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The phrase election integrity sounds noble on its face. But in recent years, election deniers have used it to lay the groundwork for challenging the results of the 2024 election.

A few months after Donald Trump took office in 2017, he signed an executive order establishing the “Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity.” The Brennan Center for Justice wrote at the time that “there is strong reason to suspect this Commission is not a legitimate attempt to study elections, but is rather a tool for justifying discredited claims of widespread voter fraud and promoting vote suppression legislation.” That proved prescient. Although there is no evidence of widespread fraud in the 2016 or 2020 elections—or in any other recent elections, for that matter—Trump and his allies have fomented the narrative that such interference is a real problem in America, employing it in the illegal attempt to overturn the 2020 election and their reported plans to claim that the 2024 race is rigged.

As part of this strategy, right-wing activists and lawyers have organized initiatives under the auspices of election integrity, warping the meaning of those words to sow distrust. Through her Election Integrity Network, the right-wing activist Cleta Mitchell has been recruiting people—including election deniers who will likely continue to promote disinformation and conspiracy theories—to become poll workers and monitors, in an effort that was reportedly coordinated with members of the Republican National Committee. Poll watching in itself is a timeworn American practice, although it has been misused in the past; now, however, election-denial groups are sending participants to polling places under the presumption that fraud is taking place.

More recently, Elon Musk—in addition to his own brazen efforts to get Trump reelected—has invited X users to report activity they see as suspicious through an “Election Integrity Community” feed, an effort almost certain to trigger a flood of misinformation on the platform. In Texas, Attorney General Ken Paxton’s Election Integrity Unit has gone to great lengths to seek evidence of fraud; in one case, nine armed officers reportedly appeared with a search warrant at the door of a woman who had been working with a Latino civil-rights organization to help veterans and seniors register to vote.

The RNC, especially under the influence of its co-chair Lara Trump, has taken up “election integrity” as an explicit priority: As she said at a GOP event over the summer, “we are pulling out all the stops, and we are so laser-focused on election integrity.” Her team created an election-integrity program earlier this year and hired Christina Bobb, who was later indicted for efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election in Arizona (she has denied wrongdoing), as its lead election-integrity lawyer. As The New Yorker reported earlier this month, the RNC plans to staff a “war room” with attorneys operating an “election-integrity hotline” on Election Day. Such initiatives have helped inject doubt into a legitimate process. Despite the clear lack of evidence to suggest fraud is likely in this election, nearly 60 percent of Americans already say they’re concerned or very concerned about it, according to a recent NPR/PBS News/Marist poll; 88 percent of Trump supporters said they were concerned about fraud (compared with about 30 percent of Kamala Harris supporters).

The “consistent, disciplined, repetitive use” of the term election integrity in this new context is “designed to confuse the public,” Alice Clapman, a senior counsel in the Brennan Center’s Voting Rights Program, told me. A sad irony, she added, is that those who use this framing have done so to push for restrictions that actually suppress voting, including strict voter-ID laws and limitations on early ballots, or to threaten the existence of initiatives to ensure fair voting. Many of the same activists promoting “election integrity,” including Cleta Mitchell, organized a misinformation campaign to undermine a bipartisan state-led initiative called the Electronic Registration Information Center, which was created in 2012 to ensure that voter rolls were accurate. Multiple states eventually left the compact.

The term election integrity isn’t entirely new—Google Trends data suggest that its usage has bubbled up around election years in recent decades. But its prominence has exploded since 2020, and the strong associations with election denial in recent years means that other groups have backed away from it. “Like so much charged language in American politics, when one side really seizes on a term and uses it in a loaded way,” it becomes “a partisan term,” Clapman told me. Now groups unaffiliated with the right are turning to more neutral language such as voter protection and voter security to refer to their efforts to ensure free elections.

Election deniers are chipping away at Americans’ shared understanding of reality. And as my colleague Ali Breland wrote yesterday, violent rhetoric and even political violence in connection with the election have already begun. This month so far, a man has punched a poll worker after being asked to remove his MAGA hat, and hundreds of ballots have been destroyed in fires on the West Coast. Election officials are bracing for targeted attacks in the coming days—and some have already received threats. If Trump loses, the right will be poised—under the guise of “election integrity”—to interfere further with the norms of American democracy.

Related:

The swing states are in good hands. The next “Stop the Steal” movement is here.

Here are three new stories from The Atlantic:

Vann R. Newkirk II on solidarity and Gaza The closing case against Trump How the Trump resistance gave up

Today’s News

Steve Bannon, a former Trump adviser, was released from federal prison after completing his four-month sentence for being found in contempt of Congress. Vice President Kamala Harris's speech tonight—which she says will be her campaign’s closing argument—will be delivered from the Ellipse in Washington, D.C., the same location where Trump spoke on January 6, 2021. Israel’s Parliament passed two laws yesterday that include provisions banning UNRWA, a UN relief agency for Palestinian refugees, from operating in the country. Israel has accused several members of UNRWA, which distributes the majority of aid in Gaza, of participating in the Hamas attack on October 7.

More From The Atlantic

The end of Francis Fukuyama “Dear James”: My colleague repeats herself constantly. Revenge voting is a mistake, Gal Beckerman argues. The people who don’t read political news Under the spell of the crowd

Evening Read

Michael Laughlin / AP

The Worst Statue in the History of Sports

By Ross Andersen

Earlier this year, the Lakers unveiled a Kobe Bryant statue with oddly stretched proportions and a too-angular face. It made Bryant look like a second-rate Terminator villain, and to add insult to injury, the inscription at its base was marred by misspellings. In 2017, fans of Cristiano Ronaldo were so aghast at a sculptor’s cartoonish bust of the legendary footballer that they hounded him into making a new one.

It gives me no pleasure—and, in fact, considerable pain—to report that Dwyane Wade’s statue may be the worst of them all.

Read the full article.

Culture Break

Matthieu Rondel / AFP / Getty

Check out. These photos show an urban opera featuring three massive robotic puppets of mythological creatures, which performed in several locations around Toulouse, France.

Read. Lowry Pressly’s new book, The Right to Oblivion, argues that privacy is the key to a meaningful existence, John Kaag writes.

Play our daily crossword.

Stephanie Bai contributed to this newsletter.

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Editor’s Note: Every Tuesday, James Parker tackles a reader’s existential worry. He wants to hear about what’s ailing, torturing, or nagging you. Submit your lifelong or in-the-moment problems to dearjames@theatlantic.com.

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Dear James,

I find myself growing irritable at one thing in my life, and one thing alone.

I work with an older woman who repeats herself constantly. She has the same three jokes and says them daily, and expects us all to laugh and/or respond as if we haven’t heard them before. I notice my younger colleagues nodding and smiling. I am less genteel. In fact, I seethe at my desk, rolling my eyes so far back in my head, I fear they may get stuck. It creates a rage in me that is truly inexplicable.

I’d like to think a younger me would just ignore it and laugh on cue, but current me has considered quitting this great job over not being able to handle something so insanely trivial.

I’m sure you're thinking, “Well, if that’s the worst thing in your life, you’re doing okay.” But I do have real things to worry about; they don’t seem to affect me like this. It’s just this one stupid thing.

Does the irritability of minor annoyances worsen with age? I thought that with age came wisdom. One would think I would be wise enough to not let this rattle me to my core so much. I’ve truly considered that I might be going insane.

Dear Reader,

Oooooh—I feel it. The dreadful imposition of another’s sensibility; the silent rancor of the oppressed; the sensation, as you listen to this poor lady and her jokes, that your time, your life, your essence is being not just wasted but forced slowly backwards through your veins. I say “poor lady,” but she’s also kind of an unwitting tyrant, isn’t she? A helpless autocrat in the workplace. Her attempts at humor, horribly renewed each morning, have become a reign of terror.

As for age bringing wisdom, I dunno. Age brings little rashes in awkward places. Age brings the end of patience. I’m going to quote an expert in this field: myself. “Patience, one discovers, is not a virtue but a quantity. Like oil in the car or milk in the fridge. Not limitless and oceanic, but quite finite. I ran out years ago. All I have now is stamina. I can endure. Radiant with suppressed exasperation, I can hang in there.”

But—clearly—you have hung in there too long. You have endured enough. It’s time to sort this out, before you scream, quit, or brain this person with a stapler.

First stop: the heart. Your heart. Which can be reached, in this case, via the imagination. Make an imaginative effort with this woman. To me, she sounds lonely, or stuck. What in her life, and in her inner life, has so drastically narrowed her awareness? How did she get stranded with this routine, with these three terrible jokes? We never know—unless we know—what other people are going through, what it costs them to just keep showing up, in however reduced a form. I try to keep in mind these lines from Franz Wright: “Someone in Hell is sitting beside you on the train. / Somebody burning unnoticed walks past in the street.”

Second: confrontation. Nothing succeeds like direct action. I don’t mean yelling, or a terrible scene. I mean something like (said with as much gentleness and good humor as you can muster—and you’ll have to dig deep): “You know what? I’ve heard that one, Gloria.” You may be amazed at the result. Think of it as a service to you both: a double emancipation.

Within earshot of the chimes of freedom,
James

Dear James,

I’ve had insomnia my whole life. Sleep and I are in an abusive relationship. I’ve had all the tests: EEGs tell me I have too much REM. I’ve done all the things: CBT-I, Ambien, benzos, Benadryl, melatonin, in various combinations. I sometimes fall asleep well and then wake up sweating, feeling sick about dreams about babies hatching from eggs in a creek behind a retired paint factory, or pulling dozens of mummified rats out of my floorboards and getting arrested for mailing them to Donald Trump, or driving a flying school bus full of children through the Bermuda Triangle. Other times, I feel like I’m almost asleep all night but not quite. A lot of the time while I’m awake in the night, I’m having existential dread. It doesn’t help that I studied existentialism and sleep disorders between undergrad and grad school. I feel like no one has told me anything new; I know all the things, and I know I’m doomed. Sometimes I try to imagine myself happy, like, This is good for me, or I’m better at this than anyone else, so ha! Joke’s on you, but how long can I delude myself? Anyway, if you have anything new for me that I haven’t tried yet, I’d love to hear it.

Dear Reader,

The worst thing about insomnia, for me, is the sense of overexposure to my own brain. I even wrote half a poem about it:

Prone, alone, dry as a bone,
scratching around for the sleep hormone,
condemned to my own society—
too much of me, too much of me!
My Self, deprived of oblivion’s dose,
is the bloke on the bus who sits too close,
who breathes too loud, who is too warm,
who fills his neighbor with thoughts of harm.

But your brain is much more interesting than mine. Look at all this imagery! I’m actually rather jealous of your visions and reveries and between-states. Not for you, the tedious binary of being awake/being asleep. You’re also a vivid writer, so I recommend plunging into the half realm, the hypnagogia, and making it your own. Write it up! For an idea of how to proceed, read Thomas De Quincey’s Confessions of an Opium Eater: De Quincey was very good on the teemingness and fathomlessness of the drifting mind. And listen to Aphex Twin. (Selected Ambient Works, Volume II would be the place to start.)

Sweet dreams,
James

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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.

Welcome back to The Daily’s Sunday culture edition, in which one Atlantic writer or editor reveals what’s keeping them entertained. Today’s special guest is James Parker, a staff writer who addresses readers’ existential worries in his “Dear James” newsletter. He has also written about why TV is full of late-career Hollywood guys at restaurants, how Game Change foretold the current state of American politics, and whether Theo Von is the next Joe Rogan.

James is currently in the mood to rewatch Logan, a superhero movie that he calls “grungy, nasty, expertly done.” He also enjoys attending local pro-wrestling events, reading any of John Sandford’s tense thrillers, and tapping along to Kacey Musgraves’s “Slow Burn.”

The Culture Survey: James Parker

The last thing that made me cry: How many times can I watch Metallica: Some Kind of Monster, Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky’s 2004 Metallica documentary, the Don’t Look Back of heavy metal? We’ll find out, I suppose. Anyway, I watched it again the other night (always at night, always alone), and James Hetfield’s wobbly speech at San Quentin State Prison, before Metallica plays a set there—and the grateful, encouraging roar he gets from the gathered inmates—made me (as always) cry. “Everyone is born good, everyone’s got the same-size soul, and we’re here to connect with that,” Hetfield tells his wary, hyper-attentive audience. “So we’re very proud to be here in your house and play some music for you.”

My favorite blockbuster: Right now I’m in a Logan mood. Does that count as a blockbuster? It’s a superhero movie—an X-Men movie, to be precise, a Wolverine movie, to be even more precise. It’s grungy, nasty, expertly done. Professor Xavier is demented, his telepathy warped, suffering grand mal seizures that frazzle the brain of anybody who happens to be nearby; Wolverine, always fascinating, is an alcoholic limo driver. [Related: Logan is a fitting farewell to Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine.]

My favorite art movie: Wim Wenders’s Wings of Desire. Berlin is full of angels, beautiful, ministering angels in long coats who float unseen among the people, loaded with compassion and consolation but made slightly forlorn by their own immateriality. The scene where Peter Falk, sensing the presence of an especially wistful angel, describes for him the pleasures of a hot cup of coffee in cold weather … magic. (Here’s an uneasy thought, though, prompted by my writing this: If I saw Wings of Desire now, for the first time, would I still be open to it? Or am I too old and coarsened and impatient and Netflix’d-out?)

The last thing that made me snort with laughter: At a local pro-wrestling event (Chaotic Wrestling: guaranteed entertainment!), I saw the amazing Cody Fluffman—a gorgeous, curvy presence amid all that wrestler’s gristle, as light on his feet as a dancer—do his signature move. It’s called the Steamroller: Having rendered his opponent prone in the ring, Fluffman then lies down and rolls his splendid bulk vertically over their body, from the toes upward, at a stately pace, making chuffing engine noises. [Related: A close encounter with wrestling’s most authentic madman]

Best novel I’ve recently read: Anything by John Sandford. I love this guy. King of the airport thrillers, in my opinion; Holy Ghost is the one I’m halfway through right now. His plotting is very rambly and relaxed, but by a strange trick, he keeps the tension twanging, and his descriptions of landscapes, buildings, and weather are extraordinary—lucid and compact to the point of poetry, sometimes.

Best work of nonfiction: I’m really enjoying Dream-Child: A Life of Charles Lamb, by Eric G. Wilson. Lamb, a 19th-century London essayist whose BFF was Samuel Taylor Coleridge, was a wit and a weirdo, and he celebrated—as Wilson writes—“the transience, variety and crowdedness of metropolitan life, thus challenging his friend Wordsworth’s nature worship.” Sold! For 33 years, Lamb held down a day job as a clerk at the East India Company. “I always arrive late at the office,” he wrote. “But I make up for it by leaving early.”

A quiet song that I love: “Slow Burn,” by Kacey Musgraves. I play the drums, and tapping along to this one inflates me emotionally in ways I dare not express.

A loud song that I love: “Rhino Ket,” by Kneecap: Irish rappers enjoying their ketamine. Which I’ve never taken, but I appreciate a good ravey drug anthem. “I’m k-holed out my head, this shit puts rhinos to bed.” Isn’t that good? Puts rhinos not to sleep, but to bed. Nightlight on, door cracked open, see you in the morning. (And they’re very good live, this lot.)

A poem, or line of poetry, that I return to: “Have a Nice Day,” by Spike Milligan:

So the man who was drowning, drownded
And the man with the disease passed away.
But apart from that,
And a fire in my flat,
It’s been a very nice day.

Here are three Sunday reads from The Atlantic:

The most opinionated man in America This influencer says you can’t parent too gently. Trump: “I need the kind of generals that Hitler had.”

The Week Ahead

Here, a drama film starring Tom Hanks about the families and couples who inhabit the same house over generations (in theaters Friday) Season 2 of The Diplomat, a thriller series about a U.S. diplomat handling international crises and her marriage to a high-profile politician (streaming Thursday on Netflix) Dangerous Fictions, a book by Lyta Gold about the influence of fictional stories and the moral panic they can induce (out Tuesday)

Essay

Illustration by Ben Hickey

Americans Are Hoarding Their Friends

By Faith Hill

Hypothetically, introducing friends from different social circles shouldn’t be that hard. Two people you like—and who like you—probably have some things in common. If they like each other, you’ll have done them a service by connecting them. And then you can all hang out together. Fun!

Or, if you’re like me, you’ve heard a little voice in your head whispering: not fun. What if you’re sweet with one friend and sardonic with another, and you don’t know who to be when you’re all in the same room? Or what if they don’t get along? Worst of all: What if they do—but better than they do with you?

Read the full article.

More in Culture

Six political memoirs worth reading The chronically online have stolen Halloween. Welcome to the trolligarchy. Why Randy Newman is least loved for his best work “Dear James”: The worst insult I ever heard as an opera singer Michael Keaton’s simple trick on SNL

Catch Up on The Atlantic

“There’s people that are absolutely ready to take on a civil war.” The Democrats’ Hail Mary Election officials are under siege.

Photo Album

Replicas of a woolly mammoth and a giant octopus are displayed at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair. (The Field Museum Library)

Check out these photos of the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, where visitors were introduced to new (and relatively new) products, including Cracker Jack, Juicy Fruit gum, and the Ferris wheel.

When you buy a book using a link in this newsletter, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic.

Editor’s Note: Every Tuesday, James Parker tackles a reader’s existential worry. He wants to hear about what’s ailing, torturing, or nagging you. Submit your lifelong or in-the-moment problems to dearjames@theatlantic.com.

Don’t want to miss a single column? Sign up to get “Dear James” in your inbox.

Dear James,

In my younger days, I was an opera singer. Like most trained singers, I found the lack of significant success extraordinarily painful, but that’s the reality in the field. I wasn’t the greatest singer, but I certainly moved audiences and earned the respect of my colleagues.

Recently, I was playing guitar and singing a cute little country ditty that required no vocal skill. My sister-in-law, who was listening, exclaimed, “That was so beautiful. It’s the first time I’ve ever heard your real voice.” She’s been hearing me sing for 40 years. I couldn’t believe she could say something so awful to me. It makes me think she has great hostility toward me, something I never would have dreamed of before. It hurts so much.

Afterward, my husband said she was just telling me that she never liked my voice, and he couldn’t see any reason why she would say such a thing, except to hurt me. I think he is exactly right, and my daughter agreed.

The professional disrespect is amazing to me. She is a clarinetist … It’s as if I’d said, after hearing her play kazoo, that that was the first time I’d heard her real musicianship. The insult is staggering. Do you think there is any other way to interpret her remark?

Dear Reader,

What a fascinating situation. Like a short story by Edith Wharton, with a splash of Larry David. A careless remark, lightly dropped in a domestic setting, touches off a failure cascade that ends with the unraveling of a family. And was the remark made innocently or with mischief in mind? Or both? Was it made, in other words, in innocence of its own mischievous purposes? The cunning of the human psyche is bottomless. (This is why people write short stories.)

As it happens, I do think there’s another way to interpret your sister-in-law’s remark. She’s a musician herself, which slightly complicates things. But hear me out. You will know, of course, that opera, and the operatic singing style, is not to everyone’s taste. Why? Because to a late-modern philistine like (for example) me, it can sound fleshy, forced, overdone. I hope one day to educate myself out of this particular prejudice, but for the time being, I’m stuck with it.

And perhaps your sister-in-law is too. Perhaps, clarinetist though she is, loyal sister-in-law though she might be, she harbors trace elements of anti-opera bias, such that when she hears you—after 40 years—singing quote-unquote normally, nonoperatically, she bursts forth in words of praise. The easy-breathing simplicity of your country singing surprised her, moved her. At last: you! The irony being, of course, that your real voice, the voice where your you-ness truly lives, is your opera voice. And this is the source of the hurt, I think: the career-long lack of affirmation you felt as a working opera singer. Which sucks, no doubt. But it’s not your sister-in-law’s fault.

A word about indignation. Indignation on another’s behalf: fantastic. Indignation on one’s own: less so. It’s to be guarded against. It’s wrapped up with pride. I’ll quote Hüsker Dü: “Stupid pride! Selfish pride!” So maybe use the feelings aroused by your sister-in-law’s thoughtless, certainly injudicious, possibly naughty remark as an opportunity to rise above. To let it go.

Wishing you harmony,
James

Dear James,

I am in a perfectly healthy, safe, loving, and committed relationship with my partner of over a year, but I still feel a nagging worry that I am wasting my time being with this person instead of pursuing other people, especially because I am so young (in my mid-20s). This worry makes me question my feelings for my partner and adds a layer of anxiety to my relationship that I wish wasn’t present.

I desire to be married one day, and monogamy seems to be the ideal relationship structure for my lifestyle and values; however, the thought of spending my entire life committed to just one person can send me into a spiral. Can I ever be content with loving one person?

Dear Reader,

“People are finite beings with infinite desires,” Billy Graham said. To which I might add: “And Wi-Fi.” Because desire today is aggravated, exacerbated, compounded, and inflamed beyond all measure by the goddamn internet. Whatever you’re doing, you could be doing something better. Whoever you’re with, they could be more … whatever. More this. More that.

What is desire? A great hollowness. A gnawing lack. A sex-shaped nothing. We think it’s inside us, but it’s outside us. Today, 2024, it wears a digital face, but it’s been around forever: the apple in the Garden of Eden—that was the first algorithm. And desire has designs on us. It wants us to buy things, replace things, replace people, replace ourselves. I say: Switch it off.

Of course, you can’t switch it off, not really, or not without a lot of praying on mountaintops and vomiting in the huts of Amazonian spirit-doctors. And you can unplug, unsubscribe—the restlessness will still be there. Monogamy is bananas; everyone knows that. An insane way to proceed. Marriage? Jesus Christ. But everything else is bananas too. So make sure you’re loving whatever’s in front of you for what it is. Which includes your current partner. I’ve no idea whether you’ll end up married to them, but I can tell you this with complete certainty: They’re real, right now, and so are you. Make the most of it.

Pounding the lectern,
James

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I hesitate to speak for other Never Trumpers, but we’ve gotten used to losing, haven’t we? In three consecutive presidential elections, our doughty gang of dissidents has failed spectacularly in its attempts to shake Donald Trump’s grip on the GOP. At this year’s Republican National Convention—that great festival of Trumpian celebration—Never Trump Republicanism was invisible, for the second convention in a row. Never Trump writers and pundits have frequently contributed to national media outlets (including here in The Atlantic), but in the GOP itself, the group has been derided and purged.

Now some Never Trumpers are finding a place elsewhere: Last night in Wisconsin, I was invited to moderate a discussion between the Democratic nominee for president, Kamala Harris, and her new ally Liz Cheney. The two had spent the day on a campaign tour through the so-called blue-wall states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. Seeing them together felt surreal: As I said at the event, Harris and Cheney make an odd couple—and their alliance is a sign of a not-at-all-normal election. It also marks a crucial shift in the focus of the Democratic case. When Harris launched her campaign this summer, she leaned heavily into a message of joy and good vibes. Her vice-presidential pick, Governor Tim Walz, rose to prominence by calling the Trumpists “weird,” rather than an existential menace, as Joe Biden had argued during his campaign. But then the polls tightened, and Harris brought in Liz Cheney.

It’s worth taking a moment to reflect on how unlikely this development is. Among many Democratic voters, the name Cheney is radioactive, going back to the years of her father’s vice presidency; Liz Cheney herself spent years as a fierce right-wing ideological warrior and party loyalist, rising to the leadership ranks of the House GOP. Cheney was not an original Never Trumper. Unlike those of us who have been publicly expressing our concern since he came down the golden escalator in 2015, Cheney says she voted for Trump twice, and in Congress, she backed his administration more than 90 percent of the time. Then came January 6. Although her disillusionment with Trump had obviously been festering for some time, the insurrection led to Cheney’s full-throated denunciation. Her willingness to sacrifice her standing with the party and her seat in Congress made her a symbol of principled GOP resistance. Her role as vice chair of the Select Committee to investigate the January 6 attack on the Capitol made her the most famous Never Trumper in the country.

And there she was Monday night with a Democrat she had once denounced as a dangerous radical. The usual alignments of right and left and Democrat and Republican simply don’t apply anymore, because Donald Trump poses a unique danger to the entire American order. “We’ve never faced a threat like this before,” Cheney said, “and I think it’s so important for people to realize this republic only survives if we protect it, and that means putting partisan politics aside and standing up for the Constitution and for what’s right and loving our country.”

This is what Never Trumpers have been shouting into the GOP void for the past nine years. And in the last two weeks of the campaign, Harris and her team have decided to make it their closing argument. Although Harris now frequently refers to Trump as “an unserious man,” she also warns that the “consequences” of his return to power are “brutally serious.” Sounding that alarm also has meant reaching out to the battered remnants of the Never Trump movement. (Bulwark’s publisher, Sarah Longwell—a leading figure of the Never Trump movement—moderated the Harris-Cheney event in Pennsylvania.) Why the Never Trumpers? Because they have been making the case for years that voting against Trump isn’t a betrayal of party principles. They are particularly well positioned to argue that it isn’t necessary to embrace Democratic policies to vote for Harris, because the stakes are so much higher than mere party politics. And that’s an argument that Harris is now trying to make to swing voters. The question is, will that argument actually persuade these voters in the way Harris hopes it will?

The majority of Republican voters across the country will vote for Trump, and Cheney’s involvement is unlikely to move many of them. Harris also faces challenges in persuading conservative voters to overlook her past stances on issues such as transgender health care, the Green New Deal, and immigration. Meanwhile, the largest known group of undecideds is unsure about voting at all.

But this election could come down to a sliver of a percent, and the Harris campaign has decided to make a concerted play for disillusioned and discarded Republican voters in places like Waukesha County, where we met Monday night. In April’s GOP presidential primary, Nikki Haley won about 14 percent of the vote in Waukesha County. Some of those voters were in the audience Monday when Cheney made it clear to them that voting for a Democrat was okay because Trump should never be allowed in any office of public trust again. Perhaps her words will give a few Republican voters the cover they need to make a decision that might feel like a betrayal but is in fact an act of loyalty to country above all.

Related:

Hypocrisy, spinelessness, and the triumph of Donald Trump Tom Nichols: The moment of truth

Here are three new stories from The Atlantic:

Trump: “I need the kind of generals that Hitler had.” The improbable coalition that is Harris’s best hope There’s no coming back from Dobbs.

Today’s News

The Israeli military said that one of its air strikes in early October killed Hashem Safieddine, a top Hezbollah leader who was a potential successor to Hezbollah’s recently assassinated longtime leader. Hezbollah did not immediately respond to the claim. A federal judge ordered Rudy Giuliani, a former Trump lawyer and former mayor of New York City, to turn over his New York apartment and his valuable personal items to the two Georgia election workers he defamed. A federal appeals court upheld the conviction of Couy Griffin, the Cowboys for Trump leader who was found guilty of a trespassing charge that was used against many other January 6 defendants.

Evening Read

Chelsey Hauge-Zavaleta at home with her children in Santa Cruz, California Jenna Garrett for The Atlantic

This Influencer Says You Can’t Parent Too Gently

By Olga Khazan

The kids held it together pretty well until right after gymnastics. At the end of a long day that included school, a chaotic playdate, and a mostly ignored lunch of sandwiches, the parenting coach Chelsey Hauge-Zavaleta picked up her twins from the tumbling gym around 5:30. The two 8-year-olds joined their 6-year-old sister inside Chelsey’s silver minivan.

Chelsey, an energetic 41-year-old, promotes gentle parenting, a philosophy in which prioritizing a good relationship with your kid trumps getting them to obey you. I was tagging along with her family for a few days to see how her strategy—stay calm, name emotions, don’t punish kids for acting out—works in practice.

Read the full article.

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Culture Break

Alex Washburn / AP

Marvel. No one knows how big pumpkins can get, Yasmin Tayag writes. Now the 3,000-pound mark is within sight.

Debate. Apparently a whole-grain, seed-coated loaf of bread counts as an ultra-processed food, just like Twinkies, Coke, and sugary cereals, Nicholas Florko writes.

Play our daily crossword.

Stephanie Bai contributed to this newsletter.

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Across the country, Donald Trump’s faithful fans sport MAGA merch—much of it emblazoned with antagonistic slogans—and line up to cheer for their candidate in arenas and event centers. His rallies are a cultural phenomenon, giving him a platform to boost violent rhetoric and deliver gibberish tirades. I spoke with my colleague John Hendrickson, who has been writing campaign-trail dispatches, about the differences he’s observed between Trump and Kamala Harris rallies and what draws people to such events.

A Never-Ending Tour

Lora Kelley: What makes attending a Trump rally feel different from other political events?

John Hendrickson: Trump long ago turned political rallies into a dark spectacle. Mitt Romney had rallies; John McCain had rallies; George W. Bush had rallies. But they didn’t have this carnival-type atmosphere.

I think a lot of people go because they want to be a part of something bigger than themselves. Maybe you can trace it to the decline of social organizations and even church attendance. Going to a Trump rally, being part of the MAGA movement, offers a sense of community—for better or for worse.

Trump remains a singular force. There’s such a cult of personality around him. His rallies are technically part of the campaign, but they’re almost unmoored from the traditional confines of a campaign. They’re his lifeblood. It reminds me of Bob Dylan’s never-ending tour, which has been going on since 1988. Trump has more or less been on his own never-ending tour for the past nine years.

Lora: How does that atmosphere contrast with what you see on the Democratic side?

John: Trump paints a dystopian portrait that revolves around this idea of a migrant “invasion” that’s destroying the fabric of the United States. His slogan—“Make America great again”—is predicated on an imagined past. Harris has zeroed in on a simple idea of championing freedom, which, ironically, used to be a Republican talking point. Her campaign rhetoric, as a whole, is far more positive and optimistic than Trump’s, especially when she’s talking about basic things such as the economy. But her tone often changes when she gets to the threats Trump poses to more personal issues, such as abortion rights, or when she called him “increasingly unstable and unhinged” at her recent rally in Pennsylvania.

Trump has internalized that negativity sells. The events held by Democrats don’t necessarily have the same electricity as the MAGA rallies, unless a high-energy surrogate, such as Barack Obama, comes out. For all of the obvious horrors of Donald Trump, he has an ability to create this vortex as a speaker that his fans find enthralling—although he inevitably drones on and people reliably trickle out. And at last night’s town hall in Pennsylvania, he stood onstage and swayed to music for a while—one of the stranger things he’s ever done.

Lora: What kind of merch do you see at these rallies, and what does that tell you about the broader mood of the campaign?

John: Most of the Trump apparel isn’t produced by the actual campaign. It comes from independent vendors, like the people who sell T-shirts outside a concert. At any given Trump rally, I’ll see hundreds of different pieces of merchandise, and the messaging tends to be aggressive. The slogans are often taunting and feature variations of a shared theme: owning the libs. I have endless pictures of these shirts and stickers on my phone—“I Clean My Guns With Liberal Tears” was one I saw recently.

At Harris’s events, you may see a T-shirt with a silhouette of Trump that says “Nope,” or an abortion-rights-themed shirt that says something like “Hands Off My Body.” But in general, the Democratic slogans are far less antagonistic toward Republicans.

Lora: Have you noticed a shift in rhetoric and attitude from Trump or his rally attendees since Harris became the nominee?

John: Right after Harris took Joe Biden’s place, seemingly everyone—Trump, his surrogates, rank-and-file rally-goers—appeared lost as to how to attack her.

In these final weeks before Election Day, Trump and his followers are trying to paint Harris as incompetent, a liar, and someone who can’t be trusted. At the most recent Trump rally I attended, in Pennsylvania, Trump repeated forms of incompetent and incompetence over and over again. But the attacks can also be vague. I’ve heard some of his supporters try to claim that she’s an illegitimate candidate because she didn’t “earn” the nomination. Harris voters, for their part, often say that Trump is a threat to democracy and to their rights.

Lora: What value do these rallies bring to the candidates?

John: The candidates have to fire up their base and hope that the people who show up will go home and convince their friends and neighbors to vote. It takes a special kind of voter enthusiasm to put on a T-shirt, get in the car, and drive to a rally. Those people are more engaged than the average person who won’t take off from work or ditch another obligation to go hear a politician speak.

Harris has held some major rallies in the nearly 100 days of her campaign, drawing big crowds to arenas. But her events aren’t over-the-top like some of Trump’s. Later this month, Trump is going to stage a rally at Madison Square Garden, in Manhattan. He’s by no means going to win New York, but holding the event feels like he’s planting a flag: Look at me—I’m headlining Madison Square Garden.

Related:

The Trump-Obama split screen in Pennsylvania On the National Mall with the RFK-to-MAGA pipeline

Here are three new stories from The Atlantic:

Trump breaks down onstage. Peter Wehner: This election is different. Inside the carjacking crisis

Today’s News

A Fulton County judge ruled that Georgia county election officials cannot decline or abstain from certifying election results under any circumstance. In a letter to Israel signed by Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, the United States warned that it might restrict military aid if Israel does not take steps to improve the humanitarian situation in Gaza within the next month. A man from North Carolina was arrested on Saturday and accused of making threats against FEMA workers.

Dispatches

The Wonder Reader: Here’s how to start your search for a new hobby—and how to deal with the likelihood that you’ll be bad at it initially, Isabel Fattal writes.

Explore all of our newsletters here.

Evening Read

Fine Art Images / Heritage Images / Getty

Dogs Are Entering a New Wave of Domestication

By Brian Hare and Vanessa Woods

In just a generation, we humans have abruptly changed the rules on our dogs. With urbanization increasing and space at a premium, the wild, abandoned places where children and dogs used to roam have disappeared from many American communities. Dogs have gone from working all day and sleeping outside to relaxing on the couch and sleeping in our beds. They are more a part of our families than ever—which means they share our indoor, sedentary lifestyle.

Read the full article.

More From The Atlantic

Why does anyone care about the Nobel Prize? “Dear James”: Should I break up with my Trump-loving partner? Anne Applebaum: The danger of believing that you are powerless The transparent cruelties of Diddy’s entertainment machine Donald Trump’s fascist romp The question hanging over Harris’s campaign

Culture Break

Illustration by Clay Rodery

Watch. In the 25 years since Fight Club’s release, the film (streaming on Hulu) has burrowed deeply into American culture—and its insights remain apt.

Read. Sandra Cisneros, who wrote The House on Mango Street, defied the traditional roles of womanhood.

Play our daily crossword.

Stephanie Bai contributed to this newsletter.

When you buy a book using a link in this newsletter, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic.

Editor’s Note: Every Tuesday, James Parker tackles a reader’s existential worry. He wants to hear about what’s ailing, torturing, or nagging you. Submit your lifelong or in-the-moment problems to dearjames@theatlantic.com.

Don’t want to miss a single column? Sign up to get “Dear James” in your inbox.

Dear James,

My partner of six years is smart and funny. I never get tired of talking with him. He makes me laugh until I can’t breathe. The sex is fantastic. We’re great travel partners.

The problem is that he is a Trumper. I feel that Donald Trump is a vile human in every way possible. I despise him and all he stands for with every fiber of my being. My partner doesn’t wear a MAGA hat, and he acknowledges that Trump has personal “flaws,” but he says he “likes his policies” and plans to vote for him … again. I’ve asked if there’s anything Trump might say or do that would dissuade him, and he can’t come up with anything.

Of course, we try to avoid political conversation, but we both follow politics and current events closely, and every few months, we end up in an argument that devolves to the same point, and I find myself questioning our relationship.

Am I being untrue to my moral convictions by staying in a relationship with someone who supports this person I find despicable?

Dear Reader,

This is easy.

Enjoy your Trumper! Embrace him; cherish him; show him how it’s done. Get your arms all the way around his Trumpiness, around all of its spikes and obduracies, and watch it dissolve in rolling billows of heavenly generosity.

And if it doesn’t dissolve, so what? The people we love: There’s always something wrong with them, because there’s something wrong with all of us. Your man could have poor hygiene, or a drug problem, or an incomprehensible hobby. He could be in weird chat rooms. He could have a deluded opinion of himself. One of the things Trumpers dislike about liberal types is how hissingly and superstitiously they recoil from anything outside their ideological parameters. MAGA folk, on the other hand, have a high tolerance for aberration, because … look at the guy. So prove ’em wrong.

Besides, the older I get, the more I think that a person’s opinions—political or otherwise—are the least important thing about them. The opinion-making portion of the brain is so vulnerable, so goofy, so effortlessly colonized by alien spores … It’s a write-off, really. How they live, how they make you feel—that’s the salient part.

Trumpism, in its pure form, I regard as a black wind from the bowels of chaos. But obviously, there are degrees of Trumpiness. And have you considered the possibility that his Trumpiness, and your non-Trumpiness, might be the secret sauce of your relationship? The key to his sense of humor, the erotic spark, the thing that keeps him interesting? And you’re good travel partners! As Walker Percy observed, if a man and a woman can drive alone in a car for two hundred miles, they should get married immediately. (Actually, he said, “… then there’s a good chance that they can be happily married.” But I prefer my version.)

There’s always this paradox about the loved one: You cannot take them for granted, and yet you must take them for granted. You need to keep in mind their rareness, and the singular circumstance of being with them, and the fragility of it—while at the same time falling backward like a dope into a state of total animal trust. And if you trust your man: There it is. Look no further.

Last thought: If you didn’t argue about Trump, you’d argue about money. Or God. Or how to load the dishwasher. And as for Trump himself: Don’t let him ruin another beautiful thing.

Wishing you (both) glorious trips through a regenerated America,

James

By submitting a letter, you are agreeing to let The Atlantic use it in part or in full, and we may edit it for length and/or clarity.

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Recently, I was rereading Livy’s History of Rome (I am obligated, contractually, to write sentences like this), in order to better understand the story of Cincinnatus, the soldier and statesman who desired only to look after his farm. “Put on thy robe and hear the words of the people,” a delegation of messengers said as they approached him. Cincinnatus, plowing his land, was a bit startled. “Is all well?” he asked.

Obviously not. “The people of Rome make thee dictator, and bid thee come forthwith to the city,” the messengers said, explaining that the city was under siege by an enemy tribe, the Aequi.

Quite an offer. We are all familiar with the tendency of great men to be tempted by the matchless possibilities of dictatorship. Cincinnatus put on his robes and went to Rome, where, over a 16-day period, he organized the defeat of the Aequi. But then he went home.

America’s first president did many great things, but as Tom Nichols notes in his new Atlantic cover story, the greatest thing George Washington ever did was return to Mount Vernon. Like Cincinnatus, he was called upon by the people to defend his nation. Like Cincinnatus, he won the affection and esteem of soldier and citizen alike. And like Cincinnatus, he could have made himself a leader for life, a despot, a king. If he’d been of different character or temperament, the American experiment—a great, noble, flawed, self-correcting, indispensable gift to humankind —would not have lasted to this day.

Washington was imperfect. He was a beneficiary of the sin of chattel slavery. But as a leader of a newly born democracy, he was also an avatar of self-restraint and self-mastery. As Tom writes in his cover story, Washington’s life and leadership were a guide for his successors. Through his example, he taught presidents how to rule, and how to return power to the people when it was time to go home.

“Forty-four men have succeeded Washington so far,” Tom writes. “Some became titans; others finished their terms without distinction; a few ended their service to the nation in ignominy. But each of them knew that the day would come when it would be their duty and honor to return the presidency to the people.”

All but one, of course: the ex-president trying to regain the office he lost in a free and fair election four years ago, and signaling that he will refuse to concede should he lose again.

The story of George Washington and Donald Trump is the sad tale of a country once led by a Cincinnatus but now being duped by a grifter. Yet Washington’s example is alive to us, if we choose to pay attention. Several months ago, I told Tom of my preoccupation with Washington. Tom, who writes this newsletter for us, served for many years with distinction on the faculty of the Naval War College, and he has the correct sort of reverence for the nation’s founders (which is to say, a critical sort of reverence). Tom did not initially react with fervent enthusiasm. Later—long after I had hectored him into writing this story—he explained why. “Like many Americans, I found Washington intimidating. He didn’t seem quite human. In every picture of Washington, he’s giving you this disapproving side-eye. Now I know that that was the look he was giving Gilbert Stuart, whom he didn’t like. But in any case, other presidents always seemed real to me—I grew up in Massachusetts, and we called Kennedy ‘Jack.’ Even Lincoln was real to me, but Washington just seemed unapproachable, like the obelisk built in his honor.”

Tom’s subsequent exploration of Washington’s record and character is what I suggest you read tonight, or as soon as possible. Even those who believe they understand Washington’s greatness will be surprised by the degree to which Donald Trump is so obviously his opposite—Trump, who seeks to be a dictator, who believes he is smarter than any general or statesman, who evinces no ability to learn, who possesses no humility, who divides Americans rather than unites them.

Tom writes of Washington, “Although he was a man of fierce ambition, his character was tempered by humility and bound up in his commitment to republican ideals: He led an American army only in the name of the American people and its elected representatives, and he never saw that army as his personal property. His soldiers were citizens, like him, and they were serving at his side in a common cause.”

We are a month away from an election that will decide America’s future. My suggestion, particularly for those of you who are still undecided about the path forward, is to read about the past, and understand what a great president can be.

Read the cover story here.

Here are four new stories from The Atlantic:

Hurricane disinformation is a precursor to November. The Trump believability gap Bill Adair: What I didn’t understand about political lying The most dramatic shift in U.S. public opinion

Today’s News

Hurricane Milton, a Category 3 storm, is expected to make landfall tonight near Florida’s Tampa Bay coastline. President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke on the phone for the first time in two months. They were expected to discuss Israel’s plans to strike back against Iran. Brazil lifted its ban on X yesterday after the company complied with the Brazilian supreme court’s orders.

More From The Atlantic

Hillels are under attack, Mayim Bialik argues. Michael Oren: The mistakes Israel can’t afford to repeat Hurricane Milton made a terrible prediction come true.

Evening Read

Illustration by The Atlantic

What Went Wrong at Blizzard Entertainment

By Jason Schreier

Over the past three years, as I worked on a book about the history of the video-game company Blizzard Entertainment, a disconcerting question kept popping into my head: Why does success seem so awful? Even typing that out feels almost anti-American, anathema to the ethos of hard work and ambition that has propelled so many of the great minds and ideas that have changed the world.

But Blizzard makes a good case for the modest achievement over the astronomical.

Read the full article.

Culture Break

Illustration by Miguel Porlan

Read. These six books are for people who love watching movies.

Phone a friend. “Whenever a friend tells me something, I blab about it to other people. Why can’t I stop?” a reader asks James Parker in his new advice column, “Dear James.”

Play our daily crossword.

Stephanie Bai contributed to this newsletter.

When you buy a book using a link in this newsletter, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic.

Dear James,

My problem is my big mouth. A friend talks to me about his or her problems, and then I blurt them out to other people. This leads to more problems. I’d like to keep my mouth shut more often, but by nature I find it hard to be controlled and reserved and private. Can you help me?

Dear Reader,

I have this problem too. I’m not a gossip, and I’m not a fink/squealer/stool pigeon, but I do indulge the eros of indiscretion: I’m an oversharer. And sometimes, having limited resources, a finite number of shareables of my own, I might incline toward sharing somebody else’s. I might blab a bit. Which is not to say I can’t be trusted. Your secret is safe with me. But make sure you tell me it’s a secret.

Why do we do this? Why do we blab? It’s a shortcut to intimacy, perhaps—to the kind of juicy mutuality that can be achieved only by an exchange of privileged info. Also: We have poor boundaries. Because we hate boundaries, don’t we? Those prissy, fussy, relationship-stunting boundaries. We want everything to be flowing and billowing and pouring unchecked from one soul to another, right? Blabbing is libidinal; blabbing is a release.

But this is the real world, baby. Things collide. Things have sharp edges. The impulse to connect, which in this case is more of an impulse to dissolve, can get you in trouble. Other people are real. They have their own existence, even if they’re not currently in the room with us, and we need to be careful of their feelings. Like Morrissey says, “Heavy words are so lightly thrown.”

You have self-awareness; that’s a start. More than a start: It’s the beginning of the answer. When you feel that saucy urge to blab rising within you, recognize it, acknowledge it, and then switch gears. Recite a poem instead. (I recommend the first verse of “The Wreck of the Deutschland,” by Gerard Manley Hopkins.)

Sincerely,

James

By submitting a letter, you are agreeing to let The Atlantic use it in part or in full, and we may edit it for length and/or clarity.

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Donald Trump has long cast himself as Mr. Economy. The former president has claimed on the campaign trail that his last term saw “the best economy in the history of our country.” (He glosses over the economic crisis of 2020.) He has presented a slate of far-fetched ideas for how to bring down the cost of living and strengthen business. (See: “Drill, baby, drill”; his promises to impose massive tariffs; his idea to deport immigrants to open up more housing; and his suggestion that he himself wants to “have a say” in toggling interest rates, which he later walked back.)

Until a few months ago, voters—who say that the economy is the biggest campaign issue on their minds—appeared to be buying his pitch. In polls, Americans overwhelmingly said that they trusted him more than President Joe Biden to handle the economy. But much has changed in recent months: Once Kamala Harris became her party’s nominee, she quickly distinguished her campaign’s economic message from Biden’s, a strategy that has resonated with some voters. Last month, the Federal Reserve lowered interest rates for the first time in more than four years, effectively signaling to Americans that inflation is over—and triggering a stream of positive news coverage to that effect. Voters’ perceptions of the economy writ large have proved stubborn, but the American public seems more and more willing to entertain the idea that Harris could be a better leader than Trump on the issue.

Scarred by a period of high prices and inflation, Americans have been reluctant to accept the message—from Biden or from pundits—that the economy is good, actually, even though inflation cooled off significantly by 2023 and the unemployment rate has been near historic lows for much of the past three years. (Consumer sentiment has risen considerably since a mid-2022 nadir, but it’s still nowhere near pre-pandemic levels). Harris’s strategy so far has not focused on defending Biden’s record; instead, her campaign has attempted to differentiate her from the president—even as Trump has tried to present her as an extension of Biden’s legacy. “Whether or not Harris is ultimately saddled with Biden’s economic baggage may come down to who wins this narrative war,” my colleague Rogé Karma, who covers economics, told me.

Harris has focused on acknowledging the high cost of living and offering paths to combat it—a departure from Biden, who spent the past year trying desperately to convince voters that the economy was strong, Rogé said. Harris’s approach (which Rogé has called “Bidenomics without Biden”) seems to be working so far: One poll found that she had a one-point lead over Trump on the economy in September, just three months after Biden was running 11 points behind Trump on the issue. Other polls also show Trump’s edge as the trusted economy candidate shrinking. “The economy as an issue has gone from being the winning issue for Trump to a virtual tie,” Rogé explained.

Harris has gained on Trump, but this trend is not guaranteed to continue until November. One primary predictor of success for the incumbent party, Gabriel Lenz, a political-science professor at UC Berkeley, told me, is the growth of what economists call “real disposable income,” or Americans’ income after taxes and transfers—spending money, in other words. Right now, that metric is on the fence: “We’re not seeing that incomes are going up relative to inflation as much as they could be,” Lenz said. News stories can also shift voter perception in the final weeks of an election, even in our calcified political moment, Lenz argued. Historical precedent has been set for that: In 1992, for example, the economy was picking up before the election, but the fact that media coverage remained negative may have influenced the incumbent George H. W. Bush’s loss, Lenz suggested. (It didn’t help that Bill Clinton’s team did its best to tie Bush to that negative narrative: That election featured the infamous Clinton-campaign line “It’s the economy, stupid.”)

The broad realities of the American economy haven’t meaningfully changed since Harris entered the race, and Americans don’t suddenly feel rosy about it. But the messenger has changed, and that may be enough to compel some voters in this final stretch. Because many Americans are so far distinguishing Harris from the Biden administration’s economic policy, she has been able to take advantage of good economic news in a way that Biden never quite could.

Related:

Bidenomics without Biden Kamala Harris needs an economic message voters can believe in.

Here are four new stories from The Atlantic:

The elite college students who can’t read books What Democrats don’t understand about J. D. Vance The Christian radicals are coming. Lebanon is not a solution for Gaza, Gershom Gorenberg argues.

Today’s News

Iran launched waves of ballistic missiles at Israel. The Israeli military did not immediately report any casualties, but a Palestinian man was reportedly killed by shrapnel in the occupied West Bank. Iran said that it had concluded its attack. Senator J. D. Vance and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz will face off tonight in the vice-presidential debate hosted by CBS News, airing at 9 p.m. ET. Claudia Sheinbaum, a former mayor of Mexico City, was sworn in as Mexico’s first female and first Jewish president.

Dispatches

The Weekly Planet: After experiencing Kentucky’s 2022 floods, Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle moved to the mountains of North Carolina, where she thought she would be safe.

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Evening Read

A boy plays near the remainder of a washed-out road near his family's home in Watauga County on September 27, 2024. (Melissa Sue Gerrits / Getty)

Hurricane Helene Created a 30-Foot Chasm of Earth on My Street

By Chris Moody

We knew something had gone terribly wrong when the culverts washed up in our backyard like an apocalyptic art installation splattered with loose rock and black concrete. The circular metal tubes were a crucial piece of submerged infrastructure that once channeled water beneath our street, the primary connection to town for our small rural community just outside Boone, North Carolina. When they failed under a deluge created by Hurricane Helene, the narrow strip of concrete above didn’t stand a chance. Weighted down by a fallen tree, the road crashed into the river, creating a 30-foot chasm of earth near our house.

Read the full article.

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Culture Break

Courtesy: Everett Collection

Rewatch. The 2012 film Game Change (streaming on Max) knew exactly what was coming for American politics, James Parker writes.

Debate. Malcolm Gladwell’s insistence on ignoring the web in his new book, Revenge of the Tipping Point, is an even bigger blind spot today than it was when The Tipping Point came out, Gal Beckerman argues.

Play our daily crossword.

Stephanie Bai contributed to this newsletter.

When you buy a book using a link in this newsletter, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic.