Today's Liberal News

Sports teams fly on the same private jets hired to deport immigrants

The planes reconfigure from “ultra-luxurious” aircraft for athletes to mass deportation machines for migrants.

By Angelika Albaladejo, for Capital & Main

The top private airlines hired by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to deport immigrants also shuttle collegiate and professional sports teams, at times on the same jets tied to incidents of alleged abuse, a University of Washington Center for Human Rights report has found.

Make Birth Free

Immediately after the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs came down, anti-abortion groups began distributing press releases celebrating their victory and vowing to get around to something the movement has politically neglected for the past several decades: helping mothers afford children. For so many millions already distraught by the ruling, the ready promises of help on the way came not so much as a comfort but as an insult.

In Praise of Pointless Goals

In July of last year, a grown man pulled on a giant bear costume and set out to walk across the country. Under the alias Bearsun, Jessy Larios, then 33, ambled from Los Angeles to New York, sweating and chafing and viewing the world through a mesh peephole. Larios told me that it was “kind of like carrying around your own prison,” and that despite the costume’s whimsical exterior, the interior experience was akin to “getting tortured.

“Left Internationalism in the Heart of Empire”: Aziz Rana & Darryl Li on Building a New Foreign Policy

We host a conversation about “Left Internationalism in the Heart of Empire,” which is the focus of an essay by Cornell University law professor Aziz Rana in Dissent magazine. Rana argues for the creation of a “transnational infrastructure of left forces across the world” and says movements of the left need “clear alternatives to the hardest questions” of foreign policy crises, such as the Russian war in Ukraine.

Roy Moore sued Borat’s creator for using a fake ‘pedophile detector’ on him. He just lost that suit

Sacha Baron Cohen is a brilliant prankster and comedian, but perhaps his greatest talent is making Republicans look foolish. Or, rather, more foolish. If there’s an antediluvian sentiment or three sloshing about in a MAGA mite’s rancid paella of a brain, Baron Cohen will most likely dislodge it. And the results will be both uniquely hilarious and cringeworthy (aka, “unhingeworthy”).

In the post-Roe ‘new legal environment,’ IVF rights could also be at risk

The people who spent the past several decades working toward overturning Roe v. Wade believe that the embryos created in fertility labs are human beings. Which means that people who have undergone fertility treatments and have embryos stored, or people who might in the future need fertility treatments, are wondering just how worried they should be.

Enter The New York Times.

Cheers and Jeers: Rum and Coke FRIDAY!

Late Night Snark: SCOTUS Fallout Continues Edition

“Men have had all kinds of reactions to last week’s abortion ruling. Ever since the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade urologists have seen a spike in vasectomies. I’ve never personally performed a vasectomy, but I’d like to try my very first one on Samuel Alito.

America Endures

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.This is my last day writing The Atlantic Daily (for now!), and I’d like to thank you all for reading. I know it’s something of an ask to allow the same fellow into your inbox every evening to opine about the day’s news, and I appreciate it.

Astronomers Haven’t Been This Giddy in Years

About six months have elapsed since the most powerful space telescope in history bid farewell to Earth and took off into the darkness. In that time, the James Webb Space Telescope has deployed its gold-coated mirrors, turned on its instruments, and gotten the hang of operating 1 million miles from Earth.

Admit It, Squirrels Are Just Tree Rats

Ben Dantzer had spent several frustrating days trying to capture a single squirrel when the epiphany arrived. Dantzer, a rodent researcher at the University of Michigan, was standing in the Canadian Yukon, scrutinizing the uncooperative squirrel, which was perched high in a spruce tree. Then, all of a sudden, he felt as though he was looking at an optical illusion: When he viewed the squirrel one way, he saw a squirrel; when he viewed it another way, he saw a rat.

What Happened to Michael Flynn?

Michael Flynn faced the camera with brow creased and lips compressed. He hadn’t been born yesterday, his expression said. He was not going to fall for trick questions.“General Flynn, do you believe the violence on January 6 was justified?” Representative Liz Cheney asked him in a video teleconference deposition for the January 6 committee.Flynn’s lawyer pressed the mute button and switched off the camera. Ninety-six seconds passed.

Shinzo Abe Made the World Better

Updated at 12:54 p.m. ET on July 8, 2022The Japan That Can Say No was the title of a once-famous book by a once-rising Japanese politician.Shinzo Abe, the former Japanese prime minister who was assassinated earlier today, bequeaths a much prouder legacy: a Japan that can—and does—say yes.Abe was more than the longest-serving prime minister in Japanese democratic history.

U.S. Accused of Whitewashing Israel’s Killing of Shireen Abu Akleh Ahead of Biden’s Middle East Trip

The United States is facing accusations of whitewashing the killing of Palestinian American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh after concluding the bullet that killed her likely came from Israeli military gunfire, but stopping short of reaching a “definitive conclusion” in her killing. Abu Akleh was wearing a press uniform while reporting on an Israeli army raid in the occupied West Bank when she was fatally shot in the head on May 11.