Today's Liberal News

Erdoğan Reelected to 5 More Years in Turkey as His Government Grows More Authoritarian & Nationalist

We look at the impact of the reelection of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan Sunday in a tight runoff vote, extending his 20-year rule for a further five years. Erdoğan received just over 52% of the vote, beating challenger Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, an economist and former civil servant who unified a broad coalition but failed to unseat Erdoğan despite growing dissatisfaction with his governance and deep economic pain within the country.

The Problem With Comparing Social Media to Big Tobacco

Last month, the surgeon general released a lengthy advisory calling attention to social media and its effects on the mental health of teenagers. Historically, a warning from the surgeon general pointed a big neon sign at an issue that we might not be sure how much to worry about: cigarettes, AIDS, drunk driving. But people are already worried about social media—and they’re acting on those concerns.

What Trump’s Recording Could Reveal

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.Yesterday, news outlets reported the existence of a recording in which Donald Trump discusses his possession of classified documents. The recording could prove legally damaging, but its existence also reveals something important about how the former president operates.

A Case for Redirecting DEI Funds

Welcome to Up for Debate. Each week, Conor Friedersdorf rounds up timely conversations and solicits reader responses to one thought-provoking question. Later, he publishes some thoughtful replies. Sign up for the newsletter here.Question of the WeekIf there were a Hall of Fame for song lyrics and you got to make one nomination, what would it be and why? (The linguist John McWhorter might pick something from Steely Dan.)Send your responses to conor@theatlantic.com.

The Filmmaker Who Knows What’s Wrong With Your Relationships

If the writer-director Nicole Holofcener could predict the future, she’d guess that no matter what happens to the planet, no matter how much human society evolves and devolves, our descendants will still get emotionally distressed over something small, petty, and entirely irrelevant to anyone else. People hurting each other’s feelings, she told me over Zoom last week, is “going to happen until the end of the world.

“Turning His Back on Student Debtors”: Biden’s Debt Deal Ends Freeze on Loan Payments for Millions

Advocates for student debt relief are raising the alarm over a controversial part of the bipartisan deal to raise the U.S. debt ceiling that would end the freeze on student loan repayments by the end of August. The moratorium has been in place since 2020. Meanwhile, the fate of the Biden administration’s plan to forgive up to $20,000 in student debt for borrowers is going to be decided by the Supreme Court, where it is likely to face skepticism from the conservative majority.

Artificial Intelligence “Godfathers” Call for Regulation as Rights Groups Warn AI Encodes Oppression

We host a roundtable discussion with three experts in artificial intelligence on growing concerns over the technology’s potential dangers. Yoshua Bengio, known as one of the three “godfathers of AI,” is a professor at the University of Montreal and founder and scientific director at Mila–Quebec AI Institute. Bengio is also a signatory of the Future of Life Institute open letter calling for a pause on large AI experiments.