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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.

For decades, my dad has been saying that he doesn’t want to hear a word about self-driving cars until they exist fully and completely. Until he can go to sleep behind the wheel (if there is a wheel) in his driveway in western New York State and wake up on vacation in Florida (or wherever), what is the point?
Driverless cars have long supposedly been right around the corner. Elon Musk once said that fully self-driving cars would be ready by 2019. Ford planned to do it by 2021.

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.

Illustrations by Ben Denzer
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The splendor of the American big-box store lay before me, with its endless variety of shaving products in every imaginable size and color—a retail extravaganza, all of it locked behind Plexiglas. I needed a razor, and in order to obtain one at my neighborhood Target, I had to press a red button to summon a store clerk. Depending on where you live, you may know the drill.

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.
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.

When Donald Trump speaks about the economy, he sounds like a child. China gives us billions of dollars via tariffs. American auto workers take imported cars out of a box and stick the pieces together. These are very light paraphrases of statements he made today at the Economic Club of Chicago, in a sometimes combative interview with the Bloomberg editor in chief John Micklethwait.
Yet voters consistently say they trust Trump more to handle the economy than they do Kamala Harris.

The Atlantic did not publish an article with the headline “To Save Democracy Harris May Need To Steal An Election.”
An image with this fabricated headline (see above) is circulating on social media, appearing to show an article published by The Atlantic. This headline is fabricated. No such article has ever been published by The Atlantic. The fake headline distorts an Atlantic article that was published on October 6, 2021, which ran under the headline “Kamala Harris Might Have to Stop the Steal.