On a recent visit to the supermarket, I found myself terribly disturbed by a carton of fruit. There, among the raspberries and blueberries, were ghostly white strawberries. They were the inverse of every strawberry I had ever seen—fully ripe berries with pale flesh bleeding pinpricks of red. Their seeds called to mind clogged pores in need of a nose strip. Rattled, I pivoted my cart toward less haunting produce.
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 WeekAre humans better or worse off for having beer, wine, and spirits? Or, if you’d prefer introspection, how about you personally?Send your responses to conor@theatlantic.com or simply reply to this email.
No one alive has seen a race like the 2024 presidential election. For months, if not years, many people have expected a reprise of the 2020 election, a matchup between the sitting president and a former president.But that hasn’t prevented a crowded primary. On the GOP side, more than a dozen candidates are ostensibly vying for the nomination.
We speak with analyst Matt Duss, former foreign policy adviser to Senator Bernie Sanders, about the U.S. political response to Israel’s bombardment of Gaza. The third Republican presidential debate on Wednesday saw candidates pledge unwavering support for Israel with “rhetoric that was frankly barbaric,” according to Duss.
Israel’s bombing campaign in Gaza has killed more than 10,500 Palestinians, including dozens of family members of award-winning Palestinian American writer, poet and physician Dr. Fady Joudah. “It is really beyond words to describe what it means to be a Palestinian in this moment,” says Joudah, who calls for the humanization of the people of Gaza and allowing more Palestinian voices into the public spotlight.
As tens of thousands flee northern Gaza amid an intensifying Israeli ground invasion, most operations have been halted at al-Quds Hospital in Gaza City due to limited fuel supplies and Israel’s bombardment nearby. “We have completely run out of all solutions,” says Nebal Farsakh, spokesperson for the Palestine Red Crescent Society, which operates the hospital, where thousands of civilians are sheltering.
Support for abortion cuts across party lines, performing significantly better at the ballot box than Biden and other Democrats.
Sen. Bernie Sanders held up the vote for months in a failed effort to push President Joe Biden to do more on drug pricing.
The CDC is tracking a spike in deadly and preventable cases of STDs passed to infants.
The Connecticut Democrat leads an unlikely coalition seeking to alleviate loneliness and the health ills that come with it.
The fight over abortion in Ohio will test whether vulnerable Democrats can turn public support for abortion rights into campaign victories — even if the elections are a year apart.
Can Democrats overcome their college-campus branding and reclaim the working class?
The new strategy UAW President Shawn Fain announced Friday signaled the strike could start having broader implications for the economy.
Democrats are loving the Biden economy. They’re less certain about his economic message.
Former President Donald Trump lashed out from the witness stand at the judge and prosecutor in his New York civil fraud case Monday. He could be forced to dissolve much of his real estate empire and bar his family from doing business in New York. “The scene was pretty incredible to witness,” says Lauren Aratani, reporter for the Guardian US who is covering the trial. The court is now determining how much the Trumps must pay in damages as the case enters the penalty phase.
For large portions of the debate, the five Republican underdog presidential candidates did not mention either Trump or Biden.
The Florida governor seems to unnerve people whenever he tries this.
“We’ve become a party of losers,” the conservative businessman Vivek Ramaswamy declared during the opening minutes of tonight’s Republican primary debate in Florida. He bemoaned the GOP’s lackluster performance in Tuesday’s elections, and then he identified the Republican he held personally responsible for the party’s defeats.
Even with two open-ended questions about why them instead of the coup-attempting former president, all but one of the five fails to press a case.
Here are six of the wildest moments from debate night.
August now holds the record for the most barrels of oil, according to the Energy Department.
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, Ivanka Trump has meticulously cultivated her public image. Today, compelled to testify in the Trump Organization’s civil trial, she was thrust back into the spotlight against her will.First, here are four new stories from The Atlantic:
Republicans can’t figure it out.
Rapid adoption of artificial intelligence is cause for enthusiasm and worry, experts say.
In Linfa Wang’s ideal world, all humans would be just a bit more bat-like.Wang, a biochemist and zoonotic-disease expert at Duke-NUS Medical School, in Singapore, has no illusions about people flapping about the skies or echolocating to find the best burger in town. The point is “not to live like a bat,” Wang told me, but to take inspiration from their very weird physiology in order to boost the quality, or even the length, of human life.
One of my chronically depressed patients recently found a psychoactive drug that works for him after decades of searching. He took some psilocybin from a friend and experienced what he deemed a miraculous improvement in his mood. “It was like taking off a dark pair of sunglasses,” he told me in a therapy session. “Everything suddenly seemed brighter.
We speak with 87-year-old Holocaust survivor Marione Ingram, who has been protesting outside the White House calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. Ingram says experiencing anti-Jewish hate, losing family members to the Nazi killing machine and surviving the Allied bombing of Hamburg as a child all inspire her to speak out for peace. “What Israel is doing will not end this conflict. It will only exacerbate it,” says Ingram.
As the death toll from Israel’s relentless assault on Gaza tops 10,000 and millions around the world march in the streets for a ceasefire, the U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday voted to censure the only Palestinian American in Congress.
We look at the results of Tuesday’s U.S. elections with The Nation’s Amy Littlefield and John Nichols, who say the results leave no doubt that protecting and expanding abortion rights is motivating voters across the country.
The Connecticut Democrat leads an unlikely coalition seeking to alleviate loneliness and the health ills that come with it.
The fight over abortion in Ohio will test whether vulnerable Democrats can turn public support for abortion rights into campaign victories — even if the elections are a year apart.