Conor Friedersdorf+

The Transcendence of Dolly Parton

The late singer was perhaps the only person in the United States who commanded nearly universal affection. Dolly Parton transcended. It almost didn’t matter what: class, gender, region, musical genre, partisanship. She transcended boundaries in all of them. During an era when politicians act like pop …

Dolly Parton: Photos From an Extraordinary Life and Career

Dolly Parton, the singer, songwriter, actor, and philanthropist, died today at the age of 80.

More American Families Are Refusing Vaccines

This fall, the nation’s kindergartners will be more vulnerable to disease than they’ve been in decades. As millions of children around the country start another school year, they’ll be confronting new classes, new teachers, and, inevitably, a new slate of germs. And this fall, they’ll be more …

The Latest Empty Threat Against Iran

The Trump administration gave its own explanation for why sanctions against Tehran won’t work. No sooner had Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced the latest tool for achieving what he said would be the “economic asphyxiation” of Iran than he revealed the reason he was reluctant to use …

Portrait of the Artist as a Movie Star

Rachel Cusk’s latest novel is about the life of a famous actress—or is it? A few months ago, I traveled to a new city in a foreign country to talk about a book I’d written. At lunch one day, my host told me about a publishing acquaintance of hers who’d hosted the writer Rachel Cusk some years back, …

The Qataris Gave Trump an Airplane. He Crippled Their Country in Return.

The tiny Gulf state is learning that the U.S. president doesn’t always keep his end of the deal. Donald Trump really wanted the plane. The Qataris had flown the $400 million Boeing 747 to West Palm Beach just after he returned to the White House so he could run his hands over the soft leather chairs …

Party in the (Downwardly Mobile) U.S.A.

The mainstream is disintegrating. What’s a frustrated pop star to do? With every passing year, Miley Cyrus’s 2009 single “Party in the U.S.A.” comes to feel more like an artifact of an empire before its fall. When the Disney Channel star sang about hopping off the plane at LAX with a dream and a …

Is Mojtaba Khamenei Dead?

The office of Iran’s supreme leader has fallen quiet, fueling uncertainty in a country with decisions to make. Last Tuesday, Iranian Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei hosted a wake for his father and predecessor, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Among the thousands who thronged Tehran’s biggest mosque were the …

The Jews Who Voted for Hitler

What happened when members of a minority community cast its lot with a political leader who despised them On the evening of February 5, 1930, the art and theater critic Paul Fechter took the podium before the League of Nationalist German Jews, in Berlin, to discuss purported Jewish control of the …

Darline Graham Is Not Her Brother

Thrown into office and an unexpected campaign, she is running on her brother’s legacy—but making clear that she’s different. It’s something that happens so often in politics that there’s a name for it: widow’s succession. Dozens of times over the past century, women have filled a seat previously …

Trump Is Losing Touch With the Public

As the president spends less time with his base at rallies, his populist instincts are failing him. One of the few issues that unites voters and politicians of both parties right now is data centers. Three-quarters of Americans would oppose a data center being built near where they live, according …

Logging In Was Never Supposed to Be This Complicated

Please, not another two-factor-authentication code. One afternoon earlier this month, I pulled up to the rec center and realized that I had a problem. It was not the three boisterous tweens in the back seat who were clamoring to be set loose in the basketball gym. It was my parking app. I had …

Where Do America’s Colleges Go From Here?

The Trump administration has a new series of questions for colleges about affordability, curriculum, and “national service”—how will they respond? And: W. E. B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington in a dubious battle over education, from the Atlantic archives. Subscribe here: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | …

The Atlantic announces Jessica Goldstein as SVP of events

Goldstein joins after leading events at NPR and the Skoll Foundation The Atlantic has hired Jessica Goldstein as senior vice president of events, who will work in partnership with managing director for events Evan Smith to lead and produce the magazine’s robust live programs nationwide. She begins …

Scenes From the 2026 World Humanoid Robot Games

More than 600 teams brought 2,000 robots to Beijing for the second edition of this annual competition, where humanoid robots compete in a wide variety of events, including athletics and household tasks.

The Road to Nowhere

The new liminal horror film It Ends captures the terror of aimlessness. If there’s one thing young moviegoers seem to fear these days, it’s the idea of the in-between. The term liminal horror has gone from niche internet speak to Hollywood trend, thanks to the acclaimed TV show Severance and the recent …

Liberal Families Are Looking Pretty Traditional

What I see in my deep-blue Washington, D.C. neighborhood undermines the simplistic culture-war narrative. Picture an old-fashioned, idealized American scene. Young kids walk to and from a redbrick public schoolhouse; almost every kid’s commute is less than 10 minutes. On warm weekend days, the …

Photos of the Week: Robot Training, Straw Chickens, Blessed Dogs

Harvest festivals in Germany, a solar-energy base in a Chinese desert, high-diving in Slovenia, hurricane damage in Hawaii, a traveling circus in France, and much more

From ‘Indispensable’ Ally to Target of Annihilation

The latest target of Trump’s ire is the low-profile Sultanate of Oman. When the United States was looking for a way to talk to Iran about a nuclear deal more than a decade ago, it turned to Oman, asking the country to do something it had quietly done for years: make an impossible conversation …

What’s Happening to the WNBA Isn’t Normal

The league’s unprecedented success has come with unprecedented controversy. Something has to change. Let’s start with the good: The WNBA is more popular than ever. During the offseason, the league and the WNBA Players Association reached a landmark collective-bargaining agreement resulting in a 400 …

Ossoff’s ‘Natalie’ Moment

The Georgia senator’s latest viral moment reveals much about Trump—and plenty about Ossoff himself. How many words does it take to trigger MAGA world? Three, it turns out. When Senator Jon Ossoff of Georgia said at a rally on Sunday that President Trump wants to “travel with Natalie”—implying an …

The White House Freak-Out Over Natalie Harp

The West Wing’s explosive response to a fleeting jab didn’t kill the story. It enabled days of coverage. You are reading this story only because the White House didn’t want you to. I’ll explain. This past Sunday, Senator Jon Ossoff of Georgia—who has become quite good at delivering viral campaign …

What Does a Trump Endorsement Actually Mean in 2026?

A few recent losses for Trump-endorsed politicians hardly mean a sea change in Trump’s power, but they do complicate his narrative. Cory Mills’s reelection campaign was in trouble before it even began. Washington, D.C., police investigated the Florida representative early last year after a woman …

An Unsettling Glimpse Into the GOP’s Future

James Fishback lost badly in Florida but showed that there’s support for bigotry among the young. Normally, when a primary candidate finishes with 10.5 percent of the vote, it is a clear signal of their irrelevance. James Fishback finished third in Tuesday’s Florida Republican gubernatorial primary, …

Why Is Everyone in Silicon Valley Talking Like That?

Did you mix something up? Maybe you’re just “hallucinating.” Silicon Valley has long had its own dialect. Venture capitalists are always talking about the value of being “high agency” and making “orthogonal bets.” But lately, tech vernacular has taken a peculiar turn—people have started describing …

President Trump Has a Pet-Project Docket at the National Parks

The National Park Service changed the way it prioritizes projects so that the president’s requests are quickly approved. President Trump gets what he wants, when he wants it, from the National Park Service. One and a half million dollars to replace brick pavers in Lafayette Park, across from the …

Another Pot of Paint Thrown in the Public’s Face

Does AI actually belong in an art museum? For several months, something discomfiting has been creeping onto San Francisco’s lampposts, bulletin boards, and restaurant windows: more and more signs, for run clubs and a July 4 parade and tacos, all of which are obviously entirely produced by generative …

The ‘Resistance’ Won

The much-derided movement was right about Trump’s nature, and how to defeat him. Donald Trump celebrated the defeat of one of his first impeachment nemeses—retired Army Lieutenant Colonel Alex Vindman, who lost the Democratic Senate primary in Florida on Tuesday—in typical form. “SleazeBag Vindman …

Donald Trump Effectively Just Told Iran to Get a Nuclear Weapon

He may also have blurted out classified information about North Korea. Anyone can get distracted now and then, and say things out loud he or she probably shouldn’t say. Perhaps an excited friend lets on about a surprise party, or a co-worker dishes up some unseemly office gossip. Or, if you’re the …

Photos: Releasing Animals Back Into Their Habitats

Recent images of the moment of release—when many different kinds of animals were reintroduced to their natural habitats after rehabilitation, or as part of repopulation efforts, or simply to help grow an ecosystem

Ukraine Planned to Swarm Moscow Airports With AI-Guided Drones

The stalled operation, code-named “M&Ms,” sought to isolate Russian elites and force Vladimir Putin to negotiate a truce. Early this year, Ukrainian officials came to President Volodymyr Zelensky with a risky new plan to end the war with Russia. It would require expanding their bombing campaign to …

The New History Wars

A bookish form of protest is opposing Trump’s changes. On a recent afternoon in Washington, I put on a pair of augmented-reality glasses for a tour of some very recent ruins: the White House East Wing. In recent months, black fencing has overtaken the area, where Donald Trump’s ballroom construction …

Another Big Difference Between Liberals and Conservatives

People on the right tend to have more kids than people on the left. Why? When some Taylor Swift fans listened to the lyrics of her 2025 song “Wi$h Li$t,” in which she sings about yearning to “settle down” with “a couple kids,” they heard a Republican dog whistle. On social media, they claimed that …

Secrets of a Jeopardy Champion

The trick to winning is to not “know everything.” Subscribe here: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube | Overcast | Pocket Casts I remember each of my triumphs in a trivia game because they are so rare. (Highlight, 2023: Who is Barry Manilow?) I do not shine in bar-trivia night, or charades, or Sporcle. At …

A Stubbornly Naive Group of GOP Senators

A small caucus of non-MAGA Republicans keeps falling for the president’s flimsy promises. For many observers of American politics, the past few years have been disillusioning, knocking down hopeful beliefs about what the people of the United States will support or tolerate. Even some of Donald …

Are You Sure You Want a Car With a Giant Touch Screen?

The AI boom is making phones and laptops more expensive. Cars are next. New drivers may never have to learn how to parallel park. At least not the old-fashioned way. Many new cars—a Ford Mustang Mach-E, a BMW sedan, a Tesla Cybertruck—will just maneuver into a spot for you with a click of a button. …

Why the Closing of Harvard’s Writing Center Matters

Students, faculty members, and alumni are asking how seriously the school is taking human learning in the age of AI. It is not every day that the laying off of a university bureaucrat generates a torrent of criticism from students, faculty, and alumni. But Jane Rosenzweig was not just any university …

The ‘Resistance’ Is Over

The insurgent left cares more about its own factional agenda than the president’s threats to democracy. Is Donald Trump over? Can we all now relax and move on to the next thing? That’s the message from a significant portion of Democratic primary voters. Just as Trump is bored with Iran and the …

Photos: Drone Attacks on Russia’s Wildberries Warehouses

Over the past month, Ukrainian drone attacks inside Russian territory have targeted the online-retail giant Wildberries, destroying massive warehouses and logistics centers. Ukraine has accused Wildberries of supporting Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine.

The New Parent Trap

At summer camp, kids may be far from home, but technology is keeping many moms and dads tethered to them, Russell Shaw writes. At the link, read more about why parents should be comfortable letting their kids learn how to do hard things all on their own: https://theatln.tc/OL05cOSJ

Will There Be a Migration Away from the GOP?

“We’ve had people try to imitate the president and haven’t done well,” Jeff Flake tells Adam Harris. They discuss the future of the Republican Party in the latest episode of “Radio Atlantic”:

The Night My Marriage Fell Apart

In one evening, Chris Jones lost his wife and his best friend; he would soon lose his home, half his money, and some equal measure of time with his children. Nearly 10 years later, he reflects on the longest night of his life—and what it took to rebuild it: https://theatln.tc/QmdOYpG1 🎨: James Lee Chiahan

Longing for a Time Before Smartphones

Gen Z has romanticized the technology of the ’90s—or the era’s lack of it. Young long for a time when people were looking at each other instead of their phones. But could that nostalgia for a smartphone-free society actually help guide the future? That’s one of the driving questions from the latest season of How to Touch Grass, co-hosted by Julie Beck and Natalie Brennan. This week on Radio Atlantic, we’re sharing the first episode, with an introduction by Hanna Rosin. --- Get more from your favorite Atlantic voices when you subscribe. You’ll enjoy unlimited access to Pulitzer-winnin

How Social Media Has Fueled the Rise of the Personal-Growth Narrative

Social-media algorithms are boosting growth narratives, and it is pushing people to share only how they’re getting better, the author Kathryn Jezer-Morton tells Charlie Warzel: “It’s a very convenient way of telling your story as a person, in a way that other people can understand.”

How the Internet Is Affecting the Way We See Ourselves

“I don’t think anyone is supposed to see their own face as much as we do now,” Sophie Gilbert tells Julie Beck. They discuss how the time we spend online is impacting our self-image:

The Toll Online Dating Can Take

Online dating can make dating easier—and it can also take a toll that turns people off romance entirely, Faith Hill tells Hanna Rosin.

Hard-Luck Men in Hardscrabble Towns

In Richard Russo’s novels, the American dream feels like a cruel joke. “I’m the first writer in the family,” the novelist Richard Russo once said, “but I’m not the first bullshitter in the family.” That honor belonged to his divorced father, Jim, a highway worker with no interest in books and an …

A Culture War in the Bedroom

A new film pokes fun at Gen Z’s inhibitions—erotic and otherwise. In the new film I Want Your Sex, characters are action figures in a staging of generational war. On one side is Gen Z, its members portrayed as anxious little prudes. Twenty-three-year-old Elliot is bumbling and directionless. His …

The Human-Origin Story Is Being Radically Revised

Some 50,000 years ago, modern humans wandered into Ice Age Europe. The continent was new to us Homo sapiens, but not for beings of our general kind. Neanderthals and their ancestors had been living among Eurasia’s glaciers for ages, and in ways that would have struck us as familiar. Evidence …

Why MAGA Really Hates Fauci

In the aftermath of pandemics, people either try to forget them or find others to blame for them. Half a dozen years ago, Anthony Fauci was as popular as he would ever be. A respected physician and researcher for decades, he became in 2020 the public face of the pandemic response—calm, confident, …

What Mitch McConnell Did

The former Senate GOP leader’s legacy will make America harder to govern for years to come. On the first Saturday of every August, the Saint Jerome Catholic Church in the tiny town of Fancy Farm, Kentucky, hosts a picnic renowned for its mutton-and-pork barbecue. Since 1880, the scent of smoked meat …

The Color Recession May Be Permanent

Consumers are so afraid of getting colors wrong, they don’t use them at all. When Bob Buckter, a 79-year-old housepainter who also goes by “Dr. Color,” began his career, in the 1970s, the job was a lot more fun. Acid-tripping hippies in his hometown of San Francisco wanted “wild-ass color …

How Social Media May Be Shrinking Our Understanding of the World

Social media mainly pushes positive stories that are limited in scope—and consuming these narratives is “shrinking our capacity” to comprehend crucial information about life, the author Kathryn Jezer-Morton tells Charlie Warzel.

Trump’s Déjà-Vu Moment on Birthright Citizenship

The president’s latest attempt to limit who is an American by birth is plagued by weak legal arguments and nonsensical claims. If at first you don’t succeed, appeal to a higher federal court. And if you even lose at the Supreme Court … just try again anyway. This seems to be President Trump’s …

The Genre That’s a Shortcut to Wisdom

As a busy adult, I approach foundational, complicated ideas with the help of the intellectual biography. “How are you on theory?” my editor asked me earlier this week. I knew what he was talking about—not my pet hypotheses about, say, the existence of cryptids, but rather a group of 20th-century …

Pop Culture Has Its Teeth in You

Jane Schoenbrun’s new film interrogates the relationship between what we watch and who we are. In their fledgling but fascinating career thus far, the director Jane Schoenbrun has been consumed by the pop culture that consumes us. They’ve already proved to be an urgent voice on the matter: Their …

The Case for Calling People on the Phone

We’ve never had more ways to keep in touch. So why are we talking to one another less? “No one picks up the phone anymore,” Alexis C. Madrigal wrote in 2018. That’s in part because too many faceless telemarketers have our number, and in part because more people have come to treat phone calls as …

The Internet Is in Crisis

For 15 minutes, the celebrity-gossip blogger Perez Hilton livestreamed his violent self-harm without anyone intervening. Almost 20 years ago, I had tickets to see Amy Winehouse perform in London, at a show that was canceled just an hour before it was scheduled to start. A friend and I went to a …

Sadism and a Blue Bunny

Not everyone who has a child is fit to love them. Children are made for love. From the moment they are born, they rely on their caregivers for everything they need, and they need a great deal: warmth, nourishment, grooming, contact. Their lives depend on it. Caring for children often comes at the …

How Social Media Makes Our Lives Smaller

In the posting era, there’s room only for redemption and improvement narratives. Most people spend more time than you think agonizing over their social-media posts. Kathryn Jezer-Morton wanted to understand their thinking—and when she dug deeper, she learned that redemption and optimization …

The Atlantic Announces Madeleine Carlisle and Danyel Smith as Staff Writers

Today The Atlantic is announcing two new staff writers: Madeleine Carlisle and Danyel Smith. This marks a homecoming for Madeleine, who was an Atlantic editorial fellow in 2018 and 2019, and went on to Time magazine and most recently 60 Minutes. Danyel is a legend in journalism who spent the past three …

How Social Media Makes Our Lives Smaller

Subscribe to The Atlantic on YouTube: http://bit.ly/subAtlanticYT

A Chatbot-Free Childhood Will Be a Status Symbol

AI is like ultra-processed food for developing brains. The human brain has evolved to learn from specific instructors. When a child hears a gentle spoken word or a soothing lullaby from another person, when their cry is responded to, their brain lights up. Nurturing interactions, or what …

The Most Basic Step of the Ebola Response Is Falling Short

Curbing the outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo will require stepping up testing. The fight against Ebola is not going well. Last week, the head of Africa CDC, Jean Kaseya, announced that the ongoing outbreak of the virus in the Democratic Republic of the Congo had ballooned into the …

Photos of the Week: Fuego Volcano, Underwater Explosion, Pig Diver

Scenes from the 2026 Commonwealth Games in Scotland, wildfires in Southern Europe, the European Aquatics Championships in Paris, a mass-wedding ceremony in the Netherlands, and much more

MAGA’s Most Famous Prisoner Is Free

Newly out of prison, Tina Peters is back to trying to prove election fraud. Earlier this year, Tina Peters was languishing in a Colorado women’s prison, eating processed food, and complaining of declining health—including a persistent cough, digestive issues, and bumps on her skin. But by the end of …

Bring Back the Blue-Book Exam

The humble booklet is more than just a last redoubt against cheating. Staring down its empty pages, students discover what they’re capable of as writers and thinkers. Across the faded blue covers of the exam books in my attic, I can trace the arc of my academic career. I can still see the grades I …

The Dishonesty of True Crime

The hit Netflix documentary Maternal Instinct tidies a far more complicated story. On October 9, 2020, Taylor Parker, a 27-year-old mother of two, visited her friend Reagan Simmons-Hancock at her home in northeastern Texas. Simmons-Hancock, who was 35 weeks pregnant with her second child, had …

Iran Goes Looking for Love in Jordan

Tehran wants the Arab public to balk at the cost of allying with the United States. In late July, Iran struck a U.S. military base in Jordan, killing three American service members. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps followed up with an unusual series of messages to the Jordanian people: “You …

Ukraine’s Short-Lived Comeback

The chorus of optimism has quieted on several fronts, including Zelensky’s struggle with corruption and his relations with Trump. Earlier this summer, Ukraine had finally seized the initiative in its punishing four-year war. President Volodymyr Zelensky had plenty of dramatic victories and …

Trump Is Asking the Private Sector to Save Him

Piecemeal price cuts won’t solve the Iran war’s effects on inflation. At this year’s annual meeting of the World Economic Forum, Donald Trump told a room full of the world’s most prominent CEOs about a routine that he performs when he meets a successful businessperson: This is how Trump has long …

Why a Republican is Endorsing Jon Ossoff

Radio Atlantic host Adam Harris speaks with former Republican U.S. Senator and former U.S. Ambassador Jeff Flake about his recent endorsement of Democratic Senator Jon Ossoff in the Georgia Senate race and why character in politics still matters. Subscribe to the “Radio Atlantic” podcast on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/radio-atlantic/id1258635512 Subscribe to the “Radio Atlantic” podcast on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4vlgAVfHGyzoHYVmY67yFL Follow The Atlantic on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theatlantic/?hl=en Get more from your favorite Atlantic

Icarus in the Faculty Lounge

The Cambridge professor Jason Arday’s unlikely ascent has come to a tragic end. Even before the push alert about his resignation from the University of Cambridge this week, Jason Arday might well have been the world’s most famous living sociologist. In early 2023, Arday received a professorship at …

One Surprising Thing About ‘The Odyssey’—Its Rating

The U.S. is a relative outlier in keeping Christopher Nolan’s movie away from younger audiences. Christopher Nolan has directed two movies in which a soldier washes up on a foreign shore and, battle-weary and sodden, fights to return home. The first, 2017’s Dunkirk, dramatized the World War II …

The New Parent Trap

At summer camp, the kids may be far from home, but technology is keeping many moms and dads tethered to them—and anxious. The first time I went to sleepaway camp, I was 10 years old. When I returned home, a month later, my mom opened my footlocker to help me unpack. On top was a tray of my …

Running From a Fire Should Not Be This Routine

Evacuation has become a familiar, terrible summer ordeal. In the western United States, particularly in fire-prone areas, people have become well versed at preparing to flee. They’re experts at using the tools and technology for monitoring a wildfire’s advance; they consult the Watch Duty app as …

How the U.S. Squandered Its Strategic Advantage

Idle threats and munitions shortages have boxed Trump in. The United States is running out of missiles. After five months of war with Iran, stockpiles of long-range weapons are so low, current and former U.S. defense officials told us, that they don’t believe the U.S. has enough to combat a threat …

Do Not Paint Granite!

The latest Trump renovation project would violate a basic rule of building maintenance. Since November, President Trump has been pushing a plan to paint the granite office building next to the White House, because he thinks it should be white too. Trump’s proposal for the Dwight D. Eisenhower …

How Theory Took Over the World

The French writers of the postwar era argued that the author’s life is irrelevant. Emily Eakin’s lively new book proves them wrong. Separating facts from lies, and real thoughts from fabrications, can seem more difficult than ever: Words and images are easily faked, and some writers at every …

The Death of Romance

We’ve entered the era of the great romance slump. Fewer people are moving in together and getting married, and a shrinking number of young adults say they have experience in a committed relationship—all this despite people saying that they want to find love. So why aren’t they getting it? The Atlantic’s staff writer Faith Hill explains what’s driving the romance decline and reports on life inside the slump.  --- Get more from your favorite Atlantic voices when you subscribe. You’ll enjoy unlimited access to Pulitzer-winning journalism, from clear-eyed analysis and insight on breaking new

Why AI May Change How We Address Anxieties

Asking an AI model about your medical anxieties can be a very different experience than just Googling your symptoms, the psychologist Ashleigh Golden tells Julie Beck. With Google, "the loop has natural friction built in,” Golden says. But with AI, "there's no natural endpoint."

Chatbots Could Be Making Us More Anxious

Nothing sucks you in quite like the internet. It seems to have a way of figuring out what you’re currently obsessed with and serving you more and more of it, whether that’s cat videos, cookie recipes, or information about your most pervasive and seemingly unshakeable anxiety. (At this point, anyone who’s never spent a late night Googling their worries should be studied by science for their willpower.) But with the rise of artificial intelligence, the internet may be fueling a different kind of engagement.  Elias Aboujaoude, a psychiatrist at Stanford University, and Ashleigh Golden, a psych

Is This Ebola Outbreak a Global-Health Failure?

The fastest-ever growing outbreak of Ebola is currently wreaking havoc across the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The numbers of infections and deaths are on track to exceed those of the worst outbreak ever recorded—the 2014–16 Ebola crisis in West Africa. This deadly strain comes after the Trump administration gutted the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) in 2025, and amid a violent conflict in the region. The international community is playing catch-up, and no vaccine is yet available. “Radio Atlantic” host Adam Harris speaks with Atlantic writer Hana Kiros about why this o

The Town That Wants a Data Center Next Door

Opposition to data-center construction is the bipartisan issue of the moment—70 percent of Americans are against construction in their communities. Recently, New York passed the country’s first statewide data-center-construction moratorium. Maine was supposed to have been the first. For this week’s episode of Radio Atlantic, the reporter Ethan Brooks traveled to Maine to understand why one tiny town killed what would have been America’s first data-center moratorium. - - - Get more from your favorite Atlantic voices when you subscribe. You’ll enjoy unlimited access to Pulitzer-winning

The No-Limits President Hits His Limits

Donald Trump once claimed that there were no limits to his power. But, Jonathan Lemire observes, recent months have delivered a reckoning for the president, who may soon run up against his biggest fear: irrelevance. 📸: Getty Images

The Fight That Could Decide 2028 | The David Frum Show

In this week’s episode of “The David Frum Show,” The Atlantic’s David Frum opens with his reaction to President Trump’s latest round of tariffs and explains why he believes they are weakening America’s economy and its alliances. Then, David is joined by his Atlantic colleague Jonathan Chait for a wide-ranging discussion on the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, whether presidents should be funny, the growing attacks on Barack Obama’s legacy, and the battle in Michigan between moderates and the progressive left that could shape the Democratic Party’s future. Finally, David closes the show wi

The Fear of Black Greeks

White people don’t own the accomplishments of ancient Greece. This article contains spoilers for Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey. In a different time, Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey would have been celebrated by the American right as a conservative film. Nolan’s interpretation of Homer’s epic poem is …

Is AI the End of Cheap Tech?

How the AI-driven memory crisis affects us all Subscribe here: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube | Pocket Casts Electronics are getting more expensive—and the culprit has a lot to do with generative AI. Amid all the talk of AI taking over people’s jobs, automating people’s workflows, and doing …

Remember Tesla?

Elon Musk’s company is quietly becoming even more important to the future of electric cars in America. Nothing captures the decline of Tesla better than the Cybertruck. When the stainless-steel pickup hit the road in 2023, Tesla was the world’s biggest electric-car company. At the time, Elon Musk …

America Is About to Go Over a Peptide Cliff

Popular gray-market drugs may soon be easy to get through mainstream channels. BPC-157 is rumored to heal almost anything: a sore shoulder, a bum knee, a pulled hamstring, ulcerative colitis. Maybe even traumatic brain injuries and multiple sclerosis, too. The drug—part of a class called …

Smoky Skies Are Coming Back

We should really have a better way of knowing when it’s safe to go outside. The air is bad this summer. Really, it’s historically disgusting. Smoke from wildfires has gusted over people’s homes, spreading haze and yellowing the sky. Last week, four midwestern cities—Chicago, Detroit, Milwaukee, and …