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 LatestToday, the Supreme Court ruled that the race-conscious admissions programs as practiced at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Harvard are unconstitutional, upending more than four decades of precedent on the use of race in college admissions.
The whole universe is humming. Actually, the whole universe is Mongolian throat singing. Every star, every planet, every continent, every building, every person is vibrating along to the slow cosmic beat.That’s the takeaway from yesterday’s remarkable announcement that scientists have detected a “cosmic background” of ripples in the structure of space and time.
Welcome to Up for Debate. Each week, Conor Friedersdorf rounds up timely conversations and solicits reader responses to one thought-provoking question. Later, he publishes some thoughtful replies. Sign up for the newsletter here.Question of the WeekWhat do you think about the Supreme Court decision in this term’s affirmative-action cases?Send your responses to conor@theatlantic.
The Supreme Court’s decision today that the race-conscious admissions programs as practiced at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Harvard—the nation’s oldest public and private universities, respectively—are unconstitutional upends more than four decades of precedent on the use of race in college admissions.
A highly anticipated court ruling is expected soon in Montana, where a groundbreaking, youth-led climate trial just ended after five days of dramatic testimony on who can be held responsible for the climate crisis.
We speak with author Genevieve Guenther about “climate silence” and how the corporate media routinely fails in reporting on worsening extreme weather events. “You need to connect the dots from what you’re reporting to the climate crisis, and then through the climate crisis to the use of fossil fuels that is heating up our planet,” says Guenther, whose forthcoming book is titled The Language of Climate Politics.
As wildfire smoke fills the skies and record heat waves cook much of North America, Canadian climate activist Tzeporah Berman says governments need to be pushed to phase out fossil fuels more rapidly. “We need people to stand up to this industry. We need activism to protest in the streets, to demand our governments stand up to this industry. And we also need international cooperation,” says Berman.
After the Wagner Group’s aborted mutiny in Russia, the Biden administration has imposed new sanctions on companies accused of profiting from the activities of the Wagner Group in Africa. This comes as Russian military police raided Wagner mercenary bases in Syria.
GOP lawmakers say President Joe Biden is using PEPFAR to promote abortion rights.
It’ll be years before many blue-state efforts to expand abortion access have an impact.
The 10-page document reveals no proof of either a lab leak or an animal host.
The company is pushing back a promotional campaign three weeks to get past the news.
Not everything played out the way people expected.
The push to own the economy, by literally branding it with the president’s name, is not without risk.
Inflation slowed to just 4% in May.
Veteran national security reporter James Risen joins us for an in-depth look at his new book, The Last Honest Man, about the work of Senator Frank Church to rein in the FBI, CIA and other agencies after the Vietnam War, Watergate and other fiascos had shaken the public’s trust in the U.S. government.
“What was Jared Kushner doing in the Middle East?” asked Christie of the ex-Trump White House adviser.
The tweet was deleted after people noticed clues suggesting the photo was taken in Russia ― such as the Cyrillic alphabet.
Federal judges in Kentucky and Tennessee blocked portions of bans on gender-affirming care for transgender youth.
The ultra-conservative governor hopes to be in the White House by the time the trial starts.
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 Supreme Court released a somewhat surprising—and pretty important—decision yesterday.
Biden has for months been telegraphing a major shift in economic policy, and on Wednesday, made the case for a new way of thinking.
Updated at 9:30 p.m. ET on June 28, 2023When you order something online, getting that thing from the warehouse into your hot little hands is hard. Internet commerce is designed to obscure that difficulty—packages are supposed to alight on your welcome mat as though dropped there by the delivery fairy—but challenges persist, and they are only getting worse. There are just too many doorsteps, and too many things that need to alight on them.
On Monday, in an 11-minute speech, Yevgeny Prigozhin, the convicted criminal who leads the Wagner mercenary group, reflected on his brief revolt against the Russian government. It was the capstone to a tense and confusing geopolitical crisis—and it took the form of a voice memo on the popular app Telegram, where it was subject to a form of instant feedback. Reviews have been mixed: 155,600 fire emoji to 131,900 clown emoji.
War with Mexico? It’s on the 2024 ballot, at least if you believe the campaign rhetoric of more and more Republican candidates.In January, two Republican House members introduced a bill to authorize the use of military force inside Mexico. They were not know-nothings from the fringes of the MAGA caucus. One was Dan Crenshaw of Texas, a former Navy Seal who received a master’s degree from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.
In Honduras, communities are fighting back against privatization and foreign exploitation after Honduran President Xiomara Castro and Congress repealed a law that established so-called Economic Development and Employment Zones, where private companies have “functional and administrative autonomy” from the national government.
Bishop William Barber, co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign, says it’s “grotesque and immoral” that poverty is the fourth leading cause of death in the United States, higher than homicide and respiratory illness, citing recent findings published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. “Why do we hear so much about crime rates and opioids and gun violence in America, but poverty kills more people than all of those things?” asks Barber.
The Supreme Court’s term is ending this week with rulings on several blockbuster cases. On Tuesday, voting rights advocates welcomed a decision in a major election law case that preserved checks and balances in elections. In a 6-3 decision, the justices dismissed the so-called independent state legislature theory that state lawmakers have nearly unlimited power to make rules for federal elections.
It’ll be years before many blue-state efforts to expand abortion access have an impact.
The 10-page document reveals no proof of either a lab leak or an animal host.