Today's Liberal News

The Anti-Abortion Movement’s New Distrust of Democracy

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.In a recent Atlantic essay, the professor and legal historian Mary Ziegler wrote about the anti-abortion movement’s erosion of faith in democracy. As Americans prepare to vote in the first major election since Roe v. Wade was overturned, I spoke with Ziegler about what happens next.

The Case Against the Death Penalty

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.

There Are No ‘Five Stages’ of Grief

It was early springtime here in Australia when my son died. I took jasmine and dark-red sweet peas from my garden to his funeral and laid them carefully beside him, wondering how I could even keep breathing through the pain.His name was Adam. He was 38, and more than six feet tall, but he was still my baby. His birth, as my first child, brought me to the most joyous life turn I’ve ever gone through; his death, the most shattering.

Angela Lansbury Could Make the Silliest Movie a Work of Art

Angela Lansbury was a boundlessly versatile performer, with a decades-long career filled with roles that played to her many strengths. She was a chilling villain in The Manchurian Candidate, a flighty and flirty accomplice to the psychological torment of Gaslight, and a winsome tavern singer in The Picture of Dorian Gray, earning an Oscar nomination for each role.

Russia Just Showed Why It’s Floundering in Ukraine

On Saturday, Ukraine showed why it is winning its war against Russia. On Monday, Russia showed why it is losing. Those two days revealed sharp contrasts between the two militaries. One is clever, well prepared, willing to undertake complex operations, and focused on maximally damaging its enemy’s ability to fight. The other is prone to bursts of rage and is open to committing any crime possible, but its actions are ultimately self-defeating.

Massive Leak of Military Docs Reveals Mexico Armed Cartels, Surveilled Journalists & Zapatistas

A stunning leak of more than 4 million documents from inside the Mexican military has revealed collusion between high-level military officials and the country’s cartels. The leak, published by the hacking group Guacamaya, is one of the largest in Mexico’s history and shows how military officials sold weapons, technical equipment and key information about rival gangs to cartels.

Health Insurance Whistleblower: Medicare Advantage Is “Heist” by Private Firms to Defraud the Public

Many of the nation’s largest health insurance companies have made billions of dollars in profits by overbilling the U.S. government’s Medicare Advantage program. A New York Times investigation has revealed that under the Advantage program, health insurance companies are incentivized to make patients appear more ill than they actually are. Some estimates find it has cost the government between $12 billion and $25 billion in 2020 alone.

Medea Benjamin & Nicolas Davies: Negotiations “Still the Only Way Forward” to End Ukraine War

The Biden administration has ruled out the idea of pushing Ukraine to negotiate with Russia to end the war, even though many U.S. officials believe neither side is “capable of winning the war outright,” reports The Washington Post. This comes as the war in Ukraine appears to be escalating on a number of fronts, with Russian President Vladimir Putin accusing Ukraine of committing a “terrorist act” and launching the largest strikes on Ukraine in months.

Remembering Indigenous Actress Sacheen Littlefeather, Who Was Mocked & Threatened at Oscars in 1973

On Indigenous Peoples’ Day, we remember the Indigenous actress and activist Sacheen Littlefeather, who died last week at the age of 75, not long after she received an apology 50 years after she spoke at the Oscars in protest of Hollywood’s portrayal of Native Americans. In 1973, she accepted an Oscar on behalf of Marlon Brando, who boycotted the ceremony, only to face boos from the crowd, threats of physical violence from the actor John Wayne and mocking by Clint Eastwood.

Ukraine update: Will Belarus join the war? Don’t count on it

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In the first few months of the war, the news was rampant with Belarus is joining the war hysteria. Terrorist Vladimir Putin was clearly leaning on Belorussian dictator Alexander Lukashenko to join the war, and Lukashenko was happy to pretend, time and time again, that he was ready to do his master’s bidding. Yet he never followed through. 

It was clear that Lukashenko had zero interest in joining the war.

Oath Keeper sedition trial Day 5: Prosecutors layer evidence of intent

Day Five of the Oath Keepers trial was dedicated to a methodical plodding through a heap of damning text messages that the Justice Department argues are proof beyond a reasonable doubt that Elmer Stewart Rhodes and four of his Oath Keeper associates conspired to stop the peaceful transfer of power by force on Jan. 6, 2021. 

Standing trial alongside Rhodes at the federal courthouse in Washington, D.C.

White House signals it may support new arms embargo after Saudi moves to boost Putin

The United States’ relationship with oil-producing Saudi Arabia has never risen to the status of “good,” and soured considerably after the Saudi monarchy’s murder of a Washington Post correspondent who criticized the regime. While it does depend somewhat on whether the current American president is or is not a sociopath, murdering journalists is allegedly something we still take quite seriously in our own diplomatic relations.

21 Reader Views on the Masculinity Crisis

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.Last week I asked, “Why are men and boys struggling? What should we do about it?” No other question has elicited so many responses, and they were especially varied, so this is a long edition.