Everybody knew artificial intelligence would play a role in this year’s election, but not quite this way.

On Sunday, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump falsely claimed that Democratic opponent Kamala Harris had used AI tools to fabricate the size of crowds at her rallies. Media outlets, including the local Fox TV affiliate that live-streamed a large Detroit airport event, debunked the former president’s social media post.

Whether it is candidates accusing opponents of altering videos when it can be so easily disproved or surprise findings that AI-aided fake political news is having only mixed success, 2024 is not turning out the way cybersecurity specialists expected. AI influence campaigns were supposed to be smarter and more subtle than what has happened so far in elections stretching from Indonesia to the United States.

Cyber meddlers are still making trouble. Yet they appear to be relying on traditional tactics more than on AI. In the latest example, Iranian hackers may have stolen information from the Trump campaign.

This week’s false claim about Harris rally attendance and its amplification on social media highlight what some cybersecurity experts have long said: Although the use of AI deepfakes is growing, the best way to combat malign cyber influence in elections is to clamp down on its distribution.

“The one thing I want to fix? It’s the problem of the last 20 years: social media,” says Hany Farid, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and pioneer in digital forensics and image analysis. “If I could create deepfakes of Biden and Trump and all I could do was mail it to my five friends, that’s really different than if I can cover Twitter and YouTube and TikTok with it.” 

Two weeks ago, for example, tech billionaire Elon Musk grabbed headlines after he shared a video on his social media platform that used an AI voice-cloning tool to mimic the voice of Vice President Harris – saying things she hasn’t really said. He later said he assumed readers knew it was a parody.

“It’s not the number of fakes [that matters]; it’s their impact,” says Oren Etzioni, founder of TrueMedia.org. “One fake can have a major impact if it’s propagated widely via social media and people believe in it.” His nonprofit is offering media outlets and others a tool to spot deepfakes quickly.

While using AI can make creating fictional material much easier and quicker, there’s no guarantee it will have its intended effect.

Petr David Josek/AP

Fireworks explode during the 2024 Summer Olympics closing ceremony at the Stade de France, Aug. 12, 2024, in Saint-Denis, France. Pro-Russian propagandists tried to denigrate the games through stunts that included AI to recreate the voice of actor Tom Cruise. The real Mr. Cruise rappelled into the ceremony to a cheering crowd.

For instance, a report in April by the Microsoft Threat Analysis Center (MTAC) found that a Russian-influenced operation called Storm-1679 repeatedly used generative AI to try to undermine the Paris Olympics, but it failed. In an update Friday, MTAC identified a Chinese group that incorporated the technology, “but with limited to no impact.”

OpenAI, the company behind the popular chatbot ChatGPT, reached a similar conclusion in a report in May. It found that although influencers linked to Russia, China, and Iran used its tools to generate articles in various languages, create names and bios for social media accounts, and debug computer code, among other activities, they had not “meaningfully increased audience engagement or reach.”

These failures may explain why foreign influencers have returned to more tried-and-true techniques. “We’ve seen nearly all actors seek to incorporate AI into their content in their operations, but more recently, many actors have pivoted back to techniques that have proven effective in the past,” according to the MTAC report released Friday.

Consider Mr. Trump's allegation this past weekend that Iranian hackers, who may have been conducting a traditional cyberattack known as spear-phishing, had stolen internal documents from his campaign. He was apparently referring to Friday’s MTAC report, which singled out an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps unit that recently used a compromised account of a former political adviser to email “a high-ranking official of a presidential campaign.”

The email included a fake forwarding address with a link to a site controlled by the unit, according to the report. In July, the political news website Politico began receiving internal Trump campaign documents from an anonymous source, including a 271-page dossier of publicly available information on Ohio Sen. JD Vance, the GOP vice-presidential nominee.

Now the FBI is investigating an alleged Iranian attack on the Democratic presidential campaign as well as the one on the GOP.

Jim Urquhart/Reuters

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump attends a campaign rally in Bozeman, Montana, August 9, 2024. This week's false claim by the former U.S. President spread quickly, highlighting the notion that the best way to combat cyber fraud is to clamp down on its distribution.

“Over the past several months, we have seen the emergence of significant influence activity by Iranian actors,” the MTAC report says.

While social media poses a bigger problem,  the number of AI political deepfakes continues to increase around the world, especially during campaign seasons.

“India, Pakistan, Taiwan, Indonesia, Mexico … in each of these elections, every single one, we’ve seen deepfakes, and they’ve become increasingly persuasive,” says Mr. Etzioni of TrueMedia.org. 

In India this spring, police arrested people from two opposition parties after a video falsely showed the home secretary saying that the government would end an affirmative-action jobs program for disadvantaged castes.

Deepfakes aren’t always malign. In Pakistan, supporters of an opposition party used deepfakes of their jailed leader, with his permission, to appeal to voters, who gave the party a plurality. It was a historic outcome, even though the party backed by the military eventually formed a coalition government with another opposition party.

Here in the United States, the motives have also been mixed. In January, before the New Hampshire primary, a political consultant paid for a deep fake of President Joe Biden discouraging voters from going to the polls. The consultant, a Democrat, claimed he did it to alert his party to the dangers of AI. Nevertheless, the Federal Communications Commission has since proposed fining him $6 million, and New Hampshire has indicted him on 32 counts related to election interference.

Elizabeth Frantz/Reuters

A deepfake video of U.S. President Joe Biden, posted on X, appeared to show him cursing his critics after he announced he would not seek reelection from the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, July 24, 2024.

Last month, a deepfake appeared to show Mr. Biden swearing at viewers during his televised speech ending his reelection campaign. The video went viral on the social media platform X (formerly Twitter). 

One reason for spreading such content is to damage a candidate’s reputation. Another more subtle aim is “polarizing the already divided segments of the society,” says Siwei Lyu, co-director of the Center for Information Integrity at the University at Buffalo.

Increasing this divisiveness often appears to be the aim of influence campaigns by foreign nations. In this election cycle, “we expect Iranian actors will employ cyberattacks against institutions and candidates while simultaneously intensifying their efforts to amplify existing divisive issues within the U.S., like racial tensions, economic disparities, and gender-related issues,” MTAC said in its report.

Companies and governments are beginning to respond to such threats.

At a Munich conference in February, Google, Meta, OpenAI, X, and 16 other large tech companies committed to the Tech Accord to Combat Deceptive Use of AI in 2024 Elections. Among other points, the accord requires companies to detect and address such content on their platforms. In May, OpenAI announced it had closed the accounts of the Russian, Chinese, and Iranian influencers it had detected. 

While democracy advocates applauded the move, many say industry self-regulation isn’t enough. The European Commission actively investigates potential failures of platforms like Facebook and Instagram.  

Mr. Farid at Berkeley sees a big change from 20 years ago.

“Now there is an awareness that ... the government does have to step in,” he says.  

In the U.S. the magnitude of the shift is an open question. In June, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to rule on whether the White House and federal agencies can push social media companies to remove content the federal government deems misinformation. The Justices said the plaintiffs lacked standing to bring the case.

The result: Although some federal oversight on misinformation may continue for now, debate over whether this violates constitutional free-speech protections is unsettled.

California, the epicenter of homelessness in the United States, is trying to find its footing after the Supreme Court this summer gave localities more power to enforce anti-camping rules.

The court’s ruling upholding the enforcement measures of the city of Grants Pass, Oregon, allows local governments to penalize people for sleeping and camping outdoors – even if there is no place to shelter them. 

With that new authority, cities like San Francisco are taking a more “aggressive” approach, as Mayor London Breed puts it. Police and street cleaners are instructed to prevent tents from popping back up after encampments are cleared; outreach workers must first offer people experiencing homelessness transportation out of town as city shelters near capacity.

Mayor Breed is in step with California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s July 25 “no more excuses” executive order that directs state agencies to develop guidelines and move urgently toward removing encampments on state property. The order encourages local city and county governments to take similar action. While he can’t force local compliance, he warned last week that he would direct money away from counties if he did not see “demonstrable results” by year’s end. About a third of the nation’s homeless people live in California.

The governor may be moving fast, but some jurisdictions are balking. The Board of Supervisors for vast Los Angeles County, for example, the most populous county in the nation, where 75,000 people are homeless, voted recently to reject fining or arresting people for sitting, sleeping, or lying in public spaces, as the Supreme Court ruling now allows it to do.

Damian Dovarganes/AP

A commuter drives past a homeless camp by Interstate 105, July 26, 2024, in Los Angeles. After the Supreme Court ruled that cities could enforce bans on sleeping outside in public spaces, California Gov. Gavin Newsom directed state and local officials "to move urgently'' to address homeless encampments.

Instead, the county board affirmed its “care first” approach, in which outreach workers encourage people to come indoors, get supportive services, and ultimately move to permanent housing. For the first time in years, the number of people living on the streets in the region declined this year – dropping 5.1% in the county overall, and 10.4% in Los Angeles.

One particular success in LA County is the coastal community of Redondo Beach, which since 2019 has halved its homeless population. That has come through innovations like individual tiny shelters, restricted camping hours, and a homeless court that convenes outdoors, according to Michael Webb, the city attorney and point person on homelessness. 

Localities are trying to find “the humane way and the effective way” to address homelessness in the wake of the Supreme Court decision, he adds.

“Everyone is in a ‘figure out where we are’ mode,” says Mr. Webb. 

Stronger enforcement a “needed tool”

Even so, he supports the Supreme Court ruling and the governor’s executive order because stronger enforcement is a “needed tool” to keep people from sleeping or camping in public spaces, especially if they refuse shelter and services or have other housing options, he says. But “it would be a mistake if [enforcement] is used as a first resort.”

That would result in shifting, not solving, the problem, he explains. One city’s tougher measures can drive homeless people to a neighboring town with weaker enforcement. That’s why Mr. Webb put forward a “good neighbor pledge” – to be adopted by cities in the region – that offers shelter and services as a core strategy, while promising not to push those who need shelter to another town.

“Generally, I’ve heard nothing but positive” comments, he says, “because everyone’s worried about being on the receiving end” of the homeless population shift.

Francine Kiefer/The Christian Science Monitor

A housing and social services navigation center for homeless people is under construction in Palm Springs, California, Aug. 1, 2024. The center includes 80 units of modular, transitional housing for individuals and families.

A recent study of three homeless hot spots in Los Angeles found that in places with encampment clearing, the homeless population declined – but only for two or three months.

“The people come back, [though] they might not have tents anymore,” says Sarah Hunter, director of the Rand Center on Housing and Homelessness, which conducted the study.

While Governor Newsom stressed the urgency behind encampment cleanup, he also said it needed to include “supporting and assisting the individuals.” The order calls for state agencies, such as parks, to adopt guidelines consistent with those of the state’s Department of Transportation, which has cleared more than 11,000 encampments from underpasses and other areas in the last three years. The guidelines must include advance notice of a cleanup, contact with homeless service providers, and storage of people’s belongings. 

Coordinating moving and services

The state is providing billions of dollars for homeless services, housing, and encampment clearing. But Dr. Hunter says the governor is putting the cart before the horse, as not all of the resources have come online yet. 

Meanwhile, politics play a “pretty substantial role,” she says, given the governor’s role on the national stage and Mayor Breed’s reelection bid. In addition, the Republican Party is using Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris of California as a punching bag for failed liberal policies.

In Palm Springs, which last month passed an ordinance to prevent encampments and sleeping in public places, police Chief Andy Mills is grateful for both the Supreme Court ruling and the governor’s executive order.

Francine Kiefer/The Christian Science Monitor

Police Chief Andy Mills stands at the site of a cleared encampment of tents along Gene Autry Trail in Palm Springs, California, Aug. 1, 2024. At one point, the area pictured behind him had about 70 tents in it.

“The state has finally come to the realization that just housing alone is not going to work,” he says. “There has to be some enforcement also.”

When Chief Mills came to Palm Springs three years ago, he found that the top concern was not burglaries, traffic, or shootings. It was, by far, homelessness. He and his team focused on it with the relentlessness of the desert sun – taking a detailed census of homeless people; connecting them with shelter, services, family, and other locations; and clearing encampments by using existing laws against trespassing and starting fires. 

Of the roughly 350 homeless people living year-round in Palm Springs in 2022, only about 100 “recalcitrant” people remain, according to city police. Police now have legal authority to tell people, “You cannot lie in the middle of the sidewalk in the middle of the day,” says Chief Mills. 

Like Mr. Webb of Redondo Beach, the police chief says the high court has given him “one more piece of leverage” to move homeless people who refuse housing and services.

A new $40 million homeless navigation center

The city’s new ordinance won’t go into effect until a new $40 million housing and social services navigation center is completed for homeless people, probably in September. It offers 80 units of modular, transitional housing for individuals and families, and includes supportive services, a play area, green space, and a dog park.

Police describe their approach as “compassion first.” But there are also consequences.

If people violate the new ordinance, they have three options, says Chief Mills: the new navigation center (if there is space), another location (preferably their hometown or with family), or jail – at the police officer’s discretion.

“We are not solving homelessness,” says the police chief. “But people have to understand they’re full-grown adults like you and I. They need to be held accountable for their impact on our community.”

Francine Kiefer/The Christian Science Monitor

Donna Jones, a self-described "trust fund baby" who is now homeless, sits behind the Palm Springs police station Aug. 1, 2024. "I'd rather sleep under the stars" than stay at the city's new navigation center, she says.

Donna Jones, a homeless woman sitting on a sidewalk near a cooling shelter with access to services, has no interest in the new navigation center – neither its large room with 50 beds that opened this spring, nor the individual units coming online. She says that she feels unsafe in group shelters. Small individual units strike her as “a little jail.” 

“I’d rather sleep under the stars,” with occasional rejuvenating visits to Motel 6, she says. A self-described “trust fund baby” whose downfall was gambling, Ms. Jones has heard nothing of the Supreme Court ruling, governor’s executive order, or new city ordinance.

“I don’t think that’s right,” she says, when told about the court’s decision and the possibility of arrest. She perks up at the news that Los Angeles, her hometown, is not going to penalize people for sleeping outside. She wonders, How can anyone tell her where to live?

Brian Snyder/Reuters

Delegates holds "Mass deportation now!" signs on Day 3 of the Republican National Convention at the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee July 17, 2024.

Illegal immigration is a major campaign issue for Donald Trump – and has become part of his survival story. As he turned his head to view a related chart at a July 13 rally, a bullet meant to assassinate him only wounded his ear.

In 2015 during his first presidential campaign, Mr. Trump said he planned to deport 11 million people unauthorized to be in the United States. He downsized that scope to 2 million to 3 million once elected the following year. That’s closer to the level of deportations, along with pandemic-era expulsions, he oversaw as president.

When the number of unauthorized migrant encounters spiked after Mr. Trump left office, Republicans urged President Joe Biden to take executive action to curb the influx, rather than wait for Congress to pass a border bill. They pointed to how the Trump administration used executive actions to rein in the release of unauthorized immigrants into the country, and they expect the same tack if he’s voted in again. That vision includes what Mr. Trump – and the Republican Party platform – calls “the largest deportation operation in American history.”

“Even larger than that of President Dwight D. Eisenhower,” former President Trump said at the party convention last month, recalling a controversial mass deportation campaign of Mexicans in the 1950s. During the event, supporters waved “Mass deportation now!” signs. Immigrant advocates, meanwhile, decry those plans, raising family separation and due process concerns.

The Democratic Party nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, has not emphasized immigration nearly as much on the campaign trail so far. But in Arizona last week, Ms. Harris called for “comprehensive [immigration] reform that includes strong border security and an earned pathway to citizenship.” Republicans call her the Biden administration’s “border czar,” though supporters say her assignment had a narrower purview.

Conservative critics also link her to record-high levels of encounters with Border Patrol agents at the U.S. southern border during the Biden-Harris administration – more than triple the overall encounters under Mr. Trump. Those figures tracked by the Border Patrol have dropped to their lowest point since President Biden took office, after he took executive action in June to limit asylum claims. 

Americans, meanwhile, are politically split on whether to deport all unauthorized immigrants, a group estimated at more than 11 million. Most Republicans – 84% – favor this measure, reports a June Gallup poll. That support drops to 41% for independents and 22% for Democrats. 

What has Mr. Trump said about mass deportation this election? 

While the Republican presidential nominee’s exact plans for mass deportations are vague, they’re a frequent talking point, which he repeated Monday in a conversation with Elon Musk.   

In an extensive April interview with Time magazine, Mr. Trump said he had “no choice” but to start mass deportations, if elected, due to the number of migrants who have entered unlawfully since he left office. When pressed for plan details, he said he’d work with the National Guard and local law enforcement, and “start with the criminals that are coming in.” 

Delcia Lopez/AP/File

A member of the National Guard checks on his colleague near the Hidalgo International Bridge in Hidalgo, Texas, April 19, 2011.

Mr. Trump’s campaign website highlights a plan for him to use National Guard and local law enforcement in “cooperative states” to “assist with rapidly removing illegal alien gang members and criminals.” But in the interview, he left open the possibility of using other branches of the U.S. military “if necessary.”

Recent presidents, including George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Mr. Trump, and Mr. Biden, have deployed National Guard troops to the U.S. southern border in support roles. However, “a number of legal considerations may arise” if the president directs the military to enforce immigration law, according to a 2023 Congressional Research Service report. 

Mr. Trump has also pledged to “stop the outrageous abuse of parole authority” under the current White House, which has permitted hundreds of thousands of immigrants in recent years to live and work temporarily in the U.S. 

How feasible are Mr. Trump’s deportation plans? 

Immigration experts cite not just logistical but also legal hurdles to rounding up and expelling many people in the U.S. without permission.

Lawsuits against such plans are likely and may temper any rollout. A conservative Supreme Court justice underscored immigrants’ right to due process back in 1993. The Fifth Amendment “entitles aliens to due process of law in deportation proceedings,” wrote Justice Antonin Scalia in Reno v. Flores.

The U.S. could expand deportations with three groups of people that are already deportable, says John Fabbricatore, former field office director for Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Enforcement and Removal Operations in Denver. That includes those with outstanding orders of removal that have yet to be completed, immigrants with multiple criminal convictions, and people who entered the U.S. lawfully but then overstayed their visas. 

Removing those unauthorized immigrants would keep the government “busy for years,” says Mr. Fabbricatore, a Republican running in Colorado’s 6th Congressional District. “You’re going to have this deterrent that’s going to cause a lot of them to leave, just on the fact that they know [the country is] being serious about our immigration laws now,” he adds.

Immigrant advocates are bracing for impact.

“Our biggest concern is that we are going to be returning people to countries where they face harm,” says Vanessa Dojaquez-Torres of HIAS, a nonprofit serving refugees and asylum-seekers. 

“We would rather see comprehensive immigration reform,” says Ms. Dojaquez-Torres, an attorney who has represented asylum-seekers. Unauthorized immigrants who don’t have criminal histories, pay taxes, and are “just trying to work,” she says, deserve a path to legal status.

Can agencies handle more deportations?

Expanding deportations raises logistical questions around capacity.  

Currently, ICE has up to 41,500 detention beds and around 6,000 Enforcement and Removal Operations officers – compared with millions of unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. Cooperation from local law enforcement around the detaining of potentially deportable immigrants varies across the country, often due to politics.

“We don’t have the manpower to be going after everyone who is removable,” says a spokesperson for ICE, adding that the agency focuses enforcement “on criminals and those who pose a threat” to public safety. 

In his Time interview, Mr. Trump said he “would not rule out” building new migrant detention camps, but “there wouldn’t be that much of a need for them, because of the fact that we’re going to be moving [migrants] out.” Yet if elected, he would face hurdles quickening the pace of certain deportation processes. 

Many deportations rely on orders from immigration court, a system long under strain. The immigration court backlog holds some 3.7 million active cases, according to Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University. Meanwhile, the government employs around 700 immigration judges.

In addition to more judges, the system also needs more support staff “to make sure you have a fully functioning, efficient immigration court,” says Mimi Tsankov, president of the National Association of Immigration Judges. “Interpreters have to be ordered; documents have to have been submitted; attorneys have to be ready.”

How could a mass deportation plan impact U.S. citizens? 

For one, many unauthorized immigrants live with a spouse or children who do have a lawful status, or are even U.S. citizens. Deportation can lead to family separation and increased socioeconomic hardship in immigrant communities.  

Policy experts also argue that widespread deportations would disrupt the economy in significant ways, due to the contributions of unauthorized workers in sectors such as food and agriculture. Border security advocates, however, say crimes linked to unauthorized immigrants can be prevented by swifter deportations.

Some analysts also worry that more lawfully present residents could become ensnared in a deportation dragnet already known for error. At Northwestern University’s Deportation Research Clinic, Jacqueline Stevens estimates that 1% of removal cases involve U.S. citizens.

“If U.S. citizens are being unlawfully detained and deported, that tells us a lot about how everybody else is being treated,” says Professor Stevens, founding director of the center. She says one safeguard could be securing the right to free counsel in immigration court, which only handles civil cases.

Major, lasting overhauls to the immigration system typically come from Congress, which hasn’t united on such measures since the 1990s. If gridlock on Capitol Hill continues, the next president – from either party – may resort to more executive action on unauthorized immigrants.

Read these companion articles:

Deportation 101: How removing people from the US really works
Deportation sounds like a straightforward term, but it’s complicated in practice. Here’s context for understanding the rise in deportations under President Joe Biden and Republican proposals calling for more.

How Biden and Trump compare on border crossings and immigration
Immigration is a top issue in the U.S. presidential race amid questions about the pace of illegal border crossings and candidate track records. Here’s what the available data tells us.

In the darkness before dawn, Yang Xingping opens the spigot of a huge, hissing tank, sending steaming hot water gushing into a big white thermos with a cork stopper. Two by two, he hoists full thermoses into a waiting cart.

“I’ve been here since 4:30 in the morning!” Mr. Yang exclaims. “I fill thousands!”

An intriguing tip has led me very early to Heming Tea House, nestled in Chengdu’s lushly verdant People’s Park. A longtime resident of this balmy southwestern Chinese city told me that “old-timers” arrive before six, when tea costs three yuan, or 42 cents.

I imagined Chengdu’s version of the small-town coffee shop or diner, filled with regulars debating local affairs. An ideal spot for an observer. The open-air, century-old teahouse was a rarity, having survived decades of explosive building in China that has demolished many ancient urban mainstays. Along with the three-yuan tea, it seemed worth rising at five for. 

Heming provided all that – and, unexpectedly, much more.

A symphony of birdsong greets daybreak visitors entering the park en route to the teahouse. A lone cat crosses a stone path and darts into the underbrush. A man in a sleeveless undershirt strolls solo, his arms swinging loosely. From over a moat and under a tall gate, the heavy wooden teahouse appears with its black-tiled roof and upturned eaves, along with the sound of Mr. Yang’s clanging thermoses. 

Ann Scott Tyson/The Christian Science Monitor

Customers take morning tea at the 100-year-old, lakeside Heming Tea House in Chengdu, China, as a boatman clears weeds from the lake.

“Find a seat!” he shouts, with an urgency that seems out of place in the nearly-empty teahouse. I pick out what appears to be a good table – one that fits neatly into a corner protruding over the lake that surrounds the building. 

Mr. Yang disappears, and returns moments later holding a small, bowl-like white cup containing a packet of jasmine tea leaves favored by Chengdu residents. He explains that the three-yuan tea normally comes with “restricted hours” – from 6:30-9:30 a.m., after which the penny-pinching tea drinkers must depart.

But “you come from afar,” he says, setting down a full thermos. “You can stay and drink it all day and into the night, if you like.” 

Not long afterward, a retired Chengdu worker with a buzz cut and plaid shirt arrives at a nearby table. He rinses his cup, tossing the water into the lake with a splash. After steeping his tea, he uses the lid to stir and cool it. “I come here whenever I have time,” he says, holding the lid to strain the leaves and sipping tea off the rim.

Following his example, I steep my tea, and wait. Birdsong draws my gaze upward to the forest-like canopy. A golden carp jumps in the water below my teahouse perch, creating ripples on the lake. I take a sip, and time slows down.

Ann Scott Tyson/The Christian Science Monitor

Mr. Wang, a retired manager from Chengdu, often joins friends for morning tea at Heming Tea House.

Little by little, more people arrive. At seven, a retired manager called Mr. Wang occupies his usual corner spot. “This is my custom. It’s the morning habit of Chengdu people,” he says, nodding at the men seated beside him. “These are all my friends.”

The sound of conversation rises. A peddler, Dai Da, sells newspapers – food for discussion. A villager from just outside Chengdu, Mr. Dai has served as a soldier, labored on the railways, and is proud, in his 80s, to remain a jack-of-all-trades.

Then the out-of-towners arrive. Suddenly, we’re all chatting – small talk giving way, in good time, to weighty topics of the world, life, and dreams deferred.

A university administrator from Shanghai bemoans the flight of foreigners from his city, both during and since the pandemic. “It’s a shame,” he sighs. “I’m so fond of the United States – I’m practically an American myself,” he says, voicing hopes for continued peace, as do many in Chengdu and across China.

Ann Scott Tyson/The Christian Science Monitor

Former railway laborer Dai Da sells newspapers at Heming Tea House.

From the adjacent table, a woman called Ms. Wu agrees. A shop owner from Wuhan, she is visiting with her daughter, who just finished China’s rigorous university entrance exams. Ms. Wu talks about how the country’s pandemic lockdowns and slowing economy have impacted people’s outlooks. 

“Before, people worked so hard and always wanted more – but they weren’t any happier, so what’s the point?” she says. “It’s difficult to find work and make money now, so the attitude changed from one of ‘struggle’ to a slower rhythm.”

Ms. Wu plans to go back to her childhood home in a rural village, grow flowers and vegetables, and care for her parents, who still farm. “Our neighbors also farm and we share, so we have everything we need,” she says.

Before I know it, hours have passed. Planning to merely observe, I’d been drawn in. People came to the tea house with their cares and left unburdened, no longer strangers. 

Then, across the patio I spot a woman holding the hand of a young girl in pigtails searching for a seat. Admittedly with a twinge of reluctance, I catch up to them and pass on the best seat in the house, made better by the giving. 

Reuters

A person in Caracas holds a Venezuelan flag during an Aug. 8 vigil for citizens who were detained following disputed election results.

Last week, some 700 student musicians from 38 countries gathered in New York to celebrate World Orchestra Week. Between rehearsals and concerts, they adorned Carnegie Hall with wishes written on satin ribbons. “Women must have their voice and their dreams,” wrote one from Afghanistan. “May love conquer war,” wrote another from China. 

Such words held special resonance for the musicians from Venezuela. While they sought mastery over Shostakovich, their friends and families back home were seeking freedom from a dictatorship that rigs elections to stay in power.

After the July 28 election, President Nicolás Maduro quickly claimed victory even though the National Electoral Council still has not released the official results. Since then, security forces have arrested more than 2,000 people on vague charges. Opposition leaders remain in hiding.

Observers say Mr. Maduro’s longevity in power depends on maintaining the loyalty of key institutions such as the military and courts. One test will come when the Supreme Tribunal of Justice, Venezuela’s highest court, renders a final ruling on the results.

The opposition, meanwhile, is relying on something it hopes will be more persuasive: the truth. It placed election observers in every polling station to obtain and publish official results as soon as they were tallied. The result shows that the main opposition candidate, Edmundo González Urrutia, won nearly 70% of the vote.

Mr. González and other members of the opposition have called on Venezuelans to join in mass protests for the “truth” on Aug. 17. “Demanding respect for our constitution is not a crime, demonstrating peacefully to uphold the will of millions of Venezuelans is not a crime,” he wrote in a statement posted on the social media platform X.

That appeal relies on Venezuelans coming together as one to realize the power of truth to defeat a lie. As the student musicians in New York displayed, the truest pitch of Venezuelan democracy lies in the harmony of its citizens.