Monster movies come in strange bunches. Vampires dominated the screen in the 2010s, as gritty zombie hordes had the decade before that. Lately, we’re awash in Frankensteins, each adding stylized flavor to Mary Shelley’s novel: Zelda Williams’s goofy high-school version, Lisa Frankenstein; Yorgos Lanthimos’s steampunk reimagining, Poor Things; and Guillermo Del Toro’s faithful-to-a-fault take, currently up for nine Oscars.

Antonio Calanni / AP
Dancers perform during the opening ceremony at the 2026 Winter Paralympics, in Verona, Italy, on March 6, 2026. The Paralympic Games will take place through Sunday, March 15.

In 1953, when President Dwight Eisenhower authorized the CIA to topple Iran’s elected prime minister, the American public was told a familiar story: Communism was creeping in, the Cold War demanded vigilance, and the United States could not afford another Moscow ally. But beneath the neat narrative of containment was a more tangible obsession—oil. Iran’s enormous reserves were not merely a strategic asset; they were a prize.

Kristi Noem played “Hot Mama” as the walk-up song for her formal introduction at the Department of Homeland Security headquarters in January 2025. President Trump had put her in charge of his signature campaign promise—the largest mass-deportation campaign in U.S. history—and Noem took a fast, flashy approach to the job. She dressed as a Border Patrol agent and an ICE officer, and rode horseback at Mount Rushmore in ads.

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 campaigned on the idea that electing him was the best way to avoid wars. He has referred to himself as the “peace president,” going so far as to complain that he hadn’t won a Nobel Peace Prize.

The United States and Israel took at least a month to prepare their attack on Iran, assembling the largest arsenal of aircraft carriers and fighter jets that the Middle East has seen in decades. But one gap in their planning became clear during the first days of the war, as the United States and its allies used their most advanced anti-aircraft systems to shoot down swarms of cheap, easily replaceable Iranian drones.

This time last year, Jay Bhattacharya’s main claim to fame was, in essence, a hot take on COVID. In 2020, Bhattacharya, then a health economist at Stanford University without specialized training in infectious disease, co-authored the Great Barrington Declaration, an open letter that downplayed the risk of COVID and called for most of society to reopen before the arrival of vaccines.