Today's Liberal News

The Atlantic Daily: Five Halloween Movies for Scaredy Cats and Hard-Core-Horror Fans

Every weekday evening, our editors guide you through the biggest stories of the day, help you discover new ideas, and surprise you with moments of delight. Subscribe to get this delivered to your inbox.The scariest weekend of the year is here. I asked our critic David Sims to select a few movies to get you in the Halloween mood.David’s five picks span the universe of spook to fulfill the needs of wannabe witches, little pumpkins, and hard-core-horror fans alike.

A Tiny Outrage Machine, Sucking the Exhaust From a Giant One

Frances Haugen, a former Facebook data scientist, copied thousands of pages of internal documents and webpages before she left the company. Then she shared those materials with The Wall Street Journal, which began publishing stories about them last month under the heading “The Facebook Files.” Weeks later, she began to parcel the materials out to a consortium of news organizations, including The Atlantic.

Democrats Need to Count Up, Not Down

With the finish line in sight (if still stubbornly out of reach) for the Democrats’ massive social-programs and economic development bill, the party now faces the challenge of focusing the attention of its key constituencies and the public on what remains in the package, not on what was cut in the exhausting legislative maneuvering.

“A Pivotal Change”: Economist Darrick Hamilton on What the Build Back Better Act Could Accomplish

Democrats in Washington remain divided over two key bills at the center of President Biden’s domestic agenda: a $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill and the $1.85 trillion Build Back Better plan, which has been cut down from $3.5 trillion. Even though Biden’s latest framework is almost half the size of the original proposal, conservative Democratic Senators Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona are still refusing to commit to its passage.

Trump can be prosecuted for inaction during Jan. 6 insurrection, says legal scholar

For most of us, it’s an article of faith that Donald Trump is responsible for the Jan. 6 insurrection, regardless of Republican sentators’ refusal to vote for a conviction in his second impeachment. But a prominent legal scholar believes there’s another way to hold Trump to account for that day’s horror. He believes that Trump can be prosecuted not for what he did that day, but for what he didn’t do.

Qualified immunity remains intact, but legal activists keep trying to chip away at it

by Aria Velasquez

This story was originally published at Prism.

Last week, the Supreme Court ruled again in favor of law enforcement officers invoking qualified immunity in cases of excessive use of force. Based on a pair of 2016 cases from Oklahoma and California, the decisions were handed down without the court hearing oral arguments or any sign of dissent from the justices.

If Silence Is the Cost of Great Ramen, So Be It

NAGOYA, Japan—Vegetables, vegetables, vegetables. I am sitting in a cardboard cubicle at a counter inside a ramen shop, rehearsing my order in my head over and over again. My sister is in the next cubicle over—all I can see is the top of her head—and later I will learn that she is doing the exact same thing.

Nobody Can See Into Facebook

The overarching takeaway from the Facebook Papers is that Facebook knows. The company monitors just about everything, as the whistleblower Frances Haugen revealed by providing 17 news organizations with documents about the social-media company’s internal research and discussions. Facebook and its tech-industry peers employ armies of exceptional research scientists who evaluate how the platform shapes social behavior.