The war in Ukraine is the final shovel of dirt on the grave of any optimism about the world order that was born with the fall of Soviet Communism. Now we are faced with the long grind of defeating Moscow’s armies and eventually rebuilding a better world.Before we turn to Ukraine, here are a few of today’s stories from The Atlantic.

Pretty early into Cocaine Bear’s running time, I started searching desperately for the metaphor. Elizabeth Banks’s action-comedy-horror is, as you might have heard, about a black bear in 1980s Georgia who eats a lot of cocaine that fell out of an airplane. The cocaine makes her angry and hungry for more cocaine, and given that she’s already a big bear with sharp claws, the combination is quite distressing for the people in the forest around her.

For the past few weeks, my daily existence has been scored by the melodies of late winter: the drip of melting ice, the soft rustling of freshly sprouted leaves—and, of course, the nonstop racket of sneezes and coughs.The lobby of my apartment building is alive with the sounds of sniffles and throats being cleared. Every time I walk down the street, I’m treated to the sight of watery eyes and red noses.

Is it news that people are angry with Marjorie Taylor Greene?This week, the Georgia Republican took advantage of Twitter’s newly liberalized character restrictions to do what she does best: suggest something unhinged, and sit back while her political opponents’ heads explode in white-hot rage.“We need a national divorce,” she tweeted. “We need to separate by red states and blue states and shrink the federal government. Everyone I talk to says this.

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.Housing shortages color all aspects of American life, my colleague Annie Lowrey wrote over the weekend, including bagels, music, and education. The solution seems simple: Build more homes.

This is an edition of Up for Debate, a newsletter by Conor Friedersdorf. On Wednesdays, he rounds up timely conversations and solicits reader responses to one thought-provoking question. Later, he publishes some thoughtful replies. Sign up for the newsletter here.Question of the WeekWhat is your relationship with organized religion? How has it affected your life, and has its impact changed over time? I’m eager to hear anything about the varieties of your religious experiences.

Photographs by Peter Garritano for The AtlanticIn 2004, Steven Spielberg made an entire movie about the terror of getting stuck for months in an airport, but I might be happy never to leave the new LaGuardiaAir travel itself, the part where you are crammed like a rodent into a metal tube, is clearly miserable.

Americans hate—or claim to hate—their politicians, but even by those standards, the early shape of the 2024 presidential race is a little bizarre. More than 20 months out from the election, Americans consistently say they don’t want to see a rematch of Joe Biden and Donald Trump. And yet the most likely outcome today is a rematch of Joe Biden and Donald Trump.

If you are an American parent, you are mired in contradiction wherever you look: Children are too coddled, a strident Facebook post might shout at you, right before you read an article about the dangers of letting kids go outside alone. It takes a village, you are told, but also, everyone hates it when you bring your toddler on a plane or into a restaurant.