Today's Liberal News

The Coming Democratic Civil War

A civil war has broken out among the Democratic wonks. The casus belli is a new set of ideas known as the abundance agenda. Its supporters herald it as the key to prosperity for the American people and to enduring power for the liberal coalition.

The Era of Thrash

“It almost feels like we’re trying to rebuild everything from scratch,” Michael Wieder told me.
The company he co-founded, Lalo, sells sleekly designed baby gear, much of it made in China. In his first weeks in office, Donald Trump increased the tariff rate on most of the company’s imported goods by 20 percentage points. In April, he jacked the rate up to 145 percent. Lalo had to stop bringing in products from overseas: Paying the tariff could have bankrupted the company.

The Show That Makes Being Awkward Feel Good

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.
Welcome back to The Daily’s Sunday culture edition, in which one Atlantic writer or editor reveals what’s keeping them entertained.

“King of the North”: New Book Examines MLK’s Fight Against Police Brutality & Racism Outside Dixie

Historian Jeanne Theoharis’s new book, King of the North: Martin Luther King Jr.’s Life of Struggle Outside the South, is a major reexamination of the civil rights leader that offers a different picture of both King’s own experiences of police brutality and his sustained critique of police brutality and the criminal legal system in the North as well as the South.
“We’ve southernized Dr. King.

“Theft from On High”: Trump’s Budget Bill Guts Medicaid, Medicare & More to Pay for Tax Cuts

Trump’s sweeping budget legislation has been described as the biggest Medicaid cut in U.S. history. House Republicans passed the bill early Thursday morning in a 215-214 vote. The legislation would trigger massive cuts to Medicare and Medicaid over the next 10 years, denying coverage to an estimated 7.6 million Americans, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

An Atlantic Reading List on Consciousness

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.
People in a vegetative state may be far more aware than was once thought, Sarah Zhang reports in a recent feature. “In some extraordinary patients, the line between conscious and unconscious is more permeable than one might expect,” she writes.

Trump Is Making Netanyahu Nervous

Donald Trump’s itinerary for his recent trip to the Middle East featured a glaring omission. The president visited Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar, but not Israel, ostensibly America’s main ally in the region. When asked about the snub, he insisted that it wasn’t a snub at all: “This is good for Israel,” Trump said, referring to the alliances he’d be strengthening with countries that were, notably, not named Israel.

The Big, Beautiful Republican Shrug

When Democrats reshaped the American health-insurance system in 2010, Republicans accused them of all manner of legislative foul play: Middle-of-the-night votes. Backroom deals. An enormous, partisan bill jammed through Congress before anyone could find out what was in it. “Have you read the bill? Hell no you haven’t!” an indignant then-House Minority Leader John Boehner thundered on the House floor.
The GOP’s claims were exaggerated.