Today's Liberal News

Reindeer Have a Special Eye Color Just for Winter

Of all the eyeballs in Glen Jeffery’s office, only a very small minority are his.“Oh, I’ve got an office full of eyes,” Jeffery, a neuroscientist at University College London, told me. Over Skype, he fished one of his favorites out of an opaque vial: About the size of a golf ball and fringed with white tissue, it looked a bit like a poached egg with a slate-hued yolk.

This Fall Will Be a Vaccination Reboot

In one sense, this is how it was always supposed to go: When viruses evolve, vaccines should follow, and sometimes try to leap ahead. The COVID-19 shots that the U.S. has used to inoculate hundreds of millions of people are simply so new that they’ve never had to undergo a metamorphosis; up until now, their original-recipe ingredients have stood up to SARS-CoV-2 well enough. But the virus they fight has changed quite radically, and this fall, the vaccines will finally, finally follow suit.

Kevin McCarthy, Have You No Sense of Decency?

In the last few minutes of today’s January 6 committee hearing, Representative Liz Cheney presented evidence of possible witness intimidation. Several witnesses, she reported, had received messages from shadowy persons purportedly close to former President Donald Trump that implicitly warned of consequences to follow if those witnesses told the truth about his conduct.That is one sort of attempted cover-up.

Today: January 6 Chaos, Russia’s War Against Civilians

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.Here in the United States, Russia’s atrocities against Ukraine have been pushed off the front pages by news about controversial Supreme Court decisions and some of the most shocking revelations from the January 6 hearings to date.

Encrypt, Obscure, Compartmentalize: Protecting Your Digital Privacy in a Post-Roe World

Reproductive health advocates are urging Congress to pass the My Body, My Data Act, which will prevent consumer data that is related to reproductive health from being used as criminal evidence. Protecting how sensitive personal information is collected and stored online is critical to combating anti-abortion laws, says Daly Barnett, staff technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Investigation: Facebook Is Helping Anti-Abortion Clinics Collect Highly Sensitive Info on People

We look at the fight for privacy rights in a post-Roe America amid concerns that anti-abortion activists could use identifying data from online platforms like Facebook to target abortion seekers. Investigative reporter Grace Oldham describes how this data is already being used by medically unlicensed “crisis pregnancy centers” that actively lure patients to discourage them from seeking abortions.

Texas Abortion Funds Push to Keep Supporting Patients as State AG Vows to Prosecute Advocates

Is raising money to send pregnant people to another state to get an abortion aiding and abetting? We speak to Kamyon Conner, executive director of the Texas Equal Access Fund, the first Black woman to head the organization, about how Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has threatened to prosecute anyone violating a statewide abortion ban that was passed in the 1920s and never repealed. Lawmakers are also introducing bills to restrict FDA-approved abortion pills delivered through the mail.

News Roundup: Supreme Court erases another right; new Jan. 6 hearing announced

The Supreme Court continued to roll back all the rights you thought you had with a new uniquely dishonest decision allowing your school’s sports coaches to promote their own personal religion (so long as it’s the right one) to your kids during team sports, and if your kid doesn’t comply and is retaliated against by the rest of the team then guess what: That’s exactly what the court majority intends.

Ukraine update: Low on troops, Russia plays whack-a-mole with frisky Ukrainians

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Russia managed to move 20 kilometers from Popasna to the southern outskirts of Lysychansk in six weeks. It managed that task by massing its artillery ahead of its lines of advance, then sending its best infantry (VDV airborne remnants and Wagner mercenaries) back and forth between Severodonetsk and the Popasna advance once artillery had reduced the next objective to rubble.

Sotomayor brings receipts against the radical Supreme Court majority attacks on the constitution

The six extremist justices on the Supreme Court furthered their coup over Congress, the White House, and the Constitution on Monday, and continued their hatchet job on the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. The Trump-packed majority ruled that it was perfectly fine for a public school employee to make a display of his religious beliefs while on the job, and further, to exhort the students in his charge to participate in his public prayers. In Kennedy v.

Do not be distracted: Some key details that have emerged from the Jan. 6 probe

Between the Supreme Court and the U.S. Capitol, Americans are currently caught between two major historic events that have now collided: Most recently the overturn of Roe v. Wade, and before that affront to human rights, the investigation of the attack on the U.S. Capitol and the mounting and damning evidence of former President Donald Trump’s direct role in those insurrectionary acts.

Roe Was Flawed. Dobbs Is Worse.

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.I’m a conservative (or what used to be called a conservative) who always thought Roe v. Wade was the product of judicial activism. But overturning it is even worse.But first, here’s more from The Atlantic.
America is sliding into the long pandemic defeat, Ed Yong writes.

Roe Is the New Prohibition

The culture war raged most hotly from the ’70s to the next century’s ’20s. It polarized American society, dividing men from women, rural from urban, religious from secular, Anglo-Americans from more recent immigrant groups. At length, but only after a titanic constitutional struggle, the rural and religious side of the culture imposed its will on the urban and secular side. A decisive victory had been won, or so it seemed.

The Misgivings of Friend-Making

Listen and subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Google | Pocket CastsIn the post-social-distancing era, some of us can’t remember how to make a new friend. But for many, making friends has always been a challenge—left as an unfulfilled desire without any clear course of action.