Today's Liberal News

The Christian Rocker at the Center of MAGA

After wildfires erupted in Los Angeles County earlier this year, a team from the Department of Housing and Urban Development descended on the wreckage. Led by HUD Secretary Scott Turner, the entourage walked through the rubble in Altadena, reassuring victims that the Trump administration had their back. At Turner’s request, a Christian-nationalist musician named Sean Feucht tagged along. “I can’t overemphasize how amazing this opportunity is,” Feucht had posted on Instagram the day before.

They Didn’t Have to Do This

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In their heedless rush to enact a deficit-exploding tax bill so massive that they barely understand it, Senate Republicans call to mind a scene in The Sopranos. A group of young aspiring gangsters decides to stick up a Mafia card game in hopes of gaining the mobsters’ respect and being brought into the crew.

Dear James: I’m Living in a Tragedy

Editor’s Note: Is anything ailing, torturing, or nagging at you? Are you beset by existential worries? Every Tuesday, James Parker tackles readers’ questions. Tell him about your lifelong or in-the-moment problems at dearjames@theatlantic.com.
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Dear James,
I’m a 20-year-old dealing with a string of terrible events. My estranged mother died in a car accident a few days ago.

The Mainstreaming of Literary Kink

Twenty years ago, a reader looking for taboo sex in print had to slink to the back of the bookstore and make whispered inquiries. Today, kinky books make up an established genre, one that shares front-table space with other major releases and possesses its own classics and conventions. This robust menagerie encompasses pulpy household names, including E. L. James’s Fifty Shades of Grey, which in 2011 vaulted BDSM onto the New York Times fiction best-seller list.

“Trying to Find Food Is a Death Sentence”: Palestinian Writer Muhammad Shehada on Gaza Aid Massacres

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is visiting the United States next week to meet with President Donald Trump and other top officials in the U.S. administration, supposedly to “capitalize on the success” of the 12-day war against Iran. This comes after nearly 21 months of Israel’s war on Gaza that has killed at least 56,000 Palestinians, with daily violence only increasing. “There’s basically an airstrike every other minute,” says Palestinian writer and analyst Muhammad Shehada.

“Worst Thing I’ve Ever Seen”: U.S. Surgeon Describes Mass Starvation, Injury and Death in Gaza

We speak with American neurosurgeon Dr. Abdul Basit Khan in Gaza, where he is volunteering at the Nasser Hospital. He describes treating patients with blast injuries and gunshot wounds from Israeli attacks, all while coping with a lack of basic medical supplies and widespread hunger. “Food insecurity is rampant, from all levels of society. Even the physicians are not eating,” he says. Multiple blasts were heard during the interview, with Dr.