EVEN WHEN Donald Trump does something well, he exaggerates. He won the popular vote last November for the first time in three tries, by a 1.5 point margin. “The mandate was massive,” he told Time. In fact it was the slimmest margin since 2000, but it was an improvement on Mr Trump’s two previous popular-vote losses, by 2.1 points in 2016 and 4.5 points in 2020. (He was elected in 2016 through the vagaries of the Electoral College.)

SOMETIMES POLITICAL fights go on long after evidence that should settle the argument has come in. Such is the case with standardised tests. In February the Trump administration warned universities that eliminating standardised admissions tests to achieve racial diversity would be illegal. The Biden administration took the opposite stance: it encouraged colleges to consider dropping admissions tests like the SAT or ACT, which critics have long said favour the wealthy and disadvantage black Americans. In 2020, which already seems like another era, Ibram X. Kendi, author of “How to Be an Antiracist”, called the tests “the most effective racist weapon ever devised to…exclude [black and brown students] from prestigious schools.”