Tom Nichols

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Today, Rich Lowry, the editor of National Review (the flagship conservative magazine founded by William F. Buckley Jr.), published an article claiming that Donald Trump could win the 2024 election “on character.”
No, really. But bear with me; the headline wasn’t quite accurate.

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The Democrats have met, they’ve nominated a candidate, and now they’re all going home. Their meeting was not a replay of the 1968 disaster; it did not devolve into a divisive confrontation among factions; it did not feature tense ballot fights stretching into the wee hours.

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One of the great myths of American politics is that detailed policy positions are crucial to winning elections. Yes, policy matters in broad strokes: Candidates take general positions on issues such as taxes, abortion, and foreign policy.

Donald Trump’s public events are a challenge for anyone who writes about him. His rallies and press conferences are rich sources of material, fountains of molten weirdness that blurp up stuff that would sink the career of any other politician. By the time they’re over, all of the attendees are covered in gloppy nonsense.

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The Democratic ticket has now taken shape, and Donald Trump is not handling it well. Meanwhile, his running mate and the rest of his party are stumbling.

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Minnesota Governor Tim Walz will be the Democratic nominee for vice president. He’s likely been tapped not for his liberal policies but for his amiability and optimism, in a bid to attract voters tiring of the gloom and doom pushed by Donald Trump and J. D. Vance.

Russia and its junior partner, Belarus, have agreed to a prisoner exchange with the United States and Germany. The deal includes the Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, the retired U.S. Marine Paul Whelan, and the Russian British journalist and Kremlin opponent Vladimir Kara-Murza among the people who are being released after arrests and convictions on various charges.

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The current political climate is suffused with nostalgia for supposedly better times. I remember my own childhood, and those days weren’t better—but they had their sugary moments.
First, here are three new stories from The Atlantic:
All airlines are now the same.

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The men leading Kamala Harris’s shortlist right now illustrate the differences in how the two major parties define modern masculinity.
First, here are three new stories from The Atlantic:
“I hope Trump kept the receipt.”
The Supreme Court fools itself.

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President Joe Biden has chosen to put his country over his own ego, a heroic decision that shows the difference between a political party and a cult of personality.
Joe Biden, the president of the United States, has decided not to run for his office in 2024.

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Donald Trump’s bizarre diatribe at the Republican National Convention shows why the prodemocracy coalition is so worried about beating the GOP nominee—even if it means that Joe Biden must step down.
But first, here are three new stories from The Atlantic.

Senator J. D. Vance of Ohio, after only three years in politics, is now the Republican nominee for vice president. I’ve written, and continue to believe, that Vance is a hollow man, an opportunist driven by a strange melding of self-admiration and insecurity, who has risen to great heights in the Republican Party by saying things he does not believe, especially when it comes to his new running mate, Donald Trump.

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Some prominent Republicans tried immediately to blame Democrats for the attempt on Donald Trump’s life. Such charges are cynical attempts to immunize Trump from any further criticism.
But first, here are four new stories from The Atlantic:
J. D.

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America is hosting the NATO summit this week. Russia’s bombing of a children’s hospital should remind every member that the Atlantic Alliance must do more for Ukraine.

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After President Joe Biden’s disastrous recent public appearances, he and his supporters are attacking media outlets for a double standard in coverage of him and his opponent. They’re right, but that double standard is structural and, unfortunately, will not end during this campaign.

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Joe Biden didn’t just have a bad night. American democracy is now more in danger than ever.
First, here are four new stories from The Atlantic:
The Biden-replacement operation
The Supreme Court’s January 6 decision is utterly baffling.
David Frum: Trump should never have had this platform.

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Donald Trump is running neck and neck with Joe Biden, and might even be taking the lead in the 2024 race. Yet Republicans and their media ecosystem seem to be in a panic about their candidate.

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Some of the people who once supported Donald Trump seem to want him to win, but without the moral stain of voting for him themselves.
First, here are three new stories from The Atlantic:
American women are at a breaking point.

Perhaps the greatest trick Donald Trump ever pulled was convincing millions of people—and the American media—to treat his lapses into fantasies and gibberish as a normal, meaningful form of oratory. But Trump is not a normal person, and his speeches are not normal political events.
For too long, Trump has gotten away with pretending that his emotional issues are just part of some offbeat New York charm or an expression of his enthusiasm for public performance.

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Donald Trump has yet again denied that he called people who gave their life in the service of their country “suckers” and “losers.” But he said those things—and now he wants to goad the military into voting for him as a “revolt.

Donald Trump posted on Truth Social today that he can free the Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich from his unjust detainment in Russia—but only after he is elected president.
Evan Gershkovich, the Reporter from The Wall Street Journal, who is being held by Russia, will be released almost immediately after the Election, but definitely before I assume Office. He will be HOME, SAFE, AND WITH HIS FAMILY.

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For years, leading Republicans have chosen to let their memory lapse about things they once said about Donald Trump. It’s a disingenuous forgetting that has deepened since Trump went on trial in New York.

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I have had cats since I was a boy, and all of them were wonderful, but one of them left a mark on my life forever.
First, here are three new stories from The Atlantic:
“What happened to Stormy Daniels is not salacious,” Quinta Jurecic writes.

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In The Atlantic’s newest cover story, Anne Applebaum details the onslaught of antidemocratic propaganda flooding the United States. If only Americans weren’t so ready to believe so much of it.

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Updated at 9:47 p.m. ET on May 2, 2024
In a recent interview with Time magazine, Donald Trump once again told Americans what he will do to their system of government.

The first Fallout game was released in 1997. I was (and am) an avid gamer, and when I played the inaugural entry in what would become a decades-long series, I saw immediately that it was different from almost anything else I’d encountered on the market. Its subtitle labeled it “a post nuclear role playing game,” but this was not the typical, fast-paced, “Radioactive Rambo” shoot-’em-up with an indestructible protagonist roaming a ravaged world to a pulsing electronic soundtrack.

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The Trump campaign is trying to turn the electoral process into a moral swamp. Voters are going to have to pace themselves to get to November.
First, here are three new stories from The Atlantic:
Joe Biden lowered drug prices.

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Over the weekend, Donald Trump sent out a video with an image of Joe Biden bound like a hostage, and linked to an article with a photo of the daughter of the judge in his hush-money trial in New York. Voters need to confront the reality of what supporting Trump means.

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Terrorists struck deep inside Russia on Friday, and the conspiracy theories are already spinning.
First, here are three new stories from The Atlantic:
Donald Trump’s nine lives
What was NBC even thinking?
Social media is not what killed the web.

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Donald Trump’s plan to pardon people in prison for their crimes on January 6—people he now calls “hostages”—is yet another dangerous and un-American attack on the rule of law.