Buying a new smartphone comes with lots of decisions. iPhone Pro or iPhone Air? “Cosmic Orange” or “Deep Blue”? Now there’s a new consideration to add to the list: buy or rent? Yesterday, Apple announced a new monthly lease program, which will allow prospective buyers to rent new electronics such as iPhones, MacBooks, iPads, and Apple Watches via an agreement with Klarna, the same company that facilitates monthly payments for $4 polyester underthings on Shein.

My teenage daughter has a diary. It’s pink and, most important, has an elaborate lock on it. And if I could go back in time to 2020, I might send this exact sort of journal to Anthony Fauci. Every night, when he was finished sharing his thoughts about battling COVID, he could have locked it, scrambled the combination, and then buried it in his sock drawer, as I think my daughter does.

Sitting in front of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs today, Anthony Fauci twirled his pen. He huffed and straightened his shoulders. He glanced down at a set of papers. He muted and unmuted his microphone.

Photographs by Nic Antaya
You won’t find a much harsher critic of the Democratic Party than the progressive trying to secure its nomination for Senate in Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed. When I caught up with him last week in Ann Arbor, he was at a café holding an outdoor roundtable with young voters, many of them college students or recent graduates.

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In this week’s episode of The David Frum Show, The Atlantic’s David Frum opens with his reaction to President Trump’s latest round of tariffs and explains why he believes they are weakening America’s economy and its alliances.

When I saw that the commentator Max Blumenthal was going to speak in Washington, D.C., about his recent trip to Iran, I couldn’t stay away. I have long been fascinated with Americans—especially privileged, well-connected Americans—who, out of alienation from their own country, show an admiration for distant authoritarian lands.

President Trump has mused about being the most powerful man in history. He has started wars and remade his nation’s economic and strategic relationships with the world. He has demanded, and largely received, total obedience from his party. He has dominated the national discourse like no president has before, and he’s tried to recast his nation’s capital—and even its history—to his liking. He’s everywhere. He has said he believes that there are “no limits” to his power.

Lindsey Graham always had a deep appreciation for earpieces, motorcades, and heavily secured environments. He recognized heady Washington status symbols when he saw them—including posthumous ones, such as big memorial services held in big, important rooms containing big, important entourages.
These were Graham’s kind of sanctums. And today was his kind of send-off.

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In a court filing earlier this month, a government lawyer did something radical: He laid out the truth in plain English.

Rarely, as a romance reporter, am I confronted with breaking news. When I am, it can come in the form of a TikTok video. And in some cases, it’s a video of two people making out.
This should never have been news in the first place. But on Thursday, a TikToker posted a video of a pair kissing on a bench in New York City’s Central Park. “Get a room,” he tells them as he approaches, clearly filming. “There’s kids around.” By today, the clip had received 3.9 million views.