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.The United States of America is facing a threat from a sometimes violent cult while a nuclear armed power wages war on the border of our closest allies. And yet, many Americans sleepwalk as if they are living in normal times instead of in an ongoing crisis.

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.Our excerpt from a forthcoming biography of Mitt Romney has many people talking about the Utah senator’s principles and character, but we should be deeply alarmed by Romney’s warning about the Republican Party.

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.Eminent legal scholars think the Constitution makes Donald Trump ineligible for office; critics of the idea worry that using the Fourteenth Amendment will create an uncontrollable political weapon.First, here are three new stories from The Atlantic:
Explore The Atlantic’s guide to privacy.

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.Like millions of other Americans, I enjoy many of Sylvester Stallone’s movies. But in recent years, I’ve come to think that Sly might have also been teaching me something.First, here are four new stories from The Atlantic.
Streaming has reached its sad, predictable fate.

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.Democracy is under attack around the world; in the United States, the summer brought good news and bad news. The institutions of democracy are still functioning, but not for long if enough Americans continue to support authoritarianism.

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 first GOP primary debate confirmed the end of the old Republican Party and squelched any hope for a normal presidential election in 2024.First, here are three new stories from The Atlantic:
The mercenary always loses.

A plane carrying Yevgeny Prigozhin, the mercenary chief who led a short-lived mutiny two months ago, crashed today in a sparsely populated area northwest of Moscow. According to Russian media, Prigozhin and at least one of his top commanders are dead.

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 has decided to skip the Republican presidential debates. That’s just as well: Debating Trump is demeaning to everyone involved, and it serves no purpose.

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 Democrats, echoing GOP narratives about Joe Biden’s age, are invested in the idea of challenging the president’s renomination. But how would that actually work?First, here are three new stories from The Atlantic:
Trump discovers that some things are actually illegal.

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.Fani Willis, the district attorney of Fulton County, Georgia, indicted Donald Trump and 18 others on an alleged conspiracy to overturn the 2020 presidential election results in her state.

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 Atlantic’s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, is the new moderator of the PBS program Washington Week, which will now be called Washington Week With The Atlantic. I talked with Jeff about this new partnership, which launches tomorrow night on PBS at 8 p.m. ET.

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.Ronald Reagan’s 11th commandment was: “Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican.” This weekend, Mike Pence—like most of the GOP field—struggled mightily to criticize Donald Trump while barely mentioning Trump’s name.

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 Ukrainian counteroffensive, under way since the spring, is slogging through miles of trenches and minefields. Progress will depend on the battlefield, not on Western impatience.

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 stands indicted for attempting to thwart the peaceful transfer of power and subvert the rights of American citizens. This is the moment that will decide our future as a democracy.

A short recap of the past 24 hours in Russia reads like the backstory for a fanciful episode of Madam Secretary or The West Wing. Yevgeny Prigozhin, the brutal convicted criminal who leads the Wagner mercenary group, declared war on the Russian Ministry of Defense and marched into the city of Rostov-on-Don. He then headed north for Moscow, carrying his demand for the ousting of Minister of Defense Sergei Shoigu and Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov. The city went on alert.

A simmering political feud in Russia has exploded into a crisis. The head of a Russian mercenary army fighting in Ukraine alongside Moscow’s official military forces has declared war against the Russian ministry of defense, claiming that Russia’s war in Ukraine was all the result of a giant plot by defense bureaucrats to mislead Russian President Vladimir Putin into a pointless conflict.

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 Ukrainians are making progress in their long-awaited counteroffensive. Meanwhile, the Russian president is talking like a gangster and rattling the nuclear saber—again.

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.When J. D. Vance first ran for office, he impressed some observers as a bridge between red and blue America. I was less impressed, but as a senator, he’s worse than even I expected; he’s become part of a caucus of panderers who are betraying the people they claim to represent.

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 was arrested and arraigned today—without incident—and he has now pleaded not guilty to 37 charges tied to the alleged mishandling of classified documents.

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.After the second indictment of Donald Trump, some extremists in the Republican Party have made barely veiled threats of violence against their fellow citizens.

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.Former President Donald Trump, along with one of his aides, has been indicted for federal crimes involving highly sensitive national-security documents.

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 dictator of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, has signed an agreement with Russia to base Russian nuclear weapons in his country. The strategic impact of such a move is negligible, but a lot can go wrong with this foolish plan.

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 dictator of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, has signed an agreement with Russia to base Russian nuclear weapons in his country. The strategic impact of such a move is negligible, but a lot can go wrong with this foolish plan.

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.After his arraignment in New York, a weary Donald Trump returned to Mar-a-Lago, where he made a rambling and disjointed statement. (To call it a “speech” would be too generous.

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 was arraigned in New York today on multiple felony counts. But maybe America isn’t going to fulfill the former president’s prediction of “death and destruction” over prosecution for his alleged crimes.

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.Russian President Vladimir Putin is once again trying to manipulate nuclear weapons to compensate for the ongoing Russian military disaster in Ukraine. These new Russian moves are dangerous but not a crisis.First, here are three new stories from The Atlantic:
Don’t take your eye off Jack Smith.

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.A grand jury has reportedly indicted Donald Trump on criminal charges stemming from his role in a hush-money payoff to the porn star Stormy Daniels.

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.At his rally in Waco this weekend, Donald Trump stood at attention as a choir of jailed January 6 rioters sang an anthem of sedition, and media outlets barely blinked.

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.Twenty years after the United States led a coalition to overthrow Saddam Hussein, the conventional wisdom is now that the postwar fiasco proved that the war was a mistake from its inception. The war, as it was executed, was indeed a disaster, but there was ample cause for launching it.

Let us begin with the obvious thing that just happened: This morning, Donald Trump threatened to summon a mob—for the second time in two years—to his defense. The former president of the United States and a leading candidate for the Republican nomination for the White House in 2024, facing a possible indictment in New York, claimed to know the exact day on which he would be arrested and then called on his supporters to “protest.