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.
“It may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS,” then–CBS President and CEO Leslie Moonves cackled in February 2016, as Donald Trump’s presidential campaign churned forward. “The money’s rolling in and this is fun … It’s a terrible thing to say. But, bring it on, Donald. Go ahead.

Americans have plenty to worry about these days when it comes to infectious-disease outbreaks. This is the worst flu season in 15 years, there’s a serious measles outbreak roiling Texas, and the threat of bird flu isn’t going away. “The house is on fire,” Denis Nash, an epidemiologist at CUNY School of Public Health, told me. The more America is pummeled by disease, the greater the chance of widespread outbreaks and even another pandemic.

Want to stay current with Arthur’s writing? Sign up to get an email every time a new column comes out.
Some years ago, I had a friend who got into trouble on the internet. He was writing a book that took a strong stance on a controversial topic and had been talking about it on social media. He didn’t have a large following, but activists who opposed his view of the issue began to notice and decided that he needed punishing for wrongthink.

Spending time on dating apps, I know from experience, can make you a little paranoid. When you swipe and swipe and nothing’s working out, it could be that you’ve had bad luck. It could be that you’re too picky. It could be—oh God—that you simply don’t pull like you thought you did.

Last June, the popular UFC fighter Sean Strickland surprised onlookers when, immediately following a victory, he ducked into the audience and took a photo with a bystander: Donald Trump. “President Trump, you’re the man, bro,” Strickland declared in his post-match interview with Joe Rogan. “It is a damn travesty what they’re doing to you. I’ll be donating to you, my man. Let’s get it done.

They arrived casually dressed and extremely confident—a self-styled super force of bureaucratic disrupters, mostly young men with engineering backgrounds on a mission from the president of the United States, under the command of the world’s wealthiest online troll.
On February 7, five Department of Government Efficiency representatives made it to the fourth floor of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau headquarters, where the executive suites are located.

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.
This week, Donald Trump falsely accused Ukraine of starting a war against a much larger neighbor, inviting invasion and mass death.

Republican senators have confirmed a onetime Bernie Sanders supporter to lead the nation’s intelligence community and a member of America’s most famous Democratic family as its health secretary. This morning, however, they saved some of their sharpest questions for a Cabinet nominee who, until last month, served alongside them as a GOP member of Congress.