Uriel Epshtein is executive director of the Renew Democracy Initiative, created three years ago by former world chess champion Garry Kasparov to combat populism, promote core constitutional values and offer a home to political centrists. He came to the job after stints at the Boston Consulting Group, DoorDash and Uber. As a Yale undergraduate, he founded and continues to chair the Peace & Dialogue Leadership Initiative, which promotes campus college dialogues on policy in the Middle East. That experience had a profound influence on him, he says, as he began to see increasing similarity between polarized partisan U.S. politics and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. His answers have been edited for clarity and length.
What's the tweet-length description of your organization?
RDI produces content with the goal of empowering the American public to understand and prioritize core constitutional principles.
Describe your very first civic engagement.
In high school I founded the Pascack Hills Political Club and eventually ended up chairing the New Jersey Teenage Republicans. Politics was my version of a team sport. I was confident my team was right and all we had to do was "defeat" the other guys. It's incredible to think how much has changed since then. I keep wondering what percentage of that change is external and what has come from shifts in my own perspective.
What was your biggest professional triumph?
Transitioning RDI from a one-man team to a more established start-up with a recognizable voice on democratic issues. Now we have published a book, put on two significant conferences and started multiple creative projects — all with the goal of empowering the public to prioritize core American values.
And your most disappointing setback?
We are in a moment of profound national uncertainty, and sometimes I allow myself to get caught up in that when I should simply focus on the task at hand.
How does your identity influence the way you go about your work?
My parents were raised in the former Soviet Union. My dad was an anti-communist, Zionist dissident born under Joseph Stalin in 1936 and my mom was born at a time of overwhelming anti-Semitism in Kiev. Their experiences living in a totalitarian society, dominated by group-think and without freedom to so much as utter a dissenting thought, has made me forever skeptical of ideologies that allow for no disagreement or debate. Today, as each American political side becomes increasingly inflexible, branding anybody willing to compromise as a traitor, I'm beginning to hear echoes of parts of my family's experience. This is what our work at RDI seeks to address. I understand the appeal of sticking with one's own tribe, but I fear that if we're unwilling to experience the discomfort of engaging those with whom we disagree, we may become increasingly willing to sacrifice the principles underpinning our republic to avoid doing so.
What's the best advice you've ever been given?
Something my rabbi said to me in college, which I really started to understand only in the last few years: We should not necessarily identify with our emotions. We never know when a crisis might turn out to be a blessing in disguise or, if we find ourselves at a low point, we have no way of knowing what's waiting around the corner. We just have to keep pushing through.
Create a new flavor for Ben & Jerry's.
Fondue Democracy: Red, white and blue sprinkles swirled together with chocolate fondant.
What's your favorite political movie or TV show?
"The Americans" on FX was a terrific and nuanced show. I was particularly impressed that they hired actual Russian speakers to play the Russian characters.
What's the last thing you do on your phone at night?
Check the news — although I'm trying to break the habit.
What is your deepest, darkest secret?
I have a pretty debilitating fear of spiders. At one point, I was with friends wandering through a children's section at the zoo. We sat down for a few minutes and, while flipping through a National Geographic magazine, I stumbled across a full-page image of a tarantula. I fell out of my seat.
U.S. President Donald Trump boards Air Force One on August 14, 2026 at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland. Trump is traveling to Long Island to tour law enforcement facilities in Nassau County and rally support for local Republican candidates ahead of the upcoming midterm elections
Travel Far Enough, You Meet Yourself
Is it possible that our President has simply not traveled enough?
Born and raised in Queens and attending Fordham University in the Bronx, Donald Trump has no record of traveling outside New York until he was over 20, when he transferred to a college in the neighboring state of Pennsylvania. Were his formative years amiss, then, in his learning about other places and other people?
Is his view akin to the famous New Yorker cover by Saul Steinberg, an illustration of the United States with New York City as the epicenter of the country and the Hudson River the border of the known world? We can now at least add Washington, D.C., and Mar-a-Lago to the map of “the realm.”
Our President has now traveled some, but what we recommend is another kind of travel. Not a state-sponsored trip or a venture to scout locations for future Trump Towers. This would be a genuine travel experience, enriching and eye-opening, showcasing other cultures and ways of living.
It will extend far beyond viewing military parades, hobnobbing with such “understanding” world leaders as Kim Jong Un, or taking tea with the King.
WHERE, then, should the President go? As Elon Musk’s Starship spacecraft is not yet ready to take passengers to Mars, perhaps he could explore our own vast country?
Maybe he could travel to “flyover country,” the farming states, where his ying-yanging tariffs and trade restrictions have played havoc with rural economies. Or possibly to California, number one in homeless U. S. citizens, and while there, regale homeless veterans (approximately 32,500 nationwide) with tales of his brave exploits invading and bombing foreign countries.
Or he might tour the Great Lakes, and rename the other four?
WHEN should he go? This will be tough, as he is very busy building his ballroom and renaming bodies of water.
How about a trip in early November, around the midterm elections? Despite the long-discredited accusation of widespread voter fraud, it would be reassuring to know he might be so caught up divvying out ladles of soup in a soup kitchen somewhere that he wouldn’t remember to deploy the military for “election security.”
HOW will he travel? He should definitely not take his Qatari-donated, newly renovated 747, especially after last time, when he had to be smuggled off clandestinely in a catering truck. It’s unlikely any traveling companions, like the Secretary of State or of the Treasury, are going to fall for the ruse a second time. Besides, we may need those people. No more decoys!
Perhaps the President could fly commercially, although this likely would expose him to undue suffering. Without gold bathroom fixtures and maple wood floors, the trip will be no “Luxury Experience.” If only he still had his “Trump Shuttle,” bought with a massive loan he later defaulted on, saying then, “I’m smart. I got out at a good time.”
Considering the potential pitfalls, maybe it’s best the President travel incognito, disguised perhaps as an elderly woman wearing a lot of bronzer.
Wherever, whenever, however: our President needs a vacation.
Moreover, we need a vacation from him.
If the President refuses our travel suggestions, here’s another idea:
Let’s get him a pet! He has never owned a pet. As we know with our children, pets teach essential life lessons: compassion and empathy; they instill a sense of responsibility. There is a well-established connection between those who can care for a pet and those who can care for people.
So, which pet should we choose? A puppy? A kitten? A boa constrictor?
Imagine, the President may even decide he likes having a pet. After all, what is more obedient than a well-trained dog, besides possibly the Cabinet? And what is more docile than a sweet kitten, other than plausibly the Supreme Court?
The President may even become more mellow with a pet afoot and less likely to slap tariffs on our allies, or attempt to annex our neighbors, or bully our Congress. (Realizing, of course, a bully requires active participation from the bullied to maintain his status.)
Maybe we should do both: get the President a pet and devise a travel plan for him. (Do you think we could possibly convince him to leave his phone at home?)
Let’s go for it! After all:
Travel far enough, you meet yourself. (David Mitchell)
And for our President, that would likely be the most profound discovery of all.
Amy Lockard is an Iowa resident who regularly contributes to regional newspapers and periodicals. She is working on the second of a four-book fictional series based on Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice."