Category: The Atlantic

The intensely hostile letter that Education Secretary Linda McMahon sent to the leadership of Harvard yesterday has a lot going on. But the most notable thing about it is what it leaves out. To hear McMahon tell it, Harvard is a university on the verge of ruin. (I say McMahon because her signature is at […]

President Donald Trump’s promised cultural renaissance will begin with misery—specifically, Les Misérables. Trump plans to attend a showing of the musical at the Kennedy Center next month and host a private fundraising reception beforehand, marking the first performance he will attend at the center as president and his first effort to raise funds for the […]

Everyone who follows American politics is going to spend a lot of time thinking about presidential and judicial power over the next few years. But to really understand the coming clashes between the president and the courts, and the constitutional environment in which they’re taking place, we have to pay attention to what isn’t happening […]

Jeff Joseph, a 53-year-old immigration attorney in Colorado, has recently started taking precautions while traveling abroad that, at another time, he would have considered a little paranoid. He leaves his phone at home. Instead, he carries a “burner’’—a device scrubbed of his contact list and communications—in case U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers send him […]

One of President Donald Trump’s greatest political strengths has suddenly become a weakness. He won a second term in large part because voters believed he could boost the economy. Instead, Trump has shrunk it, and his tariffs have sent both the stock market and consumer confidence tumbling. Republicans in Congress could soon make things much […]

American households don’t look like they used to. They’ve been changing for decades, in part because fewer people have been having kids—but also because different people have been having kids. More unmarried couples have been starting families. More single people have been parenting on their own. Some are even raising children with their friends. According […]

In Donald Trump’s administration, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem rotates through various costumes—firefighting gear for drills with the United States Coast Guard, a cowboy hat and horse for a jaunt with Border Patrol agents in Texas, a bulletproof ICE vest for a dawn raid in New York City. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth posts photos of […]

This article was featured in the One Story to Read Today newsletter. Sign up for it here. Before we begin, a primer on the science of arranging an interview with a sitting American president: In ordinary times, reporters seeking an on-the-record encounter with the commander in chief first write an elaborate proposal. The proposal details […]

The arrest of Wisconsin Judge Hannah Dugan over allegedly obstructing the apprehension of an undocumented immigrant is an attempt to intimidate the judiciary. You can just ask Attorney General Pam Bondi. “What has happened to our judiciary is beyond me,” Bondi told Fox News, commenting on Dugan’s arrest. “They’re deranged. I think some of these […]

Editor’s Note: Read The Atlantic’s related cover story, “‘I Run the Country and the World.’” On Thursday, April 24, I joined my colleagues Ashley Parker and Michael Scherer in the White House to interview President Donald Trump. The story behind this meeting is a strange one, told in their new Atlantic cover story, which you […]

This month’s cover story is written by two of our newest reporters, Ashley Parker and Michael Scherer. Both came to The Atlantic from The Washington Post, where they covered the White House and national politics. As one might expect, they have developed complicated and intriguing ideas about the brain of Donald Trump and the nature […]

This article was featured in the One Story to Read Today newsletter. Sign up for it here. Earlier this month, after it became clear that the Trump administration would not be facilitating the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia from a Salvadoran megaprison, I texted a close childhood friend. He’d voted for Donald Trump in each […]

Shortly before taking office, Donald Trump promised his supporters that he’d have “the most extraordinary first 100 days of any presidency in American history.” And, well, his second administration certainly hasn’t been ordinary. Historians tend to rate presidencies by the breadth of their accomplishments, on a scale ranging from ineffectual to transformative. The classic measuring […]

After Michael Waltz, the national security adviser, inadvertently included The Atlantic’s editor in chief in a group chat about military attack plans on the Signal messaging app, he found himself on very thin ice with his boss. But President Donald Trump and his advisers were loath to take a political hit by firing Waltz, especially […]

President Donald Trump has long made “No retreat, no surrender” his guiding ethos, refusing to apologize or acknowledge mistakes and declaring that he’s the brawler in chief for the American people. His instinct to pump his fist and yell “Fight, fight” in the moments after being shot on the campaign trail became a defining image […]

This article was featured in the One Story to Read Today newsletter. Sign up for it here. The last time we saw him, we saw all of him. Our subject is Anthony Weiner, whose surname was a burden long before it became a curse—so fused with his disgrace that you can’t say it without triggering […]