Elaine Godfrey

One morning earlier this month, I slammed my laptop shut. I was four cups of coffee deep and full of rage. My hands shook, and my vision blurred. It wasn’t politics, my usual subject matter, that had sent me spiraling.
It was Wyna Liu.
Liu is the New York Times editor who makes Connections, the online puzzle that is both the blessing and the bane of my mornings—and the days of millions of other people who regularly spend time tangling with Liu’s creation.

Yesterday, when Donald Trump announced that he wanted Representative Matt Gaetz to lead the Department of Justice, virtually all Democrats—and even some Republicans—were aghast. The man who was the subject of a federal sex-crimes investigation will now be America’s chief prosecutor? they wondered, eyes wide. Attorney General Matt Gaetz?
They may have to get used to it. “It’s the absolute perfect pick,” Steve Bannon, the former Trump campaign strategist, told me last night.

Last week, Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia posted a map on X to show Hurricane Helene’s path overlapping with majority-Republican areas in the South. She followed it up with an explanation: “Yes they can control the weather.”
Greene was using they as a choose-your-own-adventure word, allowing her followers to replace the pronoun with their own despised group: the federal government, perhaps, or liberal elites, or Democrats.

About half an hour into last night’s vice-presidential debate, the CBS anchor Margaret Brennan turned to Tim Walz and asked a question that the Minnesota governor had to have known would come. “You said you were in Hong Kong during the deadly Tiananmen Square protests in the spring of 1989,” she said, noting that new reporting suggests Walz didn’t go to Asia until months later.

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If Robert F. Kennedy Jr. were president, this is the kind of Cabinet he might appoint: Vani Hari, a.k.a. the “Food Babe” influencer; The Biggest Loser’s Jillian Michaels; the conservative psychologist Jordan B. Peterson and his daughter, the raw-meat enthusiast Mikhaila Peterson Fuller; and 18-year-old Grace Price, a self-identified citizen scientist.

During a conversation onstage at a Moms for Liberty event last week, Donald Trump said something that made even me—a seasoned visitor to Trump’s theme park of hyperbole—look around in confusion at the people around me in the audience.
“The transgender thing is incredible,” he told the Moms for Liberty co-founder Tiffany Justice. “Think of it; your kid goes to school, and he comes home a few days later with an operation. The school decides what’s going to happen with your child.

Updated at 5:55 p.m. ET on August 31, 2024
Donald Trump’s appearance last night at Moms for Liberty’s annual gathering was intended as a classic campaign stop—a chance for the candidate to preen in front of a friendly audience.
And this audience certainly was friendly. At this week’s “Joyful Warriors” summit in Washington, D.C.

Maybe you’ve seen the joke permeating the internet this week, as Vice President Kamala Harris begins her 100-day campaign for president. In one variation on X Sunday, someone wrote “Kamala’s VP options” above a lineup of Chablis and Chardonnay bottles on a grocery-store shelf labeled “Exciting Whites.” Another user posted a picture of Harris and a saltine cracker, with the caption: “This will be the ticket.

In a different election year, a place like Milwaukee’s Zeidler Union Square would surely have been teeming with people, marching around with Sharpied signs and chanting about fascism. Instead, the square, an official protest zone located a few blocks from the Republican National Convention, was like a scene from some postapocalyptic tale. This afternoon’s designated protest zone was a wide, mostly empty expanse of lush grass.

For a snapshot of our present political moment, imagine this: a 70-something woman in a bright-red sweater bobbing around a sticky dance floor at a bar in downtown Milwaukee. Thanks to the rain last night, the Jamboree at the RNC, the official celebration party on the first night of the Republican National Convention, was mostly empty. Still, DJ Milk N Cooks was in the corner, pumping out beats, and there was Susan, dancing with abandon, glittering flag earrings dangling from her ears.

Updated on Friday, May 17 at 3:27 pm
Three high-profile women in Congress got into it last night during a meeting of the House Oversight Committee, in what some outlets have described as a “heated exchange.” But that label feels too dignified. Instead, the whole scene played out like a Saturday Night Live sketch: a cringeworthy five-minute commentary on the miserable state of American politics.
Unless you are perpetually online, you may have missed the drama.

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It’s common, in criminal court, for a defendant’s friends and family to join them in the courtroom as a show of love and support. That’s not exactly what’s happening in Manhattan this week. More, after these three stories from The Atlantic:
Michael Schuman: China has gotten the trade war it deserves.

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For the first time in 221 years, two different groups of cicadas are emerging simultaneously and screaming from the treetops. More after these three stories from The Atlantic:
This is the next smartphone evolution.
Russell Berman: Attack a Democrat charged with corruption? Republicans wouldn’t dare.

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If Kristi Noem never actually met the North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, then how did that anecdote make it into her memoir? The answer, after these three stories from The Atlantic:
It’s not a rap beef. It’s a cultural reckoning.
Trump flaunts his corruption.

The guardian of the special relationship—the historical but possibly mythical bond between the United States and the United Kingdom—is a short woman with discerning blue eyes and a penchant for glittering headbands.
The role of an ambassador has always been strange. They’re expected to be fun—to flit around comfortably at galas and cocktail parties, charming guests and making inroads with important people while waiters weave around with platters of deviled eggs.

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By killing her dog, South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem may have also killed her chances of becoming Donald Trump’s vice president.

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A new abortion ban in Florida has providers scrambling—and pregnant women reassessing their options. But the law has implications well beyond the Sunshine State. More after these four new stories from The Atlantic:
Trump’s contempt knows no bounds.

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Are young people turning away from the Democratic Party in 2024? Will turnout be as high as it was last time around? What about the gender gap? Today I’ll do my best to address some pressing questions about how young folks will behave in November.

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My dentist is my enemy. But first, here are three new stories from The Atlantic:
The truth about organic milk
Britain is leaving the U.S. gender-medicine debate behind.
Trump has transformed the GOP all the way down.

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Strap in, folks. Today, we’re talking about rats: why you should love them, and why you should consider obtaining one for yourself. But first, here are three new stories from The Atlantic.

The early 2000s were an excellent time for romance. J. Lo married Marc Anthony. Vanessa Carlton vowed to walk a thousand miles for love. Ryan Gosling kissed Rachel McAdams in the pouring rain. And in Front Royal, Virginia, Chris Crowe flapped his arms to woo Walnut, a five-foot-tall white-naped crane.
Walnut was a graceful, strong-willed bird, if a tad antisocial.

Not very long ago, the harshest thing Nikki Haley would say about Donald Trump was that “chaos follows him”—a sort of benign jab that creatively avoids causation and suggests mere correlation, like noting that scorched trees tend to appear after a forest fire.
For most of the Republican-primary campaign to date, Haley adopted a carefully modulated approach toward the former president, and reserved most of her barbs for her other primary rivals.

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.’Tis the season of Taylor Swift. Maybe you’re sick of her, or maybe you’re obsessed. Either way, you are likely finding yourself in the middle of a Girl Culture moment.

The protest began with a prayer. Several thousand Muslims knelt in rows before the Capitol building yesterday afternoon, their knees resting on the woven rugs they’d brought from home. Women here and men over there, with onlookers to the side. Seen from the Speaker’s Balcony, this ranked congregation would have looked like colorful stripes spanning the grassy width of the National Mall.

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.I was skeptical of music festivals. Then I went to Newport.

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 child’s job is to be oblivious to their parents’ stress. On a recent trip, our roles were reversed.First, here are four new stories from The Atlantic:
Russia has a new gulag.
Is a glass of wine harmless? Wrong question.
Climate change feels more real now than ever.

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 Supreme Court released a somewhat surprising—and pretty important—decision yesterday.

You’d think that, by now, Donald Trump’s fans would be tired of all this. The long lines and the self-indulgent speeches and the relentless blasting of Laura Branigan’s “Gloria” as they stand outside exposed to the elements. But they aren’t. Not at all.After six years, the former president’s rallies still have summer-camp vibes—at least at first.

Kari Lake, who’s still trying to overturn her November election loss in Arizona, is one of four women Trump is considering for VP, according to a new report from Axios. Lake is flirting with another possibility too.But first, here are three new stories from The Atlantic.
A view of American history that leads to one conclusion
Arnold Schwarzenegger’s last act
Prepare for the textpocalypse.