Attention at all passengers. You can now book your train tickets on Uber and get 10% back in Uber credits to spend on your next train journey.

So no excuses not to visit your in-laws this Christmas.

Trains now on Uber. Tees and sees apply check the Uber app.

It took a couple of days for the news to reach New York that the Declaration of Independence had been approved on the 4th of July 1776.

A crowd assembled on Bowling Green at the southern tip of Manhattan, where George

the third sat astride his horse in the manner of a Roman Emperor. They used ropes to pull the monument down.

A bit more than a century later on on the 4th of July 1884, the US Ambassador in Paris took delivery of 150-foot

Statue of the goddess Liberty.

The French government would pay to ship it to New York Harbour.

The idea for the gift came from Edouard de la Boulet,

president of the French Anti-Slavery Society.

That same year, the first statue of Roberti Lee, the Confederate commander in the Civil War,

went up in New Orleans. America is still arguing about statues. With 122 days to go, this

is checks and balance.

I'm John Prredo, the Economist's US editor and this is a podcast about 2020 elections.

Each week we take one big theme shaping American politics and explore it in depth.

Today, does raising monuments really lead to political change. The 4th of July holiday feels different this year.

Americans are worried about celebrations spreading COVID-19 and they say they are less proud of being American than at any

time since Gallup started asking them. It's a sense of shame partly expressed in

campaigns to remove monuments to old racists that began in the South but has spread far beyond.

President Trump says a mob is trying to vandalize our history.

Is this just another phase in cancel culture, as some conservatives argue, or an omen of political realignment? With me as ever to discuss all of this is Charlotte Howard, the economists New York Bureau Chief and John Fasman, the Washington correspondent.

...