Today's Liberal News

Dubai’s Army of Influencers Gets Back in Line

As Iranian missiles and drones exploded above Dubai in the first days of the Iran war, the city’s legions of social-media influencers started posting. “Your boy is currently in the middle of World War III right now,” the day trader Mike Babayan, who posts under the handle “Nitrotrades,” said into his camera on February 28, a clip that garnered 1.1 million views on Instagram Reels. It was a departure from his usual fare of filming fancy sports cars and stock-trading strategies.

The Republican Who Wants to Banish His Own Constituents

The Islamic Center of Columbia, Tennessee—a small city about 45 miles south of Nashville—had been around for only a few years when white supremacists burned it down. On a Saturday in early 2008, three young men went to the mosque armed with spray paint and Molotov cocktails. According to a federal indictment, they first defaced the exterior walls with swastikas and phrases including White Power. Then they broke into the building and set it aflame.

Dario Amodei’s Oppenheimer Moment

More than a year before his recent standoff with the Pentagon, Dario Amodei, the chief executive of Anthropic, published a 15,000-word manifesto describing a glorious AI future. Its title, “Machines of Loving Grace,” is borrowed from a Richard Brautigan poem, but as Amodei acknowledged, with some embarrassment, its utopian vision bears some resemblance to science fiction.

A Horrible Throwback to the Early 2000s

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.
No one could accuse Representative Andy Ogles of using dog whistles. The Tennessee Republican prefers a bullhorn.
“Muslims don’t belong in American society,” Ogles wrote on X on Monday. “Pluralism is a lie.”
The statement’s open bigotry is jarring.

Ex-Marine, Senate Candidate Speaks Out After Arrest, Arm Broken During Iran War Protest in Senate

A Marine Corps veteran suffered a broken arm last week after he disrupted a Senate hearing to voice his opposition to the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran. Democracy Now! speaks with the veteran, Brian McGinnis, who is also a Green Party candidate for Senate in North Carolina. McGinnis is critical of U.S. policy in Israel and the Trump administration’s decision to go “full speed ahead with military action” in the Middle East.

“Trump Has Been Anointed by Jesus” to Wage War on Iran: U.S. Commanders Accused of Promoting Holy War

U.S. military commanders have reportedly been invoking extremist Christian rhetoric to push war on Iran, selling the conflict to American troops as an existential “holy war” in apocalyptic language that experts fear could exacerbate the violence and death toll of military operations. Mikey Weinstein, founder and president of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, attributes the rise in extremism at the Pentagon to U.S.

The Iranian Regime Doubles Down

Less than two weeks into the American and Israeli bombardment of Iran, the war is both a success and a failure. Militarily, the campaign has effectively degraded the Islamic Republic’s warmaking capacities. But politically, thus far, it has only strengthened the regime’s cohesion.

Arizona Is Now at the Center of Election Investigations

Updated on March 10 at 9:21 p.m. ET.
In mid-February, as Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was fighting to keep her job, she held an election-security event at a Homeland Security Investigations field office in Scottsdale, Arizona. In the past, she said, the state had been an “absolute disaster on elections,” and ensuring the security of election equipment was her responsibility. She also urged Congress to pass President Trump’s voter-ID bill.