Tag: President Joe Biden
Condoleezza Rice’s Lost September 11 Speech
William Safire wrote in the introduction to his classic compendium Lend Me Your Ears that “what makes a draft speech a real speech is the speaking of it.” But I’ve found that some of the most interesting speeches written were never delivered at all. I spent years collecting examples of the words that went unspoken because events intervened, or a leader had a change of heart, or history took a sudden turn.
Last year, shortly after leaving my role
Inside the Biden White House as Kabul Fell
August 1
August is the month when oppressive humidity causes the mass evacuation of official Washington. In 2021, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki piled her family into the car for a week at the beach. Secretary of State Antony Blinken headed to the Hamptons to visit his elderly father. Their boss left for the leafy sanctuary of Camp David.
Donald Trump’s Unhinged Attacks on Smith and Chutkan
In some ways, Donald Trump’s mental state is more transparent than nearly any public figure’s: He has no shame, little discretion, and ample channels to broadcast his feelings in real time. Yet his constant stream of consciousness and always elevated dudgeon make it hard to parse the finer fluctuations in his mood.
Even so, the former president’s public behavior since Special Counsel Jack Smith indicted him last week suggests a man feeling cornered. This isn’t to say that Trump is
The Miraculously Changing Narrative around Biden’s Involvement in Hunter Inc.
The media are committed to defending the first family, no matter what facts emerge.
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Big Beer Is Not So Big Anymore
This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.
Beer was once king. Now, with seltzers, canned cocktails, and other tasty beverages on the rise, what will become of brews?
First, here are four new stories from The Atlantic:
The Decline of the Brew
It’s Friday, so I’ll go ahead and say
Why Elite-College Admissions Matter – The Atlantic
This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.
Attendance at an elite college increases a student’s chances of joining America’s most elite ranks, according to a new study. I chatted with my colleague Annie Lowrey, who reported on this new research yesterday, about how to diversify the student bodies of America’s wealthiest
Why Biden’s Investment Boom Is A Big Political Bet
When President Joe Biden visits South Carolina to tout a new solar-energy-manufacturing facility today, he will underscore a striking pattern: Some of the biggest winners from his economic agenda have been Republican-leaning places whose political leaders have consistently opposed his initiatives.
Centered on a trio of bills Biden signed in his first two years, the president’s economic program has triggered what could become the most concentrated burst of public and private investment since the 1960s. The twin bills Biden signed
The COVID-Origins Debate Has Split Into Parallel Worlds
The lab-leak theory of COVID’s origin has always been a little squirrelly. If SARS-CoV-2 really did begin infecting humans in a research setting, the evidence that got left behind is mostly of the cloak-and-dagger type: confirmations from anonymous government officials about vague conclusions drawn in classified documents, for example; or leaked materials that lay out hypothetical research projects; or information gleaned from who-knows-where that certain people came down with who-knows-what disease at some crucial moment. In short, it’s all been
Indian Dissidents Want America to Stop Praising Modi
No one knows how the fire started. But in 2002, a train was set ablaze in a Muslim neighborhood in Gujarat. Those killed were Hindu nationalists, and the state’s chief minister, Narendra Modi, quickly deemed the fire a “preplanned” terrorist attack.
Modi’s government had the charred bodies brought to the state’s largest city, where they were displayed in public. His party called for a strike. The strike devolved into months of violence, and the Gujarati police did little to
Climate Activists Are Turning Their Attention to Hollywood
On a warm, windy fall night in Los Angeles, I stood in a conference room at the Warner Bros. Discovery television-production offices, straightened my spine, and stared down my showrunner, preparing to defend my idea for a minor character in our near-future science-fiction series.
“This character needs a backstory, and switching jobs because she wants to work in renewable energy and not for an oil company fits perfectly,” I told the unsmiling head honcho.
His face twisted, as