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.
This morning, as the United States and Israel’s war with Iran neared the end of its sixth week, Vice President Vance headed for Pakistan, where he plans to sit down with Iranian officials.
Julian Sklar spends most of his workday performing on camera. Not for anyone important; the cantankerous artist (played by Ian McKellen), the protagonist of Steven Soderbergh’s new movie, The Christophers, is recording jokey Cameos for eager fans. Facing a ring-lit iPhone, he rambles about his fading career with chipper bumptiousness.
Since 2015, Donald Trump has been an apex predator on the internet. His social-media posts have caused geopolitical crises (we’ll invade Greenland!) and stock slumps (Amazon shares down 6 percent in one day!). For years, both Trump’s Republican opponents and Democrats tried to get the better of—or stoop lower than—the president and failed.
In contemporary internet slang, Trump is a Chad, an alpha male who almost always comes out on top in any internet spat and dominates his opponents.
This is an edition of the Books Briefing, our editors’ weekly guide to the best in books. Sign up for it here.
Growing up, the novelist and New Orleans native Nancy Lemann didn’t know how culturally distinct her home city was. “I just thought, Okay, this is what it’s like. This is what life is like,” she told my colleague Kaitlyn Tiffany, who spoke with Lemann for an article about her first novel in decades, The Oyster Diaries.
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On this week’s Galaxy Brain episode, Charlie Warzel is joined by New York Times technology reporter Tiffany Hsu to discuss the rise of AI influencers—synthetic avatars, often indistinguishable from real people, that are flooding social-media feeds to sell supplements and promote brands. Hsu unpacks her reporting on the combination of forces converging around it, including the wellness industry, a historically fertile ground for scammers.
Amid strains in U.S.-European relations, the Trump administration has worked to strengthen ties with Hungary and its far-right leader, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who is facing his biggest challenge in 16 years. With just days to go before parliamentary elections, Orbán’s Fidesz party is trailing the center-right pro-EU Tisza party led by Péter Magyar. U.S. Vice President JD Vance traveled to Budapest this week and appeared alongside Orbán to openly campaign for his reelection.
The U.S.-Israeli war on Iran has deepened rifts with several European countries. The Spanish government has been most outspoken in its opposition to the war, and U.S. allies like Germany and the United Kingdom have voiced some criticism while providing logistical support for the assault on Iran. NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte has tried to smooth over differences and placate President Trump, even as he has mused about pulling the U.S.
As the United States and Iran prepare to hold talks in Pakistan aimed at ending the war, Israel is continuing to bomb Lebanon, where the death toll from Wednesday’s massive wave of attacks has topped 300.
“It was 10 minutes of terror, a day that the Lebanese are calling Black Wednesday,” says Lebanese Australian journalist Rania Abouzeid, speaking with Democracy Now! from Beirut.
Tech media is moving toward flattering, access-driven coverage, where the powerful reward friendly coverage.
Maryland-based spice company, McCormick, is absorbing Unilever’s food division in a massive “takeunder.
Things aren’t giving way just yet—but they’re getting shakier and shakier.
The iconic reality show promised its contestants the chance to build a career, but only the creators found real success.
A flurry of activity renewed concerns about insider trading in the Trump administration.
The announcement of Steve Ubl’s departure, disclosed during a board call, caps a decade atop the brand-name drug lobby.
A new POLITICO Poll finds that Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Make America Healthy again supporters don’t align with him — or each other — on some key issues.
While many Republicans approve of tackling fraud, the Trump administration’s recent efforts may not be enough to overcome concerns about higher costs.
New guidance, and the promise of a new rule, are expected to cut off funding to Planned Parenthood starting in 2027.
Outward’s hosts sit down with the host and co-creator of When We All Get to Heaven.
The neighborhood changes, the church moves, people forget and remember “the AIDS years,” but AIDS isn’t over.
The AIDS cocktail opens new possibilities. And MCC San Francisco tries to use the experience of AIDS to make bigger social change.
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.
President Donald Trump has taken one risk after another that could have destabilized the American economy. Iran is the latest crisis to test U.S. economic resilience.
The president stopped in Marjorie Taylor Greene’s old district to defend his economic record.
Amy Goodman, along with co-host Juan González and Pacifica Radio, launched Democracy Now! on WBAI 30 years ago as the only daily election show in public broadcasting. It grew from nine community radio stations to television, as well, the week of the 9/11 attacks in 2001. There’s a new documentary about Amy and Democracy Now! called Steal This Story, Please! We speak with the film’s Oscar-nominated directors Carl Deal and Tia Lessin.
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.
Vice President Vance is having a busy month. He may facilitate negotiations with Iran in Pakistan this weekend—part of the White House’s attempt to maintain the fragile cease-fire in the Middle East. But he’s also got his eye on domestic issues as the administration’s “fraud czar.
This is an edition of Time-Travel Thursdays, a journey through The Atlantic’s archives to contextualize the present. Sign up here.
From the window of Orion, home looks like a pale-blue marble slipping under the dark felt of the universe. The four people aboard the spacecraft, now earthbound after finishing their lunar flyby, have traveled farther from our planet than any person has ever ventured, and have seen more of the moon’s far side than any person has ever beheld.
A federal judge put the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices on ice last month. The changes could help Kennedy find a way around that decision.
President Trump used to quip that Iran “never won a war, but never lost a negotiation.” Perhaps this view explains his decision to forsake previous rounds of talks over Iran’s nuclear program and wage a full-scale assault on the country. But Trump’s gambit may have backfired: In this particular war, Iran remains undefeated, which puts the country in an even stronger position when the two sides start talking in Islamabad tomorrow.
For the past several weeks, Anthropic says it secretly possessed a tool potentially capable of commandeering most computer servers in the world. This is a bot that, if unleashed, might be able to hack into banks, exfiltrate state secrets, and fry crucial infrastructure. Already, according to the company, this AI model has identified thousands of major cybersecurity vulnerabilities—including exploits in every single major operating system and browser.