RFK Jr.’s future aides say they disagree with his vaccine views
Health Department nominees are distancing themselves from their prospective boss and President Trump by endorsing vaccination.
Today's Liberal News
The Doomed Midterm Strategy Some Republicans Are Trying
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.
With the midterm elections just 40 days away, Republicans are running hard—many of them away from President Trump.
Why Female Fans Can’t Win
This is an edition of Time-Travel Thursdays, a journey through The Atlantic’s archives to contextualize the present. Sign up here.
As far as journalism assignments go, Margaret Pratt Allen was handed a fun one: Investigate whether women can be sports fans.
Another Female Democrat Is Mean, Apparently
In February 2024, according to a former staff member who told the story to The New York Times, Representative Mary Peltola, an Alaska Democrat running for the Senate, pushed an aide. As the Times put it in a report published yesterday, Peltola “shoved a male employee in the chest with one hand, causing him to stumble backward.”
You might wonder why the paper of record is reporting this detail.
“Gilded Rage”: Jacob Silverman on How a Radicalized Silicon Valley Shapes Trump’s AI Policies
“One of the features we see in … a lot of the billionaire tech elites is a real kind of anger,” says Jacob Silverman, author of Gilded Rage: Elon Musk and the Radicalization of Silicon Valley. “They’re angry at what they see as the excesses of woke culture and liberal and lefty politics. … And they’re angry that they don’t have free rein to enact the world they want to enact, and that includes areas like AI.
“Colonial AI”: African Countries Seek Tech Sovereignty But Fear a New Digital Colonialism
Seydina Moussa Ndiaye is a member of the Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence, working on a strategy with the African Union to address the risks and benefits of AI for the continent. African countries face the threat of “colonial AI,” says Ndiaye. “When we talk about colonialism historically, that involves the control of resources, the control of knowledge and the control of terms of exchange, and we see that in Africa when we talk about AI.
Should U.N. Help Set Global AI Rules? AI Tech Billionaires Address Security Council
Leaders of top artificial intelligence firms, including OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, testified to the U.N. Security Council on Wednesday, urging nations to adopt international standards on the development of AI. This comes after AI agents at OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta and Google have gone rogue in recent months, hacking into other companies’ corporate systems and, in the case of OpenAI, into the portal of Australia’s public health insurance program.
Nobel Laureate Maria Ressa on Trump’s Media Ban, Regulating AI & the “Tech Coup in Plain Sight”
A federal judge has temporarily blocked President Trump’s ban on CNN, MS NOW and Politico, ordering the administration to restore their White House access for two weeks. CBS, Fox News and NBC had suspended their coverage of President Trump Monday after he expelled CNN from the White House TV press pool. “People are standing up for press freedom,” says Filipino American journalist Maria Ressa, who won the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize.
How Bitcoin Became an Emotional Tether for a Specific Type of Lost Boy
The cryptocurrency has become a sort of emotional tether for a specific type of lost boy. I went to Las Vegas to learn why.
Money Talks: What if Zero-sum Economics Is a Lie?
The director of the Ford Foundation’s mission investments program explains why assuming you can’t make a positive impact AND a profit is a big mistake.
The Private-Equity Confidence Game
The life of billionaire investor Leon Black, the private-equity behemoth he helped build, and his unfortunate friendship with Jeffrey Epstein.
It Was a Neighborhood That Defined Millennials. A New Breed of Transplants Has Made It So Much Worse.
Williamsburg’s gentrifiers are being gentrified.
RFK Jr.’s movement now has corporate sponsors
The upcoming Make America Healthy Again Summit is brought to you by companies with business before the Health Department.
Trump asked budget chief to draft order bringing health research funding under his control
The move came after the NIH director refused Trump’s request to cut Harvard grants in an Oval Office meeting.
Bill Cassidy slams RFK Jr. over measles outbreaks but demurs on confirmation vote
The Louisiana Republican said vaccine skepticism that Kennedy and his MAHA backers promoted led to the recent measles deaths.
Industry titans’ warning to Congress: Do what we say or health insurance premiums are going up
Some of America’s biggest companies say a law aimed at protecting patients is about to hurt them instead.
When Church Was a Queer Space
Outward’s hosts sit down with the host and co-creator of When We All Get to Heaven.
Remembering, with the People of MCC San Francisco, AIDS Still Isn’t Over.
The neighborhood changes, the church moves, people forget and remember “the AIDS years,” but AIDS isn’t over.
What Happens When You Organize Church Around AIDS – and AIDS Changes?
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 Pastor Gets Diagnosed with AIDS. And the Church Wonders How Much They Might Lose.
The church’s minister gets sick and everyone knows it.
A Church Romance Between a Hula Dancer and a Lumbersexual Blossoms in a Dangerous Time.
The church’s “it couple” faces AIDS, caregiving, and loss as part of a pair, part of families, and part of a community.
Sen. Kennedy rails against AI developers as ‘high IQ stupid people’
The Louisiana Republican’s comments come as both Democrats and Republicans have been forced to find ways to address the backlash against data centers.
Will Kevin Warsh Squander a Huge Opportunity?
The new Fed chair will have the spotlight at the central bank’s high-profile conference in Jackson Hole. He should use it.
Vance asks Mainers to vote Republican — as Trump ups the trade war with Canada
Vice President JD Vance’s visit marked his second to Maine’s 2nd Congressional District in four months.
AI’s Risk to Financial Systems
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.
Today’s AI agents have become exceptional hackers, and they’re already posing a threat to some of the most important infrastructure in modern life: banks.
In both finance and tech, industry leaders are well aware of the dangers, and they’re gearing up for a fight.
China Has No Use for AI Doomerism
AI is everywhere in China. In Hangzhou, humanoid police robots wearing fluorescent-yellow vests patrol tourist hot spots, gently admonishing jaywalkers. The Chinese AI chatbot Doubao is such a popular source of medical advice that citizens have begun to call the service “Doctor Doubao.
My Night at the Reindeer-Sausage Buffet
Food is like dance: a language, but not one you’d want to use in an emergency. Food can say I love you or Congratulations (it helps if you are able to use icing on top of the food to make its message clearer) or even something slightly more subtle: I am proud of the seafood offerings of my region. It cannot say Look out! There is a projectile flying at your head! or Please stop trying to invade Greenland.
The Makings of a Prewar World
Donald Trump offered perhaps the clearest summation yet of his worldview in an otherwise discursive address to the United Nations General Assembly yesterday. Defending the American takeover of Venezuelan oil, he invoked an old maxim: “To the victor belongs the spoils.” He then presented Iran with a choice between accepting his terms and being driven “into hell with no chance of survival.”
These remarks are the latest sign that world politics is entering an era when might makes right.
A Revealing Exchange Between Donald Trump and Kaitlan Collins
When CNN’s Kaitlan Collins approached President Trump with a question about the Iran war at the United Nations General Assembly yesterday, the president scolded her for being there at all. “I’m surprised that CNN is here covering me,” Trump said, adding, “You should not be here covering me.”
Presumably, he said this because CNN is among the three outlets, along with MS NOW and Politico, that Trump has barred from White House grounds because he didn’t like their coverage.