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Third-party and independent candidates are never all that popular in American presidential elections. But this year, fear of handing the election to Donald Trump is making an outsider run radioactive.
This afternoon, as the moon’s shadow slanted across the United States of America, millions upon millions of people within the centermost line of its path gazed up at totality, the most extraordinary sight that nature has to offer, here on Earth and perhaps in the universe at large. During the Great American Eclipse of 2017, totality left me awestruck. This year, outside the total-eclipse zone, was a more muted affair: On The Atlantic’s rooftop terrace in Washington, D.C.
Donald Trump didn’t rule out signing a national abortion ban, though it is unlikely Congress would be able to pass one.
Well, you have to hand it to them. Few constituencies are so ostentatiously and consistently wrong, over so many generations of human history, as the doomsayers who promise that the end is nigh.
It did seem kind of nigh there for a second, though, didn’t it? Or, as the writer Kurt Andersen put it in the days leading up to today’s eclipse, after a rare (and rather substantial) earthquake rattled New York City: “Earthquake. Eclipse. The antichrist running for president. Check.
As a little girl, I often found myself in my family’s basement, doing battle with a dragon. I wasn’t gaming or playing pretend: My dragon was a piece of enterprise voice-dictation software called Dragon Naturally Speaking, launched in 1997 (and purchased by my dad, an early adopter).
As a kid, I was enchanted by the idea of a computer that could type for you. The premise was simple: Wear a headset, pull up the software, and speak.
One morning in 1999, while I sat at the office computer where I built corporate websites, a story popped up on Yahoo. An internet domain name, Business.com, had just sold for $7.5 million—a shocking sum that would be something like $14 million in today’s dollars.
The dot-com era, then nearing its end, had been literally named for addresses such as this one.
Three of the most significant greenhouse gases contributing to global heating — carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide — reached new record highs again last year, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Global CO2 levels are now over 50% higher than they were before mass industrialization, due to the burning of fossil fuels, deforestation and livestock agriculture.
Walid Daqqa, one of the most prominent Palestinian prisoners in Israeli custody, has died from cancer. The novelist had spent the past 38 years locked up for his involvement with an armed group that abducted and killed an Israeli soldier in 1984. Rights groups had been pressuring Israel to release Daqqa, who had already finished serving his prison term, saying he was in dire need of medical attention.
“We are deeply disappointed in President Trump’s position,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America.
Israel’s war on Gaza hit the six-month mark on Sunday, a grim milestone. Over 33,100 Palestinians have been killed, including 14,000 children. Nearly 76,000 have been injured, and tens of thousands are missing. About 1.7 million people have been displaced, and the United Nations is warning that famine is imminent.
His announcement is likely to disappoint anti-abortion groups after his campaign floated a 15-week ban earlier this year.
The USDA has confirmed avian flu outbreaks in 15 herds across six states.
Are frozen embryos people now? POLITICO explains the controversy.
Genetic sequencing appears to suggest that wild birds in the Texas panhandle region infected cows, a USDA official said on the call.
Potential cow-to-cow avian flu transmission in Idaho is worrying pandemic experts.
By any measure, it amounted to a strong month of hiring.
The concern is that higher rates are putting pressure on households and businesses looking to borrow, weighing on hiring, investment and the housing market.
Last month’s job growth was up from a revised gain of 229,000 jobs in January.
The president’s team thinks it’s had a historically successful first term, delivering victories on the economy, climate, drug pricing and more. But many Americans aren’t feeling it.
Policymakers were determined to avoid the mistakes of the Great Recession — and they succeeded. But now they are in a mood of “fear and introspection.
We continue our conversation with Israeli journalist and filmmaker Yuval Abraham about the award-winning new documentary No Other Land, which he co-directed with Palestinian activist Basel Adra, about land dispossession in Masafer Yatta in the occupied West Bank. While accepting the audience award for best documentary at the Berlinale, Abraham said Israel was practicing apartheid, a comment for which he later received death threats.
The Israeli publications +972 and Local Call have exposed how the Israeli military used an artificial intelligence program known as Lavender to develop a “kill list” in Gaza that includes as many as 37,000 Palestinians who were targeted for assassination with little human oversight. A second AI system known as “Where’s Daddy?” tracked Palestinians on the kill list and was purposely designed to help Israel target individuals when they were at home at night with their families.
Senegal has inaugurated the youngest elected president in Africa. Newly elected President Bassirou Diomaye Faye nominated Ousmane Sonko to be his prime minister this week, capping a remarkable three-week period that saw the two opposition figures go from prison to ruling Senegal, vowing to fight poverty, injustice and corruption.
As the world reels from the World Central Kitchen attack in which seven aid workers in Gaza were struck and killed by three separate Israeli missiles while delivering aid for starving Palestinians, we speak with prominent Israeli scholar Neve Gordon about Israel’s history of weaponizing food access in the Gaza Strip via the destruction of Palestinian agricultural land, labor restrictions and blockade, “controlling and managing the population through food insecurity.
Often when a former cast member returns to host Saturday Night Live, they trot out their greatest hits. And, sure, when Kristen Wiig took the stage for the fifth time last night, she did return to one of her favorite characters: cranky Aunt Linda, who never seems to understand the point of the movie she’s reviewing (unless that movie is Paw Patrol: The Mighty Movie). But Wiig largely did new material, proving how unmatched she is at breathing life into kooky, unexpected characters.
In early March 2022, I spent two weeks hiding in a basement in my village near Kyiv as Russian soldiers prowled outside. In the months that followed, knowledge of Russia’s war crimes in Ukraine spread rapidly across the world. I could not believe that the international community would tolerate such atrocities and fail to intervene. I never imagined that, two years later, I would be in Washington, D.C., having to implore members of the U.S. Congress not to betray Ukraine.
Should Trump appear vague or duck the issue, some of his supporters fear it will allow the Biden campaign to tie him to the more extreme wing of the anti-abortion movement.
Until recently, in all of human history, the number of true cyborgs stood at about 70. Ian Burkhart has kept a count because he was one of them—a person whose brain has been connected directly to a computer.
Burkhart had become quadriplegic in a swimming accident after a wave ran him into a sandbar and injured his spine. He was later able to receive an implant from a research study, which allowed him to temporarily regain some movement in one hand.
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.
Welcome back to The Daily’s Sunday culture edition, in which one Atlantic writer or editor reveals what’s keeping them entertained. Today’s special guest is Rogé Karma, a staff writer who has written about the secretive industry devouring the U.S.
No one in law enforcement should be caught off guard if trouble breaks out before, during, or after the November presidential election, because Donald Trump keeps talking as if addressing differences through violence is a normal part of the American political process.