Baby formula is one of the most highly regulated sectors of the U.S. food industry. But it’s still too vulnerable to contamination, Nicholas Florko reports.
In recent months, 23 infants have fallen ill from infant botulism—which can cause muscle weakness, difficulty breathing, and, if untreated, death—after drinking powdered formula from the company ByHeart. The flare-up comes at the heels of an outbreak in 2021–22 when Abbott, one of the world’s biggest formula producers, issued a nationwide recall after two children who consumed its products died.
Though nothing about infant formula itself is inherently unsafe, it’s one of the most highly regulated sectors in the U.S. food industry because even the slightest lapse can cause serious harm. And though some experts whom Florko spoke with “were adamant that food manufacturers bear most of the blame for foodborne outbreaks,” regulators often share some culpability, he writes. “In the 2021–22 outbreak, a whistleblower alerted the FDA to alleged rule-breaking, including falsification of records and the release of untested formula into the market, but regulators failed to follow up on the complaint until 15 months later.”
It’s still unclear who’s to blame for the ByHeart recall. But the outbreak is “a reminder of how easily the baby-formula industry can crack, even when it’s supposed to be bulletproof,” Florko continues.
All the gambling that sports elicit is now playing a major role in politics, culture, and the economy. On the newest episode of “Galaxy Brain,” Charlie Warzel and the journalist Pablo Torre discuss how sports became such a valuable commodity: https://youtu.be/7XYpenjgxZw
For all the recent talk about Donald Trump growing more sympathetic toward Ukraine, “nothing of the sort turned out to be true,” Phillips Payson O’Brien argues. Now the president has approved a 28-point plan to end the war between Russia and Ukraine, and its details reveal “what Trump wants: to help the Russian president” and to “weaken Ukraine, perhaps fatally.” theatln.tc/to83RmuZ
The Trump administration has not yet made the terms of its proposal public, but according to news reports, Ukraine would have to cede more land to Russia than the Russians have been able to conquer to this point. The proposal also outlines restrictions to Ukraine’s military capacity: slashing the country’s armed forces in half, and requesting it give up the long-range weaponry that currently allows it to hit targets deep inside of Russia. Additionally, the United States and other nations would legally recognize Crimea and the other seized parts of Ukraine as Russian territory, “thereby rewarding Putin’s efforts to expand his borders by force and destroying the post–World War II global-security system that the United Nations was created to preserve,”O’Brien writes.
“In exchange for giving up land and its ability to defend itself, Ukraine would be offered toothless security guarantees by the United States—much like the never-enforced guarantees that it received when it gave up nuclear weapons after gaining independence in the 1990s,” O’Brien continues.
The plan “threatens to transform Ukraine into a Russian vassal state,” O’Brien writes. “Conquering Ukraine has always been Putin’s plan. Now the United States is setting him up to try again.”
An increasing number of college students are arriving on campus with math skills that don't meet middle-school standards. Rose Horowitch reports on what’s behind the national decline in mathematical ability: theatln.tc/JkU2RaB5
Marjorie Taylor Greene never got “the joke that MAGA is about anything more than manipulation”—her failure to do so may be her one service to the nation, David Frum argues.
“Presidents often lose control over their agenda, or the policy process, or pieces of legislation. Sometimes, they even lose control of their party. But Donald Trump seems to have lost control over the one thing every person, and especially those with immense power, should always maintain control over: himself,” Tom Nichols argues. theatln.tc/mXs9ekBj
On Thursday ”the president called for the arrest and execution of elected American officials for the crime—as he sees it—of fidelity to the Constitution,” Nichols continues. The outbursts “were likely triggered by Trump’s panic over the release of files about his former friend, the dead sex offender Jeffery Epstein.”
“No one should treat this new phase in the president’s aggression against democracy as just another episode in the Trump reality show,” Nichols argues.
A major corruption probe into a close ally of Volodymyr Zelensky is threatening to tarnish the Ukrainian leader’s standing—and his prospects for victory in the war with Russia, Simon Shuster reports. theatln.tc/dDAIhfbJ
Investigators have accused Zelensky’s old friend and business partner, Tymur Mindich, of using his apartment—located in a luxury tower known around Kyiv as the Monster—as the headquarters of a conspiracy to extort and launder about $100 million in bribes from companies in the electricity sector.
“For months, waves of Russian drone and missile attacks have caused devastating blackouts, leaving people in Kyiv and other cities without power for up to 16 hours a day,” Shuster writes. “By squeezing bribes out of the electricity sector, the alleged kickback scheme hindered efforts to protect the power grid.” According to National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine investigators, the scheme made the blackouts worse.
While Zelensky has not been implicated in the investigation, which NABU code-named Operation Midas, “the alleged involvement of his former business partner and several senior government officials has undermined the president’s greatest asset among voters and allies: his image as a leader in the mold of Winston Churchill, a tireless defender of Ukraine and Europe from the forces of Russian tyranny,” Shuster writes.
The “Wicked” sequel takes a dreary turn from the irresistible first film, David Sims argues—even its stars Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande “can’t keep the film from collapsing under the lightest scrutiny.” theatln.tc/G3JAYy17
Although the first movie was a “big, brassy delight,” as Sims describes it, “Wicked: For Good” struggles to tie its many plot threads together and is further hampered by a much weaker set of songs.
The film strives to hit the biggest character arcs while also managing to fit in the entire plot of “The Wizard of Oz,” including introducing the audience to the Tin Man, the Scarecrow, and the Cowardly Lion, and providing several glimpses of the back of Dorothy’s head. “Yet the movie can’t line up the parallel storylines well enough for that endeavor to work,” Sims writes. Elphaba is raging, Glinda is failing to coax her friend back to the side of the Wizard, and every so often, someone mentions that Dorothy’s still trotting down the Yellow Brick Road. “The characters ultimately seem cordoned off from one another, and the script spins its wheels until the big conclusion.”
“‘For Good’ is at its most successful when it’s able to tap into its predecessor’s strengths,” Sims continues. “Glinda’s dilemma of presenting a face of public propriety while inching toward more rebellious thought is the crux of both “Wicked” installments, and Grande does the best job of adding some dramatic heft. At the same time, the focus on a more melancholic Glinda emphasizes what is now sorely missing: the first movie’s comic charm, much of which stemmed from Grande’s performance. Without it, the events just come across as unrelentingly dreary.”
“Following the beloved source material may have bolstered ‘Part One,’ but it hamstrings what should be a grand finale,” Sims continues. “The ‘Wicked’ saga’s move to the big screen started on a delicious note. Now that it’s over, I’m left waiting to be satisfied.”
“In democracies all across the world, the party system appears unhealthy,” Idrees Kahloon argues. “If the major parties don’t wish to die, they will have to adapt.”
As of September, only 40 percent of voters approved of the Republican Party. The Democrats’ favorability was at 37 percent—“their worst in more than 30 years,” Kahloon reports. It’s not just an American problem—across democracies, “trust in parties is low, partisan antagonism is high, and elections feel existential instead of routine,” Kahloon writes. theatln.tc/bMWfqHkx
Some argue that the United States should become more like the United Kingdom, where the prime minister always possesses a parliamentary majority, or it should move to proportional representation, as in Germany. Or America could elect its president by popular vote, like France, or become a Scandinavian-style social democracy. “Yet European democracies with all of these features have not been immune to populism,” Kahloon writes.
“Voters are less committed to parties, angrier at their fellow citizens, and quicker to become disgruntled with government,” Kahloon writes. “The ascendant parties—the MAGA version of the Republican Party, Britain’s Reform, France’s National Rally, and the German AfD—present themselves as preservers of national culture from immigration, globalization, and the corrupt and decadent elites of the old mainstream parties. This unwinding is the result of deeper forces, social and economic transformations that have unmoored the old mass parties of left and right.”
“All the solutions you think could be applied in the U.S. have been tried and shown to fail in different European countries,” Christopher Bickerton, a professor of modern European politics at Cambridge University, told Kahloon. “There is no panacea.” “Plenty of people can hope to undo long-running declines in union membership, religiosity, and social trust—but they should not be optimistic,” Kahloon continues. “Instead, parties will need to reinvent themselves for the postindustrial, postmaterial age. This is painful, but not impossible.”
The Atlantic
The Atlantic
Baby formula is one of the most highly regulated sectors of the U.S. food industry. But it’s still too vulnerable to contamination, Nicholas Florko reports.
In recent months, 23 infants have fallen ill from infant botulism—which can cause muscle weakness, difficulty breathing, and, if untreated, death—after drinking powdered formula from the company ByHeart. The flare-up comes at the heels of an outbreak in 2021–22 when Abbott, one of the world’s biggest formula producers, issued a nationwide recall after two children who consumed its products died.
Though nothing about infant formula itself is inherently unsafe, it’s one of the most highly regulated sectors in the U.S. food industry because even the slightest lapse can cause serious harm. And though some experts whom Florko spoke with “were adamant that food manufacturers bear most of the blame for foodborne outbreaks,” regulators often share some culpability, he writes. “In the 2021–22 outbreak, a whistleblower alerted the FDA to alleged rule-breaking, including falsification of records and the release of untested formula into the market, but regulators failed to follow up on the complaint until 15 months later.”
It’s still unclear who’s to blame for the ByHeart recall. But the outbreak is “a reminder of how easily the baby-formula industry can crack, even when it’s supposed to be bulletproof,” Florko continues.
Read more: theatln.tc/72o1lOGY
📸: John Moore / Getty
1 day ago | [YT] | 68
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The Atlantic
All the gambling that sports elicit is now playing a major role in politics, culture, and the economy. On the newest episode of “Galaxy Brain,” Charlie Warzel and the journalist Pablo Torre discuss how sports became such a valuable commodity: https://youtu.be/7XYpenjgxZw
1 day ago | [YT] | 20
View 2 replies
The Atlantic
For all the recent talk about Donald Trump growing more sympathetic toward Ukraine, “nothing of the sort turned out to be true,” Phillips Payson O’Brien argues. Now the president has approved a 28-point plan to end the war between Russia and Ukraine, and its details reveal “what Trump wants: to help the Russian president” and to “weaken Ukraine, perhaps fatally.” theatln.tc/to83RmuZ
The Trump administration has not yet made the terms of its proposal public, but according to news reports, Ukraine would have to cede more land to Russia than the Russians have been able to conquer to this point. The proposal also outlines restrictions to Ukraine’s military capacity: slashing the country’s armed forces in half, and requesting it give up the long-range weaponry that currently allows it to hit targets deep inside of Russia. Additionally, the United States and other nations would legally recognize Crimea and the other seized parts of Ukraine as Russian territory, “thereby rewarding Putin’s efforts to expand his borders by force and destroying the post–World War II global-security system that the United Nations was created to preserve,”O’Brien writes.
“In exchange for giving up land and its ability to defend itself, Ukraine would be offered toothless security guarantees by the United States—much like the never-enforced guarantees that it received when it gave up nuclear weapons after gaining independence in the 1990s,” O’Brien continues.
The plan “threatens to transform Ukraine into a Russian vassal state,” O’Brien writes. “Conquering Ukraine has always been Putin’s plan. Now the United States is setting him up to try again.”
Read more: theatln.tc/to83RmuZ
📸: Oleksii Filippova / AFP / Getty
1 day ago | [YT] | 140
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The Atlantic
An increasing number of college students are arriving on campus with math skills that don't meet middle-school standards. Rose Horowitch reports on what’s behind the national decline in mathematical ability: theatln.tc/JkU2RaB5
🎨: Akshita Chandra / The Atlantic
1 day ago | [YT] | 68
View 25 replies
The Atlantic
Marjorie Taylor Greene never got “the joke that MAGA is about anything more than manipulation”—her failure to do so may be her one service to the nation, David Frum argues.
Read more: theatln.tc/kqYByzox
📸: Kayla Bartkowski / Getty
1 day ago | [YT] | 257
View 36 replies
The Atlantic
“Presidents often lose control over their agenda, or the policy process, or pieces of legislation. Sometimes, they even lose control of their party. But Donald Trump seems to have lost control over the one thing every person, and especially those with immense power, should always maintain control over: himself,” Tom Nichols argues. theatln.tc/mXs9ekBj
On Thursday ”the president called for the arrest and execution of elected American officials for the crime—as he sees it—of fidelity to the Constitution,” Nichols continues. The outbursts “were likely triggered by Trump’s panic over the release of files about his former friend, the dead sex offender Jeffery Epstein.”
“No one should treat this new phase in the president’s aggression against democracy as just another episode in the Trump reality show,” Nichols argues.
Read more: theatln.tc/mXs9ekBj
📸: Tom Brenner / The Washington Post / Getty
1 day ago (edited) | [YT] | 1,027
View 112 replies
The Atlantic
A major corruption probe into a close ally of Volodymyr Zelensky is threatening to tarnish the Ukrainian leader’s standing—and his prospects for victory in the war with Russia, Simon Shuster reports. theatln.tc/dDAIhfbJ
Investigators have accused Zelensky’s old friend and business partner, Tymur Mindich, of using his apartment—located in a luxury tower known around Kyiv as the Monster—as the headquarters of a conspiracy to extort and launder about $100 million in bribes from companies in the electricity sector.
“For months, waves of Russian drone and missile attacks have caused devastating blackouts, leaving people in Kyiv and other cities without power for up to 16 hours a day,” Shuster writes. “By squeezing bribes out of the electricity sector, the alleged kickback scheme hindered efforts to protect the power grid.” According to National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine investigators, the scheme made the blackouts worse.
While Zelensky has not been implicated in the investigation, which NABU code-named Operation Midas, “the alleged involvement of his former business partner and several senior government officials has undermined the president’s greatest asset among voters and allies: his image as a leader in the mold of Winston Churchill, a tireless defender of Ukraine and Europe from the forces of Russian tyranny,” Shuster writes.
📸: Julia Kochetova / The Guardian / Redux
2 days ago | [YT] | 72
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The Atlantic
The historian Margaret MacMillan joins David Frum for a conversation about what a “post-American” world order might look like.
Watch the latest episode of “The David Frum Show”: https://youtu.be/jb_2J7-Es6g
2 days ago | [YT] | 25
View 0 replies
The Atlantic
The “Wicked” sequel takes a dreary turn from the irresistible first film, David Sims argues—even its stars Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande “can’t keep the film from collapsing under the lightest scrutiny.” theatln.tc/G3JAYy17
Although the first movie was a “big, brassy delight,” as Sims describes it, “Wicked: For Good” struggles to tie its many plot threads together and is further hampered by a much weaker set of songs.
The film strives to hit the biggest character arcs while also managing to fit in the entire plot of “The Wizard of Oz,” including introducing the audience to the Tin Man, the Scarecrow, and the Cowardly Lion, and providing several glimpses of the back of Dorothy’s head. “Yet the movie can’t line up the parallel storylines well enough for that endeavor to work,” Sims writes. Elphaba is raging, Glinda is failing to coax her friend back to the side of the Wizard, and every so often, someone mentions that Dorothy’s still trotting down the Yellow Brick Road. “The characters ultimately seem cordoned off from one another, and the script spins its wheels until the big conclusion.”
“‘For Good’ is at its most successful when it’s able to tap into its predecessor’s strengths,” Sims continues. “Glinda’s dilemma of presenting a face of public propriety while inching toward more rebellious thought is the crux of both “Wicked” installments, and Grande does the best job of adding some dramatic heft. At the same time, the focus on a more melancholic Glinda emphasizes what is now sorely missing: the first movie’s comic charm, much of which stemmed from Grande’s performance. Without it, the events just come across as unrelentingly dreary.”
“Following the beloved source material may have bolstered ‘Part One,’ but it hamstrings what should be a grand finale,” Sims continues. “The ‘Wicked’ saga’s move to the big screen started on a delicious note. Now that it’s over, I’m left waiting to be satisfied.”
Read more: theatln.tc/G3JAYy17
📸: Giles Keyte / Universal Pictures / Everett Collection
2 days ago | [YT] | 35
View 4 replies
The Atlantic
“In democracies all across the world, the party system appears unhealthy,” Idrees Kahloon argues. “If the major parties don’t wish to die, they will have to adapt.”
As of September, only 40 percent of voters approved of the Republican Party. The Democrats’ favorability was at 37 percent—“their worst in more than 30 years,” Kahloon reports. It’s not just an American problem—across democracies, “trust in parties is low, partisan antagonism is high, and elections feel existential instead of routine,” Kahloon writes. theatln.tc/bMWfqHkx
Some argue that the United States should become more like the United Kingdom, where the prime minister always possesses a parliamentary majority, or it should move to proportional representation, as in Germany. Or America could elect its president by popular vote, like France, or become a Scandinavian-style social democracy. “Yet European democracies with all of these features have not been immune to populism,” Kahloon writes.
“Voters are less committed to parties, angrier at their fellow citizens, and quicker to become disgruntled with government,” Kahloon writes. “The ascendant parties—the MAGA version of the Republican Party, Britain’s Reform, France’s National Rally, and the German AfD—present themselves as preservers of national culture from immigration, globalization, and the corrupt and decadent elites of the old mainstream parties. This unwinding is the result of deeper forces, social and economic transformations that have unmoored the old mass parties of left and right.”
“All the solutions you think could be applied in the U.S. have been tried and shown to fail in different European countries,” Christopher Bickerton, a professor of modern European politics at Cambridge University, told Kahloon. “There is no panacea.”
“Plenty of people can hope to undo long-running declines in union membership, religiosity, and social trust—but they should not be optimistic,” Kahloon continues. “Instead, parties will need to reinvent themselves for the postindustrial, postmaterial age. This is painful, but not impossible.”
Read more: theatln.tc/bMWfqHkx
📸: Thomas Dworzak / Magnum
2 days ago (edited) | [YT] | 56
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