Today's Liberal News

Pakistani Forces in Islamabad Crush Protesters Demanding Freedom for Jailed Ex-PM Imran Khan

Security forces in Pakistan arrested over 1,000 supporters of jailed former Prime Minister Imran Khan during a march on the capital of Islamabad. Protesters had vowed to stage a sit-in until Khan — who has been imprisoned since August 2023 on what are widely viewed as politically motivated charges — was released, but ended their efforts after six people were killed.

Three Ways to Handle an Awkward Thanksgiving

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By the time I was 19 years old, I had quit college and was working a job thousands of miles from my family. With no money, my first Thanksgiving away from home promised to be a lonely one—until a local couple invited me to spend the holiday at their house with their extended family. They warned me, however, that this gathering would also include a ne’er-do-well cousin named Jeffrey.

The Most Controversial Game on the Internet

One morning earlier this month, I slammed my laptop shut. I was four cups of coffee deep and full of rage. My hands shook, and my vision blurred. It wasn’t politics, my usual subject matter, that had sent me spiraling.
It was Wyna Liu.
Liu is the New York Times editor who makes Connections, the online puzzle that is both the blessing and the bane of my mornings—and the days of millions of other people who regularly spend time tangling with Liu’s creation.

“The Message”: Ta-Nehisi Coates on the Power of Writing & Visiting Senegal, South Carolina, Palestine

We spend the hour with the acclaimed writer Ta-Nehisi Coates, whose book The Message features three essays tackling the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, book bans and academic freedom, and the legacy of the transatlantic slave trade. The Message is written as a letter to Coates’s students at Howard University, where he is the Sterling Brown Endowed Chair in the English department.

Lakota Historian Nick Estes on Thanksgiving, Settler Colonialism & Continuing Indigenous Resistance

Lakota historian Nick Estes talks about the violent origins of Thanksgiving and his book Our History Is the Future. “This history … is a continuing history of genocide, of settler colonialism and, basically, the founding myths of this country,” says Estes, who is a co-founder of the Indigenous resistance group The Red Nation and a citizen of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe.

Why Are You Still Cooking With That?

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We warned you last month to “Throw Out Your Black Plastic Spatula.” In a recent study conducted about consumer products, researchers concluded kitchen utensils had some of the highest levels of flame retardants, which you do not want anywhere near your hot food.

Always a Girlboss, Never a Tradwife

By the time Martha Stewart rose to fame, family life in the United States looked very different than it had during her childhood. American mothers had entered the workforce en masse, and when Stewart’s first book was published, in 1982, many women were no longer instructing their daughters on the finer points of homemaking fundamentals like cooking meals from scratch or hosting holiday gatherings.

A Late Win for Biden in the Middle East

On Tuesday, Israel and Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed militant group in Lebanon, agreed to a cease-fire. The arrangement is a win for outgoing President Joe Biden, who has followed a hapless policy course through a calamitous year for the Middle East.
Ever since the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, the Biden administration’s goal in the Middle East has been to contain the conflict.