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.
Updated at 6:17 p.m. ET on April 16, 2024
Donald Trump is among the most famous and most polarizing people alive. The task of selecting 12 impartial jurors who can render a fair verdict in the criminal trial of a former president is a first for America’s court system.

Sign up for The Decision, a newsletter featuring our 2024 election coverage.
The Iranian attack on Israel has heightened the fierce cross-pressures shaping President Joe Biden’s conflicted approach to the war in Gaza.
Throughout Israel’s military engagement, Biden has struggled to square his historic inclination to support Israel almost unreservedly with growing hostility in his party toward Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s conduct of the war.

Sign up for The Decision, a newsletter featuring our 2024 election coverage.
“I JUST STORMED OUT OF BIDEN’S KANGAROO COURT!” Donald Trump wrote in an email to supporters late yesterday afternoon, shortly after the end of the first day of his trial on charges of hiding hush-money payments during the 2016 campaign.
The statement led off a fundraising appeal, and it was, somewhat predictably, a lie.

Salman Rushdie tells us that he wrote Knife, his account of his near-murder at the hands of a 24-year-old Shia Muslim man from New Jersey, for two reasons: because he had to deal with “the elephant-in-the-room” before he could return to writing about anything else, and to understand what the attack was about. The first reason suggests something admirable, even remarkable, in Rushdie’s character, a determination to persist as a novelist and a man in the face of terror.

When I brought my new dog, a 4-year-old Cavalier King Charles spaniel named Grace, home for the holidays last year, I was nervous. I didn’t know how she’d react to the unfamiliar environment, so I kept scanning the floor for items she might swallow. She wasn’t perfectly house-trained yet, so I was constantly watching to see if she started to walk in circles—a sign that she has to go to the bathroom.
After a week with no trouble, my mom gently called me out.

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.
Israel’s response to Iran’s attack this past weekend signals an “astonishing win,” my colleague Graeme Wood wrote yesterday. With help from several allies, Israel managed to fend off what could have been a mass-casualty event (though one 7-year-old girl sustained life-threatening injuries).

On April 13, the Islamic Republic of Iran launched missiles and drones at Israel. Also on April 13, as well as on April 12, 14, and 15, the Russian Federation launched missiles and drones at Ukraine—including some designed in Iran.
Few of the weapons launched by Iran hit their mark. Instead, American and European airplanes, alongside Israeli and even Jordanian airplanes, knocked the drones and missiles out of the sky.
By contrast, some of the attacks launched by Russia did destroy their targets.

This article contains spoilers for the Bluey episode “The Sign.”
A few weeks ago, I found myself, fairly late at night, Googling Is Bandit Heeler depressed? This is, I admit, a ridiculous thing to wonder about a cartoon dog, but what can I say? The vibes had just been off for the patriarch of Bluey, Disney+’s wildly popular show about a family of Australian Blue Heelers. In “Stickbird,” something is clearly bothering Bandit, to the point where he’s grouchy and detached on a family vacation.

Yesterday, ABC News’s George Stephanopoulos conducted a skillful and revealing interview with New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu. Over nine damning minutes, Sununu illustrated how deep into the Republican Party the rot has gone.
The context for the interview is important. Governor Sununu is hardly a MAGA enthusiast. During the 2024 GOP primary, he supported Nikki Haley, and over the past several years, he’s been a harsh critic of Donald Trump.