As the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran enters its second month, President Donald Trump has said he wants “to take the oil” and seize Kharg Island, Iran’s key export hub in the Persian Gulf. President Trump’s comments come as 3,500 U.S. troops began arriving in the region on Friday, with The Washington Post reporting that the Pentagon is preparing for weeks of potential ground combat in Iran.
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According to President Trump, Iran has undergone not one, but two regime changes already this year—and the new government is far more “reasonable” than its predecessors. “The one regime was decimated, destroyed, they’re all dead.
Last week, the Department of Health and Human Services finally followed through on a plan it first outlined for several of its top officials nearly a year ago: It reassigned them to positions in the Indian Health Service.
It probably won’t shock you to learn that the best-selling game of 2026 thus far is not about the mundane activity of running a video store. Yet for me, it might as well be: Retro Rewind, an indie exercise in retail management, has captured my attention as much as the real global chart-topper, Resident Evil Requiem. That latest entry in the smash-hit horror franchise is exceptionally sleek, with gory action and a discomfiting atmosphere.
Each Sunday, a group of Catholics meets in the basement of St. Joseph’s Church in Greenwich Village after the 6 p.m. Mass. They mingle over wine and cheese for half an hour, and then Father Jonah Teller, a Dominican friar and priest, usually leads an hour-long discussion—about the nature of freedom, perhaps, or the virtue of hope, or a theologically laden Gerard Manley Hopkins poem. The weekly gathering is called In Vino Veritas, Latin for “In wine, there is truth.
President Trump clearly wants out—and soon.
The war that the United States and Israel started with Iran delayed what Trump sees as a landmark visit to China, which he postponed until mid-May, suggesting that he thinks he will be free to travel by then. He said in a Cabinet meeting that most of Iran’s military capabilities have been destroyed, implying a high degree of success.
The Trump administration says the United States has struck 11,000 targets in Iran since the U.S.-Israeli war on the country began. Critics have questioned the accuracy of the Maven system, the artificial intelligence system used by the military to speed up the process of identifying targets.
A Russian tanker carrying around 700,000 barrels of crude oil has arrived in the port of Matanzas, Cuba, breaking the U.S. blockade imposed by President Trump three months ago. Fuel shortages in Cuba have caused dayslong blackouts and have brought all sectors of the country to the brink of collapse.
The White House is claiming the arrival of the Russian tanker, unimpeded by the United States, does not signal a “formal change in sanction policy,” and said U.S.
The Supreme Court is hearing arguments this week on the constitutionality of President Trump’s move to end birthright citizenship. An executive order, signed on Trump’s first day back in office, declares children born to parents without permanent legal status would no longer be automatically granted citizenship.
The policy “is deeply illegal, unconstitutional and morally wrong,” says Cody Wofsy, deputy director of the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project.
A flurry of activity renewed concerns about insider trading in the Trump administration.
The seven-year war between the bookstore owner and the good liberals who went rogue.
TSA shortages, ICE agents in terminals, and security lines stretching for hours: You might want to consider booking a train instead.
The health secretary, a member of America’s most famous Democratic family, told the audience at CPAC that his father and uncle would have endorsed Trump’s decisions on Iran and Ukraine.
The Alaska Republican senator is up for reelection and facing a barrage of critical ads.
He indicated that the FDA will soon take action on peptides, the mini-proteins biohackers tout as therapies for a range of ills.
The ruling in a lawsuit brought by a group of states deals another setback to the Trump administration in its efforts to restrict the treatments.
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.
President Donald Trump has taken one risk after another that could have destabilized the American economy. Iran is the latest crisis to test U.S. economic resilience.
The president stopped in Marjorie Taylor Greene’s old district to defend his economic record.
The iconic reality show promised its contestants the chance to build a career, but only the creators found real success.
The iconic reality show promised its contestants the chance to build a career, but only the creators found real success.
When he was interviewed onstage at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Saturday, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was asked a question unlikely to be on anyone’s mind in the midst of upheaval in the department he oversees and a conflict in the Middle East: “Who’s stronger—you or Secretary of War Pete Hegseth?”
The exchange was emblematic of the role that Kennedy and other HHS officials played during the four-day conference.
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.
The term virtue signaling refers to an annoying moral peacocking that has less to do with politics than with self-gratification. It’s the dinner guest who feels compelled to comment on the climate impact of every course.
Thore Graepel may have been the first human to be vanquished by a superintelligence. In 2015, on his first day as a researcher at Google DeepMind, he was challenged to play against the earliest iteration of AlphaGo—a computer program developed by DeepMind that would prove so effective at the ancient-Chinese game of weiqi (or Go, as it is commonly known in the West) that it changed how humans play it, and then upended the field of AI itself.
The Trump administration has made a habit of pressing criminal charges against Americans observing and protesting harsh immigration-enforcement tactics, using the power of the executive branch to intimidate and punish those who visibly dissent from the president’s political agenda. In many ways, the prosecution of LaMonica McIver is in line with this general approach.
