Not long ago, the idea that a former president—or major-party presidential nominee—would face serious legal jeopardy was nearly unthinkable. Today, merely keeping track of the many cases against Donald Trump requires a law degree, a great deal of attention, or both.In all, Trump faces 91 felony counts across two state courts and two different federal districts, any of which could potentially produce a prison sentence.

The ear is a marvelous, humble organ. It powers our hearing and also our balance, keeping us upright and connected to the world around us. In return, ear doctors tend to ask that we follow one very simple rule: Don’t put anything smaller than your elbow in your ear. Of course, you can’t actually fit your elbow inside your ear. But you can fit a Q-tip, which comes with this warning: “Do not insert swab into ear canal. Entering the ear canal could cause injury.

Yesterday afternoon, my dad, Erik Dybkaer Andersen, lay sleeping at home in his hospice bed when a calm settled over his body and he drew his last breath. He was 78. For more than a year, we had known that cancer would take him; only the hour was uncertain. But it is still a shock to find him missing from his bedroom, from his family, from the world. It is too early to measure, much less put into writing, all that he meant to us.

The journalists Christine Emba and Thomas Chatterton Williams will join The Atlantic as staff writers, and Robert Worth is becoming a contributing writer, editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg announced today.
Christine joins from The Washington Post, where she was most recently a columnist and a member of the Editorial Board.

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.Claudine Gay engaged in academic misconduct. Everything else about her case is irrelevant, including the silly claims of her right-wing opponents.First, here are three new stories from The Atlantic:
Hamas doesn’t want a cease-fire, Graeme Wood argues.

For all the focus on recent changes in the political mood on college campuses, the downfall of Harvard President Claudine Gay turns out to be a story about some of the oldest values of academia.Gay, a political scientist, resigned today, making her the second president of an Ivy League institution to bow out in the past month. University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill stepped down on December 9, but the cases are not as similar as they might initially seem.

The naked human is a vulnerable creature. Lacking the fur of our mammalian ancestors and relatives, we have bare skin that offers little defense against the sun’s brutal rays or wind’s biting chill. So instead, we have had to invent a technology to replace our long-lost fur: “portable thermal protection,” as the archaeologist Ian Gilligan calls it or, more simply, clothing.Without clothing, humans would never have reached all seven continents.

Recently, I drove along Israel’s northern border, west to east. To my American sensibility, it is the best road trip in Israel—a 90-minute version of a trip that would take many hours on California back roads—from the ocean through scrubby hills and finally to the Golan Heights.