The Atlantic Daily: One Week More
Trump and Clinton hit the home stretch, and not a moment too soon for voters.
What We’re Following
Twilight for Trump: A series of new allegations against the Republican nominee emerged last night: that his company had a secret server communicating with a Russian bank, that the Kremlin launched an operation to make him a Russian asset, and that he further exploited loopholes to avoid paying federal income tax. These reports aren’t definitive, however, and the former two are in dispute. Perhaps more concerning, as voters prepare to head to the polls, are the numerous allegations that Trump’s party is coordinating widespread efforts to intimidate voters by following people, interrogating them, and even calling 911 to report cases of “voter fraud.”
Countdown for Clinton: She’s still dealing with fallout from FBI Director James Comey’s announcement about her emails, but at this point, most of the political backlash is directed at Comey himself (though some of our readers defended him). Now, at the end of a long slog of a campaign, her team is having to reckon with what can possibly follow one of the ugliest elections in recent memory. So, if a woman does win the White House, what’s next? Here’s what people predicted a hundred years ago.
And for the Rest of Us: If all this is giving you agita, you’re not alone. Fifty-two percent of Americans say the election is a significant source of stress, with high stakes, unpredictable outcomes, and a constant barrage of ugly attacks and revelations combining to create a national climate of anxiety. You can’t even relax over a cup of coffee; Starbucks just revealed that its holiday cup design is meant to be a statement against divisiveness, which just goes to show how far that sense of division has permeated. For more evidence, look to the pop charts: The longest-running No. 1 song of 2016 is the Chainsmokers’ “Closer,”a wistful duet that captures the weariness of America.
Snapshot
Who We’re Talking To
Jerry Kaplan, a computer scientist, and Saadia Zahidi, an economist, explain how robots could empower women in the future.
Max Richter, a soundtrack composer, discusses how he sets the mood for dystopian TV shows like The Leftovers.
Jodi Houge, a pastor, shares how she started a church by holding services in a coffee shop. If you’re a member of the clergy, what changes have you seen in the faith community? Do you see more people rejecting religion, or receiving it in different ways? We’d like to hear from you: hello@theatlantic.com.
Evening Read
Jacoba Urist asks: Why do colleges have so much art?
Public or private, rural or urban, college museums are tackling ambitious projects like never before, promoting academic curators—who were once part of a sleepier, insular art world—to be lead actors on the cultural stage.
But not everyone agrees that school museums should compete with their mainstream counterparts or that students necessarily benefit more from having art of such magnitude as opposed to more modest collections. The ongoing art wave raises questions about whether college museums have outlived their primary purpose as educational institutions and perhaps now serve a different function in both academic and art circles. The historian Dominic Green recently critiqued the “worldwide arms race among museums,” with each trying to outdo the other. Green was referring to the “grandiosity” of the Tate Modern in London and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, but the same sentiment applies to campus art: How much is too much?
What Do You Know?*
1. In 2015, an estimated ____________ Americans became millionaires.
Scroll down for the answer, or find it here.
2. According to one report, a third of women’s wage gains since the 1960s are thanks to the availability of ____________.
Scroll down for the answer, or find it here.
3. The Chinese typewriter had a tray bed of over ____________ characters.
Scroll down for the answer, or find it here.
Answers: 300,000, oral contraceptives, 2,000
Reader Response
A reader reflects on James Comey’s email bombshell:
It seems to me that the unfortunate way that Comey handled this situation was definitely a very clear-cut case of “working the refs.” Trump and his campaign have pushed so hard on the idea that everything is rigged—including the FBI—that when these potentially new emails came up, Comey lost his backbone and decided to cover his ass and show The Republicans that he was not rigged. Sort of like a make-up call in a big game. … If we had a normal candidate who accepted the system, then Comey would not have been feeling the pressure to prove he was not “rigged,” and he would have followed the 60-day tradition that has been in place for decades even if it meant taking some heat about it down the line.
See more reader discussion here.
Verbs
Emails checked, rom-coms revisited, free shipping debunked, “bigly” defined.
The Atlantic Daily is written by Rosa Inocencio Smith. To contact us, email hello@theatlantic.com.
*The newsletter dated October 31, 2016, misstated the home of the Golden State Warriors as Cleveland. Eek! We regret the error; thanks so much to the readers who wrote in to correct it.