A stomach-twisting thrill animates the Taken movies. As bullets fly across each progressively more ridiculous sequel, Liam Neeson kicks down the door to the pantheon of cultural Super Dads and asserts himself as its king.
Albert Woodfox, who was held in solitary confinement longer than any prisoner in U.S. history, has died at the age of 75 due to complications tied to COVID-19. The former Black Panther and political prisoner won his freedom six years ago after surviving nearly 44 years in solitary over a wrongful murder conviction of a prison guard. Fellow imprisoned Panthers Herman Wallace and Robert King were also falsely accused of prison murders, and they collectively became known as the Angola 3.
The Department of Justice has announced federal criminal charges against four former and current Louisville police officers over their roles in the fatal shooting of Breonna Taylor. The charges come after the state of Kentucky failed to prosecute any police officers for Taylor’s death, despite nationwide Black Lives Matter demands to investigate.
As the U.S. central banks raises interest rates, the rest of the world is feeling the squeeze.
Suddenly, overnight, real progress has been teed up for the White House.
Republicans are poised to cast aside all the economic technicalities and bash Democratic candidates up and down the midterm ballot over an economy that is already deeply unpopular with voters in both parties.
Nearly 60% of Kansas voters struck down a ballot measure Tuesday night that would have removed the state’s right to abortion and cleared the way for Republican state lawmakers to ban the procedure. It was the first vote on abortion rights since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
As the Republican nominee, Lake will face Democratic Secretary of State Katie Hobbs in November.
As the Manchin-Schumer Senate deal inches toward its first vote, all eyes are on the one Democratic senator known for scuttling past party deals: Sen. Kyrsten Sinema. Republican Sen. Ron Johnson, meanwhile, is casually proposing new ways to kill both Social Security and Medicare. The Department of Justice has announced new federal charges in the police killing of Breonna Taylor. And Alex Jones … hoo boy.
Although it’s public knowledge that the former governor of Puerto Rico, Wanda Vázquez Garced, and some of her cronies have been under investigation for corruption, Puerto Ricans woke up Thursday morning to the surprising news that she had been arrested by the FBI, along with two other unidentified people.
Ironically enough, prior to being appointed governor in August 2019, Vázquez served as the island’s Secretary of Justice.
The Arizona Democrat’s support for the bill paves the way for its passage as soon as next week.
As Daily Kos has continued to cover, Republicans are going after books. Attempts to ban books are so outrageous, that they sound like satire, but they’re sadly extremely real, and so are the ramifications of young people (and adults) losing access to stories by and about marginalized people. As covered by the Salt Lake Tribune, more than fifty books by several dozen authors are set to be removed from public school libraries in the biggest school district in Utah.
Usually when rich people rage against the possibility that someone less wealthy might become their neighbor, nobody bats an eye. Why would they? NIMBYism is the dominant fact of American urban geography. But in recent years, a number of very rich people, including the billionaire investor Marc Andreessen, have positioned themselves on the other side of the debate, arguing against supply restrictions and deriding purportedly progressive places for failing to address the rising cost of housing.
Border Patrol agents have violated the religious freedom of dozens of asylum-seekers throughout the past two months alone, confiscating and refusing to return turbans belonging to almost 50 Sikh individuals who have crossed the southern border into Arizona.
Advocates have noted border agents seizing turbans and other sacred items from Sikh migrants as far back as 2019, and rising sharply this past June, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Arizona said.
Back in November 2021, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Michael S. Regan embarked on a Journey to Justice tour of historically marginalized communities in the southern United States. In July of this year, he took the latest leg of the tour to Puerto Rico. There, he met with community groups and environmental activists and visited areas of the island still struggling to recover from 2017’s Hurricane Maria.
Officials said four people suffered life-threatening injuries after they were found in Lafayette Square near a statue of Andrew Jackson.
Thomas Patrick Connally, Jr. sent emails saying that Biden’s chief medical adviser would be “hunted, captured, tortured and killed,” according to court records.
Jane Henney will be spearheading the Reagan-Udall Foundation’s evaluation of the FDA’s food safety and tobacco divisions.
At least half a dozen RNC members could face prison time for their roles in the “fake elector” scheme that Trump pushed to illegally remain in office.
Seventy-eight days and more than 7,000 documented cases into the United States’s 2022 outbreak of monkeypox, federal officials have declared the disease a nationwide public-health emergency. With COVID-19 (you know, the other ongoing viral public-health emergency) still very much raging, the U.S. is officially in the midst of two infectious-disease crises, and must now, with limited funds, wrangle both at once.
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.I’m sorry to say it: We really must talk about CPAC.But first, here are three new stories from The Atlantic.
Alex Jones can’t pretend his way out of this reality.
To Putin, Brittney Griner is a pawn. To the U.S., she’s a person.
In the world of moviemaking, it’s generally considered good business to release the movies you make. After all, they can cost tens of millions of dollars to produce, and (pardon me for getting overly technical here) selling tickets for the general public to view them can help recoup that cost. Streaming TV has changed that calculation a little. Now films are sometimes made not to sell tickets but just to beef up entertainment libraries for monthly subscribers.
PhRMA CEO Steve Ubl says the group is still fighting hard against the drug pricing provisions, but is making contingency plans — and promises — should reconciliation become law.
The moves aim to speed up distribution of vaccines amid criticism of the federal government’s response.
We speak with international affairs scholar Kim Lane Scheppele on the rise and fall of Hungary’s constitutional democracy and how Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has gained popularity among the American right ahead of his speech today at the Conservative Political Action Conference. “Orbán presents, especially for the American right, a kind of irresistible combination of culture war issues,” says Scheppele.
The U.N. warned this week that humanity is “one miscalculation away from nuclear annihilation” as tensions escalate globally. We speak with Ira Helfand, former president of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, who says the U.N. Security Council permanent members, comprising Russia, China, the U.S., the U.K. and France, are pursuing nuclear policies that are “going to lead to the end of the world that we know.
Safety conditions at Ukraine’s Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant are “completely out of control,” according to the International Atomic Energy Agency. This comes as the Russian military has deployed heavy artillery batteries and laid anti-personnel landmines at the site in recent weeks.
Those who work on AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis and other plagues say progress is in danger of reversing.
They lived through the dawn of the AIDS epidemic and see parallels to monkeypox now.
The conservative state voted overwhelmingly Tuesday to reject an amendment that would have allowed the state legislature to ban the procedure.