Most Fed experts “have never contemplated what could happen if an institution with so much unchecked power came under the control of one man,” Rogé Karma writes. “Perhaps it’s time to start imagining.”

"Richard Nixon’s attorney general, John Mitchell, served 19 months in prison for his crimes during Watergate. If Trump’s hold on power loosens, Pam Bondi could share Mitchell’s fate." www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

"The idea that the Democrats can take back the Senate in 2026 without fielding candidates who are willing to publicly renounce some left-wing orthodoxies is delusional." www.theatlantic.com/politics/arc...

50 percent lower risk of reincarnation! (Autocorrect strikes again)

"Goldberg suggested in his interview with David Letterman that Jimmy Fallon was a less 'sharp-tongued' critic of Trump than other late-night hosts. Letterman shot back, 'Why do you think that is? Has something to do with IQ, is that what you’re saying?'” www.theatlantic.com/culture/arch...

Robert McNamara "was a war proponent in the Johnson administration and a war opponent in private, at once driven by a lust to succeed in the president’s eyes and horrified by the human toll of what he came to see as an unwinnable war." www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

"What happened to Jimmy Kimmel is not about one comedian who said something he should not have said. The Trump administration and its enforcers want to control your speech, your behavior, even your public expressions of mourning." www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

"Seeing a real left-wing American killer, motivated by ideology, is like seeing a passenger pigeon or a saber-toothed tiger. The rarity of left-wing political violence is well established." www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

After Utah Governor Spencer Cox pleaded for calm in his address to the nation yesterday, Donald Trump called him with a warning. McKay Coppins spoke with the Utah governor: https://theatln.tc/hPTN16Aw

“You know, the type of person who would do something like that to Charlie Kirk would love to do it to us,” Cox says Trump told him. Trump went on to recite statistics suggesting that the presidency was “one of the most dangerous jobs on the planet.” www.theatlantic.com/politics/arc...

"Christopher Rufo took six months to contradict his own advice." For the right, cancel culture is in now. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

"Fuentes has said that Hitler was 'really fucking cool' and posited that 'we need to go back to burning women alive.'" Nick Fuentes, who makes Laura Loomer look like a model of restraint, has 730k followers on X, acolytes at DHS, and has dined with Donald Trump www.theatlantic.com/technology/a...

Kamala Harris on whether Dems should have let Joe Biden stay in the 2024 race so long: "I think it was recklessness. The stakes were simply too high. This wasn’t a choice that should have been left to an individual’s ego, an individual’s ambition." www.theatlantic.com/politics/arc...

"The big secret of intellectual right-wing authoritarianism is that it’s just not very intellectual." www.theatlantic.com/politics/arc...

"The overall effect is like Judy Blume filtered through David Lynch or William S. Burroughs: **Are You There, God? It’s Me, Nicholas, Having a Panic Attack While My Friends Trip on Acid.**" -From my review of Michael Clune's **Pan** www.theatlantic.com/books/archiv...

How to reduce your anxiety by reframing it as a "Kierkegaardian Adventure." (A name I should trademark for an existential amusement park.) www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

The Bad Guys are Winning, from 2021 www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...

Boy, I wish I could travel with a private toilet. nypost.com/2025/09/03/w...

I can

"Fuentes has said that Hitler was 'really fucking cool' and posited that 'we need to go back to burning women alive.'" Nick Fuentes, who makes Laura Loomer look like a model of restraint, has 730k followers on X, acolytes at DHS, and has dined with Donald Trump www.theatlantic.com/technology/a...

"Trump is offering proof that a government can be both socialist and reactionary." www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/...

"Trump’s life and career are based on discrediting the distinction between right and wrong, and on convincing himself and others that the only reality is who screws whom. As of right now, he’s winning that messaging debate." www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

"A Danish study from 2018 found that tennis players lived nearly a decade longer than their sedentary peers—and also longer than swimmers, cyclers, and joggers. No other sport in the analysis was correlated with such a large boost to life expectancy." www.theatlantic.com/health/archi...

"'Purge' doesn’t adequately capture what national-security experts see happening here. 'Chilling effect' is too mild..." www.theatlantic.com/national-sec...

"It is about breaking people and breaking institutions by sowing fear and mistrust throughout our government. It is about paralyzing public servants...It is about deterring anyone from daring to speak truth to power." www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...

"It was humiliating to watch an American president act like a happy puppy upon encountering the dictator of a much poorer, much less important state, treating him as a superior." www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

"The most obvious reason for skepticism about Trump’s desire to fight crime is that he is the most pro-criminal president in American history." www.theatlantic.com/politics/arc...

"Habitual sarcasm toward fools who can’t see why you’re right is usually a sign of political weakness, suggesting that you have no hope or intention of convincing the unpersuaded of anything. Contempt is a style of proud and perpetual defeat." www.theatlantic.com/books/archiv...

"Americans already understood Trump to be corrupt, and proved themselves willing to tolerate that. But now they are coming to believe that he is **inept.** In American politics, that is an unforgivable sin." www.theatlantic.com/politics/arc...

"When you become less polite, the alteration in your conduct can make you less happy, more depressed, and angrier about life.... Being impolite is more like scratching at your poison-ivy rash. Giving in to the urge makes things worse." www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

Donald Trump Doesn’t Want You to Read This Article www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/...

"Mike, the claustrophobic retiree, told me that on a recent attempt to fly, he took an Ambien and drank a few shots of whiskey, yet he remained too terrified to board. Tired and tipsy, he had to call his daughter for a ride home." www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...

“Consider the case of SecDef Pete Hegseth, who was admitted to and graduated from prestigious degree programs at top universities but resigned from the Army National Guard at the lowly rank of major. The Army, unlike Princeton and Harvard, knew a petulant, insecure mediocrity when it saw one.”

“'The nation that will insist on drawing a broad line of demarcation between the fighting man and the thinking man is liable to find its fighting done by fools and its thinking done by cowards.'” www.theatlantic.com/national-sec...

"This wasn’t merely the sound of artillery, but the sound of nihilism and anarchy, of lives disrupted, businesses ruined, universities closed, futures curtailed." Wrenching, magisterial article by @anneapplebaum.bsky.social, photos by @lynseyaddario.bsky.social www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...

"The past five days have been deeply distressing for the truth as a force in restraining authoritarian governance.... Trump is engaged in a broad assault on truth, but truth has ways of fighting back." www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/...

"To me, especially having been on the other side of that label, the word **evil** feels like a cop-out. It is an excuse to stop thinking, to ignore the evidence, to hate and punish someone law enforcement didn’t, or wouldn’t, understand."--‪@amandaknox.com‬ www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

Anything @anneapplebaum.bsky.social writes is a must-read.

Insightful article by @rossandersen.bsky.social

Emil Bove's "path so far has demonstrated that total sycophancy to the president can be a fantastic career move for ambitious lawyers—especially those for whom other avenues of success might not be forthcoming." www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

"The arc of the American moral universe...has been warped by the competing pressure of a social-justice movement that has grown impatient with the liberal project, and a reactionary populism that both feeds off and weaponizes that impatience." www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

Kash Patel and Dan Bongino "get a kick out of playing dress-up and acting tough. But they actually have no idea what they’re doing."--retired 16-year FBI veteran and former head of its Norfolk, VA office www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

Hans Luther was the principled and independent president of Germany’s central bank, Timothy W. Ryback writes. “But when Luther wouldn’t accede to Hitler’s demands, he feared for his life and had to leave”:

"Luther informed Hitler in no uncertain terms that the Reichsbank was not part of his revolution. It was an independent fiscal entity with an international board of directors. On Hitler’s first full day in office, rumors circulated that he wanted Luther gone." www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

"It’s in brokenness that we understand our need for grace, our need for mercy. Brokenness helps us appreciate justice. It’s in brokenness that we begin to crave redemption.... It’s the broken among us that actually can teach us what it means to be human." www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

On Tuesday afternoon, ChatGPT encouraged me to cut my wrists. Find a “sterile or very clean razor blade,” the chatbot told me. “Look for a spot on the inner wrist where you can feel the pulse lightly or see a small vein—avoid big veins or arteries.” www.theatlantic.com/technology/a...

A great essay by Anna Deavere Smith.

"'I won’t be able to send you out.' Long pause. 'You will antagonize my clients.' “Antagonize?” 'You don’t look like anything.' Another long pause. 'Will you go as Black or white?'" www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

"If the police ask to look in your basement for a missing hitchhiker recently spotted in your car, and you offer to let them inspect your desk and closet instead, this will not dispel suspicions about what a basement inspection might reveal." www.theatlantic.com/politics/arc...

"At times, Hunter Bidden sounds like his father’s id, saying the things the ex-president would like to say but cannot." www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...