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More than 200 years ago, Alexander Hamilton defied partisanship for the sake of the country’s future; if he hadn’t done so, American history might have taken a very different course. Today, Republicans face the same choice.

But first, here are three new stories from The Atlantic.

The Trumpification of the Supreme Court “No one has a right to protest in my home.” Columbia University’s impossible position

A Red Line

Alexander Hamilton loathed Thomas Jefferson. As rivals in George Washington’s Cabinet, the two fought over economics, the size and role of government, and slavery. They disagreed bitterly about the French Revolution (Jefferson was enthralled, Hamilton appalled). Hamilton thought Jefferson was a hypocrite, and Jefferson described Hamilton as “a man whose history … is a tissue of machinations against the liberty of the country.”

But starting in late 1800, Hamilton broke with his fellow Federalists and provided crucial support that put Jefferson in the White House. He was willing to set aside his tribal loyalties and support a man whose policies he vigorously opposed—a choice that saved the nation from a dangerous demagogue but likely cost him his life.

“History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes,” Mark Twain probably never said. The quote’s attribution is apocryphal, but the point seems apt, because about 220 years later, Republicans face the same choice Hamilton did. They now have to decide whether felony charges, fraud, sexual abuse, and insurrection are red lines that supersede partisan loyalty.

Alexander Hamilton’s red line was Aaron Burr, whom he regarded as a dangerous, narcissistic mountebank and a “man of extreme & irregular ambition.” Burr was Jefferson’s running mate in the 1800 election, in which he defeated the Federalist incumbent John Adams. But under the original Constitution, the candidate with the most electoral votes became president, and the second-place finisher became vice president. Bizarrely, Jefferson and Burr each got 73 electoral votes, and because the vote was tied, the election was thrown to the House, which now had to choose the next president. Many Federalists, who detested and feared the idea of a Jefferson presidency, wanted to install Burr instead.

The result was a constitutional crisis that threatened to turn violent. “Republican newspapers talked of military intervention,” the historian Gordon Wood wrote in Empire of Liberty. “The governors of Virginia and Pennsylvania began preparing their state militias for action. Mobs gathered in the capital and threatened to prevent any president from being appointed by statute.”

Hamilton was faced with a difficult choice. He was a leading figure among Federalists; Jefferson was the leader of the faction known as Democratic-Republicans. And the 1790s were a historically partisan era. Yet “in a choice of Evils,” Hamilton wrote, “Jefferson is in every view less dangerous than Burr.” Washington, in his Farewell Address (which Hamilton helped draft and which Donald Trump’s lawyers misleadingly quoted this week), sounded the alarm about the growing partisan factionalism that he thought was tearing the country apart. Political parties, he said, could become “potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people, and to usurp for themselves the reins of government.” Hamilton was convinced that Aaron Burr was exactly the sort of cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled man that Washington had warned against.

Even though Jefferson was “too revolutionary in his notions,” Hamilton was willing to swallow his disagreements, because Jefferson was “yet a lover of liberty and will be desirous of something like orderly Government.” In contrast, “Mr. Burr loves nothing but himself—thinks of nothing but his own aggrandizement—and will be content with nothing short of permanent power in his own hands.”

Defying his fellow Federalists, Hamilton waged a vigorous and ultimately successful campaign to derail the scheme to install Burr. Jefferson was elected president on the 36th ballot after a group of Federalist congressmen flipped their votes for Burr, choosing to abstain instead.

Hamilton’s career in politics, already badly damaged by scandal, was effectively over. Burr, who became vice president, never forgave Hamilton, and on July 11, 1804, he fatally shot Hamilton in a duel in Weehawken, New Jersey. Burr was charged with murder but served out his term as vice president, immune from prosecution. Three years later, he was arrested and charged with treason after he allegedly plotted to seize territory in the West and create a new empire. He was acquitted on a technicality, and fled the country in disgrace.

But for Hamilton’s willingness to defy partisanship, American history might have taken a very different course.

Like Hamilton, we live in an age of fierce loyalties that make crossing party lines extraordinarily difficult. If anything, it is even harder now, especially for Republicans living with social pressures, media echo chambers, and a cult-like party culture compassed round, in the words of John Milton. Many public figures in the GOP have shown that they cannot break free of partisanship even in the face of rank criminality.

For example: Former Attorney General Bill Barr and New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu acknowledge Trump’s lies about the 2020 election, and his culpability in the January 6 attack on the Capitol. But both men have said they would vote for Trump. Sununu has said that he would do so even if Trump is convicted of multiple felonies, suggesting that his crimes would be less important than his political differences with the Democrats. Former Vice President Mike Pence has said he would not endorse Trump, but he has also ruled out voting for Joe Biden.

Even former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who declared that Trump “is wholly unfit to be president of the United States in every way you think,” cannot bring himself to support the Democratic incumbent. We’re still waiting for Nikki Haley to say how she will vote in November.

So far, only Liz Cheney seems to be taking a position that rhymes with Hamilton’s choice two centuries ago. “There are some conservatives who are trying to make this claim that somehow Biden is a bigger risk than Trump,” she said. “My view is: I disagree with a lot of Joe Biden’s policies. We can survive bad policies. We cannot survive torching the Constitution.” Alexander Hamilton would, I think, approve.

Related:

Trump’s willing accomplice The validation brigade salutes Trump.

Today’s News

ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, released a statement yesterday asserting that it has no plans to sell the social-media app, in light of the potential national ban. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin announced that the U.S. will give Ukraine additional Patriot missiles as part of a $6 billion aid package. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Beijing. Blinken indicated that Chinese leaders had not made any promises about the U.S. demand that China cut its support for Russia’s defense industry.

Dispatches

The Books Briefing: The author Adam Hochschild recommends books that vividly illustrate moments of great change. Atlantic Intelligence: As a technology, AI is “quite thirsty, relying on data centers that require not just a tremendous amount of energy, but water to cool themselves with,” Damon Beres writes. Work in Progress: Derek Thompson explores why it’s so hard to answer the question What makes us happiest?

Explore all of our newsletters here.

Evening Read

Tony Evans / Getty

We’re All Reading Wrong

By Alexandra Moe

Reading, while not technically medicine, is a fundamentally wholesome activity. It can prevent cognitive decline, improve sleep, and lower blood pressure. In one study, book readers outlived their nonreading peers by nearly two years. People have intuitively understood reading’s benefits for thousands of years: The earliest known library, in ancient Egypt, bore an inscription that read “The House of Healing for the Soul.”

But the ancients read differently than we do today. Until approximately the tenth century, when the practice of silent reading expanded thanks to the invention of punctuation, reading was synonymous with reading aloud. Silent reading was terribly strange, and, frankly, missed the point of sharing words to entertain, educate, and bond. Even in the 20th century, before radio and TV and smartphones and streaming entered American living rooms, couples once approached the evening hours by reading aloud to each other.

Read the full article.

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P.S.

Photo by my wife, J. F. Riordan

I’m hoping to spend some quality time this weekend with Auggie and Eli, who still think they are lapdogs. That’s me under there.

— Charlie

Stephanie Bai contributed to this newsletter.

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This story was supposed to have a different beginning. You were supposed to hear about how, earlier this week, I attended a splashy launch party for a new AI gadget—the Rabbit R1—in New York City, and then, standing on a windy curb outside the venue, pressed a button on the device to summon an Uber home. Instead, after maybe an hour of getting it set up and fidgeting with it, the connection failed.

The R1 is a bright-orange chunk of a device, with a camera, a mic, and a small screen. Press and hold its single button, ask it a question or give it a command using your voice, and the cute bouncing rabbit on screen will perk up its ears, then talk back to you. It’s theoretically like communicating with ChatGPT through a walkie-talkie. You could ask it to identify a given flower through its camera or play a song based on half-remembered lyrics; you could ask it for an Uber, but it might get hung up on the last step and leave you stranded in Queens.

When I finally got back to my hotel room, I turned on the R1’s camera and held up a cold slice of pizza. “What am I looking at?” I asked. “You are looking at a slice of pizza,” the voice told me. (Correct!) “It looks appetizing and freshly baked.” (Well, no.) I decided to try something else. “What are top 10 …” I stumbled, letting go of the button. I tried again: “What are the top 10 best use cases for AI for a normal person?” The device, perhaps confused by our previous interaction, started listing out pizza toppings beginning with the No. 2. “2. Sausage. 3. Mushrooms. 4. Extra Cheese.”

Until now, consumer AI has largely been defined by software: chatbots such as ChatGPT or the iPhone’s souped-up autocorrect. Now we are experiencing a thingification: Companies are launching and manufacturing actual bits of metal and plastic that are entirely dedicated to AI features. These devices are distinguished from previous AI gadgets, such as the Amazon Echo, in that they incorporate the more advanced generative-AI technology that has recently been in vogue, allowing users more natural interactions. There are pins and pendants and a whole new round of smart glasses.

[Read: Alexa, should we trust you?]

Yet for all its promise, this new era is not going very well. Take Humane, a Rabbit competitor that launched a wearable “AI Pin” earlier this month. That device has been positioned as a smartphone replacement, with a price to match: It costs $699 and requires a $24 monthly subscription fee. Reviewers brutalized the pin, saying it is slow, overheats, and struggles to answer basic queries. “I’m hard-pressed to name a single thing it’s genuinely good at,” The Verge wrote.

By comparison, the R1 is satisfyingly small in its ambition and (relatively) affordable in its price ($199, no subscription). The device itself is fun and retro-chic: Jesse Lyu, Rabbit’s founder and CEO, reportedly bought every member of his team a Tamagotchi for inspiration. And, in fairness, the R1 does some interesting things. Onstage, Lyu showed how the device can interpret a handwritten table and convert it into a working digital spreadsheet. It managed to speak a summary of a handwritten page when I asked, though only with about 65 percent accuracy. I was able to use the gadget to order an acai bowl on DoorDash, although it couldn’t handle any customizations. (I wanted peanut butter.) And I never got Uber to work. (Though at one point, the device told me the request had failed when it in fact hadn’t, leaving me on the hook for a $9 ride I didn’t even take.)

One of the big selling points of the R1 is that it supposedly runs something called a large action model, or LAM—a spin on the phrase large language model, which is the technology powering recent chatbots. Whereas ChatGPT can answer questions and draft you a mediocre essay, the R1 can, in theory, complete actions that you might take on different apps (Venmo-ing your friend $20, for example). Rabbit has said the device will be able to learn any app, if you teach it. Lyu compared the technology to a Tesla: When on autopilot, a Tesla car can in theory recognize a stop sign not because engineers tell it how a stop sign looks but because it has been trained on countless hours of footage to recognize the sign’s physical attributes. Likewise, R1 will be able to accomplish tasks on your phone without having to be taught each app.

The problem is, none of this is actually real. At least not yet. As with so many AI products, the R1 is fueled more by hype than by a persuasive use case. (So many of its functions could, after all, be done on a smartphone.) Back in February, Lyu said the Rabbit was training its model on 800 apps. This week, it launched with the ability to use just four: Spotify, DoorDash, Uber, and Midjourney (a popular AI art generator). The company says LAM is in “very early stages.”

[Read: Phones will never be fun again]

Onstage before an audience of reporters and Rabbit fanboys on Tuesday night, Lyu seemed nervous at times, at one point encouraging people to laugh in order to ease his nerves. Prior to the event, a user had posted on GitHub accusing Rabbit of misrepresenting its technology. “For those with a technical background, it’s painfully clear that there’s no artificial intelligence or large action model in sight,” the anonymous post, which has since been deleted, read. On X, Lyu characterized the post as “all false claims.” Lyu promised to fix any bugs that might crop up in R1 devices. Before demoing DoorDash onstage, he admitted that the feature doesn’t yet work as fast as they’d like it to: “But I want to show you, and I want to be frank with you guys.”

Yet Lyu also breathlessly announced a number of new initiatives, including a high-concept system that would allow people to someday merge the physical and the digital, so people could point at various smart items in their home and control them through Rabbit’s AI. (Never mind that the R1 has launched without many of its promised features.) Toward the end of the presentation, the words Be Humble appeared on the giant screen behind him. “We are a really, really humble team,” Lyu told the crowd. Those words were still displayed when, a few moments later, the curtains on either side of the stage dramatically dropped to reveal conveyor belts loaded with boxes of R1s. Music started blasting, and people started lining up to snatch theirs.

The R1 is a reminder of the disconnect, for better and for worse, between a Silicon Valley culture that often prioritizes speed over quality and high consumer expectations about the products they use. And to be fair, expectations are high at least in part because of the extraordinary products that have emerged from that same competitive and iterative culture over the years.

As the party wound down, news of the first bug arrived: There was no way to change the time zone on the devices, many of which were programmed by default to the West Coast. Turns out the future is stuck three hours behind.