Today's Liberal News

Ukraine update: Some parts of Kherson counteroffensive are coming into focus

On Monday, Ukraine began a counteroffensive in Kherson oblast. Depending on who you listen to, that effort has been wildly effective, liberating towns and villages from one end of the oblast to the other, or it’s been an utter failure, crushed by Russian troops who now control more territory than they did when Ukraine’s movement began. The truth is almost certainly in the middle.

Such an abuse’: Bill Barr delivers obvious facts to Fox News about Mar-a-Lago stash of documents

By now, you’ve probably heard that the disgraced former president, Donald Trump, seems to be something of a criminal. No, I’m not talking about his racist landlord violations from the 1970s. No, not his dubious interactions with contractors throughout the 1980s and 1990s. No, not his shady personal bankruptcies of the 1990s and 2000s. No, not even his two impeachments and the fact that there are numerous campaign violations that many believe need more criminal investigations.

The Speech No President Should Have to Give

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.We’re all parsing The Speech, Joe Biden’s “Soul of the Nation” address about the growing anti-constitutionalism of Republican extremism. But we should first consider how hard it is to evaluate a speech that no president should have to give.

Biden Gambles That ‘We the People’ Still Exist

The principles of classical liberalism that underlie the American political system emerged in an era, the late 17th century, when people were exhausted by violent religious wars. The philosophy that eventually created our democracy was therefore designed to “lower the temperature of politics,” as Francis Fukuyama has recently written, to take issues of existential truth off the table so that people could live in safety.

The Boundaries a Romance Novel Can Break

In Corinne Hoex’s Gentlemen Callers, sex is a dream. The book’s protagonist floats between abstract, ethereal trysts. When she visits a gas-station attendant in her sleep, she is a soapy sponge in his hands. Caressed by a pet groomer, she purrs; she’s his cat. Her liaisons are absurd and illicit—yet, crucially, never dangerous. Gentlemen Callers is not a classic romance novel or a straightforward bodice ripper, Zoë Hu points out.

The Books That Help Me Raise Children in a Broken World

In the introduction to her book Essential Labor: Mothering as Social Change, Angela Garbes describes these times as “strange and difficult years of instability, loss, and grief—both general and intimate.” That’s it, I thought. Sometimes it feels as though decades of tragedy and erasure have been smashed into the past 30 months.

What Babies Hear When You Sing to Them

Randy Lubin recalls the exact moment his life became an improvised musical. The 35-year-old game designer from San Francisco never used to sing, not even in the shower or alone in the car. At his wife’s request, he would perform the kiddush, a Jewish prayer sung each week during Shabbat, but that was it. “Singing wasn’t something I sought out or particularly found a lot of joy in,” Lubin told me.Seeing his son, Curio, for the first time changed everything.

Historian of Radical Right: Biden Is Correct, Trump Poses Existential Threat to Future of Democracy

In a primetime address Thursday, President Biden warned Donald Trump and his radical supporters are threatening the foundations of the republic. Biden said, “Too much of what’s happening in our country today is not normal,” and that MAGA Republicans present a “clear and present danger to our democracy,” referring to Trump’s campaign slogan of “Make America Great Again.

Ukraine update: Ukraine reinforced entire front, not just Kherson

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Popasna fell on May 7. Russian forces successfully pushed north and captured Lysychansk on July 3, as Ukrainian troops exhausted from the defense of Severodonetsk across the river failed to hold the lines next door. Since then, not much has happened. 

Current front lines in northeast Donbas

After that grinding push north, Russia looked west toward Bakhmut and Siversk, yet two months later, the front lines have barely budged.

Mehmet Oz’s campaign digs deeper hole, attacking exonerated men, calling them ‘murderers’

Pennsylvania’s Senate race between John Fetterman and snake oil salesman Mehmet Oz continues to be lopsided. On the one hand you have a progressive candidate who is offering up a platform of policies and ideas for making both Pennsylvania and the country a better place, and on the other hand there’s Oz. Since Oz has no policy (or medical) remedies for anyone, he has tried very hard to attack Fetterman’s health and Fetterman’s lack of wealth.