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.With the midterms less than three weeks away, the “Latino voter” is back in the national spotlight. But Democrats and Republicans alike still don’t seem to understand this crucial—and heterogeneous—group of voters.But first, here are three new stories from The Atlantic.
In 1962, the rhythm-and-blues singer and piano player Ray Charles attempted something new, unexpected, and potentially hazardous to his career. For his 17th album, Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music, he recorded standards by such titans as Hank Williams and Don Gibson. But instead of pedal steel guitars and fiddles, Charles opted for big-band orchestration and opulent strings. His record label and colleagues at first disapproved of the concept.
The famously logorrheic Steve Bannon finally found a reason to shut up, and it’s going to get him locked up.Bannon, the former éminence grise (and grease) to Donald Trump, was sentenced today to four months in prison for contempt of Congress, stemming from his refusal to testify to the House committee investigating the January 6 insurrection and Trump’s attempts to steal the 2020 presidential election. He’ll also be fined $6,500.
Sam Bankman-Fried, a 30-year-old co-founder of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX, is a $15 billion enigma. As one of the richest and most powerful men in crypto, “SBF” is already a political megadonor in the vein of Peter Thiel and George Soros: He spent millions in support of Joe Biden’s presidential campaign, and was one of the biggest Democratic donors in the country in the lead-up to this year’s midterm elections.
The budget gap shrank by half in fiscal 2022 as spending on pandemic programs expired and tax revenues surged.
What do you get the contrarian billionaire who has everything? Try a social network to call their own.It certainly seems like the hot new thing. Almost one year ago, Donald Trump, freshly banned from mainstream platforms, ginned up a Twitter clone called Truth Social, which he claimed would constitute the first “non-cancellable” global community. Elon Musk appears to be going through with his acquisition of Twitter.
We speak to law professor Kimberlé Crenshaw and civil rights attorney Barbara Arnwine, who are on an Arc of Voter Justice bus tour of 26 cities across the country to increase Black voter turnout at critical midterm elections in November. They discuss fighting voter suppression and racial gerrymandering, and the high stakes in states where Republicans have instated bans on what they describe as critical race theory.
Egypt is preparing to host world leaders next month at the U.N.’s annual climate summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, a move that prominent environmentalist and author Naomi Klein calls “greenwashing.
The family of imprisoned Egyptian human rights activist Alaa Abd El-Fattah has been staging a sit-in outside the British foreign office to demand the government help release him. El-Fattah, who was recently granted British citizenship, has been on hunger strike for over 200 days to protest being held in harsh conditions during his seemingly endless jail sentence in Egypt. “We’re not sure how much time is left.
British Prime Minister Liz Truss resigned Thursday after just 45 days in office, the shortest term in the nation’s history. Her low-tax, low-regulation financial policies were widely criticized after they sent the pound plummeting, causing several senior ministers to quit. We speak to George Monbiot, British journalist at The Guardian, about her short-lived time in office, what this says about the Conservative Party, and who her likely successor will be.
If the plan fails, the agency risks repeating the mistakes it made during the pandemic.
The president will sign a national security memo directing his administration to implement a plan to prepare for future viral and biological threats.
In the final weeks of the campaign, groups that oppose abortion rights are urging Republican candidates to go on offense.
New strains seem to evade treatments used for vulnerable patients — and could complicate the latest White House messaging strategy on Covid.
A new POLITICO/Morning Consult poll suggests economic woes are taking a toll on the electorate.
It’s a rare moment for a Fed chair to toss aside all political considerations and ignore frantic investors.
The Fed’s interest rate hikes have fueled market turmoil by boosting the value of the dollar and feeding higher borrowing costs.
As President Biden vows to codify abortion rights if Democrats can control Congress after the midterms, we speak with Democratic Congressmember Cori Bush, who faces reelection this November as a first-term Democrat in Missouri, where abortion was banned after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June. She just wrapped up a “Roe the Vote: Reproductive Freedom Tour.
We get an update from immigrant justice advocate Guerline Jozef, who is in Mexico to look at the impact of the Biden administration’s expansion of Title 42 to turn away Venezuelan asylum seekers at the U.S.-Mexico border. The Trump-era policy lets the government expel asylum seekers on public health grounds. “It is unacceptable today for the government to try to expand Title 42, and forcing people to continue to die,” says Jozef.
Protests are growing in Port-au-Prince as thousands fill the streets to demand the U.S.-backed Prime Minister Ariel Henry resign after he announced he would raise fuel prices amid an already dire humanitarian crisis. Countries including the U.S. and Canada have sent military equipment to assist the Haitian police in cracking down on the unrest, and the U.S.
Trump argued he was protected as president to verbally attack journalist who accused him of rape. Then he bizarrely repeated the attacks as a private citizen.
These days on the internet, the term theory refers to something between a rumor and a prayer: a wish so commonly expressed that it starts to seem true. And a very particular wish fueled all the theorizing about Taylor Swift’s 10th original studio album, Midnights. Fans who speculated that she was about to come out as pansexual, or make a Rumours-level masterpiece of soft rock, or finally manage to quiet down Kanye West for good all wanted the same thing: a breakthrough.
A New York City restaurant owner accused the “Late Late Show” host of abusing his wait staff on multiple occasions.
Drastic reductions would likely boost “offensive” content like porn, falsehoods and hate-filled attacks as more posts go unsupervised.
On Thursday, prosecutors meticulously guided jurors through the terrifying minutes and hours when Oath Keepers founder Elmer Stewart Rhodes allegedly oversaw and coordinated a highly organized storming of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.
Aiding the prosecution at trial was Whitney Drew, an FBI agent who started investigating mere weeks after the Capitol attack. Assistant U.S.
For the past three days, the big story out of Ukraine has been about Russia getting out of Ukraine—or at least, out of a key part of it. The area of Kherson Oblast west of the Dnipro River has been a key location for Russia since the start of the invasion. Now it seems they may be leaving that entire area, which would include the only regional capital Russia has managed to capture during the invasion.
On Wednesday, Federal District Court Judge David Carter handed down another blunt ruling, stripping away attorney-client privilege from communications between Donald Trump and attorney John Eastman. These documents relate directly to claims that Eastman made before the Georgia state senate in an effort to justify reversing the results of the 2020 election and to support a scheme to halt the final certification of electors on Jan. 6.
It’s not often a lawmaker’s partner steps into the muck of politics to defend them. But Tricia Raffensperger, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s wife, didn’t hesitate to stand up to then-Georgia Senator Kelly Loeffler and let her know what she thought of her.
It’s no surprise to hear someone in the U.S. say they’re living paycheck to paycheck. More than half of Americans do, by some measures. It’s a little more surprising to hear someone who earns well into six figures say they’re living paycheck to paycheck—but get used to hearing that, too.
Trump yet again presses “rigged vote” claims in personal attack, even though a federal judge determined this week that he knows better.