Today's Liberal News

Russell Berman

The United States Versus Steve Bannon

Shortly after 4 p.m. this afternoon, the sunburned visage of Steve Bannon popped up on a projector screen inside the Daniel Patrick Moynihan Courthouse in Lower Manhattan. President Donald Trump’s former chief strategist was sitting in what appeared to be a holding cell in lieu of a courtroom, wearing an open-collared shirt, a white mask, and handcuffs.

Barack Obama Is Scared

Barack Obama didn’t try to inspire Americans tonight: He wanted to scare them.There were no thousand-watt smiles or soaring rhetoric from the former president as he exhorted voters to elect Joe Biden and warned them about the perils of giving Donald Trump another four years in the White House.

The Myth of Andrew Cuomo

The opening night of the Democrats’ virtual convention was the beginning of a coronation for Joe Biden, but it was also a victory march for Andrew Cuomo, New York’s governor and a supposed hero of the coronavirus pandemic. “For all the pain and all the tears, our way worked,” Cuomo declared in his five-minute speech. “And it was beautiful.

Why the Democrats Can’t Nail Bill Barr

House Democrats have been waiting for more than a year to grill Attorney General Bill Barr, a man they’ve accused of all manner of professional misconduct—including repeatedly and inappropriately intervening to protect President Donald Trump and deploying federal agents to incite violence in American cities.Today they finally had their chance, as Barr testified, at long last, before the House Judiciary Committee.

Trump’s Most Brazen Reprieve Yet

Forget Bernie Kerik, Scooter Libby, Michael Milken—even Sheriff Joe Arpaio. This was the presidential reprieve President Donald Trump’s critics feared most.Trump’s move tonight to commute the sentence of his longtime associate Roger Stone, nearly five months after a federal judge sentenced him to more than three years in prison, was surely the least surprising of his many high-profile acts of executive clemency.

Democrats Don’t Know How to Handle Bill Barr

House Democrats have already impeached President Donald Trump. Now they’re going after the man they call his new “fixer,” Attorney General Bill Barr.Barr, however, is proving to be a more slippery target than the president, both physically and politically.This afternoon, the House Judiciary Committee held a hearing on the alleged “politicization” of the Justice Department featuring alarming whistleblower testimony.

The ‘Silent Majority’ Didn’t Show Up For Trump

Rarely has a single campaign rally drawn as much hype as the one President Donald Trump held Saturday night at the BOK Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma—a relaunch of his reelection bid that, according to the president himself, more than 1 million people had requested tickets to attend. Rarely has a presidential event endangered the public health of the community it was held in. And rarely has a spotty crowd made such a statement.

How Bill de Blasio Failed

David Dee Delgado; John Lamparski / Getty; Paul Spella / The AtlanticThe clash between police and protesters that, once and for all, seemed to sever Bill de Blasio from the city that twice elected him mayor occurred on a Brooklyn street corner just over a mile from where he used to live.