Updated: Thursday, Dec. 5, 2024 at 10:58 p.m. ET
Two very ugly, uniquely American things happened yesterday: A health-care executive was shot dead, and because he was a health-care executive, people cheered.
UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was murdered yesterday outside his hotel in Midtown Manhattan by an unknown assailant. The identity of the killer is unknown. His motive is not yet clear.
Across the country, the thirst for an illicit beverage is growing. Raw milk can’t be sold legally for human consumption in many states, but some 11 million Americans drink it anyway as wellness influencers, including Robert F. Kennedy Jr., extol its benefits. They do so despite a well-established risk of disease and death: E. coli, salmonella, and listeria have all been found in unpasteurized milk.
This year, a new pathogen has been added to the list.
This is an edition of Time-Travel Thursdays, a journey through The Atlantic’s archives to contextualize the present and surface delightful treasures. Sign up here.
The allure of smoking has proved hard to stamp out. Despite the fact that cigarette use is at an 80-year-low in America, smoking has, unfortunately, become cool again. At the New York Fashion Week show in February, some models accessorized their runway outfits with a cigarette.
We discuss the new HBO Original film Surveilled and explore the film’s investigation of high-tech spyware firms with journalist Ronan Farrow and director Matthew O’Neill. We focus on the influence of the Israeli military in the development of some of the most widely used versions of these surveillance technologies, which in many cases are first tested on Palestinians and used to enforce Israel’s occupation of Palestine, and on the potential expansion of domestic U.S.
The Supreme Court appears poised to uphold Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for transgender youth after it heard arguments Wednesday in United States v. Skrmetti. The Biden administration and the American Civil Liberties Union argued that the law, which bans hormone therapy for transgender children but not cisgender children, is a form of sex discrimination, but right-wing justices who make up the court’s majority appeared to reject that argument.
These two diverging displays of womanhood online have a common source.
Athletes, coaches, and choreographers are facing the fact that they’ve been unintentionally breaking the law nearly every day.
How we shop has changed so much, thanks to influencers, the internet, the pandemic, and more. In Checking Out, we’ll talk about all of it.
The agency denied Triton Distribution’s application to sell flavored e-liquids.
Trump’s picks to lead the NIH and FDA were critics of health officials and their pandemic policies.
The Stanford University physician and economist, known for opposing Covid-19 lockdowns, has been tapped to lead the $47 billion biomedical research agency.
If his nomination is approved, the longtime associate of Peter Thiel will work alongside Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
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.
A pair of POLITICO|Morning Consult polls, one conducted in the final days of the election and the other conducted after Trump won, show how public opinion has changed.
The final paid messages: Economy, culture wars and character.
Harris has ratcheted up her warnings about the dangers of a second Trump term in recent weeks.
The Democratic nominee isn’t campaigning much on the Biden administration’s bigger, slower-moving policies.
“Canada needs to stop arming Israel and implement an immediate arms embargo.” In Ottawa, over 100 Jewish activists began a sit-in inside a Canadian parliamentary building Tuesday to demand Canada stop arming Israel. Rachel Small, a member of the Jews Say No to Genocide Coalition and a member of the sit-in, says that the Canadian government’s claims that it is halting arms shipments to Israel are obfuscating the fact that Canadian weapons are still being transported via the United States.
We’re joined in our New York studio by +972 Magazine journalist Haggai Matar to discuss the latest developments in Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza. Matar is a former conscientious objector who previously refused to participate in Israel’s mandatory military service during the Second Intifada.
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.
Ronald Reagan, invoking the 17th-century Puritan John Winthrop, once compared America to “a shining city on a hill.” This image of visibility and power, my colleague David Frum writes in a new essay, “imposed extra moral responsibility on the city dwellers.
Updated at 8 p.m. ET on December 4, 2024.
This morning, I had an unsettling experience.
I was invited onto MSNBC’s Morning Joe to talk from a studio in Washington, D.C., about an article I’d written on Trump’s approach to foreign policy. Before getting to the article, I was asked about the nomination of Pete Hegseth as secretary of defense—specifically about an NBC News report that his heavy drinking worried colleagues at Fox News and at the veterans organizations he’d headed.
No federal agency is as hated as the IRS, and perhaps no federal agency deserves so much hate.
The average American spends 13 hours a year completing the agency’s ugly, indecipherable forms. The process is so onerous that Americans fork over $10 billion annually to tax preparers, who nevertheless screw up an estimated 60 percent of their clients’ returns. The IRS audits low-income working families more often than it audits all but the very richest families.
Hunter Biden has lived a troubled life, and faced years in prison—until Sunday, when his father rescued him, issuing a full executive pardon clearing him of all charges. Show me a parent who wouldn’t have done the same. If saving Hunter was politically improper or reputationally risky, it was also done in accordance with the higher and fiercer laws of familial love.
NASA, ESA, STScI, A. Simon, M. H. Wong, J. DePasquale
Day 4 of the 2024 Space Telescope Advent Calendar: A prominent string of alternating storms is visible across the low northern latitudes of Jupiter, forming a “vortex street,” as some planetary astronomers call it. Hubble recently observed this wave pattern of nested cyclones and anticyclones, locked together like alternating gears.
Brian Thompson was fatally shot outside a Midtown hotel.
