James Smithson never set foot in America. He was a British scientist who died in 1829 and left his fortune to a country he'd never visited, with one condition: found "an establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge." Congress spent a decade arguing about what to do with the money before finally chartering the Smithsonian Institution in 1846. For generations it earned its nickname, "the nation's attic," a place where Americans went to see the Wright Flyer, the Star-Spangled Banner, and Lincoln's top hat. Today they can also see a sadomasochistic "crotch harness." Something has gone badly wrong.

Melat Kiros just torched a 15-term Democrat in a Denver primary, and a single 48-second clip tells you everything you need to know about her. Not a speech. Not a policy paper. A clip, the kind that spreads because it says the quiet part out loud. In it, Kiros argues America's foreign policy is "exploitative and extractive" and that the fix is electing more lawmakers with Global South heritage. Not more good policy. Not more common sense. More immigrants. Specifically the right kind of immigrants, the kind who fit her narrative.

A masked woman stands up at a housing event in Zohran Mamdani's New York and declares that "eviction is violence," making the landlord the new enemy and the tenant, the victim. The government, she insists, must step in and make the tenant whole, permanently, because paying rent has apparently become optional and collecting it has become a crime. It is a jarring scene and it is also not a fluke. It is the loudest, ugliest expression of a project that has been building in this country for two decades: convince Americans that ownership is a fantasy, that debt and rent are the new normal, and that the state, not the paycheck, should decide whether you have a roof over your head.

Gavin Newsom went on Axios this week and did what Gavin Newsom does best: talk down to a man who has actually built something. The California governor accused Elon Musk of "turning his back" on the state that supposedly made him rich. "Regulation in California created the conditions that allowed him to take the risk to become the multi-billionaire, maybe trillionaire, that he's become," Newsom said. "Now he's turning his back on the state that promoted him."