Editor’s Note: This article is part of our coverage of The Atlantic Festival. Learn more and watch festival sessions here. In the dark 1999 comedy Election, the overachieving student Tracy Flick—played by an up-and-coming Reese Witherspoon—dreams of political domination, starting with the race for class president at her suburban high school.
We speak with Bishop William Barber of the Poor People’s Campaign to get an update on the water crisis in Jackson, Mississippi, where tens of thousands of residents are still without clean tap water. “It’s an immoral and sinful violation of equal protection under the law and human rights,” says Barber, who led a rally Monday outside the Governor’s Mansion in Jackson demanding the state reverse decades of disinvestment in the majority-Black capital.
Low-income Black and Brown housing activists in Philadelphia are fighting to stop the displacement of residents who live in an affordable housing complex in the largely gentrified neighborhood of University City.
A property management company partly owned by Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner has agreed to pay a $3.25 million fine to the state of Maryland and to reimburse potentially tens of thousands of tenants in Baltimore.
Dozens of people in Iran have been killed in a series of escalating women-led protests demanding justice for Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman who died in the custody of the so-called morality police. Amini was detained on September 13 for allegedly leaving some of her hair visible in violation of Iran’s hijab law.
This article was featured in One Story to Read Today, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a single must-read from The Atlantic, Monday through Friday. Sign up for it here.No season has the glorified reputation of summer. Although many people love the optimism of spring or the romance of autumn, American culture has a special fondness for warm weather, long days, time away from school or work, and a mindset that prioritizes fun over productivity.
During the spring of 2020, I found myself thinking a lot about the fact that I was living through a historic disaster. I read about past wars and crises, trying to calm myself with the knowledge that prior generations had been through worse. I can see now that I was distracting myself from my own day-to-day.
Abortion-rights advocates are expected to appeal the decision.
Owen County Judge Kelsey Hanlon issued a preliminary injunction against the ban, putting the new law on hold as abortion clinic operators argue in a lawsuit that it violates the state constitution.
A new president could reverse an FDA rule change that made it possible.
Biden’s “60 Minutes” remarks surprised his own health advisers, and came as the administration seeks more Covid response funding.
Fauci’s comments follow remarks from President Joe Biden, who declared “the pandemic is over” during a “60 Minutes” interview that aired Sunday evening.
Fed Chair Jerome Powell has pledged to do whatever it takes to curb inflation.
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.
The Florida Republican pretty much summed up what the GOP has become, said critics.
“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.
A new series examines how protests that erupted over a police killing three decades ago offer important lessons for the Black Lives Matter movement today. We speak to the family of Phillip Pannell, a 16-year-old Black boy who was fatally shot in the back in 1990 by a white police officer later acquitted for the killing. Pannell is the subject of “Model America,” a new four-part series by MSNBC that looks at the racial divide in the U.S.
Climate activists, led by Fridays for Future, are holding a global climate strike today to pressure world leaders to do more to address the crisis. We speak to Mikaela Loach, who has helped lead the fight against developing the Cambo oil field off the coast of Scotland and who describes the importance of seeing antiracism and climate activism as linked.
Critics of GOP Senate nominee Mehmet Oz say this attempted slam only makes his Democratic rival seem cooler.
Mark Sumner was awesome this past week, covering Ukraine through the weekend, on his days off, giving me space to spend precious time with my son Ari at Fort Benning, Georgia between his graduation from infantry advanced training, and entering the Ranger school pipeline—one of the hardest schools in the entire U.S. military, the black and gold Ranger tab one of its most prestigious honors.
A gunman with a swastika on his shirt killed 17 people—including 11 children and six adults—and wounded more than 20 others before killing himself at a school in a city in central Russia that he once attended, according to Russia’s national Investigative Committee.
Russia’s Investigative Committee said the gunman was wearing a black T-shirt bearing “Nazi symbols,” The Washington Post reported.
Ahead of the Jan. 6 committee’s last expected public hearing this week, Denver Riggleman, a former Republican congressman and onetime adviser to the insurrection panel, stirred up a bit of controversy.
In an interview for 60 Minutes on Sunday, Riggleman said during his months working with the Jan.
In October 2021, after years and years of very serious complaints and building momentum organized by activists, a federal grand jury began investigating retired Kansas City, Kansas, police officer Roger Golubski. The wide range of accusations against Golubski, who retired as a detective in 2010, was horrific. It included everything from rape to planting evidence and fabricating testimony.
Joe Manchin is doing what Joe Manchin does best: Provide an obstacle. This time it’s the stopgap funding bill that needs to pass by midnight Friday or the government shuts down versus his push to get Congress to intervene in a private sector project and make it happen. That’s the main part of the energy project permitting bill he’s trying to shove through.
The space probe came barreling in at thousands of miles per hour, its mechanical eyes locked on its target—an asteroid named Dimorphos.About an hour out, the asteroid looked to the probe’s cameras like nothing more than a faint speck in the darkness of space, slightly larger than a single pixel on your screen. A few minutes out, it began to look distinctly asteroid-like, lumpy and gray.
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.Vladimir Putin’s massive conscription of Russian men is yet another calamity of his own making.But first, here are three new stories from The Atlantic.
Three conversations with Donald Trump
Italians didn’t exactly vote for fascism.
The new Congressional Workers Union says Rep. Andy Levin’s office voted unanimously in favor of unionizing.
“John Fetterman has the courage to do what’s right,” the suburban Philadelphia sheriff says of the Democrat. “Dr. Oz doesn’t know a thing about crime.