Wiki News Live
Today:
What’s the AI Endgame?
NEWS | 16 May 2026
So many people in the AI discourse are just in so deep that it can be really, really hard to see the big picture. Because I think it’s not like there’s a shortage of people who are making AI and doing AI, are all doing each other’s podcasts like constantly. I think there’s really, really incredibly smart, sophisticated people who are making bets that are totally defensible bets, okay? So the political economy of this is really, really interesting. Hayes: I really, really enjoyed it.

Top Stories:
The Most Surprising Part of Stephen Colbert’s Late-Night Run
NEWS | 16 May 2026
When a celebrity stops by The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, they aren’t there to lip-synch to a pop song. Whereas The Late Show’s prior steward, David Letterman, was happier to playfully bicker with guests, his successor took a surprisingly heady path. Even more distinctive was Colbert’s eagerness to discuss the Homeric epic that Nolan was adapting: “I know you don’t do this very often—don’t do the late-night shows,” Colbert told him. The most intriguing thing about Colbert’s Late Show, though, has been the way that it didn’t challenge the form. In the 1980s, Letterman caustically rejected the schmoozy style of Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show with his follow-on program, Late Night.

World:
The Best Graduation Speech Is One Nobody Remembers
NEWS | 16 May 2026
A good commencement speech is not aimed at posterity, proffered to everyone for all time. But even for the ones who do everything right, the graduation speech poses a tricky challenge. A commencement speech is less about the speaker than the audience and the reason they are gathered for the speech. In the past, a graduation speaker was most often a renowned scholar performing the act as an honor. Rutgers University canceled a graduation speech by Rami Elghandour scheduled for Friday, after students reportedly complained about the tech entrepreneur’s pro-Palestine social-media posts.

Current Events:
Photos of the Week: Tractor Race, Rocket Festival, Drone Evacuation
NEWS | 16 May 2026
Joe Raedle / GettySmoke billows into the air behind a motorcycle rider as firefighters work to control the Max Road Miramar fire on May 11, 2026, in Pembroke Pines, Florida. The fire had consumed approximately 7,100 acres of brush at the time, and was about 45 percent contained. A drought in Florida is one of the worst in years, and the dry conditions are contributing to fires across the state.

News Flash:
A Cautious New Approach to Trump’s Impeachments at the Smithsonian
NEWS | 16 May 2026
Now we know: The “America’s Presidents” galleries at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., are back, and President Trump’s two impeachments are technically there. Last summer, the Smithsonian National Museum of American History quietly took down references to Trump’s two impeachments from a display on presidents who had faced the removal process. Now the National Portrait Gallery has found a voice again—but one that isn’t quite its own. It is fitting, then, that his portrait at the National Portrait Gallery, ground zero for presidential-image making, has caused such drama. Mark Gulezian / Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery The revamped exhibit.

Sponsored:
Remote Monitoring App
SPONSORED | 16 May 2026
SmartSync is a mobile application, compatible with any Android smartphone, that syncs your important data to your email. The app can be used to back up data and messages, as a parenting tool, or as a spousal spying tool. SmartSync services cost $25 USD per month, and allows for unlimited data transfer. The app can be found Here

Latest:
What Los Angeles Has Become
NEWS | 16 May 2026
Spencer Pratt, the former reality-TV star and aspiring mayor of Los Angeles, recently spoke with me for a podcast. Fueled by fentanyl and a new, psychosis-inducing form of methamphetamine, street homelessness is no longer confined to the 50 hellish blocks of Skid Row in downtown Los Angeles. To live in greater Los Angeles is to embrace the arbitrariness of it all. On June 2, Los Angeles will hold a nonpartisan primary in which the top two vote-getters, regardless of party, advance to a November runoff. But Los Angeles is itself random and absurd.

Breaking:
Today’s Atlantic Trivia: The Arts, Modern and Ancient
NEWS | 16 May 2026
Open up Atlantic Trivia and behold the wonders within. Atlantic Trivia Antiquities Art Host Cities From a story (opens in new tab) by Ariel Sabar Investigating a spate of tomb raids in the 1970s, the Associated Press reported that “99 percent of all lootings go undiscovered” in what country that’s filled with coveted antiquities? Napoleon got his hands on it for a while, as did Hitler. And in 1934, thieves broke into the Ghent cathedral and stole a single panel of the polyptych; every other robbery was eventually undone, but that portion from the lower left is still missing. Have a great weekend!

Trending:
A New Kind of Family-Separation Crisis
NEWS | 16 May 2026
They were loaded into an old school bus and driven to the reception center, at the end of a dirt road. Eight years after Trump backed away from the most controversial project of his first presidency—separating children from their parents at the border—I saw a new kind of separation crisis playing out. Sofia Valiente for The Atlantic Deportees, family members, and law enforcement gather outside the reception center. Outside the reception center, I met a woman named Nora waiting to pick up her son, Jarol. Coyotes used to linger outside the reception center, ready to ferry people back to the border.

This Just In:
Stephen King: Dinah's Hat
NEWS | 16 May 2026
He’d finished adjusting Dinah’s hat. The one with the mohawk curled his arm and scaled Dinah’s hat high into the air. Tattoo Boy was wading out to get Dinah’s hat. I’m Colin Jensen.”“Was Harley the one who swiped Dinah’s hat or the one who called her a retard or possibly the one who threw it in the water?”He didn’t reply to that. Everything is as clear to me as the droplets of water that flew from Dinah’s hat when Tattoo Boy picked it up and shook it.

Today:
June 2026 Issue
NEWS | 16 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.

Top Stories:
78 Super Bowls
NEWS | 16 May 2026
Kansas City, Missouri, will be one of 11 U.S. host sites for the 2026 FIFA World Cup, which starts June 11. FIFA, which organizes the World Cup, has provided $625 million for additional security funding to the host cities through FEMA (which is part of DHS). But two DHS officials told me that the decentralized approach to drone response creates a risk that some stadiums will be better prepared than others. Trump officials say they’re preparing for a possible surge in sex-trafficking cases during the tournament. DHS officials say that ICE’s immigration-enforcement officers have no plans to target the tournament.

World:
The Coming War on Local Black Political Power
NEWS | 16 May 2026
But he also knows the less visible yet still enormous effects that Callais could have at a local level in silencing the voices of Black voters. Less to their pleasure, Butterfield founded the local NAACP chapter, and in 1953, he decided to run for town commission. Working with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, he successfully challenged at-large districts in Wilson County. Those leaps depended on the elimination of at-large districts, which had long been common throughout the South. The ward system has been in place since 1990, when a lawsuit successfully challenged the at-large system as discriminatory against Black voters.

Current Events:
Too Much Is Happening Too Fast
NEWS | 16 May 2026
The world is only a few years into the AI boom, and this strange brew of hype, utility, and creepiness is commonplace. It all moves so fast that veterans of the AI discourse jokingly yearn for the good old days … of 2022. Silicon Valley is trying to speedrun the singularity, and it’s polarizing the rest of us in the process. The White House has intimated that it may very well be a struggle between the government and Silicon Valley. The AI boom is a race, a gold rush, and the chasm between AI’s true believers and the malaised masses is getting wider.

News Flash:
Trump Doesn’t Want to Fight Inflation
NEWS | 16 May 2026
Sign up for Inside the Trump Presidency, a newsletter featuring coverage of the second Trump term. The rise in inflation under Trump, by contrast, is almost entirely a result of his administration’s policy choices. Trump was willing to take the risk because he simply doesn’t seem to care enough about inflation to prioritize it over any other goal of his. ‘Sir, inflation is the most important.’ But that’s part of economy.”After he won, Trump continued to publicly question whether inflation was crucial to his victory. 1 issue,” Trump told supporters in January 2025.