Today's Liberal News

“Absolutely Vulnerable”: Over 20,000 Global South Ship Workers Stranded at Sea Due to Iran War

As Iran and the United States maintain rival blockades on the Strait of Hormuz and surrounding waters, we look at the more than 20,000 seafarers stranded on commercial ships since the outbreak of the war and unable to move out of the region. These maritime workers are often working-class men from developing countries across the Global South who form the crews on about 1,500 oil tankers, cargo ships and other vessels currently stuck on the water.

“They Don’t Care”: Trump’s Border Wall Construction Damages 1,000-Year-Old Sacred Indigenous Site

Construction crews in Arizona who are building President Trump’s expanded border wall have razed a portion of a Native American archeological site in the Sonoran Desert estimated to be at least 1,000 years old. Aerial photos reveal that bulldozers caused extensive damage to a 280-by-50-foot etching in the desert sand known as an intaglio, which holds special significance for the Hia-Ced O’odham people.

Amid Growing Abuse at ICE Jails, Rep. Adelita Grijalva Calls to Shut Down Trump’s Detention Network

As the Trump administration continues to expand the ICE detention system, concerns are growing over abuses inside immigration jails, including use of physical violence, pepper spray and electric shocks against detainees. Earlier this year, more than 70,000 people were being detained by ICE in jails across the country.
Congressmember Adelita Grijalva from Arizona, who visited two ICE jails recently, says detainees who spoke to her described dire conditions, medical neglect and more.

The DOGE-ing of the Humanities Is Being Reversed

Winning a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities can take months of preparation and can require multiple attempts. So last year, when DOGE officials with no humanities experience yanked the funds of hundreds of grantees using little more than a chatbot and a haphazard search for terms such as BIPOC and gay, it stung.

Understanding Our Mothers

This is an edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a set of stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Sign up here to get it every Saturday morning.
As I grew older, I began wondering about the version of my mother that existed before I did. Not just the parent who raised me, but the younger person she once was: the life she’d imagined for herself, the experiences that shaped her, the parts of her history that I will never fully know.

What Adults Lose When They Put Down Children’s Books

Please don’t judge me, but in March 2020, when I moved across the country, I got rid of six boxes of books, including many classic works of literature and nonfiction. Gone were titles by Jane Austen (Northanger Abbey—I’d rather reread Pride and Prejudice) and Charles Dickens (A Tale of Two Cities—plain old disinterest). Moby-Dick went (I’d tried for years, and failed). So did Joan Didion’s Political Fictions and Robert Caro’s The Power Broker (just never got around to them).

The Real Cost of Withdrawing U.S. Troops From Germany

While the high-security corridors of Washington and Berlin are occupied with a frantic, transactional debate over NATO burden sharing and the fallout of the Iran blockade, a far more profound rupture is occurring in the quiet streets of the Rhineland-Palatinate.
President Trump announced last week that the United States will remove 5,000 troops from Germany, possibly as the beginning of a larger drawdown.