Today's Liberal News

Did the Army Ignore a Soldier’s Murder? Questions Mount over Vanessa Guillén Disappearance

The U.S. Army says it has a suspect in custody in connection with the disappearance of Vanessa Guillén, a missing 20-year-old Fort Hood soldier whose family says her remains were likely found in a shallow grave near the Texas Army base. A second suspect in the case — a soldier who the Guillén family lawyer named as Aaron Robinson — killed himself in Killeen, Texas, as officers approached.

Barbara Ransby on the Biden Problem: Social Movements Must Defeat Trump & Also Hold Dems Accountable

Amid a mass uprising against racism and state violence, social movements are not just fighting hostility and backlash from President Trump, but also dealing with a “Biden problem,” according to historian, author and activist Barbara Ransby. “I think it’s fair to say that Joe Biden is not our dream candidate, by any means,” she says. “We should be critical of Joe Biden. We should be ready to hold Joe Biden accountable come January.

AT&T argues being misleading about data plans isn’t misleading because reporters caught them

One of the grand tricks the telecom industry was able to achieve by getting its henchman, Ajit Pai, into the majority chairman position in the FCC was to kill net neutrality protections. The most special part of this was Pai’s argument that the FCC did not have the power to enforce, and should not have the power to enforce, any regulations on the telecommunications landscape.

‘Get the f–k back!’ Michigan woman shown on video threatening Black mom with pistol

A white Michigan woman who reportedly bumped into a Black teen was shown on viral video pulling out a pistol on the child’s mother in an encounter Wednesday evening that led to assault charges for the armed woman and a man she was with. The encounter began when the child identified by The Detroit News as Makayla Green asked the woman to apologize for bumping into her outside of a Chipotle restaurant about 40 miles northwest of Detroit in Orion Township.

Cheers and Jeers: July 4, 1776 Edition

Still the best history lesson on the founding of our country I’ve seen. In fact, it’s certified “100% Texas School Board approved”:

YouTube Video

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Our annual posting of the original Cheers and Jeers from July 4, 1776—discovered gathering dust and mold behind some rotten drywall at the farm of Phinneas Pawpatch on July 5, 1776—starts below the ye olde folde.

The Atlantic Daily: Making Sense of the Fourth

Every weekday evening, our editors guide you through the biggest stories of the day, help you discover new ideas, and surprise you with moments of delight. Subscribe to get this delivered to your inbox.OLIVER MUNDAYThis is an awkward moment to be celebrating America. The past few months showed a great power in decay, struggling to contain a deadly pandemic and reckoning anew with its racist systems.As such, many Americans may hesitate to drape themselves in red, white, and blue.

Trump Is Turning America Into the ‘Shithole Country’ He Fears

There is a lot of learned material written about nationalism—scholarly books and papers, histories of it, theories of it—but most of us understand that nationalism, at its heart, at its very deepest roots, is about a feeling of superiority: We are better than you. Our country is better than your country. Or even—and apologies, but this is the precise language deployed by the president of the United States: Your country is a shithole country. Ours isn’t.

Watching Hamilton Is Like Opening a Time Capsule

In an ideal world, I’d expect a Disney+ edition of Hamilton to have some real Broadway flavor. Perhaps there’d be a filmed rendering of waiting in line to have your ticket ripped at the Richard Rodgers Theatre, or a re-creation of buying an overpriced drink before taking your seat. But the stage recording of the hit musical, which starts streaming today, offers no such thing.

The Books Briefing: The Power of Friendship

Emily Dickinson wrote a letter to a stranger in 1870 in which she asked the recipient, the writer Thomas Wentworth Higginson, to read a few of her poems. The letter sparked an enduring correspondence between the two, who became friends before eventually meeting eight years later. The friendship was said to have changed Dickinson, giving her a new confidence, as Martha Ackmann chronicles in her book These Fevered Days.

“America’s Moment of Reckoning”: Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor & Cornel West on Uprising Against Racism

Scholars Cornel West and Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor respond to the global uprising against racism and police violence following the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. “We’re seeing the convergence of a class rebellion with racism and racial terrorism at the center of it,” said Princeton professor Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor. “And in many ways, we are in uncharted territory in the United States.

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

In a Fourth of July holiday special, we hear 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, he gave one of his most famous speeches, “The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro.” He was addressing the Rochester Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society.

Australia Has a Flesh-Eating-Bacteria Problem

About a week after Steven Mikac began taking antibiotics for the strange spot on his leg, the flesh around his ankle started to tighten and swell. The moist orifice of a wound opened up and took the form of a small bullet hole. A plug of tissue had gone missing—dissolved into pus and slime. Walking was excruciating. Working, unbearable. In early October of last year, Mikac showed his ankle to a colleague at the hospital where he works in Melbourne, in the Australian state of Victoria.