Today's Liberal News

News Roundup: Trump planned for Jan. 6 crowd to march on Capitol; extremist leaders knew in advance

A new public hearing from the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 coup attempt focused on Trump’s specific actions to assemble a “wild” crowd on that date, a crowd spurred to action by Trump’s knowingly false claims of a “stolen” election. New evidence indicated that violent extremists were expecting Trump to order them to march to the Capitol during the counting of electoral votes, which Trump then did. Trump also altered his planned Jan.

Daily Space: It’s Webb Telescope day! NASA releases the first batch of gorgeous images

The James Webb Space Telescope was more than a decade in construction. When it finally launched back on Christmas Day, the massive and complex structure faced what NASA called “344 points of failure” on its way to its new home at Lagrange Point 2 (L2), roughly 1,500,000 kilometers (930,000 miles) from Earth. 

Day by day, week by week, the telescope didn’t just pass those points of potential failure, it passed with flying colors.

‘Misled the American people’: AOC calls out Gorsuch and Kavanaugh on lying about abortion views

As the country continues to process the overturn of Roe v. Wade, the landmark case that made abortion legal nationwide, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called on the Senate Monday to question whether Supreme Court Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh lied under oath about their views on the case.

During their Senate confirmation hearings, both Gorsuch and Kavanaugh said that they viewed Roe v. Wade as a settled “precedent” that had been “reaffirmed many times.

Josh Hawley tries to mock law professor on abortion—she teaches him a lesson in under two minutes

During a Senate Judiciary Committee meeting on abortion access and the law, Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri attempted to derail the otherwise incredibly important conversation by trying to trip up expert Khiara Bridges. Bridges, a law professor at the University of California-Berkeley, had used inclusive language when referring to people who seek abortions. And Hawley couldn’t handle it.

‘They started throwing gas bombs’: Cops leave teen caught in crosshairs of SWAT standoff to die

Albuquerque police officers knew a person other than the suspect they were pursuing had run inside the very house they threw powder irritants into. They had that knowledge before they decided to activate the irritants, and they did so anyway, desperate to drive those inside the home, including 15-year-old Brett Rosenau, outside. They failed in more ways than one.

“Rosenau was found deceased inside the home,” police said in a news release.

The Incitement Paper Trail

Donald Trump sent thousands of tweets during his four years as president. None may prove as consequential as the one he sent in the wee hours of December 19, 2020: “Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild,” the president wrote at 1:42 a.m. ET.At the time, Trump’s middle-of-the-night missive deepened a sense of growing alarm about a defeated president who appeared to be unmoored and was fomenting chaos during his final weeks in office.

The Coolest Space Picture I’ve Ever Seen

One question keeps bouncing around my mind as I look at this image from the new James Webb Space Telescope: How is this real? I have followed the story of Webb for years, chronicling the ups and downs and controversies the mission has experienced on its way to becoming a real, functioning telescope. I’ve talked with many dozens of scientists and engineers about how the observatory works and the kind of high-resolution images it is designed to produce.

Where Is the National Outrage Over Uvalde?

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.George Floyd’s murder changed how Americans view law enforcement. The Uvalde massacre could have its own impact on policing and guns, and yet we still don’t know why the police response went so wrong.But first, here are three new stories from The Atlantic.

Before Guernica Won Over the World, It Flopped

When it comes to art against tyranny, no work is more seared into our consciousness than Guernica, Pablo Picasso’s dark, howling mural against fascist terror. Created in 1937 at the height of the Spanish Civil War, it has in the 85 years since become a universal statement about human suffering in the face of political violence. Throughout World War II, it stood for resistance to Nazi aggression; during Vietnam controversies such as the My Lai massacre, protesters invoked it against the U.

The Trump Enablers Truly in Contempt of Congress

Over the weekend we learned that Donald Trump’s former political strategist Steve Bannon had written to the January 6 committee indicating that he might, after all, be willing to testify. Bannon, who has been indicted for contempt of Congress, had previously claimed to be bound by executive privilege—though no court has accepted that argument—but he now presented a letter from the former president granting a waiver.

Abortion Providers in Mississippi & Alabama Post-Roe Want Biden to Federally Codify Right to Choose

Heeding outrage from reproductive rights activists, President Biden signed an executive order Friday to ensure access to abortion medication and emergency contraception in the wake of the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade. We speak to the heads of two major reproductive health centers in the Deep South about how they are providing patient care now that abortion is criminalized.

How Sri Lanka Protests Led to a “Reawakening of the Citizen” & Pushed Out President & Prime Minister

Thousands of protesters in Sri Lanka have stormed the homes of the president and prime minister and are refusing to leave until they officially resign, as the president faces accusations of corruption that bankrupted the country and led to a massive economic crisis. President Gotabaya Rajapaksa is set to formally step down Wednesday and has reportedly tried to flee the country.

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.