Editor’s Note: Read The Atlantic’s related cover story, “‘I Run the Country and the World.’”
On Thursday, April 24, I joined my colleagues Ashley Parker and Michael Scherer in the White House to interview President Donald Trump. The story behind this meeting is a strange one, told in their new Atlantic cover story, which you can read here.
Ashley and Michael had been seeking an Oval Office meeting for some time.
The world found out shortly before 2 p.m. eastern time on March 15 that the United States was bombing Houthi targets across Yemen.
I, however, knew two hours before the first bombs exploded that the attack might be coming. The reason I knew this is that Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense, had texted me the war plan at 11:44 a.m. The plan included precise information about weapons packages, targets, and timing.
This is going to require some explaining.
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In April 2020, Vanessa Guillén, a 20-year-old Army private, was bludgeoned to death by a fellow soldier at Fort Hood, in Texas. The killer, aided by his girlfriend, burned Guillén’s body. Guillén’s remains were discovered two months later, buried in a riverbank near the base, after a massive search.
Guillén, the daughter of Mexican immigrants, grew up in Houston, and her murder sparked outrage across Texas and beyond.
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Recently, I was rereading Livy’s History of Rome (I am obligated, contractually, to write sentences like this), in order to better understand the story of Cincinnatus, the soldier and statesman who desired only to look after his farm.
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.
Earlier this year, Atlantic staff writer McKay Coppins suggested that voters, in the interest of civic hygiene and personal illumination, attend a Trump rally. This would be the way to understand the candidate, his thoughts, and his supporters, Coppins argued.
In early September of 2020, Joe Biden, then the Democratic nominee for president, promised to put values—values held in contempt, he argued, by the man he would go on to defeat—at the center of American foreign policy. To act on his promise, he said, he would do something Donald Trump had neglected to do. “I’ll meet with His Holiness the Dalai Lama,” Biden said.
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.
Pardon the interruption, but I’m breaking into our regular programming to share some good news about The Atlantic.
First, here are three new stories that are worth your time:
The coming birth-control revolution
The politics of gun safety are changing.
There is more good than evil in this country.
Adam Kinzinger, the former Republican congressman from Illinois, is best known for his service on the congressional committee that investigated the January 6 insurrection. He and Liz Cheney were the only two Republicans on that committee, and completely noncoincidentally, neither one is in Congress today. The new speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, is more typical of the House Republican caucus: He was a leader of the election deniers.
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.Pardon the intrusion, but I am asserting my right (such as it is) as editor in chief to seize temporary control of The Atlantic Daily from Tom Nichols (who I imagine is secretly grateful for this hijacking) in order to share good news about our magazine.
Jeffrey Goldberg, The Atlantic’s editor in chief, joined staff writer Caitlin Dickerson to discuss her cover story, a years-long investigation into the secret history of the Trump administration’s family-separation policy. Dickerson’s story argues that separating children was not an unintended side effect, as previously claimed, but its core intent.
On March 30, 1996, the ABC news-magazine show Turning Point featured a documentary about a pair of American conservationists titled “Deadly Game: The Mark and Delia Owens Story.” The show’s co-anchor Diane Sawyer introduced the broadcast this way: “They went halfway around the world to follow a dream. An idealistic American couple—young, in love. But a strange place and time would test that love.
In each edition of my newsletter, I’ll bring readers inside The Atlantic, and discuss the issues that concern us the most. Was this email forwarded to you? Sign up here to get future issues of Notes from the Editor in Chief.Political courage is a fascinating phenomenon, particularly at moments when it is largely absent.
Every month, our editor in chief will bring readers inside The Atlantic for a taste of how our journalism gets made, and the issues that concern us the most. Expect interviews with our writers, trips into our archives, stories you shouldn’t miss, and more. Sign up to get this newsletter, Notes From the Editor in Chief, delivered to your inbox.
Today, Israel will hold its fourth election in two years. This is a sign not of democracy on steroids, but instead of acute dysfunction, a semipermanent paralysis brought about, strangely, by the extreme stability of Israeli voting patterns: Neither the incumbent, Benjamin Netanyahu, nor his various opponents have been able to change enough minds to build a durable parliamentary majority.
This article was published online on February 9, 2021.In 1862, an abolitionist from Philadelphia named Charlotte Forten decided to go south to the Sea Islands of South Carolina. She was taking up an important mission: teaching Black children, newly liberated by the Union Army, how to read. Two years later, she would describe for readers of The Atlantic the exhilaration she felt as she traveled to her post.
Insurrection Day, 12:40 p.m.: A group of about 80 lumpen Trumpists were gathered outside the Commerce Department, near the White House. They organized themselves in a large circle, and stared at a boombox rigged to a megaphone.
Every weekday evening, our editors guide you through the biggest stories of the day, help you discover new ideas, and surprise you with moments of delight. Subscribe to get this delivered to your inbox.It is a truism in journalism that predicting the future is perilous, mainly because it hasn’t happened yet. So when we publish articles that, over time, prove their prescience, attention ought to be paid.
Do not say that Donald Trump failed to build his wall. He built it. But he built it in Washington, D.C., not along the southern border, and he built it to shield himself from his fellow citizens, not to shield his fellow citizens from the existential threat posed by Mexican job-seekers.The White House today is hidden behind a welter of barricades, anti-scale fencing, bollards, and Jersey barriers. The tens of thousands of people who flooded downtown D.C.
Editor’s Note: White Noise is available to rent now. Find more information here. Today marks the U.S. release of White Noise, The Atlantic’s first feature documentary. The result of a multiyear reporting effort by the director Daniel Lombroso, White Noise explores the rise of the racist right in the United States. The film is an up-close look at a fractured but still-influential movement, and a study of how extremist views have infiltrated mainstream political discourse.
When President Donald Trump canceled a visit to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery near Paris in 2018, he blamed rain for the last-minute decision, saying that “the helicopter couldn’t fly” and that the Secret Service wouldn’t drive him there. Neither claim was true.