Four and a half years ago, fresh off the success of Operation Warp Speed, mRNA vaccines were widely considered—as President Donald Trump said in December 2020—a “medical miracle.” Last week, the United States government decidedly reversed that stance when Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. canceled nearly half a billion dollars’ worth of grants and contracts for mRNA-vaccine research.
The ruling overturned a district judge’s injunction that had directed the administration to restore the flow of the grants.
We speak with Rachel Griffin Accurso, the educator known to millions around the world as Ms. Rachel, who has become a leading advocate for children in Gaza. Her YouTube channel for young children became wildly popular during the COVID-19 pandemic and today has more than 16 million subscribers. Since the start of Israel’s war on Gaza, Accurso has used her social media reach to speak out for Palestinian children facing hunger, disease, injury and death.
Are the feds really sending in the troops because of “Big Balls”?
It started with a cheese pull.
If you’re seeking the profound, here’s the best way to travel nationally and internationally
The Egg McMuffin might be the canary in the coal mine for the U.S. economy.
Agency employees said HHS’s response has been lackluster.
Industry will have to wait longer for the report, which is expected to give the government’s response to childhood chronic diseases.
Dr. Jerome Adams said HHS secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “failed” in his response to the deadly violence.
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
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.
Illinois Governor J. B. Pritzker has made himself a spokesperson for Democratic resistance to Republican plans for a brazen mid-decade gerrymander, and on Sunday, he appeared on Meet the Press to state his case. “It’s cheating,” Pritzker said of the Texas redistricting that the president has demanded.
Washington, D.C., more than any other city in the country, presents President Donald Trump with the opportunity to meddle in the minutiae of municipal governance. Even in the capital, though, his powers are far from limitless. And the chasm between Trump’s sweeping plan to “clean up” D.C.
Agency Director Susan Monarez tried to soothe staff at a Tuesday meeting, but some employees said the all-hands call was lacking.
Nichole Ayers / NASA
Green and red displays from the southern lights (aurora australis) appear above the Earth, seen from the orbiting International Space Station, south of Australia, on April 21, 2025.Nichole Ayers / NASA
Lightning flashes among cloud formations above Indonesia, seen on June 22, 2025.
Editor’s Note: Is anything ailing, torturing, or nagging at you? Are you beset by existential worries? Every Tuesday, James Parker tackles readers’ questions. Tell him about your lifelong or in-the-moment problems at dearjames@theatlantic.com.
Don’t want to miss a single column? Sign up to get “Dear James” in your inbox.
Dear James,
I can’t seem to shut up at work, and I keep putting my foot in my mouth.
I am a naturally brusque person—a get-to-the-point kinda gal—but I am not a complete boor.
Want to stay current with Arthur’s writing? Sign up to get an email every time a new column comes out.
The world of management is always wide open for new ideas and perspectives to make companies more efficient and profitable. Most business schools have semi-academic journals dedicated to offering up buzzy techniques that promise to streamline operations, improve accountability, and raise productivity by establishing tightly circumscribed protocols for workers.
Global condemnation is mounting over the assassination of one of the most prominent journalists in Gaza, Al Jazeera correspondent Anas al-Sharif, along with four of his colleagues at the network and a sixth journalist — the freelance reporter Mohammed al-Khalidi.
The killing of al-Sharif and his colleagues is “really murder,” says Irene Khan, U.N. special rapporteur on freedom of opinion and expression. “It is not killing in the context of war.
President Trump secretly signed a directive approving the Pentagon’s use of military force on foreign soil to target Latin American drug cartels, according to a New York Times report. The order gives the Pentagon authority to direct military operations at sea and on foreign soil against cartels designated by the Trump administration to be terrorist organizations.
After announcing the federal takeover of law enforcement in D.C. in the White House briefing room, President Trump painted a grim picture of the capital — including “roving mobs of wild youth” — that contrasts with crime figures showing D.C. reached a 30-year low in violent crime last January.
President Trump announced Monday that he is taking “historic action” to “take the capital back” by deploying the National Guard in Washington, D.C., and federalizing the city’s police department to “re-establish law and order,” and threatened the homeless population with jail time if they do not leave the city. Monica Hopkins, executive director of the ACLU of the District of Columbia, says there are legal limitations for the federal takeover of police forces.
The Egg McMuffin might be the canary in the coal mine for the U.S. economy.
