It took all of about 39 seconds for the vicious “birther” chatter to reemerge once former Vice President Joe Biden announced that Senator Kamala Harris would be his running mate for the November election. No wonder, since a certain variety of American citizen just can’t seem to wrap his mind around the U.S. Constitution’s provisions guaranteeing equal citizenship to all Americans.

Editor’s Note: The Atlantic is making vital coverage of the coronavirus available to all readers. Find the collection here. Michael Mina is a professor of epidemiology at Harvard, where he studies the diagnostic testing of infectious diseases. He has watched, with disgust and disbelief, as the United States has struggled for months to obtain enough tests to fight the coronavirus.

President Donald Trump’s open admission yesterday that he’s sabotaging the Postal Service to improve his election prospects crystallizes a much larger dynamic: He’s waging an unprecedented campaign to weaponize virtually every component of the federal government to partisan advantage.

Eli Joshua Ade / HBOLike many young people, the protagonist of the 2016 novel Lovecraft Country devours entertainment that his father finds foolish and reprehensible. Atticus loves reading science fiction, fantasy, and horror—genres that, as his dad points out, are dominated by white authors and full of racist stereotypes. The tension inherent in Atticus’s fondness for such writers drives much of Lovecraft Country, which is set in the 1950s.

To teach someone is to influence them, and nothing interests Kanye West more than influence. (Shutterstock / Getty / Arsh Raziuddin / The Atlantic)Underlying Kanye West’s confusing run for president may be the simple impulse that has driven much of his career: the impulse to teach. His first album, 2004’s The College Dropout, kicked off with a skit in which West was asked to give a school’s commencement speech.