Today's Liberal News

Isabel Fattal

Mike Pence Is in a Trump Trap

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.By some accounts, Mike Pence has wanted to be president since his college-fraternity days. Now he finally seems ready to run—but he can’t find a constituency to support him. How did the former VP get here?But first, here are three new stories from The Atlantic.

The Decline of Strict Etiquette

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.In a 1929 Atlantic article titled “Tragedies of Etiquette,” an anonymous writer details the many surprises contained in a book on women’s etiquette.

Finding Happiness in Middle Age

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.In a 2021 Atlantic article that I’ve now read many times, the writer Deborah Copaken reflects on her time spent with another writer, Nora Ephron. A random phone call (“Hi, Deb, this is Nora Ephron.” “Yeah, right. And I’m Joan of Arc.

The Only Good Portrayal of a Marvel Villain

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.Good morning, and welcome back to The Daily’s Sunday culture edition, in which one Atlantic staffer reveals what’s keeping them entertained.Today’s special guest is the Atlantic managing editor Bhumika Tharoor.

A Do-Nothing Day Makes Life Better

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 wife, Angie, and I made a pact,” Jason Heller writes in The Atlantic. “Every Sunday, we swore to each other, we will abstain from work. And we kept our promise: On the second day of each weekend, we start our morning and end our night by bingeing TV in bed.

What Happened to the Recession?

Economists have been talking about a looming recession for months. Why hasn’t it happened yet?But first, here are three new stories from The Atlantic:
How do you stop lawmakers from destroying the law?
What losing my two children taught me about grief
The FBI desperately wants to let Trump off the hook.
What Recession?According to the predictions of many economists last summer and fall, America should be in a recession right now.

Why Democrats Are Scared to Challenge Biden in 2024

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.This week, my colleague Mark Leibovich made the case for a primary challenge to Joe Biden. “Somebody should make a refreshing nuisance of themselves and involve the voters in this decision,” he wrote.

What Air Travel Reveals About Humans

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.“In 2004, Steven Spielberg made an entire movie about the terror of getting stuck for months in an airport,” my colleague Ian Bogost wrote in a recent article, “but I might be happy never to leave the new LaGuardia.

Explore Our National Magazine Awards Finalists

Spend your weekend with a cup of warm coffee and our National Magazine Award–nominated articles.But first, here are three new stories from The Atlantic.
People forgot how war actually works.
Shoppers are stuck in a dupe loop.
Permission-slip culture is hurting America.
Yesterday, the American Society of Magazine Editors announced the finalists for this year’s National Magazine Awards, and The Atlantic was recognized for a range of work.

How the Housing Shortage Warps American Life

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.Housing shortages color all aspects of American life, my colleague Annie Lowrey wrote over the weekend, including bagels, music, and education. The solution seems simple: Build more homes.

Can Low Expectations Make You Happy?

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.At the end of each issue of The Atlantic is a short ode by my colleague James Parker. He has praised many of life’s realities, most of them completely ordinary: naps, barbecue potato chips, chewing gum, cold showers.

The (Still) Unsettled Science of Masking

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.“Masking has widely been seen as one of the best COVID precautions that people can take,” my colleague Yasmin Tayag wrote this week in The Atlantic.

Why We Lose Our Friends as We Age

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.When I was in college, an acquaintance who had graduated a few years prior came back to visit for the weekend. As we walked around campus on Saturday night, he flung his hands into the cold Connecticut air and exclaimed, “You guys are so lucky; you live a minute away from all your friends.

Blue States Got Too Comfortable

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.The left has long believed that Democratic states are the future, whereas Republican states are the past. But migration data show that red and blue might be starting to switch places.First, here are three new stories from The Atlantic.
DEI is an ideological test.

The Legal Decision That Could Rewrite the Abortion Battle—Again

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.At last night’s State of the Union address, the first one since the fall of Roe v. Wade, President Joe Biden pledged to continue working to protect access to reproductive health care amid more than a dozen extreme state-level bans.

The GOP Has a 2024 Problem

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.By this time in an American president’s term, the next presidential race is typically in full swing. But the GOP’s Trump problem is making the 2024 race an unusual one.First, here are three new stories from The Atlantic.
American Christianity is due for a revival.

Your Lying Mind

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.In her 2017 article “This Article Won’t Change Your Mind,” my colleague Julie Beck asks a social psychologist: “What would get someone to change their mind about a false belief that is deeply tied to their identity?”The answer? “Probably nothing.

How Memphis’s Policing Strategy Went So Wrong

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.The Atlantic staff writer David A. Graham has been thinking and writing about Memphis’s policing crisis for several months now. This past weekend, he went back to survey the aftermath of released video footage of Tyre Nichols’s fatal beating by police officers.

Why Americans Love Coffee So Much

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.Coffee is one of the great loves of my life, and I’m not alone. The majority of my fellow Americans love coffee too, so much so that they refuse most alternatives—including yerba mate, an energizing option that happens to be South America’s most consumed beverage.

‘Unfortunate Family’

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.America has suffered an onslaught of mass shootings in the first weeks of 2023, adding to an ever-growing national community of survivors and grievers.But first, here are three new stories from The Atlantic.
Meet the latest housing-crisis scapegoat.

The Tech-Layoff ‘Contagion’

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.The American economy is doing fine. So why are tech companies laying off tens of thousands of workers?But first, here are three new stories from The Atlantic.
The trillion-dollar coin might be the least bad option.

Why Do We Sleep?

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.Why do living things sleep? “Ask researchers this question, and listen as, like clockwork, a sense of awe and frustration creeps into their voices,” Veronique Greenwood wrote in 2018.“In a way, it’s startling how universal sleep is,” she continued.

The Oscars Contenders You Need to See

Oscar nominations will be announced next week. I called our culture writer Shirley Li for her tips on the movies and the buzz you should know about.But first, here are three new stories from The Atlantic.
The George Santos saga isn’t (just) funny.

Is Political Violence on the Rise in America?

A defeated New Mexico GOP candidate allegedly hired others to shoot at the homes of Democratic officials, in a case that is intensifying concerns about political violence in America.But first, here are three new stories from The Atlantic.
The longest study on human happiness found the key to a good life.

AI Is Not the New Crypto

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.Recent breakthroughs in generative AI, such as the image generator DALL-E and the large language model ChatGPT, are “potentially akin to the release of the iPhone in 2007, or to the invention of the desktop computer,” Derek Thompson told me in December.

Why You Already Forgot That Book Plot

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.Before writing this newsletter about how hard it is to remember things, I decided to test myself. I wasn’t sure how much of the recent culture I’d consumed would jolt back into my brain; if it turned out I was a memory savant, I figured I should mention that here.

Why You Already Forgot That Book Plot

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.Before writing this newsletter about how hard it is to remember things, I decided to test myself. I wasn’t sure how much of the recent culture I’d consumed would jolt back into my brain; if it turned out I was a memory savant, I figured I should mention that here.

What Snow Days Mean to Adults

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.Shortly after our writer Katherine J. Wu, “a born-and-bred Californian,” moved to Boston, she was met with an epic snowstorm—one so bad that the city ran out of places to dump the snow piles. As you can imagine, she wasn’t thrilled.

How to Build a Happier 2023

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.Rebecca Rashid produces an Atlantic podcast called How to Build a Happy Life. The series, hosted by Arthur C. Brooks, joins scientific data with snapshots of human experience to help listeners find the path to a more fulfilling existence.

A Year of Botched Executions

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.This year, the state of Alabama botched three consecutive executions by lethal injection: One man died after three hours of apparent torture, while two others lived. “The state’s incompetence,” Elizabeth Bruenig wrote last month, is “a civil-rights crisis.