Today's Liberal News

Ukraine Update: Reliving the 36-day Battle of Kyiv

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The Washington Post has an in-depth, excellent story on the Battle of Kyiv, as told from the perspectives of the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, his top advisors, the military brass, down to men in the trenches. The detail is spectacular, giving us new insight into the battle we were tracking 2-3 times a day for 36 days.

Labor board charges Starbucks with another big labor law violation, this week in the war on workers

The National Labor Relations Board has issued yet another complaint against Starbucks for breaking labor laws as it attempts to break its workers’ will to organize and fight for better working conditions and more respect in the workplace. 

This is far from the first NLRB charge against Starbucks, with many focusing on the company’s pattern of obvious retaliatory firings of union activists.

A Simple Rule for Planning Your Fall Booster Shot

In less than two weeks, you could walk out of a pharmacy with a next-generation COVID booster in your arm. Just a few days ago, the Biden administration indicated that the first updated COVID-19 vaccines would be available shortly after Labor Day to Americans 12 and older who have already had their primary series. Unlike the shots the U.S.

America Is Trying to Make the Moon Happen Again

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla.—The south pole of the moon is a stunning place. Towering mountains are bathed in perpetual sunshine, and the lunar dust, fine as powder, gleams in unfiltered light. Plunging craters exist in permanent shadow and hide pockets of ice in their gray rock, the water frozen and undisturbed for as long as 3 billion years.It is here, somewhere along this silent terrain, that NASA wants to land a new crew of astronauts.

The Whimsical, Intellectual Chemistry of Idris Elba and Tilda Swinton

George Miller’s 2015 insta-classic Mad Max: Fury Road is one of the most propulsive movies ever made. It tracks a caravan of souped-up vehicles blasting across the desert in a glorious postapocalyptic battle. His follow-up is, on the surface, quite the opposite. Three Thousand Years of Longing is primarily focused on a long conversation between two characters wearing bathrobes in a fancy Turkish hotel room. But that first impression sells the film short.

Who Is Barre Seid? Secretive Tycoon Gives Record $1.6 Billion to Fund GOP Takeover of the Courts

We speak with one of the reporters who this week exposed the secretive Chicago industrial mogul who has quietly given $1.6 billion to the architect of the right-wing takeover of the courts — the largest known political advocacy donation in U.S. history. The donor is Barre Seid, who donated all of his shares in his electronics company, Tripp Lite, to the nonprofit group run by Leonard Leo, who helped select former President Trump’s conservative Supreme Court nominees.

Ukraine update: Russia vs. Russia as Putin adds a host of paper soldiers

On Wednesday, as Ukraine marked its independence day, Vladimir Putin put his signature to an order officially increasing the number of slots in the Russian army to over 2 million. While that sounds impressive, it was clearly a declaration with only symbolic value, as the total number of people in the Russian army is currently well below 1 million. There are plenty of empty helmets to fill—assuming Russia can find the helmets.

It seems many of the 19 Floridians arrested by DeSantis’ election Gestapo were told they could vote

Earlier this month, Gov. Ron DeSantis held one of his patented one-way press conferences, where he channels Donald Trump’s blunt bullying style and declares he’s doing great things. It was during this press conference that he announced that his Gestapo-style election’s enforcement apparatus was already hard at work excising bad actors from the voter rolls.

Blake Masters is trying to disappear his extreme opposition to abortion

Blake Masters is feeling the heat on abortion. The Arizona Republican Senate nominee is frantically backing away from his very well-documented positions and trying to portray Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly as the extreme one. 

Masters has dramatically scrubbed his campaign website’s abortion policy page, as if someone wasn’t going to be right there with screenshots of the stuff he took out. NBC News has the goods.

Mark Meadows, come on down! A grand jury in Georgia would like to speak with you

If you thought the House Select Committee Investigating Jan. 6 was thorough, keep your eye on the Georgia special grand jury investigating the interference in the 2020 presidential election—Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is not playing around.

The special grand jury convened by Willis has asked for testimony from a slew of top Donald Trump associates, from his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani to Sen.

The Trouble With Boutique Colleges

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.President Joe Biden’s loan-forgiveness program will help a select group of people once, but nothing about the college-debt problem will actually improve until voters, students, and parents change how they think about college.But first, here are three new stories from The Atlantic.