Photographs by Dina Litovsky
The purge began late Friday night, four days after Donald Trump returned to the White House. Seventeen inspectors general—internal watchdogs embedded throughout the federal government—received emails notifying them of their termination. Three weeks later came the Valentine’s Day Massacre: the ousting of tens of thousands of federal employees with little discernible pattern, across agencies and across the country. By April, entire departments—the U.S.
A few years ago, I visited my childhood home and heard a surprising sound: the bright and bouncy music of the Puerto Rican rapper Bad Bunny. My parents are white Baby Boomers who speak no Spanish and have never shown a taste for hip-hop, but they’d somehow gotten into Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, whose sex-and-rum-drenched lyrics they couldn’t begin to decipher. The vector of transmission appeared to be the streaming service hooked to their smart speakers.
In November 1999, Havana’s Latinoamericano stadium sold out for a baseball game that was billed as a friendly rivalry between Latin America’s oldest and newest revolutionary leaders. Hugo Chávez had been Venezuela’s president for fewer than nine months when he took the field opposite Cuba’s Fidel Castro, who had led his country’s revolution 40 years earlier, when Chávez was just 4 years old.
Scott Wiener has an unusual distinction in American politics: He upsets almost everybody. In the months before I met the California state senator—who is now running for Nancy Pelosi’s congressional seat—he had been harangued at one public meeting after another. In October, pro-Palestinian protesters disrupted his campaign’s pumpkin-carving event to shout: “Wiener, Wiener, you can’t hide; we charge you with genocide.” (This was not an isolated incident.
At least the debut of the “America-loving” newscast was an apt metaphor for America right now.
Barbieland author Tarpley Hitt tells us all about the checkered past of the world’s most famous doll.
2025 was an interesting year for US stock markets and global dealmaking.
Rating the spiciness and truthiness of the hottest takes we heard in 2025.
The group was led by members in swing seats and those who represent many constituents facing rising health insurance premiums.
Here’s how the downgrading of shots could make it easier for people who claim vaccine injuries to sue for millions, driving manufacturers from the market.
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.
The vice president fine-tunes Trump’s economic message, but he’s only got so much wiggle room.
Voters who backed Donald Trump in 2024 and swung to Democrats in this year’s Virginia and New Jersey elections did so over economic concerns, according to focus groups conducted by a Democratic pollster and obtained by POLITICO.
In races across the country, Democrats focused on promises to make life more affordable — even as they offered contrasting approaches.
The White House plans to make affordability a key selling point for Republicans across the board as the 2026 midterm elections come into focus.
President Donald Trump will give a speech in Northeastern Pennsylvania on Tuesday, the first stop in a ‘tour’ where he will talk about affordability concerns, among others.
Israeli American Liat Beinin Atzili was taken captive during the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack. Over the next two months, her family members, including film director Brandon Kramer, tirelessly advocated for her release, an endeavor now documented in Kramer’s new film, Holding Liat. We speak to Atzili and Kramer about their family’s ordeal and Atzili’s captivity in Gaza, where she was held in isolation alongside another Israeli woman by members of Hamas until November 2023.
Two years ago this month, the world was gripped by a series of shocking recordings of a 6-year-old girl in Gaza pleading for help as she sat trapped in a car riddled with bullets alongside the bodies of her cousins, aunt and uncle, who had just been killed by Israeli forces as the family attempted to flee the Israeli ground invasion of Gaza City.
Minnesota state investigators say the FBI is blocking them from investigating the ICE shooting of Renee Good, a mother of three and award-winning poet who was killed in her car on January 7.
U.S. forces have seized two more oil tankers with links to Venezuela, days after the U.S. attacked Venezuela and abducted President Nicolás Maduro along with his wife, making former Vice President Delcy Rodríguez the new leader of the country. “This is a decapitation without regime change,” says Venezuelan economist Francisco Rodríguez. “The political system in Venezuela remains intact.
The health secretary’s new dietary guidelines tell parents to cut the added sugar until their kids turn 11.
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.
Following the Trump administration’s intervention in Venezuela, Donald Trump and his senior aide Stephen Miller have escalated threats to seize Greenland.
Forty-seven years ago, Iran had a revolution that replaced a U.S.-allied monarchy with an anti-American theocracy. Today, the Islamic Republic of Iran may be on the verge of a counterrevolution.
History suggests that regimes collapse not from single failures but from a fatal confluence of stressors.
So, about all that Venezuelan oil. Although President Trump has declared that America’s oil companies will soon “go in” to Venezuela and “spend billions of dollars” to rebuild that country’s petroleum industry, the administration is making two huge assumptions. First, that unleashing Venezuelan oil would yield lower energy prices for American consumers and giant profits for American companies.
Lizzie O’Leary joins to break down the story of the disturbing deepfakes being created by X’s AI chatbot.
This is an edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a set of stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Sign up here to get it every Saturday morning.
At one point or another, we’ve all probably been that friend—the one who calls, texts, or sends a five-minute voice note with a long list of grievances.