On Our "Virtual Route 66" : On Our World (Final Month-End Edition)

 

Friday, July 18, was Mandela Day.   Our team chose this to headline our final July edition of our "Virtual Route 66" here in our Perspective Channels to pay homage to Madiba and to embrace this call to action as we hope to live up to his admonition to make peace and build.    

We present the following snapshot on our World courtesy the team at The Economist, The Guardian, Defense Now, Dropsite News, Heather Cox Richardson, and closing thoughts courtesy Professor Scott Galloway (aka Prof G): 

 

PHOTO: getty images

Oliver Jones News editor

Good morning. In today’s edition: America reaches a trade deal with Indonesia, Nvidia’s boss lauds Chinese AI in Beijing and a fossilised dinosaur skeleton goes under the hammer in New York. Elsewhere in The Economist: war, geopolitics, energy crisis—foreign-policy types talk of an age of unprecedented disorder. Yet the global economy evades every disaster. A new form of capitalism may explain its success.

Today’s top stories

Donald Trump said he had reached a deal with Indonesia in which its exports to America will face a tariff of 19%, while American goods going the other way will not be taxed. Mr Trump also said Indonesia had agreed to buy American energy, agricultural goods and Boeing jets. Last week America’s president threatened Indonesia with a 32% levy.

Inflation in America accelerated in June. Consumer prices rose by 2.7% compared with a year ago; in May they were up by 2.4%. Core inflation, which excludes volatile food and energy prices, was 2.9%. Firms have begun paying the tariffs imposed by the Trump administration, and appear to be starting to pass the higher prices on to consumers.

Meanwhile Jamie Dimon, boss of JPMorgan Chase, the world’s biggest bank, called the Federal Reserve’s independence “absolutely vital”, as the Trump administration heaped pressure on its chair, Jerome Powell. On Tuesday Scott Bessent, America’s treasury secretary, said the search had already begun to find a replacement for Mr Powell, whose term ends in May.

Thousands of Afghans have been secretly resettled in Britain since 2023, according to court documents made public on Tuesday. In 2022 a British official accidentally leaked the personal information of 19,000 Afghans seeking to move to Britain after the Taliban regained control of the country. About 4,500 were relocated under a scheme set up by the previous British government.

Thinking Machines Lab, a buzzy AI startup founded by Mira Murati, raised $2bn in new capital, valuing the firm at $12bn. Ms Murati has recruited an impressive roster of researchers from OpenAI, where she was previously chief technology officer. That helped to persuade Nvidia and AMD, two giant chipmakers, to invest, even though the firm currently lacks much of a strategy (or revenue).

A ceasefire collapsed between Syrian government forces and armed groups linked to the country’s Druze minority. The agreement was brokered on Tuesday; the Sunni-led government had deployed troops to Syria’s south to quell sectarian violence between the Druze and Sunni Bedouin tribes. Israel struck government forces and warned it would escalate its strikes if Syrian troops do not withdraw from near its border.

France’s prime minister, François Bayrou, proposed scrapping two national holidays in a bid to slash national debt. Other suggested cost-cutting measures, worth €43.8bn ($50.9bn), included a new tax on the rich and freezing welfare payments. But Mr Bayrou’s plans may be scuppered: he is likely to face a no-confidence vote this autumn. France’s budget deficit is the widest in the euro area.

From the war in Ukraine to rising tensions between China and America, military stories are reshaping the world. Sign up to the War Room newsletter for our world-class coverage of defence and international security.

Figure of the day: 15%, how much internet-search traffic is estimated to have fallen in the year to June as users increasingly turned to AI chatbots. Read the full story.

The day ahead

A turning point in the chip wars ALAMY For several years America has tightened its chokehold on advanced semiconductor technology reaching China. Not only have presidents Joe Biden and Donald Trump banned sales of the chips that China needs to power artificial-intelligence computation (namely those made by Nvidia, an American tech giant) but also much of the equipment needed to manufacture comparable kit within China. In late May Mr Trump added EDA, a type of software needed to design chips, to the growing list of restricted products. But the mood may be changing. This month the Trump administration reversed the EDA ban. On Monday Nvidia said it had received permission from the government to resume sales of H 20 chips, a type of AI semiconductor that the firm had specifically designed to comply with restrictions on exports to China. Jensen Huang, Nvidia’s boss, spoke at a supply-chain expo in Beijing on Wednesday. He praised Chinese AI models—and “constructive and positive discussions” over export controls between America’s and China’s governments.

How the EU will spend its budget ALAMY The European Union’s annual budget, 1% of the bloc’s GDP, is a rare case of spending that member states do together. Ideally, it would go towards things that the bloc can provide better than individual countries can, such as common security, cross-border infrastructure or large-scale innovation. Instead, the EU splurges about a third on wasteful farming subsidies. It also spends another third on measures to narrow economic disparities between regions. On Wednesday the European Commission will present its first proposal for the next budget, to be spent from 2028 to 2034. Advocates of change will be disappointed. The EU will continue to spend the largest chunks on agriculture and regional redistribution. But the commission will make more of that spending conditional on reform, and reserve more money for defending the bloc’s eastern frontier. That would be modest progress. But getting 27 countries to agree on money isn’t easy.

K-pop’s hitmaker faces scandal REUTERS Now that the baby-faced members of BTS have finished their military service, the South Korean boy band is set for a comeback next year. That will delight both its fans and its label, HYBE. Yet a troubling story is unfolding behind the scenes. Regulators have accused HYBE’s chairman, Bang Si-hyuk (pictured)—known as “Hitman” Bang—of stock fraud. They claim that he misled early investors in HYBE about the company’s plans to go public, which it did in 2020, and secretly pocketed nearly $300m. He denies the allegations. On Wednesday South Korea’s financial regulator will decide whether to refer the case to prosecutors. Mr Bang is more than a businessman. A composer and songwriter, he helped create BTS ’s sound and turned K-pop into a global export. If found guilty, he could face a life sentence. But few expect him to serve time. Like the heads of chaebol—South Korea’s family-run conglomerates, whose leaders often receive presidential pardons for wrongdoing or bail—he may prove “too big to jail”.

A bull market for dinosaur fossils MATTHEW SHERMAN With its legs posed mid-prance and its jaws flashing a toothy grin, Sotheby’s latest lot looks rather like it might have done darting across America’s West some 150m years ago, albeit shorn of flesh and scales. The fossilised skeleton of Ceratosaurus nasicornus, named for the dainty horn on its nose, was unearthed in Wyoming in 1996. It is one of the most complete and well-preserved of its kind. When it is auctioned in New York on Wednesday, it is expected to fetch $4m-6m. In 1993 “Jurassic Park”, a blockbuster film, kicked off a booming trade in dinosaur fossils . The craze has had a fat, sauropod-like tail. Purchases by collectors such as Ken Griffin, a hedge-fund baron, have sent prices soaring. Last year Mr Griffin paid $44.6m for a Stegosaurus, the most expensive fossil ever. Sotheby’s Ceratosaurus is a less imposing beast. Still, its steep asking price suggests the market for dead monsters is very much alive.

Today’s headlines Trump sues Wall Street Journal and Rupert Murdoch over Epstein report Escalating unrest in Syria lays bare new regime’s momentous challenges ‘Japanese-first’ Sanseito party goes into election leveraging unease about foreigners Company says investigation under way into footage of couple at Coldplay gig Trump says 10 Israeli hostages to be released from Gaza ‘very shortly’ My picks In comments that reverberated around the world, former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert told Emma Graham-Harrison, the Guardian’s Jerusalem correspondent, that the Israeli government’s proposals to force the population of Gaza into a camp in Rafah would be ethnic cleansing and that the proposed “humanitarian city” would be a “concentration camp” for Palestinians. Separately Juliette Garside, Manisha Ganguly and Ariane Lavrilleu revealed how profits generated by the US arm of European missile group MBDA for bombs that have killed children in Gaza are being routed through the UK. Writing from inside Gaza, Nour Abo Aisha explained what she believes is driving the plans. On Monday, we also ran Ruaridh Nicoll’s sobering interview with the anonymous author of the Guardian’s Gaza diaries, who talked about the life that has vanished in the last 21 months. And our editorial on Tuesday reflected on the killing of six Palestinian children – and four adults – as they queued for water in a refugee camp: “The children of Gaza have the same rights as children anywhere – to water, to food, to shelter, to education, to play, to hope, to joy. To life. Yet on Sunday, Israel killed Abdullah Yasser Ahmed, Badr al-Din Qarman, Siraj Khaled Ibrahim, Ibrahim Ashraf Abu Urayban, Karam Ashraf al-Ghussein and Lana Ashraf al-Ghussein. They were children. They were loved.” Following Donald Trump’s abrupt about-face on supplying weapons to Ukraine, while making other Nato countries pay for them, Luke Harding was in Kyiv where he found there was still some confusion around exactly what the US president had agreed to send. Luke also spoke to people in the city who are exhausted and searching for normality amid a massive increase in the number of Russian missile and drone attacks. In the US, Adam Gabbatt has been closely following the Epstein files fallout which is unfolding into a political crisis for the Trump administration. Our helpful timeline explained how and when the backlash began, and how tensions have escalated this week. Jonathan Freedland discussed the intra-Maga war on Politics Weekly America. From an Osaka baseball stadium stifling in the summer heat, Justin McCurry reported on how global warming is threatening grassroots sport in Japan, with warnings that by 2060 temperatures will reach levels high enough to prevent children from taking part in outdoor games. Damian Carrington covered a new analysis showing that record-breaking extreme weather is now the new norm in the UK. We continue to expose the countries and corporations driving the crisis: this week we launched a series looking at the planet’s 10 biggest emitters, introduced by this piece from Fiona Harvey about how to negotiate with autocracies. Science editor Ian Sample reported that eight healthy babies have now been born in the UK following a groundbreaking procedure that creates IVF embryos with DNA from three people. Ian was the first to report the first birth in May 2023. As artificial intelligence reshapes the jobs market, we spoke to UK graduates who are competing with thousands applying for the same job with almost the same CV. We spoke to recruiters for their advice on how to stand out from the crowd and explored the impact on the economy. In another enjoyable week of sport, Wimbledon ended with some contrasting finals and some fine writing from, among others, Tumaini Carayol on Jannik Sinner’s victory over Carlos Alcaraz and Jonathan Liew on the pain of Amanda Anisimova’s double-bagel defeat to Iga Świątek. At the women’s Euros, England fans were put through the wringer during the Lionesses’ dramatic win on penalties against Sweden. Jonathan described the team’s shift from shambles to euphoria. Suzanne Wrack summed up the tournament so far (mostly good), while Tom Garry broke the news that Olivia Smith is being signed by Arsenal from Liverpool to become the first £1m player in women’s football. And Gerard Meagher reported on the pride of British Nigerians at Maro Itoje’s ascent to the captaincy of the British & Irish Lions. I enjoyed Simon Hattenstone’s prickly but wildly entertaining encounter with British TV personality Janet Street-Porter; Prianka Srinivasan and Carly Earl’s trip to the remote Cook Islands in the South Pacific, a nation caught in the geopolitical contest between China and the west; Charlotte Higgins’s interview with director Mstyslav Chernov about his astonishing follow-up to the Oscar-winning 20 Days in Mariupol, which was filmed in the trenches using a bodycam; and Tory Shepherd on the remarkable survival story of German backpacker Carolina Wilga, who was found after 11 nights lost in the Australian outback. As is often the case, our lifestyle section was full of indispensable life advice. Well Actually had a fun set of articles on the joys of ageing (including pieces on the benefits of co-housing and the joy of later-life video gaming). Joel Snape asked experts for the best ways to cope with a bad night’s sleep; we also explored the travails of holidaying-while-vegan; looked at the dirtiest items in your house; and tried to answer the thorny question of when you can invite yourself along to an event. The Guide, our weekly pop culture newsletter written by Gwilym Mumford, marked its 200th edition on Friday with a detailed look at the movies, music, podcasts, art and more that have shaped the 21st century so far. It’s a fascinating journey from Big Brother to All Fours via World of Warcraft and the White House correspondents’ dinner – do sign up if you don’t receive it already. Finally, our Long reads section featured two absolutely unmissable pieces this week. The first was top French writer Emmanuel Carrère’s funny and revealing profile of Emmanuel Macron, based on three days he spent with the French president last month in Greenland and at the G7 in Canada. The second was a gripping piece of court reporting by Sophie Elmhirst, who followed the chaotic scenes at the retrial of Constance Marten and Mark Gordon, who were found guilty at the Old Bailey this week of the manslaughter of their two-week-old baby. One more thing … I have a close family member who is living with a devastating form of dementia, and I find it hard to read about. But this article in the New York Times by Lynn Casteel Harper – We May Soon Be Telling a Very Different Kind of Story about Dementia – stopped me in my tracks and matched my experience. “I have seen up close that dementia is not just a decline unto death,” she writes. “It can also involve ascendant humor, compassion and connections beyond the strictly rational.” Today’s top features ‘The ghost of Epstein is haunting Trump’s presidency’: inside the ‘Maga’ revolt Killing of young siblings at Gaza water point shows seeking life’s essentials now a deadly peril My message to the Lions: own the experience and convert it into your fuel | Ugo Monye

Heather Cox Richardson Jul 17 After years of covering Donald J. Trump, I am used to seeing stories that would have sunk any other president simply fade away as he hammers on to some new unprecedented action that dominates the news. So I am surprised by what appears to be the staying power of the recent Jeffrey Epstein scandal. That Trump is panicked by the threat of the release of material concerning convicted sex abuser Jeffrey Epstein seems very clear. After the backlash against the Department of Justice’s decision not to release any more information and to reiterate that Epstein died by suicide, Trump tried first to downplay Epstein’s importance and convince people to move on. When that blew up, he posted a long screed on social media last Saturday saying the files were written by Democrats and other supposed enemies of his. This morning, Trump posted another long message on social media blaming “Radical Left Democrats” for creating the story of the Epstein files. “Their new SCAM is what we will forever call the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax,” he wrote, and then he turned on his own supporters for demanding the administration release the files. “[M]y PAST supporters have bought into this ’bullsh*t,’ hook, line, and sinker. They haven’t learned their lesson, and probably never will, even after being conned by the Lunatic Left for 8 long years. I have had more success in 6 months than perhaps any President in our Country’s history, and all these people want to talk about, with strong prodding by the Fake News and the success starved Dems, is the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax. Let these weaklings continue forward and do the Democrats work, don’t even think about talking of our incredible and unprecedented success, because I don’t want their support anymore! Thank you for your attention to this matter. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!” Tellingly, Trump compared “the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax” to “the Russia, Russia, Russia Scam itself, a totally fake and made up story used in order to hide Crooked Hillary Clinton’s big loss in the 2016 Presidential Election.” But of course, the ties between the 2016 Trump campaign and Russian operatives and Russian interference in the 2016 election were not a hoax: they were well established both by Special Counsel Robert Mueller—a Republican—and by the Republican-dominated Senate Intelligence Committee. Ever since his campaign’s ties to Russia first came to light, Trump has hammered on the idea that the investigation was a hoax, not just to distance himself from potentially illegal behavior but also because if he could get his followers to reject the truth and accept his lies about what had happened, they would be psychologically committed to him. Although thirty-four people and three companies were indicted or pleaded guilty in the attack on the 2016 election or its cover-up, Trump loyalists believed Trump was a victim of a “deep state” run by Democrats. Trump had successfully marketed his own narrative over the truth, and his supporters would continue to believe him rather than those calling him out. From then on, whenever in danger of being called out, he harked back to “Russia, Russia, Russia” and “the Russian hoax” to rally supporters to him. Once again, he is reaching back to “Russia, Russia, Russia” to reinforce his ability to control the narrative. But this time it does not appear to be working. As Jay Kuo outlined in The Status Kuo today, Trump owes his 2024 victory to QAnon followers, who believe a cabal of Democratic lawmakers, rich elites, and Hollywood film stars are sex trafficking—and even eating—children. PRRI, a nonpartisan nonprofit organization that researches religion, culture, and politics, estimated that in 2024, about 19% of Americans believed in QAnon. CNN chief data analyst Harry Enten noted yesterday that QAnon supporters preferred Trump to Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024 by 61 points. More broadly, Enten noted that Trump’s political career has depended on conspiracy theorists, from his 2016 support from those who believed Trump’s “birther” charges that President Barack Obama wasn’t born in the United States, to his 2024 primary support from those who believed President Joe Biden did not win the 2020 presidential election legitimately. Those supporters followed Trump because they believed he was leading a secret charge against those child sex traffickers. Now that his administration says it will not release any more information about Epstein’s files, they appear to feel betrayed. Trump seems to be in full panic mode over the idea that information from the Epstein investigation might come to light. He and Epstein were friends, frequently photographed together in the years of Epstein’s operation. After turning on his former supporters on social media, Trump continued his attacks in an Oval Office meeting today, reiterating his claims that the Epstein files were written by Democrats. But then he continued to attack his own supporters, saying that “stupid Republicans,” “foolish Republicans,” and “stupid people” had fallen for the Democrats’ Epstein hoax and were demanding the release of the files. Billionaire Elon Musk, Trump’s sidekick in the White House before the two fell out, has been hammering on the issue to his 222 million followers on his social media platform X. “He should just release the files and point out which part is the hoax,” Musk wrote. Trump’s political success has stemmed in large part from his projection of dominance, and perhaps part of supporters’ willingness to cut ties to him comes from his recent behavior, which projects confusion. On Saturday, at the FIFA Club World Cup trophy ceremony, Trump seemed to miss the signal that he should leave the stage as the winning team celebrated, and had to be maneuvered behind the players. Yesterday he fell asleep on stage at the Pennsylvania Energy and Innovation Summit. At the same event, Trump told what CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale called “an especially odd imaginary tale,” claiming that his uncle, a MIT professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, had taught Ted Kaczynski, better known as the Unabomber. Trump recounted a conversation with his uncle about Kaczynski, but in fact Kaczynski didn’t go to MIT, and Trump’s uncle John died more than a decade before Kaczynski became famous, so Trump and his uncle could not have identified him as the Unabomber. Today, Trump called chair of the Federal Reserve Jerome Powell a “terrible Fed chair” and added: “I was surprised he was appointed.” Trump was the president who appointed him. Finally, today Trump’s Department of Justice fired longtime employee Maurene Comey, who had prosecuted Jeffrey Epstein and his associate Ghislaine Maxwell. To bring things full circle, Maurene Comey is the daughter of James Comey, the Republican former director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, whom Trump fired for refusing to drop the FBI investigation into ties between Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russian operatives. — Notes: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-jeffrey-epstein-question-this-creep/ Donald J. Trump, Truth Social post, July 12, 2025, 5:21 p.m. https://prri.org/spotlight/the-rise-and-impact-of-q-the-2024-election-from-the-view-of-qanon-believers/ https://meidasnews.com/news/trump-called-his-supporters-stupid-people-for-demanding-the-epstein-files https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jul/17/trump-administration-news-today-epstein-latest-musk https://www.cnn.com/2025/07/14/sport/donald-trump-club-world-cup-final-chelsea-psg-spt https://www.independent.co.uk/tv/news/trump-sleep-energy-innovation-ai-summit-pittsburgh-video-b2790151.html https://www.cnn.com/2025/07/16/politics/fact-check-trump-uncle-unabomber https://www.politico.com/news/2025/07/16/maurene-comey-fired-doj-00458921 Elon Musk, X post, July 16, 2025, 2:01 p.m. The Status Kuo Will It Cost Them Politically? The Epstein matter is becoming a huge problem for Trump, and none of his usual tricks is working… Read more 15 hours ago · 687 likes · 122 comments · Jay Kuo   The Army’s 25th Infantry Division is switching out Howitzers for HIMARS in Hawaii. A new long-range precision fires capability is heading to the Army’s Indo-Pacific stronghold, the commander of the 25th Infantry Division told reporters Tuesday. It’s part of the Army’s transformation initiative to divest of old technology and field more powerful systems across the service, Defense One’s Meghann Myers reports.   What’s new: The division’s artillery brigade is preparing to integrate 16 High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems over the next six weeks, said Maj. Gen. Marcus Evans. Their first system arrived Monday. Background: The HIMARS move shot to the top of the list once the Pentagon released its interim national defense strategy earlier this year, as a signal to China and U.S. allies that the Army is committed to having its most powerful equipment in the Indo-Pacific, Myers writes. The division will test the effectiveness of its new addition at a Joint Pacific Multinational Training Center rotation this fall, alongside new infantry squad vehicles and reconnaissance drones. More, here.  Related reading: “The Army wants an artillery system that can run offense and defense,” Myers reported separately on Wednesday.    Developing: As part of plans to cut back on general officers, the Navy may soon drop about a half dozen admirals who help build ships, Politico reported Wednesday. That means potentially eliminating “three-star positions atop the five major commands—Naval Sea, Naval Air, Naval Information Warfare, Naval Facilities Engineering and Naval Supply,” Paul McLeary and Jack Detsch write. “This would remove experts intimately involved in designing, developing and acquiring new ships and submarines at a time when all of the service’s shipbuilding programs are facing significant delays,” they add.  Second opinion: “The systems commands do make some sense for reducing the officer ranks,” especially instead of reductions at combat units, former Naval officer Bryan Clark told Politico. Read more, here.    Meanwhile, in Detroit, Navy Secretary John Phelan addressed a room full of tech startups and investors, calling on them to help jumpstart American manufacturing on Wednesday. “While the Motor City is known for building the trucks, engines, aircraft and machinery that propelled the free world to victory in World War II, I am here today to ask for your help in an effort equally as noble, one inextricably linked to the reindustrialization in the United States—that's restoring American shipbuilding and the broader maritime industrial base,” Phelan said during a keynote at the Reindustrialize conference.  On site: The former businessman stressed the need for fast tech adoption to keep pace with changing warfare, reports Defense One’s Lauren C. Williams with more to come. “We need to adopt things quicker. We need to learn how to test things faster…These are all things we need to get better at, because the speed is very different,” he said. “It's not that we're at war, but we should behave much more like we're constantly being tested.”

The way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth upon them. Ida B. Wells “Humiliation and Helplessness”: Sectarian Violence Continues Unabated in Syria as Israel Strikes Damascus Over 500 fighters and civilians were killed during four days of fighting between the Syrian government, Israel, Druze militias, and Bedouin tribes in Sweida, Syria. Murtaza Hussain Jul 17 My go-to historical frame of reference is World War II. At a staggering global cost of 85 million lives, the Second World War was the crucible of the 20th century — an explosion of unfathomable destruction, followed by an unparalleled period of (unevenly distributed) peace and prosperity. As I’m a catastrophist, I’m hard-wired to dwell on the first part, and take the second part for granted. Also, World War II, specifically the European theater, is personal. As a kid, my father and his friends kept tabs on people with foreign accents, believing they were tracking Nazi spies in their hometown of Glasgow.  When the war ended, Dad was 15 — three years away from being deployed to the front. My Jewish mother narrowly escaped the horrors of the Holocaust. She found relative safety sheltering in the London tube during the Blitz. Had the Allies not stood their ground, my mom’s life could have ended with a train ride, and you’d be reading something else. So many of us don’t appreciate how much of our success isn’t our fault. Last week, I wrote that masked agents in fatigues raiding churches, schools, and workplaces and separating families without due process is not modern America, but 1930s Europe. We’ve seen this movie before — it doesn’t end well. History, however, isn’t a single-screen theater, but a multiplex of outcomes. I recently spoke with historian Heather Cox Richardson, who is remarkable. While we share a diagnosis of the present, professor Richardson is an optimist and an Americanist. Comparing the present — what I call our slow burn into fascism — to previous periods of instability in American history, Richardson says, “I’m not convinced that the outcome is going to be a dictatorship. It could just as easily be that the outcome is a renewed American democracy. But it’s going to be messy, either way.” The question isn’t whether she is correct but rather, what can we learn from American history, specifically the 1850s and 1890s? Crisis of the 1850s At the beginning of the 1850s, American slaveholders were undefeated. They had the political capital to expand the fugitive slave laws, requiring law enforcement throughout the U.S. to aid in the arrest of runaways. If that sounds like it rhymes with today’s battles over sanctuary cities and the federalization of the California National Guard, trust your instincts. In 1855 free-staters and pro-slavery forces, egged on by national political leaders, clashed in a Civil War sneak preview called Bleeding Kansas. A year later, a pro-slavery senator attacked an abolitionist one, Charles Sumner, with a cane, nearly beating him to death on the Senate floor. If rhetoric leading to political violence reminds you of what currently passes for presidential leadership, again, trust your instincts. And for contemporary parallels of political violence, see: January 6, Charlottesville, Gretchen Whitmer, Josh Shapiro, Paul Pelosi, Steve Scalise, the attacks on state legislators in Minnesota, and the attempted assassination of Donald Trump. As Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski recently said, “We are all afraid.” Given our history, that’s common sense. As the 1850s neared their end, slaveholders appeared invincible. In a distant echo of today’s court battles over birthright citizenship, the Supreme Court ruled in Dred Scott that Black Americans, whether free or slaves, couldn’t be U.S. citizens. Two years later, abolitionist John Brown led a Hail Mary raid on the U.S. arsenal at Harper’s Ferry, intending to ignite a nationwide slave revolt. Federal military forces under the command of Colonel Robert E. Lee put down what contemporary accounts called an insurrection. At the time, Brown’s failed raid was a low point for abolitionists, but in retrospect it may have represented the high-water mark of pro-slave power in U.S. politics. Within a few years, a previously unthinkable coalition of unionists (many of whom held deeply racist views) and abolitionists had formed around Lincoln’s Republican Party, won a war to preserve the union, freed the slaves, launched Reconstruction, and set America on the path of industrialization. The Gilded Age There’s a reason many contemporary scholars are talking about a new Gilded Age. The period between 1870 and 1900, similar to our era, was defined by extreme inequality, the corporate capture of government, corruption, and widespread distrust in institutions. Today the robber barons have rebranded as tech bros. Boss Tweed and the Tammany Hall machine have been reborn as Trump’s meme coin — a pay-for-play crypto scheme operating out of the Oval Office. The fear that Congress and the courts work for corporations and the wealthy … remains a constant.  Reformers offer another parallel. The trust-busters of the Gilded Age had Teddy Roosevelt, who took on monopolies in railroads, sugar, and oil. We have Lina Kahn working to regulate digital monopolies that dictate the terms of commerce and preside over a broken information ecosystem. Leveraging distrust of Republicans and Democrats, the short-lived Populist Party of the 1890s demanded the direct election of senators, progressive taxation, and labor protections. Andrew Yang, who consistently loses elections but wins arguments, has championed reforms, notably the universal basic income and ranked choice voting. Zohran Mamdani, a progressive beneficiary of ranked choice voting, echoes William Jennings Bryan’s slogan, “Plutocracy is abhorrent to the Republic,” when he talks about “halalflation.” Reformers and their demands change throughout our history, but they share a common theme of fighting for the little guy against monied interests. False Prophets American history is a competition between two visions of governance, according to professor Richardson. Either we’re a society where people are equal under the law and have a say in their government, or we’re a society where elites have the right to rule and concentrate wealth, as they’re simply better than everyone else. At this moment, I’d argue that the 1% are protected by the law but not bound by it, and the bottom 99% are bound by the law but not protected by it. In the Gilded Age, Andrew Carnegie personified the elite. An immigrant who made his fortune in steel during the early years of American industrialization, Carnegie initially credited his adopted country with his success. Later, however, Carnegie argued he was self-made, insisting he had a right to concentrate wealth in his hands, as he was the best steward for society. Elon Musk, also an immigrant, built his first fortune on internet infrastructure financed by American taxpayers. He built his second fortune jump-starting the electric car industry, financed once again by billions in subsidies.  Somewhere along the way, he became convinced he was humanity’s savior. For Musk, anyone who stands in the way of anointing him First Friend and/or (unelected) president is an enemy of the state. The most fortunate among us have replaced patriotism with techno-karenism. Daniel Kahneman found that, above a certain threshold, money offers no incremental increase in one’s happiness. However, there’s evidence everywhere that men who aggregate billions from technology firms become infected by an inexplicable sense of aggrievance.   Our idolatry of wealth makes Americans vulnerable to men like Carnegie and Musk. As the citizens of a country predicated on the dream of economic prosperity, Americans conflate wealth with leadership. The bottom 90% tolerate — even celebrate — a Hunger Games economy, where the rich live long, remarkable lives and everyone else dies a slow death. Why? Because each of us believes we’ll eventually reach the top. That belief isn’t optimism but opium, and it keeps the bottom 90% from realizing they’re essentially nutrition for the top 10%. Private jet owners can now accelerate the depreciation on their plane(s), but we’re stripping healthcare from millions of people. Does that make any fucking sense? Antidote One common protest slogan in the Trump era is “This is not who we are.” I agree, but as a student of history I know that’s incomplete. A more accurate slogan: “This isn’t who we want to be.” Richardson says our model should be Abraham Lincoln, who navigated through a period of political instability and violence and renewed American democracy by appealing to the values expressed in the Declaration of Independence. This Independence Day, Richardson wrote about the men who signed America’s founding document. They risked everything they had to defend the idea of human equality — an idea that’s been America’s work in progress since 1776.   “Ever since then, Americans have sacrificed their own fortunes, honor, and even their lives, for that principle. Lincoln reminded Civil War Americans of those sacrifices when he urged the people of his era to ‘take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth.’” I find it difficult to see optimism in Lincoln’s story (see catastrophist). After he won the bloodiest war in American history, an assassin’s bullet robbed him of the opportunity to shape the peace. But at Gettysburg, just a few months after a pivotal battle where tens of thousands of Americans gave the last full measure of devotion, Lincoln appealed to American values as well as the American people. Then as now, the ball is in our court. “I’m not ready to give up on America,” Richardson told me. “We’ve renewed our democracy in the past, and we have the tools to do it again.” The Hard Part None of us knows how this moment will turn out. Perhaps that’s the point. But previous generations of reformers who renewed American democracy didn’t have the luxury of hindsight or guarantees, either. They had only the present moment and a choice: retreat into cynicism or push forward into the messy, uncertain work of democracy. Susan B. Anthony faced decades of ridicule and arrest. Martin Luther King’s dream must’ve seemed impossible from his Birmingham jail cell. Delores Huerta and Cesar Chavez organized immigrant farmworkers who had every reason to believe the system would never change. Harvey Milk knew visibility meant vulnerability in a hostile world. What they shared wasn’t optimism, but the willingness to act as if democracy could be renewed even when the evidence suggested otherwise.  My mother survived the Blitz because the Allies refused to give fascists the satisfaction of her fear; my father spent his youth tracking imaginary Nazi spies and joined the Royal Navy as freedom felt worth protecting. Democracy survives the same way it always has — not because the outcome is guaranteed, but because ordinary people decide it’s worth the risk. Resist. Life is so rich,