Today's Liberal News

What Does the Department of Education Actually Do?

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Donald Trump really knows how to sell someone on working for him. “I told Linda, ‘Linda, I hope you do a great job at putting yourself out of a job,” he said Tuesday in the Oval Office. That’s Linda McMahon, whom he’s nominated to lead the Department of Education.

Parenting in America Keeps Getting More Intensive

This is an edition of Time-Travel Thursdays, a journey through The Atlantic’s archives to contextualize the present and surface delightful treasures. Sign up here.
In 1933, the author Isadore Luce Smith made a bold declaration in The Atlantic: “A new type of parent has evolved.” These parents, Smith reported, hired baby specialists, pored over child-rearing books, and were obsessed with issues such as thumb-sucking.

There Is No Real-Estate Solution for Gaza

Two days ago, the president of the United States declared his intention to assume long-term ownership of the Gaza Strip, turn the coastal enclave into a real-estate-development heaven, and permanently remove its Palestinian inhabitants to other countries. The administration has already walked this proposal back, but not before touting the president’s “out of the box” thinking—a phrase that suggests ignorance of where, exactly, the box is.

Trump Is Inheriting an Environmental Disaster

In Wisconsin, where late last year Donald Trump said at a campaign stop, “I’m an environmentalist … I want clean air and clean water—really clean water,” many people want that too. Like Americans across the country, many Wisconsinites have in recent years come to understand that they have been drinking water contaminated by highly toxic “forever chemicals,” compounds known as PFAS, for decades.

Trump’s Assault on USAID Makes Project 2025 Look Like Child’s Play

Project 2025, the conservative governing playbook produced by veterans of the first Trump administration, has an entire chapter on how to overhaul USAID. Its authors urged the next president to “scale back USAID’s global footprint,” “deradicalize” its programs, and throttle its funding.
Before the election, Donald Trump disavowed Project 2025 because it veered so far to the right. But now he’s making the plan look downright timid.

“Educational Arson”: Trump Moves to Abolish Dept. of Education Amid Broader Attack on Public Schools

As the Trump administration, led in part by his unelected adviser Elon Musk, sets its sights on cutting the Department of Education, we speak to longtime educator Jesse Hagopian about what he calls an “extremist, authoritarian power grab to dismantle public education and enforce ideological conformity.” Hagopian, whose new book, Teach Truth: The Struggle for Antiracist Education, traces the history of racist educational censorship, adds, “This isn’t about protecting children.

“Trump Does Not See Palestinians as Human Beings”: Plan for U.S. to “Take Over” Gaza Faces Outcry

World leaders are rebuking Donald Trump’s proposal for the United States to take over the Gaza Strip, ethnically cleansing the region of Palestinians. “There’s no question that even though the entire region would reject it … the fundamental reality is that we are heading to the complete destruction of Palestinian society in Gaza as a matter of status quo,” says our guest Omar Baddar.