Today's Liberal News

The Recap: Trump rewrites presidential history, and Hegseth tries making religion manly

A daily roundup of the best stories and cartoons by Daily Kos staff and contributors to keep you in the know.

For Pete’s sake! Hegseth wants to make spirituality manly again?

We certainly wouldn’t want it to nourish the body and soul, now would we?

Trump screams at America that everything is fine

Sometimes if you say the lies louder it makes them come true.

Cartoon: Doesn’t fit

It’s hard to make a victim out of a monster.

Meet Tania Nemer, Fired Immigration Judge Suing Trump Admin Amid Purge of Immigration Court System

Former immigration judge Tania Nemer, who was fired in February, is now suing the Trump administration, alleging that she was discriminated against despite strong performance reviews. Nemer is one of about 100 immigration judges who have been fired or reassigned since Trump took office. The system is notoriously backlogged, with more than 3 million cases pending. “I was pulled away in the middle of the hearing,” she says.

“Divorced from Reality”: Economist Dean Baker Fact-Checks Trump’s Primetime Speech

President Trump praised the state of the U.S. economy in a primetime address Wednesday evening, even though new government statistics show the nation’s unemployment rate is at a new four-year high of 4.6%. Dean Baker, senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, says Trump’s aides should be “wondering about the man’s sanity” after Wednesday’s speech. “This is utterly divorced from reality.

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.

This Is What Presidential Panic Looks Like

The president of the United States just barged into America’s living rooms like an angry, confused grandfather to tell us all that we are ungrateful whelps.
When a president asks for network time, it’s usually to announce something important. But tonight, Donald Trump did not give anything like a normal speech or address.

Trump’s ‘Peace President’ Claim Isn’t Holding Up

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Last week, the Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado made a daring escape from her home country to Norway, where she was honored as winner of the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize.

$1,776 Checks for the Military

This story was updated on December 17 at 9:39 p.m. ET
President Donald Trump’s prime-time address tonight included an Oprah-style You get a car! And you get a car! reveal for members of the U.S. military. Specifically, he said that he was giving troops a “war dividend,” a onetime bonus check pegged to a sum with deep patriotic significance: $1,776.
“The checks are already on the way,” Trump said during his address, promising them to more than 1.4 million troops.

Today’s Atlantic Trivia: Titian? Tiepolo? Almost …

Updated with new questions at 4 p.m. on December 17, 2025.
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.

How Crypto Is Turning America Into a Kleptocracy

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On this week’s episode of The David Frum Show, The Atlantic’s David Frum opens with his thoughts on the shooting at Bondi Beach and the rise of anti-Semitic violence globally. He discusses what willing governments can do to crack down on radicals and prevent future acts of violence.
Then David is joined by Will Thomas, a professor at the Michigan Ross School of Business, to discuss Thomas’s paper “Crypto Kleptocracy.