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Atlantic
3 hours ago
- Business
- Atlantic
The Warped Idealism of Trump's Trade Policy
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. Tomorrow is Donald Trump's deadline to agree to trade deals before he imposes tariffs, and he means it this time. Why are you laughing? (In fact, since saying that yesterday, he's already chickened out with Mexico, putting the 'taco' in, well, TACO.) But the president has already written off hopes of reaching agreements with some allies. Yesterday, Trump announced that he was raising tariffs on many Brazilian goods to 50 percent across the board, as retribution for Brazil's prosecution of former President Jair Bolsonaro, a Trump ally. This morning, Trump wrote on Truth Social that Prime Minister Mark Carney's decision to recognize a Palestinian state 'will make it very hard' to strike a deal with Canada. The president's perpetual caving can make him seem craven and opportunistic, but you can detect a different impulse in his handling of trade policy too: a warped kind of idealism. When Trump began his political career, he said he would put ' America First,' rather than using American power to enforce values overseas. Wars to fight repressive autocrats were foolish ways to burn cash and squander American lives. The promotion of human rights and democracy were soft-headed, bleeding-heart causes. Trump, a man of business, was going to look out for the bottom line without getting tangled up in high-minded crusades. Now that's exactly what he's doing: using trade as a way to make grand statements about values—his own, if not America's. This is troubling on legal, moral, and diplomatic levels. The Constitution specifically delegates the power to levy tariffs to Congress, but legislators have delegated some of that capacity to the president. Trump has invoked the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which allows him to impose tariffs in response to an 'unusual and extraordinary threat,' on the basis that Congress cannot act quickly enough. This use of the law is, as Conor Friedersdorf and Ilya Somin wrote in The Atlantic in May, absurd. The White House's months of vacillation on its tariff threats since make the idea of any emergency even less credible. Understanding why Trump would be sensitive about Bolsonaro's prosecution, which stems from Bolsonaro's attempt to cling to power after losing the 2022 election, is not difficult—the parallels between the two have been often noted—but that doesn't make it a threat to the United States, much less an 'unusual and extraordinary' one. Likewise, Canadian recognition of a Palestinian state is unwelcome news for Trump's close alliance with Israel, but it poses no obvious security or economic danger to the U.S. A Congress or Supreme Court interested in limiting presidential power could seize on these statements to arrest Trump's trade war, but these are not the legislators or justices we have. Setting aside the legal problems, Trump's statements about Brazil and Canada represent an abandonment of the realpolitik approach he once promised. Even if Carney were to back down on Palestinian statehood, or Brazil to call off Bolsonaro's prosecution, the United States wouldn't see any economic gain. Trump is purely using American economic might to achieve noneconomic goals. Previous presidents have frequently used U.S. economic hegemony to further national goals—or, less charitably, interfered in the domestic affairs of other sovereign nations. But no one needs to accept any nihilistic false equivalences. Trump wrote in a July 9 letter to Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva that the case against Bolsonaro was 'an international disgrace' and (naturally) a 'Witch Hunt.' Although the U.S. has taken steps to isolate repressive governments, Trump's attempts to bail out Bolsonaro are nothing of the sort. The U.S. can't with a straight face argue that charging Bolsonaro is improper, and it can't accuse Brazil of convicting him in a kangaroo court, because no trial has yet been held. The U.S. government has also long used its power to bully other countries into taking its side in international disputes, but the swipe at Canada is perplexing. The Trump administration remains the most stalwart ally of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (notwithstanding some recent tensions), and the U.S. government has long withheld recognition of any Palestinian state as leverage in negotiations. Even so, slapping tariffs on Canada for a symbolic decision such as this seems unlikely to dissuade Carney or do anything beyond further stoking nascent Canadian nationalism. This is not the only way in which Trump's blunt wielding of tariffs is likely to backfire on the United States. Consumers in the U.S. will pay higher prices, and overseas, Jerusalem Demsas warned in April, 'the credibility of the nation's promises, its treaties, its agreements, and even its basic rationality has evaporated in just weeks.' But it's not just trust with foreign countries that the president has betrayed. It's the pact he made with voters. Trump promised voters an 'America First' approach. Instead, they're getting a 'Bolsonaro and Netanyahu First' government. Here are three new stories from The Atlantic: Virginia Giuffre's family was shocked that Trump described her as 'stolen.' Every scientific empire comes to an end. Hamas wants Gaza to starve. Today's News President Donald Trump's tariffs are set to take effect tomorrow as his administration scrambles to finalize trade deals with key partners. Mexico received a 90-day extension, while other countries, including China and Canada, remain in negotiations. Steve Witkoff, Trump's special envoy to the Middle East, and Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee will visit Gaza tomorrow to inspect aid distribution as the humanitarian crisis worsens in the region. Dispatches Evening Read By Katherine J. Wu For decades, evolutionary biologists pointed to such examples to cast hybridization as hapless—'rare, very unsuccessful, and not an important evolutionary force,' Sandra Knapp, a plant taxonomist at the Natural History Museum in London, told me. But recently, researchers have begun to revise that dour view. With the right blend of genetic material, hybrids can sometimes be fertile and spawn species of their own; they can acquire new abilities that help them succeed in ways their parents never could. Which, as Knapp and her colleagues have found in a new study, appears to be the case for the world's third-most important staple crop: The 8-to-9-million-year-old lineage that begat the modern potato may have arisen from a chance encounter between a flowering plant from a group called Etuberosum and … an ancient tomato. Tomatoes, in other words, can now justifiably be described as the mother of potatoes. More From The Atlantic Take a look. These photos capture moments from the 2025 World Aquatics Championships in Singapore, where more than 2,500 athletes from over 200 nations competed in events spanning six aquatic sports.
Yahoo
12 hours ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Can San Francisco Be Saved?
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. Subscribe here: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube | Overcast | Pocket Casts A week ago, President Donald Trump signed an executive order called 'Ending Crime and Disorder on America's Streets.' The order states that 'vagrancy' and 'violent attacks have made our cities unsafe' and encourages the expanded use of institutionalization. The order comes at a crucial moment for many American cities that have tried—and often failed—to meaningfully address homelessness and addiction. In 2024, the number of people experiencing homelessness on a single night was 771,480, the highest number ever recorded in the United States. In recent years, San Francisco has become emblematic of the crisis. And now a new mayor has pledged to prioritize the problem. To understand what's at stake, I got to know one man who has been living on the street and struggling with addiction—and who says he is finally ready to make a change. This is the first episode of a new three-part miniseries from Radio Atlantic, No Easy Fix, about what it takes to escape one's demons. The following is a transcript of the episode: Hanna Rosin: A week ago, President Trump signed an executive order called 'Ending Crime and Disorder on America's Streets.' Now, this order could be read as Trump setting up another showdown between his administration and liberal cities. But actually, some cities are already ahead of him on this. I'm Hanna Rosin. This is Radio Atlantic. Over the next three weeks, we're bringing you a special series about the beginnings of an experiment. A lot of American cities already know they have a real problem: a few streets or a neighborhood where the social order seems to have completely broken down. They're crowded with people living on the streets, often with addiction. And even before this executive order was signed, some cities were beginning to take these places on—or at least audition some new ways to fix the problem. Reporter Ethan Brooks looks at San Francisco, which is an obvious place to look because it's a city known for being exceptional at thinking up solutions to all kinds of complicated problems. Why hasn't it been able to crack this one? Ethan finds some answers close to the ground. He follows one guy and gets some insights about why the solution these cities are looking for is so elusive. Evan: I know some people that will spend hours and hours and hours and hours just holding up a cardboard sign in an intersection. It might take him 10 hours to make $10. Ethan Brooks: And you won't do that? Evan: I just—fuck. It's just knowing I could do that, or I could spend 15 minutes inside of a store, 10 minutes inside of a store, five minutes inside of a store sometimes, and then make enough money. Brooks: There are a lot of ways you could describe Evan. But if we're really getting down to it, a title that fits pretty well is 'thief.' Over the last six years or so, Evan has dedicated many of his waking hours to stealing. On a typical day, Evan—and I'm just going to use his first name to protect his privacy—Evan takes the train out of town from where he lives, in San Francisco, shoplifts all day, then comes back home. Sometimes he calls this his 'job' or 'going to work.' When he sleeps, it's out on the street or in a shelter. In Evan's world, what he does is called being an 'out-of-town booster,' as in someone who boosts, or steals, property from outside of San Francisco— which, in his circle, affords him a certain amount of status: one rung higher on the ladder than an in-town booster. Evan: The in-town booster isn't making real money. You're making, like, 20, 40 bucks a run. Brooks: Okay. Evan: But out-of-town boosters, somebody's gonna be gone all day, going to a couple different stores and then coming back, making several hundred bucks. Brooks: Evan steals so that he can sell. He's had success converting Frappuccinos, Nutella, honey into cash. Tide Pods, apparently, are always in high demand. Lately, he's been boosting Stanley cups from the Target in Emeryville, just north of Oakland. [] Brooks: He then takes the train to the Civic Center in San Francisco to sell to a middleman, who will sell the stolen Stanley cups to a diverter, who will repackage them and resell them on eBay. Evan is part of an economy that sells millions and millions of dollars of stolen goods every year. Recently, this particular Target has been on Evan's mind because he just cannot believe how easy it was to steal from them. Evan: I literally went, like, 27 days in a row because I kept telling myself, If it doesn't work, I'll quit fentanyl. And it just kept working, and it kept working, and it kept working every day. And I was like, What is going—this is, like, a Groundhog's Day or something. Brooks: Another title you could give Evan, apart from thief, is 'addict.' Fentanyl is the singular driving force behind his shoplifting. In the eyes of the middlemen who resell what he steals, fentanyl makes Evan the ideal employee: highly motivated, with a huge tolerance for risk and nothing to lose. In the real world, Evan is just a normal guy, a mechanic, and from what I'm told, a good one. But in San Francisco, as one of Evan's oldest friends put it to me, he is the 'King of the Fools.' Evan: It didn't really feel like that until I got to San Francisco. Brooks: Uh-huh. Evan: Everywhere else was super hard to make it, I feel like. Well, of course when I was there I didn't really think that. Um, but When I got here, it was so much easier. Ow. Brooks: You all right? Evan: Yeah, my leg. Can you help me put this back just a little bit again? (Laughs.) I'm sorry. Brooks: For sure. No problem, dude. Brooks: Evan pauses our interview here and asks me to adjust his hospital bed. Brooks: Like here, or all the way further down? Evan: A little bit more. Right, that's perfect. Brooks: We're sitting in Evan's room in San Francisco General Hospital. Evan is propped up in bed wearing a paper gown, with an IV drip taped to his arm. There is a huge pile of candy next to his pillow: sour worms and Starburst and Twix that hospital staff gave him. Addicts often get really intense sugar cravings. This happens for a lot of reasons, but in the end, a sugar high is still a kind of high. At the moment we're talking, Evan is in a bad way. He is visibly emaciated—with knobby elbows, rib cage on full display—and he's struggling to control his body. Depending on what happens next, death, he thinks, is a real possibility. I met Evan just a few months ago, about six weeks before this conversation in the hospital, and have followed along with him as he has made this journey from being an out-of-town booster, the 'King of the Fools,' to where he is now. Evan: We were watching this show last night about Vikings, and apparently, it was Viking tradition that when men or women would get older and they couldn't hunt, fish, or farm or help get anything, that they would just go jump off a cliff and kill themselves 'cause they were a burden to their family. Brooks: Mm-hmm. Evan: And so I thought about that. But that's the position I would be in if I was like, if that was back, you know, if it was the time we were in now. They'd be like, You can't even help us do anything 'cause your leg is fucked up, and you can't even eat a whole meal without vomiting, so we're just gonna take you to the Valhalla cliffs or whatever and have you jump. Oh man. [] Brooks: Like Evan says, there are these places around Scandinavia where, supposedly, in early Norse society, the elderly and infirm leapt to their deaths when they had no more purpose to serve. In the TV show Evan watched, there's a shot of a man leaping off this huge, towering cliff and simply falling out of the frame. He disappears. But the thing about this Viking tradition is that it's just a story; it's a myth. The cliffs are real enough, but there's no evidence anyone ever jumped off them. The Vikings had to figure out a way to care for these people, just like the rest of us. [] Brooks: The weeks I spent following Evan, a period that ended with him in this hospital bed, were critical weeks for him. It was also a critical period for San Francisco, when the city began to change its approach to people like Evan, people who are in need of real care and whose presence threatens the health of the city. From The Atlantic, this is No Easy Fix Episode 1, 'The Vanishing Point.' [] Brooks: Back in the first years of the pandemic, a new type of video started showing up on YouTube and other corners of social media. Tyler Oliveira: This is San Francisco—the city that pays drug addicts to use drugs? Brooks: They had titles like 'I Investigated the City of Real Life Zombies' and 'I Investigated the City Where Every Drug Is Legal.' Oliveira: Rampant homelessness, deadly drug addiction, and unpunished shoplifting and car break-ins. Businesses are fleeing, and the city is dying. But how did it get to— Brooks: What they were showing, to audiences of millions and millions of people, were these places in American cities where it felt like the social order had broken down completely. City blocks and encampments crowded with people injecting, overdosing, and dying—all right out in the open. Oliveira: —the center of America's drug epidemic, overrun with a drug known as 'tranq,' a mixture of horse tranquilizer and fentanyl that's turning people there into real-life zombies. Brooks: It wasn't just San Francisco in the spotlight. There was Kensington Avenue in Philadelphia, Skid Row in Downtown L.A., encampments underneath I-5 in Seattle, the storm drains under the Las Vegas Strip. There were, and still are, livestreams of these places broadcasting these images 24/7. [] Brooks: The videos gave these places a new notoriety. And it was San Francisco—specifically, the Tenderloin neighborhood—that was maybe the most infamous. There was the reality of the thing, and I'll just give one stat here to illustrate this: In this period, nearly twice as many people died of overdose in San Francisco than died of COVID-19. Fentanyl killed far more people than the pandemic. Then there was this contrast that wasn't quite the same as anywhere else: needles and human waste covering the sidewalk, signs of the most self-destructive, destitute humanity, in the same city at the cutting edge of this new technology that can write and speak like a human. Joe Wynne: From the outside, it's, like, this really grotesque cesspool, but once you're in there, it's a bizarrely normal social situation. Joe Wynne has spent a fair amount of time among people dealing with addiction in the Tenderloin, not because he's lived there himself, but because he is Evan's best friend—from before Evan got wrapped up in fentanyl. Brooks: Do you remember the first time you met Evan? Wynne: Yeah, he was a mechanic at this high-end, custom 4x4r shop in North Carolina. Brooks: Before living on the streets in San Francisco, Evan worked as a mechanic in North Carolina. The shop he worked for is a sort of Pimp My Ride for wealthy, crunchy digital nomads looking to live the van life for a while. Joe is not a digital nomad, but he's wealthy enough and at least a little crunchy. So back then, he enlisted Evan and the shop where he worked to outfit his camper van. At the time—this was around 2013—Joe was traveling and living out of his van and, with it in the shop, didn't have a place to live. Wynne: And Evan was like, You can sleep in my basement. And after, like, half a day there, they're like, Oh, you can move into the guest bedroom; it's totally available. You're not a crazy person. Brooks: So Joe and Evan became friends not so long ago because Evan offered Joe a place to stay. And they had a lot in common: They both love cars, they both became fathers when they were quite young, and they're both relentlessly outgoing. Wynne: He's one of the most charming people I've ever met. If you leave him alone in a group of four or five strangers, he will be best friends with everybody inside of 30 minutes. He's absolutely a life-of-the-party kind of guy and not in the big, loud, over-the-top way, in the kind of goes around and has a really great conversation with everyone where they feel like the center of the room. That's really his superpower, is, I feel like, is that type of little conversational loop with people. Brooks: When Joe's van was finished, they went their separate ways. Eventually, Joe went on to start a cannabis company in Northern California; Evan stayed in North Carolina. But they stayed in touch, got to know each other more, and Joe started noticing another side of Evan too. Wynne: There's, like, two sides: There's Evan and Melvin. Melvin is malicious Evan, or, like, the evil side inside of him that completely takes over, but I almost never see it. I see the aftermath of it, but he never lets me see full-blown. Brooks: If there were drugs around, Evan would do as much as he could. To Joe, it felt like he didn't understand how a sacrifice in the present might be beneficial in the future. [] Despite the lurking threat of Melvin, around 2016, Joe convinced Evan to move out to California to work for him at his cannabis company. They manufactured the oils in THC pens. Evan managed a team; Joe considered him his right-hand man. Joe had a strict 'no hard drugs' policy for his employees, and one day, Evan slipped. Wynne: So I had a drug-test kit on-site, so I told him, I said, Hey, we're going out back, and let's go piss in a cup. And he was like, Oh, oh, oh—you know, he started to freak out. And I tested him, and it was the thickest blue line for positive opiates ever, so I took him back to his room, and we loaded up everything he owned, and I said, I just can't carry you if you're gonna do that. It was excruciating, man; it was bad, and I knew it was gonna go worse. But I just couldn't have it go worse in my living room. I had a lot of people who were counting on us to make good decisions to feed their families. And it was one of the toughest days ever in my business career 'cause he was absolutely my best friend, and I felt like, that day, I felt like it was like signing his death warrant. Brooks: Once he separated from Joe, it didn't take Evan too long to make his way down to San Francisco. When Evan discovered that he could shoplift and sell what he stole and buy fentanyl all in the same place, he never left. That economy, the ease with which he could support his habit, is what kept him there. Joe went on to sell his company for a lot of money. He told me that after the sale, many of his employees got bonuses big enough for a down payment on a house. Evan, meanwhile, stole Tide Pods and slept on the street. Wynne: I would fight anything to change it. If there was any series of tasks I could go through to get my best friend back—even if I didn't get him back, even if he just got his life back—I would go through hell, 'cause like Evan, I love a challenging, knives-and-daggers, bleeding-in-the-streets fight for something that's worth it. And for my best friend who helped me—I'm living my dream life right now: I live in my dream home with the greatest partner I could ever have. My kid goes to a wonderful school and is blossoming. The car that me and Evan always talked about—the insanity car, the insane race car—it's in the garage, right? Brooks: (Laughs.) Wynne: And I've completed all life dreams, and I'm having to literally spend time making up new ones. I would do anything to help him get back his portion of the dream 'cause he helped me get mine. Brooks: Over the years, Joe has tried to give Evan back his portion of that dream. One time, he tracked Evan down in the Tenderloin, rented a penthouse suite for them both, with a Jacuzzi tub. I've seen the pictures of Evan looking like a wet dog in a tub he has single-handedly turned absolutely filthy. Joe tried, simply, to return that favor that Evan offered him when they met: a place to live. Wynne: I was just like, Hey, and I talked to him about it, and I said, Hey, I'm living alone on this land up north. The wife has not moved in. I was like, You could move in and go through horrific withdrawal and be a total piece of shit, and nobody would know except me. You can hang out. I'll put you on salary. You'll make a little money— Brooks: Yeah. Wynne: And he was like, he just literally said it: He's like, Yeah, I'm not done yet. (Laughs.) I'm not finished— Brooks: Not done yet? Wynne: Yeah. I'm not—I don't think I'm done yet. [] Brooks: Evan is just one of over 4,000 unsheltered people living in San Francisco. 'Unsheltered,' by this count, means living on the street, bus stations, parks, tents, and abandoned buildings. There are around 4,000 more in temporary shelters. Nationally, those numbers are even more grim. In 2024, the number of people experiencing homelessness on a single night was 771,480, the highest number ever recorded in the United States. To be very clear, 'I'm not done yet' is by no means a representative attitude of that whole. Unsheltered life is grueling—sometimes violent, and often deadly. Evan's willingness to leave that behind, or not, doesn't change that fact. There are many reasons why so many people in America are homeless, first among them being a lack of homes. It's no coincidence that things are so rough in one of the most expensive cities in America, while in places like West Virginia, which has its own opioid crisis and much cheaper housing, unsheltered homelessness is much more rare. [] Brooks: This year, San Francisco elected a new mayor, Daniel Lurie, an ultra-wealthy moderate in a city famous for its progressive politics. Daniel Lurie: Today marks the beginning of a new era of accountability and change at city hall, one that, above all else, serves you, the people of San Francisco. Brooks: The new mayor has his work cut out for him. San Francisco has become emblematic of what sometimes gets called a 'doom loop,' something that has happened in a lot of cities since the pandemic. In this loop, the office buildings empty out because of the pandemic and remote work. The stores and restaurants that served office workers are forced to shutter. Crime soars. Tax revenues fall. Public transportation is forced to cut back, so even fewer people come downtown. And on and on and on. Lurie is not a tough-on-crime mayor. He's not gutting the city's addiction and homelessness services. But the way he spoke about these problems, which was the first topic in his inauguration speech, was different. Lurie: I entered this mayor's race not as a politician, but as a dad who couldn't explain to my kids what they were seeing on our streets. Brooks: Lurie talks about what he could see—what the problem looks like, the effect of this constant onslaught of imagery on individual well-being. Lurie: Widespread drug dealing, public drug use, and constantly seeing people in crisis has robbed us of our sense of decency and security. Now, safety isn't just a statistic; it's a feeling you hold when you're walking down the street. That insecurity is— Brooks: One reason he might be using these terms is that, by the numbers, the unsheltered, visible homeless population in San Francisco is nearly the same as it was 10 years ago. What has changed is everyone else. It's hard to get exact numbers, but downtown San Francisco has lost about two-thirds of its daytime population—that's hundreds of thousands of commuters and office workers gone, which leaves just Evan and people like him. This, in short, might be called a visibility problem. People feel scared and maybe a little ashamed having to see so many people experiencing homelessness every day,which is an odd problem because for many people living on the street, a family member, or a loved one, is looking for them. [] Brooks: Visible to a city that sees too much of them. invisible to families who would love nothing more than to see them. That's after the break. [] Brooks: In late February, about six weeks before Evan would find himself in the hospital, I met Liz Breuilly. Liz is in her 40s and lives in the mountains outside of San Francisco. She lives a sort of double life. Her day job is in the medical field, and in her spare time, she does something else. Liz Breuilly: I'm not a private investigator. Nobody's paying me and nobody's licensing me to do the work that I do. Brooks: How would you describe what you do? Breuilly: (Laughs.) I feel like I started doing one thing, right, in the beginning, several years ago, and I feel like it's evolved into many different things. Brooks: Mm-hmm. Breuilly: Primarily, I would say that I locate missing persons that are either mentally ill, drug-addicted, and/or experiencing homelessness. Brooks: Liz finds missing people. She does this for free. I've asked her probably 25 times why she does this, and even to her, it's not clear. [] What is clear is that there's plenty of finding to do. There are around 1,400 people on the San Francisco Police Department's missing-persons list. And given that 'missing' just means that someone somewhere is looking for you—and has filed a police report—that number could be much higher. [] Brooks: Liz and others who spend time in the Tenderloin and encampments think that many of these people are here—which is strange, considering all of these disappeared people are far more visible than those of us spending our days in cars and offices, our nights in houses and apartments and bedrooms, while they're out on the street, exposed. In these first couple months of the new mayoral administration, the city has been experimenting with new solutions to this problem of unsheltered homelessness and open drug use. There have been mass arrests of dealers and users, pushing the jail population to levels that haven't been seen in years. One corner of the Tenderloin was turned into a triage center, which has since shut down, where people could go for coffee, to be connected with city services, and be offered a free bus ticket out of town, courtesy of the city. But there's no city program that does what Liz does. She's a sort of one-woman case study of a different approach, a radical approach, to this problem: reconnect lost people with their families and see if things change. Breuilly: Most of the time, when families get to me, they think their loved one is deceased. And so they're almost just looking for validation that that's the case, and it's usually not. I have located, I don't know, well over 200 people, maybe 2—I don't even know. It's been well over 200. Brooks: Evan was once one of Liz's lost people. Brooks: Do you remember who reached out to you about him the first time? Breuilly: Mm-hmm, yeah, his sister did. His sister did. He had been missing for several years, and she basically was, you know, said, This is my brother, and I heard what you do, and I'm wondering if you would help me. And I said, Sure. Brooks: There's no big secret to how Liz works. She asks families about their missing person, about their history of addiction and mental illness. She checks arrest records. She's in frequent contact with the city morgue. But mostly, she just adds pictures, like Evan's picture, to a folder in her phone, memorizes faces as best she can, and starts looking. And then, one day, there Evan was. Breuilly: So I roll down the window, and I scream, 'Evan! Evan!' (Laughs.) And he stopped, and he looked at me, and he ... (Laughs.) He basically was like, I don't know you. And I'm shouting at him from my car, and I said, No, you don't know me. I just need to talk to you for a second. And that's what started a, I don't know, four-year friendship, right, with him. Brooks: Did Evan call his sister when you— Breuilly: No. Brooks: —caught up with him? No? Breuilly: No, he did not. He just couldn't do it. Brooks: A lot of people who Liz finds don't call their families. Many of them do call but don't leave the street or go home. One person I met through Liz put it this way: 'I don't want to be missing, and I don't want to be found either.' So this limbo—not missing, not found—is where many of Liz's people stay for years. Breuilly: Every time they hear about someone overdosing or every time someone posts a video of a sheet over somebody, I'm getting a phone call from five parents asking me if I know who it is and if that's their kid. Brooks: Liz and I are driving around downtown San Francisco. A lot of open drug use and encampments that were concentrated in the Tenderloin are now more diffuse. In the Mission District, the alley behind the Everlane is packed with people smoking, injecting, laid out. Once in a while, a cleanup crew drives through, clears everyone out, hoses the alley down, and then everyone comes back. Breuilly: People were never spread out like this. I mean, there would be, in certain areas, I mean, at nighttime, there'd be 250, 300 people. And at nighttime, it still gets like that when the cops run around, but because the cops are really doing a lot of work with patrolling and doing all this stuff, it breaks them up. Brooks: Today, Liz has been looking for one guy in particular. A few weeks ago, he had asked her to find his mom, and Liz learned pretty quickly that his mom had passed away. Breuilly: So—but I also know that if I don't tell him, no one else will. Brooks: Yeah, 'cause nobody even knows, right? Breuilly: Yeah, and the only way to reach him is to do what we're doing today, which is going back out on the street to find him. Brooks: Late in the afternoon, she sees the guy she's looking for. Breuilly: I think that's him. I think that's the guy. Brooks: The man is wearing a red flannel and a corduroy jacket, with a set of neon ski goggles around his neck. He's half-standing out of his wheelchair, leaning over a row of trash cans, digging through the garbage and throwing things aside. Here's what will happen next: Liz will tell him the news—that his mother has passed away. He will cry and thank Liz for telling him. They'll smoke cigarettes together, even though Liz doesn't smoke cigarettes, for 10 minutes and then 20 minutes as he tries to adjust to this new reality. But before any of this can happen, there's a problem: The street we've pulled over in is narrow and behind us, suddenly, is a white Jaguar SUV with no one in the driver's seat. A self-driving car is stuck behind us, with traffic backing up behind it, preventing this volunteer bearer of the worst possible news from doing her job. Breuilly: Well, it's definitely a feeling of helplessness, right? This kid is very, very sick. Yes, am I glad I was able to give him the information and hopefully set him free a little bit from this persistent state of looking? But in the same respect, it's like I'm leaving somebody a little bit worse than in the situation they were in. And so it's deflating because, even me, who is really—I know the resources in the city. But right now, there's nowhere to take no space in shelters. He doesn't have a phone. I can't bring him home to my house. What am I gonna do? [] Brooks: It's not just San Francisco trying to ram a metaphorical self-driving car through a metaphorical alley of grief. Cities around the country are desperate to move on. Portland, Oregon, elected a new mayor who pledged to end unsheltered homelessness, after the state re-criminalized drug possession, after decriminalizing in 2021. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, elected a tough-on-crime mayor, and hired more police. Fremont, California, criminalized not just homeless encampments but 'aiding' and 'abetting' homeless encampments in any way. Everyone, from city leadership to regular people like Liz, seem desperate to move on and willing to try new things. Liz, in part, does this work because no one else will. Brooks: It's night now, and Liz is still out looking for a few missing people. And, tucked up behind the passenger-side visor in her car, Liz has a bundle of printed-out emails from Evan's family and a picture of his kid, a middle schooler now, playing the clarinet. At night, the plaza at 16th and Mission turns into a packed open-air market of stolen goods. The sellers, mostly are addicts, are hawking used clothes, kids' toys, tamales, phone chargers, a tricycle, and remarkably, tonight, an enormous slab of bacon. The shoppers are mostly low-income San Franciscans chasing a good deal. Behind them are the dealers, many of them young Honduran men in masks. Hundreds of people are walking around this dark patch of concrete. Cash moves in one direction: from the buyers to the sellers to the dealers. Standing on one corner, leaning against a street sign, is Evan. Evan: Every time, every time—like, the last, what, like, five times, it seems like—I've been like, I really need to see Liz today. I need to see Liz. Today, I literally kept thinking today— (Dog barks.) Evan: —I was like, I need to find her. I need to find her. Breuilly: Here I am. Brooks: This is the first time I met Evan, weeks before our conversation in the hospital. Evan is looking shaggy, but in relatively good health. And he swears that when he needs Liz, he can manifest her. Breuilly: How are you, though? Why did you manifest me? Evan: Because I'm, I have to figure something out. Breuilly: Okay, what've you got going? Brooks: Evan tells Liz that he hasn't been able to keep much food down for weeks. And his legs are infected and extremely swollen. Leg infections are common for fentanyl users like Evan due to contaminants in the supply and side effects from injection. It's why you see so many people in wheelchairs. Breuilly: How is it? Ooh, it … (Gasps.) Evan: Yeah— Breuilly: Evan! Evan: I know, that's what I'm saying. So I need, I need some, I need, I'm—I, with my leg and my stomach, I was like, I'm over this. Breuilly: Oh, wow. Evan: I'm so over it. I'm so over it. And I'm, like, I'm just ready— Breuilly: Pitiful. Evan: —for something to change, something— Breuilly: Yay! Evan: (Laughs.) Brooks: Liz, as Evan is speaking, is beaming. This was a full 180 from the 'I'm not done yet' Evan told Joe when he tried to get him off the street a few years ago. This was the first time in the years Evan and Liz have known each other that Evan has said he wanted to get off the street and get off fentanyl. Evan: Yeah, I'm falling apart, and I'm, in a way, I'm kind of glad. (Laughs.) 'Cause I'm—it's kind of making me turn to stop. Brooks: Yeah. [] Brooks: It might not sound like much, but when someone like Evan, who has been addicted to opioids for many, many years, says, 'I'm ready,' this is the moment that San Francisco's, and many cities', strategy to address this problem is built on. So here we were: Evan is ready to get off the street; the city of San Francisco is eager to help. Evan's readiness is supposed to trigger action—a chance to put a dent in this visible suffering that haunts the mayor and so many other San Franciscans. Plus, Evan's got Liz, who has a car and a phone. How hard could it be? That's next week. [] No Easy Fix is produced and reported by me, Ethan Brooks. Editing by Jocelyn Frank and Hanna Rosin. Engineering by Rob Smierciak. Fact-checking by Sam Fentress. Claudine Ebeid is the executive producer of Atlantic audio. Andrea Valdez is our managing editor. See you next week. Article originally published at The Atlantic Solve the daily Crossword
Atlantic
a day ago
- Politics
- Atlantic
Republicans Want to Redraw America's Political Map
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. Texas Republicans are planning to redraw their congressional districts this year, five years ahead of schedule. As with most other recent examples of norm-breaking behavior in American politics, the reason for this involves Donald J. Trump. Earlier this summer, the president asked Texas Governor Greg Abbott to dabble in a little gerrymandering to produce five more Republican-leaning districts in his state ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. In July, Abbott answered the call, summoning state lawmakers back to Austin for a 30-day special session, in part to begin working on a new district map. (The Texas legislature is in session only once every other year.) The state has been holding public hearings about the redistricting plan; this morning, state lawmakers released a proposed new map that could give the GOP 30 of the state's 38 House seats and help pad the party's slim majority. Not much appears to prevent Texas Republicans from doing this. States typically redraw their congressional districts every 10 years, after a new census is conducted. But the Texas GOP has gone off schedule before, way back in 2003, and the Supreme Court later ruled that the Constitution doesn't prohibit mid-decade redistricting. There's been plenty of resistance from Texas voters, who've filled public-hearing rooms in protest, and from high-profile politicians, who've appeared at rallies and raised money to fight the new map. The state's Democrats might consider breaking quorum, like they did in 2021 to block a vote on the issue, but GOP lawmakers probably have the leverage to force them back to the table. So far, things are going according to plan for Texas Republicans. They have the votes, and at least right now, they seem to have the political will. But just as important as whether Texas Republicans follow through with redistricting is how Democrats will respond. A gerrymandering war, in other words, could be on the way. 'We're saying to the Texans, 'You shouldn't be going down this path,'' former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said last week. 'You want to go down this path? We'll go down together.' The governors (and wannabe presidential contenders) Gavin Newsom of California and J. B. Pritzker of Illinois both suggested that they will consider redrawing their own state's districts to favor—or further favor —Democrats. Similar efforts are being considered in New York and Maryland too. Many experts—and Democrats themselves —have long argued that partisan gerrymandering is undemocratic and unfair. Their embrace of a gerrymandering tit for tat would reflect a new mindset that many Democrats have adopted in the second Trump era: that they should be just as politically ruthless as Republicans—and when the GOP goes low, the Democrats should meet them there. But two questions complicate this approach. The first is a logistical one: Can Democrats even do what they're threatening to? 'It's a state-by-state determination,' the election-law expert David Becker told me. Some states, such as California and New York, have independent redistricting commissions, which means that any attempt at partisan gerrymandering would require turning that power back over to politicians—a complicated and slow process. Other states, such as Illinois and Maryland, have laws allowing for a little more flexibility when redrawing maps. The other, more pressing question for Democrats is whether they should. They certainly may feel inclined to match the GOP's aggressive tactics, but extreme partisan gerrymandering carries a certain amount of risk, one that Texas Republicans would be undertaking, Becker said. To maximize Republican wins in more districts overall, they might have to reduce their margins in others, making some of those new districts vulnerable in a potential blue-wave election. All this partisan maneuvering is arguably a race to the bottom. Imagine a future in which every two years, states redraw their congressional maps: Voters would find themselves in a new district several times each decade, unable to get to know the people who are supposed to represent them. 'This would do incredible damage to faith in institutions' and add to the cynicism that so many Americans already feel about politics, Dan Vicuña, a senior policy director at Common Cause, told me. 'There appears to be a temptation to meet attacks on democracy with more attacks on democracy,' Vicuña added. It's up to Democrats to decide if they'll resist the urge. Here are three new stories from The Atlantic: To see how America unraveled, go back five years. Emil Bove is a sign of the times. The dangerous logic of CTE self-diagnosis Today's News Former Vice President Kamala Harris announced that she will not run for California governor in 2026, choosing to instead focus on supporting Democrats nationwide after her 2024 presidential loss. Harris didn't confirm any specific future plans. An 8.8-magnitude earthquake struck off Russia's Far East region yesterday, triggering tsunami waves that reached Hawaii, California, and Washington. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem confirmed this morning that the threat of a major tsunami had 'passed completely,' with no significant damage reported. The Federal Reserve held interest rates steady, despite pressure from President Donald Trump to lower rates, and warned about slowing growth. Officials have signaled potential cuts later this year, as inflation remains somewhat elevated and economic uncertainty increases. A Love Letter to Music Listings By Gabriel Kahane About a year and a half ago, I was scheduled to play a concert in Vermont when word came that the gig would be canceled because of an approaching nor'easter. I checked out of the hotel early, lobbed my suitcase into the rental car, and hightailed it to New York as menacing clouds darkened the rearview mirror. Brooklyn had been home for the better part of two decades, but after a move to the Pacific Northwest, I was returning as a tourist, and the show's cancellation augured a rare free evening in the city. There was just one problem: How was I going to figure out what to do with my night on the town? This used to be easy. More From The Atlantic Read. ' Preamble to the West,' a poem by Iris Jamahl Dunkle: 'Can't lick the witch wind that carries rumors / over shining aurora-lit prairies: / horror of what comes to light at the dawn / of the mind.' Take a look. These photos capture Guédelon Castle, in France, where builders use 13th-century techniques to re-create medieval craftsmanship. Play our daily crossword. P.S. Lots of you responded to last week's newsletter about finding simple moments of joy in your daily life, and I've loved reading your answers. I'll share two of my favorites here, as a bit of a prelude to a forthcoming, small-delights-focused issue of the Daily. Eric wrote in to say that he was inspired by the 2023 movie Perfect Days (which I need to watch!) and is now trying to incorporate a simple, daily gesture into his life: 'When I walk out my door to go to work, I try to remember to just stop, stand, look at my neighborhood and the sky, and smile—it may take only 10 seconds, but it begins the public version of my life on the right foot.' Another idea I liked, from Sarah, is buying one new thing at the grocery store every time you visit: 'It's a mini flavor adventure every trip, whether it turns out I'd buy that thing again or not.'
Atlantic
2 days ago
- Business
- Atlantic
Are Tax Cuts a Political Loser Now?
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. In theory, the proposition seems foolproof: Everyone hates the taxman and loves to keep their money, so a tax cut must be politically popular. But Republicans' One Big Beautiful Bill Act has tested the theory and found it wanting. A new Wall Street Journal poll shows that more than half of Americans oppose the law, which cuts taxes for many Americans while reducing government spending. That result is in line with other polling. The data journalist G. Elliott Morris notes that only one major piece of legislation enacted since 1990 was nearly so unpopular: the 2017 tax cuts signed by President Donald Trump. The response to the 2017 cuts was fascinating. Americans grasped that the wealthy would benefit most from the law, but surveys showed that large swathes of the population incorrectly believed that they would not get a break. 'If we can't sell this to the American people then we should be in another line of work,' Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said at the time. Americans agreed, giving Democrats control of the House a year later. If tax cuts are no longer political winners, that's a major shift in American politics. McConnell's sentiment reflected the orthodoxy in both parties for more than four decades. Ronald Reagan won the presidency in 1980 by promising to cut taxes, which he did—in both 1981 and 1986. The first cut was broadly popular; the second had plurality support. His successor, George H. W. Bush, told voters while campaigning, 'Read my lips: no new taxes,' and his eventual assent to tax hikes while in office was blamed in part for his 1992 defeat. The next GOP president—his son, George W.—made popular tax cuts. Democrats Bill Clinton and Barack Obama were careful to back higher income taxes only on the wealthy. Although separating Trump's own low approval from the way the public feels about any particular policy he pursues is difficult, the old consensus may just no longer hold. A few factors might explain the shift. First, thanks to 45 years of reductions, the overall tax burden is a lot lower than it was when Reagan took office, especially for wealthy taxpayers. In 1980, the top marginal individual tax rate —what the highest earners paid on their top tranche of income—was 70 percent; it had been as high as 92 percent, in 1952 and 1953. In 2024, it was 37 percent, applying only to income greater than $609,350. Since 1945, the average effective tax rate has dropped significantly for the top 1 percent and 0.01 percent of earners, while staying basically flat for the average taxpayer, according to the Tax Policy Center. The top corporate tax rate has also dropped from a high of 52.8 percent, in 1968 and 1969, to 21 percent, in 2024. Second, and not unrelatedly, income inequality has risen sharply. Although the gap between the wealthiest Americans and the rest of us has stabilized in the past few years, it remains well above historical averages. Voters aren't interested in subsidizing even-plusher lifestyles for the richest Americans. That's especially true when tax cuts are paired with cuts to government-assistance programs such as Medicare and Medicaid. Majorities of people in polls say Trump's policy bill will mostly help the rich and hurt the poor, and they are correct, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. Third, Republicans have argued for years that tax cuts are good policy because they generate enough growth to pay for themselves. This effect is known as the Laffer Curve, named after the influential conservative economist Art Laffer, and it allows supposed fiscal conservatives to justify tax cuts that increase the deficit in the short term. The problem is that it isn't true. Reagan's tax cuts didn't pay for themselves, nor did W. Bush's, nor did Trump's first-term cuts. These cuts won't either. Voters also consistently worry about the national debt and deficit, and today even liberal economists who wrote those concerns off in the past are sounding alarms, citing the cost of interest payments on the debt and concerns about the debt as a percentage of GDP. This points to a future problem: Even if voters have soured on tax cuts, that doesn't mean they are willing to endorse tax increases. As my colleague Russell Berman explained to me back in May, Republicans felt pressure to pass the budget bill, lest the first-term Trump tax cuts expire—which voters would hate, and which could hurt the economy. (Those cuts were time-limited as part of procedural chicanery.) And few politicians are willing to run on raising taxes. Most Republicans have signed a pledge not to raise taxes. Trump's tariffs are a tax, and he made them central to his campaign, but he also falsely insisted that Americans wouldn't pay their cost. On the other side of the aisle, Democrats have in recent cycles vowed to raise taxes on the very wealthy but generally rejected increases for anyone else. This math won't work out forever. At some point, Americans will have to reconcile the national debt, their desire for social services, and their love of low taxes. It will take a brave politician to tell them that. Here are four new stories from The Atlantic: Today's News A gunman killed four people and critically injured another in a shooting at a building in Midtown Manhattan yesterday evening. He was found dead, and police say a note in his wallet indicated that he may have targeted the NFL's headquarters. The Environmental Protection Agency proposed a revocation of its 2009 finding that greenhouse gases threaten public health, in an effort to end federal climate regulations under the Clean Air Act. The proposal seeks to remove emissions limits for cars, power plants, and oil and gas operations. Ghislaine Maxwell's lawyers said today that Maxwell, who was convicted of child sex trafficking and other crimes, would be willing to testify before Congress under certain conditions, including receiving immunity and the questions in advance. The House Oversight Committee rejected the request. Evening Read Homes Still Aren't Designed for a Body Like Mine By Jessica Slice Seven years ago, while sitting in my eighth-floor apartment with my toddler, I heard a voice over the intercom: Our building had a gas leak, and we needed to evacuate. A few weeks prior, a coffee shop down the street had exploded from a gas leak, killing two people and injuring at least 25. Terror struck me: Our elevators were powered down—and I use a wheelchair. I was trapped, unable to take myself and my child to safety. The fire department quickly determined that it was a false alarm. Still, I didn't stop shaking for hours. After a similar episode a few months later, my husband, David, and I bought a duffel bag the size of a human. We invited our neighbors over for pastries and asked if anyone would be willing to help carry me out during an emergency; my toddler could ride in the bag with me. A few neighbors agreed, but I couldn't ignore that my survival—and that of my child—was contingent on who else might be at home, and who might remember our request and be able to reach me. Eight months later, we moved out. We vowed never to live in a high-rise again. Yet nothing could free me from the indignities of seeking housing while disabled. More From The Atlantic Culture Break Watch. In 2022, David Sims recommended 10 must-watch indie films of the summer —each of which are worthy of as much fanfare as the season's blockbusters. When you buy a book using a link in this newsletter, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic.
Atlantic
3 days ago
- Politics
- Atlantic
How TV Warps Trump's Worldview
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. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is a cunning political operator, but even he can't weaken President Donald Trump's bond with television. The two leaders are at odds again over Gaza, now because of human-rights-organization warnings of widespread starvation. Under intense international pressure, Netanyahu has allowed some food aid into the region, but he insists that there is 'no starvation' in Gaza. This morning, before a meeting with U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer in Scotland, Trump was asked by reporters whether he agreed with Netanyahu's assessment. 'Based on television, I would say not particularly, because those children look very hungry,' Trump said. Later, he added: 'That's real starvation stuff. I see it, and you can't fake that.' Trump has arrived at the right conclusion in a terrible way. As president, Trump has access to the most powerful information-gathering network in the world, yet he takes his cues from what he watches on television. This helps him see the news from the same perspective as the general public, which has enabled his political success. But it also narrows his understanding, and it makes him highly susceptible to manipulation. In this case, the evidence suggests that Trump is right. Cindy McCain, the executive director of the UN's World Food Programme, has been warning for months of humanitarian disaster; WFP says one-third of Gazans have not eaten for multiple days in a row. Other organizations say Gaza is on the brink of famine. The Israeli government has defended its restriction of aid by saying that Hamas is pilfering food, but that doesn't address its responsibility to feed the civilian population caught up in the war. As Hussein Ibish recently wrote in The Atlantic, more than 1,000 Gazans may have been killed since May just trying to get food. But Trump had little to say on the matter until it broke through mass media, where images of skeletal adults and children with distended bellies make the point more viscerally than any statistics. The spread of videos and photos has helped force this story to the center of attention, just as previous footage helped turn American opinion against the war in Gaza. Less than a quarter of Americans now say Israeli military actions are ' fully justified.' Trump is attuned to—and responds to—this kind of change in public opinion more than he responds to the substance of underlying events. I often think about testimony from Hope Hicks, Trump's former press aide, during his trial in Manhattan related to hush money. Prosecutors asked Hicks how Trump reacted in 2016 when The Wall Street Journal reported on his alleged extramarital sexual relationship with Karen McDougal. Hicks couldn't recall, but added: 'I don't want to speculate, but I'm almost certain he would've asked me how's it playing.' Now, as president, he sometimes approaches news events not as things over which he has control but just like a guy watching from his easy chair, remote in hand: opportunities for punditry, not policy making. Trump's reverence of television interacts dangerously with his skepticism of anyone who represents independent expertise. 'I know more about ISIS than the generals do,' he said in 2015. Former aides say he doesn't read or pay attention during briefings, and he particularly distrusts the intelligence community, to the point that he has repeatedly taken Vladimir Putin's word instead. This means that despite access to high-quality information about what's going on in Gaza, he seems to really perk up only once it's on the tube. Such a narrow information stream is a problem, because TV is not a good source of information on its own; it should be consumed as part of a balanced news diet. That's especially true for the television channel that Trump seems to consume most, Fox News. (The liberal researcher Matt Gertz painstakingly documented the direct connection between Fox News segments and Trump tweets during his first term.) Various research over many years has found that Fox viewers are less informed than other news consumers. Trump's reliance on television news presents an easy target for anyone trying to influence him, as Gertz's research underscores. Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina adopted a strategy of going on TV to try to get messages to Trump. 'Have you conveyed this personally to the president?' a host once asked him during an interview. 'I just did,' Graham answered. Politicians seeking Trump's support have tried to use TV too. Representative Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican, ran ads in Florida when he was up for reelection in 2020 to get them in front of Trump. So have Trump opponents wishing to troll him. The fact that the president can be so easily persuaded is concerning enough on its own, and helps explain the policy whiplash during his two presidencies. But it's especially dangerous in an age of misinformation. I wrote in 2017 about how Trump's tendency to fall for fake news could cause him trouble. Eight years later, Trump has a White House staff less interested in saving him from himself, and technology has developed to allow for extremely convincing and realistic deepfakes. Trump's naive belief that you 'can't fake' what you see on TV is belied by the many tear-jerking but counterfeit AI images that circulate on Facebook. When it comes to Gaza, he has access to much more reliable evidence and warnings from human-rights experts, but those don't really seem to penetrate. News coverage is not the only obsession shaping, or warping, the administration's approach to Gaza. The president's inclination to view nearly everything as a potential real-estate deal inspired his bizarre suggestion to clear the strip and turn it into a luxury beachfront development, the 'Riviera of the Middle East.' And his poorly concealed fixation on winning the Nobel Peace Prize seems to animate many of his choices in the region. As an added benefit, a Nobel would play well on the news. Even as TV news is driving Trump's worldview, Trump's worldview is reshaping TV news. Having worked to dominate news coverage for years, Trump now wants to control it directly, as he and Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr seek unprecedented control over broadcasters such as CBS. Trump once considered starting his own TV network, but he and the nation's major broadcasters could instead create a closed loop with Trump taking his tips from channels that do what he says. Who needs facts when you can construct your own reality? Here are three new stories from The Atlantic: Today's News President Donald Trump announced that he will shorten the 50-day deadline he gave Russia two weeks ago to reach a peace deal in Ukraine. He warned of severe tariffs if no agreement is made soon. About half the country is under active heat advisories, affecting more than 198 million Americans, according to the National Weather Service; some temperatures are reaching higher than 100 degrees Fahrenheit. A federal judge extended a block on a policy in Trump's bill that would have banned for one year Medicaid funding to health-care providers offering abortions. Dispatches The Wonder Reader: Isabel Fattal explores how reading outdoors can transform a traditionally indoor activity into a form of outdoor play—and suggests great reads to bring along on your next adventure. The Weekly Planet: Rising summer heat is leading many Americans to stay indoors—and seems to be contributing to a rare form of seasonal affective disorder, Yasmin Tayag writes. Evening Read The WNBA Has a Good Problem on Its Hands By Jemele Hill For the first time in the nearly three-decade history of U.S. professional women's basketball, its star players have become household names. What would it take for them to get paid accordingly? While warming up recently for the WNBA All-Star Game, players wore T-shirts that read Pay us what you owe us, in reference to the ongoing collective-bargaining negotiations between the players and the league. Until that point, there had not been much buzz about the WNBA's negotiations, but the shirts had their intended result, taking the players' labor fight mainstream. More From The Atlantic Listen. Justin Bieber's new song, 'Daisies,' is not the summer anthem we expected—but it might be the one we need, Spencer Kornhaber writes. P.S. Back in May, I wrote about Trump's plans to accept a white-elephant 747 from Qatar: 'If there's no such thing as a free lunch, there's certainly no such thing as a free plane.' I was thinking primarily about what Qatar might expect in return, but in The New York Times, David E. Sanger and Eric Schmitt report on the more immediate costs of refitting the plane for its new role as Air Force One. No one in government will talk about these costs, Sanger and Schmitt report, but the military appears to be raiding nearly $1 billion from a missile-defense project to pay for Trump's pet project—all while achieving no savings on the plane. It's enough to make you wonder just how sincere Trump is about government efficiency.
