This is an edition of Time-Travel Thursdays, a journey through The Atlantic’s archives to contextualize the present. Sign up here.
A vivid rumor began circulating in the United States in the middle of the 1850s. It was said that Robert Toombs, the ardently pro-slavery Georgia senator, was going to come to Boston and “call the roll of his slaves at the foot of Bunker Hill.
As we continue to look at Wednesday’s contentious hearing of the House Judiciary Committee, we speak with Vermont Congressmember Becca Balint, who walked out after Attorney General Pam Bondi accused her of supporting antisemitism. Balint, who is Jewish and whose grandfather died in the Holocaust, had just asked Bondi to meet with survivors of Jeffrey Epstein — a demand that Bondi repeatedly ignored during the hearing.
Authorities in Iran have arrested the Oscar-nominated screenwriter Mehdi Mahmoudian in Tehran. Mahmoudian co-wrote the film It Was Just an Accident with dissident director Jafar Panahi, and their film is nominated for Best Original Screenplay and Best International Feature at this year’s Academy Awards.
President Donald Trump held a lengthy meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Wednesday at the White House, where the two leaders discussed ongoing nuclear talks with Iran. Trump has said he wants to reach a deal with Iran about the country’s nuclear program, which Tehran insists is only for peaceful civilian purposes but which the U.S. and Israel claim is aimed at developing nuclear weapons.
Attorney General Pam Bondi testified Wednesday before the House Judiciary Committee, where she repeatedly refused to answer questions about her handling of the Jeffrey Epstein case. She also refused to apologize to Epstein survivors over the botched release of files, some of which contained survivors’ personal information and even uncensored nude photographs.
Regrettably, I must support the Dunkin’ commercial.
The billionaire wanted the Post to die, because a vigorous, well-resourced newspaper does not help his bottom line.
Josh D’Amaro’s rise mirrors Tom Wambsgans’ improbable victory—and hints at a bleak and less creative future for Disney.
A personal finance coach explains why she’s giving her students advice she never expected to—and why it now feels unavoidable.
A leader of the “Make America Healthy Again” movement said he wants to preserve the Trump-Kennedy coalition that won in 2024.
Finland’s Oura is telling lawmakers and Trump officials it’s got a solution to systemic health care challenges.
RFK Jr.’s allies are airing an ad during Sunday’s game touting the new, MAHA-inspired HHS dietary guidelines.
Drug pricing experts have questioned whether the effort would benefit most Americans.
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.
A brief swing through the farm state underscored administration fears about the midterms.
Sixty-one percent of voters told a CNN poll released Friday that they disapprove of the way Trump is handling the economy.
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.
A new ProPublica investigation reveals new details about a sprawling ICE detention complex where families describe horrific conditions inside, such as being served contaminated food, with children and parents at times finding worms in their meals. Lights are reportedly left on for 24 hours a day. South Texas Family Residential Center, in the town of Dilley a few dozen miles from the southern border with Mexico, detains an estimated 3,500 people, more than half of them children.
In February 2016, after exchanging email pleasantries with the left-wing public intellectual Noam Chomsky and extending an invitation to his private island, Jeffrey Epstein recommended an article. “On a different note, you have encouraged me to look at data, no holds barred,” Epstein wrote before linking to “Race and IQ: Genes That Predict Racial Intelligence Differences” from the Right Stuff, an openly white-supremacist website and a pioneer of the online alt-right.
Tony Lyons told POLITICO Republican candidates must demonstrate they support Kennedy’s Make America Healthy Again mission to win midterm votes.
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“I have nothing to hide. Absolutely nothing,” Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told a Senate committee yesterday. Perhaps that’s true—but given his recent history, don’t bet on it.
In 2021, just months after the first COVID vaccines debuted, concern was growing about an exceedingly rare but sometimes deadly outcome of certain shots. Two related vaccines—one from AstraZeneca and the other from Johnson & Johnson—were linked to dangerous blood clotting.
Out of almost 19 million doses of Johnson & Johnson’s version given in the United States during the first two years of the pandemic, at least 60 such cases were identified. Nine of them were fatal.
Stefano Rellandini / AFP / Getty
Austin Florian of Team USA begins a run at a skeleton men’s training session at Cortina Sliding Center, in Cortina d’Ampezzo, on February 11, 2026, during the 2026 Winter Olympic Games. Skeleton athletes, wearing spiked shoes, sprint for up to 100 feet at the beginning of a race, propelling themselves into a slide that can reach speeds of more than 90 miles per hour.
Updated with new questions at 3:45 p.m. ET on February 11, 2026.
You won’t find this in Cortina d’Ampezzo over the next few weeks, but for several decades of the Olympics’ history, the contest awarded medals not just for sport but for art too.
In the Summer Games from 1912 to 1948, musicians, painters, and plenty of other aesthetes went brain-to-brain in events such as lyric poetry and chamber music. “Town planning” was even contested one year under the umbrella of the architecture competition.
