The Endangered Species Act always had a hole in it. It was intended to protect ecosystems as well as individual species—it says so right in the original 1973 text—but it has no provisions to do so directly. For decades, conservationists successfully plugged that hole by arguing in court that the ESA’s prohibition of harm to individual species includes destroying a species’ habitat.

Along the banks of the Rio Grande River lies Starr County, Texas, a key to understanding the political realignment that sent Donald Trump back to the White House. Both the most Hispanic county in the nation and one of the poorest, Starr was also once one of the most resoundingly Democratic; Barack Obama won it by 73 points in 2012. In 2020, the county swung harder rightward than any other county in the U.S., by 55 points.

A civil war has broken out among the Democratic wonks. The casus belli is a new set of ideas known as the abundance agenda. Its supporters herald it as the key to prosperity for the American people and to enduring power for the liberal coalition.

“It almost feels like we’re trying to rebuild everything from scratch,” Michael Wieder told me.
The company he co-founded, Lalo, sells sleekly designed baby gear, much of it made in China. In his first weeks in office, Donald Trump increased the tariff rate on most of the company’s imported goods by 20 percentage points. In April, he jacked the rate up to 145 percent. Lalo had to stop bringing in products from overseas: Paying the tariff could have bankrupted the company.

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.
Welcome back to The Daily’s Sunday culture edition, in which one Atlantic writer or editor reveals what’s keeping them entertained.