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Today:
Trump’s Running Tab in the Abrego Garcia Case
NEWS | 28 June 2025
They declared that Abrego Garcia would never come back and never go free in the United States. Abrego Garcia told officers that he was driving construction workers from St. Louis to Maryland on behalf of his boss. The highway-patrol officers reported the incident to federal authorities, but Abrego Garcia was not charged and was allowed to continue the journey. Her decision did not seem to bode well for the evidence and testimony the government is preparing against Abrego Garcia. Then it played a new card, warning that ICE could try to deport Abrego Garcia before the criminal case goes to trial.

Top Stories:
The College-Major Gamble
NEWS | 28 June 2025
I’ve spoken about generative AI replacing entry-level work with prominent lawyers, journalists, people who work in tech—the worry feels real to me. Will the purpose of higher education itself change somehow? Damon: You cover higher education in general. That reinforces why higher education needs to make the case for its value—how it teaches people to be more human, or what it’s like to live a productive life in a society. Damon: There are so many crisis points in American higher education right now.

World:
The Epitome of First-Person Pop
NEWS | 28 June 2025
The 28-year-old pop eccentric claims to have been hanging out in Washington Square Park “every day” of late. Her propulsive fourth album, Virgin, is set amid the heat-radiating pavement of the park and its downtown-Manhattan surroundings. But Virgin also reflects where Lorde finds herself in her late 20s, and where pop finds itself in the mid-2020s. Lorde sings about a transitional period of womanhood marked by pregnancy tests, gender-identity explorations, body-image issues, crises of confidence, and a shattering breakup with her partner of seven years. So much of recent pop music is like this—hyperspecifically self-involved—precisely because of Lorde’s influence.

Current Events:
What the Islamophobic Attacks on Mamdani Reveal
NEWS | 28 June 2025
Coming up with nondefamatory ways to attack Zohran Mamdani is not exactly an insurmountable task. Instead, many leading voices within the Republican Party have decided to criticize him on the grounds that, like 4.5 million other Americans, Mamdani is Muslim. Influential activists including Charlie Kirk and Laura Loomer invoked 9/11, unsubtly implying that all Muslims, even secular ones like Mamdani, are jihadists. In 2016, 88 percent of Trump’s voters were white, according to a Pew Research Center survey of validated voters. Replicating the formula that won the 2024 election would mean turning Mamdani into a symbol of out-of-touch urban progressivism.

News Flash:
How Squid Game Lost Itself
NEWS | 28 June 2025
This article contains spoilers through the Season 3 finale of Squid Game. Ignore all the gore and death, and Squid Game might as well have been a show for children. The VIPs’ unpopularity hasn’t stopped Squid Game from bringing them back for its third and final season, however. Read: The agony of indulging in Squid Game againThe show is still concerned with money, of course. The finale leaves tantalizing threads that open the door for a possible new iteration of Squid Game.

Sponsored:
SmartSync Data Sync App
SPONSORED | 28 June 2025
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:
The Three Marine Brothers Who Feel ‘Betrayed’ by America
NEWS | 28 June 2025
At any moment, the same president who sent an emboldened ICE after their father could also command them into battle. This was in addition to the 500,000 American Latinos of Mexican and Puerto Rican descent who enlisted and fought for their country, including my own grandfather. During the Vietnam War, Latinos were about 5 percent of the U.S. population, but they accounted for an estimated 20 percent of the 60,000 American casualties. In interviews with news agencies, Alejandro said that he and his brothers “feel hurt; we feel betrayed.” Their father taught them to “respect this country, thank this country, and then that led us to join the Marine Corps and kind of give back to the country and be thankful,” he said. How can any Latinos feel secure if “looking” Hispanic or speaking Spanish or even going to Home Depot puts you at risk?

Breaking:
The Invisible City of Tehran
NEWS | 28 June 2025
However briefly, a city within a city, long governed through layers of concealment and spectacle, lay exposed. After that first arrest, and in the years that followed, I began to understand just how extensive the invisible city really was. Only after my release in 2010 did the full topology of the invisible city begin to reveal itself to me—slowly, then all at once. Read: A cease-fire without a conclusionThe invisible city, by definition, was designed to remain unseen. For a few seconds, the invisible city was visible: not metaphorically, but with terrible literalness.

Trending:
How Trump Lives With the Threat of Iranian Assassination
NEWS | 28 June 2025
At least twice in 2024, federal authorities gave private briefings to campaign leaders on the evolving Iranian threat and adjusted Trump’s protection. “Big threats on my life by Iran,” Trump posted on social media last September. In response, the Iranian official said, “we have already spent a lot of money … so money’s not an issue,” Shakeri told the FBI. In 2022, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei featured an animated video on his website that depicts a targeted assassination of Trump by Iranian drones as he golfs near his Mar-a-Lago estate. The unclassified November 2024 report pointed to another alleged Iranian assassination plot that members of the government have separately said they believe included Trump.

This Just In:
America’s Coming Smoke Epidemic
NEWS | 28 June 2025
Instead, they tried exposing mice to wildfire smoke in a controlled lab environment. What cumulative smoke exposure can do to a body and mind remains largely a mystery, but the few studies that do exist point to nothing good. How much does anyone know about the long-term consequences of exposure to smoke or, worse, the long-term consequences of long-term exposure to smoke? And unlike our relatively steady exposure to ambient air pollution, exposure to wildfire smoke is spiky, coming in bursts, with pauses in between. The smoke is coming for us all—each of us is now more likely to encounter it in the coming years.

Today:
The Cure for Guilty Memories
NEWS | 28 June 2025
In the novel, memories, like money, need to be kept in circulation for the health of society. The Antidote’s characters tend to struggle with describing their memories to anyone but the Antidote—and to the reader. Only when Russell puts these four characters into proximity do they start getting some of their memories out into the air. The more we share our memories, they realize, the less they burden us—and, crucially, the more we can know ourselves through them. If the happy memories some people deposit in the Antidote’s vaults are treasures, then so, in a sense, are the ones that could have brought justice.

Top Stories:
The U.S. Military’s Loyalty Is to the Constitution, Not the President
NEWS | 28 June 2025
If we allow the president to politicize the military, that will undermine the trust of the American people in our national security. In 1878, President Rutherford Hayes signed the Posse Comitatus Act, which bars the military from doing the work of law-enforcement officers. Our service members swear an oath of loyalty to the Constitution, not to the president. They are our national security. During that long history, Americans have learned that presidential parades do not define their military; what does is their respect for the military’s mission of protecting national security.

World:
Coming Soon: A New Season of Autocracy in America
NEWS | 28 June 2025
The following is a transcript of the trailer:Frank Luntz: I know you’re gonna get into some stuff—some pretty heavy stuff—but this is Garry Kasparov. Kasparov: I’m trying to be diplomatic. And you should know, I’m writing that roadmap as we speak. Kasparov: I’m Garry Kasparov, former world chess champion and lifetime activist for democracy. Join me this summer for a new season of Autocracy in America, from The Atlantic.

Current Events:
Trump’s Deportation Goals Are Unrealistic
NEWS | 28 June 2025
The complaint was made by Erez Reuveni, a fired DOJ lawyer, and first reported by The New York Times this week. (By way of reminder, Bove got here by serving as one of Trump’s personal lawyers in some of his many criminal cases.) The allegations against Bove are what my former colleague James Fallows took to describing during the first Trump administration as shocking but not surprising. Even though the Trump administration continues to deny that it has refused to obey court orders, the reality is that it has already done so. This would be callous and morally abhorrent under any circumstances, but given the notable cases of the Trump administration deporting people who are legally protected, including Abrego Garcia, it is especially terrifying.

News Flash:
Tulsi Gabbard Chooses Loyalty to Trump
NEWS | 28 June 2025
That assessment remains unchanged, a U.S. official told us. It’s fitting, then, that Trump would lock arms with Gabbard, whose service in Iraq and Kuwait is a touchstone of her criticism of American foreign policy. “My impression is one of great disorientation and anxiety in the workforce,” a former intelligence official told us. “We’re through the looking glass.”The perception that Gabbard’s office is toeing a political line extends beyond the NIC. In a statement provided to us by Gabbard’s office, the vice president stressed her MAGA bona fides, calling her “a veteran, a patriot, a loyal supporter of President Trump, and a critical part of the coalition he built in 2024.”Read: Trump changed.