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.“People in the Northern Hemisphere are now neck-deep in a summer of travel—and so, too, are the coronaviruses they’re carrying,” our Science writer Katherine J. Wu reported in early July. As the summer goes on and the coronavirus subvariant BA.
In the 1980s, shortly before I was born, my father killed a male white-tailed deer in the woods of Oklahoma, harvested his flesh, and mounted his head. Years later, my brothers regaled me with the tale of Tony, as they posthumously named the buck. “Dad shot him,” they told me, with glee. “And then he made us eat him.” I hated the circumstances of Tony’s death. But I was also entranced.
As Kansas prepared for the first state vote on abortion since the Supreme Court decision, conflicts also played out in state courts, a video of Justice Samuel Alito and lawsuits from Florida clerics.
Cheer up. Feel better. Don’t worry, be happy. Smile more. As an emotion, cheerfulness has astonishing range. At its best, it’s a style of kindness that we extend to others, a salve during times of trouble, and a way of coping with trauma and despair. At its worst, cheer can be breezily dishonest, an on-demand feeling that we can project to get what we want. It can also be a burden, especially for women and people of color, many of whom feel pressure to be constantly upbeat.
As New York City declares monkeypox a public health emergency, and California and Illinois have also declared states of emergency over the rapid spread of monkeypox, we speak with LGBTQ+ scholar Steven Thrasher, author of the new book, “The Viral Underclass: The Human Toll When Inequality and Disease Collide,” which explores how social determinants impact the health outcomes of different communities.
We go to Kansas, where voters today are deciding whether to pass a constitutional amendment that would override a 2019 state Supreme Court ruling establishing a constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy. If the amendment passes, it will clear the way for Republican state lawmakers to ban the procedure, which they have vowed to do.
President Biden claimed Monday a CIA drone strike killed al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in Kabul, Afghanistan. Trained as a surgeon in Egypt, where he was born into a prominent family, al-Zawahiri was a key figure in the jihadist movement since the 1980s. The U.S. has long accused al-Zawahiri of being a key 9/11 plotter along with Osama bin Laden, who was killed in a U.S. raid in Pakistan in 2011.
The old saying is “Democrats fall in love; Republicans fall in line.” But that’s not quite true. Democrats wait for a dream candidate to come along—a Bill Clinton or a Barack Obama—and they go out of their minds with excitement and ardor. But when they don’t find one, they kiss a frog and wait to see what happens.
Biden’s new positive test is an example of a rebound Covid-19 case, a phenomenon that has happened in some cases after people take Paxlovid.
The package would permit negotiation on drug pricing in Medicare and appears to have a path to passage.
The new doses, which come amid widespread complaints over access to treatments and vaccines, bring the total number secured so far to 1.1 million.
Suddenly, overnight, real progress has been teed up for the White House.
Republicans are poised to cast aside all the economic technicalities and bash Democratic candidates up and down the midterm ballot over an economy that is already deeply unpopular with voters in both parties.
Slower wage growth could help bring down prices and ultimately mean less sting for the average worker.
The first case of monkeypox behind bars was reported in Chicago this week, and health experts are warning that jails could accelerate the spread as they are dangerously unprepared to combat against a virus that spreads through close physical contact. We speak with Dr. Homer Venters, the former chief medical officer for New York City’s Correctional Health Services, whose new op-ed for The Hill is headlined ”CDC must act to prevent monkeypox explosion in prisons.
As tens of millions of people in the United States live under heat alerts this summer, we look at conditions faced by those in prisons and jails with poor cooling systems and lack of access to running water. “Although heat has been an ongoing issue in Texas, this year it’s exacerbated by a staffing crisis that’s been years in the making,” says Keri Blakinger, the first formerly incarcerated reporter for The Marshall Project.
Before a deal emerged this week on a bill to address the climate emergency, six congressional staffers were arrested Monday on Capitol Hill as they held a nonviolent civil disobedience protest inside the office of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, urging him to reopen negotiations on the bill. We speak with Saul Levin, one of the staffers who was arrested, and discuss the role the action had in pushing the bill forward.
The former president lashes out after the GOP speaker of the Arizona House calls Trump a “demagogue” who rules through “thuggery and intimidation.
Every organization devoted to mass death needs a charmless, bespectacled, blank-eyed chief operating officer who inspires no one but keeps the gears of murder turning. Ayman al-Zawahiri was Osama bin Laden’s Himmler. President Biden and most Americans will see his death as just revenge for the three thousand innocents killed by Al Qaeda in the United States on September 11, 2001—and so it is. But I have to admit that Zawahiri’s end leaves me cold.
“It wasn’t the stiff, uptight, you know, kind of snobby-type atmosphere at the PGA tour,” the Georgia Republican said.
He bashes “kangaroo court” on his podcast, aims to stiff Sandy Hook families who’ve been targeted with threats by his followers.
The first Jan. 6 insurrectionist to stand trial has now received his sentence, as a federal judge hands down 87 months of prison time for militia recruiter Guy Reffitt, who traveled to Washington, D.C., for the insurrection with multiple guns. Fellow aspirational election-nullifier Sen.
Years ago, before our nation devolved into a fascist Cracker Barrel that lets Texas Sen. Ted Cruz loiter in the bathrooms for unnervingly long periods of time, Fox News and Donald Trump jumped into bed together. They eventually birthed a creepy vestigial twin with no host, and it instantly latched onto our body politic like a Peruvian spider monkey mistaking Rep. Louie Gohmert’s head for a remaindered Sara Lee pound cake.
The United States killed the leader of al-Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri, in a drone strike this weekend in Kabul. I already kind of miss him. Zawahiri came from an older generation of jihadists—he was 71—and was in many ways the kind of terrorist one wants. For a decade or more he had no known good ideas. He told young upstarts to shelve their own good ideas, and never got around to them. He was a black hole of charisma.
Trident Mortgage, a mortgage company that billionaire Warren Buffett’s company owns, was recently the target of a Department of Justice probe into claims of redlining that ended in what officials are calling the second-largest redlining settlement in the Justice Department’s history. It is the first such agreement the Justice Department has secured with a mortgage company, officials said in a news release on Wednesday.
An asylum-seeking parent who has filed a lawsuit against the federal government after being separated from her son under the previous administration’s zero-tolerance policy said they were never even given a chance to hug goodbye. Instead, M.S.E., as she is known in court documents, said her son, identified only as J.M., could only wave as officers ripped him and other children from their parents for legally seeking asylum.
“M.S.E.
A researcher confirmed earlier media reports indicating former President Donald Trump may receive hefty tax breaks for having his ex-wife buried on the Trump-owned golf course in Bedminster, New Jersey. Ivana Trump, 73, died in her Manhattan home on July 14 from “blunt impact injuries” to her torso, The Washington Post reported of an autopsy report from New York City’s chief medical examiner.
The unlikely-to-pass bill demonstrates “that there’s now bipartisan support and majority support” in the U.S. Senate to protect abortion, Democrat Tim Kaine said.
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.Would you rather watch a video of a man you don’t know rescue a sloth, or read your cousin’s take on the January 6 hearings? Meta is betting on the former.But first, here are three new stories from The Atlantic.
Of course Joe Biden has rebound COVID.
