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The twinge begins in the afternoon: toes. At my desk, toes, itching. Toes, toes, toes.
I don’t normally think about my toes. But as I commute home in a crowded subway car, my feet are burning, and I cannot reach them. Even if I could, what would I do with my sneakers? My ankles are itchy too.
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Under normal circumstances, you would not expect a crowd of regular Americans—even those engaged enough to go to a political rally—to recognize an assistant secretary of health and human services. But the crowd at Donald Trump’s appearance earlier this month at the Santander Arena, in Reading, Pennsylvania, started booing as soon as Rachel Levine’s image appeared on the Jumbotron.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams is continuing to resist calls to resign after being indicted on federal corruption charges. In recent weeks, at least seven senior city officials have resigned, leaving the city government in a state of crisis. This comes a year before New Yorkers will vote to pick the city’s next mayor. Adams has vowed to run for reelection, but opponents, including fellow Democrats, are lining up to run against him.
In Puerto Rico, a new political alliance called the “Alianza” will be on the ballot this November in a bid to change the U.S. territory’s political status quo.
As human rights groups continue to call out war crimes committed by the Israeli military, we speak to the only U.S. diplomat to publicly resign from the Biden administration over its policy on Israel. We first spoke to Hala Rharrit when she resigned from the State Department in April, citing the illegal and deceptive nature of U.S. policy in the Middle East. “We continue to willfully violate laws so that we surge U.S.
When Slate looked back into the O’Reilly harassment claims, we unearthed a revealing document.
You can’t really buy stuff with it, but tech investors Ben Horowitz and Chris Dixon make a case for blockchain.
The real damage may not be fully clear for years to come.
For a contrast between what is and what could be, nothing beats L.A.
China’s economy is sputtering. The solution? Convince women to have babies.
Arizona is one of several states where right-leaning groups are backing conservative judges as they prepare to challenge newly passed ballot measures protecting abortion.
Missteps by the World Health Organization, a vaccine manufacturer and an African country led to another health emergency, experts say.
Trump says he’ll veto legislation to ban the procedure.
The ruling allows abortions to resume beyond six weeks into pregnancy.
Still angry about the Covid response, GOP lawmakers want to overhaul the National Institutes of Health if they win in November.
The Democratic nominee isn’t campaigning much on the Biden administration’s bigger, slower-moving policies.
The Treasury secretary is defending her legacy — and warning that the stability of the U.S. economy is at stake.
It was her first solo interview with a national network as the Democratic presidential nominee.
Interest rate cut “is not a declaration of victory, it’s a declaration of progress.
The move signals that the central bank is growing nervous about the declining labor market.
We take a look at the richest man in the world, multibillionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, and his support for Donald Trump in the U.S. presidential election. During a campaign town hall in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, on Saturday, Musk pledged to give away $1 million to random voters in battleground states every day until November 5 if they sign an online petition in support of the First and Second Amendments.
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I hesitate to speak for other Never Trumpers, but we’ve gotten used to losing, haven’t we? In three consecutive presidential elections, our doughty gang of dissidents has failed spectacularly in its attempts to shake Donald Trump’s grip on the GOP.
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In April 2020, Vanessa Guillén, a 20-year-old Army private, was bludgeoned to death by a fellow soldier at Fort Hood, in Texas. The killer, aided by his girlfriend, burned Guillén’s body. Guillén’s remains were discovered two months later, buried in a riverbank near the base, after a massive search.
Guillén, the daughter of Mexican immigrants, grew up in Houston, and her murder sparked outrage across Texas and beyond.
There are two Michael Jordans, both widely regarded as the Greatest of All Time. One is an NBA legend. The other is a pumpkin. In 2023, the 2,749-pound Goliath set the world record for heaviest pumpkin. Michael Jordan weighed as much as a small car and was even more massive—so broad that it would just barely fit in a parking space. Like all giant pumpkins, its flesh was warped by all that mass—sort of like Jabba the Hutt with a spray tan.
It is hard to imagine how a pumpkin could get any bigger.
Editor’s Note: Every Tuesday, James Parker tackles a reader’s existential worry. He wants to hear about what’s ailing, torturing, or nagging you. Submit your lifelong or in-the-moment problems to dearjames@theatlantic.com.
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Dear James,
In my younger days, I was an opera singer. Like most trained singers, I found the lack of significant success extraordinarily painful, but that’s the reality in the field.
In the fall of 2021, Tammi Kromenaker started looking for a new home for her North Dakota abortion clinic. For more than 20 years, Red River Women’s Clinic had provided abortion care to the Fargo area, most of that time as the state’s only provider. But now Kromenaker, the practice’s owner and director, was moving it just across the state line to Minnesota. “We had seen the writing on the wall,” she told me. A few months earlier, the Supreme Court had announced that it would take up Dobbs v.
We continue our conversation with the acclaimed author, journalist and activist Naomi Klein, who says Vice President Kamala Harris is “running an extremely high-risk, dangerous campaign” for the White House and “trying to win without the base.” Klein faults Harris for largely ignoring progressives she needs to turn out on November 5 as she courts Republicans, even as Donald Trump’s authoritarian threats to go after “the enemies within” could put many people at risk if he is reelected.
More than a year since Israel launched its war on Gaza in response to the October 7 attack, we speak with the award-winning author, journalist and activist Naomi Klein, who says a “trauma industry” has emerged to keep Israeli society permanently in crisis in order to justify the country’s expansionist wars and human rights abuses.
Israeli forces have killed at least 115 Palestinians and injured nearly 500 over the past two days, according to Palestinian health officials. This comes as Israel continues to carry out a brutal siege on northern Gaza, which has been described as a “surrender or starve” policy of ethnic cleansing. As the military demands that tens of thousands of Palestinians leave the north, senior government ministers are pushing for new Jewish settlements in Gaza.
Russ Buettner and Susanne Craig’s new book, Lucky Loser, shows how the former president scammed America