President Donald Trump on Monday dispatched two aides to scope out the studios of Voice of America, heightening concerns among some longtime staffers that Trump may quickly put his stamp on the broadcasting arm that has long pushed U.S. democratic ideals across the world. The arrival of the two aides [...] comes after Voice of America received blowback over the weekend for sending out a series of tweets about White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer’s claims about inauguration crowd size that looked to some like an endorsement of his false statements.

Over 200 years ago, President George Washington warned Americans about foreign powers undermining American democracy by tampering “with domestic factions, to practice the arts of seduction, to mislead public opinion, to influence or awe the public councils.” In the present, we are finding that old threats are new again as the United States is challenged by Russia’s strategic communication efforts targeting both our domestic politics and international interests.

Several times, the concepts analyzed in theory and the ‘how should it be’ don’t really happen in reality, for social scientists like me it’s a constant struggle to analyze reality and society and try to come up with proposals to improve the situation and the life quality of people, and sometimes they don’t happen to be quite as real as we would want.

“There’s something young happening here,” DJ Walshy Fire says late into the sprawling, inspiring concert documentary Give Me Future. [...] They’re talking with reverent awe about Cuba’s music scene, and how rapidly it’s changing. A little over a year after President Obama eased the 54-year trade sanction against Cuba, Major Lazer went to Havana for an unprecedented mega-scale outdoor concert. 

Donald Trump’s arrival in the White House means it may, finally, be decision time for Europe. The new U.S. president’s barrage of criticism in the run up to his inauguration last week prompted pledges to stick together and revive support for the European Union. Germany’s Angela Merkel vowed to maintain unity through continuous dialogue with other members. Mark Rutte of the Netherlands called for a fresh focus on the economy. 

With the exception of co-founders Rachel Taber and Douglas Hewitt, 1951 Coffee is entirely staffed by refugees, asylum seekers and special immigrant visa holders. The nonprofit establishment counts among its baristas people who left Eritrea, Afghanistan, Iran, Nepal, Bhutan, Uganda and Syria after facing political, religious or ethnic persecution. It’s a coffee shop with a cause, giving recent arrivals barista training and employing them in customer-facing roles so they can practice speaking English and engage with the community.  

Trump is expected to lead on cybersecurity, even as he assumes the job of leader of the free world amid ongoing investigations in federal law enforcement and probes on Capitol Hill about the extent to which cyberattacks and hacks of political targets during the 2016 campaign were linked to Russian state security or their proxies. Investigators also are exploring whether there were any direct links between hackers and individuals involved in the Trump campaign.

“A decent respect to the opinions of mankind,” intones the U.S. Declaration of Independence, requires that those who want to break away from a nation-state explain publicly their reasons for doing so. Today, however, following a dramatic week of events connected to the ascent of Donald Trump to the Presidency, a similar imperative requires that we try to explain to the world—and most of all to ourselves—what is going on.