Today's Liberal News

“They’re Assassinating People for No Reason”: Cuban Minister Condemns U.S. Strikes in Caribbean

As the Trump administration escalates its pressure campaign on Venezuela, we speak with Cuban Deputy Foreign Minister Carlos Fernández de Cossío, who is in New York for the United Nations General Assembly. In recent weeks, the U.S. has bombed multiple alleged Venezuelan “drug boats” at sea, killing at least 17 people without providing any clear evidence that they were involved in drug trafficking or linked to the government in Caracas. The U.S.

As Trump Vows War on Left, Ken Klippenstein Reveals Kirk & ICE Shooters Were Disengaged with Politics

President Donald Trump is escalating his attack on progressive groups following the assassination of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk and a deadly shooting that targeted an immigration jail in Dallas. White House officials have repeatedly blamed Democrats and left-wing groups for contributing to political violence, but investigative reporter Ken Klippenstein says the motivations of people who commit such acts are often more complicated.

“On Our Way to Annihilation”: Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud Reports Live from Outside Gaza City

Israel’s military has issued new evacuation orders for neighborhoods of Gaza City as Israeli ground forces pushed deeper into the Gaza Strip’s largest urban area. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have already fled Gaza City for overcrowded areas further south, as Israeli forces systematically flatten much of the city. Meanwhile, Israeli bombardment continues to kill dozens of Palestinians every day amid widespread famine.

Syncretism

My father does not believe in God or therapists—
instead, he pedals his bike past Brighton Beach
to the Coney Island Y to swim his fifty laps.
Once, I went with him and watched as he emerged
from the locker room in faded swim trunks
moving slowly to the edge of the pool. He paused,
lifting his hands over the gray halo on his chest,
pressing his palms together in a gesture
I know he learned as a boy.

Diseducators

Translated by Oonagh Stransky
One of my students constantly changes her name. I don’t find it particularly shocking. I’ve had students enter the classroom late through the window, instead of using the door. I’ve had students who choose to sit on the floor or at the foot of my lectern while I teach, not at their desks. I’ve had to break up violent fights, with desks and chairs flying across the room as if my lessons had released some kind of paranormal energy.

The Race to Save America’s Democracy

Donald Trump likes to say he doesn’t actually lose elections–only the “rigged” ones. Such comments are not mere bluster, like the president’s boasts about golf. They are threats to democracy, which is more fragile than many Americans may realize.
At the end of last year, I asked former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Preet Bharara on his podcast whether we should be worried about Trump trying to pursue a third term.

Trump’s Politicized Prosecutions May Hit a Roadblock

According to the law, Robert Morris was a criminal. The second Black lawyer in the history of the United States, Morris was among a group of abolitionists who, in 1851, stormed a Boston courtroom to free Shadrach Minkins, an escaped slave from Virginia. Minkins had been detained under the Fugitive Slave Act and was to be returned to his master.
Morris filed a writ of habeas corpus on Minkins’s behalf, but the effort failed because Minkins was property in the eyes of the law.

I Used ChatGPT to Resurrect My Dead Father

In 1979, five months after my seventh birthday, my father crashed his plane into an orange grove and died. Dad, a pilot, had gone up in one of his twin-props with a friend and lost control after some sort of mechanical failure occurred in the skies above Central Florida.
The funeral was closed casket—an uncommon thing for Catholics back then—because my mother did not want people to see the work the undertakers had to do to stitch my father back together.