Headlines edition

Tuesday headlines: The diplomat, the president, his hotelier & his cover (up).

The White House blocks Gordon Sondland, hotelier-turned-US Ambassador to the European Union (and Ukraine fixer), from appearing for a deposition.

Why Trump fears Sondland’s testimony: it could show the president directing a cover-up.

Here’s all the evidence collected so far in the Trump impeachment inquiry. 

Republicans join Democrats in rebuking Trump’s decision to abandon the Kurds to a Turkish siege in northern Syria.

“President Trump’s erratic foreign policy gives allies good reason to doubt America will follow through on its security commitments or protect friends in their hour of need.”

Since taking office, Trump has presided over soaring rates of civilian casualties in America’s foreign conflicts.

A visit to an international arms fair as British-exported weapons find their way to civilians in Yemen.

First-hand accounts from Extinction Rebellion’s protests yesterday against governments’ non-action on the climate crisis.

The Supreme Court hears arguments on whether the definition of sex in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act includes sexual orientation and gender identity.

Eve Ewing interviews Mariame Kaba (@prisonculture) about how her childhood and other experiences shape her organizing.

Chanel Miller, attacked by Stanford student Brock Turner, now fights the university over the wording on her plaque.

Five micro essays by Sarah Hepola about the glory of Jennifer Lopez’s womanhood.

Your weekly white paper: Flannery O'Connor completed all of her work during her 20s and 30s while suffering from lupus.

"Between reader and book, there is only the continual risk of wrongness, word by word, sentence by sentence. The Internet does not get to decide. Nor does the writer. Only the reader decides." Zadie Smith on the value—and wishful thinking—of fiction.

Exhausting, in a good way: Follow the Lomaxes as they make their field recordings of folk music across the Depression-era South.

From the New York Times Magazine, an oral history of the conflict in Afghanistan, 18 years and rolling.

The controversy over the NBA, China, and the Hong Kong protests, explained.

A revelation shakes plate tectonics: Subducted plates are still sinking and colliding in the mantle, deeper than believed.