Today's Liberal News

Could Cuba Become a “Silent Gaza”? U.S. Fuel Blockade Aims to “Asphyxiate” Island: Top Cuban Diplomat

As the United Nations General Assembly opens in New York, we speak with senior Cuban diplomat Carlos Fernández de Cossío, who says the Trump administration is seeking to “asphyxiate the people of Cuba into submission.” On Friday, millions in Cuba lost power in what was at least the sixth major blackout since President Trump cut off fuel shipments to the island in January. The fuel blockade comes on top of the six-decade-long U.S.

“Politics Are Desperately Important at the Moment”: Bill McKibben on Midterms, Trump & Climate Crisis

Ahead of the midterm elections, activist and writer Bill McKibben says he has been traveling across the United States with Third Act, the environmental group he founded to harness the power of seniors who care about the climate and democracy. “These elections are also starting to set the groundwork for 2028,” says McKibben, who calls the next U.S.

“We Are the 99%”: 15 Years Later, Occupy Wall Street’s Impact Is Still Being Felt

Fifteen years ago this week, thousands of activists marched on the Financial District in New York City. They formed the Occupy Wall Street encampment in Zuccotti Park, launching a movement focused on economic inequality that spread across the nation and globe under the slogan, “We are the 99%.” Protesters would go on to sleep in Zuccotti Park for nearly two months before police raided the encampment.

Photos: Wildflowers Bloom in the Atacama Desert

Javier Torres / AFP / Getty
An aerial view of patches of blooming wildflowers in the Atacama Desert near Copiapó, Chile, seen on September 18, 2026Javier Torres / AFP / Getty
People look at a carpet of flowers blooming in the Atacama Desert on September 18, 2026.Javier Torres / AFP / Getty
A car passes through a flower-covered area of the Atacama Desert on September 18, 2026.

What Were My Dreams Trying to Tell Me?

Illustrations by Hélène Blanc
When I was 20 years old, I started to sense a hole inside me. The feeling was utterly concrete, though the result of no medical condition that any of the various doctors I saw could identify. The hole felt like a viscous emptiness—a paradox, admittedly, as any real emptiness should have felt like nothing. This was a nothing, but its nothingness very much felt like something—and something that was growing.

In Defense of Guilt by Association

J. D. Vance and Abdul El-Sayed have very little in common ideologically and seem to like each other even less. As part of a nasty exchange of personal insults last month, the Democratic nominee for Senate in Michigan implied that Vance’s grandfather would disapprove of the vice president’s Indian American wife. In response, Vance called El-Sayed “very, very evil” and warned him to “keep my wife’s name the hell out of your mouth because she’s way out of your league.