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What We’re Following Today
It’s Friday, August 30.
‣ A Guantanamo Bay military court judge has set January 2021 as the trial date for the men accused of plotting the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
‣ Citing security concerns, the Democratic National Committee recommended that the Iowa Democratic Party scrap its plan to host virtual caucuses in the state this year.
Here’s what else we’re watching.
(Brynn Anderson / AP)
Hurricane Dorian: The major storm is expected to reach Florida as soon as Monday, and could hit the state as a Category 4 hurricane. After it does, David A. Graham writes, look to your neighbors: “The best determinant of how well a community fares in a storm is often not what happens after landfall, but what it was like before the wind and water hit.”
Learning From Los Angeles: The Democratic presidential field is split between candidates advocating for a single-payer health-care plan that would eliminate private insurance, and others who would establish a public option to compete with private plans. They might do well to look to Los Angeles for lessons: In 2013, Los Angeles County implemented its own public option—but it didn’t offer the kind of revolutionary change the plan’s supporters wanted, Ronald Brownstein reports.
Snapshot
(Steve Nesius / Reuters)
NASA rolls back the Artemis launch tower from Pad 39B at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida in preparation for the landfall of Hurricane Dorian.
Ideas From The Atlantic
Meritocracy Is Killing High-School Sports (Derek Thompson)
“If you want to understand how income inequality and opportunity-hoarding by the rich can combine in toxic ways to hurt the less fortunate, you could look in all the usual places—elite colleges, housing policy, internships. Or you could look at high-school sports.” → Read on.
American Factory Grapples With the Notion of Freedom (David Sims)
“The Netflix documentary charts the economic and social issues that converge when the Chinese company Fuyao moves into a former General Motors plant in Ohio.”
→ Read on.
‘Local, Local, Local’: How a Small Newspaper Survives (James Fallows)
“This is another road report on the state of local journalism, which is more and more important, and more and more imperiled. It is important because so much of the future of American economic, cultural, and civic life is now being devised and determined at the local or state level...What has happened to media revenues in general has happened worst, fastest, and hardest to local publications, newspapers most of all.” → Read on.
What Else We’re Reading
The Trump administration wants to start DNA testing undocumented immigrants in government custody (Hamed Aleaziz, BuzzFeed News)
Why teens are creating their own news outlets (Rainesford Stauffer, Teen Vogue)
Who gets to say if Warren’s apology to Cherokee Nation is enough? (Nick Martin, The New Republic)
How Julián Castro got drowned out (David Freedlander, Politico)
About us: This newsletter is a daily effort from The Atlantic’s politics writer Elaine Godfrey, with help from Christian Paz. It was edited by Shan Wang.
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