The Lifesaving Potential of Underwater Earthquake Monitors

The seconds between the warning of an impending earthquake and the moment the quake hits can be the difference between life or death. In that time, automatic brakes can halt trains; people can duck for cover or rush for safety. But current warning systems aren’t always where they … | Continue reading


@theatlantic.com | 7 years ago

The Atlantic Daily: The Budget and the Ban

What We’re FollowingDeep Cuts: The budget proposal the White House released to Congress today is an aggressive demonstration of Trump’s campaign promises. To fund an increase in military spending, it makes deep cuts to education programs and funding for science, including the bip … | Continue reading


@theatlantic.com | 7 years ago

Conservatives Get Their Shot to Change the Republican Health-Care Bill

The American Health Care Act has now passed through three committees on its way to a vote on the House floor. So far, the Republican leadership’s replacement for Obamacare has emerged unscathed, and unchanged.It is not likely to stay that way much longer.Conservatives say they ha … | Continue reading


@theatlantic.com | 7 years ago

The Atlantic Politics & Policy Daily: The Skinny on the 'Skinny Budget'

Today in 5 LinesPresident Trump's budget blueprint, released Thursday, would increase defense spending by $54 billion and significantly cut discretionary domestic spending across federal agencies. “We went back and pulled lines from speeches, interviews and turned his words, his … | Continue reading


@theatlantic.com | 7 years ago

How to Stop a Populist

To the relief of most everyone (except his supporters), the far-right politician Geert Wilders lost in the Dutch elections. Or at least he didn’t win, which, by the world’s increasingly low standards for celebration, was seemingly good enough. Wilders’s Party for Freedom, which h … | Continue reading


@theatlantic.com | 7 years ago

The Case Against the Grammar Scolds

These are boom times for linguistic pedantry. Never before have there been more outlets for opinionated humans to commiserate about the absurdities of “irregardless” or the impropriety of “impact”-as-a-verb or the aggressive affront to civil society that is the existence of the w … | Continue reading


@theatlantic.com | 7 years ago

Trump's Proposal to Scrap the Agency Devoted to Developing Appalachia

The White House released President Trump’s wish-list for the federal budget on Thursday, and outlined in it, among other domestic-spending cuts, is a proposal to totally eliminate funding for 19 independent agencies. While Trump’s decision to cut the Corporation for Public Broadc … | Continue reading


@theatlantic.com | 7 years ago

How Trump's Budget Would Impact Cities' Poorest Residents

During his campaign for president, Donald Trump pledged to help inner cities and African American communities in particular. But his proposed budget eliminates programs that have helped these communities for years, and would deal a particular blow to Americans with the lowest inc … | Continue reading


@theatlantic.com | 7 years ago

Trump’s Budget Could Hurt Manufacturing and Innovation

Donald Trump won the White House after promising to bring back jobs to the United States and revive American manufacturing. But the president's budget blueprint, released on Thursday, calls for federal funding cuts that could set back scientific and technological breakthroughs th … | Continue reading


@theatlantic.com | 7 years ago

The March Madness Application Bump

Brackets are about to be busted.It is not a question of if, so much as one of when and by whom. Maybe Iona College will make a deep run; a plucky Winthrop University team will pick off Butler; or Florida Gulf Coast University will put together another string of upsets. As the NCA … | Continue reading


@theatlantic.com | 7 years ago

'This Is Exactly What He Wanted': How Geert Wilders Won by Losing

Dutch far-right politician Geert Wilders lost by a significant margin in Wednesday’s elections, but his brother said the Netherlands shouldn’t be too quick to celebrate: Losing was exactly what Wilders wanted. And, although his Dutch Freedom Party (PVV) was overtaken by the rulin … | Continue reading


@theatlantic.com | 7 years ago

When Populists Meet Proportional Representation

The European establishment is relieved after Dutch voters turned out en masse Wednesday to hand Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) a decisive victory over its far-right challenger, Geert Wilders’s Dutch Freedom Party (PVV), which fared wors … | Continue reading


@theatlantic.com | 7 years ago

Scientists Brace for a Lost Generation in American Research

The work of a scientist is often unglamorous. Behind every headline-making, cork-popping, blockbuster discovery, there are many lifetimes of work. And that work is often mundane. We’re talking drips-of-solution-into-a-Petri-dish mundane, maintaining-a-database mundane. Usually, n … | Continue reading


@theatlantic.com | 7 years ago

In Syria: Six Years of War

For six years now, Syrians have endured the loss and hardship caused by a protracted civil war. An estimated 4.9 million Syrians have fled their homeland, filling refugee camps in neighboring countries, and another six million remain displaced inside Syria’s borders. While Syrian … | Continue reading


@theatlantic.com | 7 years ago

Sebastian Gorka and the White House's Questionable Vetting

Michael Flynn and Sebastian Gorka share a couple of things. Both men are rabidly anti-Islam, and both seem to have been insufficiently vetted by the Trump White House.Flynn, of course, was the national security adviser pushed out after barely three weeks for lying to the vice pre … | Continue reading


@theatlantic.com | 7 years ago

A Restaurant Brings New Traditions to an 18th-Century Irish Home

Since the 1700s, the Fennell family has lived on the same property in County Kildare, Ireland. In the past, they were able to generate income from their small farm to support themselves. However, after falling into some financial insecurity, the family was forced to get creative. … | Continue reading


@theatlantic.com | 7 years ago

Trump's Education Budget Revealed

Although President Trump stayed mum on his plans for the U.S. Department of Education, one policy has been clear: Trump plans to cut nonmilitary spending. The administration’s new “America First” budget, released Thursday, follows through on this promise by slashing funds for the … | Continue reading


@theatlantic.com | 7 years ago

What Did the Dutch Election Really Prove?

In January, as Mark Rutte, the prime minister of the Netherlands, campaigned to stave off a challenge from Geert Wilders and the anti-Muslim, far-right Party for Freedom, he wrote an open letter that ran as full-page ads in several newspapers. In it, Rutte rang up mentions of “th … | Continue reading


@theatlantic.com | 7 years ago

The Dangerous Precedent Set by Judicial Attacks on Trump's Travel Ban

Let’s start with the law.The president of the United States has power to bar “any class of aliens” both as immigrants and as nonimmigrants and to impose on their ordinary comings and goings “any restrictions he may deem appropriate.”That’s the language of the U.S. Code, the law o … | Continue reading


@theatlantic.com | 7 years ago

Why Sequestration Is Poised to Kill Trump's Budget

Six years ago, in the first act of a budgetary drama, a group of aggrieved legislators hung a daft gun over the mantle. Now, in its third act, it is set to fire.The gun is the arcane fiscal tool called sequestration, and it now poses a mortal threat to President Trump’s budgetary … | Continue reading


@theatlantic.com | 7 years ago

Why Trump's Revised Travel Ban Could Still Succeed

Not since the Supreme Court told Harry Truman to give back the steel mills has an American president gotten such a concentrated dose of bad news as the federal courts gave President Trump yesterday.By now you’ve read of the harsh words that District Judge Derrick Watson in Hawaii … | Continue reading


@theatlantic.com | 7 years ago

The Real Cost of Abolishing the National Endowment for the Arts

On Thursday morning, President Trump’s proposal for the federal budget confirmed a fact long suspected: the proposed elimination of the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, and the Corporation fo … | Continue reading


@theatlantic.com | 7 years ago

Melinda Gates: The Tech Industry Needs to Fix Its Gender Problem—Now

Long before Melinda Gates was famous for her philanthropic work, she was yet another woman trying to make it in the male-dominated tech world.Gates started working at Microsoft in 1987, when it was still a small, scrappy company. But even for a woman with a degree in computer sci … | Continue reading


@theatlantic.com | 7 years ago

All the Ways Trump’s Budget Cuts Science Funding

President Trump’s budget blueprint, released Thursday morning, is supposed to lay out the administration priorities, and science is clearly not among them. It deals sweeping cuts to science and health agency budgets, and, in some cases, targets specific programs championed by the … | Continue reading


@theatlantic.com | 7 years ago

The 19 Independent Agencies Trump Wants to Eliminate

On Thursday, the White House released President Trump’s proposal for the federal budget, a blueprint outlining his spending priorities for Congress and the country. It cuts the budgets of many domestic programs. But for 19 independent agencies, it goes a step further—and proposes … | Continue reading


@theatlantic.com | 7 years ago

Trump Begins Funding his Immigration Crackdown

President Trump moved towards his promised crackdown on immigration upon taking office, signing executive orders that called for the hiring of more enforcement agents and the construction of a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, but his proposed budget, released Thursday, signals … | Continue reading


@theatlantic.com | 7 years ago

Saying Goodbye to Andy Daly’s Bizarre Review

In an era of peak television that’s expanded storytelling horizons beyond the formulaic, flooding the medium with characters that aren’t traditionally likable, Andy Daly’s Review stands out. There are plenty of flawed male protagonists on the small screen, after all, to the point … | Continue reading


@theatlantic.com | 7 years ago

How Trump Validated the Rulings Against His Muslim Ban

A trio of courts once again handed Donald Trump’s immigration order legal setbacks on Wednesday and Thursday. In Hawaii, federal Judge Derrick Watson issued a temporary restraining order against the law. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals announced Thursday night that it would no … | Continue reading


@theatlantic.com | 7 years ago

Measuring Trump's Budget Against Past Spending

To afford a beefier military, Donald Trump intends to substantially cut a slew of government departments, like the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Labor.Since the president has promised to maintain spending on entitlements like Social Security and Medicare, … | Continue reading


@theatlantic.com | 7 years ago

The 'Anticipatory Anxiety' of Waiting for Disaster

SAN RAFAEL, ECUADOR—In April 2015, a volcano in Ecuador awoke from its restless slumber. The mountain shook with hundreds of earthquakes, and a thin tendril of steam escaped from Cotopaxi’s core. Each day, locals could see smoke and ash spiraling above the peak as seismic activit … | Continue reading


@theatlantic.com | 7 years ago

Trump's Budget Proposal Cuts NIH Funding by 20 Percent

For the last two years, the National Institutes of Health has presented a rare point of agreement in Washington, with congressional Republicans leading a bipartisan effort to increase its funding.But the agency, the world’s engine of biomedical research, may now find itself in a … | Continue reading


@theatlantic.com | 7 years ago

Is Trump Dragging Down the European Far-Right?

Donald Trump’s victory in the U.S. presidential election in November was heralded as the latest in a series of triumphs for the populist right: First there was Brexit, followed by a series of gains for right-wing, anti-immigration parties in Europe. When Italians voted against a … | Continue reading


@theatlantic.com | 7 years ago

How Rats Could Lead to Drugs That Actually Treat Autism

In a shoebox-sized cage on their own floor in the Anderson Building at the Baylor College of Medicine, two little white mice with pink ears and skinny tails scurry over a bedding of corncob strips. They run from corner to corner, now and again standing on hind legs to press their … | Continue reading


@theatlantic.com | 7 years ago

The GOP’s New Bill Would be a Disaster For Genetics Research

In 2007, two senators—one Democrat and one Republican—proposed a bill to accelerate research in human genetics. The young Democrat, a relative unknown named Barack Obama, saw a future in which regular genetic testing allowed for “personalized medicine for all Americans,” includin … | Continue reading


@theatlantic.com | 7 years ago

Today's News: March 16, 2017

—A federal judge in Maryland has temporarily blocked President Trump’s revised executive order that bars for 90 days the entry of travelers from six Muslim or predominantly Muslim countries. The order follows a similar one issued Wednesday by a federal judge in Hawaii. More here … | Continue reading


@theatlantic.com | 7 years ago

How to Learn New Things as an Adult

Quick, what’s the capital of Australia? No Googling! (And no points if you’re Australian—that means the information is more meaningful to you, which means you’re more likely to know it). Did you get it? Or are you sure you learned it at some point, but forgot right around the tim … | Continue reading


@theatlantic.com | 7 years ago

What’s So ‘American’ About John Milton’s Lucifer?

Three hundred and fifty years ago, the poet John Milton wrote one of the greatest characters in all of British literature: Lucifer, the antagonist of the epic poem Paradise Lost. Feared by Puritans, fêted by Romantics, and reinvented by everybody else, Milton’s fallen archangel h … | Continue reading


@theatlantic.com | 7 years ago

President Trump's 'Hard Power' Budget

If Americans were taken aback by the restrained, highly scripted President Trump that addressed Congress last month, they should recognize a lot more of the blustery, law-and-order candidate they elected in the budget blueprint the White House will release on Thursday.“If he said … | Continue reading


@theatlantic.com | 7 years ago

Can Trump Support the GOP Health-Care Plan and Still Hold on to His Voters?

The fierce crosswinds battering the House Republican effort to replace the Affordable Care Act are straining the fragile détente between President Trump and House Speaker Paul Ryan.The immediate problem for Trump and congressional Republicans is escaping the legislative quagmire … | Continue reading


@theatlantic.com | 7 years ago

How to Kill a Snake When You’re a Snake

When two snakes fight, it can be hard to work out who’s winning. “They’re both wound together, just two tubes wrestling,” says David Penning, from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. But if one of the combatants is a kingsnake, then all you have to do is wait. The kingsnake … | Continue reading


@theatlantic.com | 7 years ago

A Leftist and a Conservative Join Forces to Defend Free Speech

The sleeping giant of classical liberalism is awaking with a start, as if beset on all sides. Its most powerful foe is presently the illiberal right, due to their waxing power. Thus the Niskanen Center met Donald Trump’s rise with a new effort to revitalize liberalism rather than … | Continue reading


@theatlantic.com | 7 years ago

The Supreme Court Confronts Racism in the Jury Room

“Some toxins can be deadly in small doses,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote last month in the Supreme Court’s opinion in  Buck v. Davis. In Buck, the Supreme Court vacated a death sentence handed down to a black defendant after an “expert” witness told the jury that black defend … | Continue reading


@theatlantic.com | 7 years ago

What Should the Feds Do About Bad Cops?

Zachary Fardon, the former U.S. attorney for the northern district of Illinois, was one of the 46 chief federal prosecutors who were ousted by the Trump administration last week. But he’s the only one who released an open letter on his way out.In his five-page statement released … | Continue reading


@theatlantic.com | 7 years ago

The Atlantic Daily: Showing an Interest

What We’re FollowingEconomic Strengths: Just as analysts expected, the U.S. Federal Reserve voted to raise interest rates today, a move that reflects confidence in the strength of the still-recovering economy. Economic worries were among the strongest factors that brought Trump t … | Continue reading


@theatlantic.com | 7 years ago

Why Oil and Coal States Are Slashing Their Education Budgets

Wyoming Governor Matt Mead signed legislation on Monday approving $34.5 million in cuts to the state’s K-12 education budget. The new spending plan also denies tax increases that would raise additional money for education, though it does establish a special committee to determine … | Continue reading


@theatlantic.com | 7 years ago

The Atlantic Politics & Policy Daily: Fed Up

Today in 5 LinesThe Department of Justice announced that four people, including two officers of the Russian Federal Security Service, have been indicted in connection with the hacking of at least 500 million Yahoo accounts in 2014. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nune … | Continue reading


@theatlantic.com | 7 years ago

Snoop Dogg's Anti-Trump Video Becomes a Pro-Trump Prop

Donald Trump has now added to the condemnations of Snoop Dogg’s latest music video, in which the rapper points a toy gun at a clown named “Ronald Klump” and pulls the trigger, firing a “bang” flag. “Can you imagine what the outcry would be if @SnoopDogg, failing career and all, h … | Continue reading


@theatlantic.com | 7 years ago

A Century Later, The Factory That Poisoned the ‘Radium Girls’ Is Still a Superfund Site

In the 1920s, young women worked in an Ottawa, Illinois, factory painting radioactive glow-in-the-dark numbers onto watches. They were told to lick their brushes to a fine point. They were told that the glowing radium in the paint was safe.Radium is extremely dangerous. The eleme … | Continue reading


@theatlantic.com | 7 years ago