In 1954, a quarter of American dwellings had no flush toilets, showers, or bathtubs. Half lacked central heating. 27% of families had no car; 33% had no television.

https://twitter.com/NJBeisner/status/1909621523293299123

In 1954, 34.4% of men whose wives were not in the labor force earned less than $3,500.

There's no way around this, really. There are many, many problems in the contemporary United States, but in strictly material terms, we are enormously more prosperous than we were then.

1. This is true! The researchers were developing and validating a neurobiological model of PTSD, which could be used both to screen for risk and to develop pharmacological treatments for the condition. You can read it for yourself: pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC64… x.com/TRHLofficial/s… 2. Research at NIH is not a significant driver of government spending, but medical care is. Military patients diagnosed with PTSD cost an average of $25,684 each year to treat, and the disorder imposes an estimated economic burden of $232 billion.

“I need the kind of generals that Hitler had,” Trump said. “People who were totally loyal to him, that follow orders.”

Read this whole story, from @JeffreyGoldberg:
theatlantic.com/politics/archi… Trump volunteered to pay for the funeral of a murdered U.S. soldier. When the bill came, Trump became angry. “It doesn’t cost 60,000 bucks to bury a fucking Mexican!” He turned to his chief of staff, Mark Meadows, and issued an order: “Don’t pay it!”

theatlantic.com/politics/archi…

1. Large numbers of students are arriving at highly selective universities unprepared to read a book cover-to-cover—because no teacher has ever asked them to before, reports @rosehorowitch theatlantic.com/magazine/archi…
2. Professors report their students are less able to absorb details while keeping track of the plot, have narrower vocabularies, shut down in the face of challenging ideas, and struggle to persist through challenging texts: theatlantic.com/magazine/archi…

1. I’ve spent the past several years trying to solve a riddle: Why has America ceased to be a land of opportunity for so many of its people? The answer, I’ve come to believe, is that we’re STUCK: penguinrandomhouse.com/books/700580/s… 2. For centuries, Americans were always starting over, always looking to their next beginning, always seeking to move up by moving on. Mobility has been the great engine of American prosperity, the essential mechanism of social equality, and the ballast of our diverse democracy.

1. We've had 32 presidents who've seen military service, and 31 of them were commissioned officers. Most Americans in uniform are enlisted personnel, but that experience is rare among powerful politicians. 2. James Buchanan served briefly as a private in 1812 in the defense of Baltimore. Among vice presidents, Walter Mondale made it to corporal; Al Gore was a Spec4.

You can read @JenSeniorNY’s masterful story—winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Magazine Award—here:
theatlantic.com/magazine/archi…

https://twitter.com/PulitzerPrizes/status/1523742211153702913

My colleague @sophieGG is a treasure—and today, in naming her a finalist for criticism, the Pulitzer board made that official. pulitzer.org/finalists/soph…

1. Some recent stories that might be helpful in contextualizing tonight’s news 🧵 In December, Mary Zeigler listened to the oral arguments, and wrote that "the Court is poised to reverse Roe outright.” theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…

1. Saddened to learn of the death of Aaron Feuerstein. In 1995, when the textile mill he owned burned down, he said, “I’m not throwing 3,000 people out of work two weeks before Christmas.” apnews.com/article/busine… 2. That’s the moment that made him famous. But in the years that followed, he made another courageous choice: Keeping the mill open, instead of following the industry overseas. That cost him his company and much of his fortune.

1. Eric Adams has often told the story of his beating at the hands of NYPD cops in recent years. It’s powerful, and an experience to which too many New Yorkers of color can relate. 2. In 2014, he wrote in a NYT op-ed, "I didn’t want any more children to go through what I endured, so I sought to make change from the inside by joining the police department.”

1. Back in 1999, @TheJuanWilliams interviewed a newly promoted police lieutenant for a magazine profile that never ran. Last month, he went back to talk to Eric Adams again. A lot of surprising stuff in here: theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/… 2. One part that caught my eye? Eric Adams’s oft-told story of how he became a police officer. The basic contours are the same, but the details different—and much more revealing, and human: theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…

1. Fascinated by this @kaiserfamfound poll which asked people who’d earlier indicated they didn’t intend to get vaccinated, but that a conversation helped change their mind, what that person said to them. 2. There are positive messages: "We can go out eating, shopping, and having a vacation after get vaccinated.”
There are obvious ones: "You should get vaccinated because you can get sick with COVID-19."

1. A quick thread on how America confronted a seemingly intractable problem of death and despair—and then solved it in ways that still keep us safe today, on this Fourth of July. 2. Children used to celebrate Independence Day by firing off firecrackers and toy pistols. Sometimes, they exploded, taking fingers or hands or limbs along with them. Sometimes, it was far worse.

1. A few thoughts about “The Cruelty Is the Point,” the new essay collection from my colleague @AdamSerwer, which is due out on Tuesday. amazon.com/Cruelty-Point-… @AdamSerwer 2. The first is that I’m not generally a fan of essay collections. But this is something different—Adam revisits some of the pieces that helped define the last four years, and weaves in some astonishingly good new essays. The whole is much more than the sum of its parts.

1. The news that Kickstarter is putting in place a four-day workweek (read @jpinsk! theatlantic.com/family/archive…) has me thinking about why we have a five-day workweek to begin with. 2. Jewish immigrants to the U.S. faced employers insisting they work on Saturdays, the traditional Sabbath. Making this even harder? A resurgent Sabbatarian movement worked to keep things closed on Sundays.

1. The U.S. is a huge outlier here. Almost all other wealthy countries mandate between 5 and 13 paid public holidays per year, even for private employers. Here? We offer none.

https://twitter.com/KFILE/status/1405934133759594498

2. Here's the thing about Juneteenth—it raises the number of legally mandated paid public holidays for private employees from zero to …. zero.

1. I work with some of the most talented people in this business—and this afternoon, a handful of them were recognized with National Magazine Award nominations for their extraordinary journalism. 2. There’s @yayitsrob, who helped build @COVID19Tracking into the premier source of information on the pandemic. But what’s humbling for the rest of us is seeing him recognized for having done this before the age of 30, with an ASMENext award.

1. Completely fascinated by this detailed account of jury-selection in the Chauvin trial—not least for the takeaway, which is the inclusion of jurors whose views or experiences might’ve been used to exclude them from the pool before: theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/… 2. Take Juror 44, who said "we have disenfranchised [minority citizens]. Laws were created many years ago that have not kept up with society and cultural changes” and “There’s inherent bias in the system” and was seated anyway:

theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…

1. This example is frequently cited as a buried lede. (“President Lincoln and wife visited Ford’s Theatre this evening for the purpose of witnessing the performance of ‘The American Cousin’...”) But I think that misses something absolutely essential that’s worth recovering.

https://twitter.com/AdrianMorrow/status/1382416525685047297

2. In the various papers where this story ran, these were never the first words readers would’ve encountered. A series of stacked headlines—in big bold letters—summarized the main news that readers could expect to find in the story itself. Here, for example, @hartfordcourant:

1. One year ago today, @TheAtlIdeas published a story from @Yascha_Mounk with a headline I will never forget: “Cancel Everything” theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/… 2. It was hardly the first story we’d published on COVID. In January, Ron Klain warned that the coronavirus was coming and Trump wasn’t ready. theatlantic.com/newsletters/ar…

1. The biggest problem with the way my colleagues are handling COVID is that they’re publishing too many incredible articles for me to keep current. Here are a few from the last couple days that are worth your time: 2. Remember that strange 19th century obsession with miasma, the idea that “bad air” could make you sick? Well, yeah. As @sarahzhang points out, maybe they were on to something: theatlantic.com/health/archive…