Today's Liberal News

Arlington’s Civil War Legacy Is Finally Laid to Rest

The wind washed over the rows of white tombstones and carried the last leaves of autumn on its breath. I held the map of Arlington National Cemetery up to my face, clinging to its edges as its corners fluttered. I looked up, and saw the statue I was searching for in the distance, encircled by tall steel fencing that caught and held the light from the afternoon sun.

The Case for Kwanzaa

For a few years of my childhood, Kwanzaa was a big deal. I recall attending three Kwanzaa celebrations hosted by Mt. Lebanon Baptist Church in Baltimore. My cousin Olivia Moyd Hazell, at the time the church’s director of Christian education, organized them. About 50 church members and friends, many wearing kente cloth, would file into a softly lit basement the weekend after Christmas.

A Tumultuous Year in Politics

Editor’s Note: Washington Week With The Atlantic is a partnership between NewsHour Productions, WETA, and The Atlantic airing every Friday on PBS stations nationwide. Check your local listings or watch full episodes here. On Tuesday, Colorado’s Supreme Court disqualified Donald Trump from the state’s primary ballot after determining that his actions on January 6, 2021, made him ineligible under the U.S. Constitution’s insurrection clause.

“Fascism Out Loud”: Trump’s Escalating Racist Rhetoric & the Far Right’s Plan for a Slow Civil War

As the 2024 presidential election campaign heats up, Republican front-runner Donald Trump is escalating his racist rhetoric, repeatedly saying in recent days that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country,” drawing comparisons to Hitler. Journalist Jeff Sharlet says, “Even more important than the substance is the spectacle, the drama, that makes him the exciting and, in fascist terms, the man of action.

The Uncanny Experience of Year-End Roundups

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.Why are “year in review” roundups so pleasing to users?First, here are three new stories from The Atlantic:
The real reason for marriage polarization
Harvard has a Veritas problem.
A sex scandal. A conservative power network. And Moms for Liberty.

Building AI Safely Is Getting Harder and Harder

This is Atlantic Intelligence, an eight-week series in which The Atlantic’s leading thinkers on AI will help you understand the complexity and opportunities of this groundbreaking technology. Sign up here.The bedrock of the AI revolution is the internet, or more specifically, the ever-expanding bounty of data that the web makes available to train algorithms.

It’s Time to Take Another Look at Parole

From the standpoint of many on the left, former President Donald Trump did exactly two good things in office. He supported Operation Warp Speed, which facilitated the development and production of the first COVID-19 vaccines. And in 2018, he signed the First Step Act, a bipartisan criminal-justice bill that shortened federal prison terms, gave judges more latitude in sentencing, and provided educational programming to ease prisoners’ eventual return to the outside world.

A Modest Proposal for Publishing

This is an edition of the Books Briefing, our editors’ weekly guide to the best in books. Sign up for it here.My fondness for the acknowledgments section of books runs very deep. Sometimes I flip to them first, though I try to hold off on this guilty pleasure. I love the way they can reveal a writer’s true, gushy self beneath the veneer of authorial control and style, reminding us of the human being who struggled to bring these pages into existence.

How Teens Spend Their Free Time

Welcome to Up for Debate. Each week, Conor Friedersdorf rounds up timely conversations and solicits reader responses to one thought-provoking question. Later, he publishes some thoughtful replies. Sign up for the newsletter here.

Sônia Guajajara, Brazil’s First Indigenous Peoples Minister, on Climate Crisis & Protecting the Amazon

Sônia Guajajara is Brazil’s first Indigenous cabinet minister and the country’s first-ever minister of Indigenous peoples. We recently sat down with Guajajara at the COP28 summit in Dubai to discuss the role of Indigenous communities in the rapidly developing climate crisis. She discussed her work within the administration of Brazilian President Lula to stop Amazon rainforest deforestation and to wrest back Indigenous governance from extractive industry.

Gazan Attorney Who Has Lost 60 Relatives in Israeli Attacks Says U.S. Is “Complicit in Genocide”

The United Nations Security Council is expected to vote today on a watered-down resolution on aid to Gaza. Though the resolution originally called for an immediate ceasefire, the United States repeatedly pushed for the vote to be delayed and the resolution’s language weakened before agreeing to support it. In the meantime, the death toll in Gaza has surpassed 20,000, while an additional 500,000 now face hunger and starvation.

Christmas Canceled in Bethlehem as Churches Mourn 20,000+ Palestinians Killed in Gaza

In “mourning and honor” of Palestinians killed in Gaza, the city of Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank, the birthplace of Jesus Christ, has announced the cancellation of traditional Christmas festivities. In Bethlehem, we’re joined by the president of Dar al-Kalima University, Reverend Mitri Raheb. Reverend Raheb relates the story of Jesus, a refugee whose mother had no place to safely give birth, to the plight of displaced Gazans facing a dearth of medical care.