Today's Liberal News

“The Doomsday Machine”: Confessions of Daniel Ellsberg, Former Nuclear War Planner

As we remember Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, who died in June, we look at how he was also a lifelong anti-nuclear activist, stemming from his time working as a nuclear planner for the U.S. government. In December 2017, he joined us to discuss his memoir, The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner. “This was an actual war plan for how we would use the existing weapons,” he noted, “many of which I had seen already that time.

Months Before Death, Daniel Ellsberg Warned Crisis over Ukraine & Taiwan Could Lead to Nuclear War

Over the past 50 years, Daniel Ellsberg remained an antiwar and anti-nuclear activist who inspired a new generation of whistleblowers. In his last interview with Democracy Now!, in April, he spoke about the war in Ukraine and why it required a diplomatic solution, and about the latest leak of Pentagon documents by Air National Guard member Jack Teixeira, who has been indicted on six counts of willful retention and transmission of classified information.

What I Learned Retracing the Footsteps of the Capitol Rioters

Standing on the Ellipse, between the White House and the Washington Monument, I heard President Donald Trump deliver his fiery address. “You’re never going to take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength, and you have to be strong,” he said to the crowd, claiming that the 2020 presidential election had been stolen from him.

Hope and Resistance: Voices of a People’s History of the United States in the 21st Century

In a special broadcast, we look at voices of a people’s history inspired by the late great historian Howard Zinn’s groundbreaking book, A People’s History of the United States, which helped reshape how history is taught in classrooms. Twenty years ago, Zinn and Anthony Arnove began organizing public readings of historical texts referenced in A People’s History of the United States.

“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.

A New Explanation for One of Ecology’s Most Debated Ideas

This article was originally published by Quanta.More than four decades ago, field ecologists set out to quantify the diversity of trees on a forested plot on Barro Colorado Island in Panama, one of the most intensively studied tracts of tropical forest on the planet. They began counting every tree that had a trunk wider than a centimeter. They identified the species, measured the trunks, and calculated the biomass of each individual.

Play a Game of (Atlantic-Themed) Trivia for the Fourth

Today we’re offering a brief history lesson (and a brief themed diversion). But first, here are three new stories from The Atlantic:
Tom Nichols: Reclaiming real American patriotism
The indispensable bureaucrat looking out for Ukraine
The hypocrisy of mandatory diversity statements
What Should the Fourth of July Be?With the Fourth of July comes all the complexities of collective observance—patriotism, fireworks, picnics, apathy, resistance.

Who Really Wrote ‘the Pursuit of Happiness’?

In a playful moment a century ago, the historian Carl Becker pondered this counterfactual: What if Benjamin Franklin, not Thomas Jefferson, had drafted the Declaration of Independence? A scholar of the American Revolution, Becker knew that such a thing was plausible. Franklin was, after all, on the Committee of Five in Philadelphia, which was allotted the job of drawing up the text in June 1776.

“What Arrogance Looks Like”: Supreme Court Justice Alito’s Ruling vs. EPA Allegedly Violates Ethics

On the final day of the Supreme Court’s term, we speak with David Dayen, executive editor of The American Prospect, about recent revelations detailing many of the Supreme Court conservative justices’ close relationships to Republican megadonors, and how allegations of financial impropriety further delegitimize the court’s standing as an objective legal authority. “These are lifetime appointments,” says Dayen. “This is what arrogance looks like.