, who has a love affair with co-star Sir Sharonan's character. The story bends history to modern sensibilities.

There's no evidence the affair ever happened. It felt as though pairing Mary with a woman who had a similar sensibility to her in terms of how they viewed the world, it felt worthy of Mary. I feel the lack of same-sex love stories in our mainstream and I often feel that the narratives are underpinned by fear, secrecy and shame.

And I think that in Ammonite, it's about two people who fall in love and the fact that they are both women is very much secondary to that. Winslet has been promoting her film Close to Home because of COVID travel restrictions, a socially distanced walk along the beach, an interview in an open-sided converted barn. She's kind of hoping things may have changed forever. I do definitely feel that we're all doing our bit for the environment in terms of not flying here, there and everywhere. I mean, you know, you would be flying everywhere interviewing people and it does definitely make one feel just that little bit better about just walking across the lawn and not having to pump so much crap into the atmosphere. Well, are we in a place now where you think, wait a minute, I don't have to fly to New York to do the late night talk show.

Yeah, I mean, in the good old days, you know, I remember getting on a plane, going and doing Letterman, turning around, getting on a plane and coming straight home again. And I do think those days probably are a little bit gone because it has actually been working. Actually, because of another twist of movie-making fate, Winslet saw this pandemic thing coming. We're isolating the sick and quarantining those who we believe were exposed.

She had a major role in the 2011 film Contagion, where an imaginary virus runs rampant. In 72 hours, we'll know what it is, if we're lucky. Clearly, we're not lucky. When this thing first happened, did you think this is life imitating art? Yeah, I absolutely did. I was wearing a mask long before any of my friends who thought I was just crazy. People were like, hey, you're scaring us. I'd say, guys, it's coming. It's coming, please. Here's a mask, here's a mask.

Yeah, here's some spray. Ammonite was shot B.C. before COVID, as we now measure time. Like everyone else, Winslet wonders if that kind of life will ever return. It does feel far away, you know, even just having a glass of wine in the hair and makeup trailer with, you know, the girls at the end of the week. I can't fathom a world where that would be possible. Let alone the pub.

Let alone a pub, which is devastating. That one was special. Kate Winslet's part in Ammonite is the type of strong, complex character she's drawn to lately. Fix it or I quit, how about that? It follows on from roles like Joanna Hoffman, Steve Jobs' assistant and conscience in the 2015 movie Steve Jobs. I called the Wall Street Journal to take out a full page out for today. And do you know what their sales guy said? Why bother?

It'd be like notifying Macy's that tomorrow is Christmas. It goes back further to her Oscar-winning depiction of Nazi concentration camp guard Hannah Schmitz in 2008's The Reader. I was just one of the gods. She was in charge. It was her idea. Of course she was. Did you write the report?

No, no. We all discussed what to say. We all, we all wrote it together. It's all a long way from that movie about that doomed big boat. This is where we first met.

In which she splashed into the big time. When I did Titanic, I turned 21 on that film. 21.

That's a year older than my daughter who hasn't left home yet. So I was still learning who I was and I was learning about the craft. And I was really scared. I wasn't supposed to be famous. I wasn't meant to be talked about and lauded and feted and have these offers made to me by big studios.

Instead, she chose her own path. There was a lot of, are you sure? I mean, you know, these moments might not come around again. You know, are you really sure? Yeah, I'm sure. I'll make that tiny movie in Marrakesh that no one's going to see. I'm good with that.

That's paid off. You know, I think it pays to be true to yourself, but I'm definitely at a time in my life where I really do feel very strongly about telling stories of unsung heroines and also playing my part in ensuring that women aren't objectified on film as much as I feel they perhaps have been. Do you think it's changed in the old Hollywood bromide? You know, there are no parts for aging women. I'm not saying you're aging, but... Well, I am aging. Well, we're all aging.

Yeah, that's fine. It's part of life. But you're demonstrating that, in fact, there are if they're women of substance. Listen, put it this way. They are certainly harder to find than the great roles for men. Because the backers won't back it to the same extent.

Because you won't have the same size budget that you would if it were your male counterpart playing that leading role. That is just the case. Won all the awards. Oh my god. You've made all the money. What have you got to prove from here on? What do you have to do? I don't know if it's necessarily a feeling of wanting to prove something. But I just always want to be doing this job. I just love it. I absolutely love acting.

I love it more as the years go by. And I'm the most unlikely version of this. You know, I didn't have anyone giving me a leg up. I didn't have any special training or tips or tricks or ways in the back door.

I didn't have any of that. So what do you put it down to? Bloody minded determination.

Gotta be good to be lucky. Yeah, you just do the work. Just put your head down, do the work. And also don't expect that the world owes you anything. And mistakes are great.

Make the mistakes and learn from them and just keep going. It turns out keeping the magic of childhood alive in these COVID times is good medicine. Opinion from our Dr. John Lapook. Will Santa still be able to visit me in coronavirus this season? During a year full of questions from our children. What if he can't go to anyone's house or near his reindeer? Grownups around the world have understood that embracing science doesn't mean abandoning the magic of childhood.

I took a trip up there to the North Pole. I went there and I vaccinated Santa Claus myself. He can come down the chimney. He can leave the presents.

He can leave and you have nothing to worry about. Last spring, as she implemented nationwide restrictions that successfully controlled the spread of COVID-19, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern addressed issues that were troubling her youngest constituents. You'll be pleased to know that we do consider both the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny to be essential workers. And just last month in Prince George in Western Canada, Vice Principal Shandi Whitehead faced a tooth fairy crisis when five-year-old Gavin Jensen lost his front tooth twice. So I don't know if it fell backwards or forwards. We were looking for it when I was outside.

When I went into the classroom, he was actually quite upset. We looked on the ceiling. We looked on the ground. We looked left.

We looked right. Since the pandemic began, our kids have had to put up with a lot of change, which makes it more important than ever for them to know there are some things they can always take to the bank. So like Mary Poppins, Well, first things first. Whitehead reached into her magical bag of tricks and pulled out a form letter to the tooth fairy that a parent had given her two years earlier. I was confirming that it was actually lost.

She wrote on official school stationery, despite the heroic efforts of a fearless search team, we were unable to recover it. As a trained vice principal and hobby dentist, I can verify that there is definitely a gap in Gavin's teeth that was not there this morning when he came in. Please accept this letter as official verification of a lost tooth and provide the standard monetary exchange rate you normally use for a real tooth. When I woke up in the morning, the tooth fairy actually did came, and I got the coin. It was a golden and silver one.

Whitehead ended her letter with a P.S. I am still waiting for the money for my wisdom teeth from 2000. Please pay as soon as possible. I have bills to pay.

My wisdom teeth pulled and I didn't get anything. A sweet reminder that in keeping magic alive for our children, we're also keeping it alive for ourselves. We leave you this Sunday in, yes, Valentine, Nebraska, at the Fort Niobrara National Wildlife Refuge, a stopover for trumpeter swans. Thank you for listening.

Please join us when our trumpet sounds again next Sunday morning. This is The Takeout with Major Garrett. This week, Stephen Law, ally of Mitch McConnell and one of Washington's biggest midterm money men. List for me the two Senate races where you think Republicans have the best chance of taking a Democratic seat away. Nevada, New Hampshire. Not Georgia. Well, Georgia's right up there, but New Hampshire is a surprise. In New Hampshire, people really just kind of don't like Maggie Hassan. For more from this week's conversation, follow The Takeout with Major Garrett on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.