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• Executive

  The Kremlin's Election Meddling Is Paying Off

  The president’s policies in office have aligned almost perfectly with Vladimir Putin’s goals.

  • Neera Tanden
  • 4:50 AM ET
• Most Popular on The Atlantic

  • What's the Problem With Al Jazeera?

    • Gregg Carlstrom

    The most popular news channel in the Arab world sits uneasily at the center of the Qatar crisis.

    Earlier this month, managers at Al Jazeera, the most popular news channel in the Arab world, summoned nervous journalists into a glass-paneled conference room in the network’s headquarters in Doha. A coalition of Arab states led by Saudi Arabia had just imposed an embargo on Qatar, closing its airspace and expelling thousands of Qatari citizens. One of the conditions for lifting the blockade, according to a list leaked on Thursday, was reportedly the closure of Al Jazeera. The network’s leadership wanted to reassure its staff that their jobs were safe. “We’re not planning any changes right now,” journalists were told, according to two participants in the meeting. That left quite a bit unsaid. (I resigned from Al Jazeera English in mid-2013 after working there for nearly four years.)

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  • What Happens When a Presidency Loses Its Legitimacy?

    • David Frum

    Mounting evidence that Trump’s election was aided by Russian interference presents a challenge to the American system of government—with lasting consequences for democracy.

    Day by day, revelation after revelation, the legitimacy of the Trump presidency is seeping away. The question of what to do about this loss is becoming ever more urgent and frightening.

    The already thick cloud of discredit over the Trump presidency thickened deeper Friday, June 23. The Washington Post reported that the CIA told President Obama last year that Vladimir Putin had personally and specifically instructed his intelligence agencies to intervene in the U.S. presidential election to hurt Hillary Clinton and help Donald Trump.

    Whether the Trump campaign knowingly coordinated its activities with the Russians remains uncertain. The Trump campaign may have been a wholly passive and unwitting beneficiary. Yes, it’s curious that the Russians allegedly directed their resources to the Rust Belt states also targeted by the Trump campaign. But it’s conceivable they were all just reading the same polls on FiveThirtyEight and RealClearPolitics.

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  • The Kremlin's Election Meddling Is Paying Off

    • Neera Tanden

    The president’s policies in office have aligned almost perfectly with Vladimir Putin’s goals.

    Fifty-four years ago this month, former President John F. Kennedy delivered the “Strategy of Peace,” a powerful address that captured America’s indispensable leadership at the height of the Cold War. Kennedy knew that our country could not guard against the Soviet Union alone, for he believed that “genuine peace must be the product of many nations, the sum of many acts.”

    Incredibly, the man who now leads the United States seems to find himself locked in an alarming and perilous embrace with the Russian government. These ties threaten to weaken a system of alliances that have held Russia—and countless other threats to the international community—at bay since the conclusion of the Second World War.

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  • Watergate Lawyer: I Witnessed Nixon's Downfall—and I've Got a Warning for Trump

    • Richard Ben-Veniste

    Richard Ben-Veniste on the uncanny parallels between the scandal he investigated and the controversy over the White House’s alleged links to Russia

    Watching the national controversy over the White House and Russia unfold, I’m reminded of Karl Marx’s oft-quoted observation: “History repeats itself: first as tragedy, second as farce.” I was a close witness to the national tragedy that was Richard Nixon’s self-inflicted downfall as president, and I’ve recently contemplated whether a repeat of his “Saturday Night Massacre” may already be in the offing. Given how that incident doomed one president, Trump would do well to resist repeating his predecessor’s mistakes—and avoid his presidency’s descent into a quasi-Watergate parody.

    The massacre began when Nixon gave the order to fire Watergate Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox, a desperate effort to prevent him from hearing tape-recorded evidence that proved the White House’s involvement in a conspiracy to obstruct the investigation of a break-in at Democratic National Committee headquarters. Nixon’s misuse of executive power backfired, immediately costing him two highly respected members of his administration: Attorney General Elliot Richardson and his deputy William Ruckelshaus, who both resigned rather than follow Nixon’s directive. Third in command at the Justice Department was Solicitor General Robert Bork, who agreed to do the dirty deed and fired Cox.

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  • What Mormon Family Trees Tell Us About Cancer

    • Sarah Zhang

    By searching the church's famed family trees, scientists have tracked down a cancer-causing mutation that came west with a pioneer couple—just in time to save the lives of their great-great-great-great grandchildren.

    Nobody knew it then, but the genetic mutation came to Utah by wagon with the Hinman family. Lyman Hinman found the Mormon faith in 1840. Amid a surge of religious fervor, he persuaded his wife, Aurelia, and five children to abandon their 21-room Massachusetts house in search of Zion. They went first to Nauvoo, Illinois, where the faith’s prophet and founder, Joseph Smith, was holding forth—until Smith was murdered by a mob and his followers were run out of town. They kept going west and west until there were no towns to be run out of. Food was scarce. They boiled elk horns.The children’s mouths erupted in sores from scurvy.  Aurelia lost all her teeth. But they survived. And so did the mutation.

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  • The Church of CrossFit

    • Julie Beck

    Gyms and other secular communities are starting to fill spiritual and social needs for many nonreligious people.

    “You always know if someone goes to Harvard or if they go to CrossFit—they’ll tell you,” said Casper ter Kuile, a ministry innovation fellow at Harvard Divinity School. “It’s really interesting that evangelical zeal they have. They want to recruit you.”

    CrossFit is his favorite example of a trend he has noticed: how, in the midst of the decline of religious affiliation in America, and the rise of isolation and loneliness, many ostensibly non-religious communities are “functioning in ways that look a little bit religious,” he explained on Friday at the Aspen Ideas Festival, which is co-hosted by the Aspen Institute and The Atlantic.

    “People’s behavior and practice is really being unbundled from the institutions and identities that would have been homes for it,” ter Kuile says. “[For example], ‘I was raised Catholic but yoga is really the practice where I find my experience of contemplation.’ As institutional affiliation decreases, people have the same age-old desires for connection, relationships, connection to something bigger than themselves.”

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  • How the Senate's Health-Care Bill Would Cause Financial Ruin for People With Preexisting Conditions

    • Gene B. Sperling and Michael Shapiro

    Republicans are going to insist otherwise, but that’s simply not the case.

    If there was one goal Senate Republicans had set out to achieve in developing their health bill to show they were less “mean” than their colleagues in the House, it was to take away the House Republicans’ green light for insurers to once again discriminate against those with pre-existing health conditions. Senate Republicans were willing to drive up deductibles and co-pays and be more draconian on Medicaid cuts, but on the one issue of pre-existing conditions they were intent on being less “mean,” as President Trump termed the House bill. Now that the text of the bill has been released, it’s clear that they have failed to achieve that.

    As they argue for the bill, Republicans are going to claim that it will not allow insurance plans to discriminate against people because they have a pre-existing condition. But that just isn’t the case. The Republican plan may not allow insurers to discriminate against a pre-existing condition through the front door, but they’ve created a backdoor way in.  

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  • Teenagers Have Stopped Getting Summer Jobs—Why?

    • Derek Thompson

    Most used to work in July and August. Now the vast majority don’t. Are they being lazy, or strategic?

    The summer job is considered a rite of passage for the American Teenager. It is a time when tossing newspaper bundles and bussing restaurant tables acts as a rehearsal for weightier adult responsibilities, like bundling investments and bussing dinner-party plates. But in the last few decades, the summer job has been disappearing. In the summer of 1978, 60 percent of teens were working or looking for work. Last summer, just 35 percent were.

    Why did American teens stop trying to get summer jobs? One typical answer is: They’re just kids, and kids are getting lazier.

    One can rule out that hypothesis pretty quickly. The number of teens in the workforce has collapsed since 2000, as the graph below shows. But the share of NEETs—young people who are “Neither in Education, Employment, or Training”—has been extraordinarily steady. In fact, it has not budged more than 0.1 percentage point since the late 1990s. Just 7 percent of American teens are NEETs, which is lower than France and about the same as the mean of all advanced economies in the OECD. The supposed laziness of American teenagers is unchanging and, literally, average.

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  • 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.

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  • The Gulf's Demands on Qatar Look Designed to Be Rejected

    • Kristian Coates Ulrichsen

    As Washington loses patience with the Gulf crisis, the Saudi-led campaign resorts to extreme measures.

    Now, Qatar has a list.

    On Thursday evening, news reports surfaced of 13 demands from Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, and four other nations that, if fulfilled by Doha, will resolve their ongoing standoff with the tiny Gulf nation. Among the more onerous demands appearing on the list, which may or may not be official, are that Qatar sever all ties with the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist movements in the Middle East, downgrade diplomatic relations with Iran, close all Al Jazeera affiliates and several other Qatar-funded media outlets, pay an unspecified sum in compensation for loss of life and damage caused by Qatari regional policies in recent years, and submit to regular monitoring for up to 12 years to ensure compliance.

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  More Popular Stories
• The Presence of Justice

  Do Right-to-Carry Gun Laws Make States Safer?

  In a new paper, researchers dispute a popular argument for arming everyday citizens. “There is not even the slightest hint in the data that [these] laws reduce violent crime,” they write.

  • Maura Ewing
  • 4:50 AM ET

• GOP Senator Dean Heller Won’t Support Senate Healthcare Bill

  Heller is the fifth Republican senator to express opposition to the legislation.

  • Clare Foran
  • Jun 23, 2017

• The Risk of Rushing Through Legislation

  New Hampshire Republicans almost legally authorized pregnant women to commit murder last week, providing a cautionary tale for their colleagues in Congress.

  • Matt Ford
  • Jun 23, 2017
• Newsletter

  

  The Atlantic Politics & Policy Daily: Heller High Water

  Dean Heller became the fifth Republican senator to oppose Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's health-care bill.

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• Q of the Week: Should Congress Take Their Summer Recess?

  Since early June, Representative Mark Meadows, the chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, has been calling for Congress to cancel…

  • Elaine Godfrey
  • Jun 23, 2017
  • Notes

• What Happens When a Presidency Loses Its Legitimacy?

  Mounting evidence that Trump’s election was aided by Russian interference presents a challenge to the American system of government—with lasting consequences for democracy.

  • David Frum
  • Jun 23, 2017

• Why Do Democrats Keep Losing in 2017?

  The party has made gains in special elections, but continues to fall short of outright victory.

  • Clare Foran
  • Jun 23, 2017
• Writers
  • Clare Foran
    GOP Senator Dean Heller Won’t Support Senate Healthcare Bill
    Jun 23, 2017
  • Matt Ford
    The Risk of Rushing Through Legislation
    Jun 23, 2017
  • David Frum
    What Happens When a Presidency Loses Its Legitimacy?
    Jun 23, 2017
  • Conor Friedersdorf
    Wisconsin Republicans Consider Cracking Down on Campus Protests
    Jun 23, 2017
  • Russell Berman
    The Perilous Path Ahead for the Senate Health-Care Bill
    Jun 22, 2017
  All Writers
• Business

  How the Senate's Health-Care Bill Would Cause Financial Ruin for People With Preexisting Conditions

  Republicans are going to insist otherwise, but that’s simply not the case.

  • Gene B. Sperling and Michael Shapiro
  • Jun 23, 2017

• Wisconsin Republicans Consider Cracking Down on Campus Protests

  The Badger State is debating a law that would suspend or expel students who shut down speakers or interfere with their free expression. Does it go too far?

  • Conor Friedersdorf
  • Jun 23, 2017

• Watergate Lawyer: I Witnessed Nixon's Downfall—and I've Got a Warning for Trump

  Richard Ben-Veniste on the uncanny parallels between the scandal he investigated and the controversy over the White House’s alleged links to Russia

  • Richard Ben-Veniste
  • Jun 23, 2017
• Congress

  The Perilous Path Ahead for the Senate Health-Care Bill

  The long-awaited proposal begins with few friends and many critics—on the right, the center, and the left. But the chilly reception doesn’t mean the legislation is doomed.

  • Russell Berman
  • Jun 22, 2017
• Politics Daily

  The Atlantic Politics & Policy Daily: Old McConnell Has a Plan

  Senate Republicans released a 142-page proposal that would dismantle parts of the Affordable Care Act.

  • Elaine Godfrey
  • Jun 22, 2017

• Obama: 'This Bill Will Do You Harm'

  The former president issued a warning about the Republican plan to replace his signature health-care law. The Senate is planning to vote on it as early as next week.

  • Vann R. Newkirk II
  • Jun 22, 2017
• Supreme Court

  The Supreme Court Defends the Integrity of U.S. Citizenship

  The justices unanimously limited the federal government’s power to strip immigrants of their hard-won status.

  • Matt Ford
  • Jun 22, 2017

• The Lasting Damage of Trump's 'Tapes' Bluff

  The president’s attempt to intimidate James Comey didn’t merely backfire—it may also embolden hostile regimes to conclude his other threats are equally empty.

  • David Frum
  • Jun 22, 2017

• Trump: There Are (Probably) No Tapes

  The president admits he never had any recordings of conversations with James Comey, but his idle threat has already set off a catastrophic chain reaction.

  • David A. Graham
  • Jun 22, 2017
• Business

  Finding Mentorship Outside of Your Industry

  Stacey Abrams has made a career for herself in politics, but that’s not where she looks for guidance.

  • Elisha Brown
  • Jun 22, 2017
• Health

  The Senate Puts Medicaid on the Chopping Block

  A draft version of the AHCA released Thursday shows even deeper cuts to the program than the House version.

  • Vann R. Newkirk II
  • Jun 22, 2017

• Trump Is a Russian-Interference Truther Once More

  On Twitter, the president claims vindication against claims of collusion and reverses his acknowledgement of Kremlin tampering with the election.

  • David A. Graham
  • Jun 22, 2017
• Congress

  What's in the Senate Republican Health-Care Bill

  Like the House version, Mitch McConnell’s proposal would slash taxes, cut Medicaid, and eliminate Obamacare’s insurance mandates for individuals and employers.

  • Russell Berman
  • Jun 22, 2017