Republican leaders are happy with Trump’s new nominee. Plus a successful rescue in Thailand, the world’s worst industrial disaster, and more.
New Nominee: President Donald Trump’s choice to replace Justice Anthony Kennedy on the Supreme Court is Brett Kavanaugh, a judge in the Washington, D. C., Circuit Court of Appeals with a notable body of work related to executive power. While Kavanaugh was considered the most conventional candidate on the president’s shortlist, he’ll face an intense confirmation battle, in which Senate Democrats may pressure him to give a specific answer about whether he’d vote to overturn Roe v. Wade. For their part, Republican leaders have welcomed Trump’s choice—suggesting that, as one GOP operative told The Atlantic ’s Elaina Plott, “as long as he sticks to safe picks for scotus, he’ll never really lose the support and money of the party.”
North Korea: Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s recent visit to North Korea didn’t make much headway toward stopping the country’s nuclear program. Pompeo called his conversations with Kim Jong Un “productive,” while North Korea called the United States’ demand for denuclearization “gangsterlike.” Soon, Uri Friedman writes, the two countries will come to a moment of truth about whether that goal is really achievable.
Good News: A rare and dangerous rescue effort succeeded in bringing 12 Thai boys and their soccer coach safely back from a flooded cave, where they’d been trapped for more than two weeks. English soccer fans are experiencing an unfamiliar moment of hope after an unexpected victory brought their team to the World Cup semifinals for the first time in 28 years. And nasa has recorded the plasma waves between Saturn and its icy moon Enceladus, which sound to human ears like eerie music.
— Rosa Inocencio Smith
Apoorva Mandavilli on the site of the abandoned Union Carbide factory in Bhopal, India:
Keep reading, as Mandavilli reports on how survivors of the Bhopal gas leak are continuing to deal with its consequences.
1. In 2010, as many as ______________ of the babies born in the U. S. were conceived through sperm donation.
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2. ____________ percent of pediatricians in a 2017 survey said they would like to have more training about gender nonconformity.
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3. The founders of the Couples Institute, a psychotherapy training center, tell patients that the biggest challenge of couples therapy is accepting the need to improve ______________.
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Our partner site CityLab explores the cities of the future and investigates the biggest ideas and issues facing city dwellers around the world. Gracie McKenzie shares today’s top stories:
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Our Letters from the Archives series highlights past Atlantic stories and readers’ reactions at the time. In our May 1955 issue, Ben H. Bagdikian analyzed changes to the Girl Scouts manual that appeared to respond to public pressures of the Cold War by scaling back the organization’s stated commitment to internationalism. Jean Gleason, a former Girl Scout from Berkeley, considered such changes “downright dangerous”:
Read more, and write to us at letters@theatlantic.com .
Ordinary superheroes, friendship breakups, smartphone-free drivers, public-sector innovation.
Happy birthday to Candace’s daughter Taia (one-fourth the age of The Atlantic); to James’s father, Bruce (twice the age of MTV); and from Andy to Amy (the same age as Michelle Obama).
