Wiki News Live
Today:
A Freedom 250 Event That Actually Worked
NEWS | 25 August 2026
The event involved 25 cars zipping around a number of D.C.’s museums and historic buildings at worryingly high speeds—147 times. Somewhere among the vrooms, I realized that this was not like the other Freedom 250 productions I had attended, like the Great American State Fair with its drab triumphal arch and the Freedom Trucks with their selective history. And the Freedom 250 Grand Prix certainly had oomph to it. In other words, this didn’t feel like another Freedom 250 event that was more about Trump than about America. Ultimately, a race is a race, and many in the crowd appeared to be there simply for the sport.

Top Stories:
What a Bicentennial Baby Knows
NEWS | 25 August 2026
Thirteen seconds after midnight on July 4, 1976, Karen Steele was born in Montclair, New Jersey, and was anointed the first “bicentennial baby.” Newspaper articles followed. Any baby born that year was treated like they had emerged playing the fife and drums. Being a bicentennial baby was not anything I ever thought about all that much. Oh, you’re a bicentennial baby too, one of us would say to the other, smiling dumbly. My point is that bicentennial babies, regardless of their individual circumstances, have all been strapped into the first row of this ride.

World:
The Trump Comedians Are Tired
NEWS | 25 August 2026
The first Trump administration was a boon for comedians and for television. Late-night comedy adopted Jon Stewart’s old playbook, trading quippy gags for more full-throated (and sometimes outright defiant) critiques of government. They’re sick of the shtick—and they’re skeptical about the function of political comedy in a world that’s arguably beyond parody. “All the majors that continue to just throttle him and carry on about him—move on to other people!” Baldwin told me. Terhune’s enthusiasm has certainly outlasted that of many of his peers, so maybe on-screen political comedy is just in need of new subjects.

Current Events:
The Gun Lobby’s Most Cynical Move Yet
NEWS | 25 August 2026
After each one, I reached out to the National Rifle Association, the National Shooting Sports Foundation (the gun industry’s trade association), and other organizations that the nation’s gun lobby comprises for their response. But the gun lobby had another response to school shootings behind the scenes—one I didn’t know about at the time. Over the many years that I reported on gun violence, the gun lobby’s enormous campaign spending was no secret. (The districts that the study looked at represent only a subset of the gun lobby’s overall election spending.) The Stanford study is a compelling reminder of how far the gun lobby will go to block any efforts to protect our children.

News Flash:
What It Takes to Reclaim Your Attention Span
NEWS | 25 August 2026
Beck: Do you have a sense in your mind of when you noticed that you feel like your attention span was getting worse? Obviously, that anxiety points to the fact that I want to have a different relationship with my phone, right? You need to be on Instagram to see this and that, and there’s just muscle-memory things, things you’re used to. I think in our frustration with our attention span sometimes, people, myself included, will demonize the phone as a device. Like, how are you feeling about—where’s your relationship at between you and your phone right now?

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SPONSORED | 25 August 2026
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Latest:
An American City, With Troops on Its Streets
NEWS | 25 August 2026
The sight of military troops patrolling in a peaceful American city would once have been strange, if not outright alarming. D.C. has now entered its second year with federal troops on its streets. Early this month, the D.C. National Guard’s interim commanding general told reporters that Guardsmen had administered the drug 325 times. Although Guard troops are the visual signature of Trump’s seizure of control over the city, they comprise the least energetic component of the task force. After a year of federal presence, D.C. is suspended somewhere between the routine and the outrageous.

Breaking:
Iran Unleashed
NEWS | 25 August 2026
It will now discover what Iran unleashed looks like. This alone was enough to alter the balance of leverage between Iran and the United States. Rather, it designated Iran as the only actor other than the weak Oman, and it even allowed Iran to charge nations for safe passage after 60 days. For a while, the United States and Iran engaged in tit-for-tat strikes, culminating in intense American attacks in mid-July. Neither Pakistan nor Turkey regards Iran as a major threat; Pakistan, like Iran, has close relations with China; Israel regards Turkey as a regional threat second only to Iran.

Trending:
The Hatred That Broke American Politics
NEWS | 25 August 2026
That ambiguity has placed them, again and again, at the center of America’s battles over free speech and equal protection. Americans appear to face an impossible choice between protecting free speech and safeguarding equal rights. One of them banned “inherently divisive concepts” such as critical race theory from classrooms in the name of free speech. Everyone claimed the mantle of free speech while denouncing the other side as perpetrators of hate speech. This article was adapted from James Loeffler’s forthcoming book, Exceptional Hatred: Antisemitism and the Fight over Free Speech in Modern America.

This Just In:
How to Lose a Trade War
NEWS | 25 August 2026
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has much more political permission to accept pain from a U.S.-Canadian trade war than Trump does. Trump’s theory of his trade war, like his theory of his Iran war, is that the bigger bully always wins. As Trump has declared over and over again, his ultimate goal in this trade war is to add Canada as a 51st state. Against Canada, Trump is fighting a trade war that very few Americans support, under leadership that most Americans reject, to achieve results that virtually all Americans would dismiss as pointless if not crazy. Against Trump, Canadians are fighting a trade war that the great majority support, under leadership that commands broad assent, to defend their independence and self-respect.

Today:
How Relationships Can Change Your Personality
NEWS | 25 August 2026
“Some researchers have found that when that happens, the art tends to look conspicuously like the artist,” she wrote. Researchers aren’t in agreement about why exactly people in relationships become more alike as time goes on. Today’s newsletter rounds up stories about how relationships of all kinds can influence your personality. “I gave myself three months to change my personality” : The results were mixed, Olga Khazan wrote in 2022.: The results were mixed, Olga Khazan wrote in 2022. What your favorite personality test says about you: Are you a Myers-Briggs person, an Enneagram person, or something else?

Top Stories:
The President’s Focus
NEWS | 25 August 2026
The national debt reached $40 trillion this week, but the president’s attention seemed directed elsewhere. Last night on Washington Week With The Atlantic, panelists joined to discuss Donald Trump’s recent focuses, and more. At a rally for Darline Graham in South Carolina last night, Trump opened the event and spoke about the White House ballroom, devoting several minutes to his project. “Not a day really goes by that he doesn’t talk about the ballroom or the Reflecting Pool or the Kennedy Center or the gold statues,” Matt Viser, a staff writer at The Atlantic, argued last night. Joining the guest moderator Atlantic staff writer Vivian Salama to discuss this and more: Zolan Kanno-Youngs, a White House correspondent at The New York Times; Mary Louise Kelly, the host of All Things Considered on NPR; Michelle Price, a White House reporter at the Associated Press; Viser.

World:
So a C-List Celebrity Is Selling Your House?
NEWS | 25 August 2026
She could go into real estate. Less than a decade later, Chrishell Stause, a star of the Netflix hit Selling Sunset, detailed her youth growing up homeless; entering real estate, in part, allowed her to finally find financial stability. In fact, the hardest part about starting work as a real-estate agent is knowing enough people who might want you to sell their house. After all, many people who hire real-estate agents choose somebody based on referrals from friends and family. Instead of lurking in railroad stations, they are touting their roster of homes on TikTok, making real estate look far more effortless than it actually is.

Current Events:
Why Do Rich Kids Love Socialism?
NEWS | 25 August 2026
Gordillo is only the most recent prominent leftist to be accused of being a silver-spooned elite masquerading as a working-class radical. Until Graham Platner’s Maine Senate campaign exploded in disgrace, Platner was routinely cast as a son of privilege playing Carhartt dress-up. According to the Ehrenreichs, the 20th-century professional class played a crucial role, implicitly and sometimes explicitly, in maintaining the public’s faith in the economic system. The present growing embrace of leftist politics among the professional class suggests that the PMC is no longer especially enthusiastic about that mission. Among college-educated Democrats, support for socialism was 71 percent.

News Flash:
Donald Trump Told Me What He Really Thinks About ‘Theater Kids’
NEWS | 25 August 2026
Theater kid has become a curious little term of abuse on the right. Donald Trump is an inveterate theater kid. Yet the actual work of being a theater kid demands a toughness Trump plainly prized. If theater kid means somebody with an instinct for showmanship, then he is an odd figure for the prosecution. What is plain is that Trump was right 22 years ago: The theater business is tough.