Today's Liberal News

Lauren Boebert and Sean Hannity’s fight on Fox News reveals bankruptcy of the Republican Party

The Republican Party is in disarray. It isn’t an ideological battle going on as the leadership old and new have been on the same page for some time about not having any policy ideas. The main difference between what is called the “Freedom Caucus” and yesteryear’s establishment Republican Party leadership is that the Freedom Caucus has forced all conservatives to give up the false pretense that they ever had any policy ideas to begin with.

In Politics, Is Older Better?

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.Congressman Kevin McCarthy’s failure this week to win the vote to succeed Nancy Pelosi as speaker of the House has only driven home the immense sway she held in the position.

Nothing Is Working for Kevin McCarthy

At this point in the unending search for a House speaker, Donald Trump’s candidacy is making as much progress as Kevin McCarthy’s.The former president (and half-hearted 2024 White House applicant) today secured his first vote as the House slogged through its seventh fruitless attempt to elect a leader.

How Worried Should We Be About XBB.1.5?

After months and months of SARS-CoV-2 subvariant soup, one ingredient has emerged in the United States with a flavor pungent enough to overwhelm the rest: XBB.1.5, an Omicron offshoot that now accounts for an estimated 75 percent of cases in the Northeast. A crafty dodger of antibodies that is able to grip extra tightly onto the surface of our cells, XBB.1.5 is now officially the country’s fastest-spreading coronavirus subvariant.

A Civil War Over Semicolons

The partnership of Robert Caro and Robert Gottlieb is beautifully anachronistic. As writer and editor, respectively, they have together produced 4,888 pages over the course of 50 years, including the multivolume, still unfinished saga that is Caro’s biography of Lyndon B. Johnson. A lasting collaboration of this sort is impossible to imagine in today’s publishing world of constant churn.

Chaos in the House: Is This Just the Beginning of a Far-Right Attempt to Make Congress Dysfunctional?

The U.S House of Representatives still has no speaker after Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy failed to get the full backing of his party over the course of two days and six rounds of voting. A contingent of about 20 far-right lawmakers opposes McCarthy’s elevation to the top job, but no other candidate has emerged so far who can garner the 218 votes necessary to claim the speaker’s gavel.

Diana Buttu & Gideon Levy: Israel’s New Far-Right Gov’t Entrenches Apartheid System with U.S. Support

Far-right Israeli politician Itamar Ben-Gvir’s Tuesday visit to the Al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied East Jerusalem is being roundly condemned across the Middle East. Ben-Gvir is a key part of Benjamin Netanyahu’s new far-right government, which includes ultranationalist and ultraorthodox parties that are calling openly for the annexation of the West Bank.

McCarthy gets reprieve, wins adjournment vote. Humiliation to resume tomorrow

The House is coming back in to resume voting for the speaker’s job. Or not. It’s not entirely clear right now if they are ready to keep voting or if Kevin McCarthy is done groveling to the maniacs. He gave in on one thing in the break they took this after: his Super PAC, the Congressional Leadership Fund has agreed to the Club for Growth’s demand that it stop getting involved in safe open-seat primaries.

What happens if Republicans never pick a speaker? It’d be good news, actually

After a never-ending string of humiliating votes for speaker that have failed to yield anything other than severe embarrassment for Kevin McCarthy, it’s worth asking what would happen if House Republicans never manage to settle on a leader. My answer: It would be good for the country.

Right now, we don’t actually need a House of Representatives—at least, not one under Republican control.

The GOP-Speaker-Vote Burlesque

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.If you think the crisis of American democracy is over, the circus in the House should remind you that a significant portion of the Republican Party has no interest in governing, policy, or democracy itself. But first, here are three new stories from The Atlantic.

Kevin McCarthy’s Predicament Is a Warning

Kevin McCarthy’s humiliation, and that of Donald Trump alongside him, offers a tall draft of schadenfreude. At the end of that, though, the nation is left with an empty glass and a bitter taste.For many reasons, McCarthy is unfit for the speakership: He undermined the 2020 election, he is dishonest, he is (as we see) unable to marshal his caucus. But his defectors aren’t really interested in a speaker who is able to keep the House organized or functional.

The Inflated Risk of Vaccine-Induced Cardiac Arrest

During this week’s Monday Night Football game, the 24-year-old Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin collapsed moments after making a routine defensive play. Hamlin seemed to have suffered a blow to his chest shortly before losing consciousness from cardiac arrest, and his condition is grave. The source of his illness remains unclear. A study of sudden cardiac events in U.S.