Today's Liberal News

“Musk Is Scamming the City of Memphis”: Meet Two Brothers Fighting Colossus, Musk’s xAI Data Center

We speak with two brothers who are fighting Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company xAI over its massive data center in Memphis, Tennessee, used to run its chatbot Grok. The facility is next to historically Black neighborhoods and is powered by 35 pollution-spewing methane gas turbines the company is using without legal permits. Musk says he wants to continue expanding the project.

Trump’s War on Children: DOGE Guts Head Start, Child Abuse Programs, Healthcare & More

Cuts by the Trump administration are putting children at risk, according to a new report by ProPublica. The administration has cut funds and manpower for child abuse investigations, enforcement of child support payments, child care and more. On top of that, Head Start preschools, which offer free child care to low-income parents, are being severely gutted. Democracy Now! speaks with ProPublica reporter Eli Hager on his investigation into Trump’s “War on Children.

Nobel Laureate Maria Ressa Remembers Pope Francis for Progressive Views & Embracing the Global South

Thousands of mourners are lining up at the Vatican, where Pope Francis’s body is lying in state in St. Peter’s Basilica. His funeral will be on Saturday. In May of 2024, Pope Francis gathered 30 Nobel Peace laureates to the Vatican in a roundtable including our guest, Maria Ressa, who was awarded the prize for defending the free press in the Philippines. “He changed the church by changing the people,” says Ressa.

Trump Administration to Judges: ‘We Will Find You’

The arrest of Wisconsin Judge Hannah Dugan over allegedly obstructing the apprehension of an undocumented immigrant is an attempt to intimidate the judiciary. You can just ask Attorney General Pam Bondi.
“What has happened to our judiciary is beyond me,” Bondi told Fox News, commenting on Dugan’s arrest. “They’re deranged. I think some of these judges think they are beyond and above the law, and they are not.

How to Find Inspiration in New Places

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 am a battery that needs to be often recharged,” Randolph S. Bourne wrote in The Atlantic in 1912. His language of “recharging” foretold modern-day conversations about what is now called “self-care.

Trump’s First 100 Days

Editor’s Note: Washington Week With The Atlantic is a partnership between NewsHour Productions, WETA, and The Atlantic airing every Friday on PBS stations nationwide. Check your local listings, watch full episodes here, or listen to the weekly podcast here.
Since Donald Trump’s return to the White House, his administration has overhauled core institutions and norms.

How Drug Cartels Took Over Social Media

The corpses started appearing in the early 2000s, hanging from overpasses with threats scrawled on their shirts. Everyone in Mexico knew that drug cartels were murdering people, but they rarely made such a show of it. Then, in 2005, a kingpin named Edgar Valdez Villarreal (a.k.a. “La Barbie”) ramped up the exhibitionism, posting a video online of his gang torturing and murdering its rivals.

Trump’s Cosplay Cabinet

In Donald Trump’s administration, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem rotates through various costumes—firefighting gear for drills with the United States Coast Guard, a cowboy hat and horse for a jaunt with Border Patrol agents in Texas, a bulletproof ICE vest for a dawn raid in New York City. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth posts photos of himself doing snowy push-ups with U.S. troops in Poland and deadlifting with them in predawn Germany.