Today's Liberal News

The New Allowance

Around the 1920s, a certain class of parents—those with enough money to indulge their kids from time to time—started to panic. Toy companies and trinket manufacturers were buffeting kids with ads, and children were pestering their parents for gifts. Many parents wanted their kids to have these new luxuries, but they also wanted them to understand that money had limits.

Something Ominous Is Happening in the AI Economy

A company that most people have never heard of is among the year’s best-performing technology firms—and a symbol of the complex, interconnected, and potentially catastrophic ways in which AI companies do business these days.
CoreWeave’s IPO in March was the largest of any tech start-up since 2021, and the company’s share price has subsequently more than doubled, outperforming even the “Magnificent Seven” tech stocks.

Despite Judge’s Order, ICE Deports Shackled Babson College Freshman, Harasses Her Family in Texas

Nineteen-year-old Any Lucía López Belloza was detained and deported, despite a lack of removal order, when attempting to head home from Babson College in Boston to surprise her family in Texas for Thanksgiving. “This is the first arrest of its kind I’ve seen,” says her attorney, Todd C. Pomerleau, who says the student has been the victim of “character assassination.

Trump Spokesperson Karoline Leavitt’s Nephew’s Mother Released from ICE Jail, Faces Deportation

Bruna Ferreira, a DACA recipient and mother of White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt’s nephew, has lived in the United States since she was 6 years old, but was recently arrested by ICE in her own driveway in what her attorney, Todd Pomerleau, calls a “brazen, unconstitutional arrest, a clear violation of her rights.” Ferreira was transported to a remote detention center in Louisiana following her arrest in Massachusetts, and just released Tuesday.

“Torture & Enforced Disappearances” at Florida’s ICE Jails “Alligator Alcatraz” & Krome

Lights on 24/7. Overflowing toilets and lack of access to showers. Solitary confinement in a 2×2-foot box. These are some of the torturous conditions documented in a new report from Amnesty International investigating human rights violations at two ICE detention centers in Florida: the Krome North Service Processing Center and the Everglades Detention Facility, dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz” by Trump and his supporters.

“The Problem with Plastic”: Former EPA Official on How to Save the Planet Before It’s Too Late

We speak with former EPA regional administrator Judith Enck about her new book, The Problem with Plastic: How We Can Save Ourselves and Our Planet Before It’s Too Late.
“Scientists have found microplastics in our blood, our kidneys, our lungs,” says Enck. “They’ve been found in heart arteries, and if it’s attached to plaque, you have an increased risk of heart attack, stroke, premature death.

The Enfeebling of the President

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.
The president of the United States can expect to face tough questions, but one that ABC’s Rachel Scott asked Monday wasn’t among them. In fact, it was nothing more than a recitation of his own words.

OpenAI Is in Trouble

For nearly three years, Marc Benioff, the CEO of Salesforce, was a ChatGPT devotee. Then, late last month, he abruptly converted to Google’s chatbot, Gemini. “Holy shit,” he wrote on X. “I’ve used ChatGPT every day for 3 years. Just spent 2 hours on Gemini 3. I’m not going back. The leap is insane.”
When Gemini 3 was released in mid-November, it appeared to crush OpenAI’s top model on a suite of evaluations shared by Google. The bot has since received widespread praise from the tech industry.

The Atlantic and Prologue Entertainment Strike Exclusive First Look for Films and Series

The Atlantic and Prologue Entertainment—the independent production studio founded by Lloyd Braun, Sarah Bremner, and Noah Oppenheim, and backed by RedBird Capital Partners—have entered into an exclusive first-look agreement to develop films and series based on The Atlantic’s journalism. As part of the deal, RedBird IMI, the joint venture led by Jeff Zucker, also has a first look to develop unscripted projects.

Today’s Atlantic Trivia: Tomato, Tomato (But Neither Is Right)

You’ve been waiting to build that dream place of yours, there in the spot you picked out a few years back, between the pons and the frontal lobe. Maybe you want to crib some designs from your friend Steve’s place; it’s got space for the first 115 digits of pi and the names of all 266 popes. But is now really the time for a new memory palace? Look at all the palaces sitting empty now, built by the folks who turned over their thinking to AI in the end.

USAID Hired the Right-Wing Influencer Responsible for Its Decimation

If the U.S. Agency for International Development is a front for the CIA, we’re about to find out all about it. A new official inside the agency is prepared to blow the lid off the whole conspiracy.
That official is Mike Benz, a right-wing influencer who popularized the notion that Taylor Swift is a secret NATO asset and once wrote, under a pseudonym, “I want white identity politics to grow like wildfire.