Prediction markets are calling who will control the Senate. On 20 August 2026, traders priced a Republican Senate at 53%, with five races too close to call:

• Alaska

• Iowa

• Michigan

• Ohio

• Texas

Republicans hold the chamber 53-47 and defend 22 of the 35 seats on the ballot on 3 November 2026.

Prediction market traders read fundraising totals, polls, and primary results. None of that measures the cultural perspectives that actually decide how a person votes.

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China’s behavior toward other nations runs on three cultural dimensions

• Long-Term Orientation. On Hofstede’s scale, China scores 87, its highest dimension. China plans and builds in decades and centuries, not years, and is willing to wait.

• A Hierarchy with China at the center, the Middle Kingdom. For most of its history, China ran its foreign relations through the tributary system: smaller states accepted China’s supriority and did not challenge it, and in return they gained access to trade with China and were left to run their own internal affairs. The old name for this order was tianxia, meaning all under heaven.

• Guanxi (Particularism). China deals through relationships built on reciprocal obligation, where what governs is the relationship and the exchange of favors between two sides, not a set of equitable rules.

Monday’s Edition showed the United States built a system of equals: it applies its rules equally, it lets status be earned, and it places authority in its institutions, so other nations join by choice and stay. Wednesday’s Edition showed Russia built the opposite: the rules served Moscow, position was fixed, and uthority sat with the ruler. Members joined under the threat of force and left only when Moscow stopped using that force to keep them.

China is building neither. It is rebuilding the tributary system in modern form. Countries join by choice, for trade and investment, and they keep control of their governments. But they join a hierarchy with China at the center, not a partnership of equals. They defer to Beijing on the few things Beijing cares about most, and in return they get money and access. China’s cultural perspective builds this patiently, over decades. That is the third kind of system.

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Russia is a Particularist, Ascription-based, and Traditional (personal) authority culture. That means:

• it applies the rules and laws based on who is involved, not equally to everyone - Particularist (Trompenaars)

• it treats one’s position as inherited through family, age, and connections, not by accomplishments - Ascription (Trompenaars)

• it places authority in leaders, not in the institution they run - Traditional (personal) authority (Weber)

Monday’s Edition, on how the US built a system nations join by choice, showed that the United States is the opposite of Russia’s three traits:

• it applies its rules equally

• it lets status be earned

• it places authority in its institutions.

Those three opposite traits let other countries join the American system by choice.

Russia’s three traits come from a different cultural perspective, and they build the opposite kind of system, one that countries join only under force and leave the moment they can. Together they describe one cultural perspective: in Russia, the ruler is the rule. The ruler decides what happens regardless of what any written agreement states

What those three cultural perspectives built

After World War Two, the Soviet Union installed communist governments across Eastern Europe and tied them to Moscow through Comecon, an economic bloc it created in 1949, and the Warsaw Pact, a military alliance it created in 1955.

In the American system, the rules bound Washington as much as everyone else (Universalism), so a small country could trust them. In the Soviet system, the rules bound the members but not Moscow. (Particularism). Membership was not a contract a country could hold Moscow to. It was obedience to whatever Moscow decided, and Moscow could change the rules at any time.

Ascription fixed each member’s place. In the American system, a country’s influence grew as its economy grew, which gave members a reason to stay and build. In the Soviet system, Moscow’s position at the top was fixed, and no member could earn a greater say by performing well. Loyalty and effort changed nothing, so no member had a reason to stay once they could leave.

The rules were whatever the Soviet Union’s leader at the moment said they were (Traditional (personal) authority). When a member tried to loosen Moscow's control or leave, Moscow answered with force, then wrote the rule afterward. Warsaw Pact troops invaded Czechoslovakia on the night of 20 August 1968. Five weeks later, the Soviet newspaper Pravda published an article claiming Moscow could send troops into any communist country whose government moved away from communism. Leonid Brezhnev repeated the claim in a speech in Warsaw on 13 November 1968. Western governments named it the Brezhnev Doctrine.

Together, these three traits built a system in which a member nation could not leave and could not change the system from the inside. The only way to push back was open revolt, and Moscow met revolt with troops. East German workers rose against their government in 1953, and Soviet tanks crushed them. Hungary tried to leave the Warsaw Pact in 1956, and the Soviet army invaded and killed thousands. Czechoslovakia’s government tried to loosen the system in 1968, and Warsaw Pact tanks ended the attempt. Each invasion proved the same fact: the system held because Moscow would use force, not because members wanted to belong.

When Moscow stopped using force, the system collapsed. Mikhail Gorbachev canceled the Brezhnev Doctrine, and in 1989 his government announced that Moscow would no longer send troops to keep the Eastern European governments in power. His spokesman called this the Sinatra Doctrine, after the song “My Way”: each country could go its own way. Removing the threat of troops removed the system’s only support, and the members left within months. Poland held a partly free election in June 1989, and its communists lost every contested seat. East Germans tore down the Berlin Wall in November 1989. Czechoslovakia and Romania removed their communist governments by the end of the year. With the members gone, the shared institutions collapsed: Comecon, the Soviet bloc’s trade organization, dissolved in June 1991; the Warsaw Pact in July 1991; and the Soviet Union itself in December 1991.

A culture that gives all authority to the ruler, applies the rules by relationship instead of equally, and fixes each nation’s position instead of letting it be earned built a system that no member had chosen and none could improve. Force was the only thing keeping members in. The moment Moscow stopped using force, every member left, and the system Moscow had built by force was gone in less than three years.

Friday’s Edition covers China, which is building a different type of system with a cultural perspective closer to Russia’s.

Get a solid understanding of Trompenaars’ cultural dimensions by purchasing the guide or subscribing to Cultural Perspective (free or paid) and receiving the guide for free.

The United States is a Universalist, Achievement-based, Rational-legal authority, Specific, Low Context culture. In plain terms:

• it applies rules and laws equally to everyone - Universalist (Trompenaars)

• it requires status to be earned instead of inherited - Achievement (Trompenaars)

• it puts authority in institutions rather than the people who run the institutions - Rational-legal authority (Weber)

• it lets strangers do business without building a relationship first - Specific (Trompenaars)

• it writes its rules down plainly enough that a foreigner understands them without a cultural insider to translate - Low Context (Hall)

Those five traits are the requirements for building a modern system other countries will join without being conquered. Russia wants this but has resorted to conquering by force. China wants something similar but lacks some of the key components.

Fons Trompenaars, a Dutch cultural theorist, found the strongest Universalism in the United States, Canada, Britain, Sweden, and Switzerland. He tested it in part by asking whether a person would lie under oath to protect a friend who hit a pedestrian while speeding, or follow the law and tell the truth. Respondents in Universalist countries said they would follow the law and tell the truth. Respondents in Russia and China, among others (Particularism) were far more likely to lie to protect their friend even though it violated the law.

Trompenaars measured the second trait by asking where respect comes from. In an Achievement culture, a person earns respect by what they accomplish. In an Ascription culture, respect comes from family, age, gender, and connections, and a person born into the wrong family cannot earn their way out of it. The United States is an achievement culture. China is an ascription culture, and Russia sits closer to the ascription side.

Max Weber's Rational-legal Authority describes a system where obedience is owed to the office and the written law, not to the person holding the office. The United States runs mostly on rational-legal authority. China and Russia run mostly on Personal Authority, in which the person in charge decides what the rules are, and the rules change when he does.

Trompenaars measured the fourth trait asking: If your boss asks you to spend Saturday helping paint his house, do you have to go? In a Specific culture, the answer is no, because the boss’s authority is only at work. In a Diffuse culture, the answer is closer to yes, because a boss is a boss in all aspects of life. Americans mostly refuse. Chinese and Russian respondents are far more likely to help paint the house.

The anthropologist Edward Hall named the fifth trait. In a Low Context culture, meaning is explicit in the words. In a High Context culture, meaning is derived significantly from the context of the situation, shared history, and unspoken understanding, and less so from the words alone. The United States is Low Context; Russia and China are High Context.

M. J. Hornby’s archetypes describe the behavior those five traits produce. The United States acts as a North Power-seeker, making decisions based on the West Sage’s information and is disturbed by the East’s communication and drive to connect people. Russia acts as a North Power-seeker, but makes decisions based on the Blue Guardian's established order and is disturbed by the Blue Guardian's directives and drive to punish anyone who deviates. China also acts as a North Power-seeker, making decisions based on the West Sage's accumulated knowledge and is disturbed by the Blue Guardian's insistence and intolerance for deviation

What those five traits built

The United States brought delegates from 44 nations to a hotel in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, in July 1944 to set the rules for a new global economy. American economic power is why the United States could write most of the rules. Universalism explains why it wrote rules that apply to everyone, including itself (usually). Because the rules bound the United States (Washington could block changes because of its large voting share), countries the United States did not control could accept them, which made joining the new American global system a choice instead of a surrender. Twenty-nine governments ratified the agreement.

Universalism made the rules the same for everyone, so a small poor country got the same exchange rate obligations as a large rich nation. A government signing in 1945 did not have to trust American goodwill, because the contract was clear, and the contract bound Washington too.

Achievement made a country’s influence something it could change. Each member received 250 basic votes plus one more vote for every 100,000 dollars of its quota, so a member that achieved a larger quota received more votes. Japan and the UK had been enemies seven years earlier. Japan joined the same institutions in August 1952 and gained voting power as its economy grew, until Japan held the second largest share (along with Germany) by 1992. A country’s history did not determine how much influence it had. Its achievement did.

Rational-legal Authority meant the rules did not change when the leader changed. Roosevelt died in April 1945, and Truman's government signed the agreements in December 1945. The commitment Roosevelt made outlived the president who made it

Specific culture made the deal narrow. Membership required a declared exchange rate, a quota payment, and regular economic data. It did not require an alliance, a political system, or a permanent friendship. This is why India joined in 1945 while opposing American foreign policy for the next forty years.

Low context made the terms clear. The Articles of Agreement stated the obligations in writing, so a finance ministry in Cairo or Santiago could calculate the cost of joining without an American in the room to explain what the words “really” meant.

Together, those five cultural perspectives removed many of the reasons a government had to refuse. Government officials could read the terms in writing, calculate what membership would cost, join without changing their country’s political system, count on the terms holding after the next American election, and gain more voting power later by achieving more. The United States did not need to force anyone. Countries that joined gained from the system.

Wednesday’s Edition covers the system Russia built and why its members left as soon as Moscow could no longer force them to stay.

Get a solid understanding of Trompenaars’ cultural dimensions by purchasing the guide or subscribing to Cultural Perspective (free or paid) and receiving the guide for free.

The prediction market gives China about a 20 percent chance of passing the United States in total economic size by 2030. That number is too low. Not because China will surpass U.S. GDP by 2030; it almost certainly will not. The market is too low because it prices where the two economies are today and ignores where they are going. The direction is clear: China is on a steady rise; the United States is on a steady decline.

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Monday’s Edition showed that the world uses the dollar because money moves freely and American courts enforce contracts the same for everyone. Wednesday’s Edition showed that China and Russia control their currencies and limit how money moves in and out of their nations. This edition shows what happens where the three meet: how they trade against each other, how Russia came to depend on the yuan, and why the dollar, though it is slowly losing ground, is not being replaced.

The same power that makes the dollar strong also drives some countries to use it less.

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Monday’s Edition showed that the dollar is the world’s most-used currency because money moves freely and American courts enforce contracts equally regardless of who is involved. The Chinese yuan and the Russian ruble are built differently. In both countries, the government keeps tight control of the currency and limits how money moves in and out. That control is why neither currency can replace the dollar, and it stems from a different cultural perspective in each country.

The biggest differences with the Chinese yuan are that:

1. It does not float. Each morning the People’s Bank of China, the country’s central bank, sets a reference price for the yuan against the dollar and allows it to trade only within 2 percent of that price.

2. The bank is not independent. It is an arm of the Chinese state and follows the Communist Party’s directives, and the Party can change those directives at any time.

3. Money also cannot move freely across China’s border. A person or company must get permission to send large amounts in or out, a system called capital controls.

Because of those controls, there are two versions of the yuan: the onshore yuan used inside China, which the state manages closely, and the offshore yuan, traded in Hong Kong and a few other cities, which moves more freely but makes up only a small share of all the yuan in use.

Some nations use the yuan to trade but few to save. In the first quarter of 2026, the yuan made up about 2 percent of the world’s reserves, compared to the dollar’s 57 percent. In June 2026, the yuan handled about 3 percent of payments sent through SWIFT, the messaging system banks use to move money across borders. China clears yuan payments through its own network, CIPS, launched in 2015. Payments cleared through CIPS are not included in that 3 percent.

This level of control fits the Chinese cultural perspective. Geert Hofstede, a Dutch researcher who measured how national cultures differ, ranked China high on Power Distance, which means people accept that authority is concentrated at the top and expect the state to direct national life. In that view, the government setting the exchange rate and controlling the flow of money is normal and expected. The cultural theorist Shalom Schwartz adds a second trait: China ranks high on Embeddedness, in which the person and the private market are treated as parts of the group and are expected to support the state priorities rather than act on their own. Thus, the state, not the market, sets the value of the yuan. Hofstede also ranked China high on Long-term Orientation, the habit of working toward goals over decades or a century. China increased the yuan slowly, accepting a small share of world trade now to build more trade later. The one thing it will not do is let money move freely, because that would let money leave the country and reduce the state's control. Restricting the flow of money in and out of China is why the yuan can pay for trade but cannot yet hold the world's savings.

Russia also controls its currency but for a different reason. The ruble is restricted in reaction to Western sanctions. On paper, the ruble floats, but in practice, since 2022 the Russian state has kept it from failing with limits on moving money out of the country, interest rates far above inflation, and, until 2025, a requirement that exporters convert their foreign earnings into rubles. When the United States and Europe cut most large Russian banks off from the dollar and from the SWIFT financial messaging network in 2022, the ruble crashed. It recovered, under Moscow’s controls. By the middle of 2026, the ruble had gained about 10 percent against the dollar and traded near 80 rubles to the dollar (before 2014 the ruble traded around 30 to 35 per dollar).

The ruble is not freely convertible. A foreign investor cannot count on moving money out of Russia, and Western sanctions block most large ruble trading abroad. So the ruble is used almost entirely for Russia’s own trade and inside its own borders, and almost no country holds it as a reserve. What gives the ruble value is oil and gas. As long as other countries buy Russian energy, foreign money flows in, and the state limits how much money can leave the country and keeps interest rates above the rate of inflation to keep the ruble from losing value.

This defensive design fits Russia’s cultural perspective. The political scientists Ronald Inglehart and Christian Welzel measured a scale from survival values to self-expression values, and placed Russia far toward Survival. In a survival culture, people value safety, order, and a strong government more than openness and personal freedom, and that preference grows stronger when they feel threatened. Placing controls on the currency to survive sanctions is how Survival cultures operate. Schwartz would add that Russia also scores high on Embeddedness, the value placed on stability and the existing order. Russia gave up the free movement of money to keep the ruble viable while under sanctions, but no one outside Russia has a reason to hold it.

The dollar moves freely, and the world holds it. The yuan is controlled by a patient government and used mostly to buy Chinese goods. The ruble is controlled by a state under siege and used mostly inside Russia. China gave up open money flows for control to protect its slow, decades-long rise as an economic power. Russia traded it for control to survive. Both got their control, and both gave up the one feature that makes a currency attractive to hold.

Friday’s Edition looks at how these three currencies act on each other: where the dollar, the yuan, and the ruble compete, where they depend on each other, and whether the dollar’s slow decline in reserves points to something larger.

Get a solid understanding of Trompenaars’ cultural dimensions by purchasing the guide or subscribing to Cultural Perspective (free or paid) and receiving the guide for free.

For most of history, the world’s great powers ran their currencies the same way. Spain and Portugal looted gold and silver from the Americas and minted it into coins. Their money was the metal itself. In the next epoch, Britain and France built their economies on trade, manufacturing, and finance, and issued paper money that could be exchanged for gold or silver. In both systems, the metal was the anchor, setting a hard limit on redemption and leaving less control over how the currency functioned. (China used paper money not redeemable for gold or silver under the Song, Yuan, and Ming, starting in the 11th century)

Today the major powers all run a fiat currency that holds value only because people accept it. That gives the government a great deal of control over how the currencies work. The U.S., China, and Russia each run their currencies differently, and that difference determines their power.

How the U.S. dollar, the Chinese yuan, and the Russian ruble operate reflects different cultural perspectives on how to manage their currencies and what a currency is for. The dollar is trusted and moves freely. The yuan moves only under strict government limits. The ruble keeps its value only because strict government rules stop it from falling. Across three editions, we look at how each one works. This edition is about the dollar, because the other two are measured against it.

Anyone can move the dollar into and out of the United States with little restriction. American courts will enforce the written contract between any two parties. The cultural researchers Kwok Leung and Dov Cohen call the United States a Dignity culture, which means a person's worth and rights are treated as something they hold inside themselves, equal to everyone else's, so disputes are settled by written law and impartial courts rather than by status or relationship. The anthropologist Edward Hall adds that the United States is a Low-context culture, which means the full agreement is written in the contract itself, not carried in the relationship between the two sides, so a court makes its decision based on the wording of the contract, not the parties involved. That is why an American court treats a foreigner's claim the same as a citizen's, and why an investor in Singapore who buys United States government debt trusts that the loan will be repaid. That confidence is why the world keeps its savings in dollars.

In the first quarter of 2026, central banks held about 57 percent of their foreign reserves in dollars. The euro was the second most held currency at 20 percent. The Japanese yen held about 5.4 percent, the British pound about 4.5 percent, and the Chinese yuan about 2 percent. No other currency comes close to the U.S. dollar. So when a company in Brazil buys parts from a company in Thailand, the two settle the deal in dollars rather than in their own money, because both trust the dollar.

The dollar floats; buyers and sellers in the open market set its price, not the government. It is fully convertible; anyone holding dollars can sell them for another currency without requiring authorization. The United States also has the deepest market for government debt in the world, where investors lend money to the government by buying its bonds. Daily Treasury cash trading runs around $900 billion. On the largest electronic bond platform, US government bonds trade about three and a half times the volume of all European government bonds combined.

The Federal Reserve, the American central bank, manages the dollar. By law, the president cannot order it to print money or set interest rates. That independence is itself a cultural perspective in which the law outranks the country’s leader. Investors trust the dollar in part because no single leader can weaken it by printing money to pay the government’s bills.

The world trusts the dollar because American rules apply equally to everyone. That trust weakens each time the United States blocks a country's access to the dollar to punish it. When the United States sanctioned Russia's two largest oil companies, Rosneft and Lukoil, in October 2025, China's four state oil companies stopped buying seaborne Russian crude the next day. Indian refiners followed by December. Neither country wanted less Russian oil. They stopped because handling a sanctioned company's cargo could cost them access to the dollar, and no refinery can operate without it. Within months, both were buying the same oil again through new companies Russia created to keep its name off the paperwork.

The lesson every country took away was clear: the dollar is open to everyone, until the United States decides to shut a country out.

The dollar works because of the

• cultural perspective built on Dignity and Low-context

• courts that enforce the rules the same way for everyone

• it moves freely

• The central bank operates independently of the president.

That combination is why most of the world’s reserves are held in dollars, and why one American sanctions order paused direct purchases, then resumed through intermediaries.

Wednesday’s Edition covers the two challengers, the Chinese yuan and the Russian ruble, and why each government gave up the free movement of money that gives the dollar its power.

Get a solid understanding of Trompenaars’ cultural dimensions by purchasing the guide or subscribing to Cultural Perspective (free or paid) and receiving the guide for free.

A barrel of American oil, called WTI, will most likely close 2026 between $75 and $88, near today’s price of about $84 (Trading Economics, 29 July 2026). President Trump has the most control over that closing price. He needs cheap gasoline before the 3 November election, so he is working to push the year-end price down.

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In November 2026, Americans vote for a new Congress, the first test of Trump’s control of Congress since he returned to office. As of late July, prediction markets give Democrats about an 83 percent chance of winning the House. Democrats lead by five to eleven points when voters are asked which party they prefer. Republicans are likely to keep the Senate, where a 50-50 split would be broken by Vice President JD Vance. The November elections decide whether the people who could stop Trump from taking a third term (or more) gain control of Congress, or whether those who support the President For Life gain control.

Trump wants to keep power; he has made that clear. The Republican Party supports Trump; none have pushed back on his move for a third term. The Supreme Court supports Trump as well, but to a lesser extent. Trump acts from a North, Power-seeker drive, the need to rule and hold on to power. The question is what that he does next and if the voters can stop him.

The answer to that question is in the historical patterns.

Political scientists call the system dictators in a democratic build competitive authoritarianism. Elections still happen, but the leader tilts the field so his side almost always wins. Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way coined the term in 2002 for Serbia, Kenya, and Peru. In 2025, they wrote, with Daniel Ziblatt, that the United States had crossed into it: Trump filled the courts with loyalists, replaced civil servants with supporters, used the government to punish rivals, and changed both who can vote and what people can vote on.

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Trump’s online store sells a red hat that reads “Trump 2028.” Tennessee congressman Andy Ogles filed a resolution to change the Constitution so Trump can run a third time. A group called the Third Term Project started at a conservative conference in February 2025 to build public support for Trump’s third term. In October 2025, asked whether he would run again, Trump said, “I would love to do it.”

The question is not whether Trump wants to keep power, but how far he will go to hold it. Trump acts from what theorist M.J. Hornby calls the North drive, the Power-Seeker: a person whose main aim is to lead and to hold power, who rejects other people’s ideas unless they serve him, and who bends or breaks rules when they block him. A healthy North directs good government, builds companies, and coaches a successful football team. A pathological North, with nothing to check it, produces dictators and tyrants. It works against the cultural value of Egalitarianism, a belief at the center of the American political cultural perspective, that power is earned, held for a short time, and passed to the next person.

Trump’s pathological North drive showed after he lost the 2020 election and refused to accept the result. He told a crowd in Washington to march on the Capitol and “fight like hell,” and the crowd attacked the Capitol to stop Congress from counting the votes. It was violent; people died, 140 officers were injured, but the insurrection failed, and Trump left office. The House impeached him for inciting an insurrection, and the Senate acquitted him.

Unable to keep power by force, but also having it made clear that the Republican Party would support him, Trump took a less violent route. He returned to office in 2025 and began building a system that would keep him in power indefinitely. Ogles filed his resolution to let a president serve three terms. That resolution gave the Third Term Project something to organize behind, and by April 2025 Trump’s own store was selling the “Trump 2028” hat.

With momentum moving in favor of a permanently elected President, Trump said in October 2025 that he would “love” to run for a third term and would not rule it out. He wore the “Trump 2028” cap at the Correspondents’ Dinner in July 2026. He has also said “it’s pretty clear I’m not allowed to run,” and he rejected one legal trick, running as vice president and then taking over, as “too cute.” Saying this serves him. As long as a third term stays possible, Trump does not become a lame duck, the weak final-term president the two-term limit usually creates. The doubt keeps Republicans from proposing another presidential candidate in 2028.

Trump’s goal is to be America’s first President For Life. He already holds the power that would decide a third term. Trump controls the Republican Party. Of the roughly 270 Republican Congress and Senate members, fewer than half a dozen vote contrary to Trump’s demands. He controls the Republican primaries by endorsing candidates months before the vote, which clears the field before anyone can challenge them. Almost every Republican now in office depends on his support, so almost none will cross him. His grip is strong but not complete: several candidates he backed in 2026 still lost, in Iowa and in a Georgia runoff.

His power reaches the courts as well. The Supreme Court gave him broad protection from the law in July 2024, ruling that a president cannot be prosecuted for official acts. In June 2026, the Court gave Trump the power to fire the officials who run federal agencies, though it set some limits. Three of the nine justices were appointed by Trump, part of a six-to-three conservative majority. The Court has generally supported Trump's consolidation of power and move to dictatorship and seldom rules against him.

Real barriers still stand:

• Changing the 22nd Amendment requires two-thirds of both houses of Congress and the approval of 38 states, and no party is close to that.

• The states run the elections and print the ballots.

• Voters in the November 2026 election will either elect a Republican-controlled Congress that supports Trump as a President for Life or a Democratic controlled Congress that supports the Constitution.

To overcome the voter problem, Trump and the Republicans, along with the support of the Supreme Court, are changing laws and rules to restrict voters not favorable to Trump.

• In Shelby County v. Holder, the Court voted 5 to 4 to strike down the formula that decided which states had to get federal approval before changing their voting rules. States with a history of discrimination now change their voting rules without federal review.

• In Rucho v. Common Cause, the Court voted 5 to 4 that federal courts cannot hear claims about districts drawn for partisan gain. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that federal judges have no authority to redistribute political power between the two parties. The Court did not say those maps are legal. It said federal judges cannot stop them.

• In Louisiana v. Callais, it made it far harder for Black and Latino voters to prove their votes had been diluted.

• Trump told Texas in 2025 to redraw its districts to win five more House seats; the Supreme Court let it stand for the November 2026 elections.

• On 11 February 2026, the House passed the SAVE America Act by 218 to 213. On 17 March, the Senate voted 51 to 48 to open debate. Debate collapsed weeks later without a vote on the bill itself, well short of the 60 needed to break a filibuster. It requires a passport or birth certificate to register and a photo ID to vote, and it ends most mail and online registration. The Brennan Center finds 21 million eligible citizens lack ready access to those documents. The Center for American Progress reports 69 million women hold birth certificates that no longer match their legal names. The bill stalled in the Senate in March 2026, short of the 60 votes it needed. Fourteen states have passed their own versions.

• Republican legislatures also passed laws that cut mail voting, closed polling places, and purged voter rolls, steps that harm Democratic and Black voters the most.

The aim is clear: the fewer people who can vote against him, the longer Trump can hold power.

Trump’s pathological Power-seeker drive led him to call for an insurrection when he lost the election and a mob attacked the Capitol. When it failed, that failure led Trump to try a new strategy: a resolution in Congress for a third term, an organized campaign, and a packed Supreme Court. The pro-Trump Supreme Court has given Trump more power, and that has caused Republican members to submit to him, increasing his power. Now only voters keep Trump from being the first American President For Life. This has led Trump, the Republicans, and the Supreme Court to restrict who can vote, skewing the balance firmly in Trump’s favor.

Friday’s Edition runs this chain one step into the future:

• what Trump is most likely to do to keep power

• whether the Republican Party, the courts, and the November election stop him

• what America looks like if they do not

Get a solid understanding of Trompenaars’ cultural dimensions by purchasing the guide or subscribing to Cultural Perspective (free or paid) and receiving the guide for free.

On July 24, 2026, President Donald Trump spoke at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in Washington. Trump said, “Just like my presidency, the second time is always better, always better, and the third time will be better yet.” At the end of his speech, he put on a red cap that read “Trump 2028,” and he said, “I'm pleased to announce my intention to, and this is somewhat of a scoop, my intention to run for a fourth term as president of the United States." Then he added, “I’m only kidding.” He was not kidding. In July 2024, speaking at Turning Point Action's Believers' Summit in West Palm Beach, he said: "In four years, you don't have to vote again." In March 2025, he told NBC News, "there are methods" for him to serve a third term. His online store had been selling the Trump 2028 hats since April 2025.

The 22nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution states that no person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice. That rule exists to keep one person from becoming too powerful and the U.S. falling into dictatorship and fascism. In the American politcial cultural perspective, people rule themselves as equals, and no one person or party rules for life, or even too long.

Twenty-Second Amendment

No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once. But this Article shall not apply to any person holding the office of President when this Article was proposed by the Congress, and shall not prevent any person who may be holding the office of President, or acting as President, during the term within which this Article becomes operative from holding the office of President or acting as President during the remainder of such term.

Americans formed that persepctive to escape the one-man rule of England’s King George III. The American colonists spent eight years, from 1775 to 1783, fighting to be free from King George III, a ruler who held power for life. They were acting from the cultural persepctive of Egalitarianism: the value that people are equals, and no one is born to rule over them. The opposite cultural persepctive is Hierarchy, the value that some people are placed above others and are owed obedience. A king is the purest form of hierarchy. A democracy is the cleanest form of egalitarianism because it allows the people to choose the government. The U.S. Founding Fathers had already written the belief down in 1776, in the line that all men are created equal. In the 1700s, “equality” pertained only to white men who owned land; thankfully, that has changed, although the U.S. is far from real egalitarianism.

That founding idea that power must never be in the hands of a single person led George Washington to give up power. He was popular enough to be re-elected for as long as he lived. But holding power for life was exactly what Americans had fought to escape; it was essentially the reason for the American Revolution. So in 1797, Washington left office and went home to his farm in Virginia after two terms. His choice created an unwritten rule: a president serves only two terms and then leaves.

America’s second President, John Adams, served only one term and power passed peacefully to Thomas Jefferson. Washington’s example convinced Jefferson to serve only two terms. Jefferson was asked to run for a third term, but refused. He warned that a president who kept winning re-election would in time become president for life, and the office could become inherited, like a king’s. Jefferson’s was clear: even if the people want a president for life, it should not happen.

Washington and Jefferson set the precedent and tradition: no president serves more than twice. That tradition grew strong enough to stop the men who challenged it. Ulysses S. Grant, a war hero who had already served two terms, tried to run for a third term in 1880, and his own party refused him the nomination. Theodore Roosevelt, who had served nearly two terms, ran for another in 1912 and lost. The rule held without needing to be a law, because it was a basic part of the American system. This was the way it was for almost a hundred and fifty years through wars, recessions, and depressions.

Then came the Great Depression, in which at one point, a quarter of American workers were unemployed. That crisis created a new level of fear, and that fear convinced Americans they needed a single strong leader to save them. The war in Europe added to the fear, and the Americans elected Franklin Roosevelt to a third term in 1940 and a fourth term in 1944. Roosevelt became the only president to hold power beyond two terms, and the tradition George Washington started, which came to be a basis of the American system, came to an end.

After the depression, the war, and the fear had passed, America returned to its founding principle, and Congress passed the 22nd Amendment restricting presidents to two terms. The custom Washington began in 1796 was now Constitutional law.

For the next 70 years, there has never been an issue with the transfer of power in America. That ended on January 6, 2021, when Donald Trump lost the election and incited the Capitol riot in a desperate hope to hold on to power. He failed. Now he appears to be trying a new tactic to hold on to power, running for a third term

The American colonists wanted freedom from one-man rule, King George III. That brought about the American Revolution, which created the American cultural perspective that no one man rules for long. That belief led Washington to give up power after two terms in 1796. His example led Jefferson to do the same, and created the tradition and basic American identity that a president can serve no more than two terms. Grant and Theodore Roosevelt tested it, but the Party and the people said 'No’. During the Depression and the Second World War, Americans gave in to the fear and elected Franklin Roosevelt for four terms. This caused Congress to pass the 22nd Amendment and legally restrict a President to two terms. The 22nd Amendment has been a key part of keeping any one person from taking power and making the U.S. into a dictatorship - until now.

Wednesday’s Edition covers what Trump has said and done to stay in power for life. How much control he now holds over the Republican Party, the courts, and those that could stop him.

Get a solid understanding of Trompenaars’ cultural dimensions by purchasing the guide or subscribing to Cultural Perspective (free or paid) and receiving the guide for free.

Canada is facing another 50 percent tariff from the U.S. Mark Carney, Canada’s Prime Minister, will treat this trade war the way he treats every hard problem, as a risk to be managed and a plan to be carried out. He will answer with calm, calibrated pressure, build a network of allies and new markets for Canada, and keep talking to Trump the whole time. He will not make it personal or gamble Canada’s economy on dramatic moves. Once you see the culture driving his decisions, the sequence is predictable.

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By July 20, 2026, the war had killed 18 American service members and wounded more than 430. Three of the 18 died in the previous four days, two of them in an Iranian missile strike on an air base in Jordan. Iran’s Ministry of Health counted 3,468 dead in the war’s first forty days, among them 376 children. The day before, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard had banned all shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, and Brent crude closed at 89 dollars a barrel, up about 13 dollars since the truce collapsed. Trump said America was “winning big” in Iran. The war was in its fifth month.

Monday’s Edition and Wednesday’s Edition traced how the 1953 coup and more than forty years of undeclared fighting produced this war. Friday’s Edition covers the war, a prediction partly wrong, and what happens next. The answer comes from the two cultural perspectives more than from the two nations’ arsenals.

The open war began over the bomb. Iran had enriched uranium to 60 percent, below the 90 percent a weapon needs. Israel unilaterally and wrongly called that close enough to a weapon and attacked Iran on June 13, 2025. Trump joined the attack on June 21, bombing the nuclear sites at Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan. Twelve days of strikes ended in a ceasefire; the nuclear program and Iran’s government both survived. America learned (again) that bombing alone does not bring down a government, so Trump kept the sanctions in place. Iran learned its defenses could not stop an American attack, so it rebuilt the bombed sites.

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By July 20, 2026, the American-Iran war had nearly stopped traffic through the world’s most important oil route. About 130 ships crossed the Strait of Hormuz daily before the war. Lloyd's List Intelligence reported on July 10 that no ship over 10,000 deadweight tons had crossed the US-coordinated lane along Oman's coast with its tracking signal on since July 7, though at least two crossed with signals off. The next day Trump said the strait was still open and reinstated a naval blockade on ships sailing to or from Iranian ports. On July 19 Iran's Revolutionary Guard banned all shipping through the strait. Brent crude traded near $88 a barrel on July 20, about $10 higher than a week earlier.

Wednesday’s Edition covers how America and Iran fought for forty years without declaring war, and how it ended. Monday’s Edition started with the 1953 coup that humiliated Iran, an Honor Culture. How the American hostages taught presidents that helplessness against Iran can cost the presidency. Neither the U.S. or Iran could afford open war: America’s voters remembered Vietnam, and Iraq’s 1980 invasion left Iran too weak. So Iran retaliated through armed groups it organized in other countries. America answered with sanctions, arms for Iran’s enemies, and warships.

The most powerful of the groups that Iran armed developed when Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982. Iran sent Revolutionary Guards to help Lebanon’s Shia Muslims found Hezbollah. A truck bomb attributed to Hezbollah destroyed the barracks of the American peacekeepers in Beirut on October 23, 1983, killing 241 Americans, most of them Marines. The bombing forced Reagan to strike back or back down, and, unwilling to start another war so soon after Vietnam, he withdrew and never retaliated for the attack. That withdrawal showed Iran that armed groups in other countries force American troops out without bringing war to Iran.

Reagan's answer was a lie to the American people. In public, he declared Iran a sponsor of terrorism and backed Iraq's war against it. In secret, he sold Iran more than two thousand missiles in 1985 and 1986 to free American hostages in Lebanon. He spent the profit arming rebels fighting to overthrow Nicaragua's government, aid Congress had banned. The irony is almost unbelievable.

The secret came out in November 1986, the Iran-Contra affair. The lie proved the Particularism Monday's Edition described: America made the rules and expected every nation to follow them, but America followed the rules only when it was convenient for America.

The Iraq war spread to the Gulf. Both Iran and Iraq were attacking oil tankers. American warships escorted tankers through the Strait. The escorts led to battles with Iranian gunboats. On July 3, 1988, the cruiser Vincennes mistook an Iranian airliner for a warplane and shot it down over the strait, killing all 290 aboard, 66 of them children. America paid the families 61.8 million dollars eight years later but never apologized. In an Honor Culture, the money is meaningless; the offender must admit the wrong. Iran’s count of unanswered insults grew.

Iran and the U.S. were still deep enemies when al-Qaeda, an enemy of Iran as well as America, attacked the U.S. on September 11, 2001. After the attack, President Bush named Iran, Iraq and North Korea the “axis of evil.” America invaded Iraq in March 2003 and removed Saddam Hussein, who had invaded Iran in 1980. The invasion gave Iran allied militias inside Iraq and a supply route through Syria to Hezbollah.

The invasion also showed Iran what protects a nation: Iraq, with no nuclear bomb, was invaded; North Korea, believed to have one, was left alone. So Iran expanded uranium enrichment from 2006, making it possible to make a nuclear bomb. America and Europe answered with sanctions, and in 2012 cut Iran’s banks out of SWIFT, the network banks use to move money across borders. No country had been cut off before. Iran's oil income collapsed, and the loss forced Iran to negotiate. The talks produced the nuclear deal of July 14, 2015:

Iran:

• Shipped out most of its enriched uranium

• Let in inspectors to confirm it was not building a bomb

The United States, the EU, Britain, France, Germany, Russia, and China

• lifted the sanctions on Iran

For once, the U.S. and Iran settled a fight by rules: Universalism.

Only 3 years later, the U.S. broke its word again. Donald Trump came to politics from New York real estate culture. A cultural perspective in which the basic unit is the deal, every deal has a winner and a loser, and a rival’s deal is by definition a loss. The theorist M.J. Hornby calls his type a pathological North: the power-seeker, a showman, willing to break rules other politicians obey. To that cultural perspective, the 2015 deal was Obama’s win, therefore Trump’s loss. Whatever other reasons he gave, Trump withdrew from the agreement on May 8, 2018, though inspectors had repeatedly certified Iran was keeping its part of the agreement. The U.S. restored sanctions.

Iran worked within the American system and lost anyway, a repeat of 1952, when it won in court, and the U.S. overthrew its government the next year. Iran has no reason to play by the rules. It enriched uranium past the deal’s limits from 2019, and Iran and its militias attacked Gulf tankers and American bases. The exchange peaked when Trump ordered a drone strike at Baghdad airport on January 3, 2020, killing Qasem Soleimani, the general who ran Iran’s militias abroad. Iran answered five days later with ballistic missiles at American bases in Iraq, then stopped. For the first time since their 1980s battles in the Gulf, each had struck the other openly.

The 1953 coup showed Iran that the U.S. does not obey its own rules and cannot be trusted. The Beirut bombing taught Iran that armed groups force American troops out. Iran-Contra and the airliner America shot down never apologized for reinforced that America's rules change to suit America: Particularism. America's invasion of Iraq made Iran stronger, and fear of being invaded like Iraq (and not North Korea, which has nuclear bombs) drove Iran to pursue a nuclear bomb. Sanctions forced Iran into the 2015 deal negotiated by Obama, which settled the fight by rules: Universalism. Trump, a pathological North Power-seeker, backed out of the deal, further reinforcing that the U.S. can not be trusted. Iran answered force with force until the Soleimani killing set the two nations directly against each other. That fight has now nearly stopped shipping through the strait.

Friday’s Edition covers the war itself: the strikes of 2025, the war of 2026, and what happens next.

Get a solid understanding of Trompenaars’ cultural dimensions by purchasing the guide or subscribing to Cultural Perspective (free or paid) and receiving the guide for free.

On July 17 and 18, 2026, American aircraft bombed Iran for the ninth night in a row, hitting bridges and power stations in Hormozgan, the Iranian province on the Strait of Hormuz, the waterway that carries about a fifth of the world’s oil. President Trump said, “We'll see what happens, but we hit them very hard again tonight.” Iran fired missiles and drones at American bases in Kuwait, Bahrain, and Jordan; American deaths in the war reached seventeen. Oil passed 90 dollars a barrel, and peace talks had collapsed over control of the strait.

The United States has a history of losing wars against smaller nations: Vietnam in 1975, Afghanistan in 2021. Iran may be the next. As with all wars, there is a long history behind it. For the U.S. and Iran, it began in 1953. That was the year America overthrew the Iranian government, an Honor Culture that demands that insults be answered, and the 444 days when Iran held Americans hostage made the two nations enemies to this day.

In 1951, Iran’s parliament took the country’s oil back from the British company that had controlled it since 1909. Britain challenged Iran's action in the World Court and effectively lost in 1952. The Court ruled the dispute was between Iran and a private company, not between two nations, so it had no power to hear the case. When Britain didn’t get its way legally, it pressured American leaders to help it overthrow the Iranian government and set up a puppet government. To regain control of Iran’s oil and from fear that Iran would fall to the communist Tudeh party and the Soviet Union, the CIA and Britain’s spy service, MI6, paid crowds and army officers to overthrow Iran’s elected prime minister, Mohammad Mossadegh, on August 19, 1953, and put the Shah, Iran’s king, in control of the nation.

After a day of street fighting that killed about 300 people, the Shah was in power and gave the oil back to the British and a large share to the Americans. In 1972, President Nixon agreed to sell the Shah any conventional weapon he wanted, so the Shah’s army, not American soldiers, would defend the Persian Gulf’s oil.

The Shah held power with a secret police force, SAVAK, that jailed and tortured opponents. It was clear that the U.S. had put the Shah in power and controlled him. So anger at the Shah grew into anger at America, and when the revolution forced the Shah out in January 1979 and toppled his government in February, the revolution’s leaders named the United States along with the Shah as the enemy.

For an Honor Culture, a nation’s worth comes from the respect others give it; insults and humiliations reduce that respect; they are personal and must be directly answered. The 1953 coup was such an insult; it must be answered and done so directly.

President Carter allowed the dying Shah into the United States for cancer treatment in October 1979. To the revolutionaries in Tehran, it looked like 1953 again: the CIA about to restore the king. Fear of a second coup drove hundreds of students to seize the American embassy on November 4, 1979, where they took about 66 Americans and held 52 of them hostage for 444 days. Americans watched helplessly night after night on television as the situation progressed. ABC started a nightly program named “The Iran Crisis: America Held Hostage.” It counted the days on screen.

America a Dignity Culture, where one’s worth is intrinsic. Disputes are not personal and are resolved in courts and by rules. But Americans hold a contradiction: they follow the rules, Universalism, when the rules work for them, but Americans also have a Particularism streak; the rules change when they are not in their favor. Americans call this cultural perspective American exceptionalism: America’s case is special, so the rules that bind others do not bind it. A nation that believes it is the exception demanded action against Iran.

The government acted, and failed. Carter sent helicopters and transport planes into the Iranian desert to free the hostages on April 24, 1980. Three of the eight helicopters failed, the mission was called off, and as the aircraft withdrew, a helicopter hit a transport plane; eight American servicemen died in the fire. Iranian television showed the wreckage to the world.

The televised wreckage helped decide an election held one year to the day after the seizure: Carter lost 44 of 50 states to Ronald Reagan on November 4, 1980. Inflation and a weak economy did part of that damage, but the hostages had convinced millions of voters that Carter was helpless. Iran made the defeat personal: it held the hostages until minutes after Reagan’s swearing-in on January 20, 1981, so the release would not be Carter’s.

That defeat set a rule for American politicians: a president who looks helpless against Iran can lose the presidency.

Reagan’s administration answered Iran with force in public view. In July 1987, the Navy began escorting reflagged Kuwaiti tankers through the Gulf. On April 14, 1988, an Iranian mine blew a fifteen-foot hole in the frigate USS Samuel B. Roberts and nearly sank it. Four days later, the Navy:

• sank the Iranian frigate Sahand and the missile boat Joshan

• crippled the frigate Sabalan

• destroyed two Iranian oil platforms

• sank several armed speedboats

Iran lost roughly half its operating navy in a single day.

Later politicians stated the rule directly. Between 2011 and 2013, Donald Trump, then a private citizen, said repeatedly that President Obama would attack Iran to win reelection. On November 29, 2011, he wrote that Obama would start a war with Iran in order to get elected. On October 9, 2012, he wrote that a president with falling poll numbers would launch a strike on Iran because he was desperate. Obama never did it. That is the point. Trump was not describing a plan. He was describing what he believed American voters reward. On January 3, 2020, facing an impeachment trial and a reelection campaign, Trump ordered the drone strike that killed Qasem Soleimani, the commander of Iran’s Quds Force.

Carter looked helpless against Iran and lost. No president since has wanted to test whether the rule still holds.

America overthrew Iran’s government in 1953 and put the Shah in power to keep control of Iran’s oil, which gave Iran, an Honor Culture, an insult to answer. The Shah’s police state made Iranians blame America along with the king, so when the revolution came, it was anti-American, and fear of a second coup drove Iranian students to take the U.S. embassy and American hostages. The hostages and a failed rescue cost Carter the presidency. Every president since Carter has known what looking helpless against Iran costs. That is one reason American bombs are falling on Iran again

Wednesday’s Edition covers what that lesson produced: forty years of attacks traded through proxies and warships, the deal that tried to end the conflict by rules, and the man who ended the deal.

Get a solid understanding of Trompenaars’ cultural dimensions by purchasing the guide or subscribing to Cultural Perspective (free or paid) and receiving the guide for free.

Claudia Sheinbaum is remaking Mexico. She’s doing it by shifting the economy from extractive to inclusive. That’s what science says is best for a nation, and science is her cultural perspective.

Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, and James Robinson, who won the 2024 Nobel Prize in economics, define inclusive institutions as those that spread power and opportunity among many people, and extractive institutions as those that concentrate power and wealth in a few hands. By that test, Mexico is moving in both directions at once, inclusive economics but extractive government. Thus far, it has improved people’s lives while centralizing government.

Sheinbaum earned a doctorate in energy engineering at the National Autonomous University of Mexico and did her doctoral research at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California. She wrote sections of two United Nations climate science reports, in 2007 and 2013, as part of the panel that shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. She ran Mexico City’s environment department from 2000 to 2006, governed Mexico City from 2018 to 2023, and became president on October 1, 2024, the first woman to hold the office.

From this cultural perspective, the basic unit is the experiment. An idea (a government policy, in this case) is grounded in observation and data and tested against real measurements. If the data support the expected outcome, the policy was right and should continue moving forward. Winning is when the policy produces the result the model predicted. Policies become experiments that have worked in other nations, aimed at achieving specific targets: reducing homicides and poverty, or increasing the minimum wage, or expanding access to healthcare. The price is that independent institutions, which a leader cannot direct, become variables she cannot hold constant, so she removes them from the experiment.

Research science is the operating system, but it is not the whole picture. Three other cultures have shaped Sheinbaum and the way she governs.

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On March 2, 2026, at a French submarine base on the Atlantic coast, President Emmanuel Macron offered to protect Europe with nuclear its weapons. He called it forward deterrence, meaning stationing French nuclear aircraft in allied countries near Russia's border. Moscow knows before it attacks that the attack will be answered with nuclear weapons. He did this because the Trump-Republican administration made it clear that it may no longer help defend Europe. By June 2026, nine European countries had agreed to open talks with France. Europe had begun to build a second nuclear force, one that it controls.

Monday’s and Wednesday’s Editions traced how Europe reached this point. In 1648, the Peace of Westphalia granted each nation the right to self-rule. This created national loyalty, and that loyalty created rivalries, and those rivalries drove the wars that ended in World War II. The devastation of World War II drove Europe to integrate its economies to end rivalries and wars. But, it never joined its armies or its foreign policies, because the United States defended it and steered its foreign policy. Now the United States is pulling back from Europe. These two issues are pressuring the EU to either form a federation or break apart.

One block pushes to unite, caused by fear when Russia invaded Ukraine, and with the Trump-Republican administration cutting the number of troops in Europe and refusing to promise to defend Europe. In February 2026, a senior American defense official said Europe must take primary responsibility for defending itself. For the first time since 1945, Europeans face a Russian army with no guarantee that the United States will fight with them. That fear is strong enough to push sovereign nations to act together. Readiness 2030 is an €800 billion plan to rebuild Europe’s militaries, with nations buying weapons together rather than separately, and Macron’s forward-deterrence nuclear offer.

On the other side, some nations want greater independence from the EU. They feel

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In 2026, Germany is spending about €108 billion on its military, its largest budget since the Second World War. The Defense Ministry has procurement plan to buy up to 1,000 new battle tanks, roughly 2,500 armored vehicles, and more fighter jets, and a government fiscal plan to raise military spending to about €152 billion a year by 2029. Germany is rea…

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On July 7 and 8, 2026, the leaders of NATO met in Ankara, Turkey. On paper, the alliance held. But the reality was different. In May, the Pentagon announced it would pull about 5,000 American troops out of Germany. It canceled a missile battalion it had promised to send. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth prepared to announce deeper cuts at a NATO meeting i…

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