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Donald Trump has built up his reputation as a rich guy. When he ended up unable to cover a massive bond, the courts threw him a lifeline, but just for now.
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The aftermath of the Baltimore bridge collapse
The Supreme Court is shaming itself.

You could see the Francis Scott Key Bridge from Fort McHenry, the pentagon-shaped keep that inspired the bridge’s namesake to write the verses that became our national anthem. You could see it from the pagoda in Patterson Park, another strangely geometric landmark from which I’ve cheered on teams at Baltimore’s annual kinetic-sculpture race. You could see it from the top of Johns Hopkins Hospital, the city’s biggest employer.

The rapid collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore early this morning touched off a frantic search for survivors—and gave Americans a frightening reminder of the fragility of the many systems that allow us to go about our lives.

A few days ago, I watched a video of myself talking in perfect Chinese. I’ve been studying the language on and off for only a few years, and I’m far from fluent. But there I was, pronouncing each character flawlessly in the correct tone, just as a native speaker would. Gone were my grammar mistakes and awkward pauses, replaced by a smooth and slightly alien-sounding voice. “My favorite food is sushi,” I said—wo zui xihuan de shiwu shi shousi—with no hint of excitement or joy.

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.
Terrorists struck deep inside Russia on Friday, and the conspiracy theories are already spinning.
First, here are three new stories from The Atlantic:
Donald Trump’s nine lives
What was NBC even thinking?
Social media is not what killed the web.

Donald Trump loves the musical Cats, and like the titular creatures, the former president seems to have nine lives. Today, in the face of yet another near-death financial experience, Trump got his latest reprieve. An appeals-court panel in New York State reduced the bond he must post in a civil fraud case from more than $464 million to just $175 million.

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Not long ago, the idea that a former president—or a major-party presidential nominee—would face serious legal jeopardy was nearly unthinkable. Today, merely keeping track of the many cases against Donald Trump requires a law degree, a great deal of attention, or both.

An old journalism axiom says that if everyone’s mad at you, you must be doing something right. Since NBC announced that it had hired Ronna McDaniel, the recently deposed chair of the Republican National Committee, as a paid contributor, everyone’s been mad. NBC executives are sure to be consoling themselves that they’re doing something right. It’s just hard to see what.
On Sunday, Meet the Press host Kristen Welker rightly raked McDaniel over her past election denialism.

Updated at 2:05 p.m. ET on March 23, 2024
A decade ago, when foreign fighters were flowing into Syria, the Islamic State’s capital, Raqqa, became a sort of Epcot of global jihad: New arrivals from different nations clustered together in their national groups. If you were a recent arrival from France or just wanted to know where to get a croissant, you could visit a café full of French people and ask. Tens of thousands of foreign fighters came from places as distant as Chile and Japan.