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.Pity the poor mayors. Or don’t—most voters clearly don’t. On Tuesday, Chicagoans unceremoniously kicked Lori Lightfoot to the curb, depriving her of the chance to win a second term in an April 4 runoff election.

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.

History has long been a theater of war, the past serving as a proxy in conflicts over the present. Ron DeSantis is warping history by banning books on racism from Florida’s schools; people remain divided about the right approach to repatriating Indigenous objects and remains; the Pentagon Papers were an attempt to twist narratives about the Vietnam War.

As part of SXSW 2023, The Atlantic is announcing a full day of interviews on Sunday, March 12, that will bring elected officials and other national leaders to the festival for conversations about the future of democracy.

Economists have been talking about a looming recession for months. Why hasn’t it happened yet?But first, here are three new stories from The Atlantic:
How do you stop lawmakers from destroying the law?
What losing my two children taught me about grief
The FBI desperately wants to let Trump off the hook.
What Recession?According to the predictions of many economists last summer and fall, America should be in a recession right now.

The way conservatives tell it, the Federal Bureau of Investigation is a hive of anti-Trump villainy, filled with agents looking for any excuse to hound the former president with investigative witch hunts. But the thing to understand about Donald Trump’s legal troubles is that they exist not because federal agents are out to get him, but despite the fact that the FBI is full of Trump supporters who would really like to leave him alone.

Gossip can provide sensational grist for an entertainer’s appeal, for better or worse. But for singer-songwriters whose artistry is often diaristic, scandal is especially intriguing.

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.Last week, I asked readers to describe their relationship with organized religion. What follows is but a fraction of the outpouring of responses—in fact, I’ll be sending another email next week with more replies.

Lorenzo Córdova is a lawyer and a scholar, a man with an office full of books. For most of the past decade, Córdova has served as president of the Mexican National Electoral Institute, an independent, nonpartisan but government-funded organization that first came into existence more than 30 years ago. The INE, as it is usually called (demonstrators chant “ee-nay, ee-nay”), has been so successful that until recently, its existence was taken for granted.