“Part of me is glad he’s wasting his time on bullshit, because it’s less dangerous for rule of law, for the American public, but it also means we don’t have a real functioning FBI director.” - FBI Official
"The problems with Patel's conduct go well beyond what has been previously known, and include both conspicuous inebriation and unexplained absences. His behavior has often alarmed officials at the FBI and the DoJ."
www.theatlantic.com/politics/202...
"Vance's attempt to enlighten the pontiff revealed not only his arrogance, but his lack of knowledge about the just-war tradition itself."
www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...
We often disparage dissidents as self-righteous, but if you look at Thoreau, and what it took to oppose slavery in his time, maybe acting out of conviction does take a certain presumptuousness.
An excerpt in @theatlantic.com from "How to Be a Dissident."
www.theatlantic.com/books/2026/0...
"To contend successfully with the traditionalists’ effects on our politics and culture, we also need to recognize that elements of their worldview are correct. But which parts are correct, and which are completely off the rails?"
www.theatlantic.com/magazine/202...
"How sick does a civilization have to be to not pass down its own sources of wisdom and meaning to its children?"
www.theatlantic.com/magazine/202...
"We moderns may think we own the future, but the traditionalists like their chances. If this is a global culture war, it’s the whole world against us."
www.theatlantic.com/magazine/202...
Is history running backwards?
"Progress was supposed to lead to the expansion of individual choice in sphere after sphere. Science and reason would prosper while superstition and conspiracy-mongering would wither away.
Turns out that was yesterday’s vision of the future."
www.theatlantic.com/magazine/202...
“'The devil,' William Shakespeare wrote in The Merchant of Venice, 'can cite Scripture for his purpose.' As we’ve seen in recent weeks, so can Pete Hegseth."
www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...
"Even if all other problems, including the economy, were holding steady—and they are not—America cannot keep ignoring the dysfunction of the commander in chief, the sole steward of the codes to a massive nuclear arsenal."
www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...
"Trump's blood-curdling Truth Social posts—shocking as they were—proclaimed desperation, not resolve. That’s the Trump version of the madman strategy: yelling at people in the street while begging those same people for a bailout."
www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...
"Donald Trump has vacillated between Neville Chamberlain and Attila the Hun, threatening to walk away one day and to bomb Iran “back to the Stone Age” the next. Tehran has clarity: Its ideology is resistance, its strategy is chaos, and its endgame is survival."
www.theatlantic.com/internationa...
For those wanting to better understand the right's admiration for Orban strongly recommend this new article from @isaacstanleybecker.bsky.social.
Does the phrase “Hitler-branded architecture” ring any bells?
“Was this edifice the work of a normal mind, or of one tormented by megalomania and haunted by visions of domination?”
www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...
"He wanted it big. He wanted lots of gold, lots of marble."
On Hitler's grandiose architectural plans for an expansion of the government's seat of power, and the dictator's use of fascist aesthetics to awe and intimidate.
www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...
"The president seems lost. Perhaps he should have stayed off the podium for a bit longer, rather than display how adrift he is to the American public and the world."
www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...
"A normal politician would attempt to convey that he is being reasonable and negotiating in good faith, whereas his adversaries are violent war criminals. Trump is arguing the reverse."
www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...
"When Hegseth tries to don the armor of a warrior priest, the result is a rancid mess that should offend believers and nonbelievers alike."
www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/...
"Yet whatever truths it contains, Marc Andreessen’s worldview still comes with a few problems. In the first place, he is an ignoramus of epic proportions."
www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...
Airports "are the opposite of vacation, even as they are inextricably linked to it. And they lay bare the fragility of this modern life, how easy it is for everything to go wrong—right now, especially."
www.theatlantic.com/culture/2026...
"The erosion of deep reading weakens our capacity to grasp complex ideas. This shallowing effect reshapes the public square, allowing brief snippets of emotionally charged content to crowd out nuance, and algorithms to reinforce preferences and prejudices."
www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...
“'There are too many ways for it to fail for it not to fail,' Kedrosky said of the AI industry’s web of risk. 'All you can say for sure is this is a fragile and overdetermined system that must break, so it will.'"
www.theatlantic.com/technology/2...
"On Yelp, where Newark Airport has a lower rating than several nearby prisons, 1,100 one-star reviews refer to it with vocabulary such as 'chaotic,' 'unacceptable,' and 'hell on earth.'"
www.theatlantic.com/culture/2026...
A Trimmer has been called “a kind of state-otter, neither fish nor flesh, and yet he smells of both” and a political “hermaphrodite.” Yet Trimmers, "the antithesis of Donald Trump," are what this moment calls for. @DavidBrooks224 makes the case.
www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...
"At the core of the MAGA project and Trumpism is disruption and destruction, the delegitimization and razing of institutions, and the brutalization of opponents. Its leader, the president, abuses power, hurts the innocent, and mocks the dead."
www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...
The Rigveda (c. 1500-1000 BCE) contains a hymn called "The Gambler's Lament," narrated by a man who has ruined his life by his addiction to gambling.
"It isn’t social conservatism that has seen so many readers disbelieve Lindy West’s rapid-onset bisexuality. Millennial Feminism failed because it was suffocating, immiserating, and often at odds with observable facts about human nature."
www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...
"It was not inevitable that a military strong enough to defend U.S. interests could avoid state capture or resist a military coup—it wasn’t even likely...No subject worried the Founders more than the risk of a standing army threatening civilian governance" www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...