The magic of Robert Eggers’s breakout first film, The Witch, a horror fable about a Puritan family besieged by supernatural forces, lay in its authenticity. Not from the close attention to period detail, though that was itself impressive, but from the earnestness of its tone, which presented every supernatural element as matter-of-factly as the grim realities of corn farming in 17th-century New England.
This is an edition of Up for Debate, a newsletter by Conor Friedersdorf. On Wednesdays, he rounds up timely conversations and solicits reader responses to one thought-provoking question. Soon after, he publishes some thoughtful replies. Sign up for the newsletter here.Question of the WeekSay you received $1 billion to spend on improving the world. How would you spend it? Why?Email your thoughts to conor@theatlantic.com. I’ll publish a selection of correspondence in an upcoming newsletter.
This article contains spoilers for Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore. The final showdown in Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore is supposed to be epic. Albus Dumbledore, the mighty wizard played by Jude Law, comes face-to-face with his former lover turned nemesis, Gellert Grindelwald (Mads Mikkelsen), breaking the pact they’d made as young men never to fight each other.
When Americans marry, their finances usually do too: The majority of married couples put all their income into shared accounts.In the 1970s and ’80s, not doing that was sometimes considered a bad omen for a relationship. But that’s no longer the case today.
Calls are growing for Texas to stop the approaching execution of Melissa Lucio, who says she was wrongfully convicted of killing her toddler Mariah in 2007. We speak to one of Lucio’s attorneys, Vanessa Potkin of the Innocence Project, who says Lucio was coerced into making a false confession within hours of her daughter’s death and deserves a new trial based on new evidence and misleading expert testimony.
The U.S. has hit a record number of apprehensions at the border shared with Mexico, arresting over 1 million asylum seekers in the past six months alone. We speak with immigration attorney Erika Pinheiro about the Biden administration’s unequal treatment of different nationalities, as refugees from countries like Haiti, Cuba and Cameroon face harsh restrictions on asylum, but Ukrainian refugees seem to be receiving special treatment and even exemption from Title 42.
A pair of bomb blasts at a boys’ school in Kabul left at least six people dead on Tuesday, the latest in a series of attacks on the minority Shiite Hazara community in Afghanistan. While no group has claimed responsibility, it follows a pattern of aggression by ISIS-K, the Islamic State affiliate, against Shiites in Afghanistan, as well as Pakistan.
It comes at a time when many global health groups are rethinking their pandemic responses amid new vaccine supplies, variants and treatment options.
Public health leaders fear preventable and possibly fatal diseases could become more common.
Ashish Jha casts doubt on China’s zero-Covid strategy.
The Fed’s campaign to raise interest rates — designed to reduce spending and curb inflation — will slow growth, which will have consequences for American workers.
Prices have been driven up by bottlenecked supply chains, robust consumer demand and disruptions to global food and energy markets worsened by Russia’s war against Ukraine.
The Biden administration recently extended a Covid-related pause on repayments.
White House officials deny any sense of panic over the economy or their midterm chances.
In a win for immigrant rights, the Biden administration has granted temporary protected status, or TPS, to Cameroonians living in the United States. The move allows around 40,000 Cameroonians to become eligible for the relief, which would protect them from deportation back to a politically unstable state and grant them permission to work in the U.S. for at least 18 months amid escalating violence in Cameroon between government forces and armed rebels.
Republican-led states are enacting a wave of new abortion restrictions, including Tennessee, Florida, Kentucky and Oklahoma just last week. Reproductive rights are under attack as the Supreme Court appears poised to overturn Roe v. Wade, says Caroline Kitchener, who covers reproductive rights for The Washington Post. We also speak with Kitchener about Lizelle Herrera, the Texas woman arrested for disclosing an attempted abortion with her doctors.
According to Arizona Rep. Debbie Lesko, 1 billion migrants were apprehended at the southern border in the past six months.
“You’re going to lose your job,” the former Fox TV host is heard telling the JetBlue employee in the clip.
“You’ve gone too far,” Eric Bolling told his former Fox News colleague.
After a day filled with mostly rumor and confusion, we finally know a bit more about how the newest of Russia’s major offensives is unfolding. It is a major attack; it is not the sort of highly coordinated and overwhelming campaign that Russia still insists it could pull off but which outside experts now believe is beyond the nation’s command competence. But it is a major threat, and Russia has been able to take some new ground already.
Do you think maybe Democrats could make political hay out of the fact that Russia’s Putin-controlled media wants to return Donald Trump—to whom congressional Republicans have more or less permanently Human Centipeded themselves—to his porcelain palace throne?
So there’s this guy Putin, see?
Two days into what Ukrainian officials have officially labeled “the Battle of Donbas,” there are reports everywhere … though what they mean is difficult to interpret.
Good
Near Izyum, where Russian forces have been gathering over the last two weeks, and which was expected to be the northern end of a north-south pincer movement, Ukrainian forces have reportedly advanced from the west, retaking some of the small villages on the outskirts of the city.
New updates have arisen in connection to an incident in which a man attacked mosque congregants with an ax and bear spray last month in Mississauga, Canada. According to the Canadian Press, Leader of the Dar Al-Tawheed Islamic Centre Imam Ibrahim Hindy said Thursday that the man who attacked mosque-goers on March 19 yelled that he was there to “kill terrorists.
Last week, the Tennessee state Senate passed SB1610, which creates more severe penalties for “illegally camping.” That is a euphemism for being homeless or unhoused. Before the 22-10 vote in favor of the bill, Republican state Sen. Frank Nicely stood up to make a speech about how homeless folks could find inspiration in famed Vienna men’s shelter occupant Adolf Hitler. That last statement concerning Mr. Nicely is not hyperbole: It is, in fact, what he said.
Police in Syracuse, New York, forced a sobbing Black 8-year-old into the back of their car over a bag of stolen Doritos.
Administration officials publicly sent mixed signals throughout the day.
Mallory McMorrow gave a moving speech on the Michigan Senate floor after a Republican cohort attacked her for her support of the LGBTQ community.
Let’s get it out of the way now. Any comments that might come to mind when you hear the name of the seventh planet from the sun pronounced a certain way—keep them to yourself. No giggles. Absolutely no wisecracks, damn it. No jokes! This is an earnest story about Uranus.Because this is a big day for Uranus.
As the United States nears its numbing, millionth COVID death and shrugs its shoulders at a rise in cases, some Americans are feeling left behind. Immunocompromised people have suffered disproportionately throughout the pandemic, and even those who have been fully vaccinated wonder if they’re really safe. News stories highlight their struggles to adapt to a society that “doesn’t seem to care whether they survive.
A little over a decade ago, Lori and David Sims were on the brink of a divorce. Lori had one son from a previous relationship, David had four, and although blending the two families went swimmingly at first, “everything went to crap” in year two, Lori told me. She felt that David was too lenient with his kids, but they wouldn’t listen to her and seemed to deeply resent her involvement in their lives.