Today's Liberal News

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.

Ed Yong on the “Disgraceful” U.S. Pandemic Response & How Medicare for All Could Have Saved Lives

As the United States experiences the world’s worst outbreak of COVID-19, we speak with Ed Yong, science writer for The Atlantic, who warned of the country’s unpreparedness for a viral outbreak in 2018. Now he says “it’s truly shocking and disgraceful” how badly the pandemic has been handled in the United States, and blames a lack of federal leadership for most of the damage.

Photos of the Week: Pride Lights, Paddy Day, Grizzly Swim

A new waterslide in the Czech Republic, a cat on the Algerian waterfront, scuffles in Taiwan’s legislature, a grotto reopening in Italy, a building collapse in Brooklyn, burying a coronavirus victim in Russia, a model village in England, a wildfire in Colorado, and much more.

Trump and the GOP are taking us into a second Great Depression, yet the magical thinking continues

This week, Dr. Anthony Fauci warned Congress that, based on the current trajectory, the United States is likely to see 100,000 new cases of COVID-19 infection per day in the very near future. Because he has to choose his words carefully to avoid antagonizing an administration that would have clearly preferred to get rid of him months ago, Fauci doesn’t play the “blame game” directly.

Donald Trump is a profile in weakness, with the help of petty men like Mitch McConnell

On a Sunday morning in 1971, Americans woke up to discover that all prices and wages in the nation had been frozen. If eggs were selling at 50 cents at the local grocery, they would stay at 50 cents right up until December. It didn’t matter if there were raises due the following week—no one was getting a raise until the end of the year. The same thing applied to service fees, or to costs like rent.

Trump’s health secretary hits the road, not to virus hot spots but to Trump swing states

The whole goddamned lot of Donald Trump’s crew needs to be impeached, including Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) Alex Azar. He’s been traveling around the country since April, but not to respond to the raging pandemic. He’s been going, Politico reports, “to key battlegrounds in the 2020 campaign: Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Maine and North Carolina, as well as two trips apiece to Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

The Week America Lost Control of the Pandemic

The American pandemic is careening out of control. Yesterday, the United States reported more than 52,000 new cases of the coronavirus, setting a new all-time daily record, according to the COVID Tracking Project at The Atlantic. The surge has put the country’s supply of coronavirus tests under strain, especially in some of the worst-hit states, such as Arizona, Texas, Florida, and California.

Candidates for a vaccine in the U.S. are racing for a prize even bigger than beating COVID-19

Last month, biotech firm Moderna Therapeutics reported very, very early positive results from a Phase 2 trial of their COVID-19 vaccine. This week it was the turn of more established drug maker Pfizer to announce that their vaccine showed similar promise and that they were also heading into Phase 3 studies in the next two weeks. These two vaccines are just two of better than 80 vaccine efforts that have been announced around the world.

The Atlantic Daily: 11 Books We’re Reading This Summer

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.Reading can feel hard right now. It’s as if the books themselves got heavier and longer, and closed off like clams. If you’re struggling to pry one open, let us help: Today, 11 writers and editors from around our newsroom offer inspiration from their own reading lists.

The Statues Brought Down Since the George Floyd Protests Began

In the widespread protests that followed the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police on May 25, statues of and memorials to Confederate soldiers and generals were vandalized or torn down. Some of the many statues of Christopher Columbus were targeted as well, as voices rose against historic and systemic racism and oppression. State and local governments then began acting to remove even more Confederate statues from public places.

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.