Today's Liberal News

The Most Important Number for the West’s Hideous Fire Season

Updated at 7:07 p.m. ET on Sept. 15, 2020.To understand the ravenous wildfire season in the American West this year, boil some ravioli. Put the heat on high. After about 10 minutes, the pasta will go limp and start to break apart. Keep boiling. When the pot holds a shallow puddle of water and a pile of soggy debris, keep going. Don’t turn down the heat until the last bubbles of water sizzle and vanish.

The Atlantic Daily: Fires Don’t Care About Swing States

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.CreditBy the time President Trump flew West—and by the time his 2020 opponent, Joe Biden, gave his first speech on the matter—the fires had been burning for weeks.

A Paranoid Rant Says a Lot About Where Trumpism Is Headed

No matter how often he’s asked, Donald Trump can’t articulate what his second term as president would look like. He doesn’t need to, because Americans can see for themselves. It looks like Michael Caputo.Caputo is the top spokesperson at the Department of Health and Human Services, which is a job in which you’re supposed to shape the news, not make it. But Caputo has had a busy few days.

Released Today: The Atlantic’s THE AMERICAN CRISIS from Simon & Schuster

The past four years have been among the most turbulent in U.S. history—and would have been so even without a global pandemic and waves of nationwide protest against police violence. How did we get here?Today The Atlantic and Simon & Schuster release The American Crisis, an urgent look at a country in chaos, drawn from the pathbreaking recent work of The Atlantic’s journalists.

Life in the Wake of COVID-19

In April, José Collantes contracted the new coronavirus and quarantined himself in a hotel set up by the government in Santiago, Chile, away from his wife and young daughter. The 36-year-old Peruvian migrant showed only mild symptoms, and returned home in May, only to discover his wife, Silvia Cano, had also fallen ill. Silvia’s condition worsened quickly, and she was taken to a nearby hospital with pneumonia.

Pandemic Profiteering: Amazon Caught Price Gouging as Jeff Bezos’s Wealth Soared to $200 Billion

The online giant Amazon has made an extraordinary amount of money during the COVID-19 pandemic, as many people shelter at home and shop online. A new Public Citizen report documents how Amazon set prices for essential products during the crisis at levels that would violate price gouging laws in many states, and marked up some products by as much as 1,000%. “This is an ongoing thing. They are doing this currently.

Colonization Made California a Tinderbox: Why Indigenous Land Stewardship Would Help Combat Climate Fires

We examine California’s history of forest management and how a century of fire suppression has made the current climate fires even more destructive. For thousands of years, Native American tribes in California would regularly burn the landscape to steward the land, but colonization led to the suppression of these tactics and decades of misguided policy.

“Mass Voter Disenfranchisement”: GOP Ramps Up Assault on Voting Rights Across U.S. Ahead of Election

With just seven weeks to go before the U.S. presidential election, the battle for the White House is increasingly being fought in courts across the country. From Wisconsin to Florida, Pennsylvania to Colorado, judges are making major rulings deciding who gets on the ballot, how a record number of mail-in ballots are handled and distributed, and who ultimately gets to vote on November 3.

The Great British Humbling

“The cretinous stupidity of it!” snaps the tragic hero in Joseph Roth’s The Radetzky March as he faces up to his likely death in a duel over his wife’s honor. He did not want the fight and no longer loves his wife anyway, but the “stupid, steely law” of honor that bound his cavalry regiment left him no escape. In frustration, he sighs: “I don’t have the strength to run away from this stupid duel. I will become a hero out of sheer idiocy.

Monday Night Owls: Excerpts from Harper’s Index

Night Owls, a themed open thread, appears at Daily Kos seven days a week

Here are some excerpts from the October Harper’s Index:

Percentage of registered U.S. voters who said in 2016 they would consider moving to Canada if Donald Trump were elected: 28

Number of Americans who have done so since then: 33,965

Percentage by which the annual number of people killed by U.S.