Editor’s Note: The Atlantic is making vital coverage of the coronavirus available to all readers. Find the collection here. On weekends, some of the people in labs, health departments, hospitals, and medical examiner’s offices who do the work of translating individual illnesses and deaths into data points get to go home.
Every weekday evening, our editors guide you through the biggest stories of the day, help you discover new ideas, and surprise you with moments of delight. Subscribe to get this delivered to your inbox.Crowds are a no-no this New Year’s Eve, but there are no restrictions on dancing by yourself.
Editor’s Note: The Atlantic is making vital coverage of the coronavirus available to all readers. Find the collection here. A new variant of the coronavirus is spreading across the globe. It was first identified in the United Kingdom, where it is rapidly spreading, and has been found in multiple countries. Viruses mutate all the time, often with no impact, but this one appears to be more transmissible than other variants—meaning it spreads more easily.
He knows the math but works too quickly.
A government shutdown was averted after the president approved the Covid relief package and annual spending bill.
The president has thrown the fate of the bill into jeopardy.
Congress curbed the central bank’s emergency lending despite the economy’s continuing struggles.
Biden added that the appointees have “broad viewpoints on how to build a stronger and more inclusive middle class.
Officials said they expect the U.S. economy to shrink by 2.4 percent this year, a brighter forecast than they offered just three months ago.
As President-elect Joe Biden and his running mate Kamala Harris prepare to take power, we continue to look at the growing debate over the direction of the Democratic Party. House Majority Whip James Clyburn recently criticized calls to “defund the police” and argued the phrase hurt Democratic congressional candidates.
Scholars Cornel West and Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor respond to the global uprising against racism and police violence following the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. “We’re seeing the convergence of a class rebellion with racism and racial terrorism at the center of it,” said Princeton professor Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor. “And in many ways, we are in uncharted territory in the United States.
The president’s declaration is not exactly the get-out-the-vote message some republicans were looking for.
Welcome back, happy holidays, and so forth. Still bored and stuck at home? Good, keep doing that. Until there’s enough vaccine for everybody, everybody needs to plant themselves at home as much as possible. Read a book. Play some games. Watch television.
If you’ve gone through everything your television has to offer and come up empty, you’re welcome to join us for our quick tour of the best of anime. (See: Part 1, Part 2.
The effort to subvert the will of voters is forcing Republicans to make choices that will set the contours of the post-Trump era and an evolving GOP.
While it can feel like thinking back to March is like thinking back about 100 years, it was, in fact, less than a year ago. If you were in the United States, we probably all experienced something relatively similar—debates on whether or not to buy or make our own masks (or wear them at all), how much food to stock up on, if you’d be working from home for a long time (if at all), and, somehow, how not to gain weight. Yes.
William Cohen, who worked as secretary of defense under President Bill Clinton, described fellow Republicans eager to please Trump as “diabolical.
Over the Christmas holiday, I decided to try my hand at the podcasting game. Thanks to a microphone delivered by Santa and the ease with which all the little tools can be acquired these days, I sat down for a day and got something that sounds like … an amateur who sat down for a day. Still, I enjoyed the process and it gave me a chance to talk about something that has obsessed me for more than half a century: the books of former radio host Frank Edwards.
L. Lin Wood falsely said that the vice president, Sen. Mitch McConnell and Chief Justice John Roberts conspired to deny Trump a second term.
The Washington Post is reporting that there are going to be some changes to the Secret Service’s presidential security detail in the Joe Biden administration. This is not unusual in itself, but the Post says the changes come “amid concerns from Biden allies that some current members were politically aligned with President Trump.”
This is an unpleasant story in every direction. It may be unfairly maligning professionals in a deadly dangerous job.
It’s the first time Congress has voted to override a veto during Donald Trump’s presidency.
The 20 millionth case comes less than two months after the country tallied its 10 millionth.
We continue our conversation with medical anthropologist Dr. Paul Farmer, whose new book, “Fevers, Feuds, and Diamonds,” tells the story of his efforts to fight Ebola in 2014 and how the history of slavery, colonialism and violence in West Africa exacerbated the outbreak. “Care for Ebola is not rocket science,” says Dr. Farmer, who notes that doctors know how to treat sick patients.
As the United States sets records for COVID-19 deaths and hospitalizations, we speak with one of the world’s leading experts on infectious diseases, Dr. Paul Farmer, who says the devastating death toll in the U.S. reflects decades of underinvestment in public health and centuries of social inequality. “All the social pathologies of our nation come to the fore during epidemics,” says Dr.
While the United States, Britain and other wealthy countries race to vaccinate their populations against the coronavirus, a new report finds that as much as 90% of the population in dozens of poorer countries could be forced to wait until at least 2022 because wealthy countries are hoarding so much of the vaccine supply. A growing movement is calling for the development of a people’s vaccine and the suspension of intellectual property rights to expand access. We speak with Dr.
QAnon—the conspiracy theory that elite Democrats, government officials, and celebrities are part of a cannibalistic, child-sex-trafficking cult, and Donald Trump is the hero destined to stop them—has allegedly inspired kidnappings, car chases, and a murder. It has also made 28-year-old Patrick Cage a lot of money.In 2018, Cage, a Californian who works in international environmental policy, discovered a gambling platform called PredictIt.
A shining city on a hill. Ronald Reagan loved the phrase. He used it over and over again, perhaps most notably in his 1989 presidential farewell address.
I’ve spoken of the shining city all my political life, but I don’t know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it.
Parenting advice on biracial parenting, changing name spellings, and cutting off family.
