Today's Liberal News

April Blooms: Spring Is on the Way

Spring started about two weeks ago, and the Northern Hemisphere has begun to warm, with flowers and trees in bloom. Gathered here today, a small collection of images from the past few weeks from North America, Asia, and Europe, of tulips, sunshine, and cherry blossoms—surely signs of warmer days to come.

The Urgency of Vaccinating Kids

Kim Hagood hates needles. But as a middle-aged adult with chronic conditions, she got vaccinated against COVID-19 without delay. “I never thought I’d be so excited to get a shot,” she told me, giddily, hours before her appointment. A single mother in Trussville, Alabama, Hagood is less certain about vaccinating her 10-year-old son when the time comes.

The Biggest Party of 2021 Is About to Start

A lot can change in 17 years. The last time the cicadas were here, the virus behind the SARS outbreak had finally retreated. George W. Bush was campaigning for his second presidential term, and Myspace had commenced its meteoric rise. Tobey Maguire was still the reigning Spider-Man.

MLK Opposed “Poverty, Racism & Militarism” in Speech One Year Before His Assassination 53 Years Ago

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated 53 years ago, on April 4, 1968, at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, at the age of 39. While Dr. King is primarily remembered as a civil rights leader, he also championed the cause of the poor, organized the Poor People’s Campaign to address issues of economic justice, and was a fierce critic of U.S. foreign policy and the Vietnam War.

Ethiopia Accused of Using Rape as a Weapon of War in Tigray as New Evidence Emerges of Massacres

We get an update on how the Ethiopian government has announced Eritrean forces are withdrawing from the Tigray region in northern Ethiopia, where harrowing witness accounts have emerged of Eritrean soldiers killing Tigrayan men and boys and rape being used as weapon of war by Ethiopian and Eritrean soldiers. Eritrea entered the Tigray region to support Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s military offensive in November targeting the Tigray People’s Liberation Front.

9 Pieces of Advice to Help You See Relationships More Clearly

Editor’s Note: With Lori Gottlieb on book leave, Rebecca J. Rosen, the editor of “Dear Therapist,” begins another month as The Atlantic’s “Dear Therapist” archivist, pointing readers to some of Lori’s most beloved columns. For this month’s look-back at Dear Therapist columns, I’ve decided to turn not to a specific theme, but to a handful of columns that have been reader favorites over the years.Rereading them, I understand why.

The Awful Wisdom of the Hostage

Gérard DuBois
This article was published online on April 5, 2021.In October 2012, in the second year of the Syrian civil war, a 44-year-old freelance journalist named Theo Padnos crossed from Turkey into Syria with two young men he thought were his friends. Padnos made friends easily and indiscriminately: In 2006, he was in Yemen researching a book about foreign converts on the path of jihad, and he showed me around when I arrived in the country.

“Abhorrent”: Oregon Gov. Kate Brown on Trump’s Treatment of Portland Protesters vs. Insurrectionists

Protesters in Portland, Oregon, took to the streets for more than three straight months following the police killing of George Floyd. In July, former President Donald Trump threatened to jail protesters for 10 years for damaging federal buildings in Portland. But months later he praised right-wing insurrectionists who attacked the U.S. Capitol. Trump’s actions were “absolutely abhorrent,” says Oregon Governor Kate Brown.