What Is an Islamic Caliphate and Why Did ISIS Make One?

The Cheapest Generation

Derek Thompson and Jordan Weissmann

Why Millennials aren’t buying cars or houses, and what that means for the economy

In 2009, Ford brought its new supermini, the Fiesta, over from Europe in a brave attempt to attract the attention of young Americans. It passed out 100 of the cars to influential bloggers for a free six-month test-drive, with just one condition: document your experience online, whether you love the Fiesta or hate it.

Young bloggers loved the car. Young drivers? Not so much. After a brief burst of excitement, in which Ford sold more than 90,000 units over 18 months, Fiesta sales plummeted. As of April 2012, they were down 30 percent from 2011.

Don’t blame Ford. The company is trying to solve a puzzle that’s bewildering every automaker in America: How do you sell cars to Millennials (a k a Generation Y)? The fact is, today’s young people simply don’t drive like their predecessors did. In 2010, adults between the ages of 21 and 34 bought just 27 percent of all new vehicles sold in America, down from the peak of 38 percent in 1985. Miles driven are down, too. Even the proportion of teenagers with a license fell, by 28 percent, between 1998 and 2008.

J. Scott Applewhite / AP / Katie Martin / The Atlantic

'We're Amending Obamacare. We're Not Killing It'

Russell Berman

The Senate bill coming out Thursday would do many things to health care in the U.S., but it won’t get rid of the Affordable Care Act, and Mitch McConnell won’t claim that it does.

The health-care bill Senate Republicans plan to unveil on Thursday likely will make substantial changes to Medicaid and cut taxes for wealthy Americans and businesses. It will eliminate mandates and relax regulations on insurance plans, and it will reduce the federal government’s role in health care.

What it won’t do, however, is actually repeal the Affordable Care Act.

Lost in the roiling debate over health care over the last several weeks is that Republicans have all but given up on their longstanding repeal-and-replace pledge. The slogan lives on in the rhetoric used by many GOP lawmakers and the Trump White House but not in the legislation the party is advancing. That was true when House Republicans passed the American Health Care Act last month, which rolled back key parts of Obamacare but was not a full repeal. And it is even more true of the bill the Senate has drafted in secret, which reportedly will stick closer to the underlying structure of the law.

Why Ossoff Lost

Molly Ball

Despite the opposition Trump has galvanized, the Democrats still haven’t figured out how to win in the places they’re trying to stage a comeback.

ATLANTA—Around midnight, hours after their candidate conceded he had lost the Most Important Special Election in History, the last remaining supporters of Jon Ossoff took over the stage where he had recently stood. One of them waved a bottle of vodka in the air. Together, they took up the time-honored leftist chant: “This is what democracy looks like!”

Sometimes, this is indeed what democracy looks like: you get outvoted.

Democrats were counting on Ossoff, the boy wonder of Georgia’s Sixth Congressional District, to deliver the proof that, with Donald Trump in the White House, there was no limit to their political potential. But after a frenzied two-month runoff campaign between Ossoff and his Republican opponent, Karen Handel, the Democrat wound up with about the same proportion of the vote—48 percent—as Hillary Clinton got here in November. If this race was a referendum on Trump, the president won it.

Elaina Natario / Katie Martin / The Atlantic

Therapy for Everybody

Olga Khazan

In Appalachia, a primary-care clinic offers quick bursts of psychotherapy on the spot

JOHNSON CITY, Tennessee—The first patient of the morning had been working 119 hours a week. Greta (not her real name) had been coming home late at night, skipping dinner, and crashing into bed. One recent night, her college-aged daughter melted down, telling an exhausted Greta that her parents’ marital tensions were putting a strain on her.

“She’s like, ‘Why don’t you just divorce him?’” Greta recounted to her psychotherapist, Thomas Bishop, who was perched on a rolling stool in the bright examination room. “‘Why don’t you just do it and get it over with?’” Greta planned to stay with her husband, but her daughter’s outburst worried her. “Is this going to affect the way she feels about relationships?” she asked Bishop.

What’s Wrong With the Democrats?

Franklin Foer

If the party cares about winning, it needs to learn how to appeal to the white working class.

The strategy was simple. A demographic wave—long-building, still-building—would carry the party to victory, and liberalism to generational advantage. The wave was inevitable, unstoppable. It would not crest for many years, and in the meantime, there would be losses—losses in the midterms and in special elections; in statehouses and in districts and counties and municipalities outside major cities. Losses in places and elections where the white vote was especially strong.

But the presidency could offset these losses. Every four years the wave would swell, receding again thereafter but coming back in the next presidential cycle, higher, higher. The strategy was simple. The presidency was everything.

Do African Americans Have a Right to Bear Arms?

David A. Graham

And if so, why won’t the justice system or the NRA stand up for it?

Philando Castile’s shooting death, at the hands of a police officer in Falcon Heights, Minnesota, one year ago, was numbingly similar to a string of other killings of black men by police. But Castile’s shooting was notably different in one crucial respect: Castile was licensed to carry a gun. He carefully informed Officer Jeronimo Yanez—exceeding his legal requirements under Minnesota law, though following the advice some gun-rights advocates offer for concealed carriers when stopped by police. And yet Yanez almost instantly shot him. That aspect made the case a central focus not just for Black Lives Matter activists, but for some gun owners, too.

As I wrote at the time, Castile’s killing raised the question of whether African Americans truly have a right to bear arms in practice. Even setting aside the questionable grounds under which Yanez had pulled Castile over (a malfunctioning taillight is a classic pretextual stop police use to question black drivers), Castile had done everything right.

Trump’s Immigration Allies Are Growing Frustrated With Him

Priscilla Alvarez

The president was supposed to be their champion, but he’s failed to act on some of his key campaign promises.

Twenty-one days after Election Day last November, Dan Stein, the president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a group that supports reduced immigration, introduced a transition document to provide the newly elected president with guidance on immigration policy.

It was their moment. FAIR had condemned the Obama administration’s immigration policy, and pushed for heightened border security and the removal of undocumented immigrants. And Trump, whose campaign had begun with a promise to crack down on illegal immigration, appeared to be the champion they needed.

Within the first few weeks of his administration, Trump expanded the number of undocumented immigrants considered a priority for deportation, threatened jurisdictions that limit cooperation with federal immigration agents, and called for more Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and Customs and Border Protection agents. But he also fell short on other promises—including a central plank of his presidential campaign, a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. In the interim, the high expectations of immigration restriction groups like FAIR have turned to frustration and disappointment.

Power Causes Brain Damage

Jerry Useem

Over time, leaders lose mental capacities—most notably for reading other people—that were essential to their rise.

If power were a prescription drug, it would come with a long list of known side effects. It can intoxicate. It can corrupt. It can even make Henry Kissinger believe that he’s sexually magnetic. But can it cause brain damage?

When various lawmakers lit into John Stumpf at a congressional hearing last fall, each seemed to find a fresh way to flay the now-former CEO of Wells Fargo for failing to stop some 5,000 employees from setting up phony accounts for customers. But it was Stumpf’s performance that stood out. Here was a man who had risen to the top of the world’s most valuable bank, yet he seemed utterly unable to read a room. Although he apologized, he didn’t appear chastened or remorseful. Nor did he seem defiant or smug or even insincere. He looked disoriented, like a jet-lagged space traveler just arrived from Planet Stumpf, where deference to him is a natural law and 5,000 a commendably small number. Even the most direct barbs—“You have got to be kidding me” (Sean Duffy of Wisconsin); “I can’t believe some of what I’m hearing here” (Gregory Meeks of New York)—failed to shake him awake.

How the Democrats Lost Their Way on Immigration

Peter Beinart

In the past decade, liberals have avoided inconvenient truths about the issue.

The myth, which liberals like myself find tempting, is that only the right has changed. In June 2015, we tell ourselves, Donald Trump rode down his golden escalator and pretty soon nativism, long a feature of conservative politics, had engulfed it. But that’s not the full story. If the right has grown more nationalistic, the left has grown less so. A decade ago, liberals publicly questioned immigration in ways that would shock many progressives today.

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In 2005, a left-leaning blogger wrote, “Illegal immigration wreaks havoc economically, socially, and culturally; makes a mockery of the rule of law; and is disgraceful just on basic fairness grounds alone.” In 2006, a liberal columnist wrote that “immigration reduces the wages of domestic workers who compete with immigrants” and that “the fiscal burden of low-wage immigrants is also pretty clear.” His conclusion: “We’ll need to reduce the inflow of low-skill immigrants.” That same year, a Democratic senator wrote, “When I see Mexican flags waved at proimmigration demonstrations, I sometimes feel a flush of patriotic resentment. When I’m forced to use a translator to communicate with the guy fixing my car, I feel a certain frustration.”

The Fall of a Foreign-Affairs Reporter

David A. Graham

The Wall Street Journal has fired Jay Solomon for becoming involved with an arms dealer, but reporters have often been unable to resist getting their hands dirty with the topics they cover.

Journalism scandals are all too common: Reporters are as fallible as the practitioners of any other profession, and because the press loves to cover itself, such stories receive great attention. But typically they’re of the garden variety—plagiarism, dishonesty, fabrication.

The story of Jay Solomon is in an entirely different league. Solomon, until Wednesday The Wall Street Journal’s chief foreign-affairs correspondent, apparently considered becoming involved in business deals with a source who has worked for the CIA—and in particular, Solomon was asked to take a proposal for hundreds of millions of dollars to the government of the United Arab Emirates, according to the Associated Press. He was offered a 10 percent stake in Denx, a company owned by the Iranian-born mogul Farhad Azima, the AP reports, though there’s no evidence Solomon ever took it.

Which Animal Murders the Most?

Alice Roth, Ed Yong, Jeremy Raff, and Jackie Lay

Humans aren't the only mammals who kill each other. So how do we stack up to lions, tigers, and bears?

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Little White Lie

Nadine Ajaka

Lacey Schwartz grew up in an upper-middle-class Jewish household, and never once questioned her whiteness—despite not looking like anyone in her family.

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How North Korea Became a Crisis

Daniel Lombroso, Jackie Lay, and Mark Bowden

To understand how the standoff between Pyongyang and the world became so dire, it helps to go back to the country's founding

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What Is an Islamic Caliphate and Why Did ISIS Make One?

About the Author

Most Popular

The Cheapest Generation

'We're Amending Obamacare. We're Not Killing It'

Why Ossoff Lost

Therapy for Everybody

What’s Wrong With the Democrats?

Do African Americans Have a Right to Bear Arms?

Trump’s Immigration Allies Are Growing Frustrated With Him

Power Causes Brain Damage

How the Democrats Lost Their Way on Immigration

The Fall of a Foreign-Affairs Reporter

Which Animal Murders the Most?

Little White Lie

How North Korea Became a Crisis

What Is an Islamic Caliphate and Why Did ISIS Make One?

Latest Video

Populism Will Save the Democrats

About the Author

Most Popular

The Cheapest Generation

'We're Amending Obamacare. We're Not Killing It'

Why Ossoff Lost

Therapy for Everybody

What’s Wrong With the Democrats?

Do African Americans Have a Right to Bear Arms?

Trump’s Immigration Allies Are Growing Frustrated With Him

Power Causes Brain Damage

How the Democrats Lost Their Way on Immigration

The Fall of a Foreign-Affairs Reporter

Which Animal Murders the Most?

Little White Lie

How North Korea Became a Crisis