Today's Liberal News

Who Really Controls the Strait of Hormuz?

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Yesterday, President Trump wrote on Truth Social that the United States would become the “GUARDIAN OF THE HORMUZ STRAIT,” blockading Iranian ports and ensuring the safe passage of non-Iranian vessels. And in the spirit of “FAIRNESS,” he added, the U.S. would charge vessels a fee for the trouble.

Marco Rubio’s Disappearing Signal Chat

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Secretary of State Marco Rubio, like most federal officials, is legally required to retain records that he creates as part of his job. So it was no surprise that his office ended up in court last year after The Atlantic revealed that he had participated in an auto-deleting Signal chat about war plans in Yemen with other top national-security officials.

The Bizarre Partnership Between the U.S. and Venezuela

James Story, America’s last chargé d’affaires in Venezuela before the embassy closed in 2019, left after the foreign minister passed along a message. The warning was stark, Story told me: If he stayed, he might be murdered.
When American diplomats raised the flag at the embassy in March, for the first time in seven years, they stood outside a building that had been festering in the tropical heat and taken over by black mold.

The Shooter in Maine Was a New ICE Recruit

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Late last night, at the end of a day that started with the killing of a 26-year-old Colombian man in Maine, the second fatal shooting involving a vehicle stop in a week, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement official Liana Castano sent out an email to top ICE supervisors around the country. “Effective immediately,” Castano wrote, “vehicle stops are suspended until further notice.

Generative AI Is an Engineering Disaster

Editor’s note: This work is part of AI Watchdog, The Atlantic’s ongoing investigation into the generative-AI industry.
As they scramble to keep their systems online, AI companies are making things expensive for the rest of us. Large language models such as ChatGPT and Claude are so resource-hungry that tech companies may be purchasing 70 percent of the world’s supply of high-end computer memory, causing a shortage.

“Vote Her Out”: After Maine ICE Shooting, Sen. Collins Under Fire for Deciding Vote on ICE Funding

The killing of 26-year-old Colombian immigrant Joan Sebastián Durán Guerrero by ICE agents in Biddeford, Maine, has put the sparsely populated state back in the national spotlight amid the ongoing fallout from a sexual assault allegation that led insurgent Democratic nominee Graham Platner to suspend his campaign for Senate. The nomination will now be determined by Maine Democratic Party delegates in an accelerated — and more crowded — version of the race’s contentious primary.

“Our Community Is Hurting”: ICE Kills 26-Year-Old Joan Sebastián Durán Guerrero in Biddeford, Maine

Just days after the killing of a Mexican immigrant in Texas, immigration agents fatally shot another immigrant, also driving to work, this time in a small town in southern Maine. Joan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, originally from Colombia, was 26 years old and the father of a 3-year-old daughter. He was reportedly authorized to work in the United States, had been issued a Social Security number and was not the target of any warrant.

“They Were Hunting for Latinos”: LULAC CEO on ICE Killing of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston

“They were hunting for Latinos.” Outcry is continuing over the ICE shooting death of 52-year-old Mexican immigrant Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in a majority-Latino neighborhood in Houston, Texas, last week. Events pieced together by eyewitness videos and texts sent by the agents involved in Araujo’s killing suggest that agents largely ignored Araujo’s cries for help after he was shot.