Today's Liberal News

The Truth Is Still Out There

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“There has been a threat to publicly release government material long shrouded in secrecy.” This sentence could have been intoned by a TV newscaster anytime in the past few years, about any number of real or alleged cover-ups—of Joe Biden’s mental decline, or the names in the Epstein files, or the origins of COVID‑19.

The Kind of Nonfiction That Wins Pulitzers

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The Pulitzer Prizes, whose 2026 honorees were announced this week, reward excellent American journalism, music, drama, and books. Public conversation about the six categories of book awards tends to focus on the fiction prize, especially in years when the winner is unusually commercial, such as 2018’s Less, or obscure, like this year’s Angel Down, or not chosen at all, as in 2012.

“Absolutely Vulnerable”: Over 20,000 Global South Ship Workers Stranded at Sea Due to Iran War

As Iran and the United States maintain rival blockades on the Strait of Hormuz and surrounding waters, we look at the more than 20,000 seafarers stranded on commercial ships since the outbreak of the war and unable to move out of the region. These maritime workers are often working-class men from developing countries across the Global South who form the crews on about 1,500 oil tankers, cargo ships and other vessels currently stuck on the water.

“They Don’t Care”: Trump’s Border Wall Construction Damages 1,000-Year-Old Sacred Indigenous Site

Construction crews in Arizona who are building President Trump’s expanded border wall have razed a portion of a Native American archeological site in the Sonoran Desert estimated to be at least 1,000 years old. Aerial photos reveal that bulldozers caused extensive damage to a 280-by-50-foot etching in the desert sand known as an intaglio, which holds special significance for the Hia-Ced O’odham people.

Amid Growing Abuse at ICE Jails, Rep. Adelita Grijalva Calls to Shut Down Trump’s Detention Network

As the Trump administration continues to expand the ICE detention system, concerns are growing over abuses inside immigration jails, including use of physical violence, pepper spray and electric shocks against detainees. Earlier this year, more than 70,000 people were being detained by ICE in jails across the country.
Congressmember Adelita Grijalva from Arizona, who visited two ICE jails recently, says detainees who spoke to her described dire conditions, medical neglect and more.

“Backtalker”: Kimberlé Crenshaw on New Memoir, Voting Rights, Critical Race Theory & Clarence Thomas

Leading scholar in the field of critical race theory Kimberlé Crenshaw coined the term “intersectionality,” which she has described as a “lens through which you can see where power comes and collides, where it interlocks and intersects.” Crenshaw, a professor of law at UCLA and Columbia University and executive director of the African American Policy Forum, has just published a new book, Backtalker: An American Memoir.

What Happened on the Hantavirus Cruise, According to a Doctor on Board

When Stephen Kornfeld set sail aboard the MV Hondius in early April, his grand plan for the cruise was to add as many new species as possible to his birding list. A medical oncologist based in Bend, Oregon, Kornfeld is also an avid birder—second on eBird’s renowned rankings of birders worldwide—and the ship would visit several remote islands, where he might spot some of the globe’s most obscure avians.

What India’s Diet Coke Shortage Means for the U.S.

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For true fans of Diet Coke, soda is sacrament, and reverence comes with strict parameters.

The End of the World as He Knew It

Before Ted Turner created a world of endless news, he imagined how the news would end. In 1980, in the run-up to the launch of CNN—in the days when 24-hour news cycle was a pipe dream, and something of a joke—the future mogul commissioned a segment to be aired in the case of environmental disaster, nuclear holocaust, or a similar Armageddon.

Does Claude Have Feelings?

Richard Dawkins, perhaps the world’s most prominent advocate for irreligiosity, has become besotted with the godlike power of a chatbot. According to his recent essay for the online magazine UnHerd, Anthropic’s Claude has really blown his hair back. After a few days of on-and-off conversations with the AI, Dawkins came away marveling at the sensitivity and subtlety of its intelligence.

The Secret to Understanding AI

In the before times—before machines could hallucinate, before compute was a noun—it was not uncommon to go several weeks without someone telling me the world was about to end. Similarly, a whole season might pass without anyone assuring me that it was also, simultaneously, about to become perfect.
That particular luxury died on November 30, 2022, when OpenAI released ChatGPT to the public. What followed was less a news cycle than a weather event—a tropical depression that would not budge.