There are exactly two possible explanations for the shameful performance the world witnessed on Monday, from a serving American president.

Either Donald Trump is flat-out an agent of Russian interests—maybe witting, maybe unwitting, from fear of blackmail, in hope of future deals, out of manly respect for Vladimir Putin, out of gratitude for Russia’s help during the election, out of pathetic inability to see beyond his 306 electoral votes. Whatever the exact mixture of motives might be, it doesn’t really matter.

Or he is so profoundly ignorant, insecure, and narcissistic that he did not  realize that, at every step, he was advancing the line that Putin hoped he would advance, and the line that the American intelligence, defense, and law-enforcement agencies most dreaded.

The United States is one country, but Americans are living in two separate worlds.

In one version of America, the country is headed in the totally wrong direction. Billionaires control politics. Foreign governments meddle in elections. And not enough people vote to demand a change.

In the other America, things are looking up, particularly with a good president in office. But some civic functions are still broken—especially the media, which is politically biased against certain candidates.

Americans having divergent views on the health of their country’s democracy isn’t a recent development. But a new survey, co-created by The Atlantic and the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), suggests that they have become radically split in their basic perceptions of reality, especially on controversial topics such as Russian interference in the 2016 election. “We only have the thinnest of agreements of what is plaguing our election system,” said Robert P. Jones, the head of PRRI. “After that, people are viewing whatever problems they see very strongly through their partisan lenses.”

It was AncestryDNA’s customer service rep who had to break the news to Catherine St. Clair.

For her part, St. Clair thought she was inquiring about a technical glitch. Her brother—the brother who along with three other siblings had gifted her the DNA test for her birthday—wasn’t showing up right in her family tree. It was not a glitch, the woman on the line had to explain gently, if this news can ever land gently: The man St. Clair thought of as her brother only shared enough DNA with her to be a half sibling. In fact, she didn’t match any family members on her father’s side. Her biological father must be someone else.

“I looked into a mirror and started crying,” says St. Clair, now 56. “I’ve taken my whole life that what I was looking at in the mirror was part my mother and part my dad. And now that half of that person I was looking at in the mirror, I didn't know who that was.”

We still do not know what hold Vladimir Putin has on Donald Trump, but the whole world has now witnessed the power of its grip.

Russia helped Donald Trump into the presidency, as Robert Mueller’s indictment vividly details. Putin, in his own voice, has confirmed that he wanted Trump elected. Standing alongside his benefactor, Trump denounced the special counsel investigating Russian intervention in the U.S. election—and even repudiated his own intelligence appointees.

This is an unprecedented situation, but not an uncontemplated one. At the 1787 convention in Philadelphia, the authors of the Constitution worried a great deal about foreign potentates corrupting the American presidency.

When Gouverneur Morris famously changed his mind in favor of an impeachment clause, he explained his new point of view by invoking a situation very similar to the one now facing the United States:

President Trump’s astonishing news conference Monday with Vladimir Putin, the Russian leader, was as remarkable for what was said as what wasn’t.  

“The disagreements between our two countries are well known and President Putin and I discussed them at length today,” Trump said in Helsinki, Finland. “But if we’re going to solve many of the problems facing our world, then we’re going to have to find ways to cooperate in pursuit of shared interests.”

Trump spent the rest of the news conference highlighting areas of cooperation between the two countries while lambasting his own FBI, and blaming the poor state of U.S.-Russia relations on Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russia’s alleged interference in the 2016 presidential election, Democrats, and Hillary Clinton. The coup de grâce against American interests came when Trump said he believed Putin’s assurances that he didn’t interfere in the election—and refused to validate the consensus of U.S. intelligence agencies that say otherwise.

Voter suppression almost certainly helped Donald Trump win the presidency. Multiple academic studies and court rulings indicate that racially biased election laws, like voter-ID legislation in places like Wisconsin, favored Republican candidates in 2016. Like most other elections in American history, this one wasn’t a fair fight.

A new poll conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute and The Atlantic has uncovered evidence of deep structural barriers to the ballot for black and Latino voters, specifically in the 2016 election. More than that, the survey finds that the deep wounds of Jim Crow endure, leaving America’s democratic promise unfulfilled.

The real extent of voter suppression in the United States is contested. As was the case for poll taxes and literacy tests long ago, restrictive election laws are often, on their face, racially neutral, giving them a sheen of legitimacy. But the new data from PRRI and The Atlantic suggest that the outcomes of these laws are in no way racially neutral. The poll, conducted in June, surveyed Americans about their experiences with voting, their assessments of the country’s political system, and their interfaces with civics. The results, especially when analyzed by race, are troublesome. They indicate that voter suppression is commonplace, and that voting is routinely harder for people of color than for their white counterparts.

Updated at 10:29 p.m. ET

When Donald Trump stood side by side with Russian President Vladimir Putin and announced that he was taking Putin’s word over that of his own intelligence community, talking heads spun on cable news. And rightfully so.

On CNN, Anderson Cooper called Trump’s performance “disgraceful.” Cooper’s face was noticeably cringing and his voice was shaking. John King called the event “the surrender summit.” Dana Bash said journalists “asked the questions of Vladimir Putin that the president of the United States failed to do.”

All par for the course from CNN. The big surprise was going on over at Fox News, where the consternation and outrage were only slightly more restrained.

The day started with Fox & Friends’ Brian Kilmeade taking issue with Trump’s pre-meeting tweet, which read: “Our relationship with Russia has NEVER been worse thanks to many years of U.S. foolishness and stupidity and now, the Rigged Witch Hunt!”

Even Fox News was appalled at President Donald Trump’s performance at his Helsinki press conference alongside Russian President Vladimir Putin. The network, usually only too happy to cheer on the president, responded somewhat differently this time to Trump’s insistence that “President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial” of Russian involvement in election interference. Neil Cavuto, a Fox Business Network host, called the press conference “disgusting.” Appearing on Fox, Mary Kissel of the conservative Wall Street Journal editorial board said, “President Putin scored a great propaganda victory by standing up with President Trump on that stage.” Newt Gingrich declared that Trump’s comments were “the most serious mistake of his presidency.”

President Donald Trump’s press conference with Russia’s Vladimir Putin was a debacle. The president went from an anodyne prepared statement to a question-and-answer session that ping-ponged between stunning and appalling (with a bit of emetic thrown in for good measure). Suffice it to say, it was a new low from a chief executive who is redefining the term.

But the reaction on Twitter from the foreign-policy establishment was almost as untethered as Trump himself. John Brennan, who served as director of the Central Intelligence Agency under Obama, tweeted:

Donald Trump’s press conference performance in Helsinki rises to & exceeds the threshold of “high crimes & misdemeanors.” It was nothing short of treasonous. Not only were Trump’s comments imbecilic, he is wholly in the pocket of Putin. Republican Patriots: Where are you???

There’s a particular type of parent whom Angela Santomero, the creator of a number of children’s shows including Blue’s Clues, Super Why!, and PBS’s Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood, encounters a lot: the guilty-feeling, screen time–loving parent. “Is it okay to let my child watch TV in general? Is that okay?” Santomero says she gets asked. “Is it okay that I need that break and I’m letting my child watch TV?”

Santomero believes that parents can and should be able to plop their kids down in front of a television screen when they need a moment, but in return it’s television’s responsibility to be a helpful babysitter. It’s a belief she shares with the creator of the show that inspired Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood: Fred Rogers, who hosted Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood for the entirety of its 33-year run until it ended in 2001.