Donald Trump threatening to annex Canada? It was an absurd situation. I briefly considered recycling an old joke of mine about merging all of the High Plains states into a single province of South Saskatchewan. But as I toyed with it, the joke soured. The president of the United States was bellowing aggression against fellow democracies. The situation was simultaneously too stupid for serious journalism and too shameful for wisecracks.
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Our editors compiled six stories about elite schools and the issues they face. Today’s reading list examines how the Ivy League broke America, the problem with college admissions, and more.
Over the decades, the American right has deployed violent imagery to describe its highest ideological goal: drown government in a bathtub, starve the beast, slash and burn. In less than two weeks of organized chaos, the Trump administration has realized these fantasies, but by deploying tactics both more subtle and more sinister than the movement’s old guard ever imagined.
Rather than eliminating departments wholesale or depleting the budgets of agencies, it has relied on menacing gestures.
America has officially lost the plot on corporate DEI.
The tariffs standoff might just be the start of a very pricey mess.
Massive amounts of information about HIV, LGBTQ+ health were pulled from cdc.gov Friday night.
The president’s failure to name a USAID administrator and other steps seem to suggest that, at the very least, he’ll fold USAID into the State Department.
Several states are trying to curtail abortion medication by claiming mifepristone could contaminate drinking water.
Mary Holland, head of Kennedy-founded Children’s Health Defense, spoke to POLITICO after attending his confirmation hearing.
The Waves also discusses the Riverside Church controversy and the case of Sarah Milov.
What we say matters, especially depending on whom we say it to.
The Waves also discusses the case against Jeffrey Epstein and Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s Fleishman Is in Trouble.
Supporters of climate, infrastructure, mortgage, tech, health, veterans’ and other projects expressed alarm as tens of thousands of programs appeared possibly at risk.
Joe Biden’s top economic adviser opens up on harrowing moments from her time in the White House, and what makes her nervous about the Trump agenda.
Miran has called for a sweeping overhaul of the Fed to ensure greater political control over the central bank, including giving the president the power to fire board members at will.
Five weeks after the election, the president took his sharpest swing at Trump’s policy plans.
President Trump’s nominee for director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, a former Democratic congressmember from Hawaii, is facing major qualms from her former colleagues. During her Senate confirmation hearing, Democrats grilled her over her refusal to label whistleblower Edward Snowden a “traitor.” We discuss Snowden’s case and what it revealed about government surveillance of the American public with Chip Gibbons.
President Donald Trump’s nominee for FBI director, Kash Patel, a Trump loyalist who has promoted right-wing conspiracy theories, is “one of Donald Trump’s most disturbing picks” who seems poised to use the office to go after journalists and other Trump critics, says Chip Gibbons of the civil liberties organization Defending Rights & Dissent.
Author and investigative journalist Brian Deer, who debunked disgraced ex-doctor Andrew Wakefield’s fraudulent claims that vaccines were linked to autism, says that Wakefield and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Donald Trump’s nominee for secretary of health and human services, are major leaders of the anti-vaccine movement. “They basically run this movement together,” he says.
The second day of confirmation hearings for Trump’s secretary of health and human services nominee Robert F. Kennedy Jr. again focused on his long record of vaccine skepticism, his shifting position on abortion and his professional inexperience in public health. Kennedy was questioned about his role in a deadly measles outbreak in Samoa in 2019. Dr.
Donald Trump is blaming DEI for the deadliest U.S. aviation disaster in more than two decades, when a regional jet and a U.S. Army helicopter collided over a Washington, D.C. airport, killing 67 people. “We have a long list of problems that need to be addressed. … Instead, we’re talking about a nonsensical issue that is not based in fact,” says FAA-licensed aircraft dispatcher Bill McGee, who says criticisms of DEI distract from and work against a critical staffing shortage at the FAA.
To understand the harm Donald Trump has done with his tariffs on Canada and Mexico, here are four things you need to know:
First, every tax on imports is also a tax on exports.
The most popular beer in America is Modelo Especial, brewed in Mexico. Impose a 25 percent tariff on Modelo and sales will slide. So, too, will exports of the American barley that goes into Mexican beer. Mexico buys three-quarters of U.S. barley exports, almost all for brewing.
The letter was meant to lend credibility to Kennedy’s nomination.
Editor’s Note: Washington Week With The Atlantic is a partnership between NewsHour Productions, WETA, and The Atlantic airing every Friday on PBS stations nationwide. Check your local listings, watch full episodes here, or listen to the weekly podcast here.
The worst aviation disaster in almost a quarter century is one of the first tests of Donald Trump’s second administration. Panelists on Washington Week With The Atlantic joined to discuss how the president responded to the crisis.
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To stay in or to go out, that is the question. It’s the dance we do while checking the time before we’re supposed to meet up with friends after a long day at work.
From inside the room, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s confirmation hearings felt at times more like an awards show than a job interview. While the health-secretary nominee testified, his fans in the audience hooted and hollered in support.
There’s not a lot of evidence that the resignation offer will be honored.
