President Trump secretly signed a directive approving the Pentagon’s use of military force on foreign soil to target Latin American drug cartels, according to a New York Times report. The order gives the Pentagon authority to direct military operations at sea and on foreign soil against cartels designated by the Trump administration to be terrorist organizations.
After announcing the federal takeover of law enforcement in D.C. in the White House briefing room, President Trump painted a grim picture of the capital — including “roving mobs of wild youth” — that contrasts with crime figures showing D.C. reached a 30-year low in violent crime last January.
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Nine years after Canada legalized assisted death—known formally as Medical Assistance in Dying, or MAID—doctors are struggling to keep up with demand, Elaina Plott Calabro reports in a feature for our September issue.
There’s a quiet revolution in how millions of Americans decide what’s real. Trust is slipping away from traditional institutions—media, government, and higher education—and shifting to individual voices online, among them social-media creators. The Reuters Institute reports that this year, for the first time, more Americans will get their news from social and video platforms—including Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, and X—than from traditional outlets.
He’s right that there’s a problem. He’s wrong about what causes and fixes it.
Brian Blase has pushed the GOP to make deeper cuts to the safety-net health program.
Thank goodness the National Guard is being called in. Lawlessness in D.C. is rampant, and someone needs to take a stand!
Stephen Miller was correct to point out that D.C. is awash in crime. Everywhere he looks: criminals. He can barely take three steps without running into one. From the moment he arrives at work in the morning until the second he leaves, one crime after another, piling horrendously high.
In 2013, ahead of a scheduled visit from President Vladimir Putin to the small Russian town of Suzdal, local officials worried that he would be disappointed by the dilapidated buildings. In a modern revival of Grigory Potemkin’s possibly apocryphal deception of Catherine the Great, they slapped exterior wallpaper onto buildings, hoping to hide the decaying concrete behind illustrations of charming village homes. It was intended as a comforting myth to keep Putin happy.
Four and a half years ago, fresh off the success of Operation Warp Speed, mRNA vaccines were widely considered—as President Donald Trump said in December 2020—a “medical miracle.” Last week, the United States government decidedly reversed that stance when Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. canceled nearly half a billion dollars’ worth of grants and contracts for mRNA-vaccine research.
The ruling overturned a district judge’s injunction that had directed the administration to restore the flow of the grants.
We speak with Rachel Griffin Accurso, the educator known to millions around the world as Ms. Rachel, who has become a leading advocate for children in Gaza. Her YouTube channel for young children became wildly popular during the COVID-19 pandemic and today has more than 16 million subscribers. Since the start of Israel’s war on Gaza, Accurso has used her social media reach to speak out for Palestinian children facing hunger, disease, injury and death.
Are the feds really sending in the troops because of “Big Balls”?
It started with a cheese pull.
If you’re seeking the profound, here’s the best way to travel nationally and internationally
The Egg McMuffin might be the canary in the coal mine for the U.S. economy.
Agency employees said HHS’s response has been lackluster.
Industry will have to wait longer for the report, which is expected to give the government’s response to childhood chronic diseases.
Dr. Jerome Adams said HHS secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “failed” in his response to the deadly violence.
The Waves also discusses the Riverside Church controversy and the case of Sarah Milov.
What we say matters, especially depending on whom we say it to.
The Waves also discusses the case against Jeffrey Epstein and Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s Fleishman Is in Trouble.
Bill Beach said the president’s suggestions that the jobs report was rigged betrayed a misunderstanding in how those numbers are assembled.
The monthly jobs report showed just 73,000 jobs in July, with big reductions to May’s and June’s numbers
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.
Illinois Governor J. B. Pritzker has made himself a spokesperson for Democratic resistance to Republican plans for a brazen mid-decade gerrymander, and on Sunday, he appeared on Meet the Press to state his case. “It’s cheating,” Pritzker said of the Texas redistricting that the president has demanded.
Washington, D.C., more than any other city in the country, presents President Donald Trump with the opportunity to meddle in the minutiae of municipal governance. Even in the capital, though, his powers are far from limitless. And the chasm between Trump’s sweeping plan to “clean up” D.C.
Agency Director Susan Monarez tried to soothe staff at a Tuesday meeting, but some employees said the all-hands call was lacking.
Nichole Ayers / NASA
Green and red displays from the southern lights (aurora australis) appear above the Earth, seen from the orbiting International Space Station, south of Australia, on April 21, 2025.Nichole Ayers / NASA
Lightning flashes among cloud formations above Indonesia, seen on June 22, 2025.
