Forty-seven years ago, Iran had a revolution that replaced a U.S.-allied monarchy with an anti-American theocracy. Today, the Islamic Republic of Iran may be on the verge of a counterrevolution.
History suggests that regimes collapse not from single failures but from a fatal confluence of stressors.
So, about all that Venezuelan oil. Although President Trump has declared that America’s oil companies will soon “go in” to Venezuela and “spend billions of dollars” to rebuild that country’s petroleum industry, the administration is making two huge assumptions. First, that unleashing Venezuelan oil would yield lower energy prices for American consumers and giant profits for American companies.
Lizzie O’Leary joins to break down the story of the disturbing deepfakes being created by X’s AI chatbot.
This is an edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a set of stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Sign up here to get it every Saturday morning.
At one point or another, we’ve all probably been that friend—the one who calls, texts, or sends a five-minute voice note with a long list of grievances.
The flu situation in the United States right now is, in a word, bad. Infections have skyrocketed in recent weeks, filling hospitals nearly to capacity; viral levels are “high” or “very high” in most of the country. In late December, New York reported the most flu cases the state had ever recorded in a single week.
There are reasons to be skeptical that voluntary cuts by insurance companies could bring significant, lasting health care savings for Americans.
At least the debut of the “America-loving” newscast was an apt metaphor for America right now.
Barbieland author Tarpley Hitt tells us all about the checkered past of the world’s most famous doll.
2025 was an interesting year for US stock markets and global dealmaking.
Rating the spiciness and truthiness of the hottest takes we heard in 2025.
Mary Childs learned about how places like ALIMA and Givewell are moving forward now that USAID is done.
The group was led by members in swing seats and those who represent many constituents facing rising health insurance premiums.
Here’s how the downgrading of shots could make it easier for people who claim vaccine injuries to sue for millions, driving manufacturers from the market.
The president’s remarks come at a tenuous time, as many lawmakers are holding out hope for a compromise bill to extend lapsed Obamacare subsidies.
Pilot program will test how far patients and regulators are willing to trust AI in medicine.
Outward’s hosts sit down with the host and co-creator of When We All Get to Heaven.
The neighborhood changes, the church moves, people forget and remember “the AIDS years,” but AIDS isn’t over.
The AIDS cocktail opens new possibilities. And MCC San Francisco tries to use the experience of AIDS to make bigger social change.
The church’s minister gets sick and everyone knows it.
The church’s “it couple” faces AIDS, caregiving, and loss as part of a pair, part of families, and part of a community.
The vice president fine-tunes Trump’s economic message, but he’s only got so much wiggle room.
Voters who backed Donald Trump in 2024 and swung to Democrats in this year’s Virginia and New Jersey elections did so over economic concerns, according to focus groups conducted by a Democratic pollster and obtained by POLITICO.
In races across the country, Democrats focused on promises to make life more affordable — even as they offered contrasting approaches.
The White House plans to make affordability a key selling point for Republicans across the board as the 2026 midterm elections come into focus.
President Donald Trump will give a speech in Northeastern Pennsylvania on Tuesday, the first stop in a ‘tour’ where he will talk about affordability concerns, among others.
U.S. forces have seized two more oil tankers with links to Venezuela, days after the U.S. attacked Venezuela and abducted President Nicolás Maduro along with his wife, making former Vice President Delcy Rodríguez the new leader of the country. “This is a decapitation without regime change,” says Venezuelan economist Francisco Rodríguez. “The political system in Venezuela remains intact.
Donald Trump has sent waves of federal agents to Democratic-run “sanctuary cities” over the past eight months, depicting the operations like episodes in a roving MAGA reality show. The places targeted by the president tend to become temporary sites of protest—and produce fodder for his meme-driven administration’s social-media channels. The relentless pressure on ICE to ramp up deportations has left officers on edge. The neighborhoods they’re targeting are on edge too.
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.
On Wednesday, an ICE officer shot and killed Renee Nicole Good, a mother of three and a U.S. citizen, in the streets of Minneapolis. She was at least the fourth person killed in a shooting by immigration-enforcement officers during Donald Trump’s second term.
Editor’s note: This work is part of AI Watchdog, The Atlantic’s ongoing investigation into the generative-AI industry.
On Tuesday, researchers at Stanford and Yale revealed something that AI companies would prefer to keep hidden. Four popular large language models—OpenAI’s GPT, Anthropic’s Claude, Google’s Gemini, and xAI’s Grok—have stored large portions of some of the books they’ve been trained on, and can reproduce long excerpts from those books.
For someone best known as an actor, Bradley Cooper’s core interest as a filmmaker is perhaps unsurprising. Thus far, he has been entirely consumed by examinations of performance—first digging into a pop musician’s stratospheric career climb in A Star Is Born, then wrestling with Leonard Bernstein’s desire to reimagine classical music in Maestro. Both movies were hefty pieces of entertainment, filled with love, death, and grand human experiences.