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Updated at 4:22 p.m. ET on December 19, 2024.
Low winter sun casts slanted light, a specific hue that’s at once happy and sad—highly fitting for this time of year. Nearly every city-dweller I know clings to the fleeting moments of gratifying glow during the final dark days of the calendar.
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Recent mysterious sightings in our night sky cannot be written off as hallucinations, mass delusions, or hoaxes. Something is indeed happening.
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The image is black-and-white, lending it an air of “historical artifact”: A modern-day Donald Trump standing next to Elvis Presley. The president-elect posted the picture on Truth Social last night. Presley is strumming a guitar; Trump is idling in the frame.
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Donald Trump appears to experience the world through the glow of a television screen. He has long placed a premium on those who look the part in front of the camera. Paging Dr. Mehmet Oz.
Trump has picked Oz to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s movement has repeatedly been written off as a farce, a stunt, a distraction. Now Donald Trump has nominated him to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, where, if confirmed, he’ll oversee a life-and-death corner of the federal government.
RFK Jr.’s operation had been building toward this moment for months.
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The MAGA hats were flying like Frisbees. It was two weeks before Election Day. Charlie Kirk, the Millennial right-wing influencer, had been touring college campuses. On this particular Tuesday, he’d brought his provocations to the University of Georgia.
Photographs by Ross Mantle
Maybe the tell was when the mayor of Philadelphia didn’t say Kamala Harris’s name. Cherelle Parker looked out at her fellow Democrats inside a private club just northeast of Center City last night. Onstage, she beamed with pride about how, despite Donald Trump’s fraudulent claims on social media, Election Day had unfolded freely and fairly across her city. But Parker did not—could not—telegraph victory for her party.
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Maybe it was always building to this: thousands of people singing and dancing to “Macho Man,” some sporting neon safety vests, others in actual trash bags, a symbolic expression of solidarity with their authoritarian hero whose final week on the campaign trail has revolved around the word garbage.
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Samuel L. Jackson strutted out onstage at James R. Hallford Stadium outside Atlanta last night and attempted to lend Kamala Harris some of his lifelong cool: “We’ve heard her favorite curse word is a favorite of mine too!” (Sadly, he restrained himself from saying it—of course you know what it is.
In a race where only a few states are up for grabs, Pennsylvania may determine the fate of the 2024 election. Polls suggest that former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris are virtually tied in a fight for the state’s 19 delegates. Both Democrats and Republicans are pouring millions into messaging through advertisements, town halls, and large rallies.
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J. D. Vance has floundered in the day-to-day “retail politics” aspect of the running-mate gig. (Take, for example, his recent strained interaction with a doughnut-shop employee.) But he nonetheless came across lucid at the lectern during last night’s vice-presidential debate.
In the spring of 2023, not long after Robert F. Kennedy Jr. launched his chaotic presidential campaign, I asked him a straightforward question. What do you see as more harmful to America: another term of Joe Biden, or Donald Trump returning to power? “I can’t answer that,” Kennedy replied.
This morning, Kennedy finally stopped being cagey. He announced that he was suspending his campaign and throwing his support to Trump.
In the spring of 2023, not long after Robert F. Kennedy Jr. launched his chaotic presidential campaign, I asked him a straightforward question. What do you see as more harmful to America: another term of Joe Biden, or Donald Trump returning to power? “I can’t answer that,” Kennedy replied.
This morning, Kennedy finally stopped being cagey: He announced that he was suspending his campaign and throwing his support to Trump.
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In his DNC address, former President Barack Obama warned about putting a premium on “money, fame, status,” and “likes.” At the same time, his fellow Democrats are shrewdly deploying celebrities and influencers to help propel Kamala Harris to victory this November.
Republicans view President Joe Biden as old, feeble, and, most importantly, beatable. Members of the GOP badly want him to remain in the race. This much was clear from my conversations with delegates on the grounds of the Republican National Convention this afternoon.
Vice President Kamala Harris, should she replace Biden as the 2024 Democratic nominee, is likewise not seen by this crowd as a formidable threat to Donald Trump. “She’s not articulate. She doesn’t know America.
J.D. Vance’s speech at the Republican National Convention completed his transformation from Never-Trumper to Trump’s MAGA torch-bearer.
Vance dutifully spent his first five minutes praising the GOP leader sitting in front of him. “Consider the lies they told you about Donald Trump,” he told the crowd. “And then look at that photo of him, defiant fist in the air.”
When he turned to policy, he sounded especially Trumpian.
Republicans opened their national convention with a surprising sense of serenity. Wandering the floor last night at Fiserv Forum, in Milwaukee, I heard nothing about the key theme of Donald Trump’s reelection campaign—retribution. People swayed and sang along to a live rendition of Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the U.S.A.” as Trump, a white bandage affixed to his ear, 48 hours after surviving an assassination attempt, held court next to his just-announced running mate, J. D. Vance.
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Copious adjectives have been used to describe Donald Trump’s behavior. Restrained was rarely one of them—until recently. Below, I look at how the former president’s newfound discipline is actually a mirage. First, here are three new stories from The Atlantic:
Trump is planning for a landslide win.
At Joe Biden’s rally in Madison, Wisconsin, this afternoon, the men and women who had crammed into a middle-school basketball gym dutifully clapped, yelled words of support, and waved signs bearing the president’s name. But when it came time to chant “four more years,” they sounded as if they were merely going through the motions. Most of the rally-goers I spoke with said they were more committed to the Democratic Party than its 81-year-old leader.
On Sunday morning, Representative James Clyburn of South Carolina tried to cover for President Joe Biden’s disastrous debate performance with an explanation that was an extreme reach. “All of us know how stutterers operate,” Clyburn said on CNN’s State of the Union. He was just the latest Biden supporter to use the president’s lifelong stutter as a shield against legitimate public concern, an excuse that many others used across social platforms.
Updated at 2:18 p.m. ET on June 18, 2024
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A lot can change in eight years. In the summer of 2016, J. D. Vance, writing in this magazine, characterized Donald Trump as “cultural heroin.” On Sunday morning in Michigan, Vance made his pitch to be Trump’s next vice president—by showing his fealty to the former president and sounding as much like him as possible.
Watch a few minutes of the NBA Finals, and you’ll likely notice how the Dallas Mavericks’ Luka Doncic argues with the officials every time a whistle blows in his direction. “Working the refs” is a long-standing tradition, but Doncic, one of basketball’s marquee stars, takes complaining to a new level. In his eyes, the referees are incapable of correctly calling the game, no matter the circumstance. Whining has become muscle memory.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. smiled, threw up a stilted wave, and made eye contact with nobody in particular. He was shuffling into Puckett’s restaurant in Franklin, Tennessee, earlier this month for a plate of midday meatloaf. No advance team had peppered the room with stickers or buttons bearing his name. No one had tipped off the local media.
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American voters have never been more polarized—except, perhaps, when it comes to the shared belief that shooting a puppy is wrong.
Wasn’t Robert F. Kennedy Jr. supposed to have flamed out by now? At a rally yesterday in Oakland, California, Kennedy—a lifelong Democrat turned independent—unveiled his 2024 running mate, the Silicon Valley entrepreneur Nicole Shanahan. Kennedy selected Shanahan from a motley crew of reported vice-presidential contenders: Aaron Rodgers, Jesse Ventura, Mike Rowe, Tulsi Gabbard, and the rapper Killer Mike, to name a few.
Shanahan is by no means a household name.
Former President Donald Trump, perhaps threatened by President Joe Biden’s well-received State of the Union address, mocked his opponent’s lifelong stutter at a rally in Georgia yesterday. “Wasn’t it—didn’t it bring us together?” Trump asked sarcastically. He kept the bit going, slipping into a Biden caricature. “‘I’m gonna bring the country tuh-tuh-tuh-together,’” Trump said, straining and narrowing his mouth for comedic effect.
Trump has made a new habit of this.
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At what point does a “long-shot candidacy” tip into a pure vanity spectacle? Representative Dean Phillips of Minnesota refuses to suspend his Democratic-primary campaign against President Joe Biden.
My friend Lee Caggiano, who died several weeks ago, was not famous. But through her work, she changed one particular corner of the world: Lee made people who stutter, like me, want to talk.Like 99 percent of the population, Lee was fluent, meaning she never knew what it was like to stutter herself. But her son did. His experience with stuttering made her pivot her life and go back to school.
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 group of voters in Colorado are trying to use the power of the court to keep Donald Trump’s name off the state’s 2024 ballot. Below, I look at this week’s contentious Fourteenth Amendment trial in Denver—and speak with Trump’s co-defendant in the case.