Track of the Day: 'Castles in the Snow'

A lamp on a desk against a dark background — INSAGO / Shutterstock

Snopes Faces an Ugly Legal Battle

Alexis C. Madrigal

The internet’s favorite fact-checkers are caught in a messy dispute.

On Monday, the editorial staff of Snopes.com wrote a short plea for help. The post said that the site needed money to fund its operations because another company that Snopes had contracted with “continues to essentially hold the Snopes.com web site hostage.”

“Our legal team is fighting hard for us, but, having been cut off from all revenue, we are facing the prospect of having no financial means to continue operating the site and paying our staff (not to mention covering our legal fees) in the meanwhile,” the note continued.

It was a shocking message from a website that’s been around for more than 20 years—and that’s become a vital part of internet infrastructure in the #fakenews era. The site’s readers have responded. Already, more than $92,000 has been donated to a GoFundMe with a goal of $500,000.

What Jared Kushner's Statement Reveals About Russian Methods

Julia Ioffe

There were numerous attempts to establish contact with the campaign and the transition team.

In trying to fend off suspicion of collusion with the Kremlin, Donald Trump Jr. and Jared Kushner have recently provided the public with two very interesting documents. Shoving responsibility for any outreach onto the Russian side, the two men have given us with a partial account of Russian methods in approaching the Trump camp in 2016.

If the accounts are true—and, given that their accounts have changed in the past, these latest accounts could change too—then, taken together, the Trump Jr. emails and Kushner’s statement show a Russian side that is experimenting with ways of getting the Trump team’s attention. They show a side that really is, as one former Obama administration official told me, “throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what would stick.”

The Case for Impeaching Trump If He Fires Robert Mueller

Conor Friedersdorf

Terminating the special counsel would show recklessness, imply corruption, and irrevocably damage the country.

Last week, President Donald Trump fueled speculation that he might work to oust Robert Mueller, the former FBI director appointed to probe Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. Trump could do so today, or tomorrow, or three months from now; the news could be announced in a televised speech, through a spokesperson, or even in a late night tweet sent on an impulse after his advisers have gone to bed.

If Trump fires Robert Mueller, few will be surprised. But if that happens, as the Department of Justice is thrown into chaos, as the American public sees its clearly expressed support for the special counsel disregarded, as the vital inquiry into the integrity of American elections stalls, as protesters take to the streets in a show of outrage at the affront to the rule of law, as the 2018 midterms morph into a referendum on the administration, and as American democracy reels into unknown territory, the House of Representatives should immediately impeach the president.

Donald Trump watches Hillary Clinton during a 2016 presidential debate. — Rick Wilking / Reuters

But What About Hillary Clinton?

David A. Graham

As Donald Trump’s troubles deepen, he keeps trying to shift attention to his old rival—but finds it no longer works like it used to.

Donald Trump’s brand-new communications director got a glimpse of the challenge he faces this weekend. As Anthony Scaramucci toured the Sunday shows, promising a new era of better relations and positive vibes, his boss was firing off his most active string of Twitter complaints in some time, taking shots at Democrats, Republicans, the press, James Comey, Robert Mueller, and—for the second time in less than a week—his own attorney general:

So why aren't the Committees and investigators, and of course our beleaguered A.G., looking into Crooked Hillarys crimes & Russia relations?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 24, 2017

The president’s choice of words to describe Attorney General Jeff Sessions is bizarre, though the condescending mockery matches the tone he often uses for adversaries. To paraphrase Trump, somebody’s doing the beleaguering, and that person is Trump himself, who railed at Sessions during an interview with The New York Times last week, saying he wished he hadn’t appointed him, and that Sessions’s decision to recuse himself from the Russia investigation was unfair to Trump.

Patricia Hofmeester / Julia Luzgareva / Shutterstock / Defense Intelligence Agency / Zak Bickel / The Atlantic

The Man McMaster Couldn't Fire

Rosie Gray

Thirty-one-year-old Ezra Cohen-Watnick holds the intelligence portfolio on the National Security Council—but almost everything about him is a mystery.

Just 24 days into his tenure as Donald Trump’s national-security adviser, Michael Flynn was forced to resign, having reportedly misled Vice President Mike Pence about his contacts with Russian officials. When Flynn departed, the men and women he’d appointed to the National Security Council grew nervous about their own jobs, and with good reason. The new national-security adviser, General H.R. McMaster, promptly began clearing out Flynn’s people, among them Dave Cattler, the deputy assistant to the president for regional affairs, Adam Lovinger, a strategic affairs analyst on loan from the Pentagon, and KT McFarland, Flynn’s deputy, who was eased out with the ambassadorship to Singapore. Even Steve Bannon, among the most powerful people in the White House, was removed from the meetings of the NSC Principal’s Committee, where he had been installed early on in the administration.

Game of Thrones: A Wolf in Wolf's Clothing

Spencer Kornhaber, David Sims, and Sophie Gilbert

Three Atlantic staffers discuss “Stormborn,” the second episode of the seventh season.

Every week for the seventh season of Game of Thrones, three Atlantic staffers will discuss new episodes of the HBO drama. Because no screeners were made available to critics in advance this year, we'll be posting our thoughts in installments.

The Mystery of Why Japanese People Are Having So Few Babies

Alana Semuels

Many point to unromantic 20-somethings and women’s entry into the workforce, but an overlooked factor is the trouble young men have in finding steady, well-paid jobs.

TOKYO—Japan’s population is shrinking. For the first time since the government started keeping track more than a century ago, there were fewer than 1 million births last year, as the country’s population fell by more than 300,000 people. The blame has long been put on Japan’s young people, who are accused of not having enough sex, and on women, who, the narrative goes, put their careers before thoughts of getting married and having a family.

But there’s another, simpler explanation for the country’s low birth rate, one that has implications for the U.S.: Japan’s birth rate may be falling because there are fewer good opportunities for young people, and especially men, in the country’s economy. In a country where men are still widely expected to be breadwinners and support families, a lack of good jobs may be creating a class of men who don’t marry and have children because they—and their potential partners—know they can’t afford to.

How Venice Beach Became a Neighborhood for the Wealthy

Conor Friedersdorf

... and what that means for affordable housing across the country

Just over a week ago, The Wall Street Journal called the neighborhood where I rent, Venice Beach, California, the toughest place in the United States to build new housing, pointing to it as an extreme example of what is happening in a lot of wealthy urban enclaves.

“Apartment developers have stepped up production focused largely on the inner cores of big U.S. cities, where millennials are flocking for high-paying jobs and easy commutes, and where development is often welcomed,” the newspaper reported. “Meanwhile, surrounding low-rise neighborhoods—many filled with older structures and historical character—are keeping developers out. Residents of these older urban neighborhoods generally have resisted newcomers, complaining about congestion on roads and public transportation and seeking to preserve architecture, sunlight and views.”

Harry Styles, Aneurin Barnard, and Fionn Whitehead in 'Dunkirk' — Warner Bros

Harry Styles and Rihanna Nail the Pop Star as Actor

Spencer Kornhaber

Dunkirk and Valerian had two highly contrasting kinds of crossovers—and Game of Thrones could have taken a lesson from either.

Megaplexes this past weekend staged a battle between two very different battle movies: the realistic World War II suspense of Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk and the campy sci-fi hijinks of Luc Besson’s Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets. Fueled by great reviews and Nolan’s bankable brand as a filmmaker, Dunkirk prevailed with a $50.5 million haul while Valerian, at just $17 million in grosses, seems headed the heap of recent space-adventure bombs. Still, it’s notable how both films, vastly unalike in tone and reception, did share one feature other than their release date—a megafamous musician in their ensemble.

Devoted fans of One Direction have tracked the progress of Dunkirk for more than a year thanks to it being the first major acting job for Harry Styles, the 23-year-old frontman of that currently suspended boy band. Valerian has made Rihanna, arguably the reigning queen of pop, a major feature of its marketing campaign. The tradition of singers attaining “multihyphenate” status by way of Hollywood is richly uneven, encompassing award-winners like Cher in Moonstruck and trainwrecks like Mariah Carey in Glitter. Styles’s and Rihanna’s simultaneous gigs, taken together, offer a neat case study in the two poles of musicians-as-actors: the serious bid perhaps en route to an eventual EGOT and the winking extended cameo meant for fans, fun, and profit.

How a Guy From a Montana Trailer Park Overturned 150 Years of Biology

Ed Yong

Biology textbooks tell us that lichens are alliances between two organisms—a fungus and an alga. They are wrong.

In 1995, if you had told Toby Spribille that he’d eventually overthrow a scientific idea that’s been the stuff of textbooks for 150 years, he would have laughed at you. Back then, his life seemed constrained to a very different path. He was raised in a Montana trailer park, and home-schooled by what he now describes as a “fundamentalist cult.” At a young age, he fell in love with science, but had no way of feeding that love. He longed to break away from his roots and get a proper education.

At 19, he got a job at a local forestry service. Within a few years, he had earned enough to leave home. His meager savings and non-existent grades meant that no American university would take him, so Spribille looked to Europe.