Since he was confirmed as Health and Human Services secretary early last year, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has previewed big changes to the Dietary Guidelines for Americans—the government’s go-to guide on what to eat, and how much of it. Rewritten only every five years, the dietary guidelines are ubiquitous in American life: The food pyramid, launched in the 1990s, is a result of the document. The guidelines determine what millions of kids eat in school cafeterias every day.

Representative Seth Moulton is a senior member of the House Armed Services Committee, but he learned about the U.S. military’s middle-of-the-night capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro the same way many Americans did: A friend who saw the news on the internet texted him.
“That is not the way Congress is supposed to be notified of operations by the Department of Defense,” Moulton, a Democrat from Massachusetts, told us wryly.

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When a federal immigration agent shot and killed a woman in Minneapolis today, the details were fresh but the story was familiar.

The Atlantic is announcing that Adam Harris is returning to staff to host and develop a new weekly video podcast, which will be the third recent video podcast from The Atlantic. Adam was a staff writer at The Atlantic for six years covering higher education and national politics, and remained a contributing writer when he joined New America in 2024 as a senior fellow with the Education Policy program.

Nearly a year ago, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. pledged during his confirmation hearing to support the CDC’s childhood-vaccine schedule. Yesterday, he broke that promise. The Department of Health and Human Services has announced that the CDC will drop several vaccines from its recommendation list. With that move, Kennedy has shown that he can change the vaccine schedule by fiat.
Kennedy appears to have a clear road if he wants to do more.

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When U.S. Delta Force commandos slipped into Venezuelan airspace over the weekend, they did so in secrecy.

This weekend’s attack on Venezuela produced plenty of indelible images. The one burned into my brain was shared by President Donald Trump on Truth Social. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is sitting in front of a laptop at a makeshift command center in Mar-a-Lago. He’s monitoring the raid with a grave expression on his face, eyes intently focused on something out of frame.

The Atlantic contributor and renowned foreign-policy scholar Robert Kagan will discus the Trump administration’s attack on Venezuela with the Atlantic staff writer Vivian Salama. In this virtual event just for subscribers, Kagan and Salama will explore the political fallout of the ousting and capture of Nicolás Maduro, the United States’ complicated history of regime changes, and how the Trump administration’s actions in Venezuela can serve as a warning for other world leaders.

Nicolás Maduro wasn’t due to arrive at his arraignment yesterday in downtown Manhattan until noon, but a large crowd had already formed outside the federal courthouse by 9 a.m. Actually, two crowds. One had come to tell Donald Trump to keep his hands off Venezuela. The other, which seemed largely Venezuelan, had come to celebrate.
Maduro was, until Saturday, a widely hated ruler. His last election campaign consisted of threatening his people with a “bloodbath” if he lost.