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Conventional wisdom says that a beach read ought to be light and fun—a book with a pastel cover. But the beach read can be anything you want it to be. Vacation might feel like the perfect moment to escape into frivolity, or to dive into something dense that you finally have the mental space for.
Last month, a small company in San Francisco announced that it had a plan to manufacture gold—not merely a flake or a nugget, but tons of the stuff. According to a paper written by one of Marathon Fusion’s co-founders (and not yet peer reviewed), the alchemist’s dream could be achieved not by mixing powders in a crucible but by tweaking atoms that were superheated during the process of nuclear fusion. The gold wouldn’t be the end game, more like a side hustle.
The president is trying to bring a taste of Mar-a-Lago to D.C.—but it’s not as unprecedented as some people think.
Cheyna Roth joins Emily Peck to dissect the money on display in And Just Like That…
Should you check your bag or carry-on? A discussion.
The move ends investments in projects involving mRNA technology.
The president overruled his HHS secretary and FDA chief, four people with knowledge of the decision tell POLITICO.
Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Marty Makary has taken a personal interest in addressing hormone therapy treatment for menopause.
The Waves also discusses the Riverside Church controversy and the case of Sarah Milov.
What we say matters, especially depending on whom we say it to.
The Waves also discusses the case against Jeffrey Epstein and Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s Fleishman Is in Trouble.
Bill Beach said the president’s suggestions that the jobs report was rigged betrayed a misunderstanding in how those numbers are assembled.
The monthly jobs report showed just 73,000 jobs in July, with big reductions to May’s and June’s numbers
The president’s approval rating had been ticking upward since its biggest drop in April.
Negotiations are underway in Geneva on a legally binding Global Plastics Treaty that has been in the works for several years, as the crisis of pollution from plastics worldwide has grown more acute. An estimated 8 billion metric tons of plastic waste now pollute the planet. Without changes, the production of plastic is expected to triple by 2060 — much of it driven by single-use plastics.
Photos shared with POLITICO show bullet holes in windows of a building on the agency’s main campus near Emory University.
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.
Overnight, Israel’s security cabinet approved a proposal from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to occupy Gaza City, a plan that neither the Israeli security establishment nor the majority of the Israeli public supports.
The Egg McMuffin might be the canary in the coal mine for the U.S. economy.
Last month, America’s top health officials gathered in downtown Washington for an ice-cream party. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—joined by Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins—hunched over a cooler and served himself a scoop. Off to the side, FDA Commissioner Marty Makary licked a cone.
This is an edition of the Books Briefing, our editors’ weekly guide to the best in books. Sign up for it here.
Virginia Woolf’s novel Mrs. Dalloway turned 100 this spring—not quite double the age of its protagonist, Clarissa Dalloway, who, as Woolf writes, “had just broken into her fifty-second year.” The book pops up less frequently on lists of the best fiction of the 20th century than James Joyce’s Ulysses, the libidinous classic to which Dalloway is often read as a side-eyed response.
Texas state Democrats had been plotting their departure for weeks. But most weren’t sure they were going—or where they were headed—until just before they boarded their plane. For a successful quorum break, the timing “has to be ripe,” State Representative Gina Hinojosa told me. “Like a melon at the grocery store.” On Sunday, she and dozens of her colleagues hopped on a chartered plane and flew to Chicago in an attempt to prevent Texas Republicans from redrawing the state’s congressional maps.
Private equity and credit firms need new investors. This is where Donald Trump—and you—come in.
Donald Trump wants to spend billions of dollars on a successor to President Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative, and he’s calling it “Golden Dome,” inspired by both Israel’s Iron Dome defense and Reagan’s early-1980s concept of a “peace shield” over North America. It’s a hugely ambitious project, but Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth apparently would prefer that no one talk about it.
Jess Michaels lives with the PTSD from her 1991 assault by the serial sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. She is part of a national chorus of voices calling on the Trump administration to release files related to the federal case against Epstein, who reportedly died by suicide while awaiting trial in 2019.
In a major victory for environmental advocates, chemical giant DuPont and its related companies have agreed to pay $2 billion to clean up four industrial sites in New Jersey that are contaminated with “forever chemicals,” or PFAS, which have been found to persist in everything from rainwater to human breast milk.
