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The passage of the Ukrainian aid package by the House this past weekend is an extraordinary sign of political courage. But in the party of Donald Trump, this win for democracy may soon seem like a mirage.
The web has become so interwoven with everyday life that it is easy to forget what an extraordinary accomplishment and treasure it is. In just a few decades, much of human knowledge has been collectively written up and made available to anyone with an internet connection.
But all of this is coming to an end. The advent of AI threatens to destroy the complex online ecosystem that allows writers, artists, and other creators to reach human audiences.
Recently, a man visiting his parents’ newly renovated home recognized an eerily familiar white curve in their tile floor. To the man, a dentist, it looked just like a jawbone. He could even count the teeth—one, two, three, four, five, at least. They seemed much like the ones he stares at all day at work.
The jawbone appeared at once very humanlike and very old, and the dentist took his suspicions to Reddit. Could it be that his parents’ floor tile contains a rare human fossil? Quite possibly.
President Biden has signed legislation to reauthorize Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act despite years of protest from rights groups and privacy experts who say the law is routinely used to conduct warrantless surveillance on millions of American citizens. The Senate approved the FISA bill on Friday in a 60-34 vote, and critics say it not only reauthorizes domestic spying but also dramatically expands its scope.
As the death toll in Gaza tops 34,000 Palestinians killed since October 7, Israeli forces and settlers have continued to ramp up violence in the occupied West Bank. The army killed at least 14 people during a two-day raid on the Nur Shams refugee camp near the city of Tulkarm over the weekend, and separately killed a Palestinian ambulance driver near Nablus as he was trying to reach Palestinians injured in an attack by Jewish settlers.
We speak with Mahmood Mamdani, a professor of government at Columbia who has spoken with many of the pro-Palestine protesters camping out on school grounds to show solidarity with Gaza and demand the school divest from Israel. He says there is growing outrage from faculty after the school’s leadership called in the police to raid the Gaza Solidarity Encampment and conduct mass arrests, while administrators have started suspending and evicting some students.
Columbia University canceled in-person classes Monday as campus protests over the war in Gaza enter a sixth day. The protests have swelled after the school administration called in the police to clear a student encampment last week, resulting in over 100 arrests. Solidarity protests and encampments have now sprouted up on campuses across the country, including at Yale, MIT, Tufts, NYU, The New School and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
What happened in North Carolina is playing out across the U.S. as large employers try to limit the costs of the expensive new generation of weight-loss drugs.
The move highlights the deepening divide between the more socially conservative wing of the party, which opposes abortion on moral grounds, and the more populist, MAGA branch.
The three liberal justices dissented as the high court dramatically narrowed a district court judge’s sweeping ruling barring enforcement of the state’s attempt to block treatment for transgender youth.
The gulf between what Trump said and what anti-abortion groups want underscores divisions that have dogged conservatives for two years.
Trump’s Monday announcement that abortion should be left to the states was supposed to neutralize an issue that has dogged Republican candidates. But by Tuesday it was clear that it was futile to try.
Biden and Trump are both campaigning on warped economic statistics, cherry-picking weird data from the Covid crisis.
By any measure, it amounted to a strong month of hiring.
The concern is that higher rates are putting pressure on households and businesses looking to borrow, weighing on hiring, investment and the housing market.
Last month’s job growth was up from a revised gain of 229,000 jobs in January.
The president’s team thinks it’s had a historically successful first term, delivering victories on the economy, climate, drug pricing and more. But many Americans aren’t feeling it.
The Gaza Collective Photo Essay project, organized by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), collected work from 14 Palestinian photographers who were each asked to share one image that captured the devastation of the Gaza Strip over the last six months. We speak with Charlotte Cans, head of photography at OCHA, about the project.
As Israel continues bombarding the Gaza Strip, we speak with a Palestinian photographer who recently fled the territory with his family. Ahmed Zakot has been documenting Gaza for the last 25 years, and two of his photographs were just featured in a project by the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and published by Rolling Stone earlier this month in a piece titled “Gaza’s Carnage Through the Eyes of Palestinian Photojournalists.
Columbia University President Nemat “Minouche” Shafik on Thursday called on New York police to forcibly clear a student occupation on the lawn of the school, which had been dubbed the Gaza Solidarity Encampment, resulting in over 100 arrests.
Israeli police arrested the internationally renowned feminist Palestinian academic Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian at her home in Jerusalem on Thursday on charges of incitement to violence. Shalhoub-Kevorkian, who holds both Israeli and U.S. citizenship, was suspended by Hebrew University last month after saying in an interview Israel was committing genocide in Gaza, though the university later reinstated her.
It’s not too late, because it’s never too late. No outcomes are ever preordained, nothing is ever over, and you can always affect what happens tomorrow by making the right choices today. The U.S. Congress is finally making one of those right choices. Soon, American weapons and ammunition will once again start flowing to Ukraine.
But delays do have a price.
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If you’ve ever tussled with our daily mini crossword puzzles, you can most likely blame Paolo Pasco. The good news is that the constructor who stumped you is now the champion of the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament at the ripe old age of 23. The ACPT is the largest speed-solving tournament in the world, this year welcoming more than 800 competitors.
Search on the Chinese food-delivery app Meituan for ejiao, and all sorts of goodies pop up. Ejiao was once a luxury consumed at the emperor’s court, valued as a traditional remedy taken to strengthen the blood, improve sleep, and slow aging. Today, ejiao is for the masses.
Inflation, finally, has cooled off. Prices have increased 2.5 percent over the past year, down from increases as high as 7 percent during the early pandemic. Rents are high but stabilizing. The cost of groceries is ticking up, not surging, and some goods, such as eggs, are actually getting cheaper. But American consumers are still stretching to afford one big-ticket item: their cars.
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.
What happened in North Carolina is playing out across the U.S. as large employers try to limit the costs of the expensive new generation of weight-loss drugs.
The move highlights the deepening divide between the more socially conservative wing of the party, which opposes abortion on moral grounds, and the more populist, MAGA branch.
The three liberal justices dissented as the high court dramatically narrowed a district court judge’s sweeping ruling barring enforcement of the state’s attempt to block treatment for transgender youth.
The gulf between what Trump said and what anti-abortion groups want underscores divisions that have dogged conservatives for two years.