Before Vine’s die-hard fans said goodbye, they wanted to reminisce. The short-form-video app, which shut down in 2017, created lots of viral moments (“And they were roommates …”) and propelled a number of internet creators into the mainstream. It was unlike anything else on the internet at the time: You can still sometimes see the refrain “RIP Vine” thrown around on social media. But for the most part, everybody has moved on.
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.
TikTok is an AI app. Not an “ask a bot to do your homework” kind of AI app, but an AI app all the same: Its algorithm processes and acts upon huge amounts of data to keep users engaged. Without that fundamental, freakishly well-tuned technology, TikTok wouldn’t really be anything at all—just another video or shopping platform.
Presidents typically spend their final days in the White House taking care of odds and ends: issuing pardons, signing some last executive orders, thanking staff. Joe Biden is doing all of those things—and also trying to change the Constitution on his way out the door.
This morning, Biden declared on X that “the Equal Rights Amendment is now the law of the land.” Well, there you have it: The Constitution has a 28th amendment, and women’s rights have been enshrined across the country.
Or not.
Stock trades move fast. The government moves slower.
This article was featured in the One Story to Read Today newsletter. Sign up for it here.
Bill Burns has spent much of his nearly four-decade career in government arguing about words. As he was packing up his office this week at CIA headquarters, the language of a cease-fire agreement between Israel and Hamas, which he had toiled over for the past 15 months, was at the top of his mind.
After commuting the sentences of over 2,500 people imprisoned for nonviolent drug offenses, Joe Biden has set a record for most pardons and commutations by a U.S. president. But Indigenous political prisoner Leonard Peltier remains behind bars. Over 120 tribal leaders are calling on Biden to grant clemency to Peltier as one of his final acts in office, warning this may be the last opportunity Peltier has for freedom.
The ultra-rich have donated a record-shattering amount of funds to the 2025 Trump-Vance Presidential Inaugural Committee, with contributions from major corporations like Apple, Chevron, Citigroup, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, Google, Pfizer, Microsoft and the pharmaceutical lobby.
Israel’s security cabinet has approved a long-awaited ceasefire deal with Hamas. If finalized, the ceasefire is expected to go into effect on Sunday. “The main challenge will be the second phase, and here there are many, many problems on the horizon,” says Israeli journalist Gideon Levy, who stresses the importance of also freeing the thousands of Palestinians held by Israel. “Again and again, Israelis always think that they are the only victims.
An executive went viral when he said he’d pay “any amount.
The local online parent group, where I’d hoped to find new friends, was basically a random yard sale.
The transition team hired trusted conservatives to key HHS positions.
The court will decide the fate of the insurance mandate later this year.
Vivek Murthy says alcohol causes cancer, but the industry still has many friends on Capitol Hill.
The Waves also discusses the Riverside Church controversy and the case of Sarah Milov.
What we say matters, especially depending on whom we say it to.
The Waves also discusses the case against Jeffrey Epstein and Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s Fleishman Is in Trouble.
Miran has called for a sweeping overhaul of the Fed to ensure greater political control over the central bank, including giving the president the power to fire board members at will.
Five weeks after the election, the president took his sharpest swing at Trump’s policy plans.
A pair of POLITICO|Morning Consult polls, one conducted in the final days of the election and the other conducted after Trump won, show how public opinion has changed.
We speak with journalists Steven Thrasher and Afeef Nessouli about their new report for The Intercept, which examines how queer, HIV-positive Palestinians are struggling to survive in Gaza with limited access to medication due to Israel’s siege and ongoing attacks on the territory. The report centers on E.S., a young Palestinian man who is HIV-positive and who has been in “a race against time,” says Nessouli. “The genocide is making it impossible to get medication to people like E.S.
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.
It’s often hard to discern, definitively, when one societal trend ends and a new one begins. But right now across the United States, one change couldn’t be clearer: Many DEI programs are sputtering or dying, and the anti-DEI movement is ascendant.
What’s going on with TikTok right now? The app was expected to be banned in the United States this coming Sunday, when the Protecting Americans From Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act is set to go into effect. But several possible turns of events could save it—a last-minute sale, a surprise judgment from the Supreme Court, or intervention from the Biden administration.
There are times when, deep into a scroll through my phone, I tilt my head and realize that I’m not even sure what app I’m on. A video takes up my entire screen. If I slide my finger down, another appears. The feeling is disorienting, so I search for small design cues at the margins of my screen. The thing I’m staring at could be TikTok, or it could be one of any number of other social apps that look exactly like it.
The flames may be dying out, but for many people in L.A. the burn is only just beginning.
When Donald Trump completes his once-unthinkable return to the White House, he’ll face a world far more violent and unsettled than when he unwillingly gave up power four years ago.
And his very presence behind the Resolute desk feels destined to destabilize it further.
Trump has offered mysterious plans to bring quick ends to the wars raging in Ukraine and the Middle East.
This article was featured in the One Story to Read Today newsletter. Sign up for it here.
When my family woke up last Thursday, we learned that our friend Arthur Simoneau was missing.
The day before, when the Palisades Fire was heading toward the neighborhood where I grew up and where he still lived, my mom had texted his ex-wife, Jill, to ask if she knew where he was—he’d stayed behind to defend our road from fire before. Jill thought he was out of town, at a hot spring.
Foreign Affairs Relations Chair Jim Risch said money from the AIDS relief program paid for abortions.
