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.
Michael Cohen is an admitted liar and a convicted felon who is openly fueled by a thirst for revenge against Donald Trump. That he is so frank about his motives and past may actually make his testimony seem more credible to jurors.
If you’re looking to understand the philosophy that underpins Silicon Valley’s latest gold rush, look no further than OpenAI’s Scarlett Johansson debacle. The story, according to Johansson’s lawyers, goes like this: Nine months ago, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman approached the actor with a request to license her voice for a new digital assistant; Johansson declined.
Tennis is an elegant and simple sport. Players stand on opposite sides of a rectangle, divided by a net that can’t be crossed. The gameplay is full of invisible geometry: Viewers might trace parabolas, angles, and lines depending on how the players move and where they hit the ball. It’s an ideal representation of conflict, a perfect stage for pitting one competitor against another, so it’s no wonder that the game comes to stand in for all sorts of different things off the court.
The social media post came after Trump said in a TV interview that he plans to share a policy on contraception “very shortly,” without providing details.
Updated at 4:38 p.m. ET on May 21, 2024
In the Martian lowlands, one rocky crater is dotted with small holes, winding from the floor to the rim like breadcrumbs. Their clean and cylindrical appearance is distinctly unnatural, suggesting the work of aliens—which it is. For three years, a robot from Earth has been collecting samples of rock and soil into six-inch-long tubes, whirring and crackling on the otherwise quiet planet.
We speak with renowned Israeli historian Ilan Pappé about his recent trip to the United States, when he was interrogated for two hours by federal agents upon arrival at Detroit airport about his political views on Gaza, Hamas and Israel, as well as demanding to know whom he knew in U.S. Muslim, Arab and Palestinian communities. Pappé was only allowed to enter the country after agents copied the contents of his phone. “They refused to tell me why they stopped me,” he says.
Israel and the United States have both strongly condemned the International Criminal Court’s decision to pursue arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on war crimes charges, calling it “outrageous” and seeking support from other allies in opposing the court’s moves.
We speak with Lily Greenberg Call, the first known Jewish appointee to resign from the Biden administration over the war in Gaza. Greenberg Call was a special assistant to the chief of staff at the Interior Department after being named to the post by President Joe Biden in early 2023, but she quit on May 15 in a four-page letter that slammed Biden’s “disastrous, continued support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
Democrats’ efforts to ride the coattails of abortion ballot measures put passage at risk.
Health systems are trying to move more of the work they do to your house.
Federal health officials estimate that roughly 100,000 people enrolled in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program will sign up for subsidized plans through the health insurance marketplace over the next year under the rule.
Anti-abortion and abortion-rights groups fear the Kennedy scion will peel off voters disillusioned with Trump and Biden.
Dairy cows in nine states are infected and hospitals are looking to the government for guidance.
The president is getting more micro in his economic sales pitch as the landscape loses its luster.
Friday’s government report showed that last month’s hiring gain was down sharply from the blockbuster increase of 315,000 in March.
Biden and Trump are both campaigning on warped economic statistics, cherry-picking weird data from the Covid crisis.
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.
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.
For years, leading Republicans have chosen to let their memory lapse about things they once said about Donald Trump. It’s a disingenuous forgetting that has deepened since Trump went on trial in New York.
At Morehouse College, students and faculty were divided over inviting President Joe Biden to receive an honorary degree and give a speech at the school’s commencement ceremony. Morehouse valedictorian DeAngelo Fletcher, who had a Palestinian flag affixed to his graduation cap, called for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza during his speech, and assistant professor of sociology Taura Taylor stood with her fist raised, facing away from Biden as he addressed the crowd.
Joe Biden is, at the moment, losing his reelection campaign. And he is doing so while presiding over the strongest economy the United States has ever experienced.
The jobless rate is below 4 percent, as it has been for nearly two and a half years. Wage growth is moderating, but it is higher than it was at any point during the Obama administration; overall, Biden has overseen stronger pay increases than any president since Richard Nixon.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on Monday won the right to appeal his extradition to the United States. Assange’s lawyers argued before the British High Court that the U.S. government provided “blatantly inadequate” assurances that Assange would have the same free speech protections as an American citizen if extradited from Britain. Assange has spent more than a decade facing the threat of extradition to the U.S.
The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court has announced he is seeking arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and three leaders of Hamas: Yahya Sinwar, Ismail Haniyeh and Mohammed Deif. The charges against Netanyahu and Gallant include starvation of civilians, extermination, intentionally directing attacks against a civilian population, among other crimes.
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian were killed on Sunday in a helicopter crash along with several other officials and crew. Wreckage of the helicopter was found early Monday in a mountainous region of the country’s northwest following an overnight search in blizzard conditions. Raisi was returning from inaugurating a new dam built jointly with Azerbaijan along the two countries’ border.
In a recent scene from HBO’s The Sympathizer, a communist spy whom we only know as the Captain (played by Hoa Xuande) sits outside a Los Angeles car-repair station, staking out the man he’s planning to kill. His target is a former senior military officer, Major Oanh, who fled with him from Vietnam to the U.S., and who is starting over as a mechanic. When the Captain learns that Oanh is importing expired Vietnamese candy as a side hustle, he confronts him. To his shock, the man embraces him.
Updated at 3:45 p.m. ET on May 20, 2024
One day the French writer Colombe Schneck, a total stranger, came to my house. She was a friend of a friend who lived in Paris, and it had somehow been arranged that she would drop by. The afternoon was gray and drizzly, and I felt slightly awkward about having this visitor I had never met coming to my house. But then she walked in, brisk, at ease. I liked her immediately. We launched right into big subjects; there was no chatter or small talk.
Of all the creatures stricken with this new and terrible H5N1 flu—the foxes, the bears, the eagles, ducks, chickens, and many other birds—dairy cattle are some of the most intimate with us. In the United States, more than 9 million milk cows live on farms, where people muck their manure, help birth their calves, tend their sick, and milk them daily.
Democrats’ efforts to ride the coattails of abortion ballot measures put passage at risk.
Health systems are trying to move more of the work they do to your house.
Federal health officials estimate that roughly 100,000 people enrolled in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program will sign up for subsidized plans through the health insurance marketplace over the next year under the rule.