From The Atlantic. There is an ongoing battle for House seats. And it’s playing out not so much in elections but in congressional maps. The Atlantic staff writers Russell Berman, who’s been covering the redistricting wars for the past several months, and Vann R. Newkirk II, who’s long followed the Voting Rights Act (and now…

From The Atlantic. What some once considered Donald Trump’s strategic unpredictability in international relations lately feels more like destabilizing unreliability, officials tell Vivian Salama. She explores what this could mean for talks in Iran.

From The Atlantic. The American project sometimes “looks chaotic,” but it’s ultimately durable, the former Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein tells David Frum: “If you ask me would I take … our system today versus another one, hands down, I take our system.”

From The Atlantic. The author Nicholas Boggs, who wrote a recent biography of James Baldwin, recommends eight biographies that are animated by the author’s love for their subject, for language, and for pushing the boundaries of what the genre can do. Read the full list at the link. Subscribe to The Atlantic on YouTube: http://bit.ly/subAtlanticYT

From The Atlantic. “President Trump is desperate for the war in Iran to end—but Tehran may have other ideas,” Jonathan Lemire says. He reports on why Iran may be willing to let this conflict drag on. 📸: Mandel Ngan / AFP via Getty Images; Andrew Harnik/Getty Images; Justin Sullivan/Getty Images; Frederic J. Brown / AFP…

From The Atlantic. Kaitlyn Tiffany recently went one month without a smartphone—and learned that much of our culture is organized around our devices. She talks with Charlie Warzel about the things she was literally unable to do without her iPhone:

From The Atlantic. “We can reclaim a lot of the culture that we had before screens on screens,” Megan Garber tells Adrienne LaFrance. “It’s really useful to think very specifically and intentionally about ‘What did we love about the culture that was?’” Watch more from their discussion of Garber’s new book, ”Screen Time.”

From The Atlantic. In 2022, Honor Jones reflected on how motherhood raised her standard for relationships. ⁠ “The usual lament—that the romance of marriage dissipates in the commotion of child-rearing—isn’t what happened to me. Rather, being a parent brought me so much joy,” Jones wrote. “Children are supposed to be the death of freedom. But…

From The Atlantic. “It may seem strange to be nostalgic about America’s most hated airline,” Saahil Desai says—but Spirit Airlines did much more to transform the airline industry than charge $4.50 for a bottle of water.

From The Atlantic. Many people are starting to consider smartphones “a hindrance to happiness and functioning”—but it’s also helpful to be able to use online apps such as Google Maps, Kaitlyn Tiffany says. She speaks with Charlie Warzel about the month she spent without her iPhone:

From The Atlantic. After losing her daughter in 2024, Danielle Crittenden published “Dispatches From Grief,” detailing what happens following a family death. She speaks with her husband, David Frum, about the loneliness of grief and how others can provide comfort to those in mourning.

From The Atlantic. On this week’s episode of “Galaxy Brain,” Charlie Warzel talks with his Atlantic colleague Kaitlyn Tiffany about what our phones are doing to us. Tiffany recently wrote about swapping her iPhone for a flip phone as part of a movement called “Month Offline.” Kaitlyn talks through her personal experience: the joys and…

From The Atlantic. The author Caro Claire Burke discusses her debut novel, Yesteryear, about a tradwife influencer suddenly transported back to 1855 and faced with the harsh realities of actual pioneer life. The book is a No. 1 New York Times best seller, and its film rights have already been sold and Anne Hathaway is…

From The Atlantic. “Many of the adults that I most admire, they were not easy teenagers,” Russell Shaw says. He examines how feisty kids—who made some teachers quietly miserable—may possess a “moral fire” that deserves cultivation: Subscribe to The Atlantic on YouTube: http://bit.ly/subAtlanticYT

From The Atlantic. David Frum and Danielle Crittenden lost their daughter in 2024. In this week’s episode, they discuss how a family can put themselves back together after a loved one dies.

From The Atlantic. More families who can afford it are hiring a “chief of staff for the home,” Nancy Walecki writes. She spoke with 12 people who have either hired or worked as a house manager to explore the latest way some people are choosing to buy back time: 📸: Sjöberg Bildbyrå / Contributor, ullstein…

From The Atlantic. Danielle Crittenden’s eldest daughter, Miranda, died in 2024. “More than two years have passed, but Miranda’s absence never ceases to shock me,” Crittenden writes. “It retains the power to hit me anew each day. Why is she still not here? Haven’t we suffered enough? Don’t we deserve to have her back now?”…

From The Atlantic. Max Spero, a co-founder of an AI-detection firm, predicts that worsening AI slop on the internet will cause a reaction similar to the rise of cybersecurity companies to combat computer viruses: “I think we are in the birth of this adversarial industry.”

From The Atlantic. For Radio Atlantic, Michael Scherer discusses Trump’s new vision of himself: “He’s behaving like one of these ancient leaders, who is going to literally hold the gladiatorial-combat celebration on the White House lawn this summer when the UFC comes to do a fight.”

From The Atlantic. Silicon Valley and the Vatican may seem like “strange bedfellows,” Elias Wachtel argues, but when it comes to defining the future of AI, each has something to gain from the other. Read more: https://theatln.tc/7yXV0Xrk

From The Atlantic. Max Spero, co-founder of an AI-detection company, speaks with Charlie Warzel about the challenges of training machines to differentiate between human and AI writing in a post-ChatGPT world: “I think the very first step, for us, is collecting really clean human-written data from 2026.”

From The Atlantic. The festooning of Donald Trump’s name and likeness across Washington, D.C., is consistent with authoritarian tendencies, Gal Beckerman argues: These are leaders who “like to have their face in your face.” Read more, and view a collection of images taken across the nation’s capital: https://theatln.tc/hmLyJNr9 📸: Carolyn Van Houten

From The Atlantic. What happens when the majority of content on the internet tips over into AI slop? On this episode of “Galaxy Brain,” Charlie Warzel talks to Max Spero, a co-founder of Pangram, an AI-detection company. They discuss how AI-detection tools work and how effective they can be at identifying what’s made by humans…

From The Atlantic. Joe Biden may have been waiting for Kamala Harris’s second term as vice president to set her up for future success, the former Harris aide Jamal Simmons tells David Frum: “I think he had no plan ever to have her run in 2024.”

From The Atlantic. Alexander the Great. Julius Caesar. Napoleon Bonaparte. Donald Trump The Atlantic staff writers Ashley Parker and Michael Scherer reported this week (https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/2026/04/donald-trump-legacy-history/686817/) on the president privately comparing himself to the three norm-defying, world-historical figures highlighted in the work of the German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel.  The president has also sought to…

From The Atlantic. Voters’ perception of Donald Trump may affect a potential J. D. Vance presidential candidacy in 2028, Jamal Simmons tells David Frum: If Trump is “viewed as someone who was a wrecking ball to the country and our international standing in the world, I don’t see how J. D. Vance escapes that.”

From The Atlantic. In this episode of “The David Frum Show,” The Atlantic’s David Frum opens with his thoughts about the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. David examines the role of the dinner in an administration that rejects the basic concepts of honesty with and respect toward independent media. During previous administrations, there was some norm…

From The Atlantic. Total security for major public events is a complex challenge—and “the realistic guiding principle is not to eliminate risk but to reduce it as much as possible,” The Atlantic contributing writer Juliette Kayyem argues. 📸: Getty Images

From The Atlantic. Atlantic staff writer Missy Ryan recounts the chaos during an attack at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner—and what it was like to report on a scene she was in the middle of. Read her reporting of the incident here: https://theatln.tc/NIv68fUJ 📸: Andrew Harnik / Staff / Getty; Al Drago / Contributor /…

From The Atlantic. Internet clipping has “become its own ecosystem, its own economy, that only a few people have really figured out. And they have gamed it relentlessly,” the podcaster Ed Elson tells Charlie Warzel. Watch their full discussion on the “clip economy”:

From The Atlantic. On Wednesday, May 13, the Atlantic staff writer Gal Beckerman will sit down with the Atlantic podcast host Adam Harris to discuss Beckerman’s new book, How to Be a Dissident. Beckerman’s book is part philosophy, part history, and part manual for living with integrity in an age of conformity and authoritarian drift.…

From The Atlantic. On Wednesday, May 6, the Atlantic staff writer Megan Garber will sit down with The Atlantic’s executive editor, Adrienne LaFrance, to discuss Garber’s new book, Screen People: How We Entertained Ourselves Into a State of Emergency. Garber offers an eye-opening look at how today’s internet-inflected culture conditions us to see one another…

From The Atlantic. Prediction markets such as Kalshi and Polymarket have a dude problem—and they’re trying to woo women through matcha memes and “get ready with me” videos, Nancy Walecki reports:

From The Atlantic. Allbirds’ hard pivot to AI might initially look like a cynical cash grab, but the shoe company’s AI rebrand could also be an escape hatch, Will Gottsegen argues. Read the full article from The Atlantic Daily: 🎨: The Atlantic. Gary Hershorn / Getty. Matthias Groeneveld / Getty. Al Drago / Bloomberg /…

From The Atlantic. The Michelin-star chef Ruthie Rogers speaks with The Atlantic’s Ellen Cushing about her new book, “Table 4 at the River Cafe”; the origins of her restaurant; what food of today she would want most in 1857. Subscribe to The Atlantic on YouTube: http://bit.ly/subAtlanticYT

From The Atlantic. “The clips are the content. That’s what people are consuming. That’s where they’re spending their time,” the writer and podcaster Ed Elson tells Charlie Warzel. Watch their full discussion on the “clip economy”:

From The Atlantic. “Donald Trump’s aides are keeping him in the dark on important conversations. And that’s not good for democratic accountability,” David A. Graham argues. In The Atlantic Daily, he explores how prior presidents have found the Oval Office confining—and how Richard Nixon provides a troubling historical example of what happens when aides feel…

From The Atlantic. In this episode of “Galaxy Brain,” Charlie Warzel talks with business writer Ed Elson about the rise of the “clip economy”—the idea that short video clips pulled from podcasts, livestreams, and other long-form content have become the dominant unit of online media, not just a promotional tool. Elson explains how figures like…

From The Atlantic. The Atlantic’s Sarah Fitzpatrick speaks with Hanna Rosin about her reporting on FBI Director Kash Patel: “The thing that stood out the most to me was the incredibly high levels of alarm that I would describe as bordering on panic for these sources.”

From The Atlantic. Last week, The Atlantic published a story (https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/2026/04/kash-patel-fbi-director-drinking-absences/686839/) about how FBI Director Kash Patel’s colleagues are alarmed by what they describe as erratic behavior and excessive drinking. Sources told staff writer Sarah Fitzpatrick that, on multiple occasions, members of his security detail had trouble waking Patel because he was seemingly intoxicated.  Patel…