Today's Liberal News

DOJ Takes Elon Musk’s Side in NAACP Lawsuit Against xAI for Polluting Black Neighborhoods

The Department of Justice has intervened in a legal case involving the world’s first trillionaire, Elon Musk, asking a Mississippi federal court to toss a lawsuit from the NAACP against Musk’s company xAI, a subsidiary of SpaceX. The NAACP says xAI is violating the Clean Air Act by running dozens of unpermitted gas-burning turbines in majority-Black neighborhoods to fuel its data centers in Memphis, Tennessee.

What Comes Next for Iran

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, watch full episodes here, or listen to the weekly podcast here.
Last night on Washington Week With The Atlantic, panelists joined to discuss the signing of an agreement between the United States and Iran, and what Donald Trump’s deal with the regime may mean for other countries.

Why Adventure Matters

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.
The word adventure tends to conjure images of people climbing mountains, kayaking through rapids, or traveling to remote corners of the world. It sounds expensive, athletic, and slightly exhausting.

Are GLP-1s Performance-Enhancing Drugs?

Before Serena Williams picked up her racket at London’s Andy Murray Arena last week, two questions hung over her return to tennis.
First: How would she do? She answered that, in her first competition in nearly four years, by winning. The 44-year-old and her doubles partner, the 19-year-old Victoria Mboko, ended up besting the third seed in their opening match of the Queen’s Club tournament. Their victory was sealed by a 116-mile-an-hour serve from Williams that her opponents couldn’t return.

This Founding Father Died in Disgrace. But He Can’t Be Forgotten.

Early one evening in August 1798, a sitting justice of the Supreme Court named James Wilson died in a sparsely furnished boarding room on the second floor of a North Carolina tavern. He had been holed up there for nearly a year to avoid creditors, to whom he owed unspeakable debts from land speculation. Delirious and destitute, he died from malarial fever, which burned through the Carolinas every summer.
There was no public announcement of Wilson’s death.

The Curse of Too Much Evidence

Sylvia Meagher was 44 years old in the fall of 1965 and lived alone, except for her cat, Allegra, named after the ballet dancer Allegra Kent. She commuted from her one-bedroom apartment in the West Village to the United Nations, where she’d been working for nearly two decades at the World Health Organization. Although Meagher was a bureaucrat, her sensibilities were bohemian. She was acquainted with many of the painters, musicians, and writers who lived near her.

DOJ Takes Elon Musk’s Side in NAACP Lawsuit Against xAI for Polluting Black Neighborhoods

The Department of Justice has intervened in a legal case involving the world’s first trillionaire, Elon Musk, asking a Mississippi federal court to toss a lawsuit from the NAACP against Musk’s company xAI, a subsidiary of SpaceX. The NAACP says xAI is violating the Clean Air Act by running dozens of unpermitted gas-burning turbines in majority-Black neighborhoods to fuel its data centers in Memphis, Tennessee.

Science Has a Name for What’s Plaguing the Reflecting Pool

Donald Trump has a new nemesis, with a name worthy of a supervillain: Scenedesmus.
The Reflecting Pool on the National Mall has become the country’s most high-profile science experiment, with workers battling against nature. After a week of combat, they have essentially killed off one type of algae infesting the pool, only to create the conditions for a new type to take over.

Mark Rutte Needs to Stop Talking

Can Mark Rutte please just stop talking? The NATO secretary general, who infantilized an entire continent last year by referring to Donald Trump as “Daddy,” continued his campaign of flattery at the most recent meeting of the G7: “The U.S. action to prevent the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran and degrade its ballistic missile capability improves security for us all,” he told reporters.

How to Think About AI Before It’s Too Late

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Cory Doctorow has a refrain: “The most important thing about a gadget isn’t what it does; it’s who it does it for and what it does it to.” In this episode of Galaxy Brain, he sits down with Charlie Warzel to talk about the AI boom, making the case that the hype, vision, and dreams of endless growth are unsustainable.

Britain’s Next Leader Has Emerged

Britain has a new prime minister in waiting. Andy Burnham has wanted to lead the Labour Party for more than a decade, and now the deep unpopularity of the incumbent, Keir Starmer, has created a path to Downing Street for the Manchester mayor.

The Thinkers Who Explain This Baffling Era

This is an edition of the Books Briefing, our editors’ weekly guide to the best in books. Sign up for it here.
My favorite essays feel like surprising chemical reactions: Their materials combine into something novel and combustible. The French philosopher Roland Barthes’s 1957 essay “The World of Wrestling,” which examines the “amplification of the tragic masks” in professional (fake) grappling, certainly fits this category.