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Every weekday evening, our editors guide you through the biggest stories of the day, help you discover new ideas, and surprise you with moments of delight. Subscribe to get this delivered to your inbox . BRETT CARLSEN / GETTY The presidential contest appears likely to drag on at least one more agonizing day. But the Oval Office wasn’t the only thing on the line this year. We explore three winners of this cycle. 1. Populism “ It will take more than unifying rhetoric to sway the more than 68 million Americans who cast their ballots for Trump this year,” Yasmeen Serhan reports. ( What is populism anyway? Earlier this year, Yasmeen argued that the definition has become murky.) 2. QAnon Two supporters of the conspiracy theory won seats in the House of Representatives. “QAnon is not just on the internet anymore; it’s in the U.S. Capitol,” our technology reporter Kaitlyn Tiffany writes. “ It is not just a conspiracy theory anymore; it’s a voting bloc. ” 3. Never Trumpers (and Quas...

Every weekday evening, our editors guide you through the biggest stories of the day, help you discover new ideas, and surprise you with moments of delight. Subscribe to get this delivered to your inbox . Getty / The Atlantic America’s political schisms are so profound that we risk a repeat of the 1850s, when the country was on the precipice of the Civil War. Two Atlantic writers warn that the 2020s could mark another dangerous decade for the American experiment. This time, the split is between those who embrace the country’s diverse future and those who fear it. Should Donald Trump win, America will enter an 1850s-style death spiral. On the left and right, “extremism will spread, mutate into new forms, and gradually become entrenched in more areas of American life,” Anne Applebaum argues. A Joe Biden victory wouldn't necessarily soothe the nation's wounds. Especially if the GOP deepens “its reliance on the most racially resentful white voters,” Ronald Brownstein write...

Every weekday evening, our editors guide you through the biggest stories of the day, help you discover new ideas, and surprise you with moments of delight. Subscribe to get this delivered to your inbox . THE ATLANTIC 1. This isn’t 2016. Democrats fear a repeat of last cycle’s polling mistakes. Our staff writer Derek Thompson offers five reasons why this election is different. 2. Here’s what liberals don’t understand about pro-Trump Latinos. “For liberal pundits, activists, and pollsters to focus on new Democratic turnout among Latinos misses the persuasiveness of the Republican pitch to Latino voters—and the staying power of their support,” Christian Paz, an assistant editor on our politics team, writes. 3. Many white men love Donald Trump’s coronavirus response. And more than 80 percent of Republicans approve. Why? The simplest explanation “is that Trump voters like Trump,” Olga Khazan reports. 4. Meanwhile, the president’s “America First” doctrine left America alone. “In s...

Every weekday evening, our editors guide you through the biggest stories of the day, help you discover new ideas, and surprise you with moments of delight. Subscribe to get this delivered to your inbox . THE ATLANTIC On the eve of President Donald Trump’s inauguration, our staff writer Ed Yong wondered how the incoming administration might handle a pandemic . In 2020, America got the answer. Now, Ed argues, the country faces a choice: Voters are about to decide how bad this pandemic will get. “If [Trump] is reelected, he will continue on the same path, and so will the coronavirus,” he writes. “More Americans will be sickened, disabled, and killed.” Meanwhile, America is sleepwalking into an Election Day surge in cases. Last week, Robinson Meyer, who’s closely followed this virus’s trajectory, pointed to three case trends worth keeping an eye on: 1. The rural explosion After months when viral transmission seemed to dominate cities, the coronavirus has now wheedled its way into...

Every weekday evening, our editors guide you through the biggest stories of the day, help you discover new ideas, and surprise you with moments of delight. Subscribe to get this delivered to your inbox . SHUTTERSTOCK / THE ATLANTIC Stimulus talks remain in a months-long stall, but one segment of America seems to be doing just fine in the meantime: the wealthy. Here are three things to know about the present condition of the pandemic-ravaged economy: This recession and recovery have been wildly uneven. As Annie Lowrey put it last month: “Normalcy for some, apocalypse for others.” Meanwhile, the pandemic has created a class of super-savers : namely, high earners who aren’t spending like they used to. “We’re just rife with cash and it has led to a decent amount of guilt,” one told Joe Pinsker over the summer. Now city and state governments fear taxing the wealthy. “They worry that rich families might simply leave, no longer bound to their offices or their children’s school...

S enate Republicans were always going to confirm Amy Coney Barrett to a lifetime appointment on the Supreme Court. Conservative voters wanted it, and the party united around the concept. Republicans “believe voting on this justice is a constitutional duty. The nomination happened. There was time to get it done. So they got it done,” Steven Duffield, a Republican former senior Senate aide, told me. Even the highest-ranking Republican leaders aren’t shy about admitting that this may be the party’s last gasp before losing political power for a while. “A lot of what we’ve done over the last four years will be undone sooner or later by the next election,” Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said during a speech yesterday. The Democrats “won’t be able to do much about this for a long time to come.” As it has become harder for the two parties to achieve their goals legislatively, the Supreme Court has become the ultimate trophy, a way to maintain influence over federal policy ...

Every weekday evening, our editors guide you through the biggest stories of the day, help you discover new ideas, and surprise you with moments of delight. Subscribe to get this delivered to your inbox . THE ATLANTIC “Spectacularly obvious.” That’s what our editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, writing on behalf of The Atlantic ’s editors, called the choice voters face this November. “Two men are running for president,” he writes. “One is a terrible man; the other is a decent man. Vote for the decent man.” For just the fourth time in our 163-year run, The Atlantic is endorsing a candidate, and that candidate is Joe Biden. We are doing so because President Donald Trump represents a threat to our collective existence: Biden is a man of experience, maturity, and obvious humanity, but had the Republican Party put forward a credible candidate for president, we would have felt no compulsion to state a preference. Donald Trump, however, is a clear and continuing danger to the United S...

Today, The Atlantic launched Planet , a new section devoted to climate change, along with The Weekly Planet , a new newsletter written by Robinson Meyer. He also writes today’s edition of the Daily, explaining why the climate story is so exciting right now. PHOTO-ILLUSTRATION BY NICO KRIJNO I’ve been covering climate change at The Atlantic for five years. There’s still one question I get more than any other: Are you hopeful? At this point, honestly, I find the question to be a little beside the point: If you don’t want the planet to warm, you should work to reduce carbon pollution regardless of whether you’re hopeful about the overall outcome. Many things in the world aren’t going well, to put it mildly. But the fight against climate change got some excellent news this week. The International Energy Agency announced , in its enormously influential annual report, that solar energy is now the “cheapest electricity in history.” At the same time, it substantially downgraded its for...

Every weekday evening, our editors guide you through the biggest stories of the day, help you discover new ideas, and surprise you with moments of delight. Subscribe to get this delivered to your inbox . KEVIN DIETSCH / GETTY Amy Coney Barrett didn’t answer the question. Today, the Supreme Court nominee demurred when asked to weigh in on Roe v. Wade , the 1973 decision establishing women’s constitutional right to abortion. Emma Green, a politics writer who’s been covering the proceedings, offers a reality check : We will not know by the end of Barrett’s nomination hearings how she would rule on an abortion-related case. … The only way to know the answer is to wait and see what she does on the bench, after her lifetime appointment is secure. Here are two things we do know so far about Barrett—and how she’s being pitched—as pulled from Emma’s recent reporting: 1. Barrett is everything conservatives want in a nominee. The trade-off is that she’ll always be tied to President Do...

Bettmann; Kevin C. Cox / Getty; Paul Spella / The Atlantic In the end, the NBA bubble held. A complex of resorts and mini-arenas in Orlando, Florida, somehow kept the coronavirus out of the playoffs, as though it were a member of the New York Knicks. Tonight, the curtain fell on the whole affair after the Los Angeles Lakers dominated the Miami Heat to close out their 17th championship, tying the Boston Celtics for the most in NBA history. Still smarting from their loss in Friday night’s Game 5 thriller, the Lakers swarmed and bullied the Heat, building a big lead early, which they held until the final buzzer of the league’s most bizarre season. The trophy presentation was thick with 2020 surrealism. The arena was nearly empty, apart from the pixelated spectators, glitching away in a digital grandstand. Masked reporters interviewed the new champs from a distance, with boom mics. On the polished blond hardwood, gigantic letters spelled out Black Lives Matter . Like the social-justice...

On the White House grounds this morning, senior West Wing aides walked around without masks. They spoke with the press without masks. They huddled privately with one another and didn’t wear masks. When I visited the White House in August, no one checked to see if I was running a fever or suppressing a hacking cough as I passed through the security booth. The ritual was the same today: I showed up hours after we’d learned that President Donald Trump had tested positive for the coronavirus, yet no one asked about my health. Instead, I was simply searched for weapons and allowed in. I’ve written twice in recent months about the dangerous conditions around the president—about lax testing of journalists flying with him on Air Force One, about troubling working arrangements inside the executive mansion itself. Trump’s illness seems an outgrowth of the administration’s flagrant disregard for public-health precautions. And yet, there’s no sign of a real course correction: The practices t...

Every weekday evening, our editors guide you through the biggest stories of the day, help you discover new ideas, and surprise you with moments of delight. Subscribe to get this delivered to your inbox . OLIVER CONTRERAS / GETTY The early-morning revelation that the president tested positive for the coronavirus set off a cascade of questions. When did Trump catch the coronavirus? What does his diagnosis mean? And who else in the White House might be sick? The answers aren’t clear-cut. Below, our reporters offer their best guidance based on the limited information available and their conversations with experts. We hope it can help you make sense of this moment. What are the possible outcomes of Trump’s diagnosis? Little is known about the president’s physical condition, our newsroom’s resident doctor, the staff writer James Hamblin, reports. “Based on age and sex alone, Trump is at high or very high risk for severe disease,” he writes. “Eight percent of COVID-19 patients ages 6...

Every weekday evening, our editors guide you through the biggest stories of the day, help you discover new ideas, and surprise you with moments of delight. Subscribe to get this delivered to your inbox . Aaron Turner In the years following Brown v. Board of Education, thousands of children desegregated America’s schools. “The task that fell to them was a brutal one ,” our senior editor Rebecca J. Rosen writes. White parents, and their children, attempted to block Black children from attending classes—often ruthlessly—using “bomb threats, beatings, protests. They physically blocked entrances to schools, vandalized lockers, threw rocks, taunted and jeered.” In our new special project, titled “ The Firsts ,” our staff writer Adam Harris tells the stories of five students who lived through the transition. Hugh Price 12 years old ♦  Taft Junior High School ♦ Washington, D.C., 1954 Price and his family fought for him to be one of the first Black students at his all-white high ...

Every weekday evening, our editors guide you through the biggest stories of the day, help you discover new ideas, and surprise you with moments of delight. Subscribe to get this delivered to your inbox . JULIO CORTEZ / AP Last night, the president refused to unequivocally condemn white supremacists and militia groups. When pressed, he said that members of the far-right group the Proud Boys should “stand back, and stand by.” That delivery was no accident , our staff writer Emma Green argues. “In moments of direct confrontation, Trump refuses to state clearly that he condemns white supremacy,” she writes. “White nationalists notice, and remember.” Meanwhile, the threat of far-right violence in America isn’t going away. Today, we published a new investigation into one right-wing militant group, the Oath Keepers —which was founded on the premise that law-enforcement officers and soldiers may, if necessary, refuse orders that they believe enable tyranny. And it has already recruited ...

This evening we’ll see Donald Trump and Joe Biden on the same stage, in the first of what are scheduled to be three debates. I will confess that I did not think this event would occur—and I am still not sure about the subsequent ones. So many things are outside usual norms this year; so many points of potential disagreement could arise (would there be an audience? who would be the moderators? what about fact checkers—or mask requirements, or allowing the candidates to direct questions at each other?); so little enforcement power is in the hands of the Commission on Presidential Debates, or the networks, or anyone except the candidates and parties themselves. Many people assume, “Oh, sure, we’ll have debates,” but it turns out that these are among the many fragile norms of modern politics. After the most famous televised debate, which nearly everyone has heard of, between Richard Nixon and John Kennedy in 1960, there were no debates for half a generation. Not in 1964, nor 1968, nor 19...

Every weekday evening, our editors guide you through the biggest stories of the day, help you discover new ideas, and surprise you with moments of delight. Subscribe to get this delivered to your inbox . GETTY / THE ATLANTIC A COVID-19-vaccine rollout could be chaotic—and a true logistical nightmare, our health reporter Sarah Zhang warns in an essential new piece . We caught up with Sarah to find out why—and hear the latest on the search for a vaccine. The conversation that follows has been edited and condensed. Caroline Mimbs Nyce: Why does this vaccine rollout have the potential to be such a headache? Sarah Zhang: First, you have the challenge of getting what is very likely two doses of a vaccine to hundreds of millions of Americans in the middle of a pandemic. And they’re not interchangeable. If you get the first dose of one vaccine, you have to get that same vaccine as a second dose. So there’s gonna be a lot of paperwork involved. Second has to do with the specific va...