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.
Before the DNC kicks off on Monday, let’s quickly recap the sheer eventfulness of the past few weeks for the Democratic Party. Less than one month ago, President Joe Biden announced that he was exiting the presidential race.
This is Atlantic Intelligence, a newsletter in which our writers help you wrap your mind around artificial intelligence and a new machine age. Sign up here.
At this point, AI art is about as remarkable as the email inviting you to save 10 percent on a new pair of jeans.
The vice president makes her pitch in North Carolina, where Democrats have long hoped to flip the closely divided state.
AI entered the presidential race this week, but not in the way many might have been expecting. In a post on Truth Social, Donald Trump falsely claimed that Kamala Harris had “CHEATED” and “A.I.’d” an image showing a large crowd of people cheering for her at a campaign stop in Michigan.
This week, X launched an AI-image generator, allowing paying subscribers of Elon Musk’s social platform to make their own art. So—naturally—some users appear to have immediately made images of Donald Trump flying a plane toward the World Trade Center; Mickey Mouse wielding an assault rifle, and another of him enjoying a cigarette and some beer on the beach; and so on. Some of the images that people have created using the tool are deeply unsettling; others are just strange, or even kind of funny.
Until recently, the Kamala Harris campaign seemed allergic to setting a policy agenda. Finally, the campaign is starting to roll out its economic platform, and the substance likely won’t appeal to many people who actually know about economics. But it’s hard for me to argue with the politics. As someone who has often said Democrats need to compromise their ideals to win, I don’t exclude my own ideals from that.
Ukraine’s government has denied a Wall Street Journal report this week that Kyiv approved the plan to blow up the Russian-owned Nord Stream pipelines in 2022. According to the newspaper, a crew of Ukrainian civilians and active-duty soldiers used a rented yacht to reach the pipelines, which deliver Russian natural gas to Germany via the Baltic Sea, and used explosives to sever three of the four pipelines.
The World Health Organization has declared mpox to be a global public health emergency. The viral disease, formerly known as monkeypox, spreads through close physical contact and can cause fevers, rashes and extremely painful lesions. The Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also declared a public health emergency over mpox earlier this week after logging over 15,000 cases. Scientists say this strain of mpox has a fatality rate of around 5% in adults and double that in children.
As Donald Trump tries to distance his campaign from Project 2025, those behind the right-wing policy blueprint to remake the U.S. government continue to brag in private about their close ties to the Republican presidential nominee and how they intend to push a radical right-wing agenda in a second Trump administration. In July, Project 2025 co-author Russell Vought met with two people he believed to be relatives of a wealthy conservative donor interested in funding the effort.
The vice president’s plan aims to make housing more affordable, ease health care costs and crack down on corporations for rising grocery prices.
Negotiating your debt can minimize what you owe and help get your finances back on track.
Why more ultrawealthy people are making sure athletes get paid.
He doesn’t have a 401(k) or IRA and doesn’t own any real estate.
The move to protect some older Americans from higher costs would come just ahead of the election.
Both the White House and the Harris campaign have envisioned the savings promised by the negotiations as playing a significant role in the run-up to November’s election.
Walz is framing IVF as an issue that affects men, too.
“We cannot win if people think we’re headed into a recession,” one Democratic National Committee member said.
Though hiring remains strong, voters blame President Joe Biden for persistent high prices.
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.
Nearly 40,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s war on Gaza, according to the official death toll, though the true casualty figure is likely far higher with thousands of the dead unaccounted for. Meanwhile, Israeli forces have raided towns and villages across the occupied West Bank, and settlers under military protection have repeatedly stormed the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in recent days.
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 recent comments about firing union workers for going on strike could come back to haunt him in this election.
At a rally this past April in Michigan, surrounded by a cadre of law-enforcement officials, Donald Trump suddenly began railing against electric cars. President Joe Biden’s decision to support EVs, he decried, “is one of the dumbest I’ve ever heard.” Minutes later, he was back to praising the sheriffs behind him: “We have to get law and order back. These are the best people in the world,” he said to a smattering of applause.
This is an edition of Time-Travel Thursdays, a journey through The Atlantic’s archives to contextualize the present and surface delightful treasures. Sign up here.
In July 1860, The Atlantic Monthly’s readers were confronted, many for the first time, with Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection.
Updated at 2:49 p.m. on August 15, 2024
By the time Lisa started breaking open her Mounjaro pens with pliers, she had run out of other ideas. She was 300 pounds. She had already tried bariatric surgery. (It had limited success.) She had tried getting her insurance company to cover Mounjaro. (It stopped after a month.) She had tried a cheaper copycat version from a compounding pharmacy. (It didn’t work as well, and she worried about what she was actually getting.
Up to 200 Rohingya Muslims were killed in drone strikes last week in Burma as they attempted to flee to Bangladesh. This comes amid intensifying conflict between the military junta and the Arakan Army, a rebel armed group. Human Rights Watch says the military and the Arakan Army have both committed extrajudicial killings, unlawful recruitment for combat, and widespread arson against Rohingya civilians.
Eight years after the 2016 peace agreement in Colombia between government forces and guerrillas that was meant to end a half-century of conflict, around 5 million Colombians remain internally displaced and a growing number of people live in areas controlled by armed groups. The ongoing violence in the country has pushed many to flee, often by going through the treacherous Darién Gap between Colombia and neighboring Panama.
Health officials in Gaza said Thursday that the official death toll from Israel’s 10-month war has topped 40,000, though that is believed to be a vast undercount of the true figure. The grim milestone was reached just days after the Biden administration greenlit $20 billion in additional weapons sales to Israel, including 50 F-15 fighter jets, tank ammunition, mortar rounds, tactical vehicles and advanced air-to-air missiles. The U.S.
