Tom Nichols

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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.

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Last spring, Russian President Vladimir Putin said he would station nuclear weapons in neighboring Belarus. Evidence suggests that this move is imminent, but it is strategically meaningless.

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It’s Friday, and we’ve probably all had enough of political news, so instead I’m going to gripe about the decline of my favorite kind of television: “mystery box” shows that center on a secret or a conspiracy. The conceit has gotten out of control.

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It’s Friday, and we’ve probably all had enough of political news, so instead I’m going to gripe about the decline of my favorite kind of television: “mystery box” shows that center on a secret or a conspiracy. The conceit has gotten out of control.

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.
Since 1952, the White House has allowed major-party candidates access to classified intelligence briefings so that they will be current on important issues if they win the election. Trump should be denied this courtesy.

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Americans claim to dread a Trump-Biden rematch, but some Republicans seem more stunned than anyone else that Trump is back on the ballot. Now they are desperately trying to rationalize supporting their nominee.

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After Super Tuesday, all of the pointless wishing for a lightning strike to change the 2024 race should end: The contest is once again an existential test of American democracy.
First, here are three new stories from The Atlantic:
The Houthis are very, very pleased.

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Donald Trump unleashed a flood of delusions and fascistic threats at CPAC this weekend in a speech to an audience that included actual neo-Nazis, a story overshadowed by the South Carolina GOP primary and his completely predictable defeat of the state’s former governor, Nikki Haley.

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A brief hubbub erupted in Washington this week over an unspecified “national security threat” that some sources now believe is related to a Russian plan to use nuclear weapons in space. The prospect is cause for concern but not panic.

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The presumptive Republican nominee showed yet again this weekend how little he thinks of America’s men and women in uniform.

Donald Trump, the 45th president of the United States and the presumptive Republican nominee, said earlier today that he would side with Russia against NATO and encourage Russian President Vladimir Putin to brutalize our allies. Not so long ago, many Americans—and especially most Republicans—would have considered anyone supporting such a view to be little more than a deranged and hateful anti-American fanatic.

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Ukrainian defenses are in danger of being destroyed and overrun because House Republicans refuse to provide ammunition and aid. If Russia wins this war, the consequences could be catastrophic.

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We are heading into a rematch that promises to be weirder than any presidential election we’ve ever experienced. Let’s review where things stand.
First, here are three new stories from The Atlantic:
What Joni Mitchell proved at the Grammys
Silicon Valley’s new start-ups are city-states.

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Republicans need to recover their senses about the dire moral and strategic tests Ukraine and the West face in Europe.
First, here are three new stories from The Atlantic:
The nonsensical impeachment of Alejandro Mayorkas
“What I found in San Francisco”
Chicken Littles are ruining America.

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The elected officials who quietly defend Donald Trump’s immorality even though they know better are just as bad as the comically devoted Trump courtiers.