Seventy-eight days and more than 7,000 documented cases into the United States’s 2022 outbreak of monkeypox, federal officials have declared the disease a nationwide public-health emergency. With COVID-19 (you know, the other ongoing viral public-health emergency) still very much raging, the U.S. is officially in the midst of two infectious-disease crises, and must now, with limited funds, wrangle both at once.
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.I’m sorry to say it: We really must talk about CPAC.But first, here are three new stories from The Atlantic.
Alex Jones can’t pretend his way out of this reality.
To Putin, Brittney Griner is a pawn. To the U.S., she’s a person.
In the world of moviemaking, it’s generally considered good business to release the movies you make. After all, they can cost tens of millions of dollars to produce, and (pardon me for getting overly technical here) selling tickets for the general public to view them can help recoup that cost. Streaming TV has changed that calculation a little. Now films are sometimes made not to sell tickets but just to beef up entertainment libraries for monthly subscribers.
PhRMA CEO Steve Ubl says the group is still fighting hard against the drug pricing provisions, but is making contingency plans — and promises — should reconciliation become law.
The moves aim to speed up distribution of vaccines amid criticism of the federal government’s response.
We speak with international affairs scholar Kim Lane Scheppele on the rise and fall of Hungary’s constitutional democracy and how Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has gained popularity among the American right ahead of his speech today at the Conservative Political Action Conference. “Orbán presents, especially for the American right, a kind of irresistible combination of culture war issues,” says Scheppele.
The U.N. warned this week that humanity is “one miscalculation away from nuclear annihilation” as tensions escalate globally. We speak with Ira Helfand, former president of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, who says the U.N. Security Council permanent members, comprising Russia, China, the U.S., the U.K. and France, are pursuing nuclear policies that are “going to lead to the end of the world that we know.
Safety conditions at Ukraine’s Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant are “completely out of control,” according to the International Atomic Energy Agency. This comes as the Russian military has deployed heavy artillery batteries and laid anti-personnel landmines at the site in recent weeks.
Those who work on AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis and other plagues say progress is in danger of reversing.
They lived through the dawn of the AIDS epidemic and see parallels to monkeypox now.
The conservative state voted overwhelmingly Tuesday to reject an amendment that would have allowed the state legislature to ban the procedure.
As Kansas prepared for the first state vote on abortion since the Supreme Court decision, conflicts also played out in state courts, a video of Justice Samuel Alito and lawsuits from Florida clerics.
Canvassers are going door to door to lay out the stakes of Tuesday’s referendum.
Suddenly, overnight, real progress has been teed up for the White House.
Republicans are poised to cast aside all the economic technicalities and bash Democratic candidates up and down the midterm ballot over an economy that is already deeply unpopular with voters in both parties.
As New York City declares monkeypox a public health emergency, and California and Illinois have also declared states of emergency over the rapid spread of monkeypox, we speak with LGBTQ+ scholar Steven Thrasher, author of the new book, “The Viral Underclass: The Human Toll When Inequality and Disease Collide,” which explores how social determinants impact the health outcomes of different communities.
Millions of vaccines on order likely won’t be delivered until 2023.
Tuesday’s elections resulted in one big surprise, as Kansas voters overwhelmingly crushed an attempt by state Republicans to curtail abortion rights. Even in the hard-right state, voters weren’t having it, and that suggests Republicans aren’t going to be able to dodge their new anti-abortion bans in November’s elections either. But will it make Republican lawmakers back down from their efforts to criminalize abortion nationally? Don’t bet on it.
Republicans greeted the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade with talk of going still further, not just allowing states to ban abortion but passing legislation in Congress to ban abortion nationwide. Can someone ask them about that again in the wake of the overwhelming Kansas vote to protect abortion rights?
House Republicans have been talking about a 15-week ban—and that isn’t all.
Conspiracy theory peddler Alex Jones admitted in court Wednesday that the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School was real, citing his newfound belief after a day of brutal testimony offered in court by the parents of one of the children who was murdered.
Jones is trying to fend off a $150 million defamation lawsuit from the parents of Jesse Lewis, a 6-year-old boy who was shot and killed in the 2012 attack at a school in Newtown, Connecticut.
Based on Sen. Kyrsten Sinema’s past behavior (her infamous thumbs-down curtsy in the weary faces of America’s working poor immediately comes to mind), I’ve never been sold on the notion that she’ll allow any substantive portion of President Joe Biden’s progressive Build Back Better agenda to pass.
Well, we’re about to find out for sure. Since Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and climate action holdout Sen.
Forgive me for being unserious at a time when companies like Florida Power & Light (FPL)—the nation’s largest utility—keep racking up scandals, but it’s kind of hard to keep track of the latest outrageous episode because the next one immediately overshadows it. Surely, FPL could take part of its 2022 Q2 net income of $989 million and just put out a greatest hits record of its standout incidents.
Shri Thanedar’s victory over eight Black candidates in a Democratic primary all but precludes the possibility of Black representation for the Motor City.
They insist that voters will care more about the state of the economy in November.
The people of Kansas spoke and now the rest of the country has to listen.
Reports say the Arizona senator is protecting the carried interest loophole.
First we got the bill. Now we have the numbers.
The Inflation Reduction Act, the surprise deal that Senator Joe Manchin and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer struck last week, would significantly reduce greenhouse-gas pollution from the American economy. If passed, the bill would cut annual emissions by as much as 44 percent by the end of this decade, according to a new set of analyses from three independent research firms.
Pro-choice organizers accomplished what many believed was impossible: A win on abortion rights in a red state after the fall of Roe.
The only way to shut up Alex Jones, for a moment, at least, is to place him inside a courtroom. For the past few days, the Infowars founder and conspiracy theorist has been in and out of a Travis County courthouse as one of his numerous defamation trials continues. The trial will determine how much Jones and his company must pay Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis, two parents from Newtown, Connecticut, whose 6-year-old son, Jesse, was killed in the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in 2012.
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.Last night, a primary election in Kansas marked “the first time that voters had a chance to weigh in directly on abortion since the Supreme Court scrapped Roe,” Russell Berman reported.