Today's Liberal News

Harvard Commencement Speakers: Despite Crackdown, “Students Will Keep Speaking Up” for Palestine

It’s graduation season in the United States, and many brave students are taking the opportunity to demonstrate support for Palestinian rights despite an ongoing campus crackdown on pro-Palestine speech. We play excerpts from commencement and graduation addresses at MIT and Harvard and are joined by a student who spoke at Harvard Divinity School’s graduation ceremony.

Gaza Aid Worker: Israel’s New Shadowy Humanitarian Aid Scheme Is “Tool to Increase Suffering”

A massacre of dozens of starving Palestinians waiting for aid occurred at a site operated by the shadowy Gaza Humanitarian Foundation over the weekend. It is exactly what many observers warned about when they expressed skepticism over the U.S.- and Israel-backed aid scheme. “It’s not a real organization,” says Eyad Amawi, a coordinator for local NGOs based in Gaza who accuses the Israeli military of using the slow trickle of aid it allows into southern Gaza “as a tool to increase suffering.

British Surgeon in Gaza Reports on Rafah Massacre as Dozens of Palestinians Killed Waiting for Aid

Health officials and witnesses in Gaza say at least 31 people were killed Sunday when Israeli forces opened fire on crowds headed to an Israeli-controlled aid distribution point near Rafah. Over 170 people were wounded. Israel denied responsibility. Dr. Victoria Rose, a volunteer surgeon in Gaza who treated some of the massacre’s survivors, decries the ongoing violence of the Israeli military upon the besieged territory’s civilian population.

Ex-Israeli Negotiator Daniel Levy: Netanyahu Wants “Permanent War” in Gaza, Not a New Ceasefire

We get an update on ongoing ceasefire negotiations between Hamas and Israel from former Israeli peace negotiator Daniel Levy. The latest proposal, mediated by U.S. Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, “walks back the commitment for a permanent ceasefire, Israeli withdrawal and allowing in of humanitarian aid.” It’s a bad deal for the Palestinians that will allow Israel to continue its ethnic cleansing of Gaza, says Levy.

Trump’s Abuse of Pardons Undermines Entire Justice System: Reagan Official Bruce Fein

President Donald Trump has signed a wave of pardons for people convicted of fraud, including a Virginia sheriff who took tens of thousands of dollars in bribes and a reality TV couple who evaded millions in taxes after defrauding banks. Last month, Trump pardoned a Florida healthcare executive convicted of tax evasion for stealing nearly $11 million in payroll taxes from the paychecks of doctors and nurses.

As Courts Battle Trump on Tariffs, Will Right-Wing Supreme Court Rescue the President’s Trade Agenda?

President Donald Trump has vowed to go to the Supreme Court to keep his tariffs in place after a whirlwind 24 hours that saw a court temporarily reinstate the measures, soon after two courts blocked most of the tariffs, saying Trump overstepped his presidential authority. Trump has been infuriated by the legal challenges and lashed out on social media against the Federalist Society and conservative legal activist Leonard Leo.

“Worse Than McCarthyism”: Historian Ellen Schrecker on Trump’s War Against Universities & Students

We speak with esteemed historian scholar Ellen Schrecker about the Trump administration’s assault on universities and the crackdown on dissent, a climate of fear and censorship she describes as “worse than McCarthyism.”
“During the McCarthy period, it was attacking only individual professors and only about their sort of extracurricular political activities on the left. … Today, the repression that’s coming out of Washington, D.C.

How to Open a Hole

I don’t know how the beetles got in.
Landed like plums rolling off a cloud,
soft erasers inside their mouths,
my dreams were first to go. Siphoned
out via bullet holes, like honeybees
smoked out their hive, chorus of black
lines, burned thick and dark, gilded
grill marks, hexagon honey stuck
to their eyes, there are six sides
to loneliness. Ballistic blowfly,
visions of parallel lives, you hide,
what you hold. Blind to the brilliance,
I died with my eyes at an angle
to my skull.

Making Religion Matter for Secular People

In recent years, an impressive number of particularly charming actors have played rabbis on TV. Adam Brody, Sarah Sherman, Daveed Diggs, and Kathryn Hahn have all donned a kippah, wrapped themselves in a tallis, and shown how fun loving (even sexy) it can feel to carve a path between the rock of tradition and the hard place of modernity. I’m not sure why progressive rabbis are the clerics to whom pop culture tends to assign this role, as opposed to, say, quirky priests or wacky imams.