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 federal judiciary may turn out to be an endangered democracy’s last line of defense.
First, here are three new stories from The Atlantic:
So you looked directly into the sun.
The state’s high court said it wouldn’t interfere with the legislature’s authority to craft abortion policy.
Cade Haskins averaged just 0.9 points a game this season for one of the worst teams in all of Division I college basketball. And yet he may turn out to be responsible for triggering one of the biggest changes in the sport’s history.
Last month, in a small HR office above the only sports bar in Hanover, New Hampshire, Haskins and his teammates on the Dartmouth College basketball squad voted to form the first-ever NCAA players’ union.
Sixteen states already ban abortion. In May, Florida, and possibly Arizona, will join them.
The Federal Trade Commission has just released its long-anticipated report on the major disruptions to America’s grocery-supply chain during the coronavirus pandemic—and it confirmed the worst. According to the report, large grocery companies saw the pandemic as an opportunity. They deliberately wielded their market power amid food shortages, entrenching their dominance and keeping their shelves stocked even as smaller companies had to scramble for goods or simply close up shop.
Updated at 4:12 p.m. ET on April 9, 2024
With less than a week to go before the start of his trial in New York on falsifying records, former President Donald Trump has sued Juan Merchan, the judge presiding over the case. The suit is sealed, but it is reportedly related to a gag order Merchan recently placed on Trump.
The suit seems highly unlikely to succeed, and it’s only the latest in a series of Trump broadsides against the judge.
About midway through the movie Klute, as Jane Fonda, playing a young woman named Bree Daniels, mazes through a sweat-soaked club, the actor Candy Darling appears in the crowd. Pink-lemonade sunglasses frame Darling’s face; her blond locks are held by a patterned bandana. Bree, floating in a druggy haze, is surrounded by sweaty men with comb-overs. As she steps onto the dance floor, she seems relieved to spot Darling, who’s one of the few women in sight.
Rwanda is holding a week of commemorations to mark the 30th anniversary of the 1994 Rwanda genocide, a period of around 100 days in which up to 1 million Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed by Hutu militias while powerful countries, including the United States, stood by and refused to stop the mass killings. Shortly after the genocide, Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame took power and has since ruled Rwanda with an iron fist, leading a harsh crackdown on the press and opposition groups.
Lawyers representing Germany at the International Court of Justice delivered their concluding remarks at The Hague today in a case brought by Nicaragua, which has accused Germany of facilitating the commission of genocide in Gaza by providing military and financial aid to Israel. Germany is Israel’s second-largest arms supplier, and Nicaragua has asked the United Nations’ top court for emergency measures to halt its material support to Israel.
Award-winning journalist Arwa Damon has just returned from a humanitarian trip to Gaza in her capacity as the founder of INARA, the International Network for Aid Relief and Assistance, a nonprofit currently providing medical and mental healthcare to children. Damon describes the overwhelming need for aid under Israel’s siege of the territory. “Nothing goes in and out of Gaza without Israel’s approval.
Should Trump appear vague or duck the issue, some of his supporters fear it will allow the Biden campaign to tie him to the more extreme wing of the anti-abortion movement.
The USDA has confirmed avian flu outbreaks in 15 herds across six states.
By any measure, it amounted to a strong month of hiring.
The concern is that higher rates are putting pressure on households and businesses looking to borrow, weighing on hiring, investment and the housing market.
Last month’s job growth was up from a revised gain of 229,000 jobs in January.
The president’s team thinks it’s had a historically successful first term, delivering victories on the economy, climate, drug pricing and more. But many Americans aren’t feeling it.
Policymakers were determined to avoid the mistakes of the Great Recession — and they succeeded. But now they are in a mood of “fear and introspection.
We continue our conversation with Israeli journalist and filmmaker Yuval Abraham about the award-winning new documentary No Other Land, which he co-directed with Palestinian activist Basel Adra, about land dispossession in Masafer Yatta in the occupied West Bank. While accepting the audience award for best documentary at the Berlinale, Abraham said Israel was practicing apartheid, a comment for which he later received death threats.
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.
Third-party and independent candidates are never all that popular in American presidential elections. But this year, fear of handing the election to Donald Trump is making an outsider run radioactive.
This afternoon, as the moon’s shadow slanted across the United States of America, millions upon millions of people within the centermost line of its path gazed up at totality, the most extraordinary sight that nature has to offer, here on Earth and perhaps in the universe at large. During the Great American Eclipse of 2017, totality left me awestruck. This year, outside the total-eclipse zone, was a more muted affair: On The Atlantic’s rooftop terrace in Washington, D.C.
Donald Trump didn’t rule out signing a national abortion ban, though it is unlikely Congress would be able to pass one.
Well, you have to hand it to them. Few constituencies are so ostentatiously and consistently wrong, over so many generations of human history, as the doomsayers who promise that the end is nigh.
It did seem kind of nigh there for a second, though, didn’t it? Or, as the writer Kurt Andersen put it in the days leading up to today’s eclipse, after a rare (and rather substantial) earthquake rattled New York City: “Earthquake. Eclipse. The antichrist running for president. Check.
As a little girl, I often found myself in my family’s basement, doing battle with a dragon. I wasn’t gaming or playing pretend: My dragon was a piece of enterprise voice-dictation software called Dragon Naturally Speaking, launched in 1997 (and purchased by my dad, an early adopter).
As a kid, I was enchanted by the idea of a computer that could type for you. The premise was simple: Wear a headset, pull up the software, and speak.
One morning in 1999, while I sat at the office computer where I built corporate websites, a story popped up on Yahoo. An internet domain name, Business.com, had just sold for $7.5 million—a shocking sum that would be something like $14 million in today’s dollars.
The dot-com era, then nearing its end, had been literally named for addresses such as this one.
Three of the most significant greenhouse gases contributing to global heating — carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide — reached new record highs again last year, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Global CO2 levels are now over 50% higher than they were before mass industrialization, due to the burning of fossil fuels, deforestation and livestock agriculture.
Walid Daqqa, one of the most prominent Palestinian prisoners in Israeli custody, has died from cancer. The novelist had spent the past 38 years locked up for his involvement with an armed group that abducted and killed an Israeli soldier in 1984. Rights groups had been pressuring Israel to release Daqqa, who had already finished serving his prison term, saying he was in dire need of medical attention.
“We are deeply disappointed in President Trump’s position,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America.
Israel’s war on Gaza hit the six-month mark on Sunday, a grim milestone. Over 33,100 Palestinians have been killed, including 14,000 children. Nearly 76,000 have been injured, and tens of thousands are missing. About 1.7 million people have been displaced, and the United Nations is warning that famine is imminent.
His announcement is likely to disappoint anti-abortion groups after his campaign floated a 15-week ban earlier this year.
The USDA has confirmed avian flu outbreaks in 15 herds across six states.