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.
Updated at 2:24 p.m. ET on Feb. 14, 2025
It’s not hard to find hostage videos online, if for some reason you’re into that sort of thing. Seeing one broadcast live on national television is more unusual, but that’s exactly what happened this morning.
The department will still “stock and provide vaccines,” according to a department memo.
Match Group, the tech company that owns Match.com, OkCupid, Hinge, Tinder and other popular dating services, has known for years which users have been accused of sexual assault and rape, but kept those reports hidden from others on the app, according to a new investigation. Match Group controls half of the world’s online dating market and facilitates meetups for millions of people in scores of countries around the world. “Match Group is aware of a lot of the scale of the harm on their apps.
As the annual high-level Munich Security Conference gets underway, the Russia-Ukraine war is dominating the agenda, and we speak to two guests protesting the conference. Economist, progressive leader and former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis says the European project started with a noble goal of promoting peace but finds itself today “cornered” between Russian and NATO militarism. “Europe has been caught in a frenzy of warmongering,” says Varoufakis.
The top federal prosecutor in Manhattan and five high-ranking Justice Department officials resigned Thursday to protest the Trump administration’s order to dismiss corruption charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams. Danielle Sassoon, who was the acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, said in her resignation letter that dropping the case against Adams would violate her duty to uphold the law fairly and consistently.
His car company is in a precarious spot.
You can’t promise lower prices while backing away from regulations.
Even Patrick Mahomes couldn’t outflop these ads.
Companies are so invested in making their Super Bowl ads a success that we’ve lost something in the process.
The wildly high tariffs on Canada and Mexico have been called off.
Chris Clem could help Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who will have a role in immigration policy as health secretary, manage deportations.
From drugmakers to doctors, few health care groups are asking senators to block Robert F. Kennedy Jr. from becoming HHS secretary.
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.
Supporters of climate, infrastructure, mortgage, tech, health, veterans’ and other projects expressed alarm as tens of thousands of programs appeared possibly at risk.
Joe Biden’s top economic adviser opens up on harrowing moments from her time in the White House, and what makes her nervous about the Trump agenda.
Miran has called for a sweeping overhaul of the Fed to ensure greater political control over the central bank, including giving the president the power to fire board members at will.
Acclaimed scholar and activist Tariq Ali joins us for a wide-ranging conversation. In Part 1, he responds to Trump’s support of the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, the U.S.’s capitulation to Israeli aggression in the Middle East and the rise in right-wing authoritarianism around the world. Ali says Donald Trump is “the most right-wing president in recent years” and exposes “in public what his predecessors used to say in private.
The ruling was handed down on the same day New York Gov. Kathy Hochul rejected a request from Louisiana to extradite the same doctor.
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.
The single greatest success of Donald Trump’s second term so far might be his Cabinet. Today, senators confirmed Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, one day after confirming Tulsi Gabbard as director of national intelligence.
The nationwide restraining order seeks to restore access to health services for transgender patients 19 years and younger that had been disrupted by a Trump executive order.
“After a long illness, the world as we know it has passed away,” a European friend recently said. A slightly premature obituary, perhaps, but not by much. The world has changed in fundamental ways, of which the Trump administration is both symptom and cause. There is no greater evidence than its emerging policy of imposing a cease-fire, which it incorrectly believes will bring peace, on Ukraine.
Despite its name, the Department of Government Efficiency is not, so far, primarily interested in efficiency. DOGE and its boss, Elon Musk, have instead focused their activity on the eradication of the federal civil service, along with its culture and values, and its replacement with something different. In other words: regime change.
No one should be surprised or insulted by this phrase, because this is exactly what Trump and many who support him have long desired.
This is an edition of Time-Travel Thursdays, a journey through The Atlantic’s archives to contextualize the present and surface delightful treasures. Sign up here.
I love the way that people talk online. And on a good day, I genuinely think the internet has made people funnier and more creative. For instance, take this fairly anodyne post on X from 2023: “Financially, whatever happened in July can’t happen again.
The Trump administration exempted lifesaving assistance from its foreign aid freeze, but providers say it’s still not getting through.
Pankaj Mishra’s new book, The World After Gaza: A History, was written as a response to the “vast panorama of violence, disorder and suffering that we’re seeing today,” says the author. In Part 1 of our interview with the award-winning Indian writer, Mishra shares why he “felt compelled” to respond to what he sees as a return to the 19th-century model of “rapacious imperialism” in the Western world, signified by global complicity in Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
How is Elon Musk personally benefiting from his role as head of the Department of Government Efficiency? The agency, known as DOGE, is tasked with slashing “trillions” of dollars in federal spending and has set its sights on regulatory agencies, including ones that have opened investigations into Musk’s business practices. “At a minimum, it’s an appearance of conflict of interest,” says journalist Eric Lipton, who is investigating Musk and DOGE for The New York Times.
