Vann R. Newkirk II
-
![]()
Karen Pulfer Focht / AP Trump Can't Even Honor Aretha Franklin Properly
The president described the deceased soul legend first as a person who “worked for me,” a telling remark in his ongoing disparagement of black women.
-
![]()
Associated Press Aretha Franklin’s Revolution
The soul singer was an architect of the civil-rights movement as much as a witness to it.
-
![]()
AP Washington, D.C., Is the Next Front for the Alt-Right
The city’s fraught racial history is a perfect parallel for the ways that white supremacy actually shapes spaces and could change the country.
-
![]()
Kevin Lamarque / Reuters Inside Trump’s Voter-Fraud Crusade
New documents reveal how Trump's election-integrity commission engaged in a political, self-promotional battle against noncitizen voting—without ever establishing that it happens.
-
![]()
Dennis M. Rivera Pichardo / AP Researchers Are Still Counting the Dead From Hurricane Maria
The newest estimate based on administrative data suggests over 1,100 people were killed by the 2017 storm and its fallout.
-
![]()
Danny Johnston / AP Trump’s Groceries Gaffe Is Even More Baseless Than It Seems
Contrary to what the president says, you don’t need ID to buy food. Lots of people don’t need ID for anything at all.
-
![]()
Robert Nickelsberg / Getty The 2020 Census Is Already in Big Trouble
From cybersecurity issues to administrative problems to a legal drama over a possible citizenship question, there are plenty of reasons to worry about the decennial head count.
-
![]()
Siphiwe Sibeko / Reuters Barack Obama Still Doesn’t Understand Donald Trump
In his most important speech since leaving office, the former president outlined a grand global theory of liberalism—one that can’t get past the ethnonationalist roadblock in its way.
-
![]()
Stockbyte / Getty / wavebreakmedia / Rawpixel.com / ... Voter Suppression Is Warping Democracy
A new survey from The Atlantic and the Public Religion Research Institute shows that black and Hispanic citizens are more likely than whites to face barriers at the polls—and to fear the future erosion of their basic political rights.
-
![]()
M. Spencer Green / AP Reopening the Emmett Till Case Is a Cynical Play
The Justice Department’s investigation of the country’s most infamous lynching case won't implicate a society full of accomplices.
-
![]()
Annapurna Sorry to Bother You Is a Dystopian Send-Up of Dystopias
The absurdism of the filmmaker Boots Riley functions as a doubled critique of modern hyper-capitalism, and of American fatalism.
-
![]()
Associated Press How Shelby County v. Holder Broke America
In the five years since the landmark decision, the Supreme Court has set the stage for a new era of white hegemony.
-
![]()
Vann Newkirk / The Atlantic Family Separation Protests Shift the Narrative
Saturday’s march against family separation grew into a much broader appeal for moral high ground.
-
![]()
Bryan Woolston / AP The Fight Over Medicaid Begins in Kentucky
A federal court’s decision to vacate newly-implemented restrictions on the state program challenges the GOP strategy across the country.
-
![]()
Jose Luis Magana / AP Donald Trump’s Poverty Denial
A fight over a report from the United Nations on the American poor further reveals the administration’s aversion toward welfare and public-assistance programs.
-
![]()
Associated Press Protest Isn’t Civil
Attacks on incivility are rooted more in preserving the status quo than in addressing ongoing harms and violence.
-
![]()
AP What Kennedy's Absence Means for Civil Rights
The justice’s retirement from the bench will almost certainly mean a retrenchment of federal enforcement in voting rights and affirmative action, and less chance for meaningful criminal-justice reform.
-
![]()
Patrick Semansky / AP The Deep Consistency of the Trump Administration
Beneath the constant contradictions and reversals, the administration has a single through line: Its policies always serve to dehumanize those deemed not to belong.
-
![]()
David Paul Morris / Getty Celebrating Juneteenth in a Moment of Peril
The holiday celebrates the emancipation of American slaves—and a citizenship that has never quite been fully granted.
-
![]()
Jacquelyn Martin / AP Partisan Gerrymandering Stands, for Now
Two decisions from the Supreme Court indicate that arguments against politically biased legislative maps still haven’t figured out how to get the attention of the justices.
