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.We’re all parsing The Speech, Joe Biden’s “Soul of the Nation” address about the growing anti-constitutionalism of Republican extremism. But we should first consider how hard it is to evaluate a speech that no president should have to give.
The VA submitted an interim final rule that would enable it to provide abortions when the life or health of a veteran or beneficiary is in peril, or in cases of rape or incest.
The plan touted by the U.S. Treasury secretary aims to diminish the Kremlin’s revenue while preserving the global oil supply.
The principles of classical liberalism that underlie the American political system emerged in an era, the late 17th century, when people were exhausted by violent religious wars. The philosophy that eventually created our democracy was therefore designed to “lower the temperature of politics,” as Francis Fukuyama has recently written, to take issues of existential truth off the table so that people could live in safety.
In Corinne Hoex’s Gentlemen Callers, sex is a dream. The book’s protagonist floats between abstract, ethereal trysts. When she visits a gas-station attendant in her sleep, she is a soapy sponge in his hands. Caressed by a pet groomer, she purrs; she’s his cat. Her liaisons are absurd and illicit—yet, crucially, never dangerous. Gentlemen Callers is not a classic romance novel or a straightforward bodice ripper, Zoë Hu points out.
In the introduction to her book Essential Labor: Mothering as Social Change, Angela Garbes describes these times as “strange and difficult years of instability, loss, and grief—both general and intimate.” That’s it, I thought. Sometimes it feels as though decades of tragedy and erasure have been smashed into the past 30 months.
Randy Lubin recalls the exact moment his life became an improvised musical. The 35-year-old game designer from San Francisco never used to sing, not even in the shower or alone in the car. At his wife’s request, he would perform the kiddush, a Jewish prayer sung each week during Shabbat, but that was it. “Singing wasn’t something I sought out or particularly found a lot of joy in,” Lubin told me.Seeing his son, Curio, for the first time changed everything.
The housing crisis is worsening in Los Angeles, where an estimated 60,000 people remain unhoused in Los Angeles County and thousands more are on the cusp of evictions, even as 20,000 hotel rooms remain vacant across the region. This comes as a new ballot measure could require hotels to house homeless people in vacant rooms.
In a primetime address Thursday, President Biden warned Donald Trump and his radical supporters are threatening the foundations of the republic. Biden said, “Too much of what’s happening in our country today is not normal,” and that MAGA Republicans present a “clear and present danger to our democracy,” referring to Trump’s campaign slogan of “Make America Great Again.
“Jerome Powell’s rhetoric is dangerous, and a Fed-manufactured recession is not inevitable — it’s a policy choice,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren said.
The panel’s vote comes after abortion-rights activists spent several months gathering more than 750,000 signatures from all 83 counties in the state.
The housing market has cooled so much as the Fed withdraws its support for the economy that some analysts say it may be in a slump.
In a closely watched speech, the Fed chair foreshadowed further interest rate increases and warned that rates might need to stay high for some time to kill price spikes.
The Federal Reserve chair needs to convince markets he means business when he addresses the landmark conference of economists on Friday.
On the last day of Black August, as President Biden calls for an assault weapons ban and more funding for police, we speak with UCLA professor Robin D. G. Kelley, who recently published the revised and expanded 20th anniversary edition of his book “Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination,” with an added foreword by poet Aja Monet.
“He is all about leverage,” Sue Gordon, a former principal deputy director of national intelligence, told The New York Times.
He claims panel lacks appointees of Rep. McCarthy, who refused to cooperate after 2 of his picks who aimed to overturn Americans’ vote were rejected.
Host Tucker Carlson accused Democrats of painting all Republicans as “Nazis” as the president called for unity to reject the extremist MAGA movement.
Almost every description of the speech President Joe Biden is scheduled to give beginning at 8PM ET has said it will address “Trump-led extremism” or “MAGA Republicans.” However, White House statements on Biden’s “Soul of the Nation” speech have indicated that this is “not about any politician or any party.
Popasna fell on May 7. Russian forces successfully pushed north and captured Lysychansk on July 3, as Ukrainian troops exhausted from the defense of Severodonetsk across the river failed to hold the lines next door. Since then, not much has happened.
Current front lines in northeast Donbas
After that grinding push north, Russia looked west toward Bakhmut and Siversk, yet two months later, the front lines have barely budged.
This is a serious question for the nation: If Donald Trump were replaced on radio appearances by an impersonator parodying Trump’s positions … how would we know?
Pennsylvania’s Senate race between John Fetterman and snake oil salesman Mehmet Oz continues to be lopsided. On the one hand you have a progressive candidate who is offering up a platform of policies and ideas for making both Pennsylvania and the country a better place, and on the other hand there’s Oz. Since Oz has no policy (or medical) remedies for anyone, he has tried very hard to attack Fetterman’s health and Fetterman’s lack of wealth.
Daily Kos recently covered the disturbing threats of violence—including an actual bomb threat—folks at Boston Children’s Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, faced because of extremist right-wing hysteria over trans rights. The hospital offers safe, age-appropriate, gender-affirming health care to trans people, including youth of certain ages. That treatment might include, for example, puberty blockers.
The beleaguered Trump ally has more explaining to do.
Speaking from Philadelphia, the president attacked “MAGA Republicans” and cast the midterm elections as a referendum on the fate of American democracy itself.
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.“Trump can’t hide from the Mar-a-Lago photo,” my colleague David A. Graham wrote yesterday. I called David today to talk about what makes the DOJ’s latest filing so powerful.But first, here are three new stories from The Atlantic.
The amendment — now in limbo — would insert permanent protections into the state’s constitution for abortion and other reproductive health services.
CDC Director Rochelle Walensky endorsed the shots
Updated at 4:50 p.m. ET on September 1, 2022.Mary Peltola was declared the winner of Alaska’s special congressional election last night, defeating the former GOP vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin. A Democrat hasn’t held the seat in 49 years, and Peltola will be the first Alaska Native elected to Congress.The election was the first in Alaska to utilize ranked-choice voting, a system adopted by the state’s voters in 2020.
A viral video starring an adorable child has briefly united the world in shared understanding: “It’s corn!”The child, whose first name is Tariq and whose last name is unknown, but who also goes by “CEO of Corn,” appeared in a video on a popular Instagram account called Recess Therapy. (Recess Therapy is a man-on-the-street-style interview show on which all the guests are children.