Give President Joe Biden democracy, self-rule, and statehood for Washington, D.C. But not yet.Yesterday, Biden announced that he would not veto Congress’s override of a new criminal code for D.C. passed by its city council. “I support D.C. Statehood and home-rule—but I don’t support some of the changes D.C. Council put forward over the Mayor’s objections—such as lowering penalties for carjackings,” Biden tweeted.
In the spring of 1986, in their rush to flee the radioactive plume and booming fire that burned after the Chernobyl power plant exploded, many people left behind their dogs. Most of those former pets died as radiation ripped through the region and emergency workers culled the animals they feared would ferry toxic atoms about. Some, though, survived. Those dogs trekked into the camps of liquidators to beg for scraps; they nosed into empty buildings and found safe places to sleep.
It was a simpler time. A friend introduced us, pulling up a static yellow webpage using a shaky dial-up modem. A man stood forth, dressed in a dapper black pinstriped suit with a red-accented tie. He held one hand out, as if carrying an imaginary waiter’s tray. He looked regal and confident and eminently at my service. “Have a Question?” he beckoned. “Just type it in and click Ask!” And ask, I did. Over and over.
In a 2014 interview, the saxophonist Wayne Shorter was asked how often his working quartet rehearsed. His reply was evasive and illuminating: “How do you rehearse the future?”This was classic Shorter—gnomic, gnostic, mischievous, wise. It was a bit of a humblebrag too. For more than six decades, he conjured the future of music into being, with or without the benefit of rehearsal.
Guatemala’s presidential election this year is taking place against a backdrop of worsening repression against journalists, human rights activists and Indigenous environmental defenders. The Guatemalan Constitutional Court on Thursday upheld a decision by the country’s electoral tribunal to bar Indigenous human rights defender Thelma Cabrera from running.
Opposition parties are disputing the results of Saturday’s presidential election in Nigeria, where the country’s Independent National Electoral Commission has declared the winner to be Bola Tinubu of the ruling All Progressives Congress party. The former governor of Lagos played a key role in helping outgoing Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari win two terms in office and campaigned using the slogan “It’s my turn.
New York City has reached a multimillion-dollar settlement with peaceful protesters who were violently “boxed in” or “kettled” by NYPD officers during a Black Lives Matter demonstration in response to the police murder of George Floyd in 2020.
The former president is assailing his primary opponents for entertaining entitlement cuts in the past — and exacerbating divisions among Hill Republicans in the process.
The Florida governor and likely presidential candidate has secured a place for the movement in the conservative mainstream.
The spectrum of responses played out on Tuesday across nearly a dozen hearings and legislation markups.
It’s been nearly three decades since California pioneered the therapeutic use of cannabis, but patients still face a confusing patchwork of rules.
“I can’t think of a time when there’s been greater uncertainty,” the president said.
The president promised a lot last year. Here’s how we graded him on some of those pledges.
Noting the 3.4 percent jobless rate, the lowest since May 1969, the president said “the Biden economic play is working.
Fed officials are signaling that they’re determined to keep their vise-like grip on the economy through the end of 2023.
In Alabama, hundreds of striking miners are set to return to work Thursday after nearly two years spent on picket lines in the so-called right-to-work state. This was the longest strike in Alabama history. Its end comes after the Warrior Met Coal company successfully used replacement workers to keep its mines running, reporting large profits to shareholders due to the skyrocketing price of coal.
The Supreme Court heard oral arguments Tuesday in two challenges to the Biden administration’s student debt relief plan, which could give tens of millions of federal borrowers up to $20,000 of relief. During arguments, several conservative justices expressed skepticism over the Biden administration’s student debt relief plan, while liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor blasted the Republican states who brought one of the lawsuits.
Without any hint of irony, the Fox News personality said the “most dangerous” men will “do anything to save themselves.
This claim falls apart pretty quickly.
Her propaganda canonized white supremacist murderers as “saints.” She may have helped inspire a shooting at a gay bar. Now she’s been unmasked.
The decision is the latest to demonstrate how widely abortion access can vary state to state in a post-Roe America.
The court is asking for new briefs after the North Carolina Supreme Court granted a rehearing in the underlying case.
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.Pity the poor mayors. Or don’t—most voters clearly don’t. On Tuesday, Chicagoans unceremoniously kicked Lori Lightfoot to the curb, depriving her of the chance to win a second term in an April 4 runoff election.
“I hope to return to the Senate later this month,” the California Democrat said.
This is an edition of Up for Debate, a newsletter by Conor Friedersdorf. On Wednesdays, he 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.
History has long been a theater of war, the past serving as a proxy in conflicts over the present. Ron DeSantis is warping history by banning books on racism from Florida’s schools; people remain divided about the right approach to repatriating Indigenous objects and remains; the Pentagon Papers were an attempt to twist narratives about the Vietnam War.
As part of SXSW 2023, The Atlantic is announcing a full day of interviews on Sunday, March 12, that will bring elected officials and other national leaders to the festival for conversations about the future of democracy.
On Sunday, Israeli settlers ransacked and torched Palestinian homes in Huwara, near the occupied West Bank city of Nablus, killing at least one Palestinian resident and injuring dozens of others. The Israeli human rights group B’Tselem has accused Benjamin Netanyahu’s government of backing a pogrom in Huwara. Israeli Minister of Finance Bezalel Smotrich said Wednesday that Huwara needs to be “wiped out” and that the state of Israel should do it.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was at the top of the agenda of a critical meeting of G20 foreign ministers this week in New Delhi. The issue has caused deep divisions within the G20, which includes 19 major economies and the European Union. U.S. Secretary of State Tony Blinken and his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, spoke briefly on the sidelines of the summit on Thursday, though there was no diplomatic breakthrough between the two countries.
The spectrum of responses played out on Tuesday across nearly a dozen hearings and legislation markups.