Images of the White House East Wing in ruins bring to mind a disaster movie. It’s one thing to understand intellectually that the country you knew is being dismantled piece by piece. It’s quite another to see photographs of perhaps the best-known building in the United States, a symbol of our Republic and the peaceful transition of power, demolished via wrecking ball.

When I first saw the images, I couldn’t help but think of the movie Independence Day, a 1996 blockbuster starring Will Smith. In the movie’s most famous scene, alien invaders destroy the White House as the President and his daughter barely escape on Air Force One. Here in our 2025 reality, demolishing a significant chunk of the White House was an inside job. With no oversight from Congress or any federal agencies, President Donald Trump appears to have acted unilaterally. This happened during a government shutdown, when federal employees were furloughed without pay or forced to work without pay. Instead of alien invaders, a democratically elected President destroyed the White House from within.

At the 54th Academy Awards, in 1982, Chariots of Fire was imperial, and Katharine Hepburn broke records. Less remembered today is a darkly brilliant European film about a stage actor in Nazi Germany that went home from the ceremony with the best international feature prize. Mephisto, directed by István Szabó, was the first ever Hungarian film to do so.

“The moment took me by surprise,” remembers Szabó, 87, four decades later. “I didn’t expect it.” Visibly elated on the live broadcast as he took to the stage, Szabó today says that he “knew this award wasn’t just mine, but also Brandauer’s”, meaning the film’s electrifying lead actor, and the largely Hungarian crew “who contributed with their talent to the making of the film”.

The House voted down a pair of measures to halt strikes on alleged drug boats and on Venezuelan land on Wednesday, hours after President Donald Trump announced a blockade on the South American country.

Democrats sponsoring the measures were able to peel off only two Republicans on the first vote and three on the second as the GOP rallied around the White House.

On Tuesday, Trump announced a partial blockade — considered an act of war in international law — against Venezuela after weeks of threatening military action.

George Orwell was dying when he wrote 1984 in the late 1940s on the desolate Isle of Jura in Scotland’s Inner Hebrides. Tuberculosis ravaged his body, and typing thousands of words a day only weakened him further. His skin flaked off. Blisters burst across his throat. Feverish and emaciated, he endured painful procedures to support his failing lungs, but the treatments were too late. Eventually, in 1950, Orwell succumbed to the disease.