Elaine Godfrey

Is it news that people are angry with Marjorie Taylor Greene?This week, the Georgia Republican took advantage of Twitter’s newly liberalized character restrictions to do what she does best: suggest something unhinged, and sit back while her political opponents’ heads explode in white-hot rage.“We need a national divorce,” she tweeted. “We need to separate by red states and blue states and shrink the federal government. Everyone I talk to says this.

In a normal year, the March for Life would begin somewhere along the National Mall. The cavalcade of anti-abortion activists in Washington, D.C., would wind around museums and past monuments, concluding at the foot of the Supreme Court, a physical representation of the movement’s objective: to overturn Roe v. Wade. The march happens in January of each year to coincide with the anniversary of the Roe decision.But this is not a normal year.

Here is a list of people you should not currently want to be: a Russian sausage tycoon, a Russian gas-industry executive, the editor in chief of a Russian tabloid, a Russian shipyard director, the head of a Russian ski resort, a Russian aviation official, or a Russian rail magnate. Anyone answering to such a description probably ought not stand near open windows, in almost any country, on almost every continent.

This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.Some very serious and unfunny things happened this year in American politics. Today, though, we are not going to talk about those things. Instead, we will examine a few of the times our elected leaders made us laugh—with them or at them.But first, here are three new stories from The Atlantic.

This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.I’ll be back tomorrow to tell you about some of the funniest things that happened in politics this year. Today, though, I would like to offer a break from current events. Sorry in advance, skiers. I hope you are too busy skiing to read this newsletter.

PHOENIX, Ariz.—The Watchers tend to show up at sundown—or so I’d heard. And yesterday evening, I went looking for them. Around 7 p.m., at a ballot drop-off site next to a juvenile-detention center in Mesa, just east of Phoenix, I sat on a concrete bench and waited under the parking lot’s bright lights. A steady stream of cars drove through, and people hopped out to slip their green mail-in-ballot envelopes into the big metal box.

PHILADELPHIA—Outside the basketball arena at Temple University, a long line of anxious Democrats contemplated their party’s possibly bleak political future, as a brass band played Taylor Swift’s “Shake It Off.”That strange juxtaposition of dread and joy seemed to be the theme of Saturday afternoon’s rally at the Liacouras Center.

This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.Earlier today, I posed a question to my colleague Russell Berman on Slack: What should we expect if—or is it when?—Republicans retake the House in the midterms? Here is the spirited chat that followed.But first, here are three new stories from The Atlantic.

This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.John Fetterman wants voters to see his stroke as an asset, not a liability. Some of them absolutely do.But first, here are three new stories from The Atlantic.
Herschel Walker is the perfect candidate for a fallen party.

Every second of every day, oxygen-rich blood is coursing through your brain. Your heart pumps it up through your chest and neck, along tinier and tinier arterial tubes, twisting and turning among the grooves and lobes of gray matter until it reaches the brain cells it’s meant to nourish. But this journey can be interrupted. An artery can get clogged—often by a free-floating, gelatinous clot—which halts the flow of blood. The clog will starve your brain’s cells of oxygen.

As election returns rolled in on the evening of November 3, 2020, a local news host in Phoenix was starring in an intensely awkward broadcast. The Fox 10 anchor Kari Lake was refusing to call Arizona for Joe Biden—even though her network had already done so. “If [voters] wake up tomorrow or two days later and it flips,” she insisted, her pendant earrings swinging, “there’s distrust in the system.” Lake’s co-anchor, John Hook, lost patience.

WILKES-BARRE, Pa.—Donald Trump’s rally on Saturday night was his first major public appearance since the FBI searched his Florida home—and you could tell. A kind of manic, vengeful energy circulated among the throngs of supporters in the blue stadium seats at the Mohegan Sun Arena. Fans wore T-shirts reading YOU RAIDED THE WRONG PRESIDENT and THREAT TO DEMOCRACY, in a reference to President Joe Biden’s speech last week in Philadelphia.

That the FBI’s search of Donald Trump’s Florida home has become a rallying point for Republicans—ever eager to demonstrate fealty to the former president and rage at government overreach—is not exactly a shock. What is noteworthy is how the news might shift political considerations in MAGA world.In another universe, last week’s FBI search could have provided a perfect opportunity for a wannabe party leader like Florida Governor Ron DeSantis to set himself apart.

This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona said that she’ll sign on to the Democrats’ climate bill—after advocating for a few adjustments that she apparently didn’t care to explain to anyone.But first, here are three new stories from The Atlantic.

This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona said that she’ll sign on to the Democrats’ climate bill—after advocating for a few adjustments that she apparently didn’t care to explain to anyone.But first, here are three new stories from The Atlantic.

This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.I’m sorry to say it: We really must talk about CPAC.But first, here are three new stories from The Atlantic.
Alex Jones can’t pretend his way out of this reality.
To Putin, Brittney Griner is a pawn. To the U.S., she’s a person.

This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.The Democrat running to be Pennsylvania’s next senator is famous for his ultracasual aesthetic and irreverent social-media strategy.But first, here are three new stories from The Atlantic.

This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.The Democrat running to be Pennsylvania’s next senator is famous for his ultracasual aesthetic and irreverent social-media strategy.But first, here are three new stories from The Atlantic.

This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.Well, folks, it looks like Congress still has the capacity to surprise us.But first, here are three new stories from The Atlantic.
The January 6 hearings are changing Republicans’ minds.
Is this a recession? Wrong question.

This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.Donald Trump returned to Washington, D.C., for the first time since leaving office in a show of support for the organization trying to make MAGA more than just vibes.But first, here are three new stories from The Atlantic.

You may not have predicted that Mike Pence—a man who once praised Donald Trump 14 times in a span of three minutes—would ever publicly defy his former boss. But 2022, it seems, is a brave new world in Republican politics.In the Arizona GOP primary for governor, Pence is, in essence, campaigning against Trump.

The video was the very definition of cringe. One day after Donald Trump endorsed her Republican primary opponent, freshman Representative Nancy Mace filmed a two-minute clip of herself outside the shiny black facade of Trump Tower in Manhattan—approximately 800 miles from her South Carolina district—to remind her followers that she was still loyal to the former president.

Four years and four months ago, a high-school student delivered a speech at a rally outside the Broward County Courthouse in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Three days earlier, a gunman had killed 17 of X González’s classmates and teachers at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland with an AR-15-style rifle. “We are going to be the last mass shooting,” González told the assembled crowd and cable-news cameras.It wasn’t, of course.

The Instagram influencer’s workshop on abortion was not meant to persuade anyone. But by the end of the 2,000-person, five-hour Zoom history lesson, at least a few attendees were thinking differently about one of the most fraught topics in American politics. “I personally believe in the sacredness of life,” Shelley Smith, a conservative participant from California, told me afterward.

In the weeks after the 2020 election, one particular Michigan woman was trumpeting claims of fraud as loudly as she could. Kristina Karamo, a community-college professor who’d previously accused Democrats of having a “satanic agenda,” went on Fox News again and again to describe how illegal ballots supposedly had been tallied for Joe Biden at the TCF Center in Detroit, where she worked as a poll watcher.

CHEVY CHASE, Md.—A few of Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s neighbors were visibly annoyed last night as a dozen abortion-rights protesters marched down their tree-lined street, blaring music and chanting, “We are not your incubators!” A middle-aged couple in jogging suits scoffed and yanked their goldendoodle to the other side of the road. One woman driving an SUV pulled up dangerously close to a demonstrator and laid on the horn.

If a new coronavirus variant surges in the United States this year—perhaps the one currently tearing through Europe—there’s a reasonable chance that the country will be unprepared to fight it. You can thank Congress for that.Last week, lawmakers passed a massive spending bill without any additional funding for COVID-19 relief, despite White House pleas for more. Democrats would like to fulfill the administration’s request.

Tonight was probably the first time that many Americans had ever heard of Kim Reynolds. It almost certainly won’t be the last.The 62-year-old governor of Iowa delivered the official Republican response to Joe Biden’s State of the Union address from outside the Capitol in Des Moines. Reynolds has been involved in Iowa politics for more than a decade.

FLORENCE, Ariz.—Tonight, deep in the Arizona desert, thousands of people chanted for Donald Trump. They had braved the wind for hours—some waited the entire day—just to get a glimpse of the defeated former president. And when he finally appeared on stage, as Lee Greenwood played from the loudspeakers, the crowd roared as though Trump were still the commander-in-chief. To many of them, he is.“I ran twice and we won twice,” Trump told his fans.

LOUDOUN COUNTY, Va.—The beer was flowing, the handmade potato chips were self-serve, and hope was in the air. Early in the night, the Loudoun County Democrats who gathered at the Döner Bistro in Leesburg were cautiously—anxiously—optimistic: Sure, it had been a rough year. A global pandemic, regular protests at the local school-board meetings, and the contentious governor’s race, rife with misinformation, had pitted neighbor against neighbor.