Today's Liberal News

The Atlantic Daily: The Limits of Anti-racism Books

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.GETTY / THE ATLANTICAs America continues to reckon with systemic racism, anti-racist reading lists are everywhere. But two of our writers warn against treating even well-intended works as a cure-all.These books need to be paired with concrete, structural changes.

Paging Dr. Hamblin: Is a Bandanna a Mask?

Editor’s Note: Every Wednesday, James Hamblin takes questions from readers about health-related curiosities, concerns, and obsessions. Have one? Email him at paging.dr.hamblin@theatlantic.com.Dr. Hamblin,We have been told that washing our hands with soap and water for 20 seconds kills the virus, and that the virus doesn’t stay viable on surfaces for more than a couple of days.

Before the Media Treated Him as a Threat, They Treated Him as a Joke

In March 2011, The Colbert Report aired an installment of “Difference Makers,” the segment in which Stephen Colbert, through the character he played on the show, satirized American “heroes” in the guise of celebrating them. Its subject this time was a lawyer who had been making headlines for his efforts to challenge the constitutionality of “ladies’ nights” at bars.

What My Kids Learned When They Weren’t in School

In mid-March, my two middle-school-aged daughters were sent home from school. They didn’t know that their school year was essentially at an end, or that they would not see some of their friends for a long time. They didn’t know that they wouldn’t sit in a classroom for at least six months. They didn’t know that their lives would be changed for even longer.Their lessons continued online, but the quality fell. The girls found them uninteresting.

Trump Is Determined to Split the Country in Two

New offensives against major cities from President Donald Trump and GOP governors are pushing at the central geographic fault line between the Republican and Democratic coalitions.On one front, Trump is taking his confrontational approach toward big cities to an ominous new level by deploying federal law-enforcement officials to Portland and potentially other locales over the objection of local officials.

As COVID Spikes in California, Latinx Workers Who “Keep the State Going” See Up to 5x the Deaths

Amid a surge in coronavirus cases and hospitalizations across the United States, the Latinx community has been hit especially hard in places like California, where many Latinx workers fill essential jobs as farmworkers and meatpackers. “Latino and people of color basically do the scut work that keep the state going, its economy going, but get very little of the resources,” says Dr.

“Silence the Guns”: Africa’s CDC Head on Delayed Pandemic, Health Equity & Dangers of War

The African continent has mostly escaped the worst of the pandemic, but the World Health Organization is now warning of an impending acceleration of its spread. “We have always been very clear that the pandemic in Africa was a delayed pandemic, that the continent wasn’t spared,” says Dr. John Nkengasong, director for Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.

COVID-19 Lays Bare South Africa’s Rampant Inequality & Fault Lines of Post-Apartheid Society

COVID-19 infections are skyrocketing in South Africa, now fifth in the world for coronavirus cases, with an already fragile hospital system. “I really think it’s our inequality reckoning moment,” says Fatima Hassan, a human rights lawyer with the Health Justice Initiative. “All of the fault lines of South Africa’s post-apartheid democracy, and its inequality and its violence, is actually coming to the fore.