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.
George F. Will joined The Washington Post when Richard Nixon was president, and he’s been espousing the same cerebral brand of conservatism twice a week ever since. His record doesn’t leave much room for surprise.
Three hours after Thomas Jefferson died at his Monticello home on July 4, 1826, his personal secretary, Nicholas Trist, snipped a lock of the Founder’s gray hair, still faintly reddish blond. Trist then tied the hair with orange thread and placed it in a paper packet, along with a short note describing what he’d done.
In an era before photography or modern embalming, hair was an easily preserved reminder of a beloved friend or relative who’d died.
Drew Philp is the winner of the 23rd annual Michael Kelly Award, given by The Atlantic, for his investigative feature “There Will Be No Mercy,” published by The Atavist Magazine in 2025. Philp’s harrowing exposé of Ethiopia’s civil war serves as the definitive account of the two-year conflict, considered one of the deadliest of this century.
The award was announced this morning at The Atlantic Festival in New York City.
Fifteen years ago this week, thousands of activists marched on the Financial District in New York City. They formed the Occupy Wall Street encampment in Zuccotti Park, launching a movement focused on economic inequality that spread across the nation and globe under the slogan, “We are the 99%.” Protesters would go on to sleep in Zuccotti Park for nearly two months before police raided the encampment.
“If we don’t connect those dots between the struggles, we’re never going to get anywhere,” says Pulitzer Prize- and Grammy-winning multi-instrumentalist Rhiannon Giddens. “That’s what music is for. … We have to make music with people from different backgrounds because then we have that conversation.
As world leaders prepare to head to New York for the United Nations General Assembly and Climate Week, Democracy Now! speaks with Amitabh Behar, executive director of Oxfam International. “We live in a very different world from 1945,” when the U.N. was formed, says Behar. “You cannot continue with the veto power.” And with António Guterres soon stepping down, Behar stresses that the United Nations’ next secretary-general must be a woman — “a fundamental shift we need to make.
The Louisiana Republican said vaccine skepticism that Kennedy and his MAHA backers promoted led to the recent measles deaths.
The director of the Ford Foundation’s mission investments program explains why assuming you can’t make a positive impact AND a profit is a big mistake.
The life of billionaire investor Leon Black, the private-equity behemoth he helped build, and his unfortunate friendship with Jeffrey Epstein.
Williamsburg’s gentrifiers are being gentrified.
Silicon Valley’s acquisition frenzy hits a new peak with Nvidia’s massive deal with Hugging Face.
His plan to bury the film blew up in his face like a stick of dynamite.
Nicole Saphier rejected the notion that vaccines cause autism during her confirmation hearing.
The health secretary and Democratic governor have repeatedly tussled over the state’s handling of the measles outbreak.
Americans will soon be able to travel to Big Sky Country to take experimental drugs in defiance of federal regulators.
The refunds comes ahead of the November midterms where high health costs are expected to play a factor.
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.
The Louisiana Republican’s comments come as both Democrats and Republicans have been forced to find ways to address the backlash against data centers.
The new Fed chair will have the spotlight at the central bank’s high-profile conference in Jackson Hole. He should use it.
Vice President JD Vance’s visit marked his second to Maine’s 2nd Congressional District in four months.
Four years ago today, the Woman, Life, Freedom uprising erupted in Iran after the death in custody of Zhina Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman who had been arrested by Iran’s “morality police.” Over the next three months, hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets protesting against Iran’s discriminatory compulsory veiling laws.
A major new report by the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem titled “The Elimination Project” accuses Israel of “dramatically intensifying its attacks on every aspect of Palestinian life in the West Bank.”
“For too long, Israel’s policies in the West Bank have been treated or looked at as isolated events,” says Ori Givati, director of international relations at B’Tselem.
Since becoming Health and Human Services secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has repeatedly denied that he opposes vaccines and has toned down some of his more extreme rhetoric on the subject. But in a keynote speech today at a conference for Children’s Health Defense, the anti-vaccine organization he founded, the old Kennedy was back. He complained about safety studies, floated disproven theories about a link between vaccines and autism, and all but declared himself an anti-vaxxer.
In a conversation at The Atlantic Festival with The Atlantic’s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, former Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg warned fellow members of the Democratic Party to resist the urge to revert to “the previous status quo” if they regain power in the midterms.
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.
If Democrats win control of the House in November, they will face a dilemma: Should they attempt a record third impeachment of Donald Trump?
The president and his allies have warned that this would be a Democratic majority’s first move. “I’m going to be impeached.
Welcome to our wedding weekend! It’s going to be a beautiful occasion, followed by an intimate gathering of family, dear friends, and one Russian oligarch nobody knows who will be handed the bill afterward. The bride will wear white, the groom will wear white, and the Russian oligarch nobody knows will wear camouflage in case someone tries to take a picture of him and ProPublica finds out. We will try to pass him off as a tropical plant, or suggest that he was doing close-up magic.