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.
Two years ago, I had a conversation that I have thought about almost every day since. Some pals and I were playing a board game, and—don’t worry, I will not try to explain the rules of a board game to you here. But suffice it to say, it involved naming colors.
In a special broadcast, we look at voices of a people’s history inspired by the late great historian Howard Zinn’s groundbreaking book, A People’s History of the United States, which helped reshape how history is taught in classrooms. Twenty years ago, Zinn and Anthony Arnove began organizing public readings of historical texts referenced in A People’s History of the United States.
We begin our July Fourth special broadcast with the words of Frederick Douglass. Born into slavery around 1818, Douglass became a key leader of the abolitionist movement. On July 5, 1852, in Rochester, New York, Douglass gave one of his most famous speeches, “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” He was addressing the Rochester Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society.
The shakeup, which has not been previously reported, comes as anti-abortion groups petition Trump, his campaign advisers and members of the RNC not to make significant changes to the party’s platform on abortion.
The 21-year-old President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief is credited with saving 25 million lives, but its budget is strained.
The cases moving through federal courts could further roll back abortion access, even if Biden wins in November.
The decision posted online shows that the justices voted to dismiss the dispute from their docket.
A federal plan to promote treatment and distribute overdose reversal drugs showed promise. Communities are trying to keep it going.
The president has a compelling antimonopoly record. But he doesn’t always lean into it. And voters don’t really know of it. The debate could change that.
Friday’s good jobs numbers may be a boost. But boosts haven’t yet materialized into political benefits.
On what would have been assassinated Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba’s 99th birthday, we speak with author and analyst Vijay Prashad, who has just published a lengthy article on Lumumba and the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s ongoing struggle for control over its own resources. Sunday marked the 64th anniversary of Lumumba’s historic speech marking his country’s independence from Belgium, in which he delivered a blistering critique of colonialism.
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.
Can the Democratic Party break out of the bubble it has created and sustained for so long? Or will it double down on the denial?
First, here are four new stories from The Atlantic:
Anne Applebaum: Time to roll the dice
John Dean: Richard Nixon would have loved the Court’s immunity decision.
Last Thursday was not a good day for Joe Biden. During the president’s shaky and at times incoherent debate performance, he appeared weaker and frailer in real time than the American public had ever seen. Friday appears to have been a much better day. At a campaign rally in North Carolina, clips of which his campaign distributed online, the president seemed like an entirely different man. Lively and invigorated, he spoke with a ferocity that had eluded him on the debate stage.
On Sunday morning, Representative James Clyburn of South Carolina tried to cover for President Joe Biden’s disastrous debate performance with an explanation that was an extreme reach. “All of us know how stutterers operate,” Clyburn said on CNN’s State of the Union. He was just the latest Biden supporter to use the president’s lifelong stutter as a shield against legitimate public concern, an excuse that many others used across social platforms.
Updated at 9:40 p.m. ET on July 3, 2024
Richard Nixon would have been thrilled with the ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court in Trump v. United States earlier this week.
I would know. I served as Nixon’s White House counsel until he fired me in April 1973 for seeking to end the Watergate cover-up by openly cooperating with the investigation of the White House’s involvement.
Joe Biden must resign the presidency. The last person to do so was Richard Nixon, who left in disgrace after abusing the powers of his office. Nixon had to resign because he led an assault on American democracy. Biden must resign for the opposite reason: to give American democracy its best chance of surviving.
The American right has spent every day since Biden was nominated in 2020 presenting him as an incompetent, doddering old fool, incapable of discharging the responsibilities of the office.
As Democrats discuss whether President Joe Biden should stand down as the 2024 Democratic presidential candidate following his disastrous debate performance, we speak with James Zogby, senior member of the Democratic National Committee, about his call for an open and transparent nomination process to select new candidates leading up to the Democratic National Convention next month, where the final nominee would be voted on.
The Israeli military has issued new evacuation orders for eastern Khan Younis and Rafah, where more than 250,000 Palestinians are seeking shelter following multiple previous forced displacements. Monday’s order prompted a flight from European Hospital, one of the few remaining partially functioning hospitals in Gaza, which has now shut down. “The situation is dire,” says Dr.
As the earliest Category 5 storm ever observed in the Atlantic carves a path of destruction through the Caribbean, we get an update on damage from Hurricane Beryl from the prime minister of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Ralph Gonsalves, where the storm hit Tuesday. He describes the disaster scenes he witnessed and discusses the rising challenge of extreme weather fueled by the climate crisis.
The cases moving through federal courts could further roll back abortion access, even if Biden wins in November.
The decision posted online shows that the justices voted to dismiss the dispute from their docket.
A federal plan to promote treatment and distribute overdose reversal drugs showed promise. Communities are trying to keep it going.
The president has a compelling antimonopoly record. But he doesn’t always lean into it. And voters don’t really know of it. The debate could change that.
Friday’s good jobs numbers may be a boost. But boosts haven’t yet materialized into political benefits.
The president is getting more micro in his economic sales pitch as the landscape loses its luster.
Chris Lehmann, D.C. bureau chief for The Nation, discusses the ongoing fallout from Thursday’s first presidential debate of 2024 and mounting pressure on President Biden to drop out of the race amid questions about his age and mental fitness. “It appears that Biden and his inner circle of advisers are doubling down,” says Lehmann. “They took this incredible risk to do this debate … and they’re now saying it’s a greater risk to change horses.
Since President Joe Biden’s debate debacle on Thursday, I’ve learned two things for sure: first, that Republicans are not the only party being led by a geriatric egotist who puts himself before the country. And second, that Republicans are not the only party whose putative leaders have a toxic lemming mindset and are willing to lead American democracy off a cliff.
I know, I know: Calm down, bed wetter. And how dare you “both sides” this predicament.
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.
Donald Trump’s “Black jobs” comment is a reminder of his long history of racism.
First, here are four new stories from The Atlantic:
David Frum: Apocalypse not
Stuart Stevens: The absurdity of the dump-Biden uprising
In Iran, the big winner is none of the above.
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Donald Trump has become the first former president to be convicted of a felony, found guilty of 34 counts in a Manhattan court on May 30.
The verdict is a historic moment. Not long ago, the idea that a former president—or a major-party presidential nominee—would face serious legal jeopardy was nearly unthinkable. Now he is convicted and is scheduled to be sentenced this fall.
Forget Donald Trump. Forget Joe Biden. Think instead about the Constitution. What does this document, the supreme law of our land, actually say about lawsuits against ex-presidents?
Nothing remotely resembling what Chief Justice John Roberts and five associate justices declared in yesterday’s disappointing Trump v. United States decision.