Today's Liberal News

Trump Sings a Song of Sedition

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.At his rally in Waco this weekend, Donald Trump stood at attention as a choir of jailed January 6 rioters sang an anthem of sedition, and media outlets barely blinked.

Nine AI Chatbots You Can Play With Right Now

If you believe in the multibillion-dollar valuations, the prognostications from some of tech’s most notable figures, and the simple magic of getting a computer to do your job for you, then you might say we’re at the start of the chatbot era. Last November, OpenAI released ChatGPT into the unsuspecting world: It became the fastest-growing consumer app in history and immediately seemed to reconfigure how people think of conversational programs.

Netanyahu Flinched

Last night, hundreds of thousands of Israelis poured into the streets, believing their country’s democracy to be in peril. The immediate precipitant for this popular protest was the firing of Yoav Gallant, Israel’s defense minister. A former general tasked with overseeing the Jewish state’s security, Gallant had called for his own coalition to pause its attempted overhaul of the Israeli judicial system, arguing that division around the plan was undermining national cohesion.

The Dilemmas of Urban Life

This is an edition of Up for Debate, a newsletter by Conor Friedersdorf. On Wednesdays, he rounds up timely conversations and solicits reader responses to one thought-provoking question. Later, he publishes some thoughtful replies. Sign up for the newsletter here.Last week, I asked readers for their thoughts on cities versus suburbs.Lauren argues that cities remain sufficiently appealing to rural and suburban migrants.

AI Is Exposing Who Really Has Power in Silicon Valley

Silicon Valley churns out new products all the time, but rarely does one receive the level of hype that has surrounded the release of GPT-4. The follow-up to ChatGPT can ace standardized tests, tell you why a meme is funny, and even help do your taxes. Since the San Francisco start-up OpenAI introduced the technology earlier this month, it has been branded as “remarkable but unsettling,” and has led to grandiose statements about how “things will never be the same.

TransAfrica Founder Randall Robinson Dies at 81; Opposed South African Apartheid & U.S. Coups in Haiti

We remember the human rights activist and lawyer Randall Robinson, the founder of TransAfrica, who died Friday at the age of 81. Robinson played a critical role in the anti-apartheid movement in the United States and was a prominent critic of U.S. policy in Haiti. In 2004, he helped expose the U.S. role in the coup that ousted Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. We air excerpts from a 2013 interview Robinson did with Democracy Now! about his work.

Navajo Nation Fights for Water Rights & Access to Colorado River as West Battles Historic Drought

At the U.N. Water Development Conference, U.S. Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland delivered the U.S. statement and called for Indigenous governance of shared waters, underscoring the importance of Indigenous-led conservation in addressing the climate and drought crises. This comes after the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments last Monday on whether to allow the Navajo Nation to argue the federal government must address the Native American tribe’s water rights.

U.N. Warns of Water Wars as 2 Billion People Lack Clean Water with Africa and Middle East Hardest Hit

A new report by the United Nations warns that a quarter of humanity lacks access to safe drinking water, and nearly half of the global population has no access to basic sanitation. Unless action is taken, 60% of the world’s population could face water supply issues by 2050. At the U.N. Water Conference in New York last week, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres addressed the report’s findings and warned of the potential link between water scarcity and war.

Israeli Protests Intensify over Netanyahu Gov’t Weakening Judiciary as Palestinian Rights Ignored

Workers across Israel are taking part in a general strike Monday to protest plans by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to disempower Israel’s judiciary. This comes after Netanyahu fired his defense minister, Yoav Gallant, on Sunday over Gallant’s warning that the judicial overhaul represents “a clear, immediate and tangible threat to the security of the state.

The Candidate and the Spy: James Bamford on Israel’s Secret Collusion with Trump to Win 2016 Race

In his new book, Spyfail: Foreign Spies, Moles, Saboteurs, and the Collapse of America’s Counterintelligence, investigative journalist James Bamford reveals that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dispatched a secret Israeli agent to the United States in the spring of 2016 to help Donald Trump win the presidential election. The agent met with advisers to Trump and offered to share secret intelligence with the campaign against Hillary Clinton.

Rep. Ro Khanna on Regulating Banks, TikTok, China, Ukraine & His Vote on the “Horrors of Socialism”

We speak with Democratic Congressmember Ro Khanna about the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank, regulating the banking sector, and how Federal Reserve interest rate hikes contributed to the banking crisis. Silicon Valley Bank was based in Khanna’s district in California, and he has criticized fellow Democrats who supported a 2018 bill that weakened oversight for some banks.

The Real Succession Endgame

This story contains spoilers through the first episode of Succession Season 4.Who is Logan Roy, really? What can we say definitively about him now, at the beginning of the fourth and final season of Succession, that we couldn’t have easily observed at the show’s start? He’s irascible. He hates his children. He “loves” his children.

How Wrestling Explains America

Awash in strobes, Seth “Freakin” Rollins begins his waltz to the ring. His nemesis, the YouTube star Logan Paul, is there waiting for him.Rollins pauses beneath the jumbotron and holds his arms outstretched like Christ the Redeemer. Green and purple spotlights dart and swirl around Boston’s TD Garden. Thousands of fans start screaming the “whoa-ohh-ohh” part of Rollins’s theme song; exponentially more are live-tweeting the broadcast at home.