Today's Liberal News

Dear James: How to Be a Better Loser?

Editor’s Note: Is anything ailing, torturing, or nagging at you? Are you beset by existential worries? Every Tuesday, James Parker tackles readers’ questions. Tell him about your lifelong or in-the-moment problems at dearjames@theatlantic.com.
Don’t want to miss a single column? Sign up to get “Dear James” in your inbox.
Dear James,
I’ve been a lifelong participant in various recreational sports. Candidly, I’m not a great athlete, but I’ve always been enthusiastic.

Are You Laughing Yet?

You all remember comedy? That thing from the 1980s where you hate your wife? Well, it’s back! We’re in a golden age of comedy now where everyone can say exactly what they want, free of the fear of censorship, except by the government. Donald Trump has made comedy legal again!
  Remember, censorship is when people don’t laugh at your jokes. Freedom is when your late-night show gets permanently taken off the air for financial reasons (16 million of them) and the president expresses his approval.

“Life After”: Film Exposes How Medicaid Cuts, Assisted Dying Laws May Bring Disabled to Early Graves

As the federal government begins to implement some $1 trillion in Medicaid cuts called for in President Trump’s budget bill passed by the Republican-led Congress, a new investigative documentary, Life After, examines the moral dilemmas and profit motives surrounding assisted dying that could increasingly confront members of the disabled community. Reid Davenport, who directed the film, notes the “film is not about suicide.

“You Feel Like Your Life Is Over”: HRW Report Exposes Abuses in Trump’s Immigration Jails in Florida

A new report titled “You Feel Like Your Life Is Over” details the dangerous and abusive conditions faced by immigrants held at three ICE jails in Miami, Florida, since Trump returned to office. One testimony describes how detention officers made men eat while shackled with their hands behind their backs. One man said, “We had to bend over and eat off the chairs with our mouths, like dogs.

Trump Revokes Bond for Asylum Seekers, Forcing Immigrants to Fight Their Cases “Behind Bars”

ICE is reportedly racing to build more detention tent camps nationwide after Congress allocated an unprecedented $45 billion in new funding over the next four years to lock up immigrants, as part of Trump’s massive tax and spending package. The Department of Homeland Security is also preparing to start detaining immigrants at more military bases, including in New Jersey and Indiana, as well as to transfer more immigrants to the U.S. naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, according to NPR.

ICE Detained 6-Year-Old with Cancer for Over a Month: “He and His Sister Cried Every Night”

As Congress approved some $45 billion to expand ICE’s immigration detention capacity, including the jailing of families and children, we look at the case of one family. In May, plainclothes ICE agents detained a 6-year-old boy from Honduras who has acute lymphoblastic leukemia, along with his 9-year old sister and their mother, as they left their immigration court hearing in Los Angeles. In detention, the boy missed a key doctor’s appointment, and the family said his sister cried every night.

Presidential Pettiness

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.
Presidents are, like the rest of us, flawed human beings. Many of them had volcanic tempers: Harry Truman, Richard Nixon, and Joe Biden, among others, reportedly could sling Anglo-Saxonisms with gusto. In public, most of them managed to convey an image of geniality.

‘We Voted for Retribution’

Three weeks ago, Donald Trump attended the opening of an immigrant-detention center in the Florida Everglades, about 50 miles west of Miami. “Pretty soon, this facility will handle the most menacing migrants, some of the most vicious people on the planet,” the president said. Officially named Alligator Alcatraz, it was constructed in eight days by the state of Florida on a disused airport runway.

Trump’s Campaign to Crush the Media

President Donald Trump’s latest assault on the news media came in the form of another lawsuit last week. After The Wall Street Journal reported that Trump had allegedly written a birthday note, complete with “bawdy” doodling, to the convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein in 2003, Trump boiled over with indignation.

Should You Sunscreen Your Cat?

For all of the eons that animal life has existed on Earth, the sun has been there too. And for all of those eons, animal life has had only one solution for intense exposure to the sun: evolution. Some creatures have thick, dark skin that’s resistant to UV harm; others sprout fur, scales, or feathers that block the sun’s rays. Many fish, reptiles, amphibians, and birds may produce a compound that protects their cells against the sun’s damaging effects.

The Mistake Parents Make With Chores

This article was featured in the One Story to Read Today newsletter. Sign up for it here.
Each September at the Montessori school I run, the preschoolers engage in an elaborate after-lunch cleanup routine. They bustle through the room with sweepers and tiny dustpans, spreading crumbs all over the floor and making a bigger mess than they started with. If any scraps do make it into their dustpans, most of them spill out as the children exuberantly walk to the trash bin.