Today's Liberal News

Historian John Womack: Unions Need to Exploit “Choke Points” in Economy to Grow Working-Class Power

As Hollywood actors enter their fifth day on the picket lines and some 340,000 Teamsters working at UPS prepare to carry out one of the largest single-employer strikes in U.S. history, we speak with historian and labor organizer John Womack Jr. about his new book, Labor Power and Strategy, focused on how to seize and build labor power and solidarity. Labor actions around the world are gaining headlines this week.

Israeli Forces Blindfold & Handcuff Palestinian Reporter Who Filmed Settler Attack in Masafer Yatta

On Saturday, Basel Adra, reporter for Local Call and +972 Magazine, was detained while covering an Israeli settler attack in the West Bank area of Masafer Yatta. After he refused to hand over his video footage, Israeli soldiers handcuffed and blindfolded him and then sat him in a chair in the blazing sun for hours. The Union of Journalists in Israel denounced Basel’s detention, describing it as a “serious violation of freedom of the press.

What This Smoky Summer Means for Kids

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.The wildfire smoke blanketing cities this summer can be harmful for children, both physically and emotionally. But caregivers can take some steps to make things a little easier.

The Humiliation of Ron DeSantis

Before his stump speeches in his reelection campaign last year, Ron DeSantis liked to play a video montage that showed him being gratuitously rude to reporters at press conferences. It was petty and graceless—and warmly received by the Florida governor’s base. At a DeSantis rally in Melbourne, Florida, last fall, I watched the video from an elevated press pen alongside a gaggle of local reporters.

EVs Are Sending Toxic Tire Particles Into the Water, Soil, and Air

Electric vehicles, you might have heard, are miraculous. Just a sliver of new cars sold in the United States are EVs, but these machines have united a mishmash of people eager to move America away from gasoline. Environmental groups are all-in, and the federal government is offering hefty incentives to spur sales. Automakers now offer twice as many EV models as before the pandemic, and are pumping out endless commercials to promote them.

The Whitewashing of Neo-Nazis: Lev Golinkin & Ben Makuch on How Far Right Is Exploiting Ukraine War

Multiple reports are reinvestigating the neo-Nazi fighters and militias involved in the war both in Russia and Ukraine. “You have neo-Nazis on both sides of this conflict,” says Ukrainian American journalist Lev Golinkin, a longtime reporter on the far right in Ukraine and Russia who is critical of the Western media’s normalization of groups like the Azov Battalion.

William Arkin: CIA Is Playing “Outsize Role” in Ukraine Despite Biden Pledge Not to Send U.S. Forces

A new investigation reveals the extent of the CIA’s involvement in the war in Ukraine, where the agency operates clandestinely in what, under a formal declaration of war, would be the domain of the military. We’re joined on the show by the author of the investigation, William Arkin, a national security reporter and senior editor at Newsweek, who says that the CIA has “got its hand in a little bit of everything” in Ukraine.

Top U.N. Human Rights Official & Fmr. Swedish FM on Palestine, Sudan & U.S. Cluster Bombs to Ukraine

On Friday, July 14, Amy Goodman moderated a wide-ranging panel on human rights in Venice, Italy, to mark the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The panel’s speakers included United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk, former Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallström and Eamon Gilmore, the European Union special representative for human rights. They discussed the U.S.

What’s the Matter With Barbie?

Life in Barbie Land, the utopian pink paradise that’s home to life-size versions of every Barbie doll that has ever existed, is one long party. Barbie (played by Margot Robbie) wakes up in her dream house every morning, hangs at the beach all day with the other Barbies and many admiring Kens, then hosts a girls’ night that’s one long choreographed dance sequence.

How Hollywood’s Businessmen Got It So Wrong

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.Last week, the roughly 160,000 members of SAG-AFTRA went on strike, joining the Writers Guild of America, which has been on strike since May. As my colleague Xochitl Gonzalez put it, “The Hollywood machine … has officially ground to a halt.

Obsessed With the Life That Could Have Been

In the early days of the pandemic, it became harder for us to see one another. The human face, the ultimate marker of individuality, what the philosopher Emmanuel Levinas called “the first disclosure,” was suddenly sheathed in fabric. Strangers encountered on the street were even stranger—and the masks that covered their visage became a screen on which to project anxious thoughts.

Donald Trump’s ‘Horrifying News’

Though Donald Trump has sometimes been called “Teflon Don”—a label that connects not just to his own name but to his modus operandi—the truth is not that he has escaped consequences for everything, just his most egregious behavior. He has lost defamation cases, his company got dinged for tax evasion, and he has been charged with byzantine business crimes. But his biggest sins—especially trying to steal the 2020 presidential election—have gone unpunished.

Historian John Womack: Unions Need to Exploit “Choke Points” in Economy to Grow Working-Class Power

As Hollywood actors enter their fifth day on the picket lines and some 340,000 Teamsters working at UPS prepare to carry out one of the largest single-employer strikes in U.S. history, we speak with historian and labor organizer John Womack Jr. about his new book, Labor Power and Strategy, focused on how to seize and build labor power and solidarity. Labor actions around the world are gaining headlines this week.

Israeli Forces Blindfold & Handcuff Palestinian Reporter Who Filmed Settler Attack in Masafer Yatta

On Saturday, Basel Adra, reporter for Local Call and +972 Magazine, was detained while covering an Israeli settler attack in the West Bank area of Masafer Yatta. After he refused to hand over his video footage, Israeli soldiers handcuffed and blindfolded him and then sat him in a chair in the blazing sun for hours. The Union of Journalists in Israel denounced Basel’s detention, describing it as a “serious violation of freedom of the press.