Today's Liberal News

Franklin Foer

The Real Reason Trump Loves Putin

For nearly the entirety of the past decade, a question has stalked, and sometimes consumed, American politics: Why do Donald Trump and his acolytes heap such reverent praise on Vladimir Putin? The question is born of disbelief.

Inside Biden’s ‘Hug Bibi’ Strategy

With his trip to Israel tomorrow, Joe Biden will become the second American president to travel abroad to an active war zone that is not controlled by his own military. The first was also Joe Biden. When he ventured to Kyiv last February, he arrived during a lull in the fighting. This time, he’s flying into an escalating conflict.

Women’s Soccer Won the World Cup

During the era of American dominance in women’s soccer, success was largely a product of athleticism, fitness, and bursts of individual skill. The triumph of Spain, which won the World Cup today, represents an evolutionary leap forward, a higher level of refinement and technique. Aitana Bonmati, Spain’s midfield brain and the player of the tournament, dominated games with subtle flicks and visionary through balls; teammates rotated around her intricately.

I’m Supporting Colombia Now

Fatalism can be a fan’s best friend. When the United States’ women’s team began this World Cup, I wanted the best to transpire, but my mind kept warning me that the team was destined for the worst. It was painfully evident that the squad wasn’t well-coached and that injuries to crucial players left it unable to surmount bad tactics. From the opening game, I watched the rest of the tournament in search of another nation that I could adopt as my own if the U.S. flamed out.

The End of the U.S. Women’s Soccer Dominance

The U.S. Women’s National Team suffers by comparison to its old glories. At the previous World Cup, in 2019, it channeled the best of the American character: magnetic self-confidence that verged on arrogance, individualism that flamboyantly flouted archaic norms. In the press, players jawboned about the president of the United States as they waged war against their own employer in the name of equal pay.

Obsessed With the Life That Could Have Been

In the early days of the pandemic, it became harder for us to see one another. The human face, the ultimate marker of individuality, what the philosopher Emmanuel Levinas called “the first disclosure,” was suddenly sheathed in fabric. Strangers encountered on the street were even stranger—and the masks that covered their visage became a screen on which to project anxious thoughts.

Eat, Pray, Pander

The rage that Russia inspires is especially painful, because it is also an expression of helplessness.

Should We Psychoanalyze Our Presidents?

Sigmund Freud had a rule. However irresistible the temptation to burrow into the inner life of kings, prime ministers, and tycoons, he wouldn’t analyze famous contemporaries from afar. It just wasn’t right to rummage around in the mind of a subject who didn’t consent to the practice. But in the end, he found one leader so fascinating and so maddening that his ethical qualms apparently melted away.

You’ll Miss Gerontocracy When It’s Gone

For the past two years, Washington has been under the unified control of the Democratic Party. It has also been under the control of a narrow demographic: longtime recipients of Social Security. The ruling troika of Nancy Pelosi (age 82), Chuck Schumer (72), and Joe Biden (80) has participated in politics for about a combined 140 years. The last time one of them had a job that wasn’t based on Pennsylvania Avenue was 1987.

The Cynic’s Dilemma

Hopefully this isn’t horribly apparent, but this piece was a slog to write. It required overcoming my professional disposition, resisting my cognitive wiring, and drying out from a certain website that I used to fiendishly inhale.For a long moment in global politics, the planet seemed to be hurtling toward authoritarianism. It was terrifying, but I found myself strangely suited for apocalyptic times.

The Lionel Messi Guide to Living

The literary critic Edward Said coined the phrase late style to describe the final works of a composer or writer—when the decay of the body can’t help but inform artistry, when creativity is infused with the bumps, bruises, and wisdom of a life almost fully lived.  In soccer years, 35 makes the Argentine forward Lionel Messi a veritable geriatric. And this World Cup was his final opus, his version of Beethoven’s last string quartets or Monet’s lily ponds.

Remembering Grant Wahl, a Champion of American Soccer

Updated at 1:15 p.m. ET on December 10, 2022.This is an edition of The Great Game, a newsletter about the 2022 World Cup—and how soccer explains the world. Sign up here.Twenty years ago, when I first called the soccer writer Grant Wahl, he was an exotic species. In those days, most writing about American games existed in niche magazines with low production values and even lower circulations.

America, the Naive

This is an edition of The Great Game, a newsletter about the 2022 World Cup—and how soccer explains the world. Sign up here.One of Gregg Berhalter’s charms is that he can’t be bothered. Unshaven, attired in the uniform of Team Schlub, he loped along the sideline as if it were still the height of the pandemic and he was enjoying his newfound freedom from showering.

The Tormented Soul of Iranian Soccer

When soccer first appeared in Iranian villages in the 1920s, clerics began their long attempt to stifle the revolution that the game represents. They hated the sport—an import from Great Britain and championed by the shah, it was a symbol of modernity that featured men running around in heretical shorts. Clerics attended local matches for the sake of pelting players with stones.

At Last, the Americans Have Arrived

The worst American soccer chant goes, “I … I believe … I believe that we will win.” It betrays the anxieties of those who bellow it; far from arrogantly assuming victory, it seems to argue that the success of the United States men’s soccer team is a matter of prayerful thinking. Beating England is not a dream, if you will it.But the chant, for many years, was also an honest assessment of the quality of the U.S. Men’s National Team.

At Last, the Americans Have Arrived

The worst American soccer chant goes, “I … I believe … I believe that we will win.” It betrays the anxieties of those who bellow it; far from arrogantly assuming victory, it seems to argue that the success of the United States men’s soccer team is a matter of prayerful thinking. Beating England is not a dream, if you will it.But the chant, for many years, was also an honest assessment of the quality of the U.S. Men’s National Team.

Now Do Amazon

One of the great literary hoaxes of our time is the book spine. A staggering number of logos stare out from dust jackets, celebrating names including Crown, Vintage, Ballantine, Knopf, and Dial. But the pluralism implied by this diversity of monikers is a sham. In the U.S., nearly 100 of them belong to a single company: Penguin Random House. The rest are owned by a small handful of competitors, one of which is Simon & Schuster.

Paul Manafort Is Back

The title of Paul Manafort’s memoir, Political Prisoner, is ridiculous, but at least he’s writing what he knows. For much of his professional life, Manafort served as a lobbyist and an image consultant for the world’s most prolific torturers. One of his clients, the Angolan revolutionary Jonas Savimbi, led an army that incinerated its enemies alive.

The Horror of Bucha

Warning: This story contains graphic imagery.On the morning of March 4, a teacher was sheltering in a basement in Bucha, an old railroad stop northwest of Kyiv that over the centuries had grown into a verdant suburb. The town lay along the Russian military’s intended path of conquest, leading into the Ukrainian capital. And while the invaders struggled to realize their overarching plan, they gained a toehold in Bucha.At 7 a.m.

Volodymyr Zelensky’s Dream Life

This morning, as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky addressed a Joint Session of the U.S. Congress from his desk in Kyiv, bitter thoughts must have crossed his mind. Not so long ago, Donald Trump wouldn’t let Mike Pence attend the Ukrainian president’s inauguration. Zelensky spent the first year of his administration begging for an invitation to the White House that never arrived.

Biden Answered the 3 a.m. Call

When Hillary Clinton sought to sow doubts about Barack Obama, her rival for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, she ran an attack ad tarnishing him as dangerously inexperienced. As the screen shows images from a suburban house, a husky-voiced narrator intones: “It’s 3 a.m. and your children are safe and asleep, but there’s a phone in the White House and it’s ringing.” There’s clearly been a terrible international incident.

The New Republican Battle Cry

The right-wing media personality Candace Owens wants to warn the conservative movement about horny bears. In fact, she’s been waiting for five years to relay a factoid she promises will unlock everything.Strolling the stage at Orlando’s Rosen Shingle Creek Resort, Owens finally has her chance to address the true believers who have come to the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC. And she’s going to seize that moment.

A Prayer for Volodymyr Zelensky

Before he became the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky played the part on television. He created and starred in a comedy series, Servant of the People. His character, a high-school history teacher, is surreptitiously recorded by one of his students as he passionately rants against the tyranny of corruption in his nation. Without his knowledge, the video goes viral. Without campaigning or even wanting the job, the teacher is improbably elected president of Ukraine.

The Triumph of Kleptocracy

Paul Manafort came of age in New Britain, Connecticut. His father, the garrulous mayor of that decaying factory town, taught him how to cobble together an electoral coalition, passing down the tricks of the trade that became the basis for the son’s lucrative career as a political consultant. But as the local hardware manufacturers fled to foreign shores, the Mafia moved into town.

The Monster Publishing Merger Is About Amazon

In 1960, Dwight Eisenhower’s attorney general, William Rogers, read the paper with alarm. He learned that Random House intended to purchase the venerable publisher Alfred A. Knopf. Rogers began making calls to prod his antitrust division into blocking the sale. In those days, monopoly loomed as a central concern of government—and a competitive book business was widely seen as essential to preserving both intellectual life and democracy.

How Donald Trump Is Killing Politics

After a caravan of Donald Trump’s supporters descended on Portland, Oregon, this weekend, aching to grapple, he praised them as “great patriots.” In cheering them on, Trump is pointing them, and others like them, toward a specific target. What he seeks to eliminate is politics itself.Politics is such a ubiquitous term in the English language, such a seemingly fixed part of American life, that its existence is assumed and its definition rarely considered.

The Tech Giants Are Dangerous, and Congress Knows It

When Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg testified on Capitol Hill two years ago, the hearings were an embarrassing exercise in congressional cluelessness. They furthered a cliché: The doddering American political elite, who sometimes seemed to confuse Messenger with the passenger pigeon, would never have the savvy to keep up with the dynamism of Big Tech, let alone regulate it.The House Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust thoroughly debunked that strand of conventional wisdom today.

The Trump Regime Is Beginning to Topple

Updated at 12:04 p.m. on June 6, 2020Over the course of his presidency, Donald Trump has indulged his authoritarian instincts—and now he’s meeting the common fate of autocrats whose people turn against them.