The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is coming undone. The White House announced last night that it had ousted the agency’s newly sworn-in director, Susan Monarez, whose lawyers insist that she still has her job because only President Donald Trump himself can fire her. (Yes, it’s a mess.) Four top officials resigned yesterday.
This is an edition of Time-Travel Thursdays, a journey through The Atlantic’s archives to contextualize the present. Sign up here.
Mindfulness is hardly a new idea—when have we not wanted to live more vividly in the present?—but the search for a balanced life has never required so many devices. The word itself has become something of a catchall recently, calling forth an entire industry of platforms, wearable tech, and wellness gurus.
On July 8, New Mexico’s Rio Ruidoso unbound from its banks for the second year in a row and swelled to 20 times its typical knee-high depth. The cascade of water roared like a train, Kathy Papasan, a longtime resident on the river’s edge, told me, and dark waves battered her porch. She and her husband had to flee uphill to a neighbor’s house.
Independent journalist Jordan Flaherty was in New Orleans in 2005 when Hurricane Katrina first hit, and both supported and reported on relief efforts in the aftermath of the storm.
As part of our coverage of the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, we speak with longtime New Orleans activist Malik Rahim, co-founder of the Common Ground Collective. In the weeks after the storm, we interviewed Rahim in his neighborhood of Algiers. He showed us how a corpse still remained on the street, and we asked soldiers and police why it hadn’t been picked up. Twenty years later, we get an update from Rahim, who continues to grapple with Katrina’s long-term devastation.
This week marks the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina’s landfall in New Orleans and the U.S. Gulf Coast. We revisit Democracy Now!’s initial coverage of the disaster, which killed over 1,800 people, forced over a million to evacuate and stranded tens of thousands of others with limited resources and aid.
“Firearms are the number one killer of our kids in America. That’s a uniquely American problem.” Two children, aged 8 and 10, were killed Wednesday when a former student fired dozens of shots through the stained-glass church windows at Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis. Seventeen other people were injured.
Teens in an NYC work program learned a harsh lesson when an ATM glitch pulled them into a citywide scam.
Target bent the knee to MAGA—sinking profits and shaking up leadership along the way.
The sports network is finally releasing a revolutionary new product—that it doesn’t want you to buy.
Elizabeth Spiers is joined by Matt Sekerke and Steve H. Hanke to discuss their book Making Money Work.
As an epicenter of small business growth and the MAGA movement, Florida offers a glimpse into the potential political fallout
The company that owns the hospital in Erwin, Tennessee, vowed to rebuild after Hurricane Helene. Federal cuts may make that impossible.
Some healthy people may have to prove they have an underlying condition, or get a prescription.
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.
Bill Beach said the president’s suggestions that the jobs report was rigged betrayed a misunderstanding in how those numbers are assembled.
The monthly jobs report showed just 73,000 jobs in July, with big reductions to May’s and June’s numbers
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.
The fried chickens have come home to roost. Cracker Barrel is reverting to its old logo, fewer than 10 days after announcing a new, stripped-down version. The ensuing controversy has been at once a welcome distraction from other news and an outgrowth of all the most annoying impulses in American life.
Susan Monarez became the first Senate-confirmed leader of the disease-fighting agency.
The mosquitoes and the National Guard were out, but it was otherwise a perfect day in the capital. Clear and sunny, not too hot: baseball weather. The first pitch was at about 9:30 in the morning. A player waiting in the dugout yammered “Whaddaya say, whaddaya say” before nearly every pitch. Another, after working a long at-bat and winning a walk, celebrated by turning to her teammates and tossing her bat gently toward them with both hands, palms up, like she was presenting them with a gift.
The decision could make it difficult for young healthy children to get a Covid-19 shot.
He’s testing whether the world’s most important central bank belongs to the U.S.—or to him.
It’s hard to imagine a world in which Taylor Swift didn’t eventually get married. Perhaps no artist today has an identity tied as closely to the idea of a forever love as hers is. So the Instagram announcement yesterday about her engagement to her boyfriend of two years, the Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce, felt existentially fitting, even preordained.
Swift has been writing songs that look ahead toward marriage since she was a teenager.
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On this episode of The David Frum Show, The Atlantic’s David Frum opens with reflections on the misuse of history in today’s politics. He argues that fascism, once thought to have been buried by the Second World War, has reemerged in modern forms, thriving on the endless hunt for enemies, stoking culture wars, and exploiting new technologies. And he explains why the best antidotes remain liberty, equality, and sometimes humor.
Like its mischievous demigod protagonist, the Chinese animated fantasy film Ne Zha II has been a practically unstoppable force. Since its initial release in China, over Lunar New Year, the blockbuster has earned more than $2 billion worldwide. It’s now the highest-grossing film of 2025, the highest-grossing animated film of all time, and the highest-grossing non-English-language film in history.
The Trump administration placed some staffers at the Federal Emergency Management Agency on leave Tuesday amid fallout over a letter to Congress signed by more than 180 current and former employees, who warn that budget cuts and mismanagement are putting the agency’s work at risk.
