Today's Liberal News

“Can’t Look Away”: New Documentary Examines How Social Media Addiction Can Harm — Even Kill — Kids

Can’t Look Away: The Case Against Social Media is a new documentary that exposes the real-life consequences of the algorithms of Big Tech companies and their impact on children and teens. In 2022, social media companies made an estimated $11 billion advertising to minors in the U.S., where 95% of teenagers use social media. One in three teens uses social media almost constantly.

“An Attack on Labor”: Washington Farmworker Organizer “Lelo” Detained in Trump Immigration Crackdown

Longtime immigrant farmworker and organizer Alfredo “Lelo” Juarez Zeferino was pulled over last week by a plainclothes agent with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in an unmarked car who broke his car window and forcibly detained him. “Within not even a minute of interaction, of getting pulled over, he was already in handcuffs,” says Edgar Franks, the political director of independent farmworkers union, Familias Unidas por la Justicia, which he co-founded with Lelo.

Reproductive Rights Crackdown: Planned Parenthood CEO on Supreme Court Case, Title X & More

The Supreme Court heard oral arguments Wednesday in a case that may cut off Planned Parenthood from Medicaid funding. Planned Parenthood says the move violates the Medicaid Act’s “free choice of provider” provision, which says patients are entitled to choose their own doctors. The case, brought by the state of South Carolina, could impact the care of low-income patients who rely on Planned Parenthood for a range of non-abortion services, including cancer screenings and full physical exams.

Trump Sends Hundreds of Immigrants to Brutal Salvadoran Prison as Mass Deportations Expand

Since President Donald Trump took office, the U.S. has expelled hundreds of immigrants and asylum seekers to El Salvador without due process to be detained at the supermax mega-prison complex known as CECOT, with many of them accused of belonging to gangs largely on the basis of having tattoos. The Trump administration recently admitted in a court filing that a Salvadoran father with protected status was among those sent to El Salvador.

The Conspiracy Theorist Advising Trump

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.
For a few months, the Donald Trump White House managed, at least in public, to keep some of the right’s fringiest figures at bay. Until yesterday.
The far-right celebrity Laura Loomer was at the White House on Wednesday.

There Is Only One Way to Make Sense of the Tariffs

Yesterday afternoon, Donald Trump celebrated America’s so-called Liberation Day by announcing a slew of tariffs on dozens of countries. His plan, if fully implemented, will return the United States to the highest tariff duty as a share of the economy since the late 1800s, before the invention of the automobile, aspirin, and the incandescent light bulb.

What RFK Jr. Gets Wrong About the Past

This is an edition of Time-Travel Thursdays, a journey through The Atlantic’s archives to contextualize the present and surface delightful treasures. Sign up here.
Last week, at an event in West Virginia, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. fat-shamed the state’s governor, Patrick Morrisey. “The first time I saw him, I said you look like you ate Governor Morrisey,” Kennedy told a laughing crowd. Morrisey has apparently invited Kennedy to be his personal trainer.

To Be Happier, Stop Resisting Change

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In 1924, a German professor named Eugen Herrigel set out to learn about Zen Buddhism, which was starting to penetrate the West. He found a teaching position in Japan, where he hoped to locate someone who could instruct him in the philosophy.

Iran Wants to Talk

Donald Trump loves letters. We know this from his first term, when he exchanged 27 letters with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un in the course of 16 months and wrote a particularly memorable missive to Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. In his second term, he has already found an unlikely new pen pal: Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Early in March, a high-ranking Emirati diplomat delivered a letter from Trump to Khamenei.

ICE Detains Mother & Her Three Children in Farm Raid Near NY Home of Border Czar Tom Homan

We speak with New York Immigration Coalition President Murad Awawdeh about a mother and three children who were swept up in an ICE raid not far from the home of Trump’s “border czar” Tom Homan in Sackets Harbor, New York, handcuffed and taken to a family detention center in Texas despite having no order of deportation. A protest calling for the family’s return is planned for this Saturday, and the mayor has called a state of emergency.