<em>The Atlantic Daily</em>: Where the Country Goes From Here

Senior Republican leadership has remained largely silent.

A few senior American military figures—including President Trump’s former defense secretary, James Mattis—have spoken out against the president. In our latest cover story, Anne Applebaum explores why some people speak out, and why others don’t. “What would it take for Republican senators to admit to themselves that Trump’s loyalty cult is destroying the country they claim to love?”

The country needs to rethink its priorities for the criminal-justice system.

The rallying cry Defund the police “is in one sense a last-resort policy,” Annie Lowrey writes. “But it is also and more urgently a statement of first principles: The country needs to shift financing away from surveillance and punishment, and toward fostering equitable, healthy, and safe communities.”

The aggressive policing of protests will worsen the pandemic.

“People cannot avoid touching their face when they have tear gas in their eyes. People cannot wash their hands in handcuffs,” James Hamblin writes. “People cannot be expected to listen to crucial health directives now, or the next time a public-health crisis arrives, from leaders who themselves refuse to listen.”

Corporate America has nothing real to say about racism.

“These brands set themselves outside the systems they serve,” Amanda Mull writes, “marveling at the country’s racism as though it’s an invisible pathogen for which no one is responsible, and therefore one that no one can meaningfully address.”

One question, answered: Are gyms as we knew them before the pandemic gone forever?

Michael Owen, our deputy editor and a self-identified “person who exercises a lot,” imagines the gyms of the future as cleaner, quieter, and less crowded spaces than they once were. But in that transformed state, they may also lose the very thing that defined them, he argues.

“Fitness can happen anywhere, in any form, anytime,” Michael writes. Gyms aren’t just places you work out; they’re “where you go when you want to be with people who can help you get stronger, and who have the best tools to do it.”

View all of our stories related to the coronavirus outbreak. We’re looking to talk with individuals who got sick with COVID-19 and didn’t tell their family about it. To share your experience, please write to us.

What to read if … you just want practical advice:

What to read if … you’re struggling to make sense of time:

In a pandemic, “the understanding of time is lost,” the artist Ai Weiwei writes. “A potted cactus, a piano, a bright table lamp, a microwave oven—all things familiar to us turn unfamiliar. Some become more important; others lose the ties to our inner life they once had.”