Today's Liberal News

The Tech Giants Are Dangerous, and Congress Knows It

When Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg testified on Capitol Hill two years ago, the hearings were an embarrassing exercise in congressional cluelessness. They furthered a cliché: The doddering American political elite, who sometimes seemed to confuse Messenger with the passenger pigeon, would never have the savvy to keep up with the dynamism of Big Tech, let alone regulate it.The House Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust thoroughly debunked that strand of conventional wisdom today.

The Atlantic Daily: Congress Wakes Up to the Danger of Tech Giants

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.SHUTTERSTOCK / THE ATLANTICThe four tech CEOs testifying before the House antitrust subcommittee today appeared, fittingly, in digital form only.

NASA Prepares to Launch the Mars Rover Perseverance

On July 30, NASA is set to launch a car-sized rover named Perseverance and a robotic helicopter named Ingenuity to the planet Mars, to search for signs of past microbial life and examine the Martian climate and geology in an area known as Jezero crater. If all goes according to schedule, the Mars 2020 mission will land its robotic explorers on Mars on February 18, 2021, after six and a half months of travel time.

Will Kids Follow the New Pandemic Rules at School?

Across the country, schools have outlined the precautions they’ll take as they reopen their campuses this fall. If and when kids return, schools are planning outdoor “mask breaks” in Denver, one-way hallways in Northern Virginia, and shortened in-person school weeks in New York City, among many, many other safeguards against coronavirus outbreaks.Included in these reopening plans are a number of measures whose implementation will fall to students themselves.

Civil Rights Icon Bernard Lafayette on His Friend John Lewis, Freedom Rides & Practicing Nonviolence

We revisit civil rights leader and Congressmember John Lewis’s early years of activism with Bernard Lafayette, one of Lewis’s closest friends and collaborators. Lafayette participated with Lewis in the first Freedom Rides of 1961 as they attempted to integrate buses and faced brutal beatings by white mobs, and was a fellow leader in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.

Rev. Warnock of Ebenezer Baptist Church on Legacy of John Lewis & Ongoing Fight for Voting Rights

We look at the life and legacy of late civil rights icon and Georgia Congressmember John Lewis, who is being mourned across the U.S. and who became the first Black politician to lie in state in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda. “The irony of this moment is that even as we celebrate and honor John Lewis, the patron saint of voting rights, he hailed from the state which in many instances is ground zero for voter suppression,” says Rev. Dr.

Paging Dr. Hamblin: My Grandma Is Angry I Won’t Take Her to the Salon

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.Dear Dr. Hamblin,My grandmother recently lost her husband and son, and was in a car accident that broke her hip and back. Because she has significant hearing and vision loss, she was told she would never be able to drive again.

Make America White Again: Eddie Glaude on Trump and What James Baldwin Still Has to Teach Us

Amid a nationwide reckoning with systemic racism, we speak with Princeton African American studies professor Eddie Glaude, whose new book on James Baldwin offers lessons from the iconic writer for the present. Baldwin, says Glaude, insisted that “we put aside the myths and illusions and understand what white supremacy has done in terms of disfiguring and distorting the character of this nation.