Today's Liberal News

Live Coverage: August 4, 2020 primaries

Tuesday brings an action-packed night of elections as five states are holding downballot primaries, and we’ll be liveblogging the results. Due to the coronavirus, many voters are choosing to vote by mail, and each state has different deadlines for the return of mail ballots. As a result, we may not know the final results for some races for several days or more.

The orca mom who mourned her calf is pregnant again, raising both hopes and deep fears

Friday Harbor, Washington—Two summers ago, an orca nicknamed Tahlequah—officially J35, a 20-year-old member of the endangered Southern Resident killer whale (SRKW) population that normally populates the Salish Sea in the summertime—captured the attention of people around the world as she mourned the death of her new calf by displaying its limp corpse, pushing it around on her rostrum for 17 days straight.

Falwell deletes yet another photo on social media, but not before it’s captured by Twitter users

Despite how many times you hear “what goes on the internet, stays on the internet” some people just don’t learn. Deleting a photo doesn’t make it go away, yet infamous Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr. seems to think otherwise. Again, Falwell has deleted something on social media—but this time not because of its obvious racism, but its bizarre nature.

SEC investigating possible insider trading around Kodak-Trump drug production deal

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is investigating possible insider trading at Eastman Kodak following a spike in the company’s shares around the announcement of a $765 million government loan to manufacture pharmaceutical ingredients. Sen. Elizabeth Warren had called on the SEC to investigate because shares began rising even before the official announcement of the loan.

The Atlantic Daily: The TikTok Scuffle Tells a Bigger Story

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.Arsh Raziuddin / The AtlanticGeneration Z can continue to lip-synch away merrily—for now. The president reversed course on threats to ban TikTok, saying he’ll instead allow the Chinese-owned social-media app to sell to an American company, so long as it meets a September deadline.

Photos: Massive Explosion Hits Beirut Port

On August 4, a fire in a structure near the port area of Beirut, Lebanon, led to an enormous explosion that shook the city. The shockwave from the blast destroyed buildings close by and shattered glass for miles around, causing at least 10 deaths and hundreds of injuries, according to reporting from Reuters. The exact cause of the fire and explosion has yet to be determined. Below are some early images from the aftermath in Beirut.

A Plan to Grow 90,000 Trees in Los Angeles

What is the most effective thing an individual can do about climate change? There are lots of possible answers: what you eat, how you vote, where and how you live, how you travel, and so on. Every one of them matters. For Americans, at this moment, the one that matters most may be how you vote.But among the steps most immediately within many people’s control, an important one is planting trees. Yes, there interview.

The Surprising Legacy of Inception, 10 Years Later

A year after the release of his 2010 film, Inception, Christopher Nolan invited some of the movie industry’s most prominent directors—Michael Bay, Jon Favreau, Edgar Wright, and others—to a special screening in Los Angeles. He treated them to the first six minutes of his next film, The Dark Knight Rises, on an IMAX screen, the huge canvas that had become a trademark for Nolan’s movies.

The Families of ISIS’s Victims Are Asking for Justice

Politics is usually about compromise, so we should savor those rare policy decisions for which every consideration—justice, morality, practicality—is neatly aligned. The Trump administration has a chance this week to reverse itself and get one such decision right. There are indications that it will.The underlying facts offer little to savor. The Islamic State kidnapped and murdered four Americans in 2014 and 2015.

“It’s Basically a Death Sentence”: Hunger Strikers Demand Release as Virus Surges in ICE Jails

People being held in Immigration and Customs Enforcement jails are holding work strikes and hunger strikes over the lack of access to personal protective equipment or quality medical care, and to demand their release. We speak with Joe Mejia, an asylum seeker who was among a group of prisoners at Yuba County Jail in California who led a hunger strike while he was held there for nearly 11 months. “That place is dangerous,” Mejia says.