Today's Liberal News

My Demoralizing but Not Surprising Cancellation

Last Tuesday, I was supposed to have launched my first book, Tablets Shattered: The End of an American Jewish Century and the Future of Jewish Life, with an event at a bookstore in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Dumbo—a conversation between me and the well-known Reform rabbi Andy Bachman.
The event didn’t happen. About an hour before the intended start, I heard from my publicist that the bookstore had “concerns” about Rabbi Bachman because he was a “Zionist.

The Electric Feeling of Summer Romance

This is an edition of the Books Briefing, our editors’ weekly guide to the best in books. Sign up for it here.
“Frankie met Lucia in that summer …” If there’s a better beginning for that greatest of all genres—the summer romance—I don’t know what it would be. Add in an ice-cream shack, a beach, a thunderstorm, and some distracted parents—all of the irresistible ingredients are here in Ruby Opalka’s “Spit,” a short story published in The Atlantic this week.

Inspectors General Are Doing Essential—And Unpopular—Work

One afternoon in January 2019, I was summoned to a meeting with the deputy secretary of defense. His massive office was in the outer ring of the Pentagon. Nearby were the offices of the secretary of defense and other top generals and admirals.
The windows looked out over the Pentagon parade grounds and the Potomac River. The Washington Monument appeared in the distance.

Palestinian Healthcare Workers Chained, Starved, Sexually Abused: New HRW Report on Israeli Prisons

We speak with Human Rights Watch researcher Milena Ansari about the organization’s new report detailing the torture of Palestinian medical workers in Israeli prisons. HRW spoke with eight doctors, paramedics and nurses who were picked up in Gaza before being transferred to the notorious Sde Teiman camp and other facilities, where they say they suffered beatings, starvation, humiliation, electric shocks and other forms of abuse.

Harris fundraising blows past $500 million—and inspires major action

Kamala Harris’ campaign announced Sunday that it had racked up $540 million in donations over its first month—an amazing number. But the $82 million that came in during last week’s Democratic National Convention shows that the campaign is maintaining the momentum and excitement that greeted the vice president’s late entry into the race after President Joe Biden stepped aside on July 21.

Fox News host creeps out colleagues with sexist jab at Harris

Fox News’ Jesse Watters has proved once again that there is wiggle room at the bottom. During primetime show “The Five,” Watters’ grotesque misogyny toward Vice President Kamala Harris prompted his fellow right-wing panelists Jeanine Pirro and Dana Perino to object. 

“We don’t know who she is. We don’t know what she believes, Watters said.” She’s going to get paralyzed in the Situation Room while the generals have their way with her.

The Conservatives Who Sold Their Souls for Trump

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Today, Rich Lowry, the editor of National Review (the flagship conservative magazine founded by William F. Buckley Jr.), published an article claiming that Donald Trump could win the 2024 election “on character.”
No, really. But bear with me; the headline wasn’t quite accurate.