Laura Clawson

When Elon Musk laid off nearly half of Twitter employees, he claimed they’d been offered three months of severance. Sixty days later, workers were left wondering what happened to that claim, Bloomberg reported Thursday, and that has led to more legal action against Twitter. Severance agreements might be forthcoming for workers willing to sign away their right to take legal action, Fortune reported, but information definitely had not come in a timely manner.

Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin is now breathing on his own and talking as he recovers from his on-field cardiac arrest in Monday night’s NFL game, but the issues his near-death and ongoing recovery raise are very much not over. For one thing, there was the long delay before the game was officially postponed (it was later cancelled), when the call to postpone a game following an on-field near-death should be a pretty much immediate one.

It took 15 votes and a near a near fistfight, but after a string of humiliating losses, Kevin McCarthy managed a humiliating victory. He has the résumé entry he’s been working toward for years: speaker of the House. Luckily for him, he doesn’t seem to care about anything but the title—because, after all of the concessions he made to get the title, he sure won’t be wielding much of the power generally presumed to go with it.

Following a massive blizzard that has killed at least 34 people in Erie County, New York, and continues to leave many people stranded, Buffalo police know where their priorities are: investigating thefts at dollar stores and ticketing drivers, not recovery missions.

The area has been devastated. A travel ban was issued too late, leaving many people trapped in cars or away from home when the storm moved in soon after.

Republican Rep.-elect George Santos admitted on Monday to many of the lies he got caught in only after being elected to Congress, but denied the broader implications of his pattern of lying and dodged some of the bigger issues raised by reports. In a series of interviews, Santos admitted to “résumé embellishment” but shrugged it off, saying that “a lot of people overstate in their résumés.

A Christmas travel weekend that kicked off with a major winter storm bringing understandable but no less disappointing flight cancellations around the country has spiraled into a total disaster for would-be passengers on one airline in particular.

On the Wednesday through Friday before Christmas, airlines cancelled more than 7,000 flights, with another 20,000 delayed due to Winter Storm Elliott.

Pointing out Republican hypocrisy is always tempting. It’s so easy to come up with examples—but the sheer ease of finding those examples shows why we need a different way of understanding what might appear to be hypocrisy. Because something else entirely is going on.

Two winners emerged from the recent poll on a piece I wrote about made-for-TV holiday movies in the Hallmark-Lifetime vein. The question was which movies I, or we, should watch, and the answers were Hanukkah on Rye by a landslide, followed by Christmas at the Golden Dragon.

Notably, both of these—though actual Hallmark productions—were big departures from the formula.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene recently said that if she’d planned the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, “we would have won. Not to mention, it would’ve been armed.” Greene went on to make clear that she was talking specifically about guns, but let’s check out what she considers to have been an inadequately armed mob, because the Jan. 6 committee has some details on that.

It took way too much yapping from Republicans, plus a vote on a motion to adjourn from Republican Rep. Chip Roy trying to take up extra time, before the House was able to vote on the omnibus bill to fund the government for the rest of the fiscal year. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy tried to win over the extremists he needs to get elected speaker in January, spewing out a series of far-right talking points that, in many cases, had little connection to the bill up for a vote.

UPDATE: Thursday, Dec 22, 2022 · 9:34:47 PM +00:00

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Laura Clawson

The House will vote Friday.

Here’s another little piece of good-but-nowhere-near-good-enough news in the government funding bill that Congress is racing to pass this week.

The New York Times is once again giving the stellar parody Twitter account New York Times Pitchbot a run for its money. The Times (the real one) is up with an article fretting about the implications of House Democrats possibly releasing information about Donald Trump’s tax returns, which “risks a tit for tat with Republicans.

The last couple of years have seen the major producers of TV holiday movies start coming out with movies centering on LGBTQ characters.

There’s a stereotype out there—pushed by the predictable crop of white centrist pundit bros—that elite liberals are just too worried about COVID-19 and favor precautions that alienate the ordinary folk. Call it the latest iteration of the impulse that produced so many New York Times interviews with Trump-supporting Midwestern diner patrons.

The data does not support that.

On Friday, Starbucks workers started a three-day strike at as many as 100 stores, following a one-day, 110-store walkout last month.

The workers are protesting the closure of some stores that have unionized, as well as Starbucks management’s refusal to negotiate in a timely way, as the company continues to drag its feet on reaching a first contract agreement at any of the more than 250 stores that have unionized so far.

The Georgia election runoff system was created in the 1960s to lessen the power of Black voters. In recent decades, it has worked overwhelmingly to the advantage of Republicans—until 2021, when Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock became U.S. senators. In response, Republicans shortened the time between general and runoff elections, hoping to gain an advantage.

Republicans have offered a preview of what we can expect from the House Oversight and Reform Committee once they’re in charge, and attorneys for women affected by that preview are objecting strongly to the “objectification and sexual exploitation” involved.

We warned you this was coming. The same crowd that said Republicans and their judges wouldn’t really overturn Roe v. Wade have dismissed the idea that Republicans and their judges would follow up Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization by coming for birth control next, but here it is.

Made-for-TV holiday movies are having a moment. They’ve been a personal tradition of mine for more than a decade, and the truly overwhelming profusion of options coming from outlets like Hallmark, Lifetime, Netflix, Hulu, BET+, Great American Family, and more suggests that I have more company every year in my affection.

Starbucks workers have been winning union elections for a year this week, and in that time more than 250 stores have unionized and more stores continue to file for union elections—but the company is still union-busting and refusing to bargain a contract in good faith with even one of those stores.

The day before the Georgia Senate runoff election, Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock is seen as having the advantage of Republican nominee Herschel Walker, but the race is expected to be tight. Warnock responded by sprinting through a final weekend of hard campaigning, making six campaign stops and delivering a sermon at Ebenezer Baptist Church, the historic Black church where he is senior pastor.

We’re in the dark days of the year, in the literal sense. The lights have to go on while I’m still working and the walk home after school happens in the darkness and the artificial light. In truth, I like winter—the weather and in a lot of ways the darkness create a sense of coziness. Snow falling through the glow of streetlights make me very happy (when it snows at all these days).

As we know, polls do not always get it right. But on Thanksgiving, we’re looking at a poll with lower stakes than who’s going to win the Georgia Senate runoff: a food poll.

Thanks to YouGov for these extremely important results on this most food-oriented of days.

Seriously, though. The Georgia runoff is coming up fast. Donate now to help Sen. Raphael Warnock bring the Democratic Senate majority to 51.

There may be no elected official better at speaking directly to the camera and conveying decency and warmth and intelligence and humor than Sen. Rev. Raphael Warnock, as he reminds us in a brilliant new Thanksgiving ad.

This ad is such a powerful reminder of why we need Raphael Warnock in the Senate. Can you donate $1, $5, or $10 to help him win this runoff?

YouTube Video

Politics these days is often used to divide us.

Rep. Mary Peltola’s August special election win to be Alaska’s lone member of the House of Representatives made history: She was the first Alaska Native in the House, and the first Democrat in 50 years to represent Alaska in the House. It was also one of the special elections that hinted, correctly, that November wasn’t going to be the red wave Republicans were crowing about.

It’s on, and by “it” I mean the Republican civil war. After the big gains they had confidently predicted failed to materialize—after, for that matter, the midterm gains you’d usually expect for the party out of the White House failed to materialize—Republicans are energetically finger-pointing and infighting. And Donald Trump’s big announcement is still on the horizon.

Let’s see what we’ve got.

Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto was seen as one of the most endangered Democratic Senate incumbents this year, but after days of counting, she has pulled it out, with NBC and CNN projecting her as the winner after a ballot drop from Clark County put her ahead by almost 5,000 votes. The first Latina in the U.S. Senate has won a second term, and Democrats will hold the Senate.

Cortez Masto defeated Adam Laxalt after being endorsed by 14 members of his extended family.

They weren’t mostly the highest-profile things on the ballot on Tuesday, but this year’s elections did include a number of ballot measures relevant to workers. The outcomes were a mixed bag.

In Illinois, a workers’ rights amendment looks likely to pass. That measure would affirm the right to organize and ban any law that “interferes with, negates, or diminishes the right of employees to organize and bargain collectively.

Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly has defeated Republican Blake Masters in Arizona’s Senate race. Arizona has been one of the hardest-fought battlegrounds this year, after both Kelly and President Joe Biden won narrowly in 2020. That marked the first time the state had two Democratic senators since 1953 and just the second time a Democrat had won the state’s presidential election since 1948.