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.
Think of the cattle auctioneer’s chant as a prayer. To the untrained ear, it’s nonsense, a stream of words compressed beyond recognition.
On this week’s episode of The David Frum Show, The Atlantic’s David Frum opens with his thoughts on the shocking alleged corruption that has informed President Donald Trump’s actions toward Ukraine and the scandal of the recently proposed “peace plan” by the United States. He goes on to discuss how the many scandals of the Trump presidency make it hard to focus on just one, as it is quickly replaced in the news cycle by another.
The Government Accountability Office report is solidifying GOP opposition to extending expiring subsidies that help people pay for health insurance.
Updated with new questions at 4 p.m. ET on December 3, 2025.
I have much extolled here the value of new knowledge. Let us now hear a counterargument: Some months after Yale gave Mark Twain an honorary degree in 1888, the writer’s schedule cleared up enough for him to pull together a speech advising that the good people of the college learn less.
“I found the astronomer of the university gadding around after comets and other such odds and ends,” he wrote.
The lore has by now been recounted many a time: In 2004, Scott and Andrea Swift moved from central Pennsylvania to Nashville so that their 14-year-old daughter, Taylor, could pursue a career in country music. They bought a house on a lake, and Taylor started heading to Music Row after school to work with songwriters.
As Swift’s star rose, something else shifted: her voice.
WTO/99 is a new “immersive archival documentary” about the 1999 protests in Seattle against the World Trade Organization that uses 1,000+ hours of footage from the Independent Media Center and other archives. The historic WTO protests against corporate power and economic globalization were met with a militarized police crackdown and National Guard troops. We feature clips from the film and discuss takeaways that have relevance today.
As a “Fight Club” of eight senators led by Bernie Sanders challenges Democratic Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s handling of President Trump, we speak with Ralph Nader, who has been taking on the Democratic Party for decades. Sixty years ago this week, he published his landmark book, Unsafe at Any Speed, exposing the safety flaws of GM’s Chevrolet Corvair and leading to major reforms in auto safety laws.
Israel has announced it will reopen the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt in the next few days as part of the U.S.-brokered ceasefire. However, the border will only open in one direction: for Palestinians to exit. Israeli American human rights lawyer Sari Bashi says the move validates fears that Israel’s goal is to “continue the ethnic cleansing of Gaza.
“No one wants a primary challenge where the accusation is: ‘You supported Obamacare.
The AIDS cocktail opens new possibilities. And MCC San Francisco tries to use the experience of AIDS to make bigger social change.
Heather Haddon joins Emily Peck to discuss the current challenges and trends she’s reported on in the fast food industry.
Lawmakers want to close a so-called hemp loophole. They might blow up a massive industry in the process.
After US Airways left Pittsburgh high and dry, yinzers finally built an airport on their own terms—and it’s incredible.
Larry Summers’ appalling emails to Jeffrey Epstein aren’t the only reason not to like the guy.
A Kennedy adviser said he wants to preserve the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. The health secretary’s anti-vaccine allies prefer it collapse.
Charities that help people pay for care say demand is way up. That’s before scheduled Medicaid and Obamacare cuts take effect.
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 celebrity contracts HIV, the world finally pays attention to AIDS, and Jim Mitulski preaches to a community tired of people dying from it.
When a lesbian minister is physically assaulted, the church is galvanized. When it happens again, the city is galvanized.
A gay minister seeks healing with his family and his queer kin, even as he knows he’ll soon die from AIDS.
Economic adviser Kevin Hassett dismissed economic bedwetters, saying strong spending bodes well for the economy.
Democrats running on cost-of-living anxieties outperformed Republicans in Tuesday’s elections by greater-than-expected margins. The president chalked it up to partisan lies.
A recent poll found a majority of Americans feel they’re spending more on groceries than they did a year ago.
The Republican nominee has promised tax cuts and economic growth, but the numbers are fuzzy.
Rahmanullah Lakanwal, the man who authorities say shot two National Guardsmen outside the White House, had previously worked in a CIA-backed “Zero Unit” in Afghanistan, often called “death squads” by human rights groups.
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.
Even today, nearly five years later, listening to Donald Trump’s call is shocking.
“So look. All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes,” he told Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and a few aides on January 2, 2021.
“Writing a play,” Tom Stoppard told an interviewer in 1977, “is like smashing that ashtray, filming it in slow motion, and then running the film in reverse, so that the fragments of rubble appear to fly together. You start—or at least I start—with the rubble.”
In life, of course, this kind of reversal is impossible. As the physicist Valentine Coverley puts it in Stoppard’s masterpiece Arcadia, “You can’t run the film backwards. Heat was the first thing which didn’t work that way.
Advocates for European drugmakers say other countries must follow the UK to the bargaining table to stave off tariffs and remain competitive.
