Today's Liberal News

What Trump—And the U.S.—Can’t Understand About Air Strikes

When Donald Trump ordered air strikes on key Iranian nuclear-enrichment sites last month and immediately declared that the targets had been “completely and totally obliterated,” he was counting on a single display of overwhelming air power to accomplish a major strategic goal. Though initially hesitant to join Israel’s 10-day-old bombing campaign against Iran, the president came to believe that the United States could finish off Tehran’s nuclear ambitions all at once.

GOP Budget Bill Slashes Medicaid for Millions, Cuts Taxes for the Rich, Funds ICE at Historic Levels

As we broadcast, the House was soon set to vote on the so-called big, beautiful bill before the July 4 deadline imposed by President Trump. Should the House pass the legislation, the bill would be sent to Trump’s desk to be signed into law. The bill massively increases funding for ICE, cuts $1 trillion from Medicaid over a decade and adds $3.3 trillion to the nation’s debt.

EXCLUSIVE: Mahmoud Khalil, Palestinian Activist Jailed by ICE for 104 Days, in First Live Interview

In his first live broadcast interview since being released from ICE detention, Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil tells Democracy Now! about his experience behind bars, the ongoing threat of deportation that hangs over him and why he continues to speak out against the U.S.-backed Israeli war on Gaza. The Columbia University graduate was the first pro-Palestinian campus protester to be jailed by the Trump administration.

A Red Sprite Gives Astronauts an Incredible Light Show

Nichole Ayers / NASA
Earlier this week, the NASA astronaut Nichole Ayers captured an amazing image of a sprite, a rarely photographed weather phenomenon, as the International Space Station passed above a storm over Mexico. Ayers wrote: “Sprites are TLEs, or Transient Luminous Events, that happen above the clouds and are triggered by intense electrical activity in the thunderstorms below.

America Is Killing Its Chance to Find Alien Life

In April, scientists announced that they had used NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to find a potential signature of alien life in the glow of a distant planet. Other scientists were quick to challenge the details of the claim and offered more mundane explanations; most likely, these data do not reveal a new and distant biology. But the affair was still a watershed moment.

A Philosophy That Sees ‘Women as Doers’

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When a woman’s clothes constrict her movement, squeezing her into unforgiving shapes, or her exercise regime is a punishing ordeal meant to winnow her down to the smallest possible size, the result is all too often an alienation from her body.

Journalist Karen Hao on Sam Altman, OpenAI & the “Quasi-Religious” Push for Artificial Intelligence

As part of our July Fourth special broadcast, we continue our extended interview with Karen Hao, author of Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman’s OpenAI. The book documents the rise of OpenAI and how the AI industry is leading to a new form of colonialism. “One of the things that you really have to understand about AI development today is that there are what I call quasi-religious movements that have developed within Silicon Valley,” says Hao.

“Empire of AI”: Karen Hao on How AI Is Threatening Democracy & Creating a New Colonial World

In our July Fourth special broadcast, we revisit our interview with longtime technology reporter Karen Hao, author of the new book Empire of AI, which unveils the accruing political and economic power of AI companies — especially Sam Altman’s OpenAI. Her reporting uncovered the exploitation of workers in Kenya, attempts to take massive amounts of freshwater from communities in Chile, along with numerous accounts of the technology’s detrimental impact on the environment.

“What to the Slave Is the 4th of July?”: James Earl Jones Reads Frederick Douglass’s Historic Speech

We begin our July Fourth special broadcast with the words of Frederick Douglass. Born into slavery around 1818, Douglass became a key leader of the abolitionist movement. On July 5, 1852, in Rochester, New York, Douglass gave one of his most famous speeches, “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” He was addressing the Rochester Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society.

This Summer’s Most Pointless Sequel Is Here

The strangest thing has happened to the Jurassic Park films over the past 32 years. In the original movie, directed by Steven Spielberg, the characters were mesmerized by dinosaurs. They saw these amazing beings, resurrected from DNA that was hundreds of millions of years old, and either stared in wonder or shrieked with fear. (Spielberg is known to be pretty good at capturing that whole “awe” thing.) But since then, each successive sequel has chipped away at that sense of discovery.

Five Feel-Good TV Shows

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A hard day is helped along by a few creature comforts: a good meal, a few friends, the right show to unwind with.