Today's Liberal News

Trump’s Abuse of Pardons Undermines Entire Justice System: Reagan Official Bruce Fein

President Donald Trump has signed a wave of pardons for people convicted of fraud, including a Virginia sheriff who took tens of thousands of dollars in bribes and a reality TV couple who evaded millions in taxes after defrauding banks. Last month, Trump pardoned a Florida healthcare executive convicted of tax evasion for stealing nearly $11 million in payroll taxes from the paychecks of doctors and nurses.

As Courts Battle Trump on Tariffs, Will Right-Wing Supreme Court Rescue the President’s Trade Agenda?

President Donald Trump has vowed to go to the Supreme Court to keep his tariffs in place after a whirlwind 24 hours that saw a court temporarily reinstate the measures, soon after two courts blocked most of the tariffs, saying Trump overstepped his presidential authority. Trump has been infuriated by the legal challenges and lashed out on social media against the Federalist Society and conservative legal activist Leonard Leo.

“Worse Than McCarthyism”: Historian Ellen Schrecker on Trump’s War Against Universities & Students

We speak with esteemed historian scholar Ellen Schrecker about the Trump administration’s assault on universities and the crackdown on dissent, a climate of fear and censorship she describes as “worse than McCarthyism.”
“During the McCarthy period, it was attacking only individual professors and only about their sort of extracurricular political activities on the left. … Today, the repression that’s coming out of Washington, D.C.

How to Open a Hole

I don’t know how the beetles got in.
Landed like plums rolling off a cloud,
soft erasers inside their mouths,
my dreams were first to go. Siphoned
out via bullet holes, like honeybees
smoked out their hive, chorus of black
lines, burned thick and dark, gilded
grill marks, hexagon honey stuck
to their eyes, there are six sides
to loneliness. Ballistic blowfly,
visions of parallel lives, you hide,
what you hold. Blind to the brilliance,
I died with my eyes at an angle
to my skull.

Making Religion Matter for Secular People

In recent years, an impressive number of particularly charming actors have played rabbis on TV. Adam Brody, Sarah Sherman, Daveed Diggs, and Kathryn Hahn have all donned a kippah, wrapped themselves in a tallis, and shown how fun loving (even sexy) it can feel to carve a path between the rock of tradition and the hard place of modernity. I’m not sure why progressive rabbis are the clerics to whom pop culture tends to assign this role, as opposed to, say, quirky priests or wacky imams.

Lament for the IRL Craft Shop

On a trip to my local Joann craft-supply store recently, I felt a cheap thrill. An extremely cheap thrill. Huge signs posted on the front doors read STORE CLOSING and ENTIRE STORE 30%–70% OFF. One screamed NOTHING HELD BACK, which struck me as both desperate and alluring.
I walked in and wandered up and down the picked-over aisles, skimming my fingers across the flannels, fleeces, silks, and satins. Buckets of yarn beckoned.

Five Movies Worth a Repeat Watch

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.
Welcome back to The Daily’s Sunday culture edition.
Not all movies are meant to be watched twice. Some leave a glancing effect; others emanate so much intensity that the idea of sitting through them again feels unbearable.

What Made William F. Buckley So Unusual

The June issue of The Atlantic features an excerpt from Sam Tanenhaus’s long-awaited biography of the conservative intellectual and polemicist William F. Buckley Jr. That book—Buckley: The Life and Revolution That Changed America—will be published by Penguin Random House on June 3. Buckley exerted enormous influence not only on American politics but also on how political debate was waged (more and more, on television).