Category: Politics

How Did America’s Weirdest, Most Freedom-Obsessed State Fall for an Authoritarian Governor?

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Illustrations by Brandon Celi This article was featured in One Story to Read Today, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a single must-read from The Atlantic, Monday through Friday. Sign up for it here. In the course of a single month this year, the following news reports emanated from Florida: A gun enthusiast in Tampa built a 55-foot backyard pool shaped like a revolver, with a hot tub in the hammer. A 32-year-old from Cutler Bay was arrested for biting off the head of his girlfriend’s pet python during…

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How Wrestling Explains America

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Awash in strobes, Seth “Freakin” Rollins begins his waltz to the ring. His nemesis, the YouTube star Logan Paul, is there waiting for him. Rollins pauses beneath the jumbotron and holds his arms outstretched like Christ the Redeemer. Green and purple spotlights dart and swirl around Boston’s TD Garden. Thousands of fans start screaming the “whoa-ohh-ohh” part of Rollins’s theme song; exponentially more are live-tweeting the broadcast at home. It’s just before 9 o’clock on a frigid Monday in March—we haven’t even reached Act II of the three-hour pageant. RAW…

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Nobody Likes Mike Pence

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Mike Pence is making little secret of his presidential ambitions. He’s written his book; he’s assembling his team; he’s mastered the art of the coy nondenial when somebody asks (in between trips to Iowa) if he’s running. In early Republican-primary polls, he hovers between 6 and 7 percent—not top-tier numbers, but respectable enough. He seems to think he has at least an outside shot at winning the Republican nomination. And yet, ask a Republican voter about the former vice president, and you’re likely to hear some of the most withering…

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The Four Quadrants of American Politics

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Control of the House of Representatives could teeter precariously for years as each party consolidates its dominance over mirror-image demographic strongholds. That’s the clearest conclusion of a new analysis of the demographic and economic characteristics of all 435 congressional districts, conducted by the Equity Research Institute at the University of Southern California in conjunction with The Atlantic. Based on census data, the analysis finds that Democrats now hold a commanding edge over the GOP in seats where the share of residents who are nonwhite, the share of white adults with…

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Nancy Pelosi: ‘Follow the Money’

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House Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi’s message at the annual South by Southwest festival could be summarized in three words: Follow the money. Pelosi uttered that specific phrase—and similar versions of it—several times during her interview with Evan Smith, a contributing writer at The Atlantic, as part of the magazine’s Future of Democracy summit this morning in Austin, Texas. Pelosi, who represents California’s 11th congressional district, began by discussing the recent collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and the anxiety sweeping through not only her home district but the tech and financial…

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The Topic Biden Keeps Dodging

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President Joe Biden is following a strategy of asymmetrical warfare as the 2024 presidential race takes shape. Through the early maneuvering, the leading Republican candidates, particularly former President Donald Trump and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis are trying to ignite a procession of culture-war firefights against what DeSantis calls “the woke mind virus.” With the exception of abortion rights, Biden, by contrast, is working to downplay or defuse almost all cultural issues. Instead Biden is targeting his communication with the public almost exclusively on delivering tangible economic benefits to working-class families,…

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