The Atlantic - LATEST

11 hours ago

As the acting attorney general prepares for confirmation hearings, his DOJ is showcasing its willingness to intimidate reporters whose revelations have upset the president. Al Drago / Bloomberg / Getty This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest st

How Lindsey Graham Miscalculated on Iran

16 hours ago

The senator helped persuade Trump to launch a war that has become a quagmire. Doug Mills / The New York Times / Redux Sign up for our newsletter about national security here. Days before the United States launched its war on Iran in late February, a senior official from an Arab nation was

The Last of the Three Amigos

18 hours ago

Lindsey Graham believed American power could be a force for good in the world. Chuck Kennedy / Tribune News Service / Getty More than 20 years ago, Senator Lindsey Graham visited Ukraine for the first time. An election was looming, one that would be reversed and run again, and that would ultima

Atlantic Trivia: Early-2000s Tech

19 hours ago

Test your knowledge—and read our stories for a little extra help. Put on some early-2000s Gorillaz and get down to today’s trivia. And by the way, did you know that the i in iPod, iPhone, etc., simultaneously means nothing and sorta-kinda everything? When the iMac debuted in 1998, Stev

The War Trump Can’t Control

21 hours ago

President Trump has consistently said the war in Iran will be over “quickly.” Is it becoming one America can’t exit? Fatemeh Bahrami / Anadolu / Getty Subscribe here: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube | Overcast | Pocket Casts Following the United States’ war with Iran can give you whipla

Russia and America Are Rediscovering the Limits of Nuclear Weapons

They buy deterrence. That’s about it. Vlad Karkov / SOPA Images / Getty Sign up for our newsletter about national security here. Henry Kissinger often said that nuclear arms are “weapons in search of a doctrine.” After the Cold War, some strategists have tried to figure out what, exactly,

How the Elite See Rome

Need the Colosseum to yourself? Want to see a privately owned masterpiece by Caravaggio? For the tourism fixer Fulvio De Bonis, there’s no such thing as a closed door. A famous entertainer would like to have the Colosseum to herself for a small evening event—anything you can do? A visitor on a

A Win for American Democracy

The Supreme Court has restored power—financial and otherwise—to political parties in elections. Illustration by Alicia Tatone / Source: Getty. This is not a sentence written often lately, but the U.S. Supreme Court has just done a great service to American democracy. On June 30, the Court

The Honorable Gentleman for Ukraine

Senator Lindsey Graham made the last foreign trip of his life to a nation he never gave up on. Mandel Ngan / AFP / Getty Sign up for our newsletter about national security here. Ukraine had few, if any, friends in Washington more devoted than Senator Lindsey Graham, who visited Kyiv at the

What Lindsey Graham Wanted

The senator always sought relevance. Al Drago / The New York Times / Redux Senator Lindsey Graham, who died unexpectedly last night, was a pivotal citizen of the Washington conversation. He loved being in the mix, slapping bipartisan backs off camera, and then, when the lights came on, cracking

Trump Loses His Wingman

Lindsey Graham’s sudden death leaves a void that the White House can’t afford. Doug Mills / The New York Times / Redux Lindsey Graham had just returned from a trip to Ukraine last night when he called President Trump to talk with him—about the trip, about one of the president’s key legislative

The Quintessential Politician of This Era

The late South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham made a mid-career turn to MAGA. Jemal Countess / Redux This article was featured in the One Story to Read Today newsletter. Sign up for it here. In his way, the late Lindsey Graham, who unexpectedly died Saturday evening, was the consummate po

The Scrubbed and Simple Moon

A poem Illustration by The Atlantic. Sources: Darren Lehane; CSA-Printstock; David Talukdar / NurPhoto. Watchless, wordless, compassless. Isn’t that when mountains open and light roars through, as when in the delivery room, slammed by a lot of meaningless brightness, you cried and were hel

The Most Famous AI Writing Tic Is Also the Most Mysterious

Why chatbots love “it’s not X, it’s Y” Illustration by Alicia Tatone. Source: Getty. If Julius Caesar had debuted this year, William Shakespeare might have been accused of writing it with AI. A certain suspicious rhetorical device appears again and again in the play. It’s in Act I, Scene ii: “T

NATO Is Going Strong, Actually

Trump hasn’t made the alliance less resilient or less necessary. Michael Kappeler / Picture Alliance / Getty Sign up for our newsletter about national security here. Donald Trump has long treated NATO like a punching bag, leading many observers to proclaim the demise of the Western allianc

The Return of the Democratic Manly Man

The party has a new campaign strategy: masculinity. Amy Lynn Powell for The Atlantic This article was featured in the One Story to Read Today newsletter. Sign up for it here. Brian Poindexter had just finished wolfing down a Reuben sandwich in a deli outside Cleveland when he delivered a m

American Loneliness

It’s not an epidemic—it’s an immune system. Marlen Mueller / Connected Archives Driving on I-79 south from Pittsburgh toward Charlottesville, I started composing this birthday card in my head—a love letter to America on its 250th birthday. The hills of Pennsylvania were blanketed in glittering

The Unintended Consequences of Genetic Tests

Data on inherited maladies can save lives, but can also complicate them. Illustration by Ard Su I was pregnant with my first baby when my grandmother died. The last time I saw her, she had moved into an assisted-living facility where all of her worldly possessions were condensed down to two sm

A Free-Speech Meltdown

PEN America’s president resigned over an article detailing the isolation and exclusion that many Israeli and Jewish writers feel after October 7. Illustration by The Atlantic On Thursday morning, PEN America, the free-speech organization, posted an article detailing the “isolation and exclusion

Can Democrats Salvage Their Chances in Maine?

Panelists on Washington Week With The Atlantic joined to discuss what the end of Graham Platner’s campaign may mean for the Democratic Party, and more. Courtesy of Washington Week With The Atlantic After Graham Platner officially withdrew from the Maine Senate race this week, Democrats are now

Look Closer: 'Interior With Women Beside a Linen Cupboard'

What the painter, a contemporary of Vermeer, revealed and concealed in a beguiling 1663 work PHAS / Universal Images Group / Getty Pieter de Hooch was a contemporary of Johannes Vermeer in the Dutch city of Delft for a time; they painted similar subjects, in similar costumes, engaged in similar

America’s Homegrown-Parasite Problem

Scientists don’t know why cyclosporiasis, a tropical diarrheal disease, is spreading more and more from domestic sources. Jennifer Cappuccio Maher / MediaNews Group / Inland Valley Daily Bulletin / Getty The other night, I found myself in the unenviable position of trying to cook a salad. And I

The Thinking About Kids and Heat Has Flipped

Kids are supposed to be uniquely vulnerable to heat, but the data tell a different story. H. Armstrong Roberts / ClassicStock / Getty You know it’s hot when summer camps have to cancel bonfires and doctors warn that playgrounds could be dangerous. Last week, when a heat dome was descending on N

The Surprising Unity of Soccer

The World Cup reminds us that loyalty doesn’t have to be bound by borders. Maja Hitij - FIFA / Contributor / Getty This is an edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a set of stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Sign up here to get it eve

The Social Ritual That Made Me a Better Man