Today's Liberal News

A Masterful Depiction of Male Cruelty

Halfway through Small Things Like These, the Irish writer Claire Keegan’s Booker-shortlisted 2022 novel, something out of the ordinary happens. The coal merchant Bill Furlong discovers during a Christmas-week delivery that a young woman has been shut in a nunnery’s coal shed overnight. Her bare feet are black with dust; she has had to go to the toilet where she slept. Horror is shot into the narrative like a hidden pouch of stage blood being pierced.

Historian Greg Grandin: Glowing Obituaries for Henry Kissinger Reveal “Moral Bankruptcy” of U.S. Elites

Henry Kissinger is dead at the age of 100. The former U.S. statesman served as national security adviser and secretary of state at the height of the Cold War and wielded influence over U.S. foreign policy for decades afterward. His actions led to massacres, coups and and even genocide, leaving a bloody legacy in Latin America, Southeast Asia and beyond. Once out of office, Kissinger continued until his death to advise U.S.

“This Is Genocide”: Attorney Raji Sourani on Israeli War Crimes & Fleeing Gaza After Home Was Bombed

After his home in Gaza was destroyed by an Israeli airstrike in October, Palestinian human rights lawyer Raji Sourani joins us from Cairo. He says Israel is enacting a “new Nakba” in its war on Gaza, and the expulsion of all Palestinians from their homeland is the clear end goal of the Israeli state. “They want us out, out of Palestine, out of Gaza, out of the West Bank,” says Sourani.

“Horror Show”: Doctors Without Borders Demands Permanent Ceasefire in Gaza, Medical Aid for Wounded

We get an update from Avril Benoît, executive director of Doctors Without Borders, on the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and violence hospitals are facing in the occupied West Bank. Israeli troops shot dead two Palestinian children Wednesday during a raid on the Jenin refugee camp, and medical workers say they were blocked from reaching the camp to treat the wounded.

Remembering Pablo Yoruba Guzmán, Young Lords Co-Founder, Afro-Latino Leader, Legendary NYC Journalist

We remember the legendary activist and journalist Pablo Yoruba Guzmán, who died from a heart attack Sunday at age 73. Guzmán was the former minister of information of the Young Lords Party, the revolutionary social justice group led by Puerto Ricans in the 1960s and ’70s. He later became a beloved print and television reporter, known for his street reporting.

The People Who Didn’t Matter to Henry Kissinger

Henry Kissinger, who died today at the age of 100, was determined to write his own place in history. Richard Nixon’s and Gerald Ford’s former secretary of state and national security adviser burnished his own reputation through his memoirs and books, by cultivating the press and foreign-policy elites, and winning the adulation of politicians as varied as Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.

The Republicans Who Won’t Quit Trump

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.Prominent Republicans criticized Donald Trump for two years.

BMI Won’t Die

If anything defines America’s current obesity-drug boom, it’s this: Many more people want these injections than can actually get them. The roadblocks include exorbitant costs that can stretch beyond $1,000 a month, limited insurance coverage, and constant supply shortages. But before all of those issues come into play, anyone attempting to get a prescription will inevitably confront the same obstacle: their body mass index, or BMI.

The Dual Threat of Donald Trump

Bill Clinton sometimes joked that the White House was “the crown jewel of the federal penitentiary system,” a sentiment shared by a few other presidents. In the 2024 presidential election, the winner will be remanded to the facility. But in a unique set of circumstances, the loser—whether it’s Donald Trump or Joe Biden—might also face incarceration, in a real federal prison.

Remembering Rosalynn Carter, Former First Lady & Pioneering Advocate for Mental Health Journalism

We look at former first lady Rosalynn Carter’s decadeslong advocacy for mental healthcare in the United States. She died November 19 at the age of 96. Carter campaigned for legislation forcing health insurance to cover mental healthcare and fought to remove stigma around the topic through a fellowship program for journalists. “There are hundreds of fellows that were inspired by Mrs.

UAE Oil CEO Sultan Al Jaber Uses His Role as U.N. Climate Summit President to Push Fossil Fuel Deals

As the largest-ever United Nations climate summit kicks off Thursday in Dubai, we look at how the COP28 president, Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, who is also CEO of the United Arab Emirates state oil company, has used climate summit meetings to lobby countries for oil and gas deals. The Centre for Climate Reporting obtained documents from meeting briefings that include Abu Dhabi National Oil Company talking points.