Today's Liberal News

With Graham Platner, Democrats Got Drunk on the Beer Test

Last September, the progressive strategist Morris Katz confessed to The New Yorker that the process by which he decided that Graham Platner was qualified to run for U.S. Senate required less time than drinking a cup of coffee. Actually, it seems to have been less a confession than a boast. “Within a few minutes of talking to him, I was, like, ‘This guy owes it to the country to run for Senate,’” Katz recalled.

FIFA Is a Cautionary Tale for Trump

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This evening, the U.S. Men’s National Team will take on Belgium in a World Cup Round of 16 match in Seattle. Much to U.S.A. fans’ relief, and to Belgians’ chagrin, the team will have the services of the striker Folarin Balogun.
The star player was sent off during last week’s U.S.A.

A Very Bad Call

The only thing more riling than a referee’s interference in a sports event is a politician’s. How to kill America’s goodwill in the World Cup: Wave a “red card” under the nose of Donald Trump. Let him go to work, by putting in a call to his good friend Gianni Infantino, the president of FIFA, to inquire about the suspension of Team USA’s top scorer. Have the player’s suspension magically lifted just in time for the next big game.

Meet Rafael Rubio, NY City Council Employee Released from Delaney Hall After 5 Months in ICE Jail

A New York City Council employee who was detained at the Delaney Hall ICE jail in Newark, New Jersey, for more than five months was released from custody in June. Rafael Andres Rubio Bohorquez was taken by federal immigration officers in January during a routine asylum interview. Rubio Bohorquez, who is from Venezuela, was detained despite holding temporary protected status that should have shielded him from deportation.
“People are sad; detainees are sad.

Record Heat Waves Are Preview of Our Future on a Warming Planet: Climate Writer David Wallace-Wells

A massive heat dome settled above the eastern half of the United States over the Fourth of July weekend, bringing triple-digit temperatures, disrupting travel and prompting emergency measures for millions of people. At least 25 people died in New Jersey due to extreme heat and humidity, and more than 185 million people — over half of U.S. residents — were under heat alerts over the weekend.

Journalist Karen Hao on Sam Altman, OpenAI & the “Quasi-Religious” Push for Artificial Intelligence

As part of our July Fourth special broadcast, we continue our extended interview with Karen Hao, author of Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman’s OpenAI. The book documents the rise of OpenAI and how the AI industry is leading to a new form of colonialism. “One of the things that you really have to understand about AI development today is that there are what I call quasi-religious movements that have developed within Silicon Valley,” says Hao.

“Empire of AI”: Karen Hao on How AI Is Threatening Democracy & Creating a New Colonial World

In our July Fourth special broadcast, we revisit our interview with longtime technology reporter Karen Hao, author of Empire of AI, which unveils the accruing political and economic power of artificial intelligence companies — especially Sam Altman’s OpenAI. Her reporting uncovered the exploitation of workers in Kenya, attempts to take massive amounts of freshwater from communities in Chile, along with numerous accounts of the technology’s detrimental impact on the environment.

“What to the Slave Is the 4th of July?”: James Earl Jones Reads Frederick Douglass’s Historic Speech

We begin our July Fourth special broadcast with the words of Frederick Douglass. Born into slavery around 1818, Douglass became a key leader of the abolitionist movement. On July 5, 1852, in Rochester, New York, Douglass gave one of his most famous speeches, “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” He was addressing the Rochester Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society.

“The American Revolution Was Hardly an Anti-Colonial Movement”: UCLA Historian Robin D. G. Kelley

Ahead of the July Fourth holiday and the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, we speak with the acclaimed scholar Robin D. G. Kelley, who examines how Black radicals have interpreted the document throughout U.S. history in a new essay for Hammer & Hope. Although the declaration famously asserts that “all men are created equal,” Kelley says that clearly did not extend to Indigenous or enslaved Black people.

“Rule of Law vs. Rule of Billionaires”: Supreme Court Says Trump Can Fire Regulators, Except at Fed

In a 6-3 ruling this week that overturned nine decades of precedent, the Supreme Court granted President Donald Trump the power to fire and replace officials at independent government agencies like the Federal Trade Commission. But in a separate 5-4 decision, the justices ruled that Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook can stay in her job as she challenges Trump’s efforts to fire her.

From Idaho B Roll

In Garfield, Washington, the second of three
speed-trap towns cutting over into
Idaho on the way home from Spokane,
there is a gray-going-white basketball
furred from use and exposure, deflated
only enough to discourage prolonged play,
in the grass by the public court, beside
the little park’s restroom, the simplest soonest
option en route. It pleases me again
to spot it and, before returning to the car,
to shoot two or three baskets.

What Trump’s July 4 Speech Revealed

Donald Trump’s favorite movie is Sunset Boulevard. That movie tells the story of an aging silent film star, Norma Desmond, who has locked herself away from the real world so that she can endlessly replay past glories until she loses her mind entirely. In his Independence Day speech, Donald Trump indulged in his own protracted Norma Desmond moment.
The 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence has been a Trump-made fiasco from start to end.

Prepare for Airplane Purgatory

One evening in May, passengers boarded United Flight 661 from Newark, New Jersey, to Chicago. As the plane readied for takeoff, a thunderstorm swept in, grounding the plane. The storm, which produced winds upwards of 50 miles an hour, was fast moving and cleared a few hours later. And yet, seven hours after Flight 661 first left the gate, it was still on the tarmac, passengers crammed inside. Around midnight, the flight was canceled.

The Alabamafication of National Politics

On Juneteenth, I watched Doug Jones, the Democratic nominee for Alabama governor, deliver a speech at the Scottsboro Boys Museum, in the northeastern corner of the state. I found myself thinking of the 1960s civil-rights rallies that I’d covered as a young reporter, and that many of the older Alabamians in the packed venue had attended. A former U.S.