Today's Liberal News

Do It for Gilda

Before John Belushi, before Bill Murray or Chevy Chase or Dan Aykroyd—before any of them, there was Gilda.
Gilda Radner was the first performer Lorne Michaels hired for the cast of Saturday Night Live when it launched, in 1975. She was, at the time, one of the stars of The National Lampoon Radio Hour, the only woman in a cast of men destined to be famous. “I knew that she could do almost anything, and that she was enormously likeable,” Michaels once said of the decision. “So I started with her.

Trump’s Loyalties

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Donald Trump and Elon Musk continued their efforts to slash and overhaul the federal government this week.

Tinder, Hinge, OkCupid, Owned by Match Group, Track Reports of Rape. Why Don’t They Warn Users?

Match Group, the tech company that owns Match.com, OkCupid, Hinge, Tinder and other popular dating services, has known for years which users have been accused of sexual assault and rape, but kept those reports hidden from others on the app, according to a new investigation. Match Group controls half of the world’s online dating market and facilitates meetups for millions of people in scores of countries around the world. “Match Group is aware of a lot of the scale of the harm on their apps.

“Frenzy of Warmongering”: Critics of Munich Security Summit Warn of Musk, Rising Fascism in Europe

As the annual high-level Munich Security Conference gets underway, the Russia-Ukraine war is dominating the agenda, and we speak to two guests protesting the conference. Economist, progressive leader and former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis says the European project started with a noble goal of promoting peace but finds itself today “cornered” between Russian and NATO militarism. “Europe has been caught in a frenzy of warmongering,” says Varoufakis.

“You Don’t Have to Comply”: U.S. Attorney, 5 DOJ Lawyers Quit, Refuse to Drop Case Against NYC Mayor

The top federal prosecutor in Manhattan and five high-ranking Justice Department officials resigned Thursday to protest the Trump administration’s order to dismiss corruption charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams. Danielle Sassoon, who was the acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, said in her resignation letter that dropping the case against Adams would violate her duty to uphold the law fairly and consistently.

“The World After Gaza”: Author Pankaj Mishra on Gaza & the Return of 19th-C. “Rapacious Imperialism”

Pankaj Mishra’s new book, The World After Gaza: A History, was written as a response to the “vast panorama of violence, disorder and suffering that we’re seeing today,” says the author. In Part 1 of our interview with the award-winning Indian writer, Mishra shares why he “felt compelled” to respond to what he sees as a return to the 19th-century model of “rapacious imperialism” in the Western world, signified by global complicity in Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

A Proven Way to Ease L.A.’s Housing Crisis

The Los Angeles metro area began 2025 with one of the worst housing shortages in the country: more than half a million units, by some estimates. The deficit has multiplied over many years thanks in part to the obscene amount of time it takes to get permission to build. According to state data, securing permits to construct a single-family home in the city requires an average of 15 months. Countywide, receiving planning approvals and permits for a typical apartment takes nearly a year and a half.

Five TV Shows That the Critics Were Wrong About

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Welcome back to The Daily’s Sunday culture edition.
The critics don’t always get it right. Some viewers are adamant that certain polarizing or panned shows deserve their flowers, while others think particular acclaimed series can be overindulged with praise.

How Progressives Broke the Government

Ed Koch was angry—and perhaps a bit embarrassed. It was the spring of 1986, and his Parks Department had wasted millions of taxpayer dollars trying to rehabilitate Central Park’s Wollman Rink. At the height of the crack epidemic, the ice-skating facility’s closure hardly represented the worst of New York’s problems. But the Parks Department’s ineptitude fed a notion that the city was fundamentally ungovernable.