Today's Liberal News

“Defending the Sacred”: Indigenous Water Protectors Continue Resistance to Line 3 Pipeline in Minnesota

Resistance to construction of the Enbridge Line 3 tar sands pipeline continues in northern Minnesota, where more than a dozen water protectors this week locked themselves to construction vehicles at two worksites, and to the pipeline itself. Just last month, 179 people were arrested when thousands shut down an Enbridge pumping station for two days as part of the Treaty People Gathering.

It’s time to dish. What foods do you hate?

Sure, “hate” is a strong word. But as applied to food, it can be entirely appropriate. Food, after all, is an essential part of life and it can inspire serious physical reactions—for good or bad. You don’t have to be a picky eater to have one food you really, really can’t eat (for reasons other than health).

It’s a holiday weekend, so let’s chat.

A lighthouse tour with a point: Lime Kiln Point, remote but deeply connected

I happen to live in a place—San Juan Island in the far Pacific Northwest—that gets tons of tourists, especially on big holiday weekends like the Fourth of July. And one of the places that is most visited on the island by those tourists is in the photo above: Lime Kiln Point Lighthouse, on the island’s western side.

It’s one of my of my favorite places on the planet.

I loved Bill Cosby as a child. Now, I only see him as what he is: A rapist

If you’ve been paying attention, you know that due to a legal technicality, Bill Cosby will be released from prison today. I could speak about the way the technicalities work and the fact that basically the wealthy get one kind of justice and the poor do not, though not as eloquently as others. There have been plenty of poor people who were convicted that did not have the access to premier legal counsel that would look for technical mistakes in the same way.

Families divided by border embrace for three minutes at the Rio Grande during annual event

Hundreds of families who live on opposite sides of the southern border got to embrace last month—but for just a few precious moments. Roughly 200 families reunited at the Rio Grande as part of the annual Hugs Not Walls day, when officials briefly allow families “from both sides of the river with no legal means to reunite to reconnect for a brief embrace in the middle of the Rio Grande,” El Paso Matters reported.

“What to the Slave Is the 4th of July?”: James Earl Jones Reads Frederick Douglass’s Historic Speech

We begin our July Fourth special broadcast with the words of Frederick Douglass. Born into slavery around 1818, Douglass became a key leader of the abolitionist movement. On July 5, 1852, in Rochester, New York, Douglass gave one of his most famous speeches, “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” He was addressing the Rochester Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society.

The Problem With the Stories We Tell About Eating Disorders

Over the past several years, depictions of eating disorders have become more common on-screen and in literature. Think of Lily Collins’s thin frame as she counts calories in the Netflix film To the Bone, or the young protagonist of the series Insatiable, who becomes skinny after a summer on a liquid diet.

Why In-Law Relationships Can Be So Challenging

Editor’s Note: With Lori Gottlieb on book leave, Rebecca J. Rosen, the editor of “Dear Therapist,” is filling in as The Atlantic’s “Dear Therapist” archivist, pointing readers to some of Lori’s most beloved columns. A marriage is the union not merely of two spouses but of two families—each with its own beliefs and ways of being in the world.

You Really Need to Quit Twitter

I’m almost 60, and in these many decades I’ve seen people—some of them good friends—taken down by all kinds of things. Alcohol and drugs, mostly. A few years ago, I lost someone to heroin, and hundreds of us sat at his funeral in wordless communion. I know a couple of people who couldn’t shake gambling, and many plagued by food and sex and all the other great distractions.

A Volcano, a Fishing Boat, and a Narrow Escape

On the evening of August 6, 2008, on a remote island in Alaska’s Aleutian chain, the side of a volcano began crumbling into the turquoise waters of its crater lake. Gulls fled from the falling rock. The wind whistled around Chris Ford as he peered over the lip of the crater. “It’s starting to get tumbling down pretty good,” he shouted into his radio.

The Heaviest, Lightest Thing

The last time a Democrat lived in the White House, I was nearly detained outside of its gates. It should have been obvious to me, an undocumented immigrant, that giving my blank passport to a Secret Service agent could get me in trouble.But I, along with a classmate, had been asked to be there for a meeting about college access hosted by first lady Michelle Obama’s higher-education initiative, and my security form had cleared the night before.