Today's Liberal News

How Relationships Grow, and How They Break

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“The reason my marriage fell apart seems absurd when I describe it: My wife left me because sometimes I leave dishes by the sink,” Matthew Fray wrote in 2022. “It makes her seem ridiculous and makes me seem like a victim of unfair expectations.

Northern Alaska Is Running Out of Rocks

This article was originally published by High Country News.
Every year, millions of migratory birds flock to Alaska. Hundreds of thousands of caribou use the tundra, rich in plant life, as their calving grounds. Alaska’s North Slope is also rich in other natural resources: oil, gas, minerals. But one important thing is lacking: rocks.

17 Indie Films You Must See in 2024

Navigating the Sundance Film Festival can be a tricky endeavor. The stacked screening schedule is practically made to send cinephiles into a tailspin: If the line for the new Steven Soderbergh movie starts forming at 9 p.m.

“Legacy”: Dr. Uché Blackstock on How Racism Shapes Healthcare in America

On the first day of Black History Month, we take a look at how racism shapes healthcare in America. We speak with Dr. Uché Blackstock about her new book, Legacy: A Black Physician Reckons with Racism in Medicine. The instant New York Times best-selling book tells her family’s story through multiple generations of Black women physicians while revealing the history of racism that created today’s disparities in medical training and treatment in America.

“Climate of Fear”: Inside UAE’s Use of U.S. Mercenaries to Carry Out Assassinations in Yemen

Democracy Now! speaks with filmmaker Nawal Al-Maghafi about her BBC investigative report which reveals new details about how the United Arab Emirates hired American mercenaries to carry out over 100 assassinations in southern Yemen, targeting politicians, imams and members of civil society. Al-Maghafi interviewed several mercenaries for the first time on camera about how they conducted the targeted killings and trained others to run similar operations.

Why the + Is Everywhere

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The plus sign is everywhere in the world of branding. It’s cool (sort of), capacious, and wholly unoriginal. At least it’s difficult to mock.

The U.S. Tries Escalating to Deescalate

The Biden administration launched air strikes against Iranian interests in Syria and Iraq Friday, the latest volley in a growing proxy war across the Middle East.
But in a policy paradox, the move appears to be an attempt to deescalate by means of powerful air strikes. The White House felt a need to respond to a drone attack this week in Jordan that killed three U.S. service members, and which the U.S. has blamed on Kataib Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed militia in Iraq.

Elon Musk Discovers the Price of Running a Public Company

In 2018, Tesla’s CEO, Elon Musk, got what was potentially the most lucrative compensation package in history, an incentive-based deal that would earn him stock options worth nearly $56 billion if he hit the contract’s targets. He did exactly that, and ahead of schedule. Over the next few years, Tesla’s market capitalization rose by many multiples: Despite having fallen from its November 2021 peak, it is still worth 10 times more than its value in early 2018.

‘The Most Entertaining Dead-Cat Bounce in History’

Not very long ago, the harshest thing Nikki Haley would say about Donald Trump was that “chaos follows him”—a sort of benign jab that creatively avoids causation and suggests mere correlation, like noting that scorched trees tend to appear after a forest fire.
For most of the Republican-primary campaign to date, Haley adopted a carefully modulated approach toward the former president, and reserved most of her barbs for her other primary rivals.

Why Don’t We Teach People How to Parent?

There are just some things you don’t do without preparation. You’re not meant to drive a car without taking lessons and passing a test. You aren’t supposed to scuba dive without certification. You can’t teach—or practice law, or therapy, or cosmetology—without first proving your knowledge. But you can become a parent without any training at all—and that’s a pretty high-stakes position.
Parents today arguably face steeper expectations than ever before.

“Origin”: Ava DuVernay’s New Film Dramatizes “Caste,” from U.S. Racism to India’s Dalits to Nazi Germany

We speak with award-winning filmmaker Ava DuVernay about her latest feature film, Origin, which explores discrimination in the United States and beyond through a dramatization of the book Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, whose process of writing the book is a central part of the film’s story.

Dearborn Mayor to Biden: “Lives of Palestinians Should Not Be Measured Simply in Poll Numbers”

President Biden faced protests in Michigan this week over his ongoing support for the Israeli assault on Gaza. Michigan is a crucial swing state that could prove decisive in this year’s presidential election and is also home to the largest percentage of Arab Americans in the United States. Dearborn Mayor Abdullah Hammoud, who refused to meet with Biden’s campaign manager last week, says it’s inappropriate to consider electoral politics as U.S. policy supports an ongoing genocide.

Israeli Cabinet Members Join Settler Event of Thousands Calling for Ethnic Cleansing of Gaza

We speak with an Israeli reporter who covered a major conference in Jerusalem calling for Palestinians to be removed from Gaza in order to rebuild Jewish settlements. The conference was attended by about a third of the Israeli Cabinet, including Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, both of whom have long been involved in the extremist settler movement in the West Bank.