Today's Liberal News

President Trump Has a Pet-Project Docket at the National Parks

President Trump gets what he wants, when he wants it, from the National Park Service. One and a half million dollars to replace brick pavers in Lafayette Park, across from the White House? Contracting officials at the NPS Washington headquarters found the money within five days last month. A $170,000 request to remove a fence around the Hains Point golf course, preparing the ground for a new “championship-quality” layout? Six days this summer.

“Love Machines”: James Muldoon on How AI Is Changing Relationships & the Global Workers Fueling AI

James Muldoon is a sociologist who writes about the changing nature of human-technology relationships. Love Machines: How Artificial Intelligence Is Transforming Our Relationships investigates how people form emotional attachments with large language models, including OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude. Feeding the Machine: The Hidden Human Labor Powering A.I.

AI Superintelligence Is Not a Tool, It’s an Adversary Threatening Humanity: ControlAI’s Connor Leahy

Sixty-nine-year-old Wynd Kaufmyn, a retired teacher from Berkeley, California, is believed to be the first person imprisoned for protesting the development of artificial intelligence, after she and other members of the group StopAI were arrested during a sit-in protest at the headquarters of OpenAI. Democracy Now! reached Kaufmyn at the San Francisco County Jail, where she is now serving a two-week sentence for charges including “interfering with a business.

5 Years After Taliban Takeover, Women & Girls in Afghanistan Have Disappeared from Public Life

Restrictions on women’s rights have expanded in Afghanistan since U.S. forces withdrew from the country five years ago, ceding control to the Taliban in the process. Afghan women are banned from attending schools and gyms, books written by women are removed from libraries, doctors and nurses are unable to practice, and child marriage rates have increased. Wives have been rendered legally subordinate to their husbands, and women are required to stay silent in public.

A Stubbornly Naive Group of GOP Senators

This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.
For many observers of American politics, the past few years have been disillusioning, knocking down hopeful beliefs about what the people of the United States will support or tolerate. Even some of Donald Trump’s backers have become disaffected.

Are You Sure You Want a Car With a Giant Touch Screen?

New drivers may never have to learn how to parallel park. At least not the old-fashioned way. Many new cars—a Ford Mustang Mach-E, a BMW sedan, a Tesla Cybertruck—will just maneuver into a spot for you with a click of a button. Even a decade-old Toyota Corolla has a backup camera and pedestrian detection.

Why the Closing of Harvard’s Writing Center Matters

It is not every day that the laying off of a university bureaucrat generates a torrent of criticism from students, faculty, and alumni. But Jane Rosenzweig was not just any university bureaucrat, and she was not presiding over just any administrative fiefdom. The dismantling of Harvard University’s writing center, and the laying off of Rosenzweig, its director—both announced last month—has been met with outcry shading into outrage.

The ‘Resistance’ Is Over

Is Donald Trump over? Can we all now relax and move on to the next thing?
That’s the message from a significant portion of Democratic primary voters. Just as Trump is bored with Iran and the economy and wants to play with monuments and gilding, so too are many Democratic primary voters in Florida and elsewhere bored with Trump and eager to play factional politics instead.

Photos: Drone Attacks on Russia’s Wildberries Warehouses

SOPA Images / Reuters
A man looks at a burning warehouse belonging to the Russian online retailer Wildberries in the Utkina Zavod area, near the village of Novosaratovka, following a drone attack. During the night of July 24, 2026, the Armed Forces of Ukraine launched a large-scale drone attack targeting Wildberries warehouses in the Leningrad Region and St. Petersburg, Russia.

Bipartisan Outcry Forces Trump to Pause Border Security Project in Big Bend National Park in Texas

The Trump administration has paused construction of border infrastructure in Big Bend National Park in Texas following public criticism of the controversial project. Crews were filmed bulldozing pristine desert wilderness earlier this month, sparking rare bipartisan pushback. The construction is part of a larger plan for the Big Bend region to build hundreds of miles of walls, vehicle barriers and other border infrastructure.

“Profoundly Corrupt”: Trump Sued for Selling Early Access to His Truth Social Posts for $100K/Month

We speak with Brendan Ballou, CEO of the Public Integrity Project, which is part of a lawsuit against President Donald Trump over his plan to monetize access to his social media platform Truth Social, where he routinely makes market-moving announcements. Truth API went live on August 1 and already has subscribers. Truth Social is charging up to $100,000 per month for early access to the president’s posts, giving investors an edge on major news events.

Trump’s “Authoritarian Takeover” of the Media, ABC Suing FCC & the Meta Trial: Free Press’s Jessica González

We look at major media news with Jessica González, co-CEO of the advocacy organization Free Press. She discusses the landmark lawsuit against Meta for making its social media platforms addictive for young people, efforts to halt the Paramount-Warner Bros. megamerger, and Disney’s lawsuit against the Federal Communications Commission over what it calls the Trump administration’s “retaliatory campaign” against the ABC television network.