Today's Liberal News

A Witch Hunt at the State Department

Esteemed Comrades of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs! Today we ask you to review your files for any communications you may have had with unreliable elements who are critical of our Party and our leader. If you have had contact with journalists, researchers, or other subversives, we ask you to report these interactions in full to the senior comrades responsible for the important work of ideological vigilance.

Inside Mike Waltz’s White House Exit

After Michael Waltz, the national security adviser, inadvertently included The Atlantic’s editor in chief in a group chat about military attack plans on the Signal messaging app, he found himself on very thin ice with his boss.
But President Donald Trump and his advisers were loath to take a political hit by firing Waltz, especially within the first 100 days of the new administration. The 100-day mark passed yesterday.

Who Gets Panzer Tattooed on Their Arm?

On the long list of reasons the United States could have lost World War II—the terribly effective surprise Japanese attack, an awful lack of military readiness, the relatively untrained troops—there is perhaps no area in which Americans were more initially outmatched than armament. Americans had the M4 Sherman, a tank mass-produced by Detroit automakers. Germans had the formidable panzer, a line of tanks with nicknames such as Panther and Royal Tiger that repeatedly outgunned the Americans.

When Presidents Sought a Third (and Fourth) Term

This is an edition of Time-Travel Thursdays, a journey through The Atlantic’s archives to contextualize the present. Sign up here.
President Donald Trump has been back in the White House for just more than 100 days, and he’s already thinking about a third term. For much of American history, the notion would have been laughable.

Mike Waltz Joins an Unhappy Fraternity

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.
For weeks, Washington has been waiting to see how long National Security Adviser Michael Waltz could hold on. The answer, we now know, was 101 days.
Multiple outlets reported this morning that Waltz and his deputy, Alex Wong, would be leaving the Trump administration.

Yemeni People in State of “Terror” After 1,000+ U.S. Airstrikes Kill Hundreds: Helen Lackner

A U.S. military strike on a migrant detention center in the north of Yemen has killed at least 68 people, largely migrants from African nations, bringing the death toll from U.S. attacks on the country to over 250 since mid-March. Middle East researcher Helen Lackner says the number of deaths is likely twice the officially recorded number, as the United States has now conducted more than 1,000 strikes on Yemen “on an absolutely nightly basis.

“They Shattered Our Dreams”: NY Father Recounts How ICE Snatched His Son & Sent Him to El Salvador

As May Day protests call for worker and immigrant rights, we talk to a New York father whose 19-year-old son Merwil Gutiérrez, with an open asylum case, was detained in the Bronx and then flown with over 230 other Venezuelans to a mega-prison in El Salvador, where he is being held incommunicado. Witnesses to Gutiérrez’s arrest say authorities were searching for a different person but, upon encountering the teenager, decided to arrest him simply because he is Venezuelan.

Schrödinger’s Detainees

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.
The buzziest moment from President Donald Trump’s interview with ABC News yesterday was a baffling exchange with the reporter Terry Moran over whether Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Salvadoran man erroneously deported from Maryland to El Salvador, has tattoos reading MS-13 on his knuckles.