The debate over immigration in America has taken a strange turn recently. Elon Musk, Donald Trump’s wealthiest backer and a prolific spreader of dehumanizing anti-immigrant conspiracy theories, finds himself defending an immigrant-visa program against his fellow right-wingers. Meanwhile, Bernie Sanders, perhaps the most prominent leftist in the country, has taken to harshly criticizing the same program for undermining American workers.
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In The Atlantic’s latest cover story, my colleague Derek Thompson explores how Americans turned anti-social. Many young people are actively choosing the solitary life, spending time at home in front of screens instead of out with other people, he explains.
For nearly as long as Los Angeles has been a city, the sky above it has changed colors, for short and long spells, at times portending doom. It happened again this week. Winds that would not be out of place in a hurricane roared down the western slopes of the San Gabriel Mountains toward the city. Fires ignited in the eastern chaparral foothills and along the Malibu coast. With blithe cruelty, they sprinted across the landscape, burning through thousands of homes, erasing whole family histories.
The local online parent group, where I’d hoped to find new friends, was basically a random yard sale.
It’s not just their reputations at stake; it’s their livelihoods.
The city’s gargantuan highways—normally an impediment and an eyesore—suddenly felt like a bulwark.
Unsavory practices propped up by a small number of operators leave some customers feeling stuck.
Most of the infrastructure that stops drivers from hitting people, buildings, and each other is designed for smaller, lighter cars.
Jane Marie joins Emily to deep dive on MLMs, their origins, and their questionable business models.
As a local, I avoid Bourbon Street—except on rare occasions, when there’s no place I’d rather be.
Vivek Murthy says alcohol causes cancer, but the industry still has many friends on Capitol Hill.
Brian Anderson is ready to shape the future of AI in health care — if Donald Trump will let him.
A combination of viral respiratory infections, malaria and malnutrition has killed nearly 50 people in the African country.
Experts warn of inadequate testing by the CDC, which maintains the risk to humans “remains low.
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.
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.
A pair of POLITICO|Morning Consult polls, one conducted in the final days of the election and the other conducted after Trump won, show how public opinion has changed.
Updated at 8:35 p.m. ET on January 10, 2025
In my neighborhood—a mobile-home park on the western side of Malibu—the power and gas have been out for days, and cell service is intermittent at best. If I drive to the right vantage points, I can see the Palisades Fire and Kenneth Fire—two of the five major fires blazing across Los Angeles—but they are still far away. My home is not in a mandatory evacuation zone or even a warning zone. It is, or is supposed to be, safe.
The court will decide the fate of the insurance mandate later this year.
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Last week, I pronounced unequivocal judgment—as I tend to do regarding many things—on the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. I think it’s a contrived and embarrassing idea driven by nostalgia and capitalism, and antithetical to the youthful rebelliousness that drives rock-and-roll music.
Like any good entrepreneur who found early success in one market, Elon Musk is now starting to expand to others. Yesterday, Musk—the entrepreneur turned Donald Trump megadonor—hosted a livestream on X with Alice Weidel, the leader of Germany’s far-right political party, Alternative für Deutschland, or AfD.
“Only the AfD can save Germany, end of story,” Musk said during the 70-minute conversation, endorsing the party ahead of the country’s elections next month.
Two years ago, U.S. intelligence analysts concluded, in unusually emphatic language, that a mysterious and debilitating ailment known as “Havana syndrome” was not the handiwork of a foreign adversary wielding some kind of energy weapon. That long-awaited finding shattered an alternative theory embraced by American diplomats and intelligence officers, who said they had been victims of a deliberate, clandestine campaign by a U.S.
Not since Nicole Kidman in Eyes Wide Shut has a female movie star offered such an awkward portrayal of sex as Nicole Kidman in Babygirl. The movie is meant to be daring, a Last Tango in Paris for our time, but its essential premise would work in a Douglas Sirk production: A sexually frustrated, long-married woman accepts her fate until a stranger comes to town and puts everything at risk.
Immigrant rights activists are urging the Biden administration to pardon longtime activist Ravi Ragbir, who has been targeted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement for potential detention and deportation since 2001. Ragbir has been subject to regular ICE check-ins for over two decades, each time facing the possibility of being taken into custody by the agency. “Once you go into that building, your family, your friends, your community don’t know if you’ll walk back out,” says Ragbir.
We continue to reflect on Jimmy Carter’s foreign policy with history professor Brad Simpson. Despite presiding over an administration that stood out for its successful championing of human rights elsewhere in the world, “in Southeast Asia, Carter really continued the policies of the Nixon and Ford administration,” particularly in Indonesia, which was at the time occupying and carrying out a genocide in East Timor.
