Today's Liberal News

How the Tariff Whiplash Could Haunt Pricing

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.
When it comes to tariffs for Canada and Mexico, America is ending the week pretty much as it started.

What Is AI Distillation?

This is Atlantic Intelligence, a newsletter in which our writers help you wrap your mind around artificial intelligence and a new machine age. Sign up here.
OpenAI has said that it believes that DeepSeek, the Chinese start-up behind the shockingly powerful AI model that launched last month, may have ripped off its technology. The irony is rich: We’ve known for some time that generative AI tends to be built on stolen media—books, movie subtitles, visual art.

What the Democrats’ Musk Whisperer Thinks Now

Representative Ro Khanna has known Elon Musk for more than a decade, so he thought he should raise some concerns about the billionaire’s assault on the federal government where he would be sure to see them. Posting on the platform Musk owns, the California Democrat said yesterday that Musk should be hauled before Congress to explain himself. “Musk’s attacks on our institutions are unconstitutional,” Khanna wrote.
It took Musk just 16 minutes to reply: “Don’t be a dick.

Trump Takes Over the Kennedy Center

Updated at 7:48 p.m. on February 7, 2025
Artists embarrassed Donald Trump when he first came to Washington. Now that Trump is back in power, he is determined not to let that happen again.

Paranoia Is Winning

The Trump administration’s attempt to eliminate USAID is many things: an unfolding humanitarian nightmare, a rollback of American soft power, the thin end of a wedge meant to reorder the Constitution. But upon closer examination, it is also an outbreak of delusional paranoia that has spread from Elon Musk throughout the Republican Party’s rank and file.
Several days ago, the administration began promoting the theory that USAID was secretly directing a communist conspiracy of unknown dimensions.

Trump Guts EPA’s Environmental Justice Office, Putting Poorest Communities of Color at More Risk

The Trump administration is planning to shutter the Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights at the Environmental Protection Agency and has placed nearly 170 employees on administrative leave. “I’m very concerned about the deregulation and the focus on corporate profits,” says Mustafa Santiago Ali, the former head of the environmental justice program at the EPA.

“Authoritarian Rampage”: Trump/Musk Sued to Block DOGE Access to Confidential Info of Millions

A lawsuit by a coalition of labor unions Thursday prompted the Labor Department to agree not to release any sensitive economic and privacy data to DOGE, the so-called Department of Government Efficiency led by billionaire Trump donor Elon Musk. Musk’s group has already gained access to sensitive files and computer systems across other key agencies as part of a push to restructure much of the federal government.

Holding Musk Accountable: Rep. Ro Khanna on Stopping DOGE’s “Unconstitutional” Power Grab

We speak with Democratic Congressmember Ro Khanna of California about the Trump administration’s ongoing assault on the federal bureaucracy and the gutting of various agencies, led by the president’s unelected billionaire adviser Elon Musk and his so-called Department of Government Efficiency.
“No DOGE employee should have access to any of Americans’ sensitive, confidential information, and they should not have access to be able to stop payments,” he says.

What Does the Department of Education Actually Do?

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.
Donald Trump really knows how to sell someone on working for him. “I told Linda, ‘Linda, I hope you do a great job at putting yourself out of a job,” he said Tuesday in the Oval Office. That’s Linda McMahon, whom he’s nominated to lead the Department of Education.

Parenting in America Keeps Getting More Intensive

This is an edition of Time-Travel Thursdays, a journey through The Atlantic’s archives to contextualize the present and surface delightful treasures. Sign up here.
In 1933, the author Isadore Luce Smith made a bold declaration in The Atlantic: “A new type of parent has evolved.” These parents, Smith reported, hired baby specialists, pored over child-rearing books, and were obsessed with issues such as thumb-sucking.