Each installment of “The Friendship Files” features a conversation between The Atlantic’s Julie Beck and two or more friends, exploring the history and significance of their relationship.This week she talks with two friends who also happen to study friendship. They met at a conference back when very few relationship scholars were focusing on the topic, and became both friends and professional collaborators.
Editor’s note: This week’s newsletter is a rerun.
We’ll be back with a fresh newsletter next week.After the Capitol riot, Matt Hawn, a teacher from Tennessee, brought an Atlantic essay to class for his students to analyze: “The First White President,” by Ta-Nehisi Coates. Earlier the class had discussed a police shooting in Kenosha, Wisconsin; later in the year, they watched a performance of Kyla Jenée Lacey’s poem “White Privilege.
Will the U.S. and Iran revive the 2015 nuclear deal abandoned by the Trump administration? President Biden is facing heat from lawmakers in both parties who oppose the deal, which would relax U.S. sanctions on Iran in exchange for limits on its nuclear program. At the crux of the debate is the Iranian request for Biden to lift the designation of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization, which would have a high political cost for the administration.
The United Nations General Assembly voted to suspend Russia from the U.N. Human Rights Council on Thursday, a resolution that accused Russia of committing human rights abuses in Ukraine. We speak with human rights lawyer Wolfgang Kaleck about the apparent double standards and weaknesses in the current international criminal justice system in light of the U.S. committing similar crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan. Nations like the U.S.
Anti-abortion legislation is sweeping the U.S., including in Texas, Oklahoma and Missouri. We speak with Michele Goodwin, author of “Policing the Womb: Invisible Women and the Criminalization of Motherhood,” about the links between current conflicts between state and federal law and their historic precedents, such as Brown v. Board of Education and the Fugitive Slave Acts.
The U.S. Senate voted 53-47 on Thursday to confirm Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court. She will be the first Black woman and first former public defender to serve on the country’s top court. While Jackson’s confirmation was a “monumental moment in United States history,” it was undercut by the “shameful spectacle” of Republican senators behaving disrespectfully toward Jackson, says law professor Michele Goodwin.
Battles reveal more than they decide. Battles in which the outcome is truly up for grabs are rare, and battles that prove decisive in achieving a political goal are rarer still. Instead, battles demonstrate how effectively combatants planned, prepared, and executed before the fighting began. The result of a battle exposes not only how well matched the sides are but also how the war might unfold in the future. In that sense, the outcome of the Battle of Kyiv was never in doubt.
The surge of Covid-19 infections in Washington this week has many wondering if it’s safe enough to hold indoor, public events again.
Panel members agreed that myriad unknowns persist about the coronavirus and how it might evolve.
It’s unclear when the White House will hold the meeting. The decision comes as the administration tries to shore up its global Covid work.
White House officials deny any sense of panic over the economy or their midterm chances.
The administration’s difficulties in getting bank cop nominees through a Democratic-controlled Senate underscore the fault lines within the party over how to approach financial regulation.
The Federal Reserve is raising interest rates — but Congress has a chance to bring real relief.
The increase reported by the Labor Department reflected the 12 months ending in February and didn’t include most of the oil and gas price increases that followed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Feb.
The Fed is already expected to begin a campaign of interest rate increases next month in a bid to remove its support for economic growth amid a blistering job market and rapidly rising prices.
Utah Republican Spencer Cox hit back at the Fox News personality’s attack with a single click of a button.
In a historic 53-47 vote, the Senate has confirmed Ketanji Brown Jackson to the U.S. Supreme Court. The 51-year old Jackson will take the seat of the justice she once clerked for, Stephen Breyer, when he retires before the October term. Vice President Kamala Harris—who represents two firsts as a woman and person of color to serve in that office—presided, making the moment doubly historic.
Jackson’s impeccable qualifications have been well-documented.
Russia continues to shift already-battered forces toward Eastern Ukraine and has made new moves around Kherson, but there’s still no clear picture of what Russia’s actual next plans might be.
A reporter asked the Senate Minority leader how he could support Donald Trump after holding him “morally responsible” for the Jan. 6 Capitol attack.
When it comes to news out of Ukraine, what the West hears about the progress of the war and what they hear in Ukraine is pretty similar. Or at least it is in places not actively engaged in conflict—people there have more immediate concerns.
In the U.S., the subset of information that we get through most media outlets is shorn of a lot of the detail on troop movements, small actions, and the triumphs—or loss—of individual soldiers.
The CoreCivic-operated Otay Mesa Detention Center in California is back in the news for the usual, but no less horrific, reason: it’s abusive treatment of people in its custody.
The San Diego Union-Tribune reports that a number of immigrants have reported sexual misconduct by a staff worker, who they say walked into their cells unannounced and stared at their groins and buttocks while making inappropriate remarks.
Police officers in Alameda, California, last year knelt on Mario Gonzalez’s back for nearly four minutes, until he died. None will be charged.
As Daily Kos continues to cover, the heinous, hateful “Don’t Say Gay” law in Florida is dangerous for LGBTQ+ students, plus those who are questioning and allies. Queer youth already face structural and systemic barriers and obstacles when it comes to mental health, in addition to being at higher risk for becoming homeless, leaving high school without a diploma, and facing verbal and physical harassment and abuse.
This social media battle between the congresswoman and the comedian just may be our new favorite non-contact sport.
The administration argued that the Constitution gives the president, as the head of the federal workforce, the same authority as the CEO of a private corporation.
Editor’s Note: In yesterday’s keynote at Disinformation and the Erosion of Democracy, a conference hosted by The Atlantic and the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics, Maria Ressa compared the impact of social media on our information ecosystem in recent years to that of an atom bomb: destructive, all-consuming, irreversible.
Atlantic staff writer Anne Applebaum, an expert on Eastern Europe, has long watched social media’s power with great concern. Yesterday, at Disinformation and the Erosion of Democracy, a conference hosted by The Atlantic and the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics, she spoke with David Axelrod, the founding director of the Institute of Politics, about the dangers these platforms pose to democracy.
The agency made a few tweaks, but mostly sticks to its proposed coverage plan despite outrage from drug companies and patient advocates.
If the governor signs the measure into law, Alabama would become the third state to block access to gender-affirming care for minors, and the first to mandate prison time.
Yesterday afternoon, President Joe Biden hosted a good old-fashioned bill-signing ceremony at the White House. Before an audience of several dozen in the State Dining Room, the president celebrated the long-awaited enactment of a postal-reform bill. After his brief remarks, a large, bipartisan group of lawmakers crowded around Biden as he put pen to paper on the legislation. They huddled in close, as politicians do, silently jostling for prime position in the photo.