Today's Liberal News

“A Stalemate and Attritional Grind”: Journalist Luke Mogelson on 2 Years of Russia’s War in Ukraine

We speak with The New Yorker war correspondent Luke Mogelson about the war in Ukraine, where the government has just passed a controversial bill that expands military conscription and cracks down on draft dodgers in an effort to replenish the depleted ranks of the army, more than two years since Russia launched its invasion. Military leaders have warned that Russian forces outnumber Ukrainian troops tenfold in the east.

“Council of War”: Walden Bello on Biden’s Trilateral Summit with Philippines & Japan to Contain China

President Biden hosted Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. at the White House on Thursday, the first meeting of its kind, which comes as the U.S. moves to expand its military presence in the South China Sea to counter China. The Philippines has deepened military ties with both the United States and Japan in recent years as maritime confrontations with China have escalated.

The O.J. Verdict Reconsidered

When the O. J. Simpson verdict was announced, I was a junior at Michigan State University. At the time, I was the managing editor of my college newspaper, The State News, so I didn’t have the luxury of reacting emotionally one way or the other. I had the responsibility of figuring out how our publication was going to present to 40,000 students this stunning outcome to what many had called “the trial of the century.

The Future of Chocolate

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.
I’ve long fought the battle in defense of milk chocolate. My colleague Yasmin Tayag understands this position—her favorite chocolate treat is the Cadbury Creme Egg—but in a recent article, she acknowledges that genuinely “good chocolate …. should taste richly of cocoa.

Women’s College Basketball Is a Worthy Investment

The NCAA women’s-basketball season officially concluded a banner season on Sunday with breathless drama, even though it wasn’t a surprise ending.
In a season stocked with unprecedented highs, the heavily favored University of South Carolina Gamecocks won the national championship over the University of Iowa.

Right-Wing Media Are in Trouble

As you may have heard, mainstream news organizations are facing a financial crisis. Many liberal publications have taken an even more severe beating. But the most dramatic declines over the past few years belong to conservative and right-wing sites. The flow of traffic to Donald Trump’s most loyal digital-media boosters isn’t just slowing, as in the rest of the industry; it’s utterly collapsing.

The Worst Day of My Life Was the Day I Learned to Read

Editor’s note: The seventh annual Hitchens Prize was awarded to the filmmaker Errol Morris at a dinner on April 10 in New York City. The award is given by the Dennis & Victoria Ross Foundation in association with The Atlantic, where Christopher Hitchens was a contributing editor. The Atlantic is joined by Air Mail. The award was given originally in association with Vanity Fair, whose editor, Graydon Carter, now Air Mail’s co-editor, where Hitchens was also a columnist and contributing editor.

The Unrelenting Shame of the Dentist

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.
My dentist is my enemy. But first, here are three new stories from The Atlantic:
The truth about organic milk
Britain is leaving the U.S. gender-medicine debate behind.
Trump has transformed the GOP all the way down.

The Golden Age of Dictation

This is Atlantic Intelligence, a limited-run series in which our writers help you wrap your mind around artificial intelligence and a new machine age. Sign up here.
Computers may have seemed magical to you once, portals to an unpredictable expanse of knowledge and entertainment. Then they became ubiquitous, perhaps a little boring, and occasionally horrifying.

Chocolate Might Never Be the Same

Good chocolate, I’ve come to learn, should taste richly of cocoa—a balanced blend of bitter and sweet, with notes of fruit, nuts, and spice. My favorite chocolate treat is nothing like that. It’s the Cadbury Creme Egg, an ovoid milk-chocolate shell enveloping a syrupy fondant center. To this day, I look forward to its yearly return in the weeks leading up to Easter.
Most popular chocolate is like this: milky, sugary, and light on actual cocoa.