A daily roundup of the best stories and cartoons by Daily Kos staff and contributors to keep you in the know.
Trump flirts with bailing on Harris debate—again
His reasoning here is as believable as his claim that he’s “a better-looking person than Kamala.”
‘This is a problem’: The Trump train is running out of steam
“He’s not the same candidate we saw in 2016 or 2020.
The Atlantic has hired Shane Harris as a staff writer to cover national security and intelligence, editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg announced today. Shane has been at The Washington Post since 2018, and will join The Atlantic in October.
Below is the staff announcement from Jeffrey Goldberg:
Some exciting news to start off the week: Shane Harris, one of the country’s most outstanding intelligence and national security reporters, will be joining us as a staff writer this fall.
Sign up for The Decision, a newsletter featuring our 2024 election coverage.
The 2024 presidential election was already like none in living memory: a matchup between the sitting president and a former president.
Then it got even more historically unusual.
We end today’s show in conversation with New York City Councilmember Yusef Salaam. He was one of five teenagers from Harlem — four Black and one Latino — wrongfully accused and convicted of raping and nearly killing 28-year-old white investment banker Trisha Meili in 1989. Meili had been jogging in Central Park when she was assaulted, and the accused teens became known as the Central Park Five.
A federal judge in Kentucky has thrown out felony charges against two former Louisville police officers for their roles in the fatal shooting of Breonna Taylor in 2020. Instead, the judge ruled that Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, is legally responsible for her death because he fired his gun to fend off intruders, after plainclothes police officers broke down the couple’s front door and barged in just after midnight.
Palestinian American journalist Rami Khouri responds to the latest exchange of fire between Israel and Hezbollah and the drawn-out ceasefire talks between Israel and Hamas, which Khouri calls a “fictitious political dynamic” that is primarily used as diplomatic cover for Israel’s warfare. “The ceasefire talks should not be taken very seriously as an effort to bring about a ceasefire,” he says.
Not long ago, tracking the spread of a virus by sampling wastewater counted as a novelty in the United States. Today, wastewater monitoring offers one of the most comprehensive pictures anyone has of COVID-19’s summer surge. This type of surveillance has been so effective at forecasting the risks of the virus’s rise and fall that local governments are now looking for other ways to use it. That has meant turning from tracking infections to tracking illicit and high-risk drug use.
The Democratic National Convention is over, and the verdict is in: It was a remarkable heist. “They stole traditional Republican themes (faith, patriotism) and claimed them as their own,” the conservative Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan wrote. “Democrats Show That Republicans Aren’t the Only Ones Who Can Wrap Themselves in the Flag,” read a New York Times headline.
Overzealous lawyers caused a PR disaster.
The former top U.S. infectious disease expert is expected to make a full recovery.
The state Supreme Court ruled in favor of Attorney General Tim Griffin, who had accused the initiative’s backers of failing to submit the proper paperwork.
Democrats this week spotlighted stories of unwanted pregnancies and men who feared they’d lose their wives because they couldn’t obtain emergency abortions.
Many prominent conservatives and anti-abortion activists were outraged by the remark, calling it “nonsensical” and “cowardly.
Democrats have made restoring abortion access a cornerstone of their campaign for the White House and Congress, but there are divisions over what, exactly, that means.
The vice president makes her pitch in North Carolina, where Democrats have long hoped to flip the closely divided state.
The vice president’s plan aims to make housing more affordable, ease health care costs and crack down on corporations for rising grocery prices.
“We cannot win if people think we’re headed into a recession,” one Democratic National Committee member said.
Vice President Kamala Harris formally accepted the Democratic presidential nomination on Thursday, vowing in her speech to the Democratic National Convention to continue the Biden administration’s tough line on immigration.
The city of Chicago, which hosted the 2024 Democratic convention, is home to the highest concentration of Palestinian Americans in the United States. In the suburbs of the city, residents of Bridgeview — known as “Little Palestine” — have been hard hit by Israel’s war on Gaza, which has killed over 40,200 Palestinians.
Vice President Kamala Harris made history Thursday as the first Black woman and the first person of South Asian descent to be nominated to lead a major party’s presidential ticket. There are now just two-and-a-half months left before the November 5 election, when she will face Republican nominee Donald Trump at the polls.
The Democratic National Convention wrapped up in Chicago on Thursday with Vice President Kamala Harris formally accepting the presidential nomination, capping a week of political showmanship and celebration for many party members. “One of the things that struck me most was the level of choreographed mass spectacle of this convention that would be really worthy of Leni Riefenstahl,” says Democracy Now! co-host Juan González.
Vice President Kamala Harris made history Thursday as the first Black woman and the first person of South Asian descent in the United States to be nominated to lead a major party’s presidential ticket.
When the astronauts Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Sunita “Suni” Williams launched to the International Space Station on June 5, they flew on a Boeing spacecraft and wore the company’s bright-blue spacesuits. On the way home, eight months after their scheduled return, they will likely ride in a SpaceX vehicle, dressed in sleek white suits designed with the aesthetic sensibilities of that company’s CEO and chief engineer in mind. Elon Musk to the rescue.
“Using rehearsal time efficiently is a whole separate skill.
“Okay, we have to move fast,” one of Pete Buttigieg’s aides told me as the discoursing dynamo was finishing another cable interview on the last day of the Democratic National Convention.
Buttigieg stepped off an MSNBC set and onto the United Center floor. “I’m here to give you some much-needed attention,” I told him. By “much-needed,” I was of course being sarcastic: Buttigieg has been a rather relentless media presence in recent weeks, especially this past one in Chicago.
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.
Welcome back to The Daily’s Sunday culture edition.
When selecting a new book, it can be comforting to return to what’s familiar: the genres you know you love, the authors whose perspectives you share. But sometimes, the best books are the ones that challenge rather than confirm your expectations.
Frankie met Lucia in that summer of tombstoners and storms, when the tomato plants got blight and the bean plants fruited early. She lived in a small cluster of houses just north of Lulworth, where the news consisted only of tomato plants getting blight and bean plants fruiting early. She was sitting in the dirt tunnel beneath the beans, which by now had shriveled in the sun like exhumed fingers, when she called up Beach Ices and it all began.
