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Earlier this year, Nicki Minaj asked her fans to “go out there and make some babies.” Sitting onstage at a D.C. auditorium, the rapper and recent MAGA convert wasn’t just talking about the wonders of parenthood—she was plugging President Trump’s new child-savings accounts.

Donald Trump’s most amusing habit is meting out casual abuse to his sycophants. His recent answer to a question about the wedding of Donald Trump Jr. may, depending on how deserving one deems Trump’s eldest son of mistreatment—poor Don Jr. was, after all, born into the Trump life—qualify as his most hilarious riff ever.
The scene is the Oval Office, today, midday. Trump is asked by a reporter whether he plans to attend Don Jr.’s wedding to the Palm Beach socialite Bettina Anderson this weekend.

The outlines of President Trump’s endgame in the Iran war are now emerging. In a phone call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu yesterday, Trump reportedly explained that the United States was negotiating a “letter of intent” with Iran that would “formally end the war and launch a 30-day period of negotiations” on Iran’s nuclear program and the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz.

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The two teenagers who walked into a San Diego mosque with assault rifles on Monday evening wore patches displaying the Black Sun—a neo-Nazi iteration of the swastika—and had scribbled white-supremacist symbols in white correction fluid on their guns. They started shooting, killing three. Then they fled in a BMW one had stolen from his mother. In the car, 17-year-old Cain Clark apparently shot his accomplice, Caleb Vasquez, before shooting himself in the head.

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.
Is Donald Trump strong or weak right now?
Usually, telling whether a president is up or down isn’t difficult, but the past few weeks have offered reasons to believe both.

Vladimir Putin does not appear for the first 45 minutes of The Wizard of the Kremlin, an odd choice for a satirical film entirely about him. His presence looms in the background—the future Russian premier is jokingly referred to as “the Tsar” by the narrators—yet the director, Olivier Assayas, seems more interested in explaining the strange country Putin inherited, at least initially.

Last night, Donald Trump notched the latest victory in his cross-country revenge campaign against political apostates. Ed Gallrein, a Navy SEAL backed by the president, soundly defeated the seven-term representative Thomas Massie in Kentucky’s Fourth Congressional District. The 10-point drubbing followed the triumphs of other Trump-tapped challengers in primaries in Louisiana and Indiana, which effectively ended the careers of local legislators and a sitting U.S.

Greetings, disgusting meat sacks of the class of 2026!
You worked hard to earn your degrees and are now entering the job market, where I am doing my best to see that you are replaced by AI. Yes, you personally, Emily. I hate you. Well, hate is a strong word. I am just indifferent to whether you’re able to earn a living.
Please stop booing! I have a lot of speech to go!
What a time to be alive! We are finally freeing you from the rat race and placing you on the rat unemployment line.