Today's Liberal News

The Tyranny of the Election Needle

The New York Times is once again poking readers’ eyes with its needle. A little digital gauge, like the one that might indicate that your boiler or nuclear-power plant is about to explode, “estimates the outcome of the race in real time based on polling data,” as the Times puts it. As we write this, the needle is piercing the red “Likely” side of the gauge, indicating that the decision is “Likely Trump.

When the Show Is Over

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.

Three Tips for Following Election Results Without Losing Your Mind

Election Night is upon us, with all of its nail-biting anxiety, its cortisol-driven fear, and, for roughly half the country, the possibility of ecstatic relief after another surreal presidential campaign.
Results could take days, even weeks, to shake out. But the state of the race could also reveal itself surprisingly quickly. At 7 p.m. eastern time tonight, polls will close in the battleground state of Georgia. At 7:30 p.m., polls will close in North Carolina, another crucial toss-up.

“The Misinformation Web”: Maria Hinojosa on the Pro-Trump Propaganda Targeting Latinos in 2024

As Latino voters are a key voting bloc in the 2024 presidential election in battleground states like Nevada, Arizona and Pennsylvania, they have been targeted by a rise in Spanish-language misinformation. Most of the false messaging disparages Kamala Harris and supports Donald Trump, says Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Maria Hinojosa, host of Latino USA, which investigated the phenomenon in a new episode called “The Misinformation Web.

Trump Tried to Steal the Vote in Georgia in 2020. Now Election Deniers Run Georgia’s Election System

Ari Berman, the voting rights correspondent for Mother Jones, details how pro-Trump forces may try to throw out the results of the 2024 election if Kamala Harris wins, with a focus on the swing state of Georgia, the “epicenter” of Trump’s failed efforts to overturn the 2020 election results. “It’s very dangerous to imagine what people who don’t believe in free and fair elections can do when given the power to oversee those very elections,” says Berman.

2020 Redux? Army of MAGA Election Officials Prepare to Challenge Results If Trump Loses

As voters across the United States head to the polls, we speak with New York Times writer Jim Rutenberg about how Donald Trump may try to preemptively declare victory and challenge election results. The former president has ramped up claims Democrats are “a bunch of cheats” and preemptively cast doubt on a win by Vice President Kamala Harris, following a similar playbook as 2020 when he baselessly claimed the election was stolen.

Does America Want Chaos?

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One thing tomorrow’s election will test is Americans’ appetite for chaos, particularly the kind that Donald Trump has been exhibiting in the last few months of his campaign. After weeks of running a disciplined campaign, Trump’s advisers lost control of their candidate, the Atlantic staff writer Tim Alberta reported this week. Trump grew restless and bored and drifted off script in his campaign appearances.

The Right’s New Kingmaker

Charlie Kirk took his seat underneath a tent that said Prove me wrong. I wedged myself into the crowd at the University of Montana, next to a cadre of middle-aged men wearing mesh hats. A student standing near me had on a hoodie that read Jesus Christ. It was late September, and several hundred of us were here to see the conservative movement’s youth whisperer.

Facebook Doesn’t Want Attention Right Now

After the 2016 elections, critics blamed Facebook for undermining American democracy. They believed that the app’s algorithmic News Feed pushed hyperpartisan content, outright fake news, and Russian-seeded disinformation to huge numbers of people. (The U.S. director of national intelligence agreed, and in January 2017 declassified a report that detailed Russia’s actions.

The Case for Gathering on Election Night

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.
Americans across the country are getting ready to wait.
Knowing the winner of the presidential election by tomorrow night is a real possibility. But the race could also take several days to be called, as it did in 2020, and some House races are likely to take days.

Musk’s Twitter Is the Blueprint for a MAGA Government

In a recent interview, the former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy made an offhanded comment that connected a few dots for me. Ramaswamy was talking with Ezra Klein about the potential for tens of thousands of government workers to lose their job should Donald Trump be reelected. This would be a healthy development, he argued.