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.
For almost an entire year, Donald Trump has begged the Federal Reserve to slash interest rates and supercharge the American economy. And for almost an entire year, Fed Chair Jerome Powell has barely budged.
Tina Peters is supposed to spend the next eight years of her life in prison. The former Colorado county clerk was convicted last year of charges tied to tampering with voting equipment under her control in 2020. President Donald Trump has repeatedly called for Peters’s release, warning of “harsh measures” if she remains incarcerated.
Updated with new questions at 4:50 p.m. ET on December 12, 2025.
You’ve been waiting to build that dream place of yours, there in the spot you picked out a few years back, between the pons and the frontal lobe. Maybe you want to crib some designs from your friend Steve’s place; it’s got space for the first 115 digits of pi and the names of all 266 popes.
In rejecting yesterday a redistricting plan backed by President Donald Trump, Indiana’s Republican-controlled senate did not merely deny Republicans two new U.S. House seats in next year’s midterm elections. They also engaged in a mass revolt against the president. The stakes of their defiance reach far beyond the midterms. This vote was possibly the most significant blow yet against the authoritarian ambitions that have defined Trump’s second term.
OpenAI turned 10 yesterday, and President Donald Trump incidentally gave the company a very special birthday gift: a sweeping executive order aiming to dismantle and preempt many state-level regulations of artificial intelligence. “There’s only going to be one winner here, and it’s probably going to be the U.S. or China,” Trump said in a press conference announcing the order. And for the United States to win, “we have to be unified. China is unified.
The billionaire philanthropist has said his meetings with the late convicted sex offender were a mistake.
Democratic lawmakers repeatedly called on Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to resign as they confronted her on Trump’s immigration crackdown during a heated House Homeland Security Committee hearing Thursday. We speak with Congressmember Delia Ramirez, who reiterated her call during the hearing for Noem to resign and announced that she would begin taking steps for her impeachment.
As the Trump administration expands its immigration crackdown nationwide, President Trump is simultaneously creating new pathways for wealthy noncitizens to obtain U.S. visas. Earlier this week, Trump officially launched a program allowing affluent visitors to fast-track permission to live and work in the United States. For a $1 million payment, applicants can receive a so-called Trump Gold Card, which promises to speed up U.S. residency applications “in record time.
Award-winning Palestinian reporter Mohammed Mhawish, who left Gaza last year, joins us to discuss his new piece for New York magazine about Israel’s surveillance practices. It describes how Palestinians throughout the genocide in Gaza have been watched, tracked and often killed by Israeli forces who have access to their most intimate details, including phone and text records, social relations, biometric data and more.
As Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. dramatically reshapes U.S. immunization policy, we speak with Dr. Fiona Havers, a former top vaccine expert at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who resigned in June.
Last week, Kennedy’s handpicked advisers on a federal vaccine panel voted against universal hepatitis B shots for newborns, reversing 35 years of CDC guidance that all newborns receive the vaccine within 24 hours of birth.
In races across the country, Democrats focused on promises to make life more affordable — even as they offered contrasting approaches.
Tim Wu joins Elizabeth Spiers to discuss his book on how our economy ended up under the collective thumb of Big Tech.
Even though that might mean you-know-who buys the studio instead.
Heather Haddon joins Emily Peck to discuss the current challenges and trends she’s reported on in the fast food industry.
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.
A celebrity contracts HIV, the world finally pays attention to AIDS, and Jim Mitulski preaches to a community tired of people dying from it.
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.
An online bazaar of freelance headhunters finds new recruits to fight Ukraine, emboldening Vladimir Putin at the negotiating table and scaring European leaders about what his growing army might do next.
Economic adviser Kevin Hassett dismissed economic bedwetters, saying strong spending bodes well for the economy.
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.
A force is pulling on Donald Trump that is even more inexorable than the march of time: political mortality.
Sometimes scandal or ineffectiveness is what fells a politician; if they survive those, term limits may get them anyway.
When Michael and Susan Dell announced last week that they would be donating $6.25 billion to put $250 per account into government-run savings accounts for millions of American children, it brought new attention to an initiative that was otherwise buried in the tax bill Republicans passed earlier this year: the Trump Account.
Trump Accounts—yes, that is the official name—function basically as individual retirement accounts for kids.
Marco Rubio here, with an important announcement: No more Calibri in official State Department communications! Get out of here with your ungarnished lines and provocatively naked terminals! The Biden administration may have shot the serif, switching from Times New Roman on the grounds that serif-less fonts such as Calibri are more accessible to readers with disabilities. That’s all over now.
It’s rude to boast, but here in 2025, you’ve got to take the wins where you can get them. This morning, Time magazine announced its Person of the Year, and it’s me. It’s you too.
If you want to get all technical about it, Time’s Person of the Year is actually not a person at all but a collection of people: the architects of AI.
Updated with new questions at 3:45 p.m. ET on December 11, 2025.
You’ve been waiting to build that dream place of yours, there in the spot you picked out a few years back, between the pons and the frontal lobe. Maybe you want to crib some designs from your friend Steve’s place; it’s got space for the first 115 digits of pi and the names of all 266 popes.
The White House plans to make affordability a key selling point for Republicans across the board as the 2026 midterm elections come into focus.
