Today's Liberal News

America’s Baffling Booster Messaging

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.Today the FDA authorized two updated COVID-19 vaccines, making the new shots available to millions of Americans as early as next week. (Wondering when you should get yours? Our science editor Rachel Gutman-Wei has a useful guide.

1990s Policing: Overrated or Underrated?

This is an edition of Up for Debate, a newsletter by Conor Friedersdorf. On Wednesdays, he rounds up timely conversations and solicits reader responses to one thought-provoking question. Later, he publishes some thoughtful replies. Sign up for the newsletter here.Question of the WeekOn Tuesday, Joe Biden declared that, “when it comes to public safety in this nation, the answer is not defund the police. It’s fund the police.” He was speaking in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.

If It Were Anyone Else, They’d Be Prosecuted

Among the documents disclosed in a Justice Department filing last night in the case involving former President Donald Trump’s possession of classified documents is a striking photograph, one showing documents marked secret and top secret strewn across the floor of Mar-a-Lago.When the search of Trump’s home by the FBI was first announced, conservatives howled that the former president was a target of political persecution.

The E-bike Is a Monstrosity

I’d like to drive less, exercise more, commune with nature, and hate myself with a lesser intensity because I am driving less, exercising more, and communing with nature. One way to accomplish all of these goals, I decided earlier this year, was to procure an e-bike. (That’s a bicycle with a motor, if you didn’t know.) I could use it for commuting, for errands, for putting my human body to work, and for reducing my environmental impact.

Cooperation Jackson’s Kali Akuno: Climate Crisis Impact Worse in Black Cities Facing Disinvestment

We speak with an evacuated resident of Jackson, Mississippi, where over 180,000 residents are on their third day without access to running water. We speak with longtime Jackson activist Kali Akuno, co-founder of Cooperation Jackson, who joins us from New Orleans, where he went when floods recently inundated the majority-Black city and shut down the main water plant. He attributes the water crisis to decades of white flight and the subsequent disinvestment in majority-Black and Brown cities.

“We Can’t Go It Alone”: Jackson, Miss., Mayor Lumumba on Water Catastrophe in Majority-Black City

We get an update on the water crisis in Jackson, Mississippi, from Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba, where more than 180,000 residents of the majority-Black city are without running water. President Biden declared a federal emergency on Tuesday. Water has been cut off since the main water treatment plant flooded amid torrential rains. Lumumba says the emergency is the result of three decades of disinvestment from the state.

CA Gov. Newsom Threatens to Veto Farmworker Union Bill as He Buys $14.5M Vineyard in Napa Valley

Hundreds of farmworkers concluded a 24-day march to Sacramento spanning 335 miles to demand California Governor Gavin Newsom support legislation that would make it easier for farmworkers to cast their ballots in union elections by mail. Newsom has threatened to veto the bill, which would keep farmworkers safe from employer retaliation, explains Teresa Romero, president of the United Farm Workers, the labor union that helped organize the march.

Ukraine update: Kherson counteroffensive off to a flying start, and Russian city boils over in panic

What’s happening in Kherson isn’t exactly clear, and it’s likely to remain that way for some days. While so far Ukraine doesn’t seem to have taken any of what might be regarded as the most strategic targets—Vysokopillya in the north, Snihurivka guarding the routes east of Mykolaiv, or the city of Kherson itself—the territory that has reportedly changed hands does have considerable significance.

Republicans are getting what they asked for on abortion, and regretting it

The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to end federal abortion protections secured half a century ago under Roe v. Wade continues to flummox Republicans who finally got what they wished for. After decades of running for elections promising precisely this—an end to legal abortion—Republicans are desperately trying to rewrite that history, pretend like the Supreme Court didn’t do what it just did, or simply change the subject. It’s not working.

The right threatens violence, the left points out those threats, and the media blames both

“Bothsiderism,” in which media outlets bend over backwards (and beyond) in order to find something they can slap Democrats over before daring to point out Republican actions, is one of the most corrosive tendencies plaguing the press. Also known as “false balance,” it happens when journalists attempt to make everything “equal” between the two parties, no matter how unequal  statements or actions may actually be.

Biracial man charged with murder; he says truck tried to run him and white girlfriend off road

A Georgia jury began deliberations on Tuesday in the case of a biracial college student charged with felony murder in what his defense has maintained was an act of self defense prompted when a pickup truck tried to run Marc Wilson and his white girlfriend off the road. 

Emma Rigdon, who was in the vehicle with Wilson, confirmed the claim in testimony covered by the Statesboro Herald on Monday.