Of the many jokes cracked by King Charles during his visit to Washington, the one recalling the definitive 18th-century Anglo-French contest for dominion over the New World was the most pointed. Speaking at a state banquet in the White House, Charles turned to Donald Trump and said: “You recently commented, Mr President, that if it were not for the United States, European countries would be speaking German. Dare I say that, if it wasn’t for us, you’d be speaking French!”

Did Trump get it? Who knows? Broadly speaking, history, even their own, is not most Americans’ favourite subject. A forward-looking people, they do not dwell on the past, nor hanker after the illusory felicities of former glories. While generations of Britons still wallow in nostalgia for Spitfires, Churchill and Vera Lynn (and beating the French), Americans typically seek new metaphorical mountains to climb. Theirs is a positive outlook, on the whole. Except, under Trump, it has twisted into a revived, ugly version of US “manifest destiny” imperialism.

In his quiet, understated way, Charles had a lot to say about all that. Addressing Congress, he did not give Trump the serious tongue-lashing many in Britain (myself included) had been hoping for. Given the constitutional and political constraints, it was a ballsy performance nonetheless. Charles may have succeeded in temporarily easing US-UK frictions. But his bigger achievement was to remind Americans, ever so gently, of who they are, where they come from, and how very much better they could and should be doing.

To put it mildly, the US, led by its manic president and the Republican party, has been acting out of character for a while now. Charles’s proffered antidote was calm, balm – and perspective. He supplied a mature, knowing lens through which to view, rise above and look beyond the trials and tribulations of the Trump era. He articulated a belief in the US that Americans are in danger of losing. He spoke of unity as an essential condition of success. He stressed that what the US does matters everywhere. Charles’s subtle, much-needed history lesson may have done more than Trump ever has to make the US feel great again.

The reaction of Democrats and many Republicans in a fractured Congress was telling. Again and again, they rose together to applaud the king’s evidently sincere conviction, implicit rather than explicit, that the US will get through this, will come to its senses, will rediscover its principles, will once more aspire to act as a moral force for good – his conviction that the nightmare will end, as, history shows, nightmares always do.

Remember Magna Carta? That English charter of 1215 curbing the power of kings was a crib sheet for the US’s founding fathers and had been cited at least 160 times in US supreme court cases, Charles said. It established “the principle that executive power is subject to checks and balances”. Who could miss this real-life king’s deft allusion to the importunities of the overweening pseudo-king in the White House? Democrats certainly didn’t. They stood and cheered.

Remember the 1688 bill of rights, product of the English civil war and the struggle for parliamentary sovereignty? Chunks of that text were lifted verbatim and incorporated in the 1791 US bill of rights, he noted. Here was candid royal backing for those who fear present-day US civil liberties are falling victim to recycled tyranny. Remember 9/11, a quarter of a century on? Nato countries such as Britain certainly do, Charles said. They also remember how they rallied round the US. Unspoken message: value the support and loyalty of the UK and your European allies. And reciprocate. Help Ukraine.

The king’s reminiscences about previous royal tours further served to refresh collective American historical memory – and underscore his theme: that no matter how big or strong, no single country can go it alone for long. Charles’s mother, Elizabeth II, had been a good friend to every president since Eisenhower. Such connections, he suggested, reflected the deep, abiding ties between the two peoples. The US, though a successful, independent nation, remained rooted in Britain and Europe. And, he almost said, don’t you ever forget it!

In a way, it was obvious, hackneyed, even manipulative stuff. But the enthusiastic reaction in Congress and the US media suggested Americans – their national sense of self under daily assault, their fears for the future ever more pronounced, their nerves exhausted and lives disrupted by endless Trump traumas and tantrums – badly needed to hear it. George Canning, Britain’s foreign secretary in 1826, famously “called the New World into existence to redress the balance of the Old”. Through Charles’s reaffirming visit, the “Old World” returned the favour.

It’s true. Politically as well as historically, Trump’s reign has thrown the US radically off-balance. Half the country seems to think it’s at war with an enemy within and ungrateful, rapacious foreign allies. The other half despairs of a president who actively undermines the democratic values and laws rebellious colonists fought to uphold 250 years ago and upon which the US constitution – and US legitimacy in the world – rests. King Charles went to Washington to save Britain’s bacon. Through his example and unassuming advice, he showed the US how to save itself.

Will Americans heed his message? Will they take history’s lessons to heart? Or will it all turn out to be a temporary blip, a fleeting moment of goodwill and good manners, a mere gap in the clouds? No sooner had Charles left Washington than Trump, predictably, began exploiting their private conversations to justify his Iranian inanities.

The Iran war – barely mentioned during this visit for fear of eruptions – is an acid test. If the Trump administration were to adopt Charles’s calm approach, stand back and dispassionately examine the history of this senseless feud, thinking back to the CIA’s anti-democratic 1953 Mossadegh coup, the installation of the Shah’s dictatorship, and the long decades of irrational vilification, mutual ostracism and sanctions that followed the 1979 revolution – including US support for Saddam’s Hussein’s 1980s war of aggression and Israel’s long, lethal shadow war – maybe it would act differently now.

Since he apparently likes the British way of doing things – and in the spirit of Charles’s visit – Trump should follow the UK’s prescriptions, not restart the war. De-escalate, pursue unconditional, good-faith negotiations, and offer an end to sanctions and diplomatic normalisation in return for Iran’s pledge to forgo nuclear weapons development and close down regional proxies. That’s the deal everyone is waiting for. It’s the only one that will stick.

If Trump, taking the long view for once, chose to do it, he could belatedly put the US back on the right side of history. And king or no kings, the world would have reason to celebrate the week Mr Windsor went to Washington.

Kemmerer, WYO — The infamous Wyoming wind is whipping an American flag hoisted above the construction site of what’s only the fourth nuclear reactor to be built in the U.S. this century, and one of the first in a new generation of advanced designs.

“We’re building an advanced nuclear plant but so many aspects of the plant and of the business are the same as the sixty-year-old coal plant that’s down the road,” says Chris Levesque, Terra Power’s CEO, as he gestures to the west where the old Naughton plant stands.

The Washington state-based Terra Power, founded by Bill Gates, says this will be the first of many, part of a new nuclear renaissance they want to bring to long time energy exporting states like Wyoming. Levesque says the company’s “advanced reactor” technology makes nuclear plants safer and quicker to build.

“There is an energy crisis, it’s concerning,” Levesque says.

The recent beginning of construction here comes amid forecasts that an artificial intelligence boom means that data centers in the U.S. are going to need about 130% more energy by 2030. That’s according to the International Energy Agency.

To help meet that demand, Big tech companies and the federal government are partnering to invest billions of dollars in new nuclear power plants.

Nuclear boosters think its NIMBYism problem is in the past

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission gave Terra Power final approval to begin construction in March. This capped five years of studies and safety demonstrations and a decision to site the plant in Kemmerer, Wyoming which won bids over numerous other western towns.

“There is a whole different story to begin with, is communities vying for a nuclear power plant,” Levesque says. “The old story on nuclear was more of a ‘not in my backyard thing.’”

Levesque, who came to Terra Power after a career in the legacy nuclear industry, thinks new technologies and demand for low emission power is changing this. Almost everything here will be buried underground and they’ll use liquid sodium metal instead of water to cool the reactor.

“Milestones like this really show people that, yeah, this is a new technology but we’re doing it,” he says. “It’s real and people can start to work this into their plans.”

If all goes to plan and the plant is online by 2031, Terra Power says it will make enough electricity for a utility to power almost half a million homes – likely in nearby Salt Lake City. The company has also inked agreements with META for several more reactors to power the tech company’s data centers specifically.

“Since we were selected by the Department of Energy, we’ve had a project going for five years that’s switched administrations, switched parties, switched multiple controls of Congress,” Levesque says.

Rocky Mountain states join the race to win DOE nuclear hubs

A recent press release from the company marking the beginning of full-scale construction in Kemmerer included quotes praising the project from Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon and the state’s entire congressional delegation.

The Department of Energy pilot program that spurred Terra Power’s first project began during the first Trump administration. Then, the Biden-administration’s Infrastructure Law fronted half of the costs of construction, about two billion dollars.

Wyoming’s Republican Senators voted against that bill. But the state is eagerly courting nuclear energy plants and new uranium mines. So is neighboring Idaho, home to a federal nuclear lab, and Utah, where Governor Spencer Cox recently staged a press conference in the barren scrubland west of Salt Lake City.

“If you are serious about energy abundance, you have to be serious about nuclear energy,” Cox said, as he went on to unveil Utah’s application to be one of the U.S. Department of Energy’s new nuclear hubs.

It’s billed as a “nuclear life cycle innovation campus” where they’d enrich nuclear fuel, recycle it and store its waste, including one day possibly that generated by the Kemmerer plant.

Cox noted that nuclear already supplies roughly a fifth of all the electricity on the U.S. grid.

“This should not be controversial,” the Republican says. “America built the nuclear industry.”

Some environmentalists question how green nuclear is

But nuclear still is controversial, especially in the West with its legacy of abandoned uranium mines and radioactive waste particularly in Indian Country. And Salt Lake City was downwind from Cold War Era nuclear weapons test sites.

“This area has been considered a sacrifice zone for a long time,” says Lexi Tuddenham, executive director of Healthy Environment Alliance Utah, or HEAL.

Skeptical about a nuclear renaissance, Lexi Tuddenham, executive director of Health Environment Alliance for Utah, is concerned about her state’s proposal to store nuclear waste near the Great Salt Lake.

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Tuddenham is alarmed that Utah wants to site its proposed nuclear hub some ten miles from the western shore of the drying Great Salt Lake. She says nuclear is being rebranded as green but that ignores the ongoing problem of where to store its radioactive waste.

“Bill Gates is paying for this first one, we as taxpayers are also paying for this first one, I will say,” Tuddenham says. “But what about the next one and the next one? How much are we going to be on the hook for as taxpayers, as rate payers, as we go down this path?”

Terra Power says like conventional nuclear reactors, its plant in Wyoming will store its spent fuel on site until a permanent repository is approved by the feds. They say it’s safe and the “advanced nuclear” tech produces less waste than legacy plants.

An old coal town is eager for a nuclear rebirth

In Wyoming, the country’s top coal producing state, one thing that’s not in dispute is that Kemmerer is eager for any sort of energy boom. When the West Coast divested from coal, national headlines all but wrote off this town of 3,000 as dying.

“That’s what we were concerned about is no longer being an exporter of power, cause that’s a majority of our jobs,” says Brian Muir, city administrator in Kemmerer.

Kemmerer, Wyoming city administrator Brian Muir was hired by the city in 2019 to help find new economic opportunities when at that time the coal mine had gone bankrupt and the nearby coal power plant was slated to be decommissioned.

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But today he says there’s relief and optimism around town. Hundreds of skilled jobs are being created. Due to the high demand for electricity, the old coal plant isn’t completely shutting either. Some of its generators are being converted to natural gas which will preserve about 100 existing jobs.

“I’ll just say, when Bill Gates came here, he talked about our high energy IQ,” Muir says. “We know about all forms of energy and the benefits and the costs and the risks and the footprints and all of that, we understand that.”

Muir says Kemmerer is already lobbying Terra Power to build a second nuclear plant here.

“He’s like a Volkswagen! He’s so huge!” said Oluwaseyi Akinbobola, a visitor from Los Angeles who had an extra half hour so she ran down to the pier for a hopeful peek of the elusive sea lion. “I have heard everywhere about this big giant sea lion, and I like to look at things, so just thought I’d check it out.”

Chonkers likely came from up north off the coast of Washington or Oregon and is estimated to weigh between 1,500 and 2,000 pounds (680 and 907 kilograms), said Laura Gill, public programs manager at The Marine Mammal Center in nearby Sausalito. Chonkers has been one of the few Steller sea lions to venture to the pier, which is protected from predators and crashing waves while providing a fish-filled buffet.

“There’s plenty of food in San Francisco Bay for them, so the fish, the rockfish, the anchovies, the herring, there’s a lot of easy prey for them,” she said.

@apnews A surprise guest at San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf is quite literally making waves. Meet Chonkers, the name given to a giant Steller sea lion spotted this week lounging among his considerably smaller California sea lion neighbors. Chonkers belongs to the Steller species, the largest of all sea lions, known for their commanding presence and dock-dominating energy. Adult males can weigh over a ton. #sealion #cuteanimals #sanfrancisco #seal #california #fishermanswharf #animals #ocean ♬ original sound – The Associated Press