Today's Liberal News

Our Special Forces’ Capacity to Evolve Despite Failure

Thirty years ago today, the U.S. military was involved in a brief but brutal battle in Somalia. In a series of firefights over two bloody days, 18 members of America’s most elite Special Forces and hundreds of Somali militiamen were killed. This was the Battle of Mogadishu, which the journalist Mark Bowden (now an Atlantic contributing writer) famously reported for The Philadelphia Inquirer and later adapted as the book and the film Black Hawk Down.

Police Killings of Black & Brown People May Be Double Previous Estimates: La Raza Database Project

The newly released Raza Database Project reveals the number of Brown and Black people killed by police in the United States may be more than double the amount that is widely reported. Statistician and demographer Jesus Garcia explains how the team merged data sets from independent research projects on police violence to more accurately determine the ethnicities of victims. These are “terrible numbers to look at,” says Garcia. “The results are stark and bare.

Gunman Wearing MAGA Hat Shoots Indigenous Activist at New Mexico Protest over Conquistador Statue

In New Mexico, a 23-year-old gunman wearing a red MAGA hat opened fire last week on Jacob Johns and other Indigenous activists opposing plans to reinstall a statue honoring the 16th century conquistador Juan de Oñate, New Mexico’s first colonial governor. Johns, the prominent climate activist, was airlifted from Española to an Albuquerque hospital and required emergency surgery.

“Crime Against Humanity”: Exiled from Diego Garcia for U.S. Military Base, Residents Demand to Return

Over 50 years since the United States forced them out in order to build a military base on the island of Diego Garcia, exiled residents of the Chagos Archipelago in the Indian Ocean continue to pressure Britain and the U.S. to pay reparations and apologize for expelling residents. We speak with prominent Chagossian activist Olivier Bancoult, who is visiting the United States to meet with lawmakers and State Department officials. The U.S.

Top Cuban Diplomat Seeks Probe of D.C. Embassy Attack & End to “Unbearable” U.S. Sanctions

Cuba has released footage showing an individual throwing two Molotov cocktails inside the Cuban Embassy compound in Washington, D.C., last Sunday, condemning it as a terrorist attack. An investigation is underway, but no arrests have been made. Cuba’s Deputy Foreign Minister Carlos Fernández de Cossío says the country is demanding a speedy investigation, adding that it is the latest in a series of attacks against Cuban diplomatic missions in recent years.

‘Young people like me are fed up’: North Carolina teen calls out GOP gerrymandering

When North Carolina’s state Supreme Court struck down conservative-gerrymandered election maps saying that they were in conflict with the state’s constitution, the belief that something approximating majority rule could thrive. Unfortunately, that decision was put in jeopardy as soon as the state’s Supreme Court flipped to Republican control. After rehearing the case, the newly conservative court ruled that Republicans could draw even more extremely gerrymandered districts.

Why the GOP Extremists Oppose Ukraine

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.Republicans averted the self-inflicted wound of a government shutdown this weekend. The main casualty of the process was aid for Ukraine, but foreign aid was always a fig leaf—for both GOP dysfunction and the determination of a small group of Republicans to help Russia.

Ukraine Update: The totally secret Ukrainian plan for an amphibious landing in Crimea

In the opening weeks of the war, Ukraine managed to stop Russia’s advances near the border of Kherson and Mykolaiv oblasts, preventing passage of Russian forces across the broad Southern Bug River. Many times during that period, Russia tried to move toward the city of Mykolaiv, or to circumvent that location and pass across the Bug where it narrows to the north, but Ukraine dug in hard against these efforts.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: ‘I Worry That What We’re Looking at Is the End of Curiosity’

The writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie isn’t afraid to speak her mind. Her most well-known novel, Americanah, explores race, love, and migration through the story of a young Nigerian woman who moves to the U.S.; in 2013, she gave a TEDx talk titled “We Should All Be Feminists,” which Beyoncé sampled on her song “Flawless,” bringing Adichie to instant international attention.

The Evening Brief: Republicans are truly in disarray

The Republican Party sh-tshow continues unabated this week. Let’s start with Donald Trump, who has been on quite the bender the past few days. It’s certainly clear that if the media gave Donald Trump the same level of “Is he too old?” scrutiny, there wouldn’t be much else for them to write about.

Matt Gaetz files motion to oust McCarthy. Will Democrats join the effort or save his hide

UPDATE: Monday, Oct 2, 2023 · 11:13:32 PM +00:00 · Joan McCarter

Gaetz just started the process, formally filing his motion to vacate the chair. The leadership has two legislative days in which to schedule the vote.

The day after House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s astonishing capitulation that allowed Democrats to once more save the day and keep the government funded, Rep.

California’s Math Misadventure Is About to Go National

When I decided to read every word of California’s 1,000-page proposal to transform math education in public schools, I learned that even speculative and unproved ideas can end up as official instructional policy. In 2021, the state released a draft of the California Mathematics Framework, whose authors were promising to open up new pathways into science and tech careers for students who might otherwise be left behind.

Daniel Clowes Is Ready to Face the Truth

Across five decades, the cartoonist Daniel Clowes has written about a wide array of outcasts: the high-school best friends wrestling with their transition into adulthood; the middle-aged grouch searching for the daughter he never knew; the sex-obsessed malcontent fixated on his ex-girlfriend; the many other dropouts, weirdos, and natural-born screwups who feel drawn from real life.

Survived & Punished: Meet Tracy McCarter, a Nurse Jailed, Then Cleared, for Stabbing Abusive Husband

October is National Domestic Violence Awareness and Prevention Month, and we look at how Black and Brown survivors of domestic abuse are further criminalized by police and prisons — and how activists have been organizing to win their freedom. In her first broadcast interview, we speak with Tracy McCarter, a nurse and grandmother who was jailed after her abusive husband, a white man, died of a stab wound when she defended herself during an altercation.