Today's Liberal News

Chile’s Trump? Ariel Dorfman on the Election of Pinochet Admirer José Antonio Kast

José Antonio Kast has won Chile’s presidential election, with the far-right leader getting about 58% of the vote in Sunday’s runoff against Jeannette Jara, a member of the Communist Party who served as labor minister under outgoing President Gabriel Boric. Kast has openly praised former U.S.-backed dictator Augusto Pinochet and is the son of a Nazi who fled Germany after World War II. Kast campaigned on fighting crime and carrying out mass deportations of immigrants.

A Path to WWIII? Greg Grandin on Venezuela, Trump’s “Madman Doctrine” & More

President Trump has ordered what he called a “total and complete blockade” of sanctioned oil tankers entering and leaving Venezuela, as the United States escalates pressure on the government of President Nicolás Maduro. The move comes amid a major U.S. military buildup in the region and days after U.S. forces seized an oil tanker carrying Venezuelan oil. Since September, the U.S.

Meet Mia Tretta: Shot 6 Years Ago, Brown Student Speaks Out After Surviving 2nd School Shooting

A deadly mass shooting at Brown University left two students dead and nine others injured on Saturday. One student, Mia Tretta, had survived a shooting in 2019 when she was shot in the stomach as a high school student. Her best friend was killed in the shooting, and she had selected Brown University for Rhode Island’s strong gun control laws. Now she has survived yet another school shooting.

Trump Still Needs Susie Wiles

Susie Wiles styles herself as a White House chief of staff who avoids being in the headlines. When cameras come into the Oval Office, she tends to sit just out of frame. She rarely gives interviews. Unlike her predecessors, she seldom tries to curb President Donald Trump’s impulses.

The New ‘Weapon of Mass Destruction’

This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.
For months, President Donald Trump’s crusade against the drug trade has carried the threat of violence: “I think we’re just going to kill people that are bringing drugs into our country,” he said in October.

Today’s Atlantic Trivia: Unto the Breach

When I visited the Snapple website this week, I was served one of the drink brand’s famous fun facts: that a jiffy is an “actual time measurement equaling 1/100th of a second.” Fun indeed! And arguably even a little bit true!
In 2013 in The Atlantic, Adrienne LaFrance courageously exposed that many of Snapple’s bottle-cap facts were false.

‘Commuting Is Bad’—Particularly for Women

For all of the professional gains women have made over the past several decades, one stubborn measure of inequality—the gender wage gap—has been especially difficult to stamp out. And it’s a disparity that can be traced in large part to parenthood. In nearly every country on Earth, the arrival of children tends to coincide with a lasting drop in employment and earnings for moms but not dads.

Trump’s Inferno of Hate Is Intensifying

The actor and director Rob Reiner and his wife, the producer and photographer Michele Singer Reiner, were found stabbed to death in their home on Sunday. Yesterday, their son Nick, who has spoken about his bouts of drug addiction and homelessness, was arrested on suspicion of murder. With that news, a terrible event became doubly tragic.
Reiner was beloved by almost everyone who knew him. On social media, friends described him as generous, kind, funny, and a caring soul.

From “Alligator Alcatraz” to Gaza: U.S. Companies Line Up for Lucrative Gaza Contracts Under Trump

At least a dozen people have died in Gaza as winter storms batter displaced Palestinians forced to shelter in makeshift tents among the rubble of collapsing buildings severely damaged by Israeli bombing. That rubble is being eyed by U.S.-based contractors, who are already vying for lucrative contracts to rebuild Gaza under the Trump-backed ceasefire deal.

“We’re Angry”: Brown Univ. Student & Parkland Survivor Zoe Weissman Demands Action on Gun Violence

The two victims in Saturday’s mass shooting at Brown University have been identified: freshman Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov and sophomore Ella Cook. We speak to another sophomore, Zoe Weissman, who came to Brown from Parkland, Florida, where she was a student at the middle school adjacent to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School during the mass shooting that occurred there in 2018.