The July jobs report crushed both expectations and Republican hopes for bad economic news. The economy added 528,000 jobs, defying predictions of 250,000 new jobs. Unemployment fell to 3.5%—or, economist Justin Wolfers tweeted, more precisely 3.46%, which would be “THE LOWEST UNEMPLOYMENT RATE IN OVER HALF A CENTURY.”
Remarkable number.
We need a thorough, deep dive into the four-year-old allegations against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh if we’re ever to get to the bottom of what “boof” means. It would also be nice to know if the guy who voted to wrest reproductive rights away from every American with a womb is a concupiscent churl and serial sexual assaulter. But first things first.
Indiana state Rep. John L. Bartlett proposed an amendment Thursday to a bill as ludicrous as the anti-abortion bill the state is attempting to pass. The congressman suggested that if pregnancy was “an act of god,” then “impotency” must also be. Obviously, he was illustrating a point about bodily autonomy.
“We’re forcing young girls to mothers, but not forcing the men to be fathers,” Bartlett argues.
This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona said that she’ll sign on to the Democrats’ climate bill—after advocating for a few adjustments that she apparently didn’t care to explain to anyone.But first, here are three new stories from The Atlantic.
“There are more people working than at any point in American history,” Biden said of the new report, adding it signals recovery from pandemic job losses.
At first, it was all very exciting. In 1971, a team of Danish researchers stationed on Greenland’s northwest coast found that a local Inuit community had remarkably low levels of diabetes and heart disease. The reason, the researchers surmised, was their high-marine-fat diet—in other words, fish oil. Incidence of heart disease, which once afflicted relatively few Americans, had shot up since the turn of the century, and here, seemingly, was a simple solution.
“Instead of dancing, you stand around and watch this guy cry,” said one journalist describing the bizarre scene.
There are different ways of evaluating whether the economy is good or bad without making up new definitions of recession.
Not long after the 1989 launch of The Sandman, Neil Gaiman’s groundbreaking comic-book series, came the inevitable question that plagues critically acclaimed smash hits—how best to translate it to the screen? The series’s central family, known as “The Endless,” live in a vividly cinematic world; each member personifies a natural force, including dreams, death, and desire. But Gaiman’s epic story spans eons and an ensemble of dozens.
A series of ads from industry-backed groups falsely suggests cuts to Medicare are on the way.
Reading is hard right now. The pandemic has pushed our already scattered attention spans to a crisis point. But even before 2020, stressors such as political chaos and the allure of our phones made it harder and harder to find the time and focus to get lost in a book. Even when we’re not living through a distracting moment, we will inevitably have personal fallow periods when reading as a habit and a respite just doesn’t happen.
A stomach-twisting thrill animates the Taken movies. As bullets fly across each progressively more ridiculous sequel, Liam Neeson kicks down the door to the pantheon of cultural Super Dads and asserts himself as its king.
Albert Woodfox, who was held in solitary confinement longer than any prisoner in U.S. history, has died at the age of 75 due to complications tied to COVID-19. The former Black Panther and political prisoner won his freedom six years ago after surviving nearly 44 years in solitary over a wrongful murder conviction of a prison guard. Fellow imprisoned Panthers Herman Wallace and Robert King were also falsely accused of prison murders, and they collectively became known as the Angola 3.
The Department of Justice has announced federal criminal charges against four former and current Louisville police officers over their roles in the fatal shooting of Breonna Taylor. The charges come after the state of Kentucky failed to prosecute any police officers for Taylor’s death, despite nationwide Black Lives Matter demands to investigate.
As the U.S. central banks raises interest rates, the rest of the world is feeling the squeeze.
Suddenly, overnight, real progress has been teed up for the White House.
Republicans are poised to cast aside all the economic technicalities and bash Democratic candidates up and down the midterm ballot over an economy that is already deeply unpopular with voters in both parties.
Nearly 60% of Kansas voters struck down a ballot measure Tuesday night that would have removed the state’s right to abortion and cleared the way for Republican state lawmakers to ban the procedure. It was the first vote on abortion rights since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
As the Republican nominee, Lake will face Democratic Secretary of State Katie Hobbs in November.
As the Manchin-Schumer Senate deal inches toward its first vote, all eyes are on the one Democratic senator known for scuttling past party deals: Sen. Kyrsten Sinema. Republican Sen. Ron Johnson, meanwhile, is casually proposing new ways to kill both Social Security and Medicare. The Department of Justice has announced new federal charges in the police killing of Breonna Taylor. And Alex Jones … hoo boy.
Although it’s public knowledge that the former governor of Puerto Rico, Wanda Vázquez Garced, and some of her cronies have been under investigation for corruption, Puerto Ricans woke up Thursday morning to the surprising news that she had been arrested by the FBI, along with two other unidentified people.
Ironically enough, prior to being appointed governor in August 2019, Vázquez served as the island’s Secretary of Justice.
The Arizona Democrat’s support for the bill paves the way for its passage as soon as next week.
As Daily Kos has continued to cover, Republicans are going after books. Attempts to ban books are so outrageous, that they sound like satire, but they’re sadly extremely real, and so are the ramifications of young people (and adults) losing access to stories by and about marginalized people. As covered by the Salt Lake Tribune, more than fifty books by several dozen authors are set to be removed from public school libraries in the biggest school district in Utah.
Usually when rich people rage against the possibility that someone less wealthy might become their neighbor, nobody bats an eye. Why would they? NIMBYism is the dominant fact of American urban geography. But in recent years, a number of very rich people, including the billionaire investor Marc Andreessen, have positioned themselves on the other side of the debate, arguing against supply restrictions and deriding purportedly progressive places for failing to address the rising cost of housing.
Border Patrol agents have violated the religious freedom of dozens of asylum-seekers throughout the past two months alone, confiscating and refusing to return turbans belonging to almost 50 Sikh individuals who have crossed the southern border into Arizona.
Advocates have noted border agents seizing turbans and other sacred items from Sikh migrants as far back as 2019, and rising sharply this past June, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Arizona said.
Back in November 2021, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Michael S. Regan embarked on a Journey to Justice tour of historically marginalized communities in the southern United States. In July of this year, he took the latest leg of the tour to Puerto Rico. There, he met with community groups and environmental activists and visited areas of the island still struggling to recover from 2017’s Hurricane Maria.
Officials said four people suffered life-threatening injuries after they were found in Lafayette Square near a statue of Andrew Jackson.
Thomas Patrick Connally, Jr. sent emails saying that Biden’s chief medical adviser would be “hunted, captured, tortured and killed,” according to court records.
Jane Henney will be spearheading the Reagan-Udall Foundation’s evaluation of the FDA’s food safety and tobacco divisions.
At least half a dozen RNC members could face prison time for their roles in the “fake elector” scheme that Trump pushed to illegally remain in office.