Today's Liberal News

Blue Check Marks Were Always Shameless

Many years ago, when picking up my teenage daughter from an outdoor mall, I found myself surrounded by her friends. “You’re verified,” one of them said, gushing. At first I thought this was some new youth slang term for “cool” or even “uncool.” But alas, she was referring to Twitter. I had a blue check on the service. That kind of verified.

The Candidate and the Spy: James Bamford on Israel’s Secret Collusion with Trump to Win 2016 Race

In his new book, Spyfail: Foreign Spies, Moles, Saboteurs, and the Collapse of America’s Counterintelligence, investigative journalist James Bamford reveals that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dispatched a secret Israeli agent to the United States in the spring of 2016 to help Donald Trump win the presidential election. The agent met with advisers to Trump and offered to share secret intelligence with the campaign against Hillary Clinton.

Rep. Ro Khanna on Regulating Banks, TikTok, China, Ukraine & His Vote on the “Horrors of Socialism”

We speak with Democratic Congressmember Ro Khanna about the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank, regulating the banking sector, and how Federal Reserve interest rate hikes contributed to the banking crisis. Silicon Valley Bank was based in Khanna’s district in California, and he has criticized fellow Democrats who supported a 2018 bill that weakened oversight for some banks.

The U.S. Owes Iraq “Just Compensation”: Muslim Peacemaker Sami Rasouli on 2003 Invasion & Aftermath

As we continue to look back on the 20th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, we’re joined by Sami Rasouli, an Iraqi native who immigrated to the United States over 35 years ago and became a successful restaurateur and beloved member of the community in Minneapolis. After the U.S. invasion of his home country in 2003, he moved back to Iraq, where he founded the Muslim Peacemakers, a group that works to promote and practice nonviolent conflict resolution and intervention.

The Cases Against Trump: A Guide

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.If you’re finding it hard to keep track of all of former President Donald Trump’s legal woes, don’t feel bad: He can’t get it straight, either. Last weekend, he announced that he’d be arrested in Manhattan on Tuesday.

How Decades of Lax Rules Enable Train Disasters

Updated at 4:30 p.m. ET on March 23, 2023.It’s been more than a month since a Norfolk Southern train derailed in East Palestine, Ohio. More than 100,000 gallons of vinyl chloride, a carcinogen, were released, with some spilling into waterways. Many hundreds of people had to evacuate from their homes. An estimated 43,000 aquatic animals died.

“Disaster”: Iraqi Journalist Ghaith Abdul-Ahad on U.S. Invasion, Sanctions, Occupation & What’s Next

As we continue to mark the 20th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, we are joined by Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, an award-winning Baghdad-born Iraqi journalist and author. Abdul-Ahad has received the Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism, the British Press Awards’ Foreign Reporter of the Year and the Orwell Prize. His new book is A Stranger in Your Own City: Travels in the Middle East’s Long War.

A Police Killing Inside a Hospital: Ben Crump on Death of Irvo Otieno During Mental Health Crisis

As new footage is released about the shocking killing of Irvo Otieno inside a hospital in Virginia, we speak with civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who represents Otieno’s family. Surveillance video shows seven sheriff’s deputies and three hospital workers violently pinned Otieno to the floor and piled on him for more than 11 minutes, suffocating him. New video released Wednesday reveals at least one officer had also repeatedly punched Otieno earlier that day.

The Crisis of the Intellectuals

In 2017, I was trying to write How to Be an Antiracist. Words came onto the page slower than ever. On some days, no words came at all. Clearly, I was in crisis.I don’t believe in writer’s block. When words aren’t flowing onto the page, I know why: I haven’t researched enough, organized the material enough, thought enough to exhume clarity, meticulously outlined my thoughts enough. I haven’t prepared myself to write.

A Philosopher Gets Fed Up With Profundity

Here is a story I have heard from more than one professional philosopher, though it has never, at least not yet, happened to me: You are sitting on a plane, the person next to you asks what you do, you tell them you are a philosopher, and they ask, “So, what are your sayings?” When a philosopher opens their mouth, people expect deep things to come out of it.