Today's Liberal News

The Trump Administration Casts Out the ‘Soul’ of MAHA

As of today, it seems likely that the nation’s next surgeon general will, at least, have an active medical license. President Trump announced that he was pulling his nomination for Casey Means, a wellness influencer who dropped out of her surgical residency in 2018, in a Truth Social post this afternoon. The move is the latest setback for Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Vance Denies and Confirms Atlantic Reporting in One Breath

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.
Staying in Donald Trump’s good graces while also protecting your own political future requires supreme political agility, and most people who try end up failing at both. Just ask Mike Pence, Mike Pompeo, Paul Ryan, and any number of other faded GOP stars—if you can find them.

Seven Death-Defying Books for the Adventurous Reader

When you stand at the summit of Mount Everest, the sky is a deep-blue bowl inverted above you, and the peaks of the Himalayas are a carpet at your feet. The sun on the snow is bright enough to blind you, even as your body starts failing in air so thin it can hardly sustain human life. I know that not because I’ve been there myself, but because I’ve read Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air and other books about the world’s highest mountain.

Making America’s Houses Bigger May Have Been a Mistake

This is an edition of Time-Travel Thursdays, a journey through The Atlantic’s archives to contextualize the present. Sign up here.
“When I was nine or ten and lived in a dark fourth-floor apartment in a building that had seen better days, I fantasized mansions that were more suited to my romantic nature,” Linda Lewis wrote in The Atlantic in 1978.

The Iran War’s Ramifications Have Only Just Begun

President Trump, celebrating Tehran’s declaration that the Strait of Hormuz would reopen to commercial shipping, posted on Truth Social on April 17, “IRAN HAS JUST ANNOUNCED THAT THE STRAIT OF IRAN IS FULLY OPEN AND READY FOR FULL PASSAGE.” The opening didn’t last. But, in his haste, Trump had inadvertently spelled out possibly the most consequential result of his eight-week war: The Strait of Hormuz now looks, in practice, like the “STRAIT OF IRAN.

Sunlight Doesn’t Go Through the Strait of Hormuz: Bill McKibben on Iran Oil Shock & Green Transition

We speak with author and activist Bill McKibben about the worsening climate crisis and why the world must rapidly transition to renewable energy in order to stave off the worst impacts. He says the Iran war has exposed the “utter folly” of fossil fuel dependence. “Sunlight has to travel 93 million miles to reach the Earth, but none of those miles go through the Strait of Hormuz,” says McKibben.

Maya Wiley: Southern Poverty Law Center Indictment Is Part of Trump’s Broader Attack on Civil Rights

Attorney and civil rights activist Maya Wiley responds to the Justice Department’s fraud case against the Southern Poverty Law Center, which centers on the group’s history of paying individuals to infiltrate white supremacist groups in order to monitor their activities. The SPLC has rejected the charges as politically motivated, saying its informant program was used to monitor threats of violence and that the information gathered was routinely shared with local and federal law enforcement.

Supreme Court Guts Voting Rights Act in “Devastating Blow” to Democracy & Civil Rights: Maya Wiley

The U.S. Supreme Court has effectively gutted Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, the last remaining major provision of the landmark 1965 law that was a crowning achievement of the civil rights movement.
In a 6-3 decision along partisan lines, a majority of justices ruled Wednesday that Louisiana must redraw a congressional map that was designed to create a second majority-Black district in the state, where African Americans have long faced racial segregation and barriers to voting.