Spirited Away came out in 2001, when I was 8. After watching it in a Japanese cineplex, I stumbled out into a wall of late-summer heat, shaken by what I had just seen: the grotesque transformation of parents into pigs, the vomiting faceless monsters, the evolution of a sniveling girl to a brave heroine. The way a dragon could be a boy magician and also a river, how the story seemed held together by association and magic.
Photographs by Christopher Gregory-RiveraIn 2017, as summer ends, when news anchors first mention the oncoming Hurricane Irma, the people go to the big-box store or the Econo supermarket just a few minutes from home. They try to stock up, but by the time they arrive, the lines are long and most of the shops are running low. They get what they can: some food, a few gallons of water, a portable gas-powered hot plate in case they lose power.
President Volodymyr Zelensky is playing the role of a Ukrainian Churchill, minus some of the fantastical notions and with an infinitely better workout regimen. Like Churchill in 1940, he has been the indispensable man in a mortal crisis, without whom his country might well have been lost, and whose eloquence has rallied not only his fellow citizens but a larger democratic world.
At a packed school-board meeting near Rockford, Illinois, earlier this year, a woman waved blown-up images from Maia Kobabe’s illustrated memoir Gender Queer in front of the Harlem School District board. “If my neighbor were to give this to my child, guess what? He would be in jail,” she said to scattered applause.
As human rights advocates denounce efforts by Republicans to send dozens of buses full of asylum seekers to sanctuary cities across the United States, we look at the related history of the Reverse Freedom Rides of 1962, when Southern segregationists bused Black families to the North to antagonize Northern liberals and civil rights activists.
President Biden declared that “the pandemic is over” during an interview on “60 Minutes” Sunday, despite data collected by Johns Hopkins showing COVID-19 killed 13,000 people across the U.S. over the past month as 2.2 million new infections were reported.
Democracy Now! co-host Juan González says people are showing resilience in the face of Hurricane Fiona in his native Puerto Rico, where the power grid crashed across the entire island due to the storm. Many who learned from 2017’s Hurricane Maria are dipping into their personal water reserves and using power generators, he says.
The ban has exemptions for medical emergencies and for rape and incest victims until eight weeks of pregnancy for adults and 14 weeks for children.
Demetre Daskalakis has become caricatured as a tattooed oddity among buttoned-up bureaucrats. The truth is far different. “I wish I were that interesting,” he says.
Despite the signs of moderating price increases, inflation remains far higher than many Americans have ever experienced and is keeping pressure on the Federal Reserve.
The plan touted by the U.S. Treasury secretary aims to diminish the Kremlin’s revenue while preserving the global oil supply.
“Jerome Powell’s rhetoric is dangerous, and a Fed-manufactured recession is not inevitable — it’s a policy choice,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren said.
The housing market has cooled so much as the Fed withdraws its support for the economy that some analysts say it may be in a slump.
In a closely watched speech, the Fed chair foreshadowed further interest rate increases and warned that rates might need to stay high for some time to kill price spikes.
In an extended interview, acclaimed physician and author Dr. Gabor Maté discusses his new book, just out, called “The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture.” “The very values of a society are traumatizing for a lot of people,” says Maté, who argues in his book that “psychological trauma, woundedness, underlies much of what we call disease.
Analysts and pundits are finally picking up on the fact that the supposed red wave of 2022 was much more of a red mirage all along. The slow-but-steady downgrading of GOP prospects in November is everywhere. But nowhere is this more apparent than in the Senate, where Republican candidates are consistently underperforming and, in some cases, are downright comically bad (witness Dr. Mehmet Oz, whose political wizardry is already the stuff of legend).
There is an article of faith among certain circles that Ukraine “needs” ATACMS in order to finish off the Russians. ATACMS are long-range rockets fired by HIMARS/MLRS launchers.
A new pro-Trump dating app that’s scheduled to launch this month is not exactly grabbing women by the … um … heartstrings. Nor have the folks behind the app assembled even one binder full of women. It’s almost as if no one’s attracted to men who both idolize serial sexual assaulters and want to force women to give birth to their rapists’ babies.
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Republicans know just as well as we do that the road to the White House runs through two major swing states in the Midwest: Michigan and Pennsylvania. And since we also know the GOP no longer respects the results of elections unless they win, we can expect Republicans to use every lever at their disposal to subvert any outcomes they don’t like.
One of the things that the (mostly white) Jan. 6 defendants are experiencing for the first time is how slowly the justice system can move when you are considered too dangerous to release back into the public. The general angle that most insurrection apologists have taken is that the attempted coup d’etat at our nation’s Capitol building on Jan. 6, 2021, was a no harm, no foul violation of civility. Things got out of hand.
“Somebody came from out of state, preyed upon these people, lured them with promises of a better life,” a Texas sheriff said of Florida Gov. DeSantis’ stunt.
Biden’s “60 Minutes” remarks surprised his own health advisers, and came as the administration seeks more Covid response funding.
After months of defiance, Montana’s health department will follow a judge’s ruling and temporarily allow transgender people to change the gender on their birth certificates.
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.Speaking in Ohio on Saturday, Trump tried to energize QAnon on his behalf—a new phase in his campaign of threats against the government and the people of the United States.But first, here are three new stories from The Atlantic.
The American Firearms Association recently called on supporters to prepare for “battle” at the U.S. Capitol amid gun control talks.
Virginia’s new governor won office distancing himself from Trump’s election lies, but is now helping one of the most prolific spreaders of those falsehoods.
Fauci’s comments follow remarks from President Joe Biden, who declared “the pandemic is over” during a “60 Minutes” interview that aired Sunday evening.
Saturn has quite the collection of moons, more than any other planet in the solar system. There’s Enceladus, blanketed in ice, with a briny ocean beneath its surface. There’s Iapetus, half of which is dusty and dark, and the other shiny and bright. There are Hyperion, a rocky oval that bears a striking resemblance to a sea sponge, and Pan, tiny and shaped just like a cheese ravioli.But one moon might be missing.
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.Last week, I asked readers to discuss how they’re thinking about the upcoming midterm elections in the United States.
Ron DeSantis and Greg Abbott, the Republican governors of Florida and Texas, respectively, have exploited thousands of migrants by busing and flying them to New York City; Washington, D.C.; and Martha’s Vineyard, off Massachusetts. The idea is simple: Make the Democrats deal with the border crisis and prove they’re all hypocrites, human rights be damned.As a matter of optics, it’s not yet clear who has emerged ahead.