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In embracing the elimination of taxes on tips, a policy proposal recently promoted by Donald Trump, Kamala Harris is neutralizing any advantage Trump might have gained from it—at little to no cost to her own campaign.
But first, here are three new stories from The Atlantic.

The novelist Gary Shteyngart recently asked Donald Trump’s supporters on X to “check out RFK Jr.,” noting that the idiosyncratic candidate has “many interesting things to say about lots of stuff.” We asked Shteyngart if he himself would vote for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. This was his response.
I’m a lifelong registered Republican who has voted for Donald J. Trump in the past five presidential elections. But lately I have been looking at Robert F. KENNEDY Jr.

Last week, civilians in Russia experienced something new—something Chechens, Georgians, Syrians, Ukrainians, and other civilians in the path of Russia’s military have known about for decades. After Russian tanks withdraw and shelling stops, Moscow holds certain hot spots in stasis. They become “gray zones”: neither at war nor fully at peace, wrecked by heavy artillery, psychologically traumatized and economically ruined, under Russia’s boot but subject to its neglect.

That was a crazy public service provided by Elon Musk and X.
The X Spaces interview delivered Donald Trump without makeup or dress-up, talking unselfconsciously: manic, boastful, untruthful, aggrieved, abusive, obsessive, random, ignorant, tedious, bitchy—and ultimately, formless and endless. You might think a major-party presidential nominee would have other claims on his time, some sort of deadline, if only to get some sleep to ready himself for the next day’s campaigning. But no.

One broiling Friday last month, I visited the emergency room of Mayo Hospital, the largest hospital in Pakistan. For more than 150 years, it has stood just outside the Old City of Lahore, not far from the marble domes of the Badshahi Mosque. Every day, more than 1,000 people fill its wards. No one is turned away. Patients come from all corners of Lahore, from the sugarcane fields outside the city and from far-off villages.

Just before Elon Musk was set to host Donald Trump Monday night in an audio livestream on X, the tech billionaire offered some context for listeners. He would not be interviewing the former president, but instead facilitating a conversation. “Nobody is quite themselves in an interview, so it’s hard to understand what they’re really like,” he wrote on X.

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.
“Trump, enraged and rattled, is reverting to his feral ways,” Peter Wehner wrote in The Atlantic today.

When Donald Trump is at his most vulnerable, when he feels most threatened, he tells fans not to believe their own eyes and ears.
After the January 6 attack on the Capitol, he called the event a “love fest,” denying the video evidence of the violence. After the writer E. Jean Carroll accused him of sexual assault, he said he had “never met” her, despite a photo showing them together.

Kamala Harris has had as good a three-week stretch as any presidential candidate in modern American history.
When Joe Biden dropped out on July 21, less than a month after his catastrophic debate performance against Donald Trump, the Democratic Party was on course to be defeated in a landslide.

Susie Lawing moved to Cohasset, a small community located in the forested canyons above the city of Chico, California, in the 1970s. After she and her husband divorced, Lawing stayed, presiding over 26 acres of lush family compound. Loved ones built homes of their own on the property, and they began hosting weddings and retreats. Lawing started to grow her own food.
All of that is now gone, she told me. Two weeks ago, the Park Fire ripped through the property. Lawing, now 81, lost everything.