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Election Day is in a few weeks, but for millions of Americans, early voting in the presidential and downballot races is already under way. Over the next 19 days, how people vote in dozens of swing districts will determine which party takes control of the House of Representatives.

The race for the House looks like “a true toss-up,” my colleague Russell Berman, who covers politics, told me. (He also noted that the Democrats he’s spoken with lately are “cautiously optimistic”—and some actually seem “a touch more confident about retaking the House than winning the presidency.”) To take back control, Democrats need to pick up four seats from Republicans.

Abortion is a key issue that could determine the balance of power in the House, Russell explained, in large part because many of the most important races are happening in suburban areas where significant numbers of college-educated women are expected to turn out. Still, it’s unclear whether that issue will actually mobilize blue-state voters who have perceived less of a threat to abortion access. Immigration policy could also come into play; some Democrats are striking a more hawkish tone on the border, Russell said, following a strategy that helped Representative Tom Suozzi win George Santos’s former seat in a special election on Long Island earlier this year.

Below are five competitive House races that we’re keeping an eye on.

***

New York’s Seventeenth District

New York is famously a Democratic stronghold. But in the 2022 midterms, Republicans’ sweep of the state’s most competitive House races was a key factor that contributed to the Democrats losing control of the House. Now, just north of New York City in a district where 80,000 more Democrats than Republicans are registered, Republican Mike Lawler is trying to defend his seat against former Representative Mondaire Jones in a close race that may help tip the House.

Lawler, who is framing himself as a moderate Republican, has worked to tie Jones to the embattled Democratic New York City Mayor Eric Adams, and he’s tried to haunt Jones with his old progressive stances from 2020, when he won a House seat in the Seventeenth District. Democrats have spotlighted Lawler’s abortion views—he opposes abortion except in cases of rape or incest, though he does not back a national ban—as a weakness in his campaign. Immigration has been another point of contention because of the recent influx of migrants in New York; both candidates have swiped at each other’s record on the border.

Pennsylvania’s Tenth District

In Pennsylvania, a must-win swing state for the presidential candidates, a race between a MAGA Republican and a former news anchor could affect the balance of power in the House. Republican Representative Scott Perry is fighting to hold onto his seat against a challenge from Janelle Stelson, who became a local celebrity thanks to her decades on air. In a recent dispatch from the district, Russell described Perry as “the most vulnerable Trump loyalist in the House,” in part because of his baggage related to January 6 (he reportedly tried to install an attorney general who would help Trump stay in power).

Stelson carries little political baggage as a longtime news anchor and first-time candidate. A former registered Republican and self-identified centrist, she has taken a stronger stance on immigration than many Democrats, and she declined to endorse Vice President Kamala Harris until recently. But she’s largely aligned with her party on abortion: Stelson has said that the overturning of Roe v. Wade fueled her decision to run as a Democrat, and Perry recently said that he wouldn’t rule out voting for a national abortion ban.

Washington’s Third District

A rematch will take place between Joe Kent, a MAGA loyalist who has denied the outcome of the 2020 presidential election, and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, a vulnerable Democrat who won in an upset in 2022. That the Trump-backed Kent, rather than the district’s more moderate Republican incumbent, ran (and lost) in the district in 2022 was a “self-inflicted wound” that was “emblematic of how poor Republican choices and MAGA purity tests hurt the party in races up and down the ticket,” my colleague David Graham wrote at the time.

Washington’s Third District is a primarily rural area that voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020. In the House, Perez sometimes crosses the aisle to vote with Republicans on certain issues, including student-loan-debt relief, raising the ire of party loyalists. In July, she went where few Democrats did: Shortly after President Joe Biden withdrew from the race, she released a statement that appeared to cast doubt on his fitness to serve the rest of his term.

Arizona’s First District

Republican Representative David Schweikert, who is seeking his eighth term in the House, is running against Democrat Amish Shah, an ER physician turned state representative. Arizona’s First District, with its large share of college-educated suburban voters, is considered a bellwether district in a state that could determine the outcome of the presidential election.

Republicans have framed Shah as “an extreme liberal,” sympathetic to socialism and raising taxes in a race where taxes and border security are key issues. But abortion is also top of mind for many voters—a measure that would codify the right to abortion in Arizona will be on the state’s November ballot—and Schweikert repeatedly co-sponsored a bill that would have banned nearly all abortions nationwide.

California’s Forty-Seventh District

California, like New York, is sure to go to Harris in the presidential race. But across the state, a handful of House races remain highly competitive. In Orange County’s affluent Forty-Seventh District, Democratic State Senator Dave Min and the Republican attorney Scott Baugh are facing off in a tight race that both parties have identified as a key target to win in 2024. The two candidates are vying to take over the seat currently occupied by Democratic Representative Katie Porter, who opted to run instead for the late Senator Dianne Feinstein’s seat (a bid that failed in part because a tech-backed campaign spent $10 million attacking Porter for being insufficiently crypto-friendly).

The number of registered Democrats and Republicans in the district is nearly equal, and Orange County’s growing Asian American and Latino populations have helped shift left the area once known as a conservative bastion. Min and Baugh will likely need to court the vote of independents to win, with a focus on the local issues including the economy and crime.

Related:

Seven Senate races to watch The New York race that could tip the House

Here are four new stories from The Atlantic:

Israel has won the war, Franklin Foer writes. Can it win the peace? Ron Brownstein: Kamala Harris’s closing argument Donald Trump’s roomful of suspiciously friendly women Mike Pence is haunting this election.

Today’s News

Israeli forces killed Yahya Sinwar, Hamas’s top leader, in southern Gaza, officials confirmed today. A grand jury in Georgia indicted the 14-year-old Apalachee High School shooter and his father on murder charges for a mass shooting last month that left four people dead. The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles agreed yesterday to pay $880 million to 1,353 victims of clergy sexual abuse, the largest single child-sex-abuse settlement involving a single Catholic archdiocese.

Dispatches

Time-Travel Thursdays: Eleanor Roosevelt was ahead of her time, Helen Lewis writes. The beloved first lady was as visible as her husband in the White House. Work in Progress: On the whole, Democrats are pro-EV and Republicans are not, Matteo Wong writes. Partisanship only partly explains the difference.

Explore all of our newsletters here.

Evening Read

Illustration by The Atlantic

A Calculator’s Most Important Button Has Been Removed

By Ian Bogost

I worry that the calculator we’ve known and loved is not long for this Earth. This month, when I upgraded my iPhone to the latest operating system, iOS 18, it came with a refreshed Calculator app. The update offered some improvements! I appreciated the vertical orientation of its scientific mode, because turning your phone sideways is so 2009; the continuing display of each operation (e.g., 217 ÷ 4 + 8) on the screen until I asked for the result; the unit-conversion mode, because I will never know what a centimeter is. But there also was a startling omission: The calculator’s “C” button—the one that clears input—was gone. The “C” itself had been cleared.

Read the full article.

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Dr. Sherif Abdallah Ahmed, Tanta, Egypt

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Play our daily crossword.

P.S.

On the last Monday of each month, Lori Gottlieb answers a reader’s question about a problem, big or small, in the “Dear Therapist” newsletter. This month, she is inviting readers to submit questions related to Thanksgiving.

To be featured, email dear.therapist@theatlantic.com by Sunday, October 20.

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.

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.

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In March 2023, when Mark Milley was six months away from retirement as a four-star general and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he met Bob Woodward at a reception and said, “We gotta talk.”

Milley went on to describe the grave degree to which former President Donald Trump, under whom Milley had served, was a danger to the nation. Woodward recounts the episode with Milley—who almost certainly believed that he was speaking to Woodward off the record—in his new book, War:

“We have got to stop him!” Milley said. “You have got to stop him!” By “you” he meant the press broadly. “He is the most dangerous person ever. I had suspicions when I talked to you about his mental decline and so forth, but now I realize he’s a total fascist. He is the most dangerous person to this country.” His eyes darted around the room filled with 200 guests of the Cohen Group, a global business consulting firm headed by former defense secretary William Cohen. Cohen and former defense secretary James Mattis spoke at the reception.

“A fascist to the core!” Milley repeated to me.

I will never forget the intensity of his worry.

For readers of The Atlantic, this will sound familiar: Milley’s warning about Trump as well as the steps Milley took to defend the constitutional order during Trump’s presidency were the subject of a cover story last year by The Atlantic’s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg. As Goldberg put it in that story: “The difficulty of the task before Milley was captured most succinctly by Lieutenant General H. R. McMaster,” who served as the second of Trump’s four national security advisers. “As chairman,” McMaster said to Goldberg, “you swear to support and defend the Constitution of the United States, but what if the commander in chief is undermining the Constitution?”

Milley knows well the risks of criticizing Trump. The former president has reportedly expressed a desire to recall and court-martial retired senior officers who have criticized him, and he has even suggested that Milley should be executed. Since Milley retired, Woodward noted, the combat veteran who served three tours in Afghanistan has endured “a nonstop barrage of death threats,” which led him to install bulletproof glass and blast-proof curtains in his home.

I long resisted the use of the word fascist to describe Trump. But almost a year ago, I came to agree with Milley that Trump is through-and-through a fascist. He is not only unhinged in his narcissistic self-obsessions, a problem which itself renders him unfit for office; he is also an aspiring dictator who demands that all political life centers on him. He identifies his fellow Americans as “enemies” because they are of a different race, national origin, or political view. And he has threatened to use the powerful machinery of the state and its military forces to inflict brutality on those fellow citizens.

Of course, it’s one thing to hear such concerns from angry members of the so-called Resistance on social media, from liberal talk-show hosts, or even, say, from curmudgeonly retired political-science professors who write for magazines. It’s another to hear them from a man who once held the nation’s top military office.

Some observers question whether Milley should have said anything at all. I understand those reservations: I taught military officers for decades at the Naval War College, and I am familiar with the tradition—handed down from America’s first commander in chief, George Washington—of the military’s avoidance of entanglement in civilian politics. I, too, am uncomfortable that, while still on active duty, Milley spoke to Woodward about a presidential candidate. He could have waited a few months, until his retirement; he could even have resigned his commission early in order to be able to speak freely.

My own objectivity on the issue of Milley speaking with Woodward is strained by my strong feelings about Trump as an existential danger to the nation, so I checked in with a friend and widely respected scholar of American civil-military relations, Kori Schake, a senior fellow and the director of foreign- and defense-policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute.

“It’s a legitimately difficult call,” she wrote to me. She noted that resigning and then going public is always an option. She admitted, however, that for a general to throw his stars on the desk might be an honorable exit, but it’s not much use to the people remaining in uniform who must continue to serve the country and the commander in chief, and in general she sees the idea of simply quitting and walking out to be unhelpful.

So when should a general—who’s seen things in the White House that terrify him—raise the alarm if he believes that a president is planning to attack the very Constitution that all federal servants are sworn to protect? Schake thinks that Milley overestimated his importance and was out of his lane as a military officer: “The country didn’t need General Milley to alert them to the danger of Trump, that was evident if people wanted to know, and plenty of civilian officials—including General Milley’s boss, [Mark Esper], the Secretary of Defense—had already been sharing their concern.”

Schake is one of the smartest people I know on this subject, and so I am cautious in my dissent, especially because other scholars of civil-military affairs seem largely to agree with her. And like Schake, I am a traditionalist about American civil-military relations: Trump, as I wrote during his presidency, routinely attacked the military and saw its leaders as his opponents, but that should not tempt anyone in uniform to match his egregious violations of our civil-military norms and traditions.

A comparable situation occurred during the final days of President Richard Nixon’s time in office: Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger told the Joint Chiefs chair at the time, General George Brown, that any “unusual orders” from the president should be cleared through him. (The Constitution, of course, does not have a special provision allowing Cabinet officers to subvert the chain of command at will if they think the president is having a bad day.) Schlesinger’s actions arose from concern about Nixon’s mental state; four years earlier, Admiral Thomas Moorer, one of Milley’s predecessors as Joint Chiefs chair, was so worried about Nixon’s policies that he actually oversaw some internal spying on National Security Council proceedings.

And yet I understand Milley’s alarm and frustration. He was not grousing about a policy disagreement or trying to paper over a temporary crisis regarding the president’s capacity. He was concerned that a former American president could return to office and continue his efforts to destroy the constitutional order of the United States. This was no political pose against a disliked candidate: For Milley and others, especially in the national-security arena, who saw the danger from inside the White House, Trump’s continuing threat to democracy and national stability is not notional.

I also am somewhat heartened that a four-star general, when faced with what he sees as a dire peril to the nation, believes that the sunlight of a free press is the best option. But, more important, are people now listening to what Milley had to say? The revelations about his views seem to have been overwhelmed by yet more of Trump’s gobsmacking antics. As I was writing today’s Daily, news broke that Trump had added Nancy Pelosi and her family to his enemies list. (Paul Pelosi has already suffered a hammer attack from a deranged man stoked by conspiracy theories, a ghastly incident that some Trump supporters have used as a source for jokes; Trump himself has referenced it mockingly.)

All of this raises the question, once again, of what it will take, what will be enough, to rouse the last undecided or less engaged American voters and bring them to the ballot box to defend their own freedoms. Milley and other senior military officers are in a bind when it comes to talking about a former president, but telling the truth about Trump is a duty and a service to the nation.

Related:

How Mark Milley held the line Trump floats the idea of executing Joint Chiefs Chairman Milley.

Here are three new stories from The Atlantic:

The man who’s sure that Harris will win A Trump loyalist on the brink Shoplifters gone wild

Today’s News

Vice President Kamala Harris’s interview with the Fox News anchor Bret Baier aired tonight at 6 p.m. ET. Italy passed a law that criminalizes seeking surrogates abroad, including in countries where surrogacy is legal. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky presented the country’s Parliament with a “Victory Plan,” which aims to end the Ukrainian-Russian war by next year and calls for a NATO invitation for Ukraine.

Evening Read

Illustration by The Atlantic. Source: Found Image Holdings / Corbis / Getty.

The Sunshine Staters Aren’t Going Anywhere

By Diane Roberts

Floridians regularly observe that Florida is trying to kill us. Venomous water snakes lie in wait for heedless kayakers paddling down the wrong slough. More people die of lightning strikes in Florida than in any other state. I-4, from Tampa to Daytona Beach, is the deadliest highway in the country. Mosquitoes the size of tire irons carry several sorts of fever and encephalitis, and the guacamole-colored algae infesting our waters can cause severe respiratory distress and liver disease. Despite claims of perpetual sunshine, the weather in Florida is often horrendous: 95 degrees Fahrenheit with 95 percent humidity.

Then there are the storms.

Read the full article.

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Play our daily crossword.

P.S.

On the last Monday of each month, Lori Gottlieb answers a reader’s question about a problem, big or small, in the “Dear Therapist” newsletter. This month, she is inviting readers to submit questions related to Thanksgiving.

To be featured, email dear.therapist@theatlantic.com by Sunday, October 20.

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.

Stephanie Bai contributed to this newsletter.

Explore all of our newsletters here.

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

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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

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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.

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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.

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A couple of days ago, the account u/whitehouse posted on Reddit for the first time. Since it kicked things off with a photo of President Joe Biden leading a briefing on Hurricane Milton and Hurricane Helene, the account has appeared on various pages related to the storms. “Yep, it’s really us!” one comment from the account reassured any (understandably) skeptical users.

This has been quite a week for disinformation across the internet: Some of the lies being spread as storms batter the Southeast come from accounts that belong to everyday users posting sensational images with the help of AI, but some have come directly from elected officials, such as Marjorie Taylor Greene and Donald Trump, who are using the storm to fuel a political agenda. Debuting on Reddit this week was a way for the White House to push back against misinformation, Christian L. Tom, the White House director of digital strategy, told me earlier today. “We view Reddit as a good example of a service that allows people to align around shared interests,” including specific topics and locations, Tom said.

The White House is still posting on other major social platforms; Tom noted that using Reddit was among the White House’s various digital strategies, which include working with content creators, and he emphasized that having a presence on the platform doesn’t come at the expense of dealing with misinformation on platforms such as X. (Reddit itself is, of course, not immune to misinformation.)

That Reddit is now an appealing home for such content is a bit of a swerve: The site was once infamous for hosting unwieldy conversation threads and even hate speech. But since the mid-2010s, the platform has put major effort into moderating its content. Its user base has also grown dramatically in recent years. As Reddit’s competitors, especially Elon Musk’s X, have become vectors of inaccuracy and lies, Reddit is standing out as an unexpected place for real-time, accurate information to reach an engaged public.

The Reddit cleanup began after several high-profile crises—including a staff revolt against its former CEO Ellen Pao and swells of violent speech on the platform at the time of the 2017 white-supremacist rally in Charlottesville. The company soon updated the language of its content-moderation policies and banned accounts it found to be in violation. As the Reddit co-founder and now-CEO Steve Huffman told The New Yorker at the time: “We let the story get away from us. And now we’re trying to get our shit together.” For Reddit, part of the effort to tamp down on bad actors was clearly about revenue growth, and on that score, the company’s efforts seem largely to have worked; it went public this past March, debuting on the stock market at a $6.4 billion valuation.

My colleague Kaitlyn Tiffany, who has covered the world of Reddit, told me that the platform has always been a product of its time—including 20 years ago, when the web had different norms. The site today is no utopia, she cautioned. But its unusual system of volunteer moderators has allowed Reddit to evolve. The site has shifted “fairly organically because of a content-moderation system that empowers users to keep their own siloed spaces clean,” she said. Reddit can be understood as a collection of “fiefdoms,” known as subreddits, Kaitlyn explained, governed by rules laid down by the moderators of that space—and subject to the site’s broader policies. The system of allowing users to upvote and downvote posts “works as a built-in check against bad information spiraling out of control,” she added (though bad actors could always overtake a page and try to manipulate it).

Reddit’s role in this moment also speaks to the fact that other platforms have let lies proliferate unchecked: X, once carefully moderated and admired for its utility in fast-changing news moments, is now overrun with disinformation—some of it personally boosted by its owner, Elon Musk. The site formerly employed a robust team of trust and safety officials; Musk fired many of them in 2022, and has mocked the idea of content moderation. Meanwhile, Google is clogged with AI tools and nonsensical, not-always-accurate summaries. Into this landscape comes Reddit: 100 people per second are appending “Reddit” to their Google searches in order to get the results they’re seeking, a Reddit spokesperson told me; the site’s users were at an all-time high last quarter, she said, adding that subreddits for various Florida communities affected by the storms saw boosts in traffic over the past two weeks.

As my colleague Elaine Godfrey wrote yesterday, right-wing efforts to politicize the hurricanes “offer a foretaste of the grievance-fueled disinformation mayhem that we’ll see on and after Election Day.” In a moment when America’s elected leaders are fanning the flames of disinformation, and social-media lords are working against the spread of accurate content (in Musk’s case, literally leaping into an alliance with a political candidate doing the same), people sharing real-time facts are looking for somewhere to go. In our topsy-turvy media ecosystem, the answer may be—of all places—Reddit.

Related:

Inside r/relationships, the unbearably human corner of Reddit November will be worse.

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For only the fifth time, The Atlantic is endorsing a presidential candidate: Kamala Harris. Melania really doesn’t care. Kamala Harris’s muted message on mass deportation

Today’s News

At least five people are dead and more than 3 million people have lost power after Hurricane Milton battered Florida overnight. The Department of Justice announced that TD Bank will pay a $3 billion fine for charges including violating the Bank Secrecy Act and failing to monitor money laundering. Ethel Kennedy, widow of Senator Robert F. Kennedy and matriarch of the Kennedy family, died at age 96.

Dispatches

The Weekly Planet: Hurricane Milton was a test of Florida’s coast, which has everything to recommend it, except the growing risk of flooding, Zoë Schlanger writes. Time-Travel Thursdays: A 1938 hurricane left many New Englanders in a similar position to the Appalachian communities devastated by Hurricane Helene, Nancy Walecki writes.

Explore all of our newsletters here.

Evening Read

Illustration by Jan Buchczik

Get Off the Family Plan

By Arthur C. Brooks

People constantly ask me what they should help their adult kids pay for, if they themselves have been lucky enough to do well in life. The dilemma they have is that they’re proud of having earned their way and feel that their self-reliance, not a handout, is the gift they want to pass on; yet they also feel that it’s stingy to hold out on their nearest and dearest, rather than share their good fortune.

Here’s a rule of thumb to help resolve that dilemma: If you can afford to help your adult kids, pay for investment, not consumption.

Read the full article.

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Play our daily crossword.

Stephanie Bai contributed to this newsletter.

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Kamala Harris is in the midst of a media blitz this week, including an interview on CBS’s 60 Minutes yesterday evening and an appearance on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert tonight. But she is also dipping into the world of mega-popular, not straightforwardly journalistic podcasts—notably appearing on the show Call Her Daddy last weekend. I spoke with my colleague Helen Lewis, who covers the podcast-sphere, about why Donald Trump and Harris are both spending time on these sorts of shows, what these interviews avoid, and how independent podcasters became major players in political media.

The New Mainstream

Lora Kelley: How does the value to the viewer of a traditional press interview—one focused on the specific issues and policies of the race—differ from that of a lifestyle podcast?

Helen Lewis: Roughly speaking, there are two types of sit-down conversations in politics: the accountability interview and the talk-show appearance. One focuses on pinning down candidates on their past statements and their future promises; the other, which most podcasts fall into, tries to understand the candidate as a person. The latter aren’t necessarily soft options—being charismatic and engaging while making small talk or fielding deeply personal questions is a skill in itself. (And I found Donald Trump’s appearance on Theo Von’s podcast, where he talked about his elder brother’s struggle with alcoholism, very revealing indeed.)

But only with the accountability interviews do you get candidates pressed repeatedly on questions that they’re trying to dodge. On Logan Paul’s podcast, Impaulsive, Trump was asked about the transmission of fentanyl over the border, and he got away with rambling about how “unbelievable” the German shepherds Border Patrol officers use are. On Lex Fridman’s podcast, Trump asserted that he could easily sort out the crisis in Ukraine—and that was it. Who needs details? When Kamala Harris went on Call Her Daddy, the host, Alex Cooper, gave her a chance to lay out her message on reproductive rights but didn’t, for example, challenge her on whether she supports third-trimester abortions, which are deeply divisive.

Lora: From the perspective of a political campaign, are there any downsides to appearing on a podcast such as Call Her Daddy?

Helen: The obvious criticism of Harris appearing on Call Her Daddy, which has a young, female audience, is that she already has a big lead among young women aged 18–25. You can say the same about Trump appearing on podcasts that are popular with young men. But both groups contain many people who will be undecided about whether to vote at all.

Lora: Harris has done some traditional press interviews during this campaign cycle, including her 60 Minutes interview yesterday. But are we in a new era in which chats with friendly podcasters rival (or even overtake) traditional media interviews?

Helen: Well, quite. An article I think about a lot is John Herrman’s 2015 “Access Denied,” in which he asked why an A-lister—someone like Kim Kardashian—would give an interview to a celebrity magazine if she had something to sell, instead of simply putting a picture on Instagram. Why cooperate with the old guard of media when they are no longer the gatekeepers of attention? Herrman argued that the traditional media was suffering a “loss of power resulting in a loss of access resulting in further loss of power.”

That dynamic has now migrated to politics. The legacy brands no longer have a monopoly on people’s attention, and the online right, in particular, has been extremely successful in building an alternative, highly partisan media. Fox News is no longer the rightmost end of the spectrum—beyond that is Tucker Carlson’s podcast, or the Daily Wire network, or Newsmax, or Elon Musk’s X.

Now candidates tend to talk to the traditional media only when they want to reset the narrative about them, because other journalists still watch 60 Minutes or whatever it might be. There’s still a noisiness around a big legacy interview that you don’t get with, say, Call Her Daddy—even if more people end up consuming the latter.

Lora: Are these podcasts really doing anything new, or are they largely replicating traditional media interviews without the same standards and accountability?

Helen: The better ones strive for impartiality and don’t, for example, reveal their questions in advance—but many political podcasts are wrapped in an ecosystem where big-name guests mean more advertising revenue, and thus bigger profits for the hosts personally; plus, their only hope of getting a second interview is if the candidate feels the first one was sympathetic. Compare that with 60 Minutes, which interviewed Trump so robustly in 2020 that he has asked for an apology.

I’m as guilty as anyone, but we need to stop treating these podcasts as the “alternative” media when they are absolutely the mainstream these days. The top ones have audiences as big as, if not bigger than, most legacy outlets. If they don’t want to hire all the editorial infrastructure that traditional journalism has (such as fact-checkers, research assistants, etc.), or risk being unpopular by asking difficult questions, that’s on them. Joe Rogan renewed his Spotify contract for $250 million. Alex Cooper signed a deal with SiriusXM this year worth $125 million. We should stop treating the mega-podcasts like mom-and-pop outfits competing with chain stores. They’re behemoths.

Lora: You recently wrote about The Joe Rogan Experience, which is the top-listened-to podcast on Spotify and arguably the most influential behemoth of them all. Why haven’t the candidates gone on the show yet? Who from each ticket do you think would make the most sense as a guest?

Helen: As I understand it, Team Trump would love to get on The Joe Rogan Experience. The two politicians that Rogan adores are Tulsi Gabbard and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who are now both working with the Republicans, and Team Trump would hope to encourage some of Rogan’s audience of crunchy, COVID-skeptic libertarians to follow them in moving from the independent/Democrat column to the GOP. But Rogan isn’t a full MAGA partisan like some of his friends, and Trump recently said that Rogan hasn’t asked him to appear.

In any case, I think Rogan would prefer to talk to J. D. Vance, who is very much part of the heterodox Silicon Valley–refugee tendency that he admires. For the Democrats, Harris might struggle to relax into the stoner-wonderment vibe of Rogan, given the tight-laced campaign she’s running. Rogan and Tim Walz could probably have a good chat about shooting deer and the best way to barbecue.

Related:

What going on Call Her Daddy did for Kamala Harris How Joe Rogan remade Austin

Here are three new stories from The Atlantic:

Milton is the hurricane that scientists were dreading. David Frum: Behind the curtain of Mexico’s progress Donald Trump flirts with race science.

Today’s News

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis announced that roughly 8,000 National Guard members will be mobilized by the time Hurricane Milton, a Category 5 storm, makes landfall this week. The Supreme Court appears likely to uphold the Biden administration’s regulation of “ghost gun” kits, which allow people to buy gun parts and build the weapons at home. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed that the Israeli military has killed the replacement successors of the Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, who was killed in an Israeli air strike last month.

Dispatches

Atlantic Intelligence: The list of Nobel laureates now contains two physicists whose 1980s research laid the foundations for modern artificial intelligence, Matteo Wong writes.

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Evening Read

Illustration by Ben Kothe / The Atlantic. Source: Getty.

They Were Made Without Eggs or Sperm. Are They Human?

By Kristen V. Brown

The little clump of cells looked almost like a human embryo. Created from stem cells, without eggs, sperm, or a womb, the embryo model had a yolk sac and a proto-placenta, resembling a state that real human embryos reach after approximately 14 days of development. It even secreted hormones that turned a drugstore pregnancy test positive.

To Jacob Hanna’s expert eye, the model wasn’t perfect—more like a rough sketch … But in 2022, when two students burst into his office and dragged him to a microscope to show him the cluster of cells, he knew his team had unlocked a door to understanding a crucial stage of human development. Hanna, a professor at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, also knew that the model would raise some profound ethical questions.

Read the full article.

More From The Atlantic

Israel and Hamas are kidding themselves, Hussein Ibish argues. The New York race that could tip the House

Culture Break

Warner Bros. / Everett Collection

Read. Lauren Elkin’s latest novel, Scaffolding, suggests that total honesty can take a marriage only so far, Lily Meyer writes.

Watch (or skip). Joker: Folie à Deux (out now in theaters) has nothing interesting to say about the challenges of fame, Spencer Kornhaber writes.

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Stephanie Bai contributed to this newsletter.

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A Donald Trump rally is always a strange spectacle, and not only because of the candidate’s incoherence and bizarre detours into mental cul-de-sacs. (Journalists have faced some criticism for ignoring or recasting these moments, but The New York Times, for one, has finally said that the candidate’s mental state is a legitimate concern.) Trump’s rally on Saturday in Butler, Pennsylvania, was a hall-of-fame entry in political weirdness: Few survivors of an attempted assassination hold a giant lawn party on the spot where they were wounded and someone in the crowd was killed.

The candidate’s tirades are the most obviously bizarre part of his performances, but the nature of the gathering itself is a fascinating paradox. Thousands of people, mostly from the working and middle class, line up to spend time with a very rich man, a lifelong New Yorker who privately detests the heartland Americans in his audience—and applaud as he excoriates the “elites.”

This is a political charade: Trump and his running mate, the hillbilly turned multimillionaire J. D. Vance, have little in common with most of the people in the audience, no matter how much they claim to be one of them. The mask slips often: Even as he courts the union vote, Trump revels in saying how much he hated having to pay overtime to his workers. In another telling moment, Trump beamed while talking about how Vance and his wife both have Yale degrees, despite his usual excoriations of top universities. (He always carves out a glittering exception for his own days at the University of Pennsylvania, of course.)

Trump then welcomed the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, to the stage. Things got weirder from there, as Musk—who, it should be noted, is 53 years old—jumped around the stage like a concertgoing teenager who got picked out of the audience to meet the band. Musk then proceeded to explain how democracy is in danger—this, from a man who has turned the platform once known as Twitter into an open zone for foreign propaganda and has amplified various hoaxes. Musk has presented himself on his own platform as a champion of the voiceless and the oppressed, but his behavior reveals him as an enemy of speech that isn’t in his own interest.

What happened in Butler over the weekend, however, was not some unique American moment. Around the world, fantastically wealthy people are hoodwinking ordinary voters, warning that dark forces—always an indistinct “they” and “them”—are conspiring to take away their rights and turn their nation into an immense ghetto full of undesirables (who are almost always racial minorities or immigrants or, in the ideal narrative, both).

The British writer Martin Wolf calls this “pluto-populism,” a brash attempt by people at the top of the financial and social pyramid to stay afloat by capering as ostensibly anti-establishment, pro-worker candidates. In Britain, former Prime Minister Boris Johnson dismissed the whole notion of Brexit behind closed doors, and then supported the movement as his ticket into 10 Downing Street anyway. In Italy, a wealthy entrepreneur helped start the “Five-Star Movement,” recruiting the comedian Beppe Grillo to hold supposedly anti-elitist events such as Fuck-Off Day; they briefly joined a coalition government with a far-right populist party, Lega, some years ago. Similar movements have arisen around the world, in Turkey, Brazil, Hungary, and other nations.

These movements are all remarkably alike: They claim to represent the common voter, especially the “forgotten people” and the dispossessed, but in reality, the base voters for these groups are not the poorest or most disadvantaged in their society. Rather, they tend to be relatively affluent. (Think of the January 6 rioters, and how many of them were able to afford flights, hotels, and expensive gear. It’s not cheap to be an insurrectionist.) As Simon Kuper noted in 2020, the “comfortably off populist voter is the main force behind Trump, Brexit and Italy’s Lega,” a fact ignored by opportunistic politicians who instead claim to be acting on behalf of stereotypes of impoverished former factory workers, even if there are few such people left to represent.

One of the pioneers of pluto-populism, of course, is the late Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, a rake and a grifter who stayed in office as part of staying out of jail. That strategy should sound familiar to Americans, but even more familiar is the way the Italian scholar Maurizio Viroli, in a book about Italian politics, notes how Berlusconi deformed Italian democracy by seducing its elites into joining the big con against the ordinary voter: Italy, he wrote, is a free country, but Viroli calls such freedom the “liberty of servants,” a sop offered to people who are subjects in a new kind of democracy that is really just the “court at the center of which sits a signore surrounded by a plethora of courtiers, who are in turn admired and envied by a multitude of individuals with servile souls.”

The appeals of the pluto-populists work because they target people who care little about policy but a great deal about social revenge. These citizens feel like others whom they dislike are living good lives, which to them seems an injustice. Worse, this itching sense of resentment is the result not of unrequited love but of unrequited hate: Much like the townies who feel looked down upon by the local college kids, or the Red Sox fans who are infuriated that Yankees fans couldn’t care less about their tribal animus, these voters feel ignored and disrespected.

Who better to be the agent of their revenge than a crude and boorish magnate who commands attention, angers and frightens the people they hate, and intends to control the political system so that he cannot be touched by it?

Musk, for his part, is the perfect addition to this crew. Rich beyond imagination, he still has the wheedling affect of a needy youngster who requires (and demands) attention. Like Trump, he seems unable to believe that although money can buy many things—luxury digs, expensive lawyers, obsequious staff—it cannot buy respect. For people such as Musk and Trump, this popular rejection is baffling and enraging.

Trump and those like him thus make a deal with the most resentful citizens in society: Keep us up in the penthouses, and we’ll harass your enemies on your behalf. We’ll punish the people you want punished. In the end, however, the joke is always on the voters: The pluto-populists don’t care about the people cheering them on. Few scores will truly be settled, and life will only become harder for everyone who isn’t wealthy or powerful enough to resist the autocratic policies that such people will impose on everyone, regardless of their previous support.

When the dust settles, Trump and Vance will still be rich and powerful (as will Musk, whose fortune and power transcends borders in a way that right-wing populists usually claim to hate). For the many Americans who admire them, little will change; their lives will not improve, just as they did not during Trump’s first term. Millions of us, regardless of whom we voted for, will have to fend off interference in our lives from an authoritarian government—especially if we are, for example, a targeted minority, a woman in need of health care, or a member of a disfavored immigrant community.

This is not freedom: As Viroli warned his fellow citizens, “If we are subjected to the arbitrary or enormous power of a man, we may well be free to do more or less what we want, but we are still servants.”

Related:

Elon Musk bends the knee to Donald Trump. Elon Musk has reached a new low.

Here are four new stories from The Atlantic:

What going on Call Her Daddy did for Kamala Harris How Jack Smith outsmarted the Supreme Court Third-trimester abortions are rare—but they are happening in America. October 7 created a permission structure for anti-Semitism, Dara Horn argues.

Today’s News

Hurricane Milton has strengthened into a Category 5 storm. It is expected to make landfall on Wednesday near the Tampa Bay, Florida, region. The Supreme Court allowed a lower court’s decision on Texas’s abortion case to stand; the decision ruled that Texas hospitals do not have to perform emergency abortions if they would violate the state’s law. Philip B. Banks III, the deputy mayor for public safety in New York City and one of Mayor Eric Adams’s top aides, has resigned. His phones were seized by federal investigators last month as part of a probe into bribery and corruption allegations.

Dispatches

The Books Briefing: In a new short story, Lauren Groff captures the precise moment when a friendship changes forever, Walt Hunter writes. The Wonder Reader: Henry David Thoreau once argued in The Atlantic that autumn doesn’t get enough attention. “This season, I’m wondering whether Thoreau had a point,” Isabel Fattal writes.

Explore all of our newsletters here.

Evening Read

Illustration by Karlotta Freier

Couples Therapy, but for Siblings

By Faith Hill

Cam and Dan Beaudoin’s three-decade-old problem began when they were kids. Dan would follow his big brother around. Cam, who’s about three years older, would distance himself. Dan would get mad; Cam would get mad back. Although their mom assured them that they’d be “best friends” some day, nothing much changed—until about three years ago, when a fight got so bad that the brothers stopped talking to each other completely. Dan left all of their shared group chats and unfriended Cam on LinkedIn.

But the brothers, who didn’t speak for about a year and a half, started to understand the gravity of this separation.

Read the full article.

Reflections on October 7

Today marks one year since Hamas’s attack on Israel and the start of the subsequent Israel-Hamas war in Gaza. Below, we’ve compiled some of our writers’ recent reporting, analysis, and reflection:

The war that would not end: In the year since October 7, the Biden administration has focused on preventing the escalation of a regional war in the Middle East, Franklin Foer reports. But it has failed to secure the release of Israeli hostages or end the fighting in Gaza. Gaza’s suffering is unprecedented: “In my brother’s story, you can get a small glimpse of what the most destructive war in Palestinian history has meant in human terms,” Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib writes. “How my family survived the October 7 massacre”: “We heard shouting in Arabic outside our house—a commander telling one of his men to try to break in. We had woken up to a nightmare: The border had been breached. Hamas was here,” Amir Tibon writes in an article adapted from his new book, The Gates of Gaza. A naked desperation to be seen: In books about the aftermath of October 7, Israelis and Palestinians seek recognition for their humanity, Gal Beckerman writes. The Israeli artist who offends everyone: Long a fearless critic of Israel, Zoya Cherkassky-Nnadi has made wrenching portraits of her nation’s suffering since October 7, Judith Shulevitz writes.

Culture Break

NBC

Watch. The return of Nate Bargatze and his now-classic George Washington sketch points to what really works about Saturday Night Live, Amanda Wicks writes.

Grow up. Rather than sneak your greens into a smoothie, it’s time to eat your vegetables like an adult, Yasmin Tayag writes.

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Stephanie Bai contributed to this newsletter.

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In her new short story, “The Ghosts of Wannsee,” the author Lauren Groff captures the precise moment when a friendship changes forever. “Wannsee” follows two friends from high school who reunite one afternoon after many years apart; the encounter alters their understanding of each other in ways that neither anticipated. Groff’s narrator remembers her old friend Leslie as a childhood crush—and she remembers his father, who abused him and belittled her. But Leslie, now the partner of a wildly successful designer, is not eager to summon old ghosts from his past. When the narrator meets up with him on a brief layover in Berlin, she realizes that the person standing in front of her is no longer her Leslie: “Oh, I thought, how strange to see people whom you’ve loved for so long,” Groff writes. “You don’t really see their current face; instead, you see the faces of your greatest intensity of love.”

Groff’s most recent novel, The Vaster Wilds, which the Atlantic contributor Judith Shulevitz likened to a “pilgrimage,” followed a solitary young girl running through the wilderness on foot in 17th-century America. The narrator in “Wannsee” takes a cab through contemporary Berlin, surrounded by people, museums, and bars. The two settings couldn’t be more different, but Groff’s novel and her short story share an interest in the revelations and limitations of a single point of view. In “Wannsee,” the narrator is caught off guard by Leslie’s anger at her attempts at sympathy. Groff taps into the deeply unsettling reality that, no matter what experiences we share, the memories we have are shaped by our perspectives, and are ours alone.

Photograph by Emile Ducke

The Ghosts of Wannsee

By Lauren Groff

In Berlin, the winter sky is screwed on so tight that all the world beneath becomes dark and gray and grim. On my runs around Wannsee, from the corner of my eye, I could glimpse the furious ghosts of the place seething in the middle of the lake, transforming into whitecaps if I looked at them directly. Around some bends, I’d come across naked old men, bright red with the cold of their swim, vigorously toweling off their withered loins. When I’d come to the ferry launch to Pfaueninsel, the peacocks across the spit of water would cry out so loudly in their winter rutting, I could easily imagine that the island was entirely made of peacocks, in layers four thick upon the ground, that the castle there was wrapped in a hissing sheet of iridescent blue, the million eyes of Argos on their tail feathers staring up, affronted by the low gray clouds.

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In our scattered social-media age, a strange little problem has emerged: It is hard to figure out how to invite people to a party. A slew of digital tools is available—Paperless Post, Instagram stories, Partiful, a simple group text—that should theoretically make it easier to reach people. But it also means you have no one way to contact everyone you want to invite, and you’re left sending out multiple emails and posts for a single party. Sending a few extra texts hardly ranks among the world’s most pressing problems, but finding ways to gather people together is a meaningful act during a time when so many Americans—even the ones with friends—deal with loneliness and isolation. The challenge of the modern party invite is the story of the changing web in miniature: In recent decades, everyone seemed to be hanging out in the same few places online. Now people are dispersed widely across platforms, with even more variability based on age and affinity.

If you are loyal to a particular invitation method—or if you simply call your friends when you’re having a party—you may be scratching your head, wondering what I am talking about here. That’s fair enough. But according to my unscientific surveys, I am not the only one living in a dispersed invitation landscape. The other day, I texted a group of family members asking in what formats they get invited to parties. My Boomer mom responded first: Paperless Post, always, she said. My Gen Z sister, scoffing at the idea of receiving an email invite, said she mostly gets invites via the app Partiful, or group texts with friends (“grexts,” as she called them). My Millennial sister-in-law said she usually receives emails or texts from friends. Another, just as unscientific, poll of my colleagues indicated a similarly diverse range of invite approaches.

Geography seems to play a part too: My East Coast colleagues, especially those based in New York City, were familiar with Partiful, whereas that name meant little to people in other regions. (Partiful declined to share information about its users’ age and regional distribution with me.) These different experiences mirror the broader feeling of spending time online right now. Compared with a decade ago, when the internet was loosely understandable as a cohesive body, the web now is splintered and evacuated of any semblance of monoculture, as my colleague Charlie Warzel has written. That lack of common practices can breed a sense of disorientation—there’s no one TV show everyone seems to be watching, or one funny post or viral moment of the day. It can also cause logistical headaches.

The party-invite patchwork is especially new to Millennials, many of whom, for years, relied on the trusty Facebook event as their go-to method—one that let hosts be very inclusive about whom they were inviting without needing to have everyone’s phone number or email address. But now the platform has dramatically declined in popularity among younger generations. Hosts, turning to other options, risk inadvertently excluding potential invitees who aren’t on the same apps—especially those outside one’s inner circle. (Meta didn’t respond to my inquiry about its event feature.)

Am I being dramatic? Perhaps. Lizzie Post, the great-great-granddaughter of the etiquette doyenne Emily Post and a co-president of her eponymous institute, was far too polite to say as much to me when we spoke on the phone. She did note that although navigating a varied invite landscape is not an entirely new phenomenon, the digital world has introduced novel etiquette questions: For example, if you see an Instagram story about a party, are you really invited?

Post told me that my approach for inviting people to my recent birthday party, at which I served a six-foot sandwich to my friends in Prospect Park, was both clear and “so cool” (not to brag or anything). In addition to my Instagram “close friends” story invite, which stated that anyone who saw it was invited, I sent some personal messages to people who may have missed it, and told other friends about it in person. Was this extra work? A bit. Was it worth it? Absolutely. That our online lives are so diffuse only reinforces the value of in-person gathering. Parties alone can’t fix what my colleague Derek Thompson has called “a hang-out depression,” caused in part by the demands of technology. But, for all the annoyance of our new party landscape, putting in a bit of extra effort to get people together can be a beautiful thing.

Related:

Why Americans suddenly stopped hanging out Partiful calls itself “facebook events for hot people.”

Here are three new stories from The Atlantic:

How do you forgive the people who killed your family? It’s time to stop taking Sam Altman at his word, David Karpf argues. Yuval Noah Harari wants to reclaim Zionism.

Today’s News

The longshoremen’s strike has been suspended until January 15, after the union reached a tentative agreement with the U.S. Maritime Alliance. Last month, 254,000 jobs were added to the U.S. economy, and the unemployment rate dropped to 4.1 percent. The U.S. military launched strikes that hit more than a dozen Houthi targets in Yemen, according to U.S. officials.

Dispatches

The Books Briefing: Karl Ove Knausgaard’s exploration of the art of Edvard Munch is moving and worthwhile, Emma Sarappo writes. Atlantic Intelligence: What if your ChatGPT transcripts leaked?

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Evening Read

Warner Bros. / Everett Collection

More Evidence That Celebrities Just Don’t Like You

By Spencer Kornhaber

Examples are stacking up: Celebrities just don’t like us. Last year, Donald Glover enlisted his famous friends to make a gruesome TV show about a killer pop fan. This year, Chappell Roan, the breakout singing sensation of 2024, called her most ardent admirers creepy. Now Joker: Folie à Deux offers a tedious lecture about the challenges of fame. Audience members may walk out feeling punished for the crime of wanting to be entertained by a comic-book-inspired movie-musical starring some of the most successful performers on Earth.

Read the full article.

More From The Atlantic

Lithium is making a comeback. We’re entering uncharted territory for math. Amir Tibon: “How my father saved my life on October 7”

Culture Break

Simon Ridgway / HBO

Watch. Ever feel like your life is determined by powerful forces beyond your reach? Industry (streaming on Max) is the show for you, Zachary Siegel writes.

Read. “The Ghosts of Wannsee,” a short story by Lauren Groff:

“On my runs around Wannsee, from the corner of my eye, I could glimpse the furious ghosts of the place seething in the middle of the lake, transforming into whitecaps if I looked at them directly.”

Play our daily crossword.

P.S.

Among the many meats on my six-foot birthday sandwich was capicola. This cured meat has long been a staple of my Italian sandwiches, so I was tickled to see it among the words and phrases Merriam-Webster added to its dictionary this year. It is in good company with touch grass and nepo baby.

— Lora

Stephanie Bai contributed to this newsletter.

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Western North Carolina lies hundreds of miles inland from any coast. The counties around the Blue Ridge Mountains sit at high elevations, away from the dense flood zones along the Atlantic. The idea that more than a foot of rain would rapidly overwhelm the region, sweeping up homes and ripping up vegetation, seemed almost unthinkable. But a week after Hurricane Helene made landfall, at least 200 people have died, and the death toll is expected to rise as the floodwaters recede and the debris clears. Many inland residents in North Carolina have never experienced flooding like this in their lifetime, and only a sliver have the flood insurance necessary to help them rebuild.

Flood insurance isn’t included in homeowner’s insurance, and Americans are generally not required to buy it. (One exception is the homeowners who live in high-risk areas, who must purchase flood insurance to get a federally backed mortgage.) Without this special coverage, floods can be “a huge financial shock to households,” Carolyn Kousky, the associate vice president for economics and policy at the Environmental Defense Fund, told me. Those living in storm-torn areas without coverage are looking at a massive list of expenses—home repairs, debris removal, temporary lodging—that they may have to pay for out of pocket after Helene. Still, just a tiny share of homeowners currently own flood insurance. Most of the North Carolina counties hit hard by Helene did not fall within high-risk areas on flood maps from the Federal Emergency Management Agency; one estimate found that less than 2.5 percent of homeowners in the region have flood insurance—and that number is even lower in some counties.

“In a perfect world, everyone with some degree of flood risk could and would carry flood insurance on their homes,” my colleague Zoë Schlanger, who covers climate change, told me. But the reality is that even some of the residents in flood-prone areas do not buy the plans because they are so expensive. The average premium cost $700 a year in 2019, but that number can reach the thousands for some coastal communities. Lower-income residents face an especially daunting situation: They are less likely to be able to afford flood insurance, and they also have less money on hand to rebuild.

Many people assume that they face little risk if they aren’t living in an area included in high-risk zones on FEMA’s flood maps, Sarah Pralle, a political-science professor at the Maxwell School at Syracuse University, told me. But FEMA’s maps don’t capture the full picture of flood risk. They are drawn “based on the assumption that the past will help us predict the future. In a rapidly changing climate, that’s not the case.” The maps can quickly become outdated as climate risks evolve, she noted, and don’t take into account fluvial flooding, or flooding from heavy-rain events, which is what North Carolina saw last week. Even people who have personally experienced flooding sometimes drop their policies, Pralle said, adding that “if people have lived in a place where it hasn’t flooded in decades, they lose that memory of what can happen and what kind of losses they might suffer.”

Those who do buy flood insurance usually live in areas prone to flooding. The result is a system in which the risk is not evenly spread out, making flood-insurance premiums hugely pricey—Pralle likened it to a health-insurance system in which only the sick buy coverage. Some countries organize their disaster-insurance programs so everyone pays a flat rate, Kousky explained. In the United States, that would mean someone living on Florida’s coastline would pay the same premium as someone living on the top of a mountain. That’s a tough sell for many Americans, and overhauling the National Flood Insurance Program, which is saddled with debt, would be politically contentious.

Those without flood insurance will need to rely on a “patchwork” system of federal aid, loans, and charity, Kousky said, as they recover from Helene. One option is accepting government loans, but she noted that many people are not in a position to take on more debt after a hurricane—and their applications may be denied too. FEMA disaster-assistance grants are another pathway, and most of them do not need to be repaid—but those are “just an emergency stopgap,” Kousky said. They’re not designed to fully help people recover, usually providing only a few thousand dollars for each household—a fraction of what residents would need to rebuild.

The process of recovering from Helene is just beginning. Still, hurricane season is not over for the rest of the country, and FEMA currently does not have enough funding to make it through the rest of the season. Last week, President Joe Biden signed a short-term spending bill authorizing another $16 billion for the agency, but further funding would need to come from Congress, which is currently in recess until after the election.

So much of the response following disasters can feel piecemeal and reactive, Pralle said. Insurance is important—but not the full story. “Every dollar we put into prevention is going to be a lot more efficiently spent,” she explained. In a world reshaped by climate change, “this idea that there’s safe places you can go hide is unrealistic.”

Related:

North Carolina was set up for disaster. Hurricane Helene through the eyes of a former FEMA chief

Here are three new stories from The Atlantic:

The rise of the right-wing tattletale America isn’t ready for the new reality of hurricane deaths. Gisèle Pelicot and the most unthinkable, ordinary crime

Today’s News

A court filing from Special Counsel Jack Smith was unsealed yesterday, revealing key evidence in his federal election-subversion case against Donald Trump. Israel will continue striking targets linked to Hezbollah in Beirut, the Bekaa Valley, and southern Lebanon, according to the Israeli military chief. Kamel Ahmad Jawad, a resident of Dearborn, Michigan, was killed by an air strike in Lebanon on Tuesday, his family said in a statement. Tina Peters, a former Colorado county clerk, was sentenced to nine years in prison for a data-breach scheme that involved tampering with voting machines used in the 2020 presidential election.

Dispatches

Work in Progress: In many domains, the conventional wisdom among progressives is mistaken, oversimplified, or based on wishful thinking, Rogé Karma writes. The economics of immigration is not one of them.

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Evening Read

Illustration by Liana Finck

Please Don’t Make Me Download Another App

By Ian Bogost

Fifteen years ago, an Apple ad campaign issued a paean to the triumph of the smartphone: There’s an app for that, it said. Today, that message sounds less like a promise than a threat. There’s an app for that? If only there weren’t.

Read the full article.

More From The Atlantic

The EV culture wars aren’t what they seem. What conservatives mean by “freedom of speech” Georgia’s election-law problems aren’t legal ones. Health care is on the ballot again. For how much longer can life continue on this troubled planet?

Culture Break

Illustration by Ben Kothe / The Atlantic. Source: Getty.

Debate. When a friend’s in need and you’re at a loss for words, why not use ChatGPT?

Read. In Olga Tokarczuk’s posthumously published novel, The Empusium: A Health Resort Horror Story, she champions a world governed by myth, not reason.

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J. D. Vance has floundered in the day-to-day “retail politics” aspect of the running-mate gig. (Take, for example, his recent strained interaction with a doughnut-shop employee.) But he nonetheless came across lucid at the lectern during last night’s vice-presidential debate. In the face of Democrats’ consistent characterization of him as “weird,” Vance slyly executed a strategy to make himself, and Trumpism, appear “normal.” He eschewed talk of “childless cat ladies” and ran from his own lies about Haitian immigrants eating pets in Springfield, Ohio. That such a sentence needs to be written tells you all you need to know about the ugly tenor of this race.

Vance seemed to be following a simple three-word mantra: Tone it down. Cameras showed him warmly greeting his opponent, Tim Walz, before and after the contest. He wore a bright-fuchsia necktie, a softer version of the MAGA-red power tie. He didn’t raise his voice, nor did he appear overly combative and childish like his running mate. Although he’s still not broadly liked by voters, for some viewers, last night’s version of Vance proved palatable: “I thought Vance would be a little more radical, taking a page from Trump, but he seemed fairly calm and complimentary,” a 77-year-old voter from Central Pennsylvania told The New York Times.

On the other side of the screen you had Tim Walz, a candidate who has been almost too good at the folksy, eye-level stuff (Change your air filter, folks! Clean those gutters!). On the debate stage, though, Walz didn’t strike a bold, confident figure. From the jump, his eyes went wide with apprehension, and he seemed to spend much of the night on the defensive. His twisty answer about his false claim that he was in Tiananmen Square during the 1989 massacre took far too long to reach its destination: I misspoke.

Both candidates ensured that the evening stayed disconcertingly friendly—good for Americans’ blood pressure, bad for properly holding an opponent’s feet to the fire. Per NBC, voters heard Walz and Vance use agree, agreement, and I don’t disagree more than a dozen times throughout the broadcast. This amiable atmosphere likely helped Vance in particular. And though Walz’s favorability rating also increased among viewers, the reality is that his repeated attempts to extend an olive branch had the unintended side effect of making the Trump-Vance ticket seem like a legitimate choice this November.

As my colleague David Graham noted, the most revealing moment of the night came near the very end, and, sadly, it’s unclear how many viewers were even still tuned in to witness it. Walz asked Vance whether he believed that Trump lost the 2020 election. Vance dodged, and reverted to spinning some strange yarn about Facebook and censorship. “That is a damning nonanswer,” Walz said. “Mike Pence made that decision to certify that election. That’s why Mike Pence isn’t on this stage.”

It was a sharp, if understated, Walz retort. In this moment, and in many other moments throughout the debate, Walz did not expose the depths of MAGA extremism. He could have more forcefully laid bare the truth about his rival, but he mostly stuck to highlighting policy differences. Pence was absent from that microphone opposite Walz not merely because Pence and Trump disagree. Pence has been cast out of Trump’s world because many members of the MAGA movement consider Pence a traitor worthy of scorn—or something much worse.

Casual news consumers might forget certain details of January 6. The Trump-directed mob didn’t just charge down the National Mall from the Ellipse to the Capitol. Earlier that day, a group had literally erected a gallows outside Congress. Chants of “Hang Mike Pence!” rang out among the insurrectionists. None of this was a joke. It wasn’t a performance. Some Trump supporters wanted to execute the former vice president. And, as all of this unfolded, nobody knew whether Trump was going to take the necessary steps to stop such an event from happening. What sort of person would ever take Pence’s place?

Vance may have come across as disarming last night, but persuadable voters should listen to his messaging on the stump. As my colleague Elaine Godfrey recently wrote, Vance has the dangerous ability to squeeze Trumpism “through his own post-liberal-populist tube and produce something that looks like a coherent ideology." Meanwhile, a key component of Vance’s appeal, at least in Trump’s eyes, is that Vance won’t “betray” him like he believes Pence did. That historic “betrayal” is the only reason why America is able to have what will hopefully prove to be a fair election in five weeks.

Walz didn’t have to stomp his feet, or yell, or act like a jerk—that wouldn’t have worked, and it’s not his nature. But this election’s only vice-presidential debate exposed the true danger of polite normalization. Throughout the debate, Walz failed to remind viewers just how extreme of a moment, and a movement, Trump has created. He wasn’t debating a fellow potential vice president; he was squaring off against someone who may ignore the Constitution in service of an aspiring authoritarian. If Trump wins this election, another free one is far from guaranteed.

Vance is a cerebral, Ivy League–educated lawyer who once referred to Trump as “cultural heroin,” but, right now, he’s aiding and abetting Trump on his steady march to autocracy.

As I wrote earlier this year, Vance has successfully fashioned himself into Trump’s Mini-Me. Like any politician, he can turn that dial whichever way he wants, whenever he wants. Last night, Vance used grace as a Trojan horse for Trumpism, and Walz’s reciprocal friendliness and diplomacy unfortunately helped Vance squeeze through the gate and into America’s living rooms.

Related:

The Vance warning What Democrats don’t understand about J. D. Vance

Here are three new stories from The Atlantic:

Did Donald Trump notice J. D. Vance’s strangest answer? The journalist who cried treason Revenge of the office

Today’s News

Prosecutors said that they may bring additional charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams, and that more defendants could be indicted. Israel and Hezbollah fought at close range in Lebanon, and eight Israeli soldiers were killed in the first day and a half of combat, according to the Israeli military. Israeli strikes in Lebanon have killed at least 1,400 people, according to the Lebanese government. Longshoremen are striking and picketing at ports across the country. They are asking for higher wage increases over six years as well as limits on automation use.

Evening Read

Illustration by The Atlantic. Sources: Getty; Shutterstock.

‘Nobody Knows What These Bills Are For’

By Annie Lowrey

Catherine, who asked me to use only her middle name to protect her privacy, is a white-collar worker in Pennsylvania. “About 10—Jesus, 12—years ago, I was diagnosed with Crohn’s,” she told me, which led her to rack up debt, some of it related to her use of a $46,000-a-year IV-infusion drug …

In years past, Catherine’s medical debt would have accumulated late fees and interest. Her creditors might have sued, seizing her assets or garnishing her wages. Her credit score would have plummeted, making it hard or even impossible for her to rent an apartment or buy a home. Some doctors might have refused to give her care. Some companies might have refused to employ her. But now, all of Catherine’s debts might not augur much of anything. A quiet, confusing revolution is happening in the world of medical debt, one that—and I cannot believe I am typing this—actually bodes well for consumers.

Read the full article.

More From The Atlantic

Shh, ChatGPT. That’s a secret. David Frum: The Vance warning J. D. Vance tries to rewrite history. A chance for Biden to make a difference on the death penalty Anne Applebaum: The only way the Ukraine war can end Iran is not ready for war with Israel.

Culture Break

Graham Tolbert

Listen. The singer-guitarist MJ Lenderman is indie rock’s new golden boy—probably because he’s offering more of the same, Spencer Kornhaber writes.

Read. “Mutation: Factor V,” a poem by Shara Lessley:

“Light through the blinds / sprays the gray wall- / paper. The sonographer / hunts for things / that could kill me, / her wand wheezing”

Play our daily crossword.

Stephanie Bai contributed to this newsletter.

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