Today's Liberal News

The Album That Made Me a Music Critic

Smash Mouth has long been, as its guitarist, Greg Camp, once said, “a band that you can make fun of.” The pop-rock group’s signature hit, 1999’s “All Star,” combines the sounds of DJ scratches, glockenspiel, and a white dude rapping that he “ain’t the sharpest tool in the shed.” Fashionwise, the band tended to dress for a funky night at the bowling alley.

The Atlantic Announces Hillary Rodham Clinton and New Speakers for the 15th Annual Atlantic Festival

The Atlantic is today announcing new speakers––including former Secretary of State and United States Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton––appearing at the 15th annual Atlantic Festival, taking place on Thursday, September 28, and Friday, September 29, at The Wharf in Washington, D.C. Clinton will be in conversation with The Atlantic’s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, discussing existential threats to democracy.

Our First ‘Nonemergency’ COVID Season

One thing we crave after our collective pandemic experience is certainty. If a potentially powerful new variant is out there, we need some answers about it: How fast is its evolution? Will it spread as quickly and widely as Omicron? And will the vaccine be effective against it?In this episode, I talk with Atlantic science writers Katie Wu and Sarah Zhang. They know a lot, and they are very honest about all the things they don’t know.

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.

Ukrainian & Russian Activists on How Putin’s War Emboldens “Authoritarian Forces” Around the World

On the same day U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited Kyiv to announce $1 billion in new U.S. aid to Ukraine, 17 Ukrainians were killed in a Russian missile attack on a Donetsk market. “It’s very painful for me to see all the streets and cities that I spent my childhood in to be completely destroyed by the ongoing war,” says Hanna Perekhoda, Ukrainian historian from the Donetsk region on a speaking tour of the U.S.

“Doing Harm”: Roy Eidelson on the American Psychological Association’s Embrace of U.S. Torture Program

A military judge at Guantánamo has thrown out the confessions of Saudi man Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri because he had been tortured and waterboarded at secret CIA black sites in Afghanistan, Thailand, Poland, Romania and Morocco before being sent to Guantánamo. Psychologists James Mitchell and John Bruce Jessen, who were paid at least $81 million by the CIA to develop and then implement the CIA’s post-9/11 torture program, had waterboarded al-Nashiri at a CIA black site.

American Democracy Perseveres—For Now

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.Democracy is under attack around the world; in the United States, the summer brought good news and bad news. The institutions of democracy are still functioning, but not for long if enough Americans continue to support authoritarianism.

The Big COVID Question for Hospitals This Fall

Back in the spring, around the end of the COVID-19 public-health emergency, hospitals around the country underwent a change in dress code. The masks that staff had been wearing at work for more than three years vanished, in some places overnight.

America Could Be in for a Rough Fall

On Labor Day, you could drive from Minnesota’s border with Canada all the way to where Louisiana hits the Gulf of Mexico and not encounter a high under 90 degrees. The heat hasn’t broken: Today, nearly a third of Americans are sweltering under heat alerts.Such weather is a fitting end to a devastating season, the kind you run out of superlatives for. This summer, climate extremes suddenly seemed to be everywhere, all at once.

The Taint of Nuclear Disaster Doesn’t Wash Away

The numbers were climbing on a radiation dosimeter as the minibus carried me deeper into the complex. Biohazard suits are no longer required in most parts of Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi power plant, but still, I’d been given a helmet, eyewear, an N95 mask, gloves, two pairs of socks, and rubber boots. At the site of the world’s worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl, you can never be too safe.

How Men Muscled Women Out of Surfing

When I first started surfing, as a teenager in Honolulu in 1966, my uncle would clear a way for me through the big, intimidating men on long, heavy surfboards—men who vastly outnumbered women in the fabled waves at Queen’s surf break in Waikiki.Back then, I didn’t see the irony in men dominating a break named for a powerful woman—Queen Lydia Lili‘uokalani, whose cottage had once stood on that very beach.

Kenyan Activist at Africa Climate Summit: Fund Green Transition on Continent & Phase Out Fossil Fuels

As the Africa Climate Summit wraps up in Nairobi, we get an update from Kenyan climate justice organizer Eric Njuguna. He says the focus by Western leaders and multinational companies on establishing carbon markets in Africa amounts to a “ticket to pollute” without directly addressing the need to phase out fossil fuels. Njuguna says a key demand from activists is to create access to climate financing without new debt burdens on the continent’s governments.

“Alarming”: Biden to Supply Depleted Uranium Shells to Ukraine Despite Contamination Risks

The Biden administration is expected to send armor-piercing munitions containing depleted uranium to Ukraine as part of the latest military aid package, even though the weapons are radioactive and their use causes contamination that is hazardous to human health. It’s the latest escalation in the war between Ukraine and Russia that nonproliferation activists warn could possibly lead to a nuclear confrontation.