Today's Liberal News

Why Elite-College Admissions Matter

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.Attendance at an elite college increases a student’s chances of joining America’s most elite ranks, according to a new study.

Hollywood’s Huge Barbenheimer Fumble

Hollywood has always had a short memory. Industry analysts will predict doom for the future of cinema for months, then exult when a new release defies expectations. This summer has been no exception: A few blockbusters such as The Flash and Indiana Jones underperformed, and hand-wringing quickly ensued. But last weekend brought a colossal turnaround, thanks to Barbenheimer—the head-to-head releases of Greta Gerwig’s Barbie and Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer.

Greta Gerwig’s Lessons From Barbie Land

This article contains spoilers for the film Barbie.As soon as I asked a question about Ken, my call with Greta Gerwig dropped. When the writer-director of Barbie returned, she had no idea what happened. I suggested that of course merely mentioning Ken—the pining and overlooked doll played by Ryan Gosling—would cause a failure of some sort. Gerwig agreed. “The world was like, I don’t care,” she joked.But the world cares very much about the movie he’s in.

Israel on the Brink

The Knesset’s passage of legislation yesterday to curtail the authority of Israel’s Supreme Court marks a new era for the state of Israel. The disjuncture comes not because of the legal implications alone, although they are substantial. Nor because of the economic, diplomatic, and security damage wrought in the short time since Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu returned to office, although it is considerable.

Oppenheimer’s Cry of Despair in The Atlantic

In February of 1949, J. Robert Oppenheimer, the former director of Los Alamos Laboratory under the Manhattan Project, took to the pages of this magazine to write about a terrible defeat. Nearly four years had passed since the Manhattan Project had detonated the first atomic bomb in New Mexico. The explosion had flashed purple light onto the surrounding mountains and raised a 40,000-foot pillar of flame, smoke, and debris from the desert floor.

100 Years of Statelessness: Kurdish Activist Walks 300 Miles from D.C. to U.N. to Demand Kurdish Rights

Kurdish peace activist Kani Xulam is in New York City after his solo 300-mile, 24-day walk from the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., to the United Nations headquarters. His arrival Monday coincided with the 100th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Lausanne, which partitioned Kurdistan into four parts — British Iraq, French Syria, Turkey and Iran — which left the Kurdish people without a recognized sovereign state.

19 GOP Attorneys General Seek Private Medical Records of Patients Who Obtain Out-of-State Abortions

Amid a widening crackdown on abortion access, 19 Republican attorneys general in states where abortion is illegal are demanding the right for local governments to access the private medical records of patients in order to see if they obtained abortions out of state. We speak to Tamarra Wieder, state director of Planned Parenthood Alliance Advocates in Louisville, Kentucky, where residents are crossing state lines to access abortion care due to the state’s near-total abortion ban.

Israel’s Fight over Judicial Changes Ignores Occupation & Apartheid

We speak with two Israeli journalists in Tel Aviv after lawmakers in Israel passed a highly contested bill Monday weakening the power of the Supreme Court by preventing it from blocking government decisions it deems unreasonable. The bill is part of a broader set of judicial reforms pushed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that has sparked months of unprecedented protests, which continued last night.

AI Companies Are Trying to Have It Both Ways

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, seven technology companies appeared at the White House and agreed to voluntary guardrails around the use of AI. In promising to take these steps, the companies are nodding to the potential risks of their creations without pausing their aggressive competition.

The Perfect Service to Make Everyone at the Airport Hate You

With sincere apologies, I need to ask you to imagine yourself arriving at the airport. Freshly expelled from whatever mode of transport brought you there, you are probably at least a little bit harried. Maybe you’re running late or you’re wrangling small children. Maybe you are weighed down by an overstuffed tote bag and a roll-aboard that could burst at any moment because you are opposed in principle to paying $50 to check a bag.

The Ticks Are Winning

In the three-plus decades I’ve been alive, I have never been bitten by a tick. Actually, that may be a lie, and I have no way of knowing for sure. Because even though ticks have harpoonlike mouthparts, even though certain species can latch on for up to two weeks, even though some guzzle enough blood to swell 100 times in weight, their bites are disturbingly discreet.

Is Hollywood Still Afraid of the Truth About the Atomic Bomb?: Greg Mitchell on “Oppenheimer”

The movie Oppenheimer about J. Robert Oppenheimer — the “father of the atomic bomb” — focuses on Oppenheimer’s conflicted feelings about the weapons of mass destruction he helped unleash on the world, and how officials ignored those concerns after World War II as the Cold War started an arms race. Journalist Greg Mitchell says that while the film is well made and worth seeing, “the omissions are quite serious.

The Intercept Reveals Border Patrol Is Caging Migrants Outdoors in Deadly Arizona Heat

As a record-breaking heat wave continues in Arizona, reporters with The Intercept say they have observed U.S. Border Patrol holding about 50 migrants inside a chain-link pen in the Sonoran Desert, at the Ajo Border Patrol Station. This comes as the group Humane Borders reports the bodies of at least 13 people were found over the past month in the Sonoran Desert where many migrants cross.

DOJ Threatens to Sue Texas Gov. Abbott for Installing Barrels Wrapped in Razor Wire in Rio Grande

The U.S. Justice Department is threatening to sue the state of Texas after Republican Governor Greg Abbott installed barrels wrapped in razor wire in the Rio Grande in an attempt to block migrants from crossing the river. This comes just after a whistleblower state trooper at the Texas Department of Public Safety recently protested the state’s inhumane policies in a letter to superiors.

Does Sam Altman Know What He’s Creating?

On a Monday morning in April, Sam Altman sat inside OpenAI’s San Francisco headquarters, telling me about a dangerous artificial intelligence that his company had built but would never release. His employees, he later said, often lose sleep worrying about the AIs they might one day release without fully appreciating their dangers. With his heel perched on the edge of his swivel chair, he looked relaxed.

Why You Have to Care About These 12 Colleges

What does Harvard do? What is Yale for? What is Dartmouth’s purpose?The schools themselves have ready answers to those questions. Harvard says it exists to “educate the citizens and citizen-leaders for our society” through the “transformative power of a liberal arts education.