In 1876, as corruption scandals shook the Ulysses S. Grant administration, the poet, diplomat, and founding Atlantic editor James Russell Lowell wondered where the American experiment was headed. “Is ours a ‘government of the people, by the people, for the people,’” he wrote, “or a Kakistocracy rather, for the benefit of knaves at the cost of fools?”
Now there’s a $10 word for you. From the Greek kakos, for “bad,” kakistocracy means “rule by the worst.
From Chipotle to Chopt, the cyclosporiasis outbreak is causing an implosion of sales—and an explosion of problems elsewhere.
It looks like Bending Spoons’ bet on nostalgia brands like AOL, Vimeo, and Evernote is playing off after its big IPO this week.
Nobel Prize winner Alvin Roth explains what we learn when markets are shaped by big ethical questions.
Comcast splits from NBCUniversal as media companies realize bigger isn’t better.
The Trump administration said Monday Americans in Congo, where Ebola is spreading, must spend three weeks in a third country before coming home.
John Cornyn, Bill Cassidy and Thom Tillis are leaving the Senate after warring with Trump, but they still can block the president’s appointees.
The Trump administration’s crackdown on Medicaid fraud in Minnesota has upended finances and disrupted access to care.
U.S. citizens in the Democratic Republic of the Congo will have to spend 21 days in a third country before returning to the U.S., even if they show no signs of disease.
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.
Hollywood’s blockbuster adaptation of the ancient Greek epic The Odyssey premieres around the world today amid growing calls for a boycott. Human rights campaigners are criticizing director Christopher Nolan over his decision to film part of the film in Western Sahara, a vast territory in northwestern Africa that Morocco has occupied for the past half-century.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio and top White House adviser Stephen Miller are pushing for a global crackdown on leftist organizations. The State Department on Thursday hosted a summit “on the resurgence of political terrorism,” where Miller described the left as “enemies of civilization” and described efforts to “disrupt, identify, defund, debank, arrest and prosecute these political terrorists that are operating in our country.” Rubio announced the U.S.
Hundreds of community members gathered in Houston on Thursday evening for a public viewing of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, the 52-year-old Mexican man shot and killed by an ICE agent on July 7. His sons stood by their father’s casket for hours greeting mourners who wore blue, Salgado Araujo’s favorite color. A mariachi band played, and several altars adorned the chapel: One table held Salgado Araujo’s construction tools and hard hats, while another displayed two of his Mexico soccer jerseys.
In a primetime address on Thursday, President Trump accused China of meddling in U.S. elections in his latest effort to spread doubt about the U.S. voting system ahead of the midterm elections in November. Trump announced he was declassifying documents that show what he called “shocking vulnerabilities in our election infrastructure,” but offered no evidence that China or any other country directly interfered with recent elections.
Lifelong activist, organizer and educator Denise Oliver-Vélez has died at the age of 78. She was a central figure in the civil rights movements of the 1960s and 1970s and was the first woman elected to the Young Lords Central Committee, a radical Puerto Rican human rights group modeled on the Black Panther Party, which Oliver-Vélez was also a member of. She later became the first Black female program director in public radio and taught at SUNY New Paltz.
Two more Americans have given their lives in the service of their country. They died in an Iranian attack on a Jordanian air base; several more U.S. military personnel were injured and one is missing. The American people have a right to know why they died, and how many more of their sons and daughters President Trump is willing to risk in this war of choice.
The president, so far, has issued his usual stock answers.
With drug deaths plummeting, state officials are wary of halting harm reduction initiatives.
This is an edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a set of stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Sign up here to get it every Saturday morning.
Earlier this year, my colleague Rose Horowitch reported on a new irony in higher education: Students who have chosen to take film classes can’t sit through the films.
Editor’s Note: Washington Week With The Atlantic is a partnership between NewsHour Productions, WETA, and The Atlantic airing every Friday on PBS stations nationwide. Check your local listings, watch full episodes here, or listen to the weekly podcast here.
President Trump’s obsession with alleged election corruption featured heavily in his latest speech to the nation. On Washington Week With The Atlantic, panelists joined to discuss the president’s remarks, and more.
Lionel Messi on the soccer field takes the short, trotty steps of a dachshund in the park. Such diminutive, mincy movements are part of his mystique: He gives opponents absolutely no reason whatsoever to track his runty, 5-foot-7 figure, right up until he bolts away and suddenly tears open the grass in front of him. He becomes the most commanding man on the green expanse, and seems to grow a foot in stature as he charges the goal.
The pop star Dua Lipa is known for her dance-floor hits, for her turn as a mermaid in Barbie, for always seeming to be on vacation. Lately, though, she’s cultivated a reputation as a literary tastemaker. Through her book club, Service95, founded in 2023, the singer has made her love of books key to her public persona. She interviews authors on her podcast and has appeared at various Booker Prize festivities; she and her new husband, Callum Turner, purportedly bonded over a Hernan Diaz novel.
It looks like Bending Spoons’ bet on nostalgia brands like AOL, Vimeo, and Evernote is playing off after its big IPO this week.
Nobel Prize winner Alvin Roth explains what we learn when markets are shaped by big ethical questions.
Comcast splits from NBCUniversal as media companies realize bigger isn’t better.
John Cornyn, Bill Cassidy and Thom Tillis are leaving the Senate after warring with Trump, but they still can block the president’s appointees.
The Trump administration’s crackdown on Medicaid fraud in Minnesota has upended finances and disrupted access to care.