The meritocracy isn’t working. We need something new. By David Brooks
Lucy Calkins was an education superstar. Now she’s cast as the reason a generation of students struggles to read. Can she reclaim her good name?
The National Gallery’s “Paris 1874” explores the movement’s dark origins.
The reelection of Donald Trump would mark the end of George Washington’s vision for the presidency—and the United States.By Tom Nichols
Voters detest the things that Trump wants to do. But they just don’t believe he’ll follow through.By David A. Graham
And how to get them to stopBy Bill Adair
He said Republican politicians would be easy to break. He was right.
His latest comments about mass deportation are a revelation about how he feels—and a troubling reminder of the sources of his appeal.
Julius Rosenwald understood that charity is not just about giving, but about fixing the inequalities that make giving necessary.
The Darién Gap was once considered impassable. Now hundreds of thousands of migrants are risking treacherous terrain, violence, hunger, and disease to travel through the jungle to the United States.
Some say a big war will help the country’s enemies. But is anyone listening?
Tightwads drag around a phantom limb of poverty, no matter what their bank account says.
Why would an armed officer stand by as a school shooting unfolds? By Jamie Thompson
It was the early afternoon of Valentine’s Day 2018, and the campus of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School was full of kids exchanging stuffed animals and heart-shaped chocolates. Scot Peterson, a Broward County sheriff’s deputy, was in his office at the school, waiting to talk with a parent about a student’s fake ID. At 2:21 p.m., a report came over the school radio about a strange sound—firecrackers, possibly—coming from Building 12. Peterson stepped outside, moving briskly, talking into the radio on his shoulder. Then the fire alarm rang. Peterson, wearing a sheriff’s uniform with a Glock on his belt, started running.
Why is it so hard to root out fakes and forgeries?
We’ve become inured to his rhetoric, but his message has grown darker.
“We pledge to you that we will root out the Communists, Marxists, fascists, and the radical-left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country, that lie and steal and cheat on elections,” Donald Trump said this past November, in a campaign speech that was ostensibly honoring Veterans Day. “The real threat is not from the radical right; the real threat is from the radical left … The threat from outside forces is far less sinister, dangerous, and grave than the threat from within. Our threat is from within.”
How Trump could unwind generations of progress
In late 2020, even as the instigators of insurrection were marshaling their followers to travel to Washington, D.C., another kind of coup—a quieter one—was in the works. On December 21, in one of his departing acts as attorney general, Bill Barr submitted a proposed rule change to the White House. The change would eliminate the venerable standard used by the Justice Department to handle discrimination cases, known as “disparate impact.” The memo was quickly overshadowed by the events of January 6, and, in the chaotic final days of Donald Trump’s presidency, it was never implemented. But Barr’s proposal represented perhaps the most aggressive step the administration took in its effort to dismantle existing civil-rights law. Should Trump return to power, he would surely attempt to see the effort through.
His campaign is promising a more repressive and dangerous America.
In a second term, Trump would punish the cities and states that don’t support him.
A play of past and present
The Atlantic revisits Reconstruction
.By JEFFREY GOLDBERG
No one should fear a history that asks a country to live up to its highest ideals.
The federal government abandoned Reconstruction in 1877, but Black people didn’t give up on the moment’s promise.
Can hard-core gamers learn to play well with others? By Spencer Kornhaber
Playing a prerelease version of Diablo IV, the latest installment in a 26-year-old adventure series about battling the forces of hell, I faced swarms of demons that yowled and belched. My character, a sorcerer, shot them with lightning bolts, producing a jet-engine roar.
Inside the desperate effort to rescue America’s pastime from irrelevance By Mark Leibovich
Where in the name of human rain delays is Juan Soto?
The stud outfielder is late. Everyone keeps checking their phones—the antsy Major League Baseball officials, the San Diego Padres PR guy, the handful of reporters, and the assorted hangers-on you encounter around baseball clubhouses. Everyone is wondering when the Padres superstar will show up. He was supposed to be here half an hour ago, just after this baseball players’ sanctum opened and we were allowed to join them in their most elemental of baseball activities: waiting around.
Bono illustrates President Zelensky for June cover
The Atlantic’s June cover is illustrated by U2’s lead singer, Bono, who sketches Zelensky and includes a quote from the Ukrainian president:
In an editor’s note, also published today, Goldberg writes that, after learning Bono has a hobby of redesigning and reimagining Atlantic covers, he invited the singer and writer to create an original.
“Zelensky, a man we both admire, was a natural subject for his first go. Like Anne, Bono is preoccupied with issues of freedom and dignity, and, working with Oliver Munday, our associate creative director, he made a stunning cover that captures the resolve of Ukraine’s wartime president.”
If the technology is only as good as the information it learns from, then state censorship is not a recipe for success.
Are you a Myers-Briggs person, an Enneagram person, or something else? The Atlantic made a quiz to help you find out.
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