Building a new monument in Washington, D.C., is supposed to take time—a slow procedural grind of plans drafted, designs revised, studies conducted, and preservationists, historians, tribes, and architects consulted all before work crews ever break ground. The idea is to preserve the carefully choreographed symbolism of the federal city. That is not the approach favored by Donald Trump, who wants to leave his mark on the city’s symbolic core before he leaves office.

Argan, shea butter, & castor. A thousand ways
to soften, mist & moisture, but nothing to supple
knees: crease immune to chemical peel & heel mask,
instrument of pray & beg. I cough up aerosol
in wet white clouds, bleach them into beauty
slick as slobbered bone.

Late last year, President Trump announced that Washington would loosen controls on chip exports to China, permitting Nvidia to sell its H200 AI chip to approved Chinese firms. The president’s decision raised the alarm among lawmakers that he was sacrificing American security and the country’s edge in AI for a trade deal with China’s leader, Xi Jinping. But any concern that Chinese companies would be gobbling up precious Nvidia chips was soon squelched by Beijing’s own ban on orders of the H200.

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Welcome back to The Daily’s Sunday culture edition, in which one Atlantic writer or editor reveals what’s keeping them entertained.

In 1876, as corruption scandals shook the Ulysses S. Grant administration, the poet, diplomat, and founding Atlantic editor James Russell Lowell wondered where the American experiment was headed. “Is ours a ‘government of the people, by the people, for the people,’” he wrote, “or a Kakistocracy rather, for the benefit of knaves at the cost of fools?”
Now there’s a $10 word for you. From the Greek kakos, for “bad,” kakistocracy means “rule by the worst.

Two more Americans have given their lives in the service of their country. They died in an Iranian attack on a Jordanian air base; several more U.S. military personnel were injured and one is missing. The American people have a right to know why they died, and how many more of their sons and daughters President Trump is willing to risk in this war of choice.
The president, so far, has issued his usual stock answers.

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Earlier this year, my colleague Rose Horowitch reported on a new irony in higher education: Students who have chosen to take film classes can’t sit through the films.

Editor’s Note: Washington Week With The Atlantic is a partnership between NewsHour Productions, WETA, and The Atlantic airing every Friday on PBS stations nationwide. Check your local listings, watch full episodes here, or listen to the weekly podcast here.
President Trump’s obsession with alleged election corruption featured heavily in his latest speech to the nation. On Washington Week With The Atlantic, panelists joined to discuss the president’s remarks, and more.

Lionel Messi on the soccer field takes the short, trotty steps of a dachshund in the park. Such diminutive, mincy movements are part of his mystique: He gives opponents absolutely no reason whatsoever to track his runty, 5-foot-7 figure, right up until he bolts away and suddenly tears open the grass in front of him. He becomes the most commanding man on the green expanse, and seems to grow a foot in stature as he charges the goal.