Today's Liberal News

The Week That Made Modern America

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.“Collective grief can have a way of warping the historical lens,” my colleague Vann R. Newkirk II explains in Holy Week, a new Atlantic podcast series exploring the week of fiery uprisings that broke out across many major U.S. cities following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.

What Does DEI Even Mean?

Welcome to Up for Debate. Each week, he rounds up timely conversations and solicits reader responses to one thought-provoking question. Later, he publishes some thoughtful replies. Sign up for the newsletter here.Question of the WeekThis week, Donald Trump was arraigned on 34 felony counts and pleaded not guilty to all. His indictment has sparked debates about the legal soundness and wisdom of the criminal charges against him, his future in politics, and how the press is covering it all.

We Settled for Catan

Board games are hostage situations. “C’mon, it’s fun!” your brother or so-called friend says, and then for the next two or eight hours you’re stuck. Rules are read, cardboard chits are distributed, and rounds of wit or chance (or both) transpire. But it is fun, because the joy of gaming first involves accepting arbitrary rules just to feel the sensation of having embraced them.And yet, board games are terrible.

“The Undertow”: Author Jeff Sharlet on Trump, the Far Right & the Growing Threat of Fascism in U.S.

We speak with award-winning journalist and author Jeff Sharlet, who has spent the last decade reporting on the growing threat of fascism across the United States. In his new book, The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War, Sharlet says the language of “civil war” has become central to right-wing rhetoric, mainstreamed by former President Donald Trump, Congressmember Marjorie Taylor Greene and other Republicans.

Reporters Without Borders Denied Entry to Visit Assange in U.K. Prison; No NGO Has Seen Him in 4 Years

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has spent the last four years locked up at the Belmarsh high-security prison in London, where he has been fighting extradition to the United States on espionage charges. He faces up to 175 years in prison if convicted. This week, amid growing concerns about Assange’s health, Reporters Without Borders attempted to become the first NGO to visit with Assange since his arrest four years ago.

Calls Grow for Russia to Free Jailed U.S. Journalist Evan Gershkovich, Accused of Espionage

We speak with Joshua Yaffa, a close friend of Evan Gershkovich, The Wall Street Journal reporter who has been jailed in Russia since his arrest last week, when he was accused of trying to obtain state secrets related to the Russian military — days after the United States indicted a Russian man in Brazil on espionage charges. Gershkovich’s parents left the Soviet Union for the United States before he was born, and he has reported in Russia since 2017.

The GOP’s ‘Abusive Relationship’ With Trump

It’s a measure of Donald Trump’s hold on the Republican Party that his unprecedented criminal indictment is strengthening, not loosening, his grip.Trump was on the defensive after November’s midterm election because many in the GOP blamed voter resistance to him for the party’s disappointing results.

Trump’s Authoritarian Playbook

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.After his arraignment in New York, a weary Donald Trump returned to Mar-a-Lago, where he made a rambling and disjointed statement. (To call it a “speech” would be too generous.

The New ‘Transparent’ Twitter Isn’t Very Transparent

For the past decade or so, the social internet has been largely controlled by secretive algorithms. Designed by tech companies to capture attention and drive engagement, they determine which posts end up in your feeds and which sink like a rock, never to be seen again. These algorithms play a role in polarization, rocketing ordinary people to overnight fame, and the spread of extreme, violence-provoking content.

Depraved, Deranged, and Doing Real Damage

In his speech last night to his supporters at Mar-a-Lago, made several hours after he was arraigned in Manhattan on 34 felony counts, Donald Trump took aim at Juan Merchan, the judge in the case.“I have a Trump-hating judge with a Trump-hating wife and family, whose daughter worked for Kamala Harris and now receives money from the Biden-Harris campaign, and a lot of it,” Trump said.