Today's Liberal News

Biden’s Complicated Path to Reelection

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. President Joe Biden is attending the G20 gathering of world leaders in Delhi and meeting with Vietnamese leaders in Hanoi this week with the goals of strengthening key relationships and countering China’s influence in the region.

Oyster Insomnia is Real

This article originally appeared in Hakai Magazine.In several quiet rooms in a marine lab in southwest France, dozens of Pacific oysters sit in glass tanks, quietly living their oyster lives. Each morning, the lights come up slowly, carefully mimicking the rising sun, but at night the test groups’ rooms never fully darken. The dim glow simulates the light pollution that plagues many marine species—even in natural habitats.

Why Persuading People to Give Up Meat Is So Hard

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.For many years, choosing to give up meat meant choosing to stop experiencing its taste. Vegan and vegetarian food had many merits, but tasting like meat was not one of them. In the past half decade, though, some new meat substitutes have come impressively close to the original.

Ignore Jack Smith’s Critics

Several distinguished individuals have recently expressed grave reservations about the prosecutions of former President Donald Trump. Notably, they appear to have no dispute about the seriousness of his wrongdoing. Rather, their main concern is that “terrible consequences” may result, because the prosecutions “may come to be seen as political trials … and play directly into the hands of Trump and his allies.

Democratic Republic of Congo Faces “Worst Hunger Catastrophe” as Mineral Extraction Enriches the Few

The Democratic Republic of the Congo is seeing a dramatic deterioration of infrastructure and displacement of citizens as a result of armed violence, flooding and the world’s largest hunger crisis. In recent months, rampant violence of armed groups has forced more than half a million people to flee their homes, while the United Nations says some 3,000 families also lost their homes after recent intense flooding and mudslides in the eastern part of the country.

My Hero, Sly Stallone

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.Like millions of other Americans, I enjoy many of Sylvester Stallone’s movies. But in recent years, I’ve come to think that Sly might have also been teaching me something.First, here are four new stories from The Atlantic.
Streaming has reached its sad, predictable fate.

Streaming Has Reached Its Sad, Predictable Fate

The first question plaguing omnivorous, content-hungry humans with a spare hour or two is this: What should I watch? In recent years, a second question has come to dominate our evening streaming rituals: How do I watch it? Drenching your eyeballs in sweet television can be surprisingly tricky, requiring some amount of research to determine which streaming platform has whatever you want to watch and, crucially, whether you pay for it already.

Elon Musk’s Latest Target Hits Back

Over the past few days, hundreds of thousands of posts on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, have lambasted a Jewish organization that many people are only vaguely aware of: the Anti-Defamation League.

The Problem Olivia Rodrigo Can’t Solve

Have you ever loved a song without knowing what it means? That rarely happens when I listen to Olivia Rodrigo. The 20-year-old pop star has conquered the world by singing about unruly emotions with the precision of a court reporter. The songs on her new album, Guts, offer tidy thesis statements about the nature of heartbreak, declaring, “Love’s embarrassing” (on “Love Is Embarrassing”) or “Love is never logical” (on “Logical”).

This Week in Books: Sylvia Plath Continues to Fascinate

This is an edition of the revamped Books Briefing, our editors’ weekly guide to the best in books. Sign up for it here.Sylvia Plath lived only to the age of 30—this year marks the 60th anniversary of her death. When you consider all that has been written about her, and the writers still thinking of her, the shortness of her existence is shocking.