“For all this talk of chaos, I just didn’t see it, not from my perch,” John Kirby, the National Security Council’s coordinator for strategic communications, said on Thursday at the White House, following the publication of the Biden administration’s report on the Afghanistan withdrawal. That statement made me angry. My perch was a lot lower than his, and I certainly saw chaos.I had a modest part in the evacuation that was precipitated by the U.S.

Pro-life activists across the country are celebrating the decision by a federal district-court judge in Texas to force mifepristone, a drug used in self-induced abortions, off the market. This response makes sense: If, as pro-lifers like myself believe, the embryo developing in a mother’s womb is a human life, it is therefore worthy of both legal protection and social support. Steps that make it harder for women to have an abortion are welcome.

The first time I saw Amy, Ali Wong’s character in Beef, I found myself sitting up a little straighter and leaning a little closer toward my TV. I knew Wong had a starring role, but Amy caught me off guard.

This is an edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a set of stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Sign up here to get it every Saturday morning.When my colleague Amanda Mull’s mom wouldn’t let her buy high heels in high school, she got an after-school job and bought them herself.

Barry Benson tightened his grip on his steering wheel. The federal wildlife-damage-abatement officer had handled bears, coyotes, and wolves. But now he was on a bigger hunt. And he was not alone. At an utterly unassuming, otherwise-bucolic intersection just outside the 280-acre Schmeeckle Reserve in rural Wisconsin, dozens of cars—Benson’s among them—idled in the predawn darkness of 5 a.m., all tuned into the same local radio station, 90 FM, waiting for instructions.

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.Thanks to extraordinary demand for the drugs Ozempic and Wegovy, which cause weight loss, pharmaceutical companies are racing to bring even more potent anti-obesity treatments to market.

Of all the characters on Abbott Elementary, there’s one who never fails to make me laugh. I’m talking about Mr. Johnson, the janitor whose dry humor and droll facial expressions make him one of the funniest personas on ABC’s hit comedy. Here’s what we know about Mr. Johnson: He’s probably in his 70s. He’s worked at Abbott forever, his institutional knowledge rivaling that of the longest-tenured teachers.

In March 2020, Yamagata’s trail went cold.The pathogen, one of the four main groups of flu viruses targeted by seasonal vaccines, had spent the first part of the year flitting across the Northern Hemisphere, as it typically did. As the seasons turned, scientists were preparing, as they typically did, for the virus to make its annual trek across the equator and seed new outbreaks in the globe’s southern half.That migration never came to pass.

Air faces a steep challenge, in terms of winning its audience over. Ben Affleck’s film, set in the mid-1980s, wants viewers to root for Nike—yes, that Nike, the shoe company, the one that’s done pretty well for itself over the past few decades.