“Masculinism” is uniting an unlikely constellation of pastors, posters, senators, preachers, influencers, podcasters, and fanboys who are pushing back against the advances of feminism, Helen Lewis reports in our June cover story.
“In the past decade, one of the New Right’s major challenges has been to retrofit a consistent ideology onto the electoral power of Donald Trump,” Lewis writes. “Masculinism has been a great gift, because factions with different views on, say, protectionism or Israel or Big Tech can all agree on the overreach of feminism and the need for a return to traditional gender roles. Far from being a fringe belief system, masculinism has become the single most important force uniting the American right.”
“This is a movement with real policy goals,” Lewis writes. “The rollback of no-fault divorce. Tax breaks to reward male breadwinners and female homemakers. An end to anything with a whiff of DEI, even leadership programs for women in the military,” like one cut by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. “A return to the workplace culture of the 1970s, where sexual harassment was normalized. An open preference for male employees in hiring, promotion, and pay awards—in other words, affirmative action for men.”
“A growing number of powerful allies are sincere in these beliefs, and would want to enact them if given the chance,” Lewis continues. “Masculinism is both serious and silly, sometimes camp and sometimes chilling, an attention-grabbing performance and a genuine proposition.”
Read The Atlantic’s June cover story at the link in our bio.
🎨: @lizziehrt
This is a promise Caity Weaver is making to you: She knows what the best free restaurant bread is in America, and she’s going to tell you.
To determine which establishment offered patrons the best free bread, Weaver employed a simple method: ask every person she encountered, “What is the best free restaurant bread in America?,” then travel to as many of the nominations as possible and try the bread for herself. She gathered more than 500 responses. Her quest would cover more than 13,000 miles, and she would drink far more Diet Coke than she thought possible.
Weaver tried the 16 different breads served at Joël Robuchon at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, which accompany a meal that costs in excess of $700. She went to the smallest Cheesecake Factory in America to try its famous “brown bread.” She went to a Lambert’s Cafe in Missouri, where the servers hurl searing hot rolls through the air.
How can one determine which bread is “the best”? “Let us acknowledge that the ‘best’ bread is influenced by current fashions,” Weaver writes. “Soft white bread was, for much of human history, a yearned-for extravagance. Today, Americans generally regard it as the nastiest, lowest form of bread and stock it in their cheapest grocery stores.”
Based on Weaver’s survey, most Americans prefer bread served warm or hot. The most commonly used adjectives to describe people’s favorite breads were “pillowy,” “soft,” and “sweet,” followed by “crispy” and “crusty.”
“Americans seem capable of genuinely convincing themselves that they have just eaten the best free restaurant bread in America anytime they are given gratis bread that is warm or hot,” Weaver writes. At the link in our bio, find her pick for the best loaf in America.
📸: @_hugoyu
On March 11, Jeffrey Goldberg, The Atlantic’s editor in chief, received a connection request on Signal, an encrypted messaging service, from a user identified as “Michael Waltz” (Michael Waltz is the name of President Donald Trump’s national security adviser). Goldberg did not assume it was the real Michael Waltz—it is not at all uncommon these days for nefarious actors to try to induce journalists to share information that could be used against them.
Still, Goldberg accepted the connection request, hoping that this was the actual national security adviser, and that he wanted to chat about some important or newsworthy matter. Two days later, Goldberg was added to a Signal chat group called the “Houthi PC small group.”
In all, the group had 18 members, including “MAR” (the secretary of state is Marco Antonio Rubio), “JD Vance,” “TG” (presumably Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence), “Scott B” (apparently Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent), and “Pete Hegseth.”
On March 14, Goldberg witnessed a detailed policy debate (screenshots of which are shared above). The next morning, explicit operational details of forthcoming strikes on Yemen, including information about targets, weapons the U.S. would be deploying, and attack sequencing, were shared by the account labeled “Pete Hegseth.”
After receiving the first messages, Goldberg still couldn’t believe that the text chain could be legitimate. But once bombs dropped in Yemen and members of the group celebrated in the chat, Goldberg concluded that the chat was almost certainly real. Today, a spokesperson for the National Security Council confirmed that the Signal group was, in fact, authentic.
“I have never seen a breach quite like this,” Goldberg writes. By coordinating national-security-related action over Signal, Waltz may have violated the Espionage Act, which governs the handling of “national defense” information, according to several national-security lawyers interviewed by Atlantic staff writer Shane Harris for this story. Waltz may have also violated federal records law by setting some of the messages to automatically delete after a certain amount of time. Read more at the link in our bio.
Democrats have reasons to be optimistic headed into the midterms—but they’re starting to seem overconfident, Mark Leibovich reports.
“Is a blue wave coming?” Leibovich asks. “Or is this just another blue mirage?”
Read the full story at the link in our bio.
“Adam Silver is one of America’s most powerful men,” Tim Alberta writes. But on the day Alberta met the NBA commissioner, Silver “appeared aimless, drifting awkwardly through the roped-off VIP area of a sports-business conference in Nashville.”
“The commissioner is carefully stage-managed,” Alberta writes. Media engagements are rare; rarer still are the probing questions that might be asked of someone leading a business as big as the NBA. “Early last year, I’d approached the NBA about a profile—not just of Silver but of the game itself, a holistic look at the evolution of professional basketball. The answer: a hard no. Hence the trip to Nashville,” Alberta continues.
When Alberta finally did find Silver, he reached out to shake the commissioner’s hand. Silver, studying the writer’s name tag, “turned colorless, almost ethereal.” Alberta asked for a proper interview, and Silver glanced at his spokesman, saying that it wasn’t his call before hustling away.
After months of pestering and cajoling, Alberta was finally able to sit down with the commissioner. They spoke as Silver’s league was confronting a moment of institutional crisis: “Peacetime is a thing of the past,” Alberta writes. “For the foreseeable future, the commissioner will be at war—with fans, with media critics, with players and coaches, with the game itself.”
In that conversation and others, Alberta sought the answer to one big question: “Does Adam Silver have the stomach for this fight?”
Read the full story at the link in our bio.
📸: Paola Chapdelaine
If you’re heading out for a summer vacation, The Atlantic’s writers and editors have suggested some page-turners to bring along.
At the link in our bio, see the 25 books in our summer reading guide. There are selections to suit every mood or fancy.
🎨: @dhrutika.khimani
A hard day can be helped along by a few creature comforts: a good meal, a few friends—and the right show to unwind with, Stephanie Bai wrote in 2025. She asked The Atlantic’s writers and editors: What’s your go-to feel-good TV series?
At the link in our bio, see some picks selected by Atlantic staff.
📸: PictureLux / The Hollywood Archive / Alamy
“It’s open season both for the frequency and for the rationales for drawing new maps,” Vann R. Newkirk II tells Hanna Rosin. They discuss why the changes to voting districts after the Supreme Court’s Voting Rights Act decision could just be beginning.
If you’re having AI do your brainstorming, “your brainstorming muscles are going to get weaker,” the MS NOW host Chris Hayes tells Charlie Warzel. They discuss the possible effects of letting AI take over creative and generative thinking:
Watch Galaxy Brain at the link in our bio.
The U.S. is sending planeloads of people to Honduras, and Caitlin Dickerson traveled there to report on the danger and confusion once they land.
“New arrivals are handed a cup of coffee, a burrito, and a bag with their personal belongings, then rushed through a series of cubicles where the Honduran government records their return,” Dickerson writes. “Volunteer doctors examine those who are visibly ill, injured, or pregnant. In between flights, the staff tries to advise people on common crises: ICE has separated them from their children or spouse, or they have no home to return to in Honduras, or a gang or ex-partner wants them dead.”
The deportees from the United States are especially vulnerable to robbery and kidnapping once they land because gangs and bandits assume that their families can pay larger ransoms, Dickerson reports. Since last fall, at least three have been murdered within days of their arrival, volunteers told Dickerson.
People like Sister Idalina Bordignon and other workers try to answer questions such as “What do I do if I don’t know where my child is?” and “Do I lose my rights as a parent if I’m deported?” But the Trump administration was sending too many people to Honduras too quickly, and soon the center would be full of new deportees, exhausted, hungry, and in shock.
ICE policy requires officers to ask detainees if they are the parent of a minor child, and to reunite families before deportation or obtain a sworn statement from parents who choose to leave their child with a designated guardian, Dickerson reports. But Congress hasn’t codified these rules into law. And the policy is sprinkled with caveats such as “when operationally feasible” and “ICE reserves its right to make case-by-case removal decisions.”
Department of Homeland Security officials told Dickerson that the White House’s guidance has been clear: Nothing should slow down deportations.
Read more at the link in our bio.
📸: @valiente_sofia
The art world has long committed to fighting the illicit antiquities trade, but looted goods continue to make their way into prestigious museums. Ariel Sabar reports on one family’s alleged exploits—and the institutional failures that enabled them:
“In November 2017, French President Emmanuel Macron traveled to the United Arab Emirates to inaugurate a new museum,” Sabar writes. “The Louvre Abu Dhabi was to become the Arab world’s first ‘universal’ museum, filled with art from around the globe that spanned thousands of years of history.”
“The Emiratis were paying the French $1 billion for the rights to the Louvre name, guidance on what art to buy, and loans of masterworks by Da Vinci, Matisse, and Van Gogh,” Sabar continues. France was also required to “pay careful attention to the ethical rules regarding acquisitions, in particular regarding provenance.”
But over the past 50 years, one network made a fortune selling allegedly looted goods to museums across the world, including the Louvre Abu Dhabi and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Sabar writes. At the link in our bio, Sabar investigates the family at the center of the deals.
🎨: @anano__
In his commencement address to the NYU class of 2026, Jonathan Haidt urged graduates to treasure their attention—and to use it to do hard things.
Haidt, a social psychologist, argued that “paying attention is in fact one of the most challenging and meaningful things you can do. Because what you pay attention to shapes what you care about. And what you care about shapes who you become.”
“One of the most common experiences of adulthood—especially in ambitious cities, among high-achieving people—is a strange kind of loneliness,” he continued. “You can be messaging people all day. You can see everyone’s lives unfold in real time. And yet, despite all this so-called connection, you may find yourself feeling increasingly alone. Friendship now requires much more intentionality than it once did. So my advice, as you think about what does and doesn’t deserve your attention, is to reach out to others, even when it feels awkward.
“Call someone you love just to say hi. Invite someone to dinner. Say yes when someone invites you,” Haidt recommended. “Be the one who makes things happen in the real world, and others will be grateful to you.”
Read his full speech at the link in our bio.
