Today's Liberal News

The Books Briefing: Language Can Build Community—Or Sow Division

In the media reporter Brian Stelter’s book Hoax, he shares an anecdote that neatly sums up so much about Fox News and its influence on how its viewers communicate. A staffer who described a restaurant chain’s decision to offer a vegan burger as an improvement to the menu said they were castigated and corrected: The new option was actually proof of the “war on meat,” a network superior said. Thus, the story was quickly reframed in the channel’s familiar vernacular.

A Friendship That Fuels a Bigger Notion of Family

Each installment of “The Friendship Files” features a conversation between The Atlantic’s Julie Beck and two or more friends, exploring the history and significance of their relationship.This week she talks with two couples—Jenny and Marisa (parents to Atlas and Blaise), and Lora and Michelle (parents to Finnley and Tegan)—who had their children using the same sperm donor.

Climate Change Is Already Rejiggering Where Americans Live

When I met Flynn Hoob on Monday, he was standing in front of his home. Or rather, what was left of his home. It was the day after Hurricane Ida, and Hoob’s one-story house in Bourg, Louisiana, had fallen off its concrete pilings and sunk halfway into the nearby bayou. He had ridden out the storm inside until his house had tipped over, at which point he fled to the flooded-out bar next door and waited out the storm there for eight hours.

“On the Kill Floors”: Essential Workers in Meatpacking Plants Still Lack Safety & COVID Protections

Amid a surge in COVID-19 cases, we look at the experiences of meatpacking workers during the pandemic and beyond. Dulce Castañeda, a founding member of Children of Smithfield, a Nebraska-based grassroots advocacy group led by the children and family members of meatpacking workers, says conditions in the meatpacking plants during the pandemic remained as usual.

Dirty Work: Eyal Press on Essential Jobs and the Hidden Toll of Inequality in America

Ahead of Labor Day, we speak with journalist and sociologist Eyal Press about his new book, “Dirty Work: Essential Jobs and the Hidden Toll of Inequality in America.” Press profiles workers like prison guards and oil workers — people who make their livelihoods by doing “unethical activity that society depends on and tacitly condones but doesn’t want to hear too much” about, he says.

A Slow and Quiet Calamity

Rare is the New Orleans tourist who doesn’t visit the French Quarter, the 13-block neighborhood sitting at the edge of the Mississippi River. Residents, too, are accustomed to its sounds and smells and images, which together have come to represent our hometown, one of the most special places in the world. I think of the city I come from every day—especially now.

News Roundup: Supreme Court move to erase Roe blasted by dissents; Ida delivers dangerous final hit

In the news today: As the Northeast reels from new flooding, most other news today focuses on the Supreme Court decision allowing a plainly Roe-violating Texas anti-abortion law to take effect—sneeringly, according to the court’s majority, because the Texas plan of using civilian bounty hunters to enforce the law is such a thorny procedural question that the hard-right court has no choice but to let abortions be effectively banned in the state while the court ponders the issue.

So much for the free market: Florida to fine private businesses that require proof of vaccination

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis reminds me of someone. Someone from popular culture. Is it Hannibal Lecter? Nah. Lecter was far more discriminate when it came to choosing his victims. President Camacho from Idiocracy? No way. Camacho at least showed glimmers of empathy. Gus the Field-Goal Kicking Mule? Closer, but no. Gus was actually good at something. Jim Carrey’s talking asshole from Ace Ventura? Much closer—especially this version. But not quite.

Over 100 groups say reinstatement of Remain in Mexico in any form ‘would be a travesty’

Last week, the Supreme Court’s right-wing justices issued a stunning, unsigned order that forces the Biden administration to revive the previous administration’s cruel and unlawful Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) policy or Remain in Mexico. Now, more than 100 organizations are calling on the Biden administration to take “all necessary legal steps” to attempt again to end the policy, including issuing a new memo.

Abortion allows us to determine our own futures

By Aimee Registe, J.D. and Jasminee Yunus, J.D.

This story was originally published at Prism.

At midnight on Sept. 1, our greatest fears became a reality in Texas under Senate Bill 8, which bans abortion before most people even know they’re pregnant and deputizes strangers to sue anyone who supports or assists another person in accessing abortion in violation of the law.