Volcanoes are erupting in The Philippines, but on-fire Australia received some welcome rain. The Iran war cries have been called off and The Donald’s military powers are about to be hamstrung by the Senate. Meanwhile, his impeachment trial is starting, and we’re all on Twitter for a front-row seat.
What Could Go Right? Don’t Freak Out. Show Up.
The best cure for worry is to contribute well to something around you.
Emma Varvaloucas
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Don’t Freak Out. Show Up.
Donald Trump has been reelected president of the United States, winning the electoral vote and on track to win the popular one as well.
Despite widespread concern prior to Election Day, it went smoothly. Any issues, such as those from malfunctioning software or machines, were minor, typical ones that occurred in a handful of counties across the country. The Federal Bureau of Investigation traced bomb threats made to voting locations in seven states back to Russian email domains. On the test of behaving respectfully to their fellow voters, Americans passed.
“Some places that were hot spots in the 2020 election,” reported ($) The New York Times, “were relatively serene.” At the Huntington Place convention center in Detroit, where a near-riot took place four years ago, Detroit’s director of elections, Daniel Baxter, said that things were peaceful, telling reporters, “I think I hear people singing ‘Kumbaya.’”
Kumbaya is not what a Trump win feels like for half the country, of course. For those grappling with the reality of the politician’s historical comeback—he is the first former president to return to the White House since Grover Cleveland in 1892—it’s helpful to view the US within a wider context.
This year was dubbed the mother of all election years, with more than 78 countries going to the polls. With Trump’s win, the US is following a larger international trend of ousting incumbents, including, as Progress Network member Matthew Yglesias wrote on his Substack, conservatives in the United Kingdom, the center-left in New Zealand, and the center-right in Australia. This is also the case in countries the American press pays less attention to, like Senegal and Botswana, which both voted in opposition parties in stunning upsets this year. While it’s tempting to analyze the US solely by the criteria of its domestic divisions, the US is not an outlier in deciding to turn over control. The world electorate post-Covid is one dissatisfied with parties in power.
While there are some nightmare scenarios for Democrats that will likely not come to pass—The Economist points out, for example, that mass deportations, as Trump has threatened, lack an existing infrastructure and would be unenforceable ($)—the risks of a second Trump term abound, from a more empowered Russia to a Department of Justice bent on the persecution of Trump’s enemies. But claims that this is the end of the US are just as overblown as Trump’s promises to “fix everything.”
Instead, life will continue to be a complex mixture of the bad, the good, and the neutral, and a second Trump term will be the same. As Progress Network member Robert Wright remarked in his “don’t freak out” election video, it’s a fool’s errand to predict what the long-term consequences of anything will be. The classic Taoist parable about the old man who loses his horse reminds us that seemingly bad outcomes can yield good fortune, and seemingly good ones, bad. The story ends, “Bad luck brings good luck, and good luck brings bad luck. This happens without end, and nobody can estimate it.” Few on the left, for instance, in the jubilance after President Joe Biden’s win in 2020, would have foreseen in that moment that his refusal to step down after one term would be followed by a Trump blowout.
As Trump declared victory in the early morning hours yesterday, I was returning to journalist Dylan Matthews’ contrarian take on the presidency of George W. Bush. Top on most people’s lists of Bush’s sins was the disaster of the Iraq War, the fallout of which is well-known. Much less known is the fact that Bush saved the lives of at least one million people through the establishment of PEPFAR, a foreign aid program to combat HIV/AIDS. Bad and good do not exist in exclusion of each other.
Neither do bad and good stem solely from the office of the president, or members of Congress. This election will have enormous consequences. But so, too, do many things that have little to do with elections, as Kelsey Piper pointed out in Vox. Consider the effect, she wrote, of antibiotics, vaccination, mass electrification, the internet, and so on—all world-changing developments that occurred outside of the sphere of politics.
This is not some kind of election outcome escapism, but a method for separating disappointment or disillusion from a commitment to keep showing up, especially when we see the bad crop up over the next four years. In my own circles, I’m hearing a lot of concern over how to handle what will likely soon turn into a chaotic news cycle focused on outrage. My advice is not to mistake being informed about the news, or even issues you care about, with being meaningfully engaged in the ongoing and often uphill project of making the world better. The best cure for existential dread, electoral or otherwise, is contributing well to something around you. The choices of where we can direct our energy are vast.
As the final note on this edition’s “steady on” song, the American election is not the only thing that happened this week. Rwanda has its Marburg outbreak under control, nearly 500,000 currently stateless people belonging to minority ethnic groups in Thailand will receive permanent residency and nationality, and as Americans were voting on Tuesday, the Japanese were sending the world’s first wooden satellite into space.
The world keeps spinning on its axis. And we keep choosing how to respond to the good and the bad.
Referendum Results
On Tuesday, voters in each state also made their voices heard on a variety of issues. We summarize the notable ones below. For a full list, click here and navigate to “Referendums.”
- Measures to enshrine abortion rights passed in Arizona, Colorado, Maryland, Missouri, Montana, and New York. They failed in South Dakota and Florida. Two competing measures that both passed in Nebraska may turn into a legal showdown there. In Amarillo, Texas, voters decided against instituting a ban on traveling out of state for an abortion.
- It was a bad night for ranked choice voting, with Colorado, Idaho, Oregon, and Nevada declining to introduce it, and Missouri voting to prohibit it. It was passed in the District of Columbia, however.
- In a win for voting rights, Connecticut will now allow no-excuse mail voting, which will primarily benefit people with disabilities. Iowa will now allow 17-year-olds to vote in primaries if they will be 18 by the general election. Several states passed measures requiring a voter to be a citizen, which was already the case by law. In Nevada, a photo ID will now be required to vote.
- Arizona will allow state and local police to enforce immigration laws and increased penalties for the sale of fentanyl.
- Florida, South Dakota, and North Dakota declined to legalize marijuana. Massachusetts declined to legalize psychedelics. Medical marijuana will now be legal in Nebraska, however.
- Alaska and Missouri increased their minimum wage to $15 per hour and will now require employers to provide paid sick leave. Nebraska passed a measure that gives workers the right to earn paid sick leave.
What Could Go Right? S6 E28
Why are the elderly our top candidates for a Mars mission? How bad is sexual intercourse while researchers are asking questions? What’s it like to be mugged by monkeys? Zachary and Emma speak with Mary Roach, the eclectic and quirky author of several books about what she calls “curious science,” including Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers and Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex. They discuss body decomposition, the psychological and physical challenges of a Mars mission, and the importance of looking at the lesser-known aspects of human science. | Listen now
By the Numbers
73: The number of women elected to Japan’s House of Representatives, up from 45 in 2021. There are a total of 465 seats, so women are still a minority, but a growing one.
55%: The drop in road deaths in Warsaw, Poland, in the last 10 years. It is the lowest rate since the city began collecting statistics in the 1980s, and a turnaround for a city once known as one of the deadliest in Europe for both drivers and pedestrians. (Bloomberg $)
30: The number of states in the US that have passed laws banning “forever chemicals” in products, the vast majority of them in the past five years.
Quick Hits
📉 Greenhouse gas emissions in the European Union fell by eight percent in 2023, a drop so steep that it’s close to the one that occurred when daily activities were shuttered at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. The closing of coal plants and the switch to renewable energy has brought sustainable change to the region, which has now cut emissions by 37 percent from 1990 levels. The target is to cut them 55 percent by 2030.
🇨🇳 Carbon emissions in China have flatlined over the last six months, the latest indicator that emissions in the world’s largest emitter may have already peaked. Independent climate organizations have estimated a decline of 24–30 percent by 2035 based on current trends and targets.
🧑🏭 Nearly a third of the $736 billion earmarked for investment in the domestic production of computer chips, electric vehicles, and clean energy has flowed into “left behind” American communities where economic opportunities had cratered due to cheap imports from Mexico and China. (NYT $)
🌎 Two weeks ago, we highlighted the exceptional progress the world has made adding marine protected areas (MPAs). One more just made the list: at about 200 square kilometers, a “small but mighty” MPA that encompasses the coral reefs on Puerto Rico’s northern coasts.
🛠️ TIME magazine has released its list of this year’s best inventions. There are over 200 to peruse, but our favorites include this at-home nasal spray that vaccinates you against the flu, this lab-grown cotton, these ultra-light earphones, and this electronic instrument programmed with music from medieval times (useful in case you’re interested in jamming to the sounds of lutes, hurdy-gurdies, and Gregorian chants).
🌿 A new study, published in the journal Nature, found that plants worldwide are absorbing about 31 percent more carbon dioxide than the standard estimate, which was established in the 1980s and is currently used in Earth system models to forecast climate trends. The new estimate comes from a better analysis of a particular process that happens during photosynthesis.
🐀 Rescue rats trained to sniff out landmines are now turning their noses to another endeavor. The Tanzania-based nonprofit that trains and cares for these rats has demonstrated that their rats are now able to find wildlife products, like rhino horns, being trafficked out of Africa. The rats could be a promising, cheaper alternative to dogs.
💵 Going forward, the World Bank will report on global poverty levels using two indicators. Living on $2.15 a day will be kept as a standard for extreme poverty, while living on $6.85 per day will be set as a poverty indicator more appropriate for middle-income countries. This reflects a fundamental global change from the 1990s, when many more countries that are now classified as middle income were low income.
👀 What we’re watching: The south African country of Botswana has thrived under a functional democracy since its independence from the British almost 60 years ago. It has been under the rule of the same political party, however, from then until now. Last week, voters registered their frustrations with high unemployment and other economic issues by voting in an opposition party for the first time in the country’s democratic history, in a “political earthquake.”
💡 Editor’s pick: Two reads on developing science: CAR-T-cell therapy, primarily used as a cancer treatment, may be able to cure lupus and other autoimmune diseases. ($) Meanwhile, biotech companies are testing RNA editing, which works by editing “the RNA blueprints for proteins,” to treat genetic diseases and some cancers.
TPN Member Originals
(Who are our Members? Get to know them.)
- Well, that happened . . . | The Edgy Optimist | Zachary Karabell
- Trump says the country is ‘dying.’ The data says otherwise. | NYT ($) | Steven Pinker
- Will the anti-obesity wonder drugs work wonders for the US economy? | Faster, Please! | James Pethokoukis
- After the election, California will keep moving the world forward no matter what | Wired | James Fallows
- No, men’s views on policy haven’t really changed | Of Boys and Men | Richard V. Reeves
- Why you might need an adventure | The Atlantic ($) | Arthur C. Brooks
- The Harris-Walz campaign has created a pro-democracy movement in America | Lucid | Ruth Ben-Ghiat
- The America we have, the America we could have | Faster, Please! | James Pethokoukis
- The dawn of the Trump era | Yascha Mounk | Yascha Mounk
- How Trump won—and what it means for the world | GZERO | Ian Bremmer
- Election countdown: The day after | Breaking the News | James Fallows
- A tale of two machines | Slow Boring | Matthew Yglesias