Today's Liberal News

“Justice for My Brother”: Sister of Samuel Sharpe Speaks Out After Police Killing During RNC

As anger grows in Milwaukee over the police killing of 43-year-old Samuel Sharpe during the Republican National Convention, we speak with his sister, Angelique Sharpe, who says the family is fighting for transparency from the authorities and the full video of the fatal incident. “We really want justice for my brother,” says Angelique, who also explains that her brother’s life had been threatened by a “bully” and that he had actually called the police for help before he was killed.

The GOP Is Waging a War on Abortion Rights, But You Wouldn’t Know It If You Watched the RNC

The Washington Post reports the word “abortion” was not mentioned a single time from the stage during the first three days of the Republican National Convention. Reporter Amy Littlefield, abortion access correspondent at The Nation, says the silence from Trump and others at this week’s RNC in Milwaukee does not reflect a change in attitude from the Republican Party, which is still fiercely opposed to reproductive rights. “Republicans can read the polls.

Bishop William Barber: Trump & Republicans Did Not Offer “Unity” at RNC, Only More Lies & Hate

Bishop William Barber, co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign, joins us as the Republican National Convention wraps up in Milwaukee. On the final night, Donald Trump’s invective-filled speech, coming just days after the attempt on his life, was promoted as an address about unity. But Barber says it was only “a unity of rejection” on offer — rejecting the rights of women, immigrants, workers, poor people, disenfranchised voters and more.

Milwaukee Protesters Demand Justice for Samuel Sharpe and D’Vontaye Mitchell

A march through downtown Milwaukee Thursday called for justice for Samuel Sharpe and D’Vontaye Mitchell, two Black men killed before and during the Republican National Convention amid a massive security buildup. Sharpe was a 43-year-old unhoused Black man who was shot dead by police officers from Ohio who were in Wisconsin as part of a group of 4,500 law enforcement officials in Milwaukee for the RNC. The shooting took place a mile from the RNC’s proceedings.

In “Unity” Speech, Trump Demonizes Migrants, Spreads Lies & Embraces Authoritarianism

We host a roundtable the morning after Donald Trump accepted the Republican nomination for president on Thursday, just five days after surviving an assassination attempt, delivering the longest acceptance speech in convention history. Trump began with a somber recounting of what happened in Butler, Pennsylvania, when a bullet grazed his right ear, and soon went off script to deliver a rambling diatribe against various political enemies and repeatedly demonized immigrants.

What the Democrats’ Divisions Could Mean for the Election

Editor’s Note: Editor’s Note: Washington Week With The Atlantic is a partnership between NewsHour Productions, WETA, and The Atlantic airing every Friday on PBS stations nationwide. Check your local listings or watch full episodes here.
Calls from Democrats for Joe Biden to end his bid for reelection are mounting, with congressional members such as Nancy Pelosi joining those who support an end to his candidacy.

Abortion Isn’t About Feminism

One of the greater indignities of the Dobbs Supreme Court decision—besides stripping millions of American women of their bodily autonomy—was how deeply out of step it was with the majority of Americans’ beliefs. According to a 2023 Gallup poll, a record-high 69 percent of Americans believed that first-trimester abortions should be legal. Considering this statistic, it’s surprising that Democrats haven’t more robustly rallied people around this issue.

Biden Is Right to Take on the Court

In 1983, an ambitious young lawyer in Ronald Reagan’s Justice Department wrote a memo about a hypothetical constitutional amendment to reform the judiciary. “Setting a term of, say, fifteen years would ensure that federal judges would not lose all touch with reality through decades of ivory tower existence,” he wrote. “It would also provide a more regular and greater degree of turnover among the judges.”
That lawyer’s name was John Roberts.

The Animals Behaving in ‘Humanlike’ Ways

This is an edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a set of stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Sign up here to get it every Saturday morning.
Do dogs understand what’s funny? In the November 1910 issue of The Atlantic, the nature writer John Burroughs turned to this question as he tried to understand how animal minds really work.

The Urban Doom Loop Could Still Happen

“It’s another truly amazing gold rush!” Marc Benioff posted on X in September 2023. The founder and CEO of Salesforce was celebrating San Francisco’s AI-fueled revival, touting a report that pegged demand for new office space in the city at nearly 1 million square feet. By February 2024, The Economist was declaring that “San Francisco staged a surprising comeback.”
It looked like quite a turnaround for a city whose epitaph had been written again and again since the pandemic.

A Searing Reminder That Trump Is Unwell

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Donald Trump’s bizarre diatribe at the Republican National Convention shows why the prodemocracy coalition is so worried about beating the GOP nominee—even if it means that Joe Biden must step down.
But first, here are three new stories from The Atlantic.

Can a Bot Be Too Good at Its Job?

This is Atlantic Intelligence, a newsletter in which our writers help you wrap your mind around artificial intelligence and a new machine age. Sign up here.
AI has been cheered by proponents for its ability to automate tasks, allowing users to spare themselves from boring work assignments (or, in a less happy example, to flood the web with useless slop).

Hillbilly Excuses

Senator J. D. Vance of Ohio, after only three years in politics, is now the Republican nominee for vice president. I’ve written, and continue to believe, that Vance is a hollow man, an opportunist driven by a strange melding of self-admiration and insecurity, who has risen to great heights in the Republican Party by saying things he does not believe, especially when it comes to his new running mate, Donald Trump.

Whoops! The Internet Broke.

Overnight, much of the world ground to a halt: Tens of thousands of flights and trains were canceled or delayed, hospitals stopped elective surgeries, doctors couldn’t book appointments, banks struggled to process transactions, television networks stopped broadcasting. The culprit was not a war, an earthquake, a mounting heat wave, or a terrorist attack, but some faulty computer code. It was likely the largest IT failure in history.

J. D. Vance’s Empty Nationalism

As the Civil War began to rage in 1861, the American press became enraptured with an idea—that Giuseppe Garibaldi, the gallant Italian nationalist and erstwhile New Yorker who had become famous fighting wars of independence in two hemispheres, was willing to join the Union cause.
There was only one condition: The Union had to embrace emancipation.