Every weekday evening, our editors guide you through the biggest stories of the day, help you discover new ideas, and surprise you with moments of delight. Subscribe to get this delivered to your inbox.GETTY / THE ATLANTICWelcome to the great wait. The 2020 election is now close enough that you can feel its dragon breath on your neck. And yet! There’s still one more full week to go.American elections are drawn-out affairs, but this year’s contest may feel particularly long.

In 2016, Donald Trump won Michigan by the narrowest margin of any state—10,704 votes.  “There are 11,000 more votes in Detroit,” Garlin Gilchrist told himself that night. “There are 11,000 Black men who could vote to change that.”A few months later, Gilchrist, then just 35, entered the race for Detroit city clerk—the city’s chief elections officer. His pitch: He could help engage more voters, and help make it easier for them to vote.

Massachusetts is one of the smallest, but most densely populated, states, with a population of nearly 6.9 million. From the Berkshires through the Pioneer Valley to Boston, out to Cape Cod and the Islands, here are a few glimpses of the landscape of Massachusetts, and some of the wildlife and people calling it home.This photo story is part of Fifty, a collection of images from each of the United States.

It’s been almost five years since Adele Adkins released new music. Her last album, 25, delivered emotional, vocally masterful, classicist pop just in time to soothe listeners during taxing election seasons in the U.S. and U.K. An excellent Saturday Night Live sketch back then even posited that her hit “Hello” could be the one thing to bring together feuding family members at Thanksgiving dinners.

During her confirmation hearings, Amy Coney Barrett argued that the judicial philosophy known as “originalism” should guide judges in their interpretation and application of constitutional principles.

Every weekday evening, our editors guide you through the biggest stories of the day, help you discover new ideas, and surprise you with moments of delight. Subscribe to get this delivered to your inbox.THE ATLANTIC“Spectacularly obvious.”That’s what our editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, writing on behalf of The Atlantic’s editors, called the choice voters face this November.“Two men are running for president,” he writes.