Today's Liberal News

Meet Loui Ridi: Palestinian American Returns to West Bank Home Besieged by Israeli Settlers

Loui Ridi, a Palestinian American man who lives in Ohio, traveled to the occupied West Bank on Monday to help relatives defend their family home in the village of Qusra, south of Nablus. Israeli settlers have surrounded the home, which Ridi owns, for more than a week. Settlers have besieged several Palestinian houses in the village, trapping people inside and cutting off water and electricity in some cases.
“I’m not getting no protection here. I still fear for my life.

“Love Machines”: James Muldoon on How AI Is Changing Relationships & the Global Workers Fueling AI

James Muldoon is a sociologist who writes about the changing nature of human-technology relationships. Love Machines: How Artificial Intelligence Is Transforming Our Relationships investigates how people form emotional attachments with large language models, including OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude. Feeding the Machine: The Hidden Human Labor Powering A.I.

How to Lose a Trade War

U.S.-Canada trade talks collapsed last night. Punitive Trump tariffs will now go into effect. Canada will reciprocate with retaliatory tariffs of its own.
The story may not be over. Donald Trump is notorious for issuing threats, then reversing them. Wars are on, off, on again, off again, then on a third time—but only as a “little detour.” This is not an administration that thinks even one move ahead. But without a supersized Trump TACO, the U.S.-Canada impasse likely won’t resolve soon.

How Relationships Can Change Your Personality

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.
A few years ago, my colleague Faith Hill reported on what psychologists call the “Michelangelo phenomenon”: the idea that over time, romantic partners mold each other. “Some researchers have found that when that happens, the art tends to look conspicuously like the artist,” she wrote.

The President’s Focus

The national debt reached $40 trillion this week, but the president’s attention seemed directed elsewhere. Last night on Washington Week With The Atlantic, panelists joined to discuss Donald Trump’s recent focuses, and more.
At a rally for Darline Graham in South Carolina last night, Trump opened the event and spoke about the White House ballroom, devoting several minutes to his project.

So a C-List Celebrity Is Selling Your House?

Kelly Killoren Bensimon is no stranger to a career pivot. In 2009, she joined the cast of the Real Housewives of New York after having worked as a model and jewelry designer. Two years later, she left the show and did what many people with a bit of fame and a lot of marketing savvy do: She wrote books. She launched a line of fragrances, then candles, then outerwear. But by 2017, she’d realized that her skills were suited to what might have once seemed like a more quotidian job.

Why Do Rich Kids Love Socialism?

When the news broke that a co-chair of New York City’s Democratic Socialists of America chapter lives in a $1.5 million Brooklyn townhouse paid for by his father, critics of the DSA had a field day. The New York Post jabbed at Gustavo Gordillo, a 38-year-old former Yale student, for benefiting from his dad’s largesse “while railing against the rich and property ownership.