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.
During the summer of his 2024 presidential campaign, Donald Trump made a vow to the cryptocurrency industry: Elect him, and the United States would become the “crypto capital of the planet.
President Trump has extravagant plans for the Gaza Strip. The only problem is that they bear no connection to the grim realities on the ground—nor is there much prospect that the two will align in the foreseeable future.
Trump has declared that the cease-fire in Gaza—such as it is, given that Hamas continues to attack Israeli forces, and Israeli strikes continue to kill Palestinians—has now entered Phase 2.
Jared C. Tilton / Getty
Corinne Stoddard of Team USA, Rika Kanai of Team Japan, and Arianna Sighel of Team Italy crash as Team China’s Wang Xinran crosses the finish line to win heat three in the women’s short-track speed-skating 500m on day four of the Winter Olympic Games at Milano Ice Skating Arena, February 10, 2026.
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.
Senate Democrats have reportedly begun tentative negotiations with the White House just days before funding for the Homeland Security Department is set to expire at midnight on Friday, threatening another partial government shutdown. Joaquin Castro, a Democratic congressmember from Texas, visited the family immigration detention center in Dilley where 5-year-old Liam Ramos was held. Kids have been “traumatized by the experience,” says Castro.
Lawmakers on Capitol Hill are accusing the Justice Department of covering up the names of co-conspirators of the deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein as fallout from the Epstein files grows across the globe. Millions of pages remain unreleased. As many prominent U.S. figures evade accountability following mentions in the Epstein files, a number of European figures have resigned for their relationships with Epstein.
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.
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.
The health research agency is offering the Oregon National Primate Research Center federal money to stop testing on primates.
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.
In a state court in Los Angeles this week, 12 jurors are hearing opening arguments in a case that has the potential to change social media—maybe even the internet—as we know it.
The trial, which began today, is a bellwether: Similar individual cases have been filed all around the country, and a massive federal case with more than 2,000 plaintiffs is expected to proceed this summer. In each case, the plaintiffs accuse social-media companies of releasing defective products.
A leader of the “Make America Healthy Again” movement said he wants to preserve the Trump-Kennedy coalition that won in 2024.
Harvard University has more than 100 students who are in the Reserve Officer Training Corps. They will get their diploma and then put their life on the line for their country, serving under a secretary of defense, if he is still in his job by spring, who has nothing but contempt for their education and their alma mater.
Gonzalo Fuentes / Reuters
Mathilde Gremaud of Switzerland, wearing a Swiss flag as a cape, celebrates winning the gold medal in the women’s freeski slopestyle competition on Day 3 of the 2026 Winter Olympics at Livigno Snow Park, on February 9, 2026.
Wuthering Heights, the writer-director Emerald Fennell’s new adaptation of Emily Brontë’s groundbreaking Gothic novel, is her best film to date—a heaving, rip-snortingly carnal good time at the cinema. It is also a gooey, grimy mess. The camera lingers on dripping egg yolks and squishy, bubbling dough; the protagonist, Cathy Earnshaw (played by Margot Robbie), must wade through pig’s blood on her way to the moors near her home, leaving a trim of viscera on her gorgeously anachronistic dress.
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.
Last night, during Super Bowl halftime, I watched a mustachioed entertainer put on a show that celebrated working-class values, the pleasures of a good party, and the virtues of marriage, with a side serving of grievance against elites.
The partial reopening of Gaza’s southern Rafah crossing with Egypt has been marked by chaos and severe restrictions imposed by Israel, as tens of thousands of Palestinians continue to wait for medical evacuation to receive urgent care outside the Gaza Strip. According to U.N. data, only 36 Palestinians in need of medical treatment were allowed to leave Gaza during the first four days of the crossing’s reopening.
With the 2026 Winter Olympics underway in Italy, we speak with writer and academic Jules Boykoff, author of six books about the Olympics, who says Milan is hosting the Games despite widespread public opposition from locals.
