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The elected officials who quietly defend Donald Trump’s immorality even though they know better are just as bad as the comically devoted Trump courtiers.

Yesterday, a drone thought to be launched by Iranian proxies killed three American soldiers in Jordan, on the Syrian border. All talk now is of escalation. President Joe Biden said the United States “shall respond,” adding that the response would occur “at a time and in a manner [of] our choosing.” For once I would like to hear a world leader vow to devastate the enemy in a manner and time of the enemy’s choosing.

Sooner or later, it was bound to happen. A drone launched by an Iran-affiliated militia hit an American base in Jordan, near the borders with Syria and Iraq, killing three service personnel and wounding 25 more. Now, once again, the United States finds itself wondering what to do next.
The overpowering temptation for this administration is to engage in a game of tit for tat, aiming more frequently at things (missile launchers, for example) than people, and then to let things lie.

Ulysses S. Grant once said that the Confederate cause, the defense of chattel slavery, was “one of the worst for which a people ever fought, and one for which there was the least excuse.” Texas’s embrace of neo-secessionist rhetoric in defense of letting children drown in the Rio Grande belongs somewhere on that same list.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott is engaged in a number of legal battles with the Biden administration over immigration.

Once upon a time, having Justin Timberlake on Saturday Night Live would have been a thrilling thing. In the mid-2000s, the pop star emerged as one of the show’s favorite recurring hosts, the kind of mega-famous celeb who seemed like he would be down for anything, such as dressing up in a giant mascot costume or putting his, ahem, dick in a box.
But the tide has turned on Timberlake. He arrived on SNL this weekend as a musical guest with an air of desperation.

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.
Welcome back to The Daily’s Sunday culture edition, in which one Atlantic writer or editor reveals what’s keeping them entertained.

On January 17, House Speaker Mike Johnson led a candlelight vigil at the Capitol to mark the recent passing of the 100th day of hostage-holding by Hamas terrorists in Gaza. Members of Congress assembled shoulder to shoulder with families of hostages. The Republican speaker delivered a heartfelt speech. “We must stand together in solidarity with the Jewish people,” he said.

For the most part, America’s governing institutions have thus far responded to the problem of Donald Trump’s authoritarian aspirations by punting—passing the ball to some other actor in our political system. The criminal prosecutor Robert Mueller decided that Congress, not the Department of Justice, where he was special counsel, should assess whether Trump had committed any crimes in the 2016 election.

One great paradox of our time is that to limit humanity’s harms to the planet, we must decarbonize the economy; but to decarbonize the economy, we must build tons of new stuff: wind farms, solar fields, geothermal wells, and above all electricity-transmission lines. Last month, a broad coalition of congressional Democrats released their vision for how to do this.