This is an edition of Time-Travel Thursdays, a journey through The Atlantic’s archives to contextualize the present and surface delightful treasures. Sign up here.
I love the way that people talk online. And on a good day, I genuinely think the internet has made people funnier and more creative. For instance, take this fairly anodyne post on X from 2023: “Financially, whatever happened in July can’t happen again.
The Trump administration exempted lifesaving assistance from its foreign aid freeze, but providers say it’s still not getting through.
Pankaj Mishra’s new book, The World After Gaza: A History, was written as a response to the “vast panorama of violence, disorder and suffering that we’re seeing today,” says the author. In Part 1 of our interview with the award-winning Indian writer, Mishra shares why he “felt compelled” to respond to what he sees as a return to the 19th-century model of “rapacious imperialism” in the Western world, signified by global complicity in Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
How is Elon Musk personally benefiting from his role as head of the Department of Government Efficiency? The agency, known as DOGE, is tasked with slashing “trillions” of dollars in federal spending and has set its sights on regulatory agencies, including ones that have opened investigations into Musk’s business practices. “At a minimum, it’s an appearance of conflict of interest,” says journalist Eric Lipton, who is investigating Musk and DOGE for The New York Times.
According to the White House, Russia’s Vladimir Putin has agreed to meet with President Trump to negotiate ending the war in Ukraine. Trump opposed the United States’ financial involvement in the Russia-Ukraine war during his campaign, distinguishing himself from the Biden administration’s funding of Ukraine’s military. Trump’s Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth broke with years of U.S.
You can’t promise lower prices while backing away from regulations.
Even Patrick Mahomes couldn’t outflop these ads.
Companies are so invested in making their Super Bowl ads a success that we’ve lost something in the process.
The wildly high tariffs on Canada and Mexico have been called off.
The decision by U.S. District Judge John Bates, a George W. Bush appointee, came after a testy Monday afternoon hearing.
The groups said the freeze violates Congress’ wishes and is endangering lives in developing countries.
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.
We speak with the acclaimed Palestinian writer Mohammed El-Kurd on the publication day for his new book, Perfect Victims. It comes at a time of heightened censorship and attacks on Palestinian expression in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, as well as in the United States and elsewhere.
Today, the war in Ukraine ended, at least in a sense.
Bloody fighting between depleted militaries will continue to barely move the frozen front lines. Russian missile and drone raids will still pummel Ukrainian cities and terrorize their citizens. Gutsy, covert Ukrainian strikes will hit deep behind the Russian border.
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.
Ask Trump supporters why they like the president, and chances are good you’ll hear something like: He tells it like it is and says what he means. The question, then, is why so many of them refused to take him at his word.
Chris Clem could help Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who will have a role in immigration policy as health secretary, manage deportations.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order last night that seeks to give more power to Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, to cleave through the supposed “waste, bloat, and insularity” in the federal government. The team is being given broad permission by Trump to disrupt work at key agencies and cut jobs.
From drugmakers to doctors, few health care groups are asking senators to block Robert F. Kennedy Jr. from becoming HHS secretary.
“Having the best spies, the best collection systems, and the best analysts will not help an intelligence service if it leaks like a sieve,” the former CIA speechwriter Charles E. Lathrop remarked in The Literary Spy, a book of quotations about espionage that he compiled. Lathrop, who wrote under a pseudonym, was making a point about counterintelligence—the flushing out of enemy spies and leakers who might compromise a spy agency’s precious secrets.
Let us pause the various constitutional crises, geopolitical showdowns, and DOGE dramas to make a simple observation: Donald Trump seems kind of busy, no?
In recent days, he kicked off what the media have dubbed “Tariff Week” by declaring Sunday, February 9, to be Gulf of America Day. This occurred as he flew to New Orleans to become the first-ever sitting U.S.
Policymakers are scrambling to find ways to reduce costs — or even dropping coverage.
Acclaimed scholar and activist Tariq Ali joins us for a wide-ranging conversation. In Part 1, he responds to Trump’s support of the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, the U.S.’s capitulation to Israeli aggression in the Middle East and the rise in right-wing authoritarianism around the world. Ali says Donald Trump is “the most right-wing president in recent years” and exposes “in public what his predecessors used to say in private.
Is Trump embracing the authoritarian playbook of far-right Hungarian dictator Viktor Orbán? Princeton professor Kim Lane Scheppele walks us through Orbán’s sudden rise to power and how the Trump administration’s recent actions appear to follow his anti-democratic “blueprint,” with Trump “echoing a lot of Orbán’s rhetoric,” consolidating power in the executive branch and bypassing federal checks and balances.
