Sam Bankman-Fried Pushed One Boundary Too Many

Updated at 1:35 p.m. ET on August 15, 2023

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.

For months, the FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried has regularly engaged with the outside world and lived in relative comfort under house arrest. Now the judge presiding over his case has had enough.

First, here are three new stories from The Atlantic:

• How America got mean
• The GOP primary is a field of broken dreams.
• Drinking water is easy. Just add stuff to it.

‘Up to the Line’

Sam Bankman-Fried has long bent the rules. The FTX founder once elite investors with talk of FTX’s bright future while playing the video game during a meeting; later, he raised a “meme round” of $420.69 million from 69 investors. For years, Bankman-Fried’s maverick approach worked in his favor: His quirky persona, unruly mop