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.
The era of the teeny store is upon us. Spend time in some of America’s prime shopping destinations, and you may be presented with just a few racks of clothing or a small collection of shoes. You might enjoy a lovely floral display and a comfy spot to sit, but you won’t be offered options.

You might have already guessed this from the coughs and sniffles around you, but a lot of people are sick right now, and a lot of them have COVID. According to the CDC’s latest data, levels of SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater are “very high” in every region of the country; national levels have been “very high” for about a month.

One weirdness of listening to Donald Trump talk for any length of time is that, amid the syllable minestrone, he occasionally says something that is both intelligible and honest.
One such moment came during his appearance on the popular podcast hosted by the computer scientist Lex Fridman this week. “To get the word out,” Trump said, is important in politics, and television was becoming “a little bit older and maybe less significant.

Emilio Morenatti / AP
Diego Meneses, of Colombia, competes in the Men’s Javelin Throw F34 Final at the Stade de France stadium during the 2024 Paralympics, on September 4, 2024. Meneses won the bronze medal in the event.

Peter Pomerantsev, a contributor at The Atlantic and author of This Is Not Propaganda: Adventures in the War Against Reality, is an expert on the ways information can be manipulated. For this special episode, Megan talks with Peter about the role of propaganda in America and how to watch out for it.
Looking for more great audio from The Atlantic? Check out Autocracy in America, hosted by Peter Pomerantsev and staff writer Anne Applebaum. Subscribe wherever you listen.

This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.
Donald Trump has disgraced himself in many areas.

Steph Chambers / Getty
Kinga Dróżdż of Team Poland competes against Xufeng Zou of Team China during the Women’s Sabre Category A fencing quarterfinals on day six of the Paris 2024 Summer Paralympic Games at the Grand Palais. In wheelchair fencing matches, competitors are seated in opposing wheelchairs that are fixed to a platform, ensuring close-combat tactics and limiting their ability to dodge attacks. In the sabre and épée categories, hits above the waist are counted.

During a conversation onstage at a Moms for Liberty event last week, Donald Trump said something that made even me—a seasoned visitor to Trump’s theme park of hyperbole—look around in confusion at the people around me in the audience.
“The transgender thing is incredible,” he told the Moms for Liberty co-founder Tiffany Justice. “Think of it; your kid goes to school, and he comes home a few days later with an operation. The school decides what’s going to happen with your child.

Today is the publication date for two new books from Atlantic Editions, an imprint of The Atlantic and the independent publisher Zando: On Heroism: McCain, Milley, Mattis, and the Cowardice of Donald Trump, by Jeffrey Goldberg, editor in chief of The Atlantic and host of Washington Week on PBS; and On the Housing Crisis: Land, Development, Democracy, by Jerusalem Demsas, a staff writer and host of the new Atlantic policy podcast, Good on Paper.

Not that long ago, in the summer of 2020, the moment seemed ripe for meaningful criminal-justice reform in America. Millions of people joined demonstrations denouncing the police killings of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, among others, and to call for racial justice. There was a feeling that real progress was about to be made in tackling the problem of mass incarceration in the United States that began in the 1970s and that disproportionately affects communities of color.