In the short weeks since the Colorado Supreme Court threw Donald Trump off the ballot on the grounds that he is barred from office for engaging in “insurrection or rebellion” under the Fourteenth Amendment, the apologists for a man who tried to overthrow the constitutional order by fraud and then force have become pious apostles of democracy.
Republicans and conservative media figures have criticized the decision as “an attack on democracy” and “pro-tyranny.

In January 1995, when The Atlantic published “In Praise of Snow,” Cullen Murphy’s opus to frozen precipitation, snow was still a mysterious substance, coming and going enigmatically, confounding forecasters’ attempts to make long-term predictions. Climate change registered to snow hydrologists as a future problem, but for the most part their job remained squarely hydrology: working out the ticktock of a highly variable yet presumably coherent water cycle.

Over the decades, as it evolved from a slur into a term of tribal pride, the word queer was converted by academics into a verb. To queer a text is to look for hidden, un-straight meaning—to theorize that sexual repression shapes Holden Caulfield’s bad attitude and Nick Carraway’s unreliable narration. Typically, readers queer a work through their interpretation. What the author really meant is, in many cases, unknowable; the text and its effect are what matters most.

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.On Friday, a short flight teetered into near disaster when a chunk of the plane flew off during its ascent. Whatever the results of the pending investigation into what went wrong, the accident comes at a bad moment for Boeing.

Several years ago, I made a New Year’s resolution to eat more plants. Doing so, I assumed, would be better for my health, for animals, and for the planet. Besides, it would be easy: The rise of plant-based meat alternatives, offered by companies such as Impossible Meat and Beyond Meat, made it a breeze to eat less meat but still satisfy the occasional carnivorous urge. I could have my burger and eat it too.Or so I thought.

When Wayne LaPierre, the longtime leader of the National Rifle Association, announced his resignation on Friday, his opponents may have been tempted to celebrate. But the reality is that his departure does not necessarily change the group’s immediate prospects. The NRA remains under the control of an old guard that comprises mainly LaPierre’s lieutenants.If change is to come quickly to the NRA, it will be through the trial that began in New York today.

When Google Translate was released, in 2006, I was an eighth grader stumbling through introductory Spanish, and my teacher had little reason to worry about her students using it to cheat. It’s almost hard to remember now, but early machine-translation systems were laughably poor. They could give you the general thrust of, say, a Portuguese website, but they often failed at even basic tasks.

As Vladimir Putin’s army continues to wage war in Ukraine—destroying cities and villages, murdering civilians, and kidnapping children—many people may find themselves probing the culture of modern Russia in an effort to make sense of the atrocities. In the past, those looking to art or literature to better understand Russian society might have picked up works by Tolstoy or Dostoyevsky.