Today's Liberal News

The DOGE Plan That Endangers U.S. Revenue

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Tax season is always a busy time at the IRS. This year has been especially eventful. In February, the agency was told to start firing up to 7,000 workers—before judges ordered that such firings needed to be paused.

Students Yelled at Me. I’m Fine.

Updated at 5:20 p.m. ET on April 1, 2025
One day this fall, while on campus at Brown University, I was met by two students—cellphones raised, cameras recording. They had spun off from a larger group protesting Brown’s decision not to divest from Israel. They recognized me as a trustee of the university and saw an opportunity to take me to task. They followed me for perhaps a block or two, calling me a hypocrite.

Long COVID Showed Me the Bottom of American Health Care

My house was dark. Tinfoil covered the windows. The only light I could tolerate came from dimmable red bulbs. Ten weeks before, I had tested positive for COVID. On week three of my infection, I went to the emergency room with a debilitating migraine. On my third trip to the ER, I was hospitalized for seven days. I came home to a changed life. All the clichés about headaches are true—a pile of bricks on the head, a vise grip on the temples, an axe through the skull.

The Evermaskers

“It breaks my brain sometimes,” Dennis Rosloniec told me. For half a decade now, the 44-year-old media technician and mountain biker from Green Bay, Wisconsin, has done everything he can to understand the risks of getting COVID. He’s read the published studies. He’s looked at meta-analyses. And here’s the truth as far as he can tell: Each time he’s infected, the chances that something really bad will happen to his body ratchet up a little higher.
Dennis is not immunocompromised.

So Much for the MAGA Divorce

Steve Bannon seems resigned to sharing power with the “tech bros,” as he calls them. Last week, when I spoke with President Donald Trump’s former chief strategist and continued ally, he was clear about his disagreements with Elon Musk and other Silicon Valley elites on the so-called tech right. “Nationalist populists,” Bannon’s self-identified political clan, “don’t trust these oligarchs,” he told me. But, he added, “we see the usefulness of working together on broad things.

“The Darkest Hour of Need”: Burmese Junta Continues Bombing in Aftermath of Devastating Earthquake

We get an update on “the darkest hour of need” for the Burmese people, from Maung Zarni, a Burmese human rights activist, after a 7.7-magnitude earthquake hit Burma Friday, leaving at least 2,700 dead, with the death toll expected to rise as rescue efforts continue. Aid groups in the worst-hit areas of Burma, also known as Myanmar, said there was an urgent need for shelter, food and water.

Workers vs. Musk: Federal Unions Resist Attacks on Bargaining Rights & Cuts to Essential Services

As federal unions lead the resistance to cuts by billionaire Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency, President Trump has pushed to end collective bargaining rights for nearly half the federal workforce in a new executive order that calls them “hostile” to his agenda. Unions say the order is the biggest attack on the labor movement in U.S. history.