Donald Trump is hosting a UFC fight on the White House lawn for his birthday. Although the president loves fights, he doesn’t understand them, @bhumikatharoor argues. She explores what Trump can learn from mixed martial arts:

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What does “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” written to prepare the Union and its soldiers for the terrible fight ahead, say about America itself? @JeffreyGoldberg on @TheAtlantic’s greatest poem and the 250th anniversary of the republic:

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Marjane Satrapi, the French Iranian author of the groundbreaking graphic memoir “Persepolis,” died last week. Hillary Chute examines how Satrapi made defiance into a lifelong project:

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RT @YAppelbaum: Read @bhumikatharoor on what fighters know that Trump does not:

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RT @bhumikatharoor: Hello hi, I wrote about mixed martial arts, the upcoming UFC fight at the White House, and Trump

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No Russian thinker has worked harder than Aleksandr Dugin to rationalize the invasion of Ukraine—but Dugin, along with many other Russian elites, has run out of cogent stories to tell, @shustry reports: : Ramil Sitdikov / AFP / Getty

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The NBA is facing critiques of the sport’s very soul—a fight that would be daunting for any commissioner, much less one who dreads confrontation, @TimAlberta wrote in May. He examines the future of the league, and its leader:

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The Founders could never have imagined America’s modern information environment—and the “question for our democracy is whether a system designed for the communications technologies of the 18th century can survive those of the 21st,” @JeffreyRosen argues.

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Since the start of his tenure as secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth has sought to delegitimize the accomplishments—and the very presence—of Black people in the military, @ClintSmithIII writes.

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Unable to agree on how to interpret American history, schools, universities, and political institutions have stopped trying to interpret it at all, @YAppelbaum writes. But “without a coherent national story, we will fail to be a coherent nation.”

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“Battle Hymn of the Republic” can be used to make a statement in a way that “The Star-Spangled Banner” never can—and the rousing urgency of the hymn’s lyrics can’t be ignored, Jake Lundberg writes.

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The latest flu shot is ready for review—but nearly a dozen experts, including former ACIP members and former HHS officials told @KatherineJWu they have never encountered such uncertainty about the basic government process of recommending the vaccines.

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Would you pay $12,000 for a coat of arms? Many Americans have, @helenlewis writes. Why does a nation founded on the rejection of aristocratic traditions still yearn for them?

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“We’d save ourselves an enormous amount of trouble in the future if we’d agree to a simple litmus test: Immediately disregard anyone in the business of selling a vision who proudly proclaims they hate reading,” Thomas Chatterton Williams wrote in 2023:

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.@DKThomp spoke with the economist Jesús Fernández-Villaverde about why the birth rate is dropping, why it matters, and just how steep the decline is likely to get:

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The white identitarians have more cultural and political power today than they did at any point in the past half century—and now that DEI and anti-racism are in retreat, they're moving on to a more ambitious goal, @thomaschattwill argues.

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The hit movie “Obsession” dramatizes a particular kind of Gen Z anxiety spiral, Emma Stefansky writes:

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Tennis is now easier to pick up than ever. “But its real advantage over other sports is what happens when you keep on playing,” Alexandra Moe wrote in 2025.

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"For many people, the talents that bloom later in life are more consequential than the ones that bloom early," David Brooks wrote in 2024:

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Being alive at all is the most extraordinary stroke of good luck any of us will ever experience, the physicist Alan Lightman writes: “The question is: What are we to make of the fantastically improbable fact of our existence, our moment of life?” : Will

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Answer today’s trivia, from Jake Lundberg’s article on the resurgence of a long-standing, politically dubious practice. Check your response and tackle two other questions: