Today's Liberal News

Video shows Maryland cop shock Black tourist with Taser after accusing him of vaping on boardwalk

Viral videos showed Maryland police tackling a teen, kneeing him in the stomach, and shocking another man with a Taser because of their response to allegations they were vaping on the Ocean City boardwalk Saturday evening, according to The Washington Post. A city ordinance prohibits “smoking and vaping outside of the designated areas on the Boardwalk,” city officials said in a news release.

Video of Black woman being dragged by her hair in sports bar ignites protests in Washington, D.C.

On Sunday evening, people gathered to protest outside of Nellie’s Sports Bar, a gay bar in Washington, D.C., after a disturbing video went viral that appeared to show a Black woman being dragged by her hair down the stairs. Dragged by whom? Allegedly, a member of the bar’s security team. It’s unknown what precisely led to the incident, but it’s deeply, inarguably unacceptable for someone to be removed from an establishment in this violent, demeaning fashion.

G7 makes big climate pledges, but the details are lacking

While many hoped the return of United States competence would swiftly translate into bold international climate action, the results of the G7 summit are mixed. On one hand, the G7 nations made a new promise to cut carbon emissions in half before the end of this decade—an aggressive move towards cleaner energy sources. On the other hand, an international climate pledge and two dollars will get you a cup of coffee, and not much else.

Notes From the Editor in Chief: The Capitol Riot Was Prologue

Every month, our editor in chief will bring readers inside The Atlantic for a taste of how our journalism gets made, and the issues that concern us the most. Expect interviews with our writers, trips into our archives, stories you shouldn’t miss, and more. Sign up to get this newsletter, Notes From the Editor in Chief, delivered to your inbox.

A Strangely Comforting Finding About Alien Rain

On rainy days, Kaitlyn Loftus likes to imagine herself somewhere else. Not on a sun-soaked beach, but on another world in the middle of its own rainstorm. Beneath the swirling storms of Jupiter or Saturn’s hazy cloud tops, where helium drops from the sky. On Neptune, where it might drizzle diamonds. Maybe Titan, a moon of Saturn, where methane rain can fill entire lakes.Loftus is a planetary scientist at Harvard, and for her, otherworldly rain is more than a daydream.

What Ilhan Omar Actually Said

By the time Republicans and centrist Democrats had united late last week to scold Representative Ilhan Omar for a tweet—one of the few pastimes that still draw the two parties together, and something those selfsame chiders would doubtlessly decry, under different circumstances, as cancel culture or censorship—it no longer mattered what, exactly, Omar had said. They had already managed to make a news cycle out of it: mission accomplished.

Wedding Season 2021 Is a Perfect Storm

With the promise of a delightfully normal summer in the United States comes the resumption of the summer wedding season. Late spring through early fall is historically the most popular time for couples to get married. This year, however, widespread vaccination in the U.S. and the ensuing easement of gathering restrictions, after more than a year of the coronavirus pandemic, are making for a wedding season of grand proportions.

50 Years After Pentagon Papers, Ellsberg Reveals U.S. Weighed 1958 Nuclear Strike on China over Taiwan

As President Biden meets with leaders of NATO countries, where he is expected to continue stepping up rhetoric against China and Russia ahead of his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin this Wednesday in Geneva, we speak with famed Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg about why he recently released another classified document showing that U.S. military planners in 1958 pushed for nuclear strikes on China to protect Taiwan from an invasion by communist forces.

Pentagon Papers at 50: Daniel Ellsberg on Risking Life in Jail to Expose U.S. Lies About Vietnam War

Fifty years ago this week, The New York Times began publishing excerpts of the Pentagon Papers — 7,000 pages of top-secret documents outlining the Pentagon’s secret history of U.S. involvement in Vietnam since the 1940s. The leak exposed years of government lies about the war, revealed that even top officials believed it was unwinnable, and would end up helping to end the Vietnam War and lead to a major victory for press freedom.