Today's Liberal News

In Largest Israeli Protest to Date, 1 Million Israelis Demand Gaza Ceasefire to Free Hostages

Massive protests have erupted in Israel, with about 500,000 people marching in Tel Aviv Sunday to demand an end to the war in Gaza. Organizers say 1 million took part in demonstrations across the entire country. Most of the Israelis who were out on the streets “blame Netanyahu” for prioritizing his political survival over an end to the war, says Oren Ziv, reporter and photographer for +972 Magazine.

Trump Keeps Defending Russia

Donald Trump loves to speak extemporaneously, and usually, he makes very little sense. (Sharks? The Unabomber? What?) Trying to turn his ramblings into a coherent message is like trying, as an old European saying goes, to turn fish soup back into an aquarium. But he is the president of the United States and holds the codes to some 2,000 nuclear weapons. When he speaks, his statements are both policy and a peek into the worldview currently governing the planet’s sole superpower.

Trump’s Half-Baked Approach to Negotiation

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On the surface, yesterday’s White House summit on Ukraine showed an impressively unified front among President Donald Trump, major European leaders, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. The participants all smiled and expressed optimism.

Scenes From the 2025 World Games in Chengdu

Jade Gao / AFP / Getty
Italy’s team competes in the mixed aerobic group final during the 2025 World Games at the Dong’an Lake Sports Park Multi-Function Gymnasium in Chengdu, in China’s Sichuan province, on August 15, 2025.Jade Gao / AFP / Getty
Taiwan’s Chang Yu-Hsin (center) competes in the women’s 15,000-meter speed-skating-road elimination final during the 2025 World Games at Shuyue Park in Chengdu on August 13, 2025.

Dear James: Do I Need to Be Nice to My Aging Stepfather?

Editor’s Note: Is anything ailing, torturing, or nagging at you? Are you beset by existential worries? Every Tuesday, James Parker tackles readers’ questions. Tell him about your lifelong or in-the-moment problems at dearjames@theatlantic.com.
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Dear James,
My late mother’s second husband was pretty mean and made no bones about disliking me in his heyday.

The Sword and the Book

If Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has some notions about strategy, he has been reticent in sharing them. But he does trumpet his commitment to restoring Confederate names to bases and their statues to national military cemeteries, which is absurd and vile. And we know that he thinks civilian academics have little if any place in military education, which is wrong and even more damaging.

“They Kidnapped Me”: L.A. Immigrant Rights Activist Recounts Violent Arrest by Masked Federal Agents

Amanda Trebach, a member of the immigrant rights’ group Unión del Barrio and an ICU nurse, was monitoring ICE operations in the Los Angeles area when she was targeted and arrested herself. Video of the scene shows masked agents in plainclothes forcing her to the ground and briefly kneeling on her head. “They took me into an unmarked vehicle. They did not read me my rights.

Will Russia-Ukraine War End with Diplomacy or on Battlefield? John Mearsheimer vs. Denys Pilash

President Trump says he is working on a “deal” to end the Russia-Ukraine war by hosting a series of meetings between the U.S., European Union, Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky. Putin is insisting Russia keep areas of Ukraine that it has seized, including the long-contested Donbas region, while Zelensky is asking the U.S. for security guarantees to prevent future invasion by its powerful neighbor.