Today's Liberal News

Ukraine Update: Russia fields its new volunteer battalion, and it’s … it’s just weird

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Starting in July, we started hearing about Russia working hard to sign up new volunteers, offering hefty signing bonuses appealing to a Russian culture of deep indebtedness. Big monthly paychecks were designed to draw in desperate recruits from Russia’s most impoverished, neglected regions.  

In a normal army, in a normal war, those recruits would spend several months training, then be integrated as replacements in existing units.

Intelligence agencies fear that Trump has been leaking information on U.S. spies overseas

In what may be the most shocking story to emerge from the entire Mar-a-Lago document scandal, The New York Times is reporting that officials at intelligence agencies fear that among the classified information Donald Trump stole was details on U.S. assets embedded in foreign countries. The names, locations, and even the existence of such assets is among the most guarded secrets of the nation.

GOTV: How YOU can do something about the news

As we all know very well already, we have an election of immense significance on Nov. 8, a mere 74 days from now. The best antidote to worry and dread over the outcome, and the best way to guarantee a big, beautiful blue Democratic wave once again? ACTION. And do we ever have the opportunities for ACTION on our Get Out the Vote page, newly linked through the site footer.

‘Dooming another generation of Americans’: The crisis of exposure to toxic materials

The trick about conspiracy theories is they’re built from a kernel of truth. Anti-vaccine theories are a good example—a lack of trust about what our bodies are exposed to helped create fertile soil for anti-vaccine theories to grow. America’s federal government has earned its distrust, and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) played its part in aiding and creating the space for conspiracy theories to flourish by failing to protect Americans from toxic materials.

Museum

Better than the minivan you slept
a winter in, American Legionparking lot, siphoning gas for heat,
but not much better. Cinder-blockapartment building on Homestead,
a couple miles from mom’s. Got inthrough the window. Waded through
the cans and bedding. Left it openfor the smell. Tried not to look
at the stain. Tried to be respectfullike in a museum. Stood so long
in front of your dresser, my brothertouched my elbow. Everything
we touch, you touched. Your socks.Your coat.

The Ballad of Downward Mobility

In the summers of my youth, the rooms were always air-conditioned. This machine-cooled air came not from window units, which were a relic of the cities, but from central systems that chilled every inch of living space to an Alaskan 67 degrees. The air seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. It had no warm spots, no eddies, no pockets of humidity.

15 Under-the-Radar TV Shows That Deserve Your Attention

New TV shows have it rough these days—especially if they don’t take place in Westeros, Middle Earth, or other well-trodden storytelling locales. Since 2020, original programming has had to contend with pandemic-scrambled production schedules, competition from cinematic universes, the boom in streaming platforms, and, most recently, the threat of disappearing from libraries altogether.

Andrew Yang Doesn’t Have Any Litmus Tests

Andrew Yang—an entrepreneur, a policy celebrity, and a proud nerd—recently co-founded Forward, America’s newest political party. During Yang’s gadfly bids for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination and last year’s Democratic mayoral nomination in New York City, his advocacy for a universal basic income gained him a cult following.

We Can Be Framers Too

The recent set of watershed Supreme Court opinions pulsates with the language of democratic accountability. Dobbs v. Jackson, overruling Roe v. Wade, makes its refrain the promise to “return” the abortion question “to the people and their elected representatives.” Concurring in West Virginia v.

The Trouble With Boutique Colleges

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.President Joe Biden’s loan-forgiveness program will help a select group of people once, but nothing about the college-debt problem will actually improve until voters, students, and parents change how they think about college.But first, here are three new stories from The Atlantic.

Trigger Laws Make Abortion Off Limits for Millions; Patients Face “Intolerable” Risk & Uncertainty

Millions of pregnant people in the United States have now lost access to abortion in their state since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. Anti-abortion “trigger laws” have gone into effect in numerous states across the country, including Texas, where it became a felony to perform an abortion starting Thursday,​​ punishable by up to life in prison. We speak to Dr.

Who Is Barre Seid? Secretive Tycoon Gives Record $1.6 Billion to Fund GOP Takeover of the Courts

We speak with one of the reporters who this week exposed the secretive Chicago industrial mogul who has quietly given $1.6 billion to the architect of the right-wing takeover of the courts — the largest known political advocacy donation in U.S. history. The donor is Barre Seid, who donated all of his shares in his electronics company, Tripp Lite, to the nonprofit group run by Leonard Leo, who helped select former President Trump’s conservative Supreme Court nominees.