Editor’s Note: Panelists on Washington Week With The Atlantic joined to discuss growing opposition to President Trump’s attacks on Iran and what winning a war with unclear objectives could like.
President Trump’s war in Iran is putting economic pressure on many European countries. On Washington Week With The Atlantic, panelists joined to discuss the effects of the conflict on America’s allies, and more.
“It’s a very strange moment because, on the one hand, actually, U.S.

Adorning urban intersections and rising high at countryside interstate exits, the gas-station sign announces the mood of the consumer economy. For the past several weeks, the economic ramifications of the Iran war have been more or less universally represented through photographs and videos of them. It’s easy to see why: The price of gasoline is always displayed on the sign, in huge numbers that overwhelm the rest of the scene.

By most measures, the new GLP-1 pills are underwhelming. Earlier this month, the pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly debuted a weight-loss tablet that is far less effective than its popular injectable counterpart, Zepbound. Oral Wegovy, which hit the market in December, can hold its own with the shot version—but it has to be taken on an empty stomach with fewer than four ounces of water. And both pills come with many of the same side effects as the shots, namely nausea and diarrhea.

The prediction that Iran will be America’s next Vietnam—a moral catastrophe, an abyss into which money and lives have been pitched, with the sole effect of weakening the United States and heartening its enemies—is already in general circulation among Americans. A few days ago, the Iranian embassy in Hanoi joined the doomsaying. Its X account featured an AI-generated image of a mouth-breathing American GI being lectured to by a smiling Vietnamese soldier in Saigon on April 30, 1975.

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 morning, as the United States and Israel’s war with Iran neared the end of its sixth week, Vice President Vance headed for Pakistan, where he plans to sit down with Iranian officials.

Julian Sklar spends most of his workday performing on camera. Not for anyone important; the cantankerous artist (played by Ian McKellen), the protagonist of Steven Soderbergh’s new movie, The Christophers, is recording jokey Cameos for eager fans. Facing a ring-lit iPhone, he rambles about his fading career with chipper bumptiousness.

Since 2015, Donald Trump has been an apex predator on the internet. His social-media posts have caused geopolitical crises (we’ll invade Greenland!) and stock slumps (Amazon shares down 6 percent in one day!). For years, both Trump’s Republican opponents and Democrats tried to get the better of—or stoop lower than—the president and failed.
In contemporary internet slang, Trump is a Chad, an alpha male who almost always comes out on top in any internet spat and dominates his opponents.

This is an edition of the Books Briefing, our editors’ weekly guide to the best in books. Sign up for it here.
Growing up, the novelist and New Orleans native Nancy Lemann didn’t know how culturally distinct her home city was. “I just thought, Okay, this is what it’s like. This is what life is like,” she told my colleague Kaitlyn Tiffany, who spoke with Lemann for an article about her first novel in decades, The Oyster Diaries.

Subscribe here: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube
On this week’s Galaxy Brain episode, Charlie Warzel is joined by New York Times technology reporter Tiffany Hsu to discuss the rise of AI influencers—synthetic avatars, often indistinguishable from real people, that are flooding social-media feeds to sell supplements and promote brands. Hsu unpacks her reporting on the combination of forces converging around it, including the wellness industry, a historically fertile ground for scammers.