Tom Nichols

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.Every administration has its ups and downs; today I examine why the Biden White House is taking more than its fair share of hits. But first, here are three great new stories from The Atlantic.
The right to become a parent is now at risk too.
Monkeypox vaccines are too gnarly for the masses.

As we continue to learn more about the January 6, 2021, attack on our democracy, I explore whether any of it will matter to Republicans or disaffected Democrats. But first, here are three great new stories from The Atlantic.
Light and noise pollution are warping animals’ senses, Ed Yong warns in our July/August cover story.
A negative COVID test has never been so meaningless.
This is the most important study in the abortion debate.

Sign up for Tom’s newsletter, Peacefield, here.Joe Biden has been a model of restraint during the most serious global crisis in nearly 60 years, and thank goodness for that. He has provided assistance to Ukraine while keeping NATO together against the possibility of a Russian attack against the alliance.

Sign up for Tom’s newsletter, Peacefield, here.Joe Biden has been a model of restraint during the most serious global crisis in nearly sixty years, and thank goodness for that. He has provided assistance to Ukraine while keeping NATO together against the possibility of a Russian attack against the Alliance.

Sign up for Tom’s newsletter, Peacefield, here.Russian President Vladimir Putin is in trouble. Despite his limited gains on the ground in Ukraine, he is facing strategic defeat in a war that no one (including me) would have expected him to lose. The vaunted Russian army has turned out to be a hollow force whose major skill sets seem to be bullying its own conscripts and killing foreign civilians.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, in a long speech full of heavy sighs and dark grievances, made clear today that he has chosen war. He went to war against Ukraine in 2014; now he has declared war against the international order of the past 30 years.Putin’s slumped posture and deadened affect led me to suspect that he is not as stable as we would hope.

If Russian President Vladimir Putin isn’t about to invade Ukraine—or, more accurately, isn’t about to expand his previous invasion—he’s certainly making a good show of it.Russian military forces have been moving into position for weeks. Russia and Belarus announced snap exercises that will continue for at least a month. President Joe Biden says he is expecting an invasion, and there are reports that the U.S.

“I go on this great republican principle,” James Madison said in 1788, “that the people will have virtue and intelligence to select men of virtue and wisdom. Is there no virtue among us? If there be not, we are in a wretched situation.”The notion that a virtuous people will select virtuous representatives to exercise their judgment is at the core of the American experiment.

For days, those defending President Joe Biden’s pullout from Afghanistan repeated the mantra that no U.S. citizens had been killed during the successful evacuation of tens of thousands of Americans and Afghans from the country.

“You’ll want to read this,” my wife said, handing me the Sunday Boston Globe. The cover story that week in late September 2020 was about a 62-year-old woman who had colon cancer that had metastasized. She died in a local hospital; her husband was also in poor health and could not take care of her at home. After she died, he moved into an area facility. Reading of someone so close to my own age succumbing to a highly preventable disease was a bit unsettling.

The Republicans in Congress are blocking a bipartisan investigation into the January 6 insurrection. Their spines crushed by years of obedience to Donald Trump, the members of the GOP have once again retreated from civic responsibility, with one more humiliation of those last few in the party who thought that the Senate Republicans might mimic something like statesmanship.

For decades, I have taught courses on nuclear weapons and the Cold War. Conveying what life was like with the everyday fear of immediate destruction, especially to younger students, has become more and more difficult over the years. Students understand, in some general way, that nuclear war was a terrifying possibility.

Donald Trump is intent on creating as much chaos as possible on his way out of the White House. Could that include saddling Joe Biden with another war in the Middle East?We already know that Trump is thinking about attacking Iran. In mid-November, after he lost the presidential election, Trump asked for military options against Iranian nuclear facilities, a reckless idea that was derailed by top aides.

The moment every Donald Trump opponent has been waiting for is at hand: Joe Biden seems to be taking the lead. So why am I not happy?I am certainly relieved. A Biden victory would be an infinitely better result than a Trump win. If Trump were to maintain power, our child-king would be unfettered by bothersome laws and institutions. The United States would begin its last days as a democracy, finally stepping over the ledge into authoritarianism.