Today's Liberal News

News Roundup: Schools, hospitals, and workers fight the pandemic—and a conspiracy-minded public

In the news today: It may be a mostly-quiet holiday weekend, but there’s no respite from the times in which we live. As schools grapple with our children’s safety and essential workers grapple with their own safety, during a pandemic(!), there are no shortage of Americans to threaten violence against them and anyone else who might take a emergent deadly disease more seriously than the conspiracy-minded would prefer they do.

As the world reopens, remember: No one cares about your diet

As the world still continues to combat the novel coronavirus, parts of life are beginning to reopen (at least temporarily), bringing many people out of their homes for the first time in a while. Whether that means returning to in-office work, returning to the classroom in person, or simply socializing face-to-face again, there’s been a good bit of online hysteria focused on one health topic that isn’t face masks and vaccine booster shots. What is it? Weight.

Nuts & Bolts—Inside a Democratic campaign: Mayors matter

Welcome back to the weekly Nuts & Bolts Guide to small campaigns. Every week I try to tackle issues I’ve been asked about. With the help of other campaign workers and notes, we address how to improve and build better campaigns, or explain issues that impact our party.

When we think of executive officers, we tend to think of the president and governors. One other area in our government gains immediate executive experience, and that is our mayors.

The unemployment insurance system shuts out BIPOC workers. Here’s how to fix it

By Lakshmi Gandhi

This story was originally published at Prism.

Millions of Americans are entering Labor Day weekend knowing that one of the key unemployment benefits that has been keeping them afloat throughout the pandemic is coming to an end. States across the country have announced they will not be extending the specially created federal pandemic unemployment beyond Sept. 4, leaving workers and advocates scrambling to figure out what to do next.

Not Even a Pandemic Could Settle One of Medicine’s Greatest Controversies

Doug Robertson is the kind of doctor who eats his own dog food. As a gastroenterologist in the Department of Veterans Affairs health-care system, he is overseeing a 50,000-person study comparing two different ways to screen for colon cancer: Patients aged 50 to 75 are randomly assigned to receive either a colonoscopy or a fecal immunochemical test, which can be conducted at home and detects tiny amounts of blood in a patient’s poop.

Drake’s Tedious Descent Into Villainy

Maybe the rise of the term fuckboy to mock men who can’t keep their Dickies zipped is a sign of progress. I’ll never forget when my middle-school social-studies teacher, introducing the class to the concept of sexism, filled the whiteboard with all the ugly words for female promiscuity—slut, whore, etc.—but could muster only praising (stud) or outdated (cad) terms for men.

Ghosting

How cavalier
people are—with language
and with silence.Any ghost will
tell you—the last thing
we meanto do
is leave you.This poem appears in the October 2021 print edition. When you buy a book using a link on this page, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic.

Most NFL Players Understand What Cam Newton Doesn’t

A popular saying in football is that a player’s best ability is his availability. The idea explains why injured players in professional football are often cut, released, or relegated to lesser roles. It’s why an NFL player’s history of missing games can keep him from getting a big contract. It’s why players who face criminal allegations are handled according to whether they’ll miss time on the field.

The Evangelical Who Got Fired for Promoting Vaccines

Dan Darling was the consummate evangelical insider, until he wasn’t. Over the years, he has run the communications shop for several big-name Christian organizations, most recently the National Religious Broadcasters, or NRB, an association of more than 1,000 Christian radio hosts, television producers, and other media professionals. But at the end of August, he was fired.