The debate was a travesty—because its whole premise was to treat a failed coup leader as a legitimate candidate for the presidency.

The only question is whether American citizens today can uphold that commitment.

American allies see a second Trump term as all but inevitable. “The anxiety is massive.”

Silicon Valley has its own ascendant political ideology. It’s past time we call it what it is.

An America vacillating between violent struggle and idle nihilism is shuddering toward its end.

On the ground in the Georgia congresswoman’s alternate universe

But instead he got a fair one, and was convicted by a jury of his peers.

Donald Trump will not be held accountable before the 2024 presidential election for his violent attempt to overturn the previous election, but he is now a convicted felon all the same.

In a masterful opinion, the D.C. Circuit rejected the former president’s bid for immunity.

The former president said that if he wins in November, Putin will release Evan Gershkovich. It’s an odd assertion, even by Trump’s standards.

He demonstrates contempt for Americans in uniform while claiming to adore them—but wants service members to “revolt” for him at the ballot box.

He came to thank the U.S. for supporting Ukraine. It is Americans who should thank him.

I thought this trial was a sideshow; I now think I was wrong.

The environment in which kids grow up today is hostile to human development.

At a rally on Saturday, the former president announced he would tell the Russians “to do whatever the hell they want” to states delinquent in their bills.

They should take it.

One hundred years after the publication of The Waste Land, its vision has never been more terrifying.

Autocrats in China, Russia, and elsewhere are now making common cause with MAGA Republicans to discredit liberalism and freedom around the world.

By the end of the argument, everyone knew it.

Why have Republican leaders abandoned their principles in support of an immoral and dangerous president?

Twitter is a private company, not the federal government—something Elon Musk and Tucker Carlson fail to understand, @DavidAFrench writes:

Watching the president at the first debate was at times almost physically uncomfortable.

How the world’s greatest businessman drove his newspaper into a ditch

Calls for the National Guard to stop campus protests are not about safety.

You have a right to free speech as long as you are saying what conservatives want you to say.

What if Mike Johnson is actually good at this?

Donald Trump is the first president in U.S. history to be convicted in a court of law.

If you live in a country where democracy is still intact: Don’t wait.

136 books that made America think

The Oath Keepers imagine themselves to be true patriots, but, as a jury of their peers found this week, their deeds were a crime against the United States.

Why have Republican leaders abandoned their principles in support of an immoral and dangerous president?

We must treat him like any other candidate for high office who is emotionally and mentally unstable.

Sign up for the The Trump Trials newsletter by George T. Conway III, available Weekly-ish.

He was so damaged, and yet he showed us so much of the world.

Elite colleges are now reaping the consequences of promoting a pedagogy that trashed the postwar ideal of the liberal university.

Tim Alberta, Sophie Gilbert, and Jennifer Senior win for reporting; Jenisha Watts and special issue, “To Reconstruct the Nation,” were finalists

Those who have cared for Biden the longest cannot allow him to continue.

And Joe Biden should welcome him.

The disease once guaranteed an early death—but a new treatment has given many patients a chance to live decades longer than expected. What do they do now?

Invention alone can’t change the world; what matters is what happens next.

Over the past 10 years, the “This Is Fine” dog has evolved from a joke into an indictment.

If Donald Trump loses November’s election, it will be for one reason: He can’t help making it all about himself.

The funniest people on the planet think there’s no funnier person than Albert Brooks.

Lauded for his strategic insights, the former secretary of state is better remembered for his callousness toward the victims of global conflict.

Bram Stoker’s gothic masterpiece speaks surprisingly well to our information-addled age of paranoia.

Trump’s denial of his own well-documented remarks is a tell.

Russia’s war on Ukraine need not end in negotiation.

Many Republicans continue their collective amnesia about Trump.

The networks want their show, but to give the challenger equal status on a TV stage would be a dire normalization of his attempted coup.

An Atlantic investigation reveals who they are and what they might do on Election Day.

The Atlantic contributing writer and author of the Unsettled Territory newsletter is awarded one of the highest prizes in American letters.

What the former president’s shark tirade says about American politics and media

I thought my mother was an only child. I was wrong.

The app’s original purpose has been lost in the era of “performance” media.

I will never owe another cat the debt that I owe her.

If reasonable people disengage from politics, the zealots win.

Even behind bars, the dissident leader was a threat to the corrupt Russian dictator.

A scientific inquiry

This isn’t the first time the billionaire has dabbled in the news business. 

Children have a folklore all their own, and the games, rhymes, trends, and legends that catch on spread to many kids across time and space.

Live music is a mess right now.

Extremist rhetoric online is often a foundation for action in the physical world—but not immediately.

Conspiracism and hyper-partisanship in the nation’s fastest-growing city

Biden needs to step aside—for the sake of his own dignity, for the good of his party, for the future of the country.

If the Florida governor ever intends to wrest control of the GOP from Trump, now is his moment.

Seven agonizing nights aboard the Icon of the Seas

Humans are evolutionarily drawn to beauty. How do such complex experiences emerge from a collection of atoms and molecules?

A reflection on the death at 92 of Alice Munro, the Nobel Prize–winning master of the short story

What makes the book controversial is exactly what makes it valuable.

They impede learning, stunt relationships, and lessen belonging. They should be banned.

Ordinary people, when seduced by violent ideologies, can be extraordinarily brutal.

But at least you have something to talk about.

What I saw inside the government’s response to COVID-19

Humans are evolutionarily drawn to beauty. How do such complex experiences emerge from a collection of atoms and molecules?

He is becoming frighteningly clear about what he wants.

Sam Altman’s weekend of shock and drama began a year ago, with the release of ChatGPT.

A requiem for Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment

Merrick Garland hasn’t tipped his hand, but it’s clear to me that he will bring charges against the former president.

The captain of the U.S. soccer team is the latest in a long line of sports stars who have had to wrestle with a complex legacy on the world stage.

A handful of images of the tens of billions of individual animals divided among some 10,000 species, inhabiting nearly every environment on Earth

Our mass-shooting guidance may be woefully out of date.