Today's Liberal News

Make Birth Free

Immediately after the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs came down, anti-abortion groups began distributing press releases celebrating their victory and vowing to get around to something the movement has politically neglected for the past several decades: helping mothers afford children. For so many millions already distraught by the ruling, the ready promises of help on the way came not so much as a comfort but as an insult.

In Praise of Pointless Goals

In July of last year, a grown man pulled on a giant bear costume and set out to walk across the country. Under the alias Bearsun, Jessy Larios, then 33, ambled from Los Angeles to New York, sweating and chafing and viewing the world through a mesh peephole. Larios told me that it was “kind of like carrying around your own prison,” and that despite the costume’s whimsical exterior, the interior experience was akin to “getting tortured.

America Endures

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.This is my last day writing The Atlantic Daily (for now!), and I’d like to thank you all for reading. I know it’s something of an ask to allow the same fellow into your inbox every evening to opine about the day’s news, and I appreciate it.

U.S. Accused of Whitewashing Israel’s Killing of Shireen Abu Akleh Ahead of Biden’s Middle East Trip

The United States is facing accusations of whitewashing the killing of Palestinian American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh after concluding the bullet that killed her likely came from Israeli military gunfire, but stopping short of reaching a “definitive conclusion” in her killing. Abu Akleh was wearing a press uniform while reporting on an Israeli army raid in the occupied West Bank when she was fatally shot in the head on May 11.

“Left Internationalism in the Heart of Empire”: Aziz Rana & Darryl Li on Building a New Foreign Policy

We host a conversation about “Left Internationalism in the Heart of Empire,” which is the focus of an essay by Cornell University law professor Aziz Rana in Dissent magazine. Rana argues for the creation of a “transnational infrastructure of left forces across the world” and says movements of the left need “clear alternatives to the hardest questions” of foreign policy crises, such as the Russian war in Ukraine.

Scammers posing as ICE officials are defrauding U.S. families of asylum-seekers

With knowledge of personal details, ICE imposters have coaxed thousands of dollars from fearful relatives of detainees.

By Gabriel Thompson for Capital & Main

On April 5, Mariana was at her usual spot on a Miami sidewalk selling hot dogs and grilled corn when her phone rang.

She did not recognize the 1-800 number, and the caller said he was an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) official named Marcos Cruz.

Lucky

Lucky no one got hurt when I failed
To notice that another car had entered
The traffic circle before me, but not so lucky
When my car was declared not worth repairing.Lucky my car made no accusations
About the many more years of driving
We might have enjoyed together if only
I’d remembered to look where I was going.No way to explain to a car, which always waits
Just where you leave it, the human capacity
To drift in thought away from the body
Just when the body is in need of guidance.

Can You Cure Mental Illness? Two Centuries of Trying Says No.

Psychiatry, from its very inception, has been subject to raised eyebrows if not outright ridicule. Even before Freud came along with his batty theories about infantile sexuality and repressed wishes to kill one’s father, the discipline had struggled to define its methods and objectives.

America Endures

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.This is my last day writing The Atlantic Daily (for now!), and I’d like to thank you all for reading. I know it’s something of an ask to allow the same fellow into your inbox every evening to opine about the day’s news, and I appreciate it.

Astronomers Haven’t Been This Giddy in Years

About six months have elapsed since the most powerful space telescope in history bid farewell to Earth and took off into the darkness. In that time, the James Webb Space Telescope has deployed its gold-coated mirrors, turned on its instruments, and gotten the hang of operating 1 million miles from Earth.

Admit It, Squirrels Are Just Tree Rats

Ben Dantzer had spent several frustrating days trying to capture a single squirrel when the epiphany arrived. Dantzer, a rodent researcher at the University of Michigan, was standing in the Canadian Yukon, scrutinizing the uncooperative squirrel, which was perched high in a spruce tree. Then, all of a sudden, he felt as though he was looking at an optical illusion: When he viewed the squirrel one way, he saw a squirrel; when he viewed it another way, he saw a rat.