ESA / Hubble & NASA, G. Duchêne
Day 2 of the 2025 Space Telescope Advent Calendar: a stellar nursery. Reflection nebula GN 04.32.8 is part of the stellar nursery called the Taurus Molecular Cloud, roughly 480 light-years from Earth. Enormous clouds of dust surround a group of chaotic young stars, illuminated by their starlight.
President Trump has gutted the U.S. government’s support for AIDS healthcare around the world while ordering an end to commemorations of World AIDS Day, observed annually on December 1. Cuts to U.S. foreign aid are having a disproportionate impact on LGBTQ+ communities in many countries, says journalist and scholar Steven Thrasher, speaking from Uganda. “There are people who’ve been harmed very immediately,” he says.
New York Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani and Vermont independent Senator Bernie Sanders joined striking Starbucks workers on the picket line Monday to demand the coffee giant reach a fair contract with its unionized workforce after years of delay tactics.
Speaking outside a store in Brooklyn, Mamdani said New York is a “union town,” and vowed to continue joining pickets even after he is sworn in as mayor on January 1.
As bipartisan criticism intensifies over U.S. attacks on alleged “drug boats” in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, the White House is defending a September 2 operation that killed 11 people. The Washington Post reports Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered a second attack to kill two survivors of an initial strike, an order that legal experts say would constitute a war crime.
States are choosing not to cover the new weight-loss drugs, sacrificing a chance to stem cancer, diabetes and heart disease.
Heather Haddon joins Emily Peck to discuss the current challenges and trends she’s reported on in the fast food industry.
Lawmakers want to close a so-called hemp loophole. They might blow up a massive industry in the process.
After US Airways left Pittsburgh high and dry, yinzers finally built an airport on their own terms—and it’s incredible.
Larry Summers’ appalling emails to Jeffrey Epstein aren’t the only reason not to like the guy.
A Kennedy adviser said he wants to preserve the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. The health secretary’s anti-vaccine allies prefer it collapse.
Charities that help people pay for care say demand is way up. That’s before scheduled Medicaid and Obamacare cuts take effect.
The president said an extension of subsidies that help people pay for health insurance “may be necessary” to buy time for a broader overhaul.
The second round of Inflation Reduction Act negotiation prices, which includes 15 brand-name drugs, will kick into effect in 2027.
GOP lawmakers knew subsidies were expiring and premiums would spike, but no clear, conservative alternative emerged.
The church’s minister gets sick and everyone knows it.
The church’s “it couple” faces AIDS, caregiving, and loss as part of a pair, part of families, and part of a community.
A celebrity contracts HIV, the world finally pays attention to AIDS, and Jim Mitulski preaches to a community tired of people dying from it.
When a lesbian minister is physically assaulted, the church is galvanized. When it happens again, the city is galvanized.
A gay minister seeks healing with his family and his queer kin, even as he knows he’ll soon die from AIDS.
Economic adviser Kevin Hassett dismissed economic bedwetters, saying strong spending bodes well for the economy.
Democrats running on cost-of-living anxieties outperformed Republicans in Tuesday’s elections by greater-than-expected margins. The president chalked it up to partisan lies.
A recent poll found a majority of Americans feel they’re spending more on groceries than they did a year ago.
The Republican nominee has promised tax cuts and economic growth, but the numbers are fuzzy.
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 the past few weeks, President Donald Trump has seemed uncharacteristically passive. His own Republican Party bucked him on the release of files related to Jeffrey Epstein—in a movement partly led by Marjorie Taylor Greene, who once seemed like his staunchest apostle. His U.S.
I have much extolled here the value of new knowledge. Let us now hear a counterargument: Some months after Yale gave Mark Twain an honorary degree in 1888, the writer’s schedule cleared up enough for him to pull together a speech advising that the good people of the college learn less.
“I found the astronomer of the university gadding around after comets and other such odds and ends,” he wrote.
Presidents have always sent people to lead the Pentagon who respect the institutions and personnel of the armed forces, not least because Americans tend to bristle at any sign that an administration does not unreservedly support the men and women of the U.S. military. (Just ask Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, both of whom were castigated for such supposed disrespect.
At necessary moments in my life, Tom Stoppard, the preeminent British playwright who died last Saturday, has popped up like one of his frenetic characters, spouting enigmatic lines and leaving me thrilled, confused, and somehow heartened.
ESA / Webb, NASA & CSA, M. Villenave et al.
A Cosmic Butterfly. In August, the James Webb Space Telescope provided this new view of IRAS 04302+2247, a planet-forming disk about 525 light-years away. This protoplanetary disk, a structure that is several times the diameter of our solar system, can be seen at center, encircling a protostar—a young star that is still gathering mass from its environment, possibly forming new planets.
Rahmanullah Lakanwal, the man who authorities say shot two National Guardsmen outside the White House, had previously worked in a CIA-backed “Zero Unit” in Afghanistan, often called “death squads” by human rights groups.
