Today's Liberal News

If I Stayed, I Would’ve Died: Journalist Abubaker Abed on “Agonizing” Decision to Leave Gaza

We speak with 22-year-old Palestinian journalist Abubaker Abed in Ireland after he evacuated Gaza last month suffering from malnutrition and under threat for his reporting on Israel’s genocide. Abed describes himself as an “accidental war correspondent” and hoped to become a sports journalist and commentator before the start of the war, but spent much of the last two years reporting on daily death and destruction.

The MAGA-World Rift Over Trump’s Qatari Jet

As Air Force One glided into Doha today, it was easy to imagine President Donald Trump having a case of jet envy.
Hamad International Airport, in Qatar’s capital, is sometimes home to the $400 million “palace in the sky,” a luxury liner that Trump is eyeing. Qatar’s royal family plans to give the plane to Trump as a temporary replacement for the aging Air Force One and then to his future presidential library after he leaves office.

The Mess at Airports Is Part of a Larger Pattern

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On this much, there is bipartisan agreement: The Federal Aviation Administration is in a bad mess. After years of exceptional safety, the U.S. air-travel system has recently been beset with near misses and, in one horrifying case, a collision.

The ‘Amateur Diplomat’

Steve Witkoff emptied his backpack on the conference table in his second-floor office, in the West Wing. He wanted to show me a pager given to him by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and senior officials of the Mossad. The pager commemorates the intricate operation in which Israel detonated handheld devices used by Hezbollah, the Iranian-sponsored Lebanese militant group, killing or maiming thousands of its operatives.

Trump’s Tactical Burger Unit Is Beyond Parody

The first months of Donald Trump’s second presidency have included a systematic attempt to dismantle government agencies and pillage their data; state-sponsored renditions of immigrants; flagrant corruption; and brazen flouting of laws and the courts. The New York Times editorial board summed it up well: “The first 100 days of President Trump’s second term have done more damage to American democracy than anything else since the demise of Reconstruction.

The Cynical Republican Plan to Cut Medicaid

A generation ago, the Republican Party’s preferred symbol of government-funded indolence was the “welfare queen,” a quasi-mythical figure who collected checks to sit at home watching television. Today’s GOP has fixated on an even stranger target: unemployed adults who take advantage of the taxpayer by collecting free … health insurance.
The fiscal centerpiece of the “big, beautiful bill” now making its way through Congress is to take Medicaid away from jobless adults.

Salvadoran Journalists Exposed Pres. Bukele’s Ties to Gangs. Then They Had to Flee to Avoid Arrest

We speak with a Salvadoran journalist who fled El Salvador along with others from the acclaimed news outlet El Faro after Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele threatened to arrest them for exposing how Bukele had made secret deals with Salvadoran gangs. Bukele has run the country under a so-called state of exception since 2022, detaining nearly 80,000 people accused of being in gangs, largely without access to due process.

U.S. & Saudis Sign $142B Arms Deal as Trump Meets with Syria’s New Leader & Drops Syrian Sanctions

We look at President Donald Trump’s diplomatic visit to the Middle East and discuss his administration’s foreign policy in the region with Akbar Shahid Ahmed, senior diplomatic correspondent for HuffPost, and Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of DAWN. As Trump sells U.S. military power in the Gulf in exchange for investments in U.S. businesses, they warn that Trump’s transactional business philosophy is spreading to the administration’s dealings around the world.