I went to Arlington, VA, to moderate competitions in history and other subjects for high school students. My first round went poorly, as I switched between screens reading questions and keeping score electronically with a system I’d never used, while pressing a button on a buzzer device. “What the fuck?” I said several times, staring at my laptop while the students waited for me to figure out what I was doing.
The trip enabled some time to visit Washington. I put too much money into SmarTrip, an app for buying rides on the D.C. Metro, thinking I could just pass the phone back to my son and his friend as we went through the turnstile. Not designed that way. We went to the Library of Congress for a timed-entry visit. Then we stopped at the Supreme Court, not sure what might be accessible there. We lucked out, arriving just in time for a lecture, by a court staffer, inside the courtroom, where I’d never been before. The room was a little smaller than I expected, and the justices’ chairs less elevated; many visitors apparently are similarly surprised. In the Q&A, I didn’t ask the lecturer what the Supreme Court’s options are when its orders are flouted by a criminal regime.
Nearby, we had to wait for a motorcade to pass by. To my surprise the VIP’s car flew a Ukrainian flag. The motorcade seemed too big to be just an ambassador. Was Volodymyr Zelensky back in town, to listen to more diatribes from Donald Trump and J.D. Vance in the Oval Office? I hoped not. Arguing with people who say the same thing again and again is a waste of time.
A lawyer for a regulatory agency, who’s a parent I’ve met at academic competitions, told me that morale is terrible in his and other federal agencies; people are heading for the exits even at once-prized workplaces, such as the Office of the Solicitor General. Another parent, living in Maryland, said his neighborhood has many scientists whose research depends on NIH grants; their levels of stress have skyrocketed. At Scientific American, my colleague Megha Satyanarayana aptly describes how the Trump administration’s undermining American science, through budget cuts; hostility to immigrant scientists and international projects; and diversion of resources into debunked ideas, such as that vaccines cause autism. As Megha points out, science and democracy are interlinked: “evidence-based policymaking allows the largest number of people in the country to be healthy, be safe and have a voice.”
The Library of Congress has an exhibit on “The Two Georges”:George Washington and King George III. Washington, rejectingreal or de-facto monarchy, set the precedent of the two-term presidency. Less well known is that George III considered resigning as the treaty formalizing American independence was negotiated in 1783. The exhibit has a hand-written note: “A long Experience and a serious attention to the Strange Events that have successively arisen, has gradually prepared My mind to expect the time when I should be no longer of Utility to this Empire. That hour is now come, I am therefore resolved to resign My Crown and all the Dominions appertaining to it to the Prince of Wales,” his son. The king’s advisors apparently dissuaded him from stepping down, and he reigned until his death in 1820.
Also in the LOC is Thomas Jefferson’s library. The intro display reads: “By 1814, when the British burned the Capitol and with it the Congressional Library, Thomas Jefferson had acquired the largest personal collection of books in the United States.” The ex-president then offered to sell his library as a replacement, and Congress purchased it for $23,950 in 1815. A large volume in a glass case caught my eye, titled Of Wisdom. A fire on Christmas Eve of 1851 destroyed two-thirds of Jefferson’s collection, but what remained is impressive, and formed the core from which the Library of Congress developed. Our nation was founded by intellectual types, and I doubt they’d look fondly on the D.C. of 2025.
—Kenneth Silber is author of In DeWitt’s Footsteps: Seeing History on the Erie Canal. Follow him on Bluesky.