Mostly young, mostly male Moroccans crawling onto beaches, climbing hills, scaling walls, jumping over fences, surging past police in order to get into Europe: The photographs and videos that emerged from Ceuta, a Spanish enclave in North Africa, on July 29 and 30 looked very much like migrant-terror videos, deliberately designed to be broadcast by the international far right.

Updated at 8:32 p.m. ET on August 2, 2026
A couple of years ago, squinting into the morning sun on a Dulles International Airport people mover after arriving from London, I found myself chatting with a flight attendant. Looking at the tired travelers packed in around her, she said in her British accent that she always dreaded flying through Washington. “I just can’t believe this is the airport at your nation’s capital.

Sometime after Jack Black hollered “chicken jockey” in 2025’s A Minecraft Movie, and before The Odyssey drove the masses mad with aspect-ratio anxiety, Hollywood finally felt seen—and saved—by Gen Z. Over the past year, trade publications and mainstream outlets alike celebrated the news: Zoomers were coming of age and coming to the rescue of American cinema.

When you approach the freshly gilded twin statues near the Lincoln Memorial, there is no mistaking that they are gold. Very, very gold. Distractingly gold—or, more precisely, covered in 23.75-karat gold leaf costing $5.1 million. The 19-foot statues, called The Arts of War, were once easy to miss but now look a bit like oversized children’s trophies, especially next to the classical and austere Lincoln Memorial.

The videos that Instagram suggests in my never-ending “For You” feed are usually of a constellation of women. They’re strangers, but I call them “my girls.” One of them is remodeling her house; one is always cleaning and “resetting” the van she lives in; one is sampling pasta and sandwiches at various New York establishments.