Today's Liberal News

What a Collapse Could Look Like

Editor’s Note: Washington Week With The Atlantic is a partnership between NewsHour Productions, WETA, and The Atlantic airing every Friday on PBS stations nationwide. Check your local listings or watch full episodes here. In this year-end episode, some of the contributors to the The Atlantic’s January/February issue forecast what a second Trump term might look like.

As Biden Pushes Trump-Like Border Policies, Blinken Meets with AMLO, Who Has Criticized U.S. Sanctions

As many as 10,000 people a day are being arrested in the U.S.-Mexico border as the Biden administration adapts the GOP’s xenophobic anti-immigrant framework ahead of the 2024 election, says Laura Carlsen, director of the Mexico City-based think tank MIRA: Feminisms and Democracies. She joins us as the U.S. secretary of state and homeland security secretary met Wednesday with the Mexican president. The U.S.

The Year’s Best Movies, TV Shows, and Books

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.This was the year of the sold-out stadium tour, double-feature mania, celebrity memoirs (and documentaries), and superhero fatigue. It was also the year of the Hollywood strike, controversy over book bans, and the rise of AI music.

Suddenly, Trump Is Interested in Democracy

Donald Trump won the presidency with fewer votes than his opponent?
We’re a republic, not a democracy.State Republican parties in Wisconsin, North Carolina, and other states gerrymandered themselves into supermajorities?
We’re a republic, not a democracy.Forty-one senators block laws favored by 59? A single senator blocks promotions across the Defense Department?
We’re a republic, not a democracy.

The Year We Embraced Our Destruction

The sounds came out of my mouth with an unexpected urgency. The cadence was deliberate—more befitting of an incantation than an order: one large strawberry-lemon-mint Charged Lemonade. The words hung in the air for a moment, giving way to a stillness punctuated only by the soft whir of distant fluorescent lights and the gentle hum of a Muzak cover of Bruce Hornsby’s “Mandolin Rain.”The time was 9:03 a.m.; the sun had been up for only one hour.

Where Will AI Take Us in 2024?

This is Atlantic Intelligence, an eight-week series in which The Atlantic’s leading thinkers on AI help you understand the complexity and opportunities of this groundbreaking technology. Sign up here.What will next year hold for AI? In a new story, Atlantic staff writer Ross Andersen looks ahead, outlining five key questions that will define the technology’s trajectory from here.

“Utterly Illegal”: U.N. Special Rapporteur Slams Netanyahu’s “Voluntary Migration” Plan for Gazans

More United Nations workers have been killed in Israel’s ongoing assault on the Gaza Strip than in any other conflict in the organization’s history. As the death toll for U.N. workers ticks above 136, Israel has announced it will no longer grant automatic visas to U.N. workers, after accusing the organization of being “complicit partners” with Hamas after months of U.N. officials repeatedly calling for a ceasefire and the delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza.

U.S. Complicit in “On-Air Genocide”: Palestinian Amb. Husam Zomlot Slams 12-Week Gaza Assault

Gaza health officials report the past 12 weeks of Israeli assault has killed more than 21,500 Palestinians as Israel admits to killing civilians in an attack on the Maghazi refugee camp on Christmas. We speak with Husam Zomlot, the head of the Palestinian Mission to the United Kingdom, where Prime Minister Rishi Sunak says “too many civilians” have died in Gaza and has called for a sustainable ceasefire.

Taylor Swift at Harvard

Last month, Harvard announced that I would be teaching a class next semester called “Taylor Swift and Her World,” an open-enrollment lecture partly about Swift’s work and career and partly about literature (poems, novels, memoirs) that overlaps with, or speaks to, that work. When the news came out, my inbox blew up with dozens of requests, from as far away as New Zealand.