Today's Liberal News

Why Live Music Costs So Much

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 LatestToday, the Supreme Court ruled that the race-conscious admissions programs as practiced at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Harvard are unconstitutional, upending more than four decades of precedent on the use of race in college admissions.

Scientists Found Ripples in Space and Time. And You Have to Buy Groceries.

The whole universe is humming. Actually, the whole universe is Mongolian throat singing. Every star, every planet, every continent, every building, every person is vibrating along to the slow cosmic beat.That’s the takeaway from yesterday’s remarkable announcement that scientists have detected a “cosmic background” of ripples in the structure of space and time.

When Sports and Politics Mix

Welcome to Up for Debate. Each week, Conor Friedersdorf rounds up timely conversations and solicits reader responses to one thought-provoking question. Later, he publishes some thoughtful replies. Sign up for the newsletter here.Question of the WeekWhat do you think about the Supreme Court decision in this term’s affirmative-action cases?Send your responses to conor@theatlantic.

The Decision That Upends the Equal-Protection Clause

The Supreme Court’s decision today that the race-conscious admissions programs as practiced at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Harvard—the nation’s oldest public and private universities, respectively—are unconstitutional upends more than four decades of precedent on the use of race in college admissions.

“Climate Silence”: Corporate Media Still Failing to Link Wildfires & Extreme Weather to Climate Crisis

We speak with author Genevieve Guenther about “climate silence” and how the corporate media routinely fails in reporting on worsening extreme weather events. “You need to connect the dots from what you’re reporting to the climate crisis, and then through the climate crisis to the use of fossil fuels that is heating up our planet,” says Guenther, whose forthcoming book is titled The Language of Climate Politics.

Canadian Climate Activist: Big Oil Is Fueling Fires. We Must Stop Funding New Fossil Fuel Pipelines

As wildfire smoke fills the skies and record heat waves cook much of North America, Canadian climate activist Tzeporah Berman says governments need to be pushed to phase out fossil fuels more rapidly. “We need people to stand up to this industry. We need activism to protest in the streets, to demand our governments stand up to this industry. And we also need international cooperation,” says Berman.

The Court Is Conservative—But Not MAGA

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 Supreme Court released a somewhat surprising—and pretty important—decision yesterday.

Surprise! You Work for Amazon.

Updated at 9:30 p.m. ET on June 28, 2023When you order something online, getting that thing from the warehouse into your hot little hands is hard. Internet commerce is designed to obscure that difficulty—packages are supposed to alight on your welcome mat as though dropped there by the delivery fairy—but challenges persist, and they are only getting worse. There are just too many doorsteps, and too many things that need to alight on them.

The World’s Most Important App (for Now)

On Monday, in an 11-minute speech, Yevgeny Prigozhin, the convicted criminal who leads the Wagner mercenary group, reflected on his brief revolt against the Russian government. It was the capstone to a tense and confusing geopolitical crisis—and it took the form of a voice memo on the popular app Telegram, where it was subject to a form of instant feedback. Reviews have been mixed: 155,600 fire emoji to 131,900 clown emoji.

The New Republican Litmus Test Is Very Dangerous

War with Mexico? It’s on the 2024 ballot, at least if you believe the campaign rhetoric of more and more Republican candidates.In January, two Republican House members introduced a bill to authorize the use of military force inside Mexico. They were not know-nothings from the fringes of the MAGA caucus. One was Dan Crenshaw of Texas, a former Navy Seal who received a master’s degree from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.