Today's Liberal News

Photos: Wildfire Smoke Blankets Parts of North America

Cole Burston / AFP / Getty
People walk in downtown Toronto as smoke from forest fires in northern Ontario causes poor air quality over the city, in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, on July 15, 2026.Stephen Maturen / Getty
The sun sets behind a layer of smoke on July 15, 2026, in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Atlantic Reads: The Small Stuff With Ian Bogost

The Atlantic contributing writer Ian Bogost sat down with the senior editor Chris Suellentrop to discuss Bogost’s new book, The Small Stuff: How to Lead a More Gratifying Life. Bogost argues that machines, technology, and other modern conveniences have contributed to a growing sense of societal disconnection and dissatisfaction. Bogost and Suellentrop’s candid conversation explores how to identify and appreciate the small, often overlooked joys in doing everyday tasks.

How the World Cup Finally Won Over America

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Why does the World Cup endure in an age of fractured attention? Is FreddyLA7 a real person? Charlie Warzel speaks with Men in Blazers founder Roger Bennett to chart how the World Cup has become far more than a sporting event and how this year’s tournament marks a turning point for soccer in the United States.

Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey” Faces Boycott Calls over Filming in Occupied Western Sahara

Hollywood’s blockbuster adaptation of the ancient Greek epic The Odyssey premieres around the world today amid growing calls for a boycott. Human rights campaigners are criticizing director Christopher Nolan over his decision to film part of the film in Western Sahara, a vast territory in northwestern Africa that Morocco has occupied for the past half-century.

“Disrupt, Identify, Defund, Debank, Arrest & Prosecute”: Trump Admin Threatens Leftist Groups

Secretary of State Marco Rubio and top White House adviser Stephen Miller are pushing for a global crackdown on leftist organizations. The State Department on Thursday hosted a summit “on the resurgence of political terrorism,” where Miller described the left as “enemies of civilization” and described efforts to “disrupt, identify, defund, debank, arrest and prosecute these political terrorists that are operating in our country.” Rubio announced the U.S.

Report from Houston: Family of ICE Shooting Victim Lorenzo Salgado Araujo Holds Public Viewing

Hundreds of community members gathered in Houston on Thursday evening for a public viewing of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, the 52-year-old Mexican man shot and killed by an ICE agent on July 7. His sons stood by their father’s casket for hours greeting mourners who wore blue, Salgado Araujo’s favorite color. A mariachi band played, and several altars adorned the chapel: One table held Salgado Araujo’s construction tools and hard hats, while another displayed two of his Mexico soccer jerseys.

Trump’s Election Integrity Speech Lays Groundwork for Midterm Interference: Ari Berman

In a primetime address on Thursday, President Trump accused China of meddling in U.S. elections in his latest effort to spread doubt about the U.S. voting system ahead of the midterm elections in November. Trump announced he was declassifying documents that show what he called “shocking vulnerabilities in our election infrastructure,” but offered no evidence that China or any other country directly interfered with recent elections.

Denise Oliver-Vélez, Pioneering Young Lord & Black Panther, Dies at 78

Lifelong activist, organizer and educator Denise Oliver-Vélez has died at the age of 78. She was a central figure in the civil rights movements of the 1960s and 1970s and was the first woman elected to the Young Lords Central Committee, a radical Puerto Rican human rights group modeled on the Black Panther Party, which Oliver-Vélez was also a member of. She later became the first Black female program director in public radio and taught at SUNY New Paltz.

Trump Still Hasn’t Found What He’s Looking For

Since President Trump returned to office a year and a half ago, he has dispatched investigators and analysts from across the U.S. intelligence community to search for evidence of foreign interference in an election that he lost but claims he won. In an address from the White House tonight, the president sought to reveal proof for his baseless assertions of a 2020 vote marred by fraud. But once again, he came up empty.

Trump Just Did More Damage to American Elections Than China

President Trump addressed the American people tonight and told them that their elections are at the mercy of foreign actors—especially China. He called the current situation a “crisis” and vowed to prevent any future elections from being “stolen.” He directed the public to a website where people can peruse documents that he says prove not only that bad actors have influenced U.S. elections, but that all of this was kept from him by “deep state” malefactors during his first term.

Trump Dooms His Own Party

In early 2021, Republicans were poised to win a majority in the U.S. Senate. Had they won, they could have stalled President Biden’s agenda and forced him to govern on Republican terms. All they had to do was win the two Senate seats in Georgia headed to a run-off in January.
Then Donald Trump opened his yap. He had just lost the presidency. To assuage his own ego injury, Trump attacked the election as fake and rigged. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported the effect of this talk in Georgia.

Your Odyssey Might Be Cropped

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An IMAX-film-camera system looks like the kind of device that could give you an X-ray. Weighing hundreds of pounds, it emits a constant, deafening mechanical roar that must be muted with a large encasement known as a sound blimp.

Explaining Sex to an Anthropologist

Last week, the president of the American Anthropological Association weighed in on one of the most polarizing subjects in her field: biological sex. Some anthropologists believe that biological sex is binary, and that it is a necessary and useful category; others believe that this position is at odds with settled science and is a threat to people’s “safety and dignity,” as the AAA put it in an official statement.

Earthjustice Sues to Block Trump’s Move to Gut Endangered Species Act

The Trump administration has introduced a new interpretation of the Endangered Species Act, a bedrock of successful U.S. wildlife conservation for more than 50 years, dramatically weakening its power to protect natural habitats and opening vulnerable lands to real estate development, oil drilling and other extractive industries. A coalition of conservation groups is suing the Trump administration over the rule change.