The Daily

Almost a year into the pandemic and the American education system remains severely disrupted. About half of children across the United States are not in school. The Biden administration has set a clear goal for restarting in-person instruction: reopening K-8 schools within 100 days of his inauguration. Is that ambitious target possible? Guest: Dana Goldstein , a national education correspondent fo...

The second impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump will begin today. This time, the case against Mr. Trump is more straightforward: Did his words incite chaos at the Capitol on Jan. 6? We look ahead to the arguments both sides will present. Guest: Jim Rutenberg , a writer at large for The New York Times and The Times Magazine. For an exclusive look at how the biggest stories on our show...

The departure of President Donald Trump and the storming of the Capitol have reignited a long-dormant battle over the future of the Republican Party. Today, we look at two lawmakers in the Republican House conference whose fate may reveal something about that future: Liz Cheney of Wyoming, who voted in favor of Mr. Trump’s second impeachment, and Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, a proponent of c...

Jay Caspian Kang, the author and narrator of this week’s Sunday Read, spoke with the actor Steven Yeun over Zoom at the end of last year. The premise of their conversations was Mr. Yeun’s latest starring role, in “Minari” — a film about a Korean immigrant family that takes up farming in the rural South. They discussed the usual things: Mr. Yeun’s childhood, his parents and acting career — which in...

“The Earth is round. Two plus two equals four. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris won the 2020 election for president and vice president of the United States.” So begins the 280-page complaint filed by Smartmatic, an election software company, against the Fox Corporation. Smartmatic accuses the network of doing irreparable damage to the company’s business by allowing election conspiracy theorists to use...

Rumors had been swirling for days before Myanmar’s military launched a coup, taking back power and ousting the civilian leader, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. Myanmar’s experiment with democracy, however flawed, now appears to be over. Today, we examine the rise and fall of Aung San Suu Kyi. Guest: Hannah Beech , The New York Times’s Southeast Asia bureau chief.  For an exclusive look at how the biggest st...

When her daughter Karen was kidnapped in 2014, Miriam Rodríguez knew the Zetas, a cartel that ran organized crime in her town of San Fernando, Mexico, were responsible. From the hopelessness that her daughter may never return came resolve: She vowed to find all those responsible and bring them to justice. One by one, Ms. Rodríguez tracked these people down through inventive, homespun detective met...

President Biden’s plans for curbing the most devastating impacts of a changing climate are ambitious. His administration is not only planning a sharp U-turn from the previous White House — former President Donald Trump openly mocked the science behind human-caused climate change — but those aims go even further than the Obama administration’s. Today, we look at the Biden administration’s environme...

This episode contains strong language. GameStop can feel like a retailer from a bygone era. But last week, it was dragged back into the zeitgeist when it became the center of an online war between members of an irreverent Reddit subforum and hedge funds — one that left Wall Street billions of dollars out of pocket. Today, we look at how and why the GameStop surge happened, as well as how it can be...

“Smell is a startling superpower,” writes Brooke Jarvis, the author of today’s Sunday Read. “If you weren’t used to it, it would seem like witchcraft.” For hundreds of years, smell has been disregarded. Most adults in a 2019 survey ranked it as the least important sense; and in a 2011 survey of young people, the majority said that their sense of smell was less valuable to them than their technolog...

This episode contains strong language.  Inauguration Day was supposed to bring vindication for adherents of the pro-Trump conspiracy theory QAnon. Instead, they watched as Joe Biden took the oath as the 46th president of the United States. What happens to a conspiracy theory and its followers when they are proved wrong? Guest: Kevin Roose , a technology columnist for The New York Times.  For an ex...

As Democrats and Republicans haggled over how to share power in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, the minority leader, made one key demand: Do not touch the filibuster rule. Today, we explore the mechanics and history of the rule and look ahead at its fate.  Guest: Julie Hirschfeld Davis , the congressional editor for The New York Times.  For an exclusive look at how the biggest stories on our show com...

The number of new coronavirus cases in the United States is falling, but has the country turned a corner in the pandemic? And what kind of threats do the new variants pose to people and to the vaccine rollout? Today, we discuss the latest in the quest to stamp out the pandemic.   Guest: Donald G. McNeil Jr. , a science and health reporter for The New York Times.  For an exclusive look at how the b...

This episode contains strong language. In many instances while advising the Trump administration on the pandemic, Dr. Anthony Fauci was faced with a “difficult” situation. Yet he said he had never considered quitting. What was it like working under President Donald J. Trump? We listen in on a candid conversation between Dr. Fauci and Donald G. McNeil Jr., the Times science and health reporter. Gue...

The Russian activist Aleksei Navalny has spent years agitating against corruption, and against President Vladimir Putin.  Last summer he was poisoned with a rare nerve agent linked to the Russian state. Last week, after recovering in Germany, he returned to Moscow. He was arrested at the airport, but he managed to put out a call for protest, which was answered in the streets of more than a hundred...

The cultural history of clouds seemed to be shaped by amateurs — the likes of Luke Howard and the Honorable Ralph Abercromby — each of whom projected the ethos of his particular era onto those billowing blank slates in the troposphere. Gavin Pretor-Pinney was our era’s. On today’s Sunday Read, the story of the Cloud Appreciation Society and how Mr. Pretor-Pinney, backed by good will, challenged th...

Within hours of assuming the presidency, President Biden signed a flurry of executive orders. He rejoined the Paris climate agreement, repealed the so-called Muslim travel ban and mandated the wearing of masks on federal property. The actions had a theme: They either reversed former President Donald Trump’s actions or rebuked his general policy approach. But governing by decree has a downside. We...

Unity was the byword of President Biden’s Inaugural Address. The speech was an attempt to turn the page. But can this be achieved without, as many in the Democratic coalition believe, a full reckoning with and accountability of how America got to this point of division? Today, we explore the defining messages of the president’s inaugural address.  Guests: Astead W. Herndon , a national political r...

Joe Biden will be sworn in as the 46th president of the United States today. Among Democrats, there is a sense of joy and hope, but also of caution and concern. We speak with a range of Mr. Biden’s supporters, including activists who had originally hoped for a more progressive ticket and longtime fans who embrace his moderation. Guests: Jennifer Medina , a national politics reporter for The New Yo...

Polling in the days since the storming of the Capitol paints a complex picture. While most Americans do not support the riot, a majority of Republicans do not believe that President Trump bears responsibility. And over 70 percent of them say they believe that there was widespread fraud in the election. Before President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration, we called Trump supporters to hear their views...

Most Americans treat climate change seriously but not literally — they accept the science, worry about forecasts but tell themselves that someone else will get serious about fixing the problem very soon. The Valve Turners, on the other hand, take climate change both very seriously and very literally. In the fall of 2016, the group of five environmental activists — all in their 50s and 60s, most wi...

This episode contains strong language.  Three days after being sworn into Congress, Representative Peter Meijer, Republican of Michigan, was sitting in the gallery of the House of Representatives as pro-Trump rioters stormed the Capitol. After the siege, Mr. Meijer made his feelings clear: President Trump’s actions proved that he was “rankly unfit.” A week later, he became one of just a handful of...

“A clear and present danger.” Those were the words used by Nancy Pelosi to describe President Trump, and the main thrust of the Democrats’ arguments for impeachment on the House floor. While most House Republicans lined up against the move, this impeachment, unlike the last, saw a handful vote in favor. Today, we walk through the events of Wednesday, and the shifting arguments that led up to the h...

After the attack on the Capitol, social media platforms sprang into action, deleting the accounts of agitators. Without a central place to congregate, groups have splintered off into other, darker corners of the internet. That could complicate the efforts of law enforcement to track their plans. We ask whether the crackdown on social media has reduced the risk of violence — or just made it harder...

At the heart of the move to impeach President Trump is a relatively simple accusation: that he incited a violent insurrection against the government of the United States. We look at the efforts to punish the president for the attack on the Capitol and explain what the impeachment process might look like. Guest: Nicholas Fandos , a national reporter for The New York Times. For an exclusive look at...