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.Putin announced his attempt to lay claim to eastern Ukraine with his most unhinged speech yet, intending to terrify the rest of the world into submission. We should instead continue to show courage and steadfastness.But first, here are three new stories from The Atlantic.
The Hubble Space Telescope is falling.Not imminently, but it’s happening. The beloved observatory, which has spent decades revealing cosmic wonders from its perch a few hundred miles above Earth, does not have a propulsion system to maintain its altitude. According to NASA’s latest projections, the observatory could reenter Earth’s atmosphere as early as 2037—a grim fate that the agency has been anticipating for many years.
Yesterday, the world got a look inside Elon Musk’s phone. The Tesla and SpaceX CEO is currently in litigation with Twitter and trying to back out of his deal to buy the platform and take it private. As part of the discovery process related to this lawsuit, Delaware’s Court of Chancery released hundreds of text messages and emails sent to and from Musk.
It is not often that criminals declare the date and place of the future crime. Only the boldest crooks behave that way. Earlier today, though, Russia followed through on its publicly announced intention to close on its neighbor’s property. At an event in the Kremlin, it declared that it had annexed the Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine.If the world fails to react, evil will prevail. Brute force will override the rule of law.
This week, Ian slammed into southwestern Florida as a Category 4 (almost 5) hurricane. The state is still very much in the process of assessing the damage: Emergency teams have rescued hundreds of stranded people, while some 1.9 million people remain without power. Officials have identified as many as 21 dead, and that number may still rise.Ahead of the storm’s landfall, Florida officials ordered the evacuation of about 2.5 million people.
We speak with the award-winning filmmaker Reid Davenport about his directorial debut, “I Didn’t See You There,” in which he reflects on the portrayal of disability in media and popular culture. “Documentary film has traditionally subjugated disabled people, so I wanted to completely turn that on its head” by filming from his perspective without being seen, says Davenport.
The lobby of DCTV’s new documentary film center in New York will be dedicated to the filmmaker Brent Renaud, who worked out of the historic firehouse alongside Democracy Now! for many years. Renaud was the first journalist to be killed in the Ukraine war after he was shot dead on March 13, 2022, while filming refugees near the capital Kyiv for a documentary series.
The New York City firehouse studio that housed Democracy Now! from 2001 to 2009 has reopened as a movie theater devoted to documentary films. The opening of Firehouse: DCTV’s Cinema for Documentary Film comes as Downtown Community Television celebrates 50 years of media activism and training.
Brazil’s far-right President Jair Bolsonaro faces former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in Sunday’s presidential election. Lula is a former union leader who held office from 2003 through 2010. He’s running on a leftist platform to uplift Brazil’s poor, preserve the Amazon rainforest and protect Brazil’s Indigenous communities, and is supported by a broad, grassroots alliance, explains Brazilian human rights advocate Maria Luísa Mendonça.
The Fed’s interest rate hikes have fueled market turmoil by boosting the value of the dollar and feeding higher borrowing costs.
Medical groups say the new laws are delaying patient access to a range of treatments.
Abortion-rights advocates are expected to appeal the decision.
Owen County Judge Kelsey Hanlon issued a preliminary injunction against the ban, putting the new law on hold as abortion clinic operators argue in a lawsuit that it violates the state constitution.
A new president could reverse an FDA rule change that made it possible.
Biden’s “60 Minutes” remarks surprised his own health advisers, and came as the administration seeks more Covid response funding.
Fed Chair Jerome Powell has pledged to do whatever it takes to curb inflation.
Despite the signs of moderating price increases, inflation remains far higher than many Americans have ever experienced and is keeping pressure on the Federal Reserve.
The plan touted by the U.S. Treasury secretary aims to diminish the Kremlin’s revenue while preserving the global oil supply.
“Jerome Powell’s rhetoric is dangerous, and a Fed-manufactured recession is not inevitable — it’s a policy choice,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren said.
The housing market has cooled so much as the Fed withdraws its support for the economy that some analysts say it may be in a slump.
We speak with Dahlia Lithwick, who covers the courts and the law for Slate, about women who fought the racism, sexism and xenophobia of Trump’s presidency. She profiles many of them in her new book, “Lady Justice: Women, the Law, and the Battle to Save America.” “Law is slow and takes a long time, but at its best, it really can make us all freer and safer and restore dignity to those that have been harmed,” says Lithwick.
Some “well-meaning person” didn’t request the name be hidden; the White House did, confirm emails newly released under the Freedom of Information Act.
History is still on the side of the GOP, but Rep. Steny Hoyer was feeling confident enough to list races he thought Democrats would win.
Russia rushed its fake “referendums” in the occupied territories for a simple reason: Vladimir Putin continues to resist declaring formal war, so pretending that Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk, and Luhansk oblasts are “Russia” will allow him to both deploy conscripts to the region (Russian law does not allow their deployment outside Russian soil), as well as enable nuclear brinkmanship.
Just because Judge Aileen Cannon gifted Donald Trump with a special master, and let him pick who he wanted to serve in that role, does not mean she’s done with stepping in to provide Trump another damn the law, full-speed ahead gift of a ruling.
After being scraped out of the White House and deposited back at Mar-a-Lago, it didn’t take long for Donald J. Trump to begin holding for-profit events that looked and sounded a lot like campaign rallies but have, in fact, been nothing but personal cash grabs.
A North Carolina sheriff, in all his caucasity, likely never imagined he’d be at the center of an investigation into a phone call he made to blow off a little steam. He likely thought that calling his colleagues “black bastards” or even threatening to fire them for no reason other than their race was nothing out of the ordinary. But his calls were recorded, and now he knows.
In 2019, reports emerged that the White House had requested the USS John McCain stay out of sight while Donald Trump regaled the troops in Japan with a speech in which he weirdly wished a “happy Memorial Day” to Japanese service members. After the story blew up, Trump did his best to distance himself from the controversy, eventually calling it “an exaggeration, or even Fake News.”
Guess what? He was lying.
Judge Aileen Cannon lets Trump skate — for now — on his highly suspect claims that the FBI planted files in records seized from Mar-a-Lago.
Sixteen people, including four alternates, were picked to serve as jurors during what is expected to be a lengthy, high-profile trial.