Today's Liberal News

It’s Time to Evacuate. Wait, Never Mind.

Updated at 8:35 p.m. ET on January 10, 2025
In my neighborhood—a mobile-home park on the western side of Malibu—the power and gas have been out for days, and cell service is intermittent at best. If I drive to the right vantage points, I can see the Palisades Fire and Kenneth Fire—two of the five major fires blazing across Los Angeles—but they are still far away. My home is not in a mandatory evacuation zone or even a warning zone. It is, or is supposed to be, safe.

Rock On, Readers

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Last week, I pronounced unequivocal judgment—as I tend to do regarding many things—on the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. I think it’s a contrived and embarrassing idea driven by nostalgia and capitalism, and antithetical to the youthful rebelliousness that drives rock-and-roll music.

Elon Has Appointed Himself King of the World

Like any good entrepreneur who found early success in one market, Elon Musk is now starting to expand to others. Yesterday, Musk—the entrepreneur turned Donald Trump megadonor—hosted a livestream on X with Alice Weidel, the leader of Germany’s far-right political party, Alternative für Deutschland, or AfD.
“Only the AfD can save Germany, end of story,” Musk said during the 70-minute conversation, endorsing the party ahead of the country’s elections next month.

The Consensus On Havana Syndrome Is Cracking

Two years ago, U.S. intelligence analysts concluded, in unusually emphatic language, that a mysterious and debilitating ailment known as “Havana syndrome” was not the handiwork of a foreign adversary wielding some kind of energy weapon. That long-awaited finding shattered an alternative theory embraced by American diplomats and intelligence officers, who said they had been victims of a deliberate, clandestine campaign by a U.S.

Is Anyone Shocked By Babygirl?

Not since Nicole Kidman in Eyes Wide Shut has a female movie star offered such an awkward portrayal of sex as Nicole Kidman in Babygirl. The movie is meant to be daring, a Last Tango in Paris for our time, but its essential premise would work in a Douglas Sirk production: A sexually frustrated, long-married woman accepts her fate until a stranger comes to town and puts everything at risk.

Biden Urged to Pardon Immigrant Rights Leader Ravi Ragbir, Who Could Soon Be Deported

Immigrant rights activists are urging the Biden administration to pardon longtime activist Ravi Ragbir, who has been targeted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement for potential detention and deportation since 2001. Ragbir has been subject to regular ICE check-ins for over two decades, each time facing the possibility of being taken into custody by the agency. “Once you go into that building, your family, your friends, your community don’t know if you’ll walk back out,” says Ragbir.

Jimmy Carter Championed Human Rights But Also Funded & Armed Indonesia’s Genocide in East Timor

We continue to reflect on Jimmy Carter’s foreign policy with history professor Brad Simpson. Despite presiding over an administration that stood out for its successful championing of human rights elsewhere in the world, “in Southeast Asia, Carter really continued the policies of the Nixon and Ford administration,” particularly in Indonesia, which was at the time occupying and carrying out a genocide in East Timor.

“Sabotaged by His Own Democratic Party”: Ralph Nader on Jimmy Carter’s Legacy

Former President Jimmy Carter, who died on December 29 at the age of 100, has been laid to rest in his hometown of Plains, Georgia, following a state funeral held in Washington, D.C. “He was the last president to actively encourage participation and involvement in governmental processes by the progressive civil community,” remembers the celebrated civil society and consumer advocate Ralph Nader.