Today's Liberal News

Today’s Atlantic Trivia: What Stoic Got Rome Through a Plague?

Updated with new questions at 5:30 p.m. ET on February 12, 2026.
You won’t find this in Cortina d’Ampezzo over the next few weeks, but for several decades of the Olympics’ history, the contest awarded medals not just for sport but for art too.
In the Summer Games from 1912 to 1948, musicians, painters, and plenty of other aesthetes went brain-to-brain in events such as lyric poetry and chamber music. “Town planning” was even contested one year under the umbrella of the architecture competition.

A 168-Year-Old Question Still Worth Asking

This is an edition of Time-Travel Thursdays, a journey through The Atlantic’s archives to contextualize the present. Sign up here.
A vivid rumor began circulating in the United States in the middle of the 1850s. It was said that Robert Toombs, the ardently pro-slavery Georgia senator, was going to come to Boston and “call the roll of his slaves at the foot of Bunker Hill.

“I Was Just So Disgusted”: Jewish Rep. Balint Walks Out of Hearing After Bondi Calls Her Antisemitic

As we continue to look at Wednesday’s contentious hearing of the House Judiciary Committee, we speak with Vermont Congressmember Becca Balint, who walked out after Attorney General Pam Bondi accused her of supporting antisemitism. Balint, who is Jewish and whose grandfather died in the Holocaust, had just asked Bondi to meet with survivors of Jeffrey Epstein — a demand that Bondi repeatedly ignored during the hearing.

Netanyahu Seeks to Kill U.S.-Iran Talks to Start Another War: Mouin Rabbani

President Donald Trump held a lengthy meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Wednesday at the White House, where the two leaders discussed ongoing nuclear talks with Iran. Trump has said he wants to reach a deal with Iran about the country’s nuclear program, which Tehran insists is only for peaceful civilian purposes but which the U.S. and Israel claim is aimed at developing nuclear weapons.

“Massive Cover-Up”: Rep. Jayapal Slams AG Pam Bondi over Epstein Files & Spying on Lawmakers

Attorney General Pam Bondi testified Wednesday before the House Judiciary Committee, where she repeatedly refused to answer questions about her handling of the Jeffrey Epstein case. She also refused to apologize to Epstein survivors over the botched release of files, some of which contained survivors’ personal information and even uncensored nude photographs.

“I Have Never Felt So Much Fear”: Immigrant Children Speak Out on Life Inside ICE Jail in Dilley, TX

A new ProPublica investigation reveals new details about a sprawling ICE detention complex where families describe horrific conditions inside, such as being served contaminated food, with children and parents at times finding worms in their meals. Lights are reportedly left on for 24 hours a day. South Texas Family Residential Center, in the town of Dilley a few dozen miles from the southern border with Mexico, detains an estimated 3,500 people, more than half of them children.

The Epstein Emails Show How the Powerful Talk About Race

In February 2016, after exchanging email pleasantries with the left-wing public intellectual Noam Chomsky and extending an invitation to his private island, Jeffrey Epstein recommended an article. “On a different note, you have encouraged me to look at data, no holds barred,” Epstein wrote before linking to “Race and IQ: Genes That Predict Racial Intelligence Differences” from the Right Stuff, an openly white-supremacist website and a pioneer of the online alt-right.

Howard Lutnick’s Epstein Story Doesn’t Make Any Sense

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“I have nothing to hide. Absolutely nothing,” Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told a Senate committee yesterday. Perhaps that’s true—but given his recent history, don’t bet on it.

Scientists Figured Out the Problem With Johnson & Johnson’s COVID Vaccine

In 2021, just months after the first COVID vaccines debuted, concern was growing about an exceedingly rare but sometimes deadly outcome of certain shots. Two related vaccines—one from AstraZeneca and the other from Johnson & Johnson—were linked to dangerous blood clotting.
Out of almost 19 million doses of Johnson & Johnson’s version given in the United States during the first two years of the pandemic, at least 60 such cases were identified. Nine of them were fatal.