On a cool Saturday morning in New York City, voters lined up outside polling places, waiting for the chance to make their voices heard in the midterm elections. There was something reassuringly familiar about the scene: neighbors nodding at one another, first-time voters clutching sample ballots, older New Yorkers who had done this many times before, all taking part in a ritual that has defined democracy for centuries. That moment of civic engagement, captured in a photograph of early voting, feels solid and real. Yet while these voters moved through the physical world, an invisible and much more chaotic battle…

A presidential visit is the kind of thing that can turn an ordinary Texas town into a small universe of controlled chaos. There are street closures, police escorts, Secret Service agents in dark suits and earpieces, helicopters beating through the sky, and crowds of people pressed against barricades hoping to catch a glimpse of the man in the long black car. So when word began spreading online and through news outlets that President Donald Trump would be visiting Port Arthur to see a Venezuelan tanker loaded with crude oil, it was easy for people to imagine the refinery city suddenly…