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Today:
A Dangerous New Attack on Press Freedom
NEWS | 07 May 2026
The Trump administration’s war against freedom of the press has reached a startling new low. But if Patel’s bureau has launched a criminal investigation into a reporter, employing the power of the federal government, that would be a significant escalation. You’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t.”It would be notable if the Trump administration is launching a criminal probe focusing on a member of the press. If the report is true, Patel appears to have launched a criminal investigation into a reporter simply because he was embarrassed by her reporting. Even for an administration with an awful record on press freedom, and a bureau with a history of unsavory actions by directors, this is a dangerous step.

Top Stories:
The FBI Is Reportedly Investigating a Leak to an Atlantic Writer
NEWS | 07 May 2026
MS NOW reported that there is concern among FBI agents assigned to the investigation, citing two people familiar with the matter who were granted anonymity. Leak investigations are typically focused on government officials, not on journalists, with the goal of avoiding scrutinizing the reporters’ private communications, notes, or other work material. You’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t.”The FBI spokesperson Ben Williamson denied the investigation and said in a statement, “This is completely false. Patel denied the details in the story and sued The Atlantic and Fitzpatrick for defamation, seeking $250 million in damages. The Atlantic has defended its reporting and called the lawsuit “meritless.” White House aides have said that President Trump continues to support the FBI director, although he has not mounted a vociferous defense of Patel.

World:
The Perverse Tyranny of a Perfect Transcript
NEWS | 07 May 2026
Putting a perfect GPA in reach of so many students perversely deters them from taking classes that could threaten it. If educators want to revive academic risk-taking, engagement, and inquisitiveness on college campuses, then we should liberate our students from the tyranny of the impeccable transcript. “It would be flippant to say that [Harvard] grades are useless, but they’re almost useless,” a law-school dean has said. In February we unveiled our proposal to cap flat A grades to around 33 percent across Harvard College. (A Yale committee has also recommended a grade cap, though it would set the average grade to a B.

Current Events:
Today’s Atlantic Trivia: New Colors
NEWS | 07 May 2026
Today’s quiz is sizzling and ready for you to dig in. Show Hint The districts look like thin, wavy strips. Answer Submit Previous Question Next QuestionAnd by the way, did you know that scientists at UC Berkeley last year discovered a new color? The shade, “olo,” does not exist in nature, and viewers can see it only when a precisely aimed laser activates cone cells in their retina. Ross Andersen, in an Atlantic article from last spring, reports that it’s like an intense teal—but you’ll have to see for yourself.

News Flash:
A Brutal First for the Cruise Industry
NEWS | 07 May 2026
Norovirus loves a cruise ship. Over the weekend, health officials contacted the World Health Organization to report a cluster of serious illnesses aboard a cruise ship bound for South Africa. At least one type of hantavirus may be capable of limited person-to-person transmission, in situations involving close and prolonged contact—the sort that a cruise ship certainly encourages. The perils of cruise ships became painfully apparent during the early days of COVID, when the coronavirus zoomed through hundreds of people aboard the Diamond Princess. Neither Niranjan nor Hanage thinks the takeaway is to swear off cruise ships.

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SmartSync Data Sync App
SPONSORED | 07 May 2026
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Latest:
Yet Another Wasted Met Gala
NEWS | 07 May 2026
If you tuned in to the official livestream of the Met Gala red carpet last night, however, you would have learned none of this. Read: The real game changer at the Met GalaShallow chitchat is the lingua franca of red-carpet Q&As—but the Met Gala is the rare venue where the question “Who are you wearing?” can yield actual substance beyond just a name, and more so this year than in the recent past. In a speech before the evening began, Anna Wintour, the Vogue editorial director and Met Gala co-chair credited with transforming the event into the A-list pageant it is today, emphasized that the evening was an opportunity to showcase the work that goes into fashion—work, she said, that included the efforts of hairdressers, drivers, and caterers, who make the Met Gala itself possible. Once she hit the carpet, Wintour noted that the livestream also encourages tourists to visit the Met in person. (This is not the first time that the Met Gala has met in-person pushback; pro-Palestine demonstrators similarly stood out front, and off camera, last year.)

Breaking:
Progressive Activists Are Sometimes on the Wrong Side of History
NEWS | 07 May 2026
The theme was that progressive activists inherently occupy the right side of history. Equality was not handed down by benevolent leaders, he suggested, but demanded by brave activists who defied social condemnation. The actual argument made by Peterson and others is for deference not to student activists in general but specifically to progressive student activists. Progressives believe that activists are on the right side of history, because they choose to remember the causes that fared well. The assumption that progressive activists are inherently on the side of justice elevates them above the category of mere political actors into a kind of priestly class whom others can only learn from, and can never criticize.

Trending:
Judicial Supremacy Has Arrived
NEWS | 07 May 2026
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 did not die all at once, or by one means. It is something more ambitious and insidious—a consolidation of judicial supremacy, achieved by turning those amendments against the congressional authority they were meant to confer. The 1965 Voting Rights Act came apart in two stages before Callais. Congress—in the Voting Rights Act, its reauthorizations, and a crucial 1982 amendment—repeatedly and unequivocally rejected the notion that vote-dilution claims must rest on provable intentional discrimination. By allowing consideration of the effects of redistricting on Black voters, the resurrected Gingles factors—designed to give the Fifteenth Amendment teeth—would now run headfirst into a Fifteenth Amendment problem.

This Just In:
Photos: The Rescue of Timmy the Whale
NEWS | 07 May 2026
Bernd Wüstneck / DPA / GettyPontoons, two cranes, and more equipment for rescuing the stranded humpback whale arrive by truck at the port of Kirchdorf on the Baltic Sea island of Poel on April 16, 2026. The equipment was set up to be used in a new rescue attempt for the humpback whale stranded off the island.

Today:
What Adding Race to BMI Can Do
NEWS | 07 May 2026
But researchers and clinicians still rely deeply on both BMI and race, in some cases at the same time. When screening for type 2 diabetes, for instance, race-sensitive BMI cutoffs identify more at-risk people than either factor alone. “But we don’t really have much else to guide us.”For now, several researchers told me, race-sensitive BMI risk cutoffs could stand to be used more widely, not less. BMI cutoffs that take into account race and ethnicity may be short-lived, as researchers develop better tools and protocols to help people identify and manage chronic metabolic conditions. Across the board, the researchers I spoke with told me that they understand the serious limitations—and major risks—of overusing or misusing BMI and race, separately or together.

Top Stories:
The Secret of Elizabeth Strout’s Appeal
NEWS | 07 May 2026
She’s not a minimalist, but Elizabeth Strout does more with less than any writer I can think of. Strout’s hero, Artie Dam, is a high-school history teacher, so it comes as no surprise when he eventually writes the word FASCISM on the blackboard. Always eager to exploit tension among her characters, Strout sets up a contrast between the meals Artie shares with two friends. Read: Elizabeth Strout on Louise Glück’s poem “Nostos”With Ken, Artie opens up easily: “Boy, I talk a lot with you. I just yak away.” When he tells him a momentous secret he’s shared with no one else, Ken feels privileged to be his confidant.

World:
June 2026 Issue
NEWS | 07 May 2026
The Atlantic DailyGet our guide to the day’s biggest news and ideas, delivered to your inbox every weekday and Sunday mornings. See more newslettersEmail Address Sign UpYour newsletter subscriptions are subject to The Atlantic's Privacy Policy and Terms and Conditions.

Current Events:
The House of Representatives Is Turning Into the Electoral College
NEWS | 07 May 2026
In a few years, almost every seat in the House of Representatives could be safely occupied by a hyper-partisan incumbent, beholden only to primary voters. The chamber could become something like the Electoral College: Whoever wins a state gets all of its representatives, and the winners are there just to vote for or against the president. Trump’s successful push to get Republican states to do off-cycle redistricting this year already blew past one long-standing impediment to gerrymandering maximalism. Could California, a state with more registered Republicans than any other, really send zero Republican representatives to Congress? Because there are 435 total seats in the House of Representatives, this would leave the whole country with only 26 competitive districts.

News Flash:
For Ibram X. Kendi, It’s Nazis All the Way Down
NEWS | 07 May 2026
Instead, he gives us something less helpful: another conspiracy theory. In Kendi’s telling, the Great Replacement theory is itself a mask, one covering an ism we already know and loathe: Nazism. The story of replacement has no basis in reality, Kendi writes. Yet Kendi argues that the Great Replacement theory is not just the most recent manifestation of racial anxiety, but something far broader, more all-encompassing, and more manufactured. The “great replacement politicians and theorists have misrepresented, maligned, and villainized me—­and many intellectuals like me—­as anti-­White, as ‘racist,’” he writes.