Today's Liberal News

Mario Vargas Llosa’s Question for the Trump Era

“At what precise moment had Peru fucked itself up?” So begins the novelist Mario Vargas Llosa’s 1969 masterpiece, Conversation in the Cathedral. What made the opening so famous and effective was the fact that many countries across Latin America, a landscape of shaky democracies, were asking themselves that question about their homeland. The number of people asking this seems to have grown in recent years all over the world. Perhaps you’ve asked it yourself.

“The Dark Money Game”: Director Alex Gibney on How Citizens United Ushered in “Legalized Corruption”

A new set of documentaries directed by Academy Award-winning filmmaker Alex Gibney premieres April 15 and April 16 on HBO. The films in The Dark Money Game series investigate the origins and impacts of campaign finance in the U.S. “Our country is being run by a small group of people who have an enormous amount of money, and they dominate our politics,” says Gibney. “It’s almost as if bribery has become utterly legalized. It’s pay to play. It’s quid pro quo.

Cover-Up in Ecuador? Disputed Presidential Election Rocked by New Allegation from 2023 Assassination

As Ecuador’s President Daniel Noboa claims victory in a contested election, Noboa’s leftist rival Luisa González is challenging the results, calling Noboa a “dictator” who committed election fraud to be reelected. The widow of former candidate Fernando Villavicencio also released a new video seemingly confirming allegations that Noboa had been involved in an attempt to frame a third candidate for Villavicencio’s assassination during the 2023 presidential election.

Trump Weighs Expelling U.S. Citizens as Salvadoran Pres. Says He Won’t Return Wrongfully Removed Man

We speak to Nayna Gupta, policy director at the American Immigration Council, and José Olivares, an award-winning investigative journalist specializing in Latin American politics, about El Salvador’s immigrant detention collaboration with the United States. Over 300 people have been disappeared to El Salvador’s dangerous maximum-security prisons, including at least one man who was targeted for removal by mistake. U.S.

Liberation Seder: Hundreds of Jewish Protesters Demand Release of Foreign Students Abducted by ICE

Hundreds of members of Jewish Voice for Peace in New York protested outside of the office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement Monday on the third night of the major Jewish holiday Passover. They gathered in support of a growing number of immigrant activists who have been taken prisoner by ICE, including New York residents Mahmoud Khalil and Mohsen Mahdawi, both Palestinian participants of pro-Palestine protests at Columbia University last year.

What Harvard Learned From Columbia’s Mistake

The richest university in the world has decided that some things are more important than money.
Earlier this month, the Trump administration threatened to revoke $9 billion in federal grants and contracts if Harvard did not agree to a long list of demands, including screening foreign applicants “hostile to the American values and institutions” and allowing an external body to audit university departments for viewpoint diversity.

What the Josh Shapiro Attack Reveals

Josh Shapiro is very lucky to be alive. The Pennsylvania governor and his family escaped an arson attack in the early hours of this morning. Parts of the governor’s mansion were badly charred, including an opulent room with a piano and a chandelier where Shapiro had hosted a Passover Seder just hours earlier. Things could have been much worse.

Trump Dares the Supreme Court to Do Something

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.
Donald Trump took one step closer to openly defying an order from the Supreme Court today—effectively daring the justices to defend the law or pack up and go home.

Trump Is Running Economic Development In Reverse

The markets are going haywire, and consumer confidence is nosediving. You might be wondering why the Trump administration decided to burn down the healthy economy it inherited. Is it pure incompetence? Or is there a plan?
The answer to both questions appears to be yes. The incompetence is undeniable. But the administration does have a plan, or at least a vision, for what will spring up from the ashes. The trouble is that the long-term economic program is even worse than the short-term one.