Today's Liberal News

What Happens if Russia Stashes Nukes in Belarus

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 dictator of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, has signed an agreement with Russia to base Russian nuclear weapons in his country. The strategic impact of such a move is negligible, but a lot can go wrong with this foolish plan.

AI Is Unlocking the Human Brain’s Secrets

If you are willing to lie very still in a giant metal tube for 16 hours and let magnets blast your brain as you listen, rapt, to hit podcasts, a computer just might be able to read your mind. Or at least its crude contours.

The Far Right Is Splintering

As Judge Amit Mehta sentenced Stewart Rhodes yesterday to 18 years in prison—the longest yet for a defendant involved in the January 6 insurrection—he explained why the leader of the far-right group the Oath Keepers needed to be behind bars for a long time. “You pose an ongoing threat and peril to our democracy and the fabric of this country,” Mehta told Rhodes.Mehta was right about that. At his sentencing, Rhodes was unrepentant.

What You Should Be Reading This Summer

This is an edition of the revamped Books Briefing, our editors’ weekly guide to the best in books. Sign up for it here.Our summer reading guide is now live! This is our annual feature in which The Atlantic’s writers and editors get a chance to play that slightly pushy character at the backyard barbecue who practically screams out, “I just finished this book, and you need to read it! Right now.

Other Writers Seem Asleep by Comparison

I learned how to be funny from Martin Amis.I don’t mean in person—I’m not funny in person, and I don’t know if Amis was, either. Although our paths crossed a couple of times after he moved to Brooklyn, I never spoke with him for long enough to learn whether the caustic hilarity of his 20th-century novels—which I devoured in the 1990s and then studied, trying to understand how their humor worked—was a feature of Amis’s social persona or just his writing.

Memorial Day Massacre: Chicago Cops Killed 10 During 1937 Steel Strike, Then the Media Covered It Up

We look at the largely forgotten 1937 Memorial Day Massacre, when police in Chicago shot at and gassed a peaceful gathering of striking steelworkers and their supporters, killing 10 people, most of them shot in the back. It was a time like today, when unions were growing stronger. The workers were on strike against Republic Steel, and the police attacked them with weapons supplied by the company. The tragic story is told in a new PBS documentary.

Seditious Conspiracy: Oath Keepers Founder Stewart Rhodes Gets 18 Years in Prison for Jan. 6

Stewart Rhodes, founder of the far-right Oath Keepers group, has been sentenced to 18 years in prison for his role in the attack on the U.S. Capitol. It is the longest sentence handed down so far to any participant in the January 6 insurrection, when thousands of Trump supporters stormed the halls of Congress to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential victory.

Kissinger at 100: New War Crimes Revealed in Secret Cambodia Bombing That Set Stage for Forever Wars

A bombshell new investigation from The Intercept reveals that former U.S. national security adviser and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was responsible for even more civilian deaths during the U.S. war in Cambodia than was previously known. The revelations add to a violent résumé that ranges from Latin America to Southeast Asia, where Kissinger presided over brutal U.S. military interventions to put down communist revolt and to develop U.S. influence around the world.

Yellowjackets, How Could You?

This story contains spoilers for the Season 2 finale of Showtime’s Yellowjackets.Back when she was just a member of the championship high-school soccer team known as the Yellowjackets, Natalie (played by Sophie Thatcher) was a wide midfielder, according to fans who studied the few scenes of the girls in action. The position comes with little glory. Wide midfielders don’t normally score the goals themselves; they are tasked with attacking from the wings and providing assists.

Ozempic in Teens Is a Mess

Somehow, America’s desire for Ozempic is only growing. The drug’s active ingredient, semaglutide, is sold as an obesity medication under the brand name Wegovy—and it has become so popular that its manufacturer, Novo Nordisk, recently limited shipments to the U.S. and paused advertising to prevent shortages. Its promise has enticed would-be patients and set off a pharmaceutical arms race to create more potent drugs.

A New Way to Unstick Your Mind

Today we relaunched The Atlantic’s flagship podcast, Radio Atlantic, with a new host: senior editor Hanna Rosin, a former Atlantic writer who went on to become the editorial director for audio at New York magazine. “There’s this phrase someone said to me recently: road-testing ideas, like you would road-test a car,” Hanna says in the trailer for the new podcast. “You run them through the dirt, see if they can stand up to actual real-world conditions.

A Chinese American Show That Doesn’t Bother to Explain Itself

Growing up in suburban New Jersey, I dreaded having new visitors over. I wasn’t asocial; I just feared that anyone who wasn’t Chinese—as in, the majority of my classmates—wouldn’t understand my family home and all of its inevitable differences from their own. Even if they didn’t ask me about the cultural objects they might stumble upon around the house, I felt the need to explain what they were seeing, in order to make them comfortable.