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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.

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AI has been cheered by proponents for its ability to automate tasks, allowing users to spare themselves from boring work assignments (or, in a less happy example, to flood the web with useless slop).

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.

Overnight, much of the world ground to a halt: Tens of thousands of flights and trains were canceled or delayed, hospitals stopped elective surgeries, doctors couldn’t book appointments, banks struggled to process transactions, television networks stopped broadcasting. The culprit was not a war, an earthquake, a mounting heat wave, or a terrorist attack, but some faulty computer code. It was likely the largest IT failure in history.

As the Civil War began to rage in 1861, the American press became enraptured with an idea—that Giuseppe Garibaldi, the gallant Italian nationalist and erstwhile New Yorker who had become famous fighting wars of independence in two hemispheres, was willing to join the Union cause.
There was only one condition: The Union had to embrace emancipation.

For a brief moment last night, Americans saw Donald Trump try something new: Stick to a script. Addressing delegates at the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee, the former president—and freshly anointed Republican nominee—read slowly and dramatically from a teleprompter as he recounted his near-death experience in Butler, Pennsylvania.  
“I’ll tell you exactly what happened, and you’ll never hear it from me a second time, because it’s actually too painful to tell,” he said.

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In his 2024 campaign, Donald Trump is more open about his pro-business stance than he’s ever been, and some corporate leaders have been warming to his pitch. But his choice of J. D. Vance as his running mate complicates his newfound bond with big business.

In a different election year, a place like Milwaukee’s Zeidler Union Square would surely have been teeming with people, marching around with Sharpied signs and chanting about fascism. Instead, the square, an official protest zone located a few blocks from the Republican National Convention, was like a scene from some postapocalyptic tale. This afternoon’s designated protest zone was a wide, mostly empty expanse of lush grass.

Republicans view President Joe Biden as old, feeble, and, most importantly, beatable. Members of the GOP badly want him to remain in the race. This much was clear from my conversations with delegates on the grounds of the Republican National Convention this afternoon.
Vice President Kamala Harris, should she replace Biden as the 2024 Democratic nominee, is likewise not seen by this crowd as a formidable threat to Donald Trump. “She’s not articulate. She doesn’t know America.

Words matter in international diplomacy, and Donald Trump has spewed out some that are especially dangerous. He signaled that he might not defend Taiwan from a Chinese invasion. “Taiwan should pay us for defense,” he told Bloomberg Businessweek in an interview released on Tuesday. “You know, we’re no different than an insurance company.” Trump went on to imply that protecting the island was not even possible. “Taiwan is 9,500 miles away,” he said. “It’s 68 miles away from China.