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The first time I went to sleepaway camp, I was 10 years old. When I returned home, a month later, my mom opened my footlocker to help me unpack. On top was a tray of my belongings—flashlight, lanyard, marksmanship badge, a few items of clothing, and a stack of letters my parents had mailed to me, many unopened.
In the western United States, particularly in fire-prone areas, people have become well versed at preparing to flee. They’re experts at using the tools and technology for monitoring a wildfire’s advance; they consult the Watch Duty app as often as checking the time. They know the three levels of evacuation—Ready, Set, Go—and many perform a running calculation of how much time they might need to get to safety.
On Saturday afternoon, Rita Gregovich was following that script.
The former Covid czar refused to testify at a hearing last week, exercising his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.
In Pakistan-administered Kashmir, a coalition of local politicians, activists and small-business leaders called the Joint Awami Action Committee (JAAC) has been leading mass protests over the soaring cost of living and the limits placed on political autonomy. In response, the Pakistani government banned the group under counterterrorism laws and ordered a communications blackout.
Is AI superintelligence inevitable? AI safety researcher David Krueger says it doesn’t have to be. Krueger, an assistant professor at the University of Montreal and founder of the nonprofit Evitable, warns that “we need to mitigate the risk of extinction” with regulation and moratoriums to halt the development of AI’s computational power and complexity, which he says is progressing at a rate much faster than current levels of human supervision can manage.
The Pacific Northwest is facing its worst fire season in more than 30 years. Scientists say drought, extreme heat and climate change are making wildfire seasons longer, more frequent and more destructive across the western United States.
“The homes, the communities, they’re just not simply prepared for fire,” says Paul Hessburg, former senior research ecologist at the U.S. Forest Service and professor of fire and landscape ecology at the University of Washington.
A live chat with Felix Salmon and Lee Buchheit hosted by the Library of Mistakes.
Leopold Aschenbrenner’s A.I.-focused portfolio was plummeting before Ken Griffin snapped up most of it.
Cyclosporiasis’ rebranding as “explosive diarrhea” has brought our collective attention to food safety concerns and the MAGA-cultivated Taylor Farms.
Beth Gardiner explains how we ended up holding the (plastic) bag for Big Oil’s wastefulness.
The rush to build more data centers is driving up electricity costs.
Steven Quay is in final vetting to run the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
The acting attorney general made the remarks during a private call with faith leaders.
In a heated interview with Dana Bash, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. attacked Anthony Fauci and the media.
Lawmakers agree that the bill is flawed. But hostilities between insurers and doctors could stymie their efforts to fix it.
The case challenging Mehmet Oz’s “faithfulness to Congressional intent” will continue.
Outward’s hosts sit down with the host and co-creator of When We All Get to Heaven.
The neighborhood changes, the church moves, people forget and remember “the AIDS years,” but AIDS isn’t over.
The AIDS cocktail opens new possibilities. And MCC San Francisco tries to use the experience of AIDS to make bigger social change.
The church’s minister gets sick and everyone knows it.
The church’s “it couple” faces AIDS, caregiving, and loss as part of a pair, part of families, and part of a community.
We look at the life and legacy of Dominican American historian, activist and prison abolitionist Dr. Johanna Fernández, who died on July 30 after a long battle with cancer. She was 55 years old. As a professor of history at Baruch College and the CUNY Graduate Center, Fernández was a leading scholar of the Young Lords, the radical 1960s civil rights organization founded in Chicago and New York and modeled on the Black Panthers.
This story was updated on August 5, 2026, at 7:29 p.m. ET
he Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed made the customary call for unity after a hard-fought primary against a fellow Democrat. “Always magnanimity in victory,” he told a packed crowd of supporters, adding that “however much we might disagree with our Democratic opponent, there is so much more that unites us than divides us.”
But just minutes earlier, one of his most famous endorsers was pushing a much different message.
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This morning, House Speaker Mike Johnson finally broke his silence on the scandal engulfing Representative Max Miller of Ohio. Well, sort of—Johnson didn’t have much to say.
“I haven’t spoken to Max about this in the last few days. Of course, I will,” he told Politico.
Tony follows a very familiar sort of 19-year-old menace—the kind of character coming-of-age movies like this were made for. He’s someone you might have crushed on in college: He sulks around with worldly paperbacks stuffed into his rear pockets, dresses in leather jackets even if it’s unseasonably warm, and seems to wear a permanent glower. Yet Tony, as played by Dominic Sessa, is more than just a pretentious bad boy; he’s starting to work his way toward something meaningful.
What does a roughly $100,000 BMW 7 Series get you? With a few taps on the sedan’s massive touch screen, you can play Pac-Man or let the car park itself.
Last week, the internet raged as social-media posts and news articles accused AI companies of “destroying the world’s books”—including “millions of rare” ones—by chopping off their spines to scan them more easily, and discarding them afterward. One article said the news was “sparking concerns that the last remaining copies of out-of-print texts are being destroyed.” The investor and AI skeptic Michael Burry called the practice of sacrificing rare books “evil incarnate.
In the wake of a third ICE death at the Delaney Hall ICE jail in Newark, New Jersey, we speak with Gabriela Soto, whose husband Martín was one of the leaders of the May hunger strike at the immigration jail. Martín was transferred to Elizabeth Detention Center, New Jersey’s other ICE facility, during the hunger strike at Delaney. Gabriela is calling for the closure of both facilities.
Voters went to the polls in Kansas, Michigan, Missouri, Virginia and Washington state on Tuesday. We continue to look at the results of those primary elections, with The Nation’s John Nichols calling it “a very good night for insurgent candidacies and for outsiders,” especially for candidates that campaigned around the fight against AI data centers.
Progressive candidate Abdul El-Sayed has been declared the winner of Michigan’s closely watched Democratic Senate primary, narrowly beating out Congressmember Haley Stevens, according to the Associated Press and other news agencies. AIPAC and its affiliated groups spent as much as $46 million to help Stevens in what has become the most expensive Democratic Senate primary contest in U.S. history.