Voters gave America’s rudest man permission to return to the White House; what else have they given permission to? Michael Che has one idea. “So y’all gonna let a man with 34 felonies lead the free world and be the president of the United States?” he asked during last night’s “Weekend Update.” “That’s it. I’m listening to R. Kelly again.

The first time I felt it, I knew it was old as ancestry:
the feeling some women chase with words; some feel
out the flesh of their mouths or stomach with moans
and growls you would’ve thought was warfare. The child  
conceived of heartache, our evidence of loving.
I was with child before I ever lay with a man—an ill-mannered
girl who made a language of feeling. She rattled my insides,
making songs of heartache and lonely.

One of the mysteries of this election is how the Democrats approached polling day with a set of policies on gender identity that they were neither proud to champion—nor prepared to disown.
Although most Americans agree that transgender people should not face discrimination in housing and employment, there is nowhere near the same level of support for allowing transgender women to compete in women’s sports—which is why Donald Trump kept bringing up the issue.

Donald Trump is a crypto bro who’s going to cut taxes and regulations, loves big banks and corporate mergers, doesn’t care about deficits, loves oil and hates wind and solar, and might actually let RFK Jr. do some kooky health stuff. That, roughly speaking, is the picture of Trump that you get when you look at how markets reacted this week to his reelection as president of the United States. In other words, the markets are saying that he’s pretty much who many of us thought he was.

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In today’s reading list, our editors have compiled stories about new and promising medical developments, including breakthroughs to treat lupus, a possible birth-control revolution, and a food-allergy fix that’s been hiding in plain sight.

Americans don’t typically have a reason to think about the fluoride in their water, but this is not a typical week. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the former independent presidential candidate whom Donald Trump is eyeing as his health czar, has vowed to remove the mineral from drinking water if he is appointed to the next administration. Kennedy has said that the chemical lowers children’s IQ, even though studies overwhelmingly show that it is safe.

In September 2020, I took my kids apple picking at a small, quiet orchard in Massachusetts called Windy Hill Farm. It was our first weekend away from home since the pandemic had started. The trees dripped with so much fruit, they looked like they were wearing jeweled capes. My son was 10 and my daughter 13, and as they ran and played and picked, the fears I’d been carrying about the virus, the changing world, and the terrible news fell away.

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This election marked, among other things, the birth of a new Republican-led multiracial working-class coalition and the beginning of an upheaval in the Democratic Party.

For museums and their public, Impressionism is the Goldilocks movement: not too old or too new, not too challenging or too sappy; just right. Renaissance art may baffle with arcane religious symbolism, contemporary art may baffle on purpose, but put people in a gallery with Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, and Camille Pissarro, and explanatory wall texts feel superfluous. Eyes roam contentedly over canvases suffused with light, vibrant with gesture, and alive with affable people doing pleasant things.

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If you tell five people you have trouble sleeping, you’re likely to get suggestions for five items that you can purchase. “Sleep is going the way of other types of buyable ‘wellness,’” my colleague Megan Garber wrote last year.