The Trump administration is continuing its assault on higher education, but in a departure from its earlier high-profile fights with individual institutions like Harvard, it is now rewriting the federal rules that govern all universities and colleges.
We continue our conversation with acclaimed Iranian environmental scientist Kaveh Madani, who comments on U.S. strikes targeting Iranian water reservoirs, which have exacerbated the country’s water shortage. He criticizes the “normalization of targeting civil infrastructure as a part of a war.”
“Who suffers from the consequences of this? The poor community, the vulnerable communities,” says Madani.
The environmental toll of the artificial intelligence boom continues to mount as tech companies use ever more power to run their data centers and enormous amounts of water for cooling. A new investigation by U.N. scientists warns that AI’s water use in 2030 will match the needs of 1.3 billion people, while its power use will be triple that of Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nigeria combined — countries with a total population of 650 million.
Editor’s Note: Washington Week With The Atlantic is a partnership between NewsHour Productions, WETA, and The Atlantic airing every Friday on PBS stations nationwide. Check your local listings, watch full episodes here, or listen to the weekly podcast here.
Last night, panelists joined a special edition of Washington Week With The Atlantic to discuss the state of democracy 250 years after the Declaration of Independence, and the successes and challenges of the American experiment.
But inside the health department, workers say the dysfunction of the DOGE era persists.
“We know of nothing,” Henry James observed in 1875, “that is a better proof of the essential impotence of criticism, in the last resort, than Mr. Church’s pictures.” James wasn’t (in this instance) being spiteful.
When David Hockney in the 1960s turned his attention to a photograph of a splash-splattered swimming pool, he did what most of us today, immersed in an endless stream of digital images, do not. He kept looking.
For two weeks, the artist worked tirelessly from the photo to perfect his rendition in his acrylic painting A Bigger Splash, of the dancing droplets that erupted when some long-forgotten swimmer threw themselves into the deep end. The splash ended in an instant.
Given President Trump’s disregard for long-standing political norms and his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, many Americans fear that he is hostile to democracy. According to this view, the 49.8 percent of voters who supported him in 2024 must simply be unaware of the existential threat he poses to our republic. The logic, to Trump’s critics, is therefore simple: Once voters fully grasp that democracy is under threat from creeping authoritarianism, then surely they will turn against Trump.
It was a simple plan, but somehow, as he and his men followed the shackled man through the hills, Khawar wondered if it should have been simpler still. If they had been able to shoot him close to the police station earlier in the day, a story about a thwarted escape might have played out quite nicely. But his skinny constable, Javed, had noted that at that hour, there were too many day laborers passing by who knew the man, which could have created “complications.
Inflation is on the rise, but the Trump administration doesn’t seem concerned.
Is the industry screwed?
Brendan Greeley offers up the surprising origin story of our favorite currency.
Guest host Mary Childs explains why index funds are bending their rules and giving investors little choice but to opt into the AI boom.
The people now running CBS seem really determined to undermine the best thing going.
The billionaire is going to hate this—and there’s nothing he can do about it.
The American Medical Association has sought a working relationship with the health secretary. Members saw moral compromise.
Lawmakers will question the billionaire Microsoft founder and global health philanthropist about his ties to the late sex offender.
Trump administration wants ill recipients to prove they can’t work every six months. Doctors, advocates and state officials wonder how.
Public-health officials are trying to use a Covid-era playbook without pandemic-era funding.
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.
“We have to take care of ourselves because we can’t rely on one foreign partner,” Mark Carney said in a video address. “We can’t control the disruption coming from our neighbors.
If it feels as though Washington and Tehran have been on the verge of a deal before, it’s because they have. At least 38 times during the months of negotiations to end the war in Iran, President Trump has suggested that an agreement was within reach, only for new disputes, military escalations, or competing narratives to push the finish line further away.
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.
Photos of air travel in decades past can cause almost visceral pain for a modern flier. Faded or sepia images show sharply dressed people eating real food in spacious seats.
At times, the defining mood of the 2020s seems to be disassociation. The culture of these years will be remembered for lots of things that dulled and distracted the senses: easygoing country music, friendly AI chatbots, ketamine nasal sprays, conspiracy theories that were preferable to the truth, and droning podcasts about all of the above. Feeling is out; vibing is in.
But the case against this line of thinking is simple: Olivia Rodrigo.
This is an edition of the Books Briefing, our editors’ weekly guide to the best in books. Sign up for it here.
Among my friends and family, I am notorious for being a skeptic. I don’t believe in ghosts; I find all cryptozoological sightings unconvincing; I dismiss astrology out of hand. But (and this might surprise my inner circle) I am quite open to the possibility that some form of extraterrestrial life exists.
Subscribe here: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube
Baseball has never been synonymous with change. But in recent years, Major League Baseball has transformed radically, and this season it has embraced technology via the ABS pitch-tracking system (also known as “robot umpires”).