In the weeks leading up to today’s arraignment in New York, former President Donald Trump was reportedly enamored by the idea of a dramatic “perp walk.” He seemed to revel in the power of the word arrested. Perhaps Trump, a noted Godfather fan, wanted this historic day to resemble that of the real-life mafioso John Gotti, the former Gambino-crime-family boss, who famously strutted into the New York State Supreme Court in 1990 as flashing cameras captured his smirk.

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.Donald Trump was arraigned in New York today on multiple felony counts. But maybe America isn’t going to fulfill the former president’s prediction of “death and destruction” over prosecution for his alleged crimes.

All of a sudden, Ozempic is everywhere. The weight-loss drug that it contains, semaglutide, is a potent treatment for obesity, and Hollywood and TikTok celebrities have turned it into a sensation. In just a few months, the medication has been branded as “revolutionary” and “game-changing,” with the power to permanently alter society’s conceptions of fatness and thinness.

Donald Trump, the 45th president of the United States, became the first former president to be arraigned today. After surrendering to authorities in Manhattan early this afternoon, Trump pleaded not guilty to 34 felonies during a closed-door hearing.The day provided a series of striking images. The New York–born mogul slowly traveled from Trump Tower in Midtown to a courthouse in Lower Manhattan via motorcade.

I found it hard to get to sleep on Thursday night after seeing news that a Moscow court had charged the Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich with espionage. The images from outside the court shocked many of us. The Moscow press pack is a tight-knit community, and Gershkovich’s colleagues from the BBC, the Financial Times, Politico, and other publications posted “Journalism is not a crime” on their social media.

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.Russian President Vladimir Putin is once again trying to manipulate nuclear weapons to compensate for the ongoing Russian military disaster in Ukraine. These new Russian moves are dangerous but not a crisis.First, here are three new stories from The Atlantic:
Don’t take your eye off Jack Smith.

This is an edition of Up for Debate, a newsletter by Conor Friedersdorf. On Wednesdays, he rounds up timely conversations and solicits reader responses to one thought-provoking question. Later, he publishes some thoughtful replies. Sign up for the newsletter here.Last week I quoted the late astronomer and astrophysicist Carl Sagan on humanity’s place in the cosmos, and asked readers for their thoughts on outer space.

If you asked Americans to name a space mission, any space mission, I suspect very few would pick Apollo 8. The 1968 mission, the first to circle the moon, gets overshadowed by Apollo 11 (“One small step for man”; you know the rest) and Apollo 13 (of Tom Hanks fame). The astronauts didn’t venture from their spaceship, nor did they touch the lunar surface. But in its own, quiet way, that mission was an existential milestone.

Even a halfway-decent political campaign knows you better than you know yourself. A candidate’s army of number crunchers vacuums up any morsel of personal information that might affect the choice we make at the polls. In 2020, Donald Trump and the Republican Party compiled 3,000 data points on every single voter in America. In 2012, the data nerds helped Barack Obama parse the electorate to microtarget his door-knocking efforts toward the most-persuadable swing voters. And in 1960, John F.