Today's Liberal News

“They Want to Silence Me”: Columbia Student Mohsen Mahdawi on ICE Jail, Palestine, Activism, Buddhism

In his first live interview since his release from ICE detention, Columbia University student and Palestinian activist Mohsen Mahdawi recounts the traumatic experience of his arrest and incarceration. Mahdawi, a green card holder who was born and raised in a refugee camp in the occupied West Bank, was arrested in Vermont on April 14 when he appeared for what he was told would be a citizenship interview, and spent more than two weeks in U.S.

“Surveillance Humanitarianism”: As Gaza Starves, U.S.-Israeli Plan Would Further Weaponize Food

Israel has imposed a complete block on humanitarian aid into Gaza since March 2, with hundreds of trucks with lifesaving aid waiting at the border. Now many of Gaza’s kitchens have closed, and Palestinians face mass starvation as rations run low. We speak with Alex de Waal, executive director of the World Peace Foundation at Tufts University, author of Mass Starvation: The History and Future of Famine.

What We Inherit From Our Parents

This is an edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a set of stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Sign up here to get it every Saturday morning.
Many of us spend our teenage years working tirelessly to avoid becoming our parents. But sooner or later, we discover that we didn’t stray quite as far as we thought.

How Colin Jost Became a Joke

On a recent episode of Saturday Night Live, the cast member Sarah Sherman dropped by the “Weekend Update” desk in character as the accountant Dawn Altman, the latest in her repertoire of high-strung weirdos. Altman was theoretically there to give one of the co-anchors, Colin Jost, some bad news about his tax returns.

Trump’s Transactional Foreign Policy

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This week, Donald Trump returned from the first major foreign trip of his second term.

No One Knows How to ‘Save’ Hollywood

Hollywood trade publications often call attention to how the film industry is in danger: If a hotly anticipated movie bombs at the box office, it’s evidence of people not going to theaters anymore; if a studio shelves a completed film in exchange for a tax write-off, it’s a sign of diminished optimism in cinema both commercially and artistically.

The Neo-Anti-Vaxxers Are in Power Now

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s anti-vaccine activism is not what you’d call subtle. For decades, he has questioned the safety and effectiveness of various childhood vaccines, insisting that some of them cause autism, lying about their ingredients, and dismissing troves of evidence that counter his views. However much he might deny it, Kennedy is “an old-school anti-vaxxer,” Dorit Reiss, an expert in vaccine law at UC Law San Francisco, told me.