Today's Liberal News

Trump’s overinflated real estate empire, massive fraud end in civil suit from New York AG James

New York Attorney General Letitia James has filed a $250 million civil lawsuit against Donald J. Trump, Ivanka Trump, Eric Trump, and Donald Trump Jr., as well as two Trump executives, Allan Weisselberg and Jeff McConney, for “numerous acts of fraud and misrepresentations,” and seeks to bar any of the Trumps from operating a company in the state of New York ever, or from engaging in any commercial real estate transactions in the state for five years.

The Next Shock Wave in Puerto Rico

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.For the forthcoming November issue of The Atlantic, the author Jaquira Díaz wrote about the ongoing impact of Hurricane María on Puerto Rico.

Fauci Addresses ‘The Pandemic Is Over’

Editor’s Note: Editor’s Note: This article is part of our coverage of The Atlantic Festival. Learn more and watch festival sessions here. Several days after President Joe Biden declared that “the pandemic is over,” Anthony Fauci weighed in on the president’s controversial remarks during an interview at The Atlantic Festival, an annual live event in Washington, D.C.

The Constitutional Case Against a Federal Abortion Ban

Welcome to Up for Debate. On Wednesdays, I round up timely conversations and ask readers a thought-provoking question. Later, I publish some of your thoughtful replies. (Were you forwarded this email? Sign up here.)Question of the WeekWhat are your thoughts or views about immigration? Feel free to write about politics, policy, culture, or personal experience.

This Is Neptune?

Did you know that Neptune has rings?It’s true. The planet we’re now told is the farthest from us has a set of narrow bands made of dust. Planetary scientists know this, as do hard-core astronomy fans, probably. But for those of us who have certain textbook images of the solar system in our mind, the knowledge that Neptune is a ringed planet might come as a surprise.

It’s Just Fraud All the Way Down

At times in his prepresidential life, Donald Trump represented himself as a real-estate mogul, a television star, a business visionary, and a salesman par excellence. But according to a complaint filed today by New York Attorney General Letitia James, the Trump Organization was actually just a massive fraud with incidental sidelines in property development, merchandising, and entertainment.The basic scheme alleged in the complaint is straightforward.

“The American Dream & Other Fairy Tales”: Disney Heiress Tackles Inequality, Family Legacy in New Film

Half of full-time workers in the United States cannot make ends meet. Thousands of them work for the Walt Disney Company. One of them reached out to the dissident heiress Abigail Disney, whose grandfather Roy Disney built what is often called the “happiest place on Earth.” Now she’s made a documentary about how the family business exploits its workers: “The American Dream and Other Fairy Tales.

Adnan Syed Freed After 23 Years in Prison. Same Flaws in His Murder Case Plague Thousands of Others

Adnan Syed, the subject of the popular podcast “Serial,” was released Monday after a Maryland judge vacated his murder conviction due to evidence withheld during the trial that might have helped exonerate him. Syed spent 23 years in prison after being convicted of murdering his ex-girlfriend Hae Min Lee as a teenager in 1999. He has not been declared legally innocent, and prosecutors could decide to retry the case, but that appears unlikely.

COVID, Climate & Conflict Fueling Global Hunger as World Leaders at U.N. Urged to Take Action

An open letter signed by over 200 humanitarian groups calls on world leaders at the United Nations General Assembly to urgently take action on world hunger, citing that one person dies of hunger every four seconds. We speak with Abby Maxman, president and CEO of Oxfam America, one of the letter’s signatories, who just returned from Somaliland, where a famine may be declared as early as next month.

Ukraine update: As Russia prepares to force ‘referendums’ in occupied areas, Putin is a no-show

It’s been hard to locate any reasonable military response for Russia at this point in its failed invasion of Ukraine. Because there isn’t one. So Moscow is now scrambling for the means to justify even more attacks on civilian infrastructure—and civilians—and it thinks it has that plan in the form of a series of “referendums” to be carried out in occupied areas of Ukraine over the next week.

Lindsey Graham: Abortion ‘is not a states’ rights issue’

The most common way other Senate Republicans are trying to dodge questions on Sen. Lindsey Graham’s national abortion ban bill is to claim they think abortion is a states’ rights issue. But voters should take those claims as seriously as Graham’s own insistence just last month that he thought abortion was a states’ rights issue.

Trump got the special master he wanted, but he’s finding that Judge Dearie isn’t what he expected

Now that he has the “special master” he requested to deal with the documents he hoarded at Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump is already finding reasons to object to the process. Specifically, Trump’s legal team is refusing to talk about whether, or how, Trump actually tried to declassify any of the documents by claiming it would harm their “defense to the merits of any subsequent indictment.