Today's Liberal News

“We Just Unionized Amazon”: How Two Best Friends Beat the Retail Giant’s Union-Busting Campaign

We speak with the two best friends who led a drive to organize workers at Amazon’s warehouse in Staten Island, New York, and made history Friday after a majority voted to form the first Amazon union in the U.S. We speak with Christian Smalls, interim president of the new union and former Amazon supervisor, about how he led the effort after Amazon fired him at the height of the pandemic for demanding better worker protections.

Chris Hedges on Jailed WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange’s Wedding: He’s “Crumbling” in London Prison

Imprisoned WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is “crumbling” physically and psychologically, says journalist Chris Hedges, who last week attended Assange’s wedding to his longtime partner Stella Moris at London’s Belmarsh prison. Assange has been behind bars for nearly three years awaiting a possible extradition to the United States on espionage charges for publishing documents revealing war crimes committed in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Law: Emmett Till’s Cousin and Ida B. Wells’s Great-Granddaughter Respond

President Biden signed the Emmett Till Antilynching Act into law on Tuesday, culminating efforts to make lynching a federal crime that started over a century ago. We’re joined by Emmett Till’s cousin and best friend, Reverend Wheeler Parker Jr., who was 16 years old when he witnessed Till’s abduction from his great-uncle’s home in Money, Mississippi, prior to his brutal killing.

Calls Grow for Medicare for All; Uninsured & Communities of Color Hurt Most by End of COVID-19 Funds

With COVID-19 coverage ending for the uninsured, we look at how uninsured people and communities of color will bear the impact of the end to free COVID-19 testing, treatment and vaccines, and how the pandemic has led to a renewed push for Medicare for All. We are joined by Dr. Oni Blackstock, primary care and HIV physician and founder and executive director of Health Justice, and Dr.

The Reason for Zelensky’s Surprise Grammy Appearance

Addressing a room of sparkly bodices and artfully oversized jackets at the Grammy Awards, the president of Ukraine had a simple reminder to give. “Our musicians wear body armor instead of tuxedos,” Volodymyr Zelensky said in a surprise, pre-taped message that aired during last night’s ceremony.

Ukraine update: Russian war crimes in Bucha; new Russian moves in eastern Ukraine

As Russian troops retreat from their positions around Kyiv—a retreat forced by increasingly successful Ukrainian counterattacks that put a significant chunk of Russia’s committed forces in danger of encirclement–the world is in shock tonight as images of Russian war crimes continue to flow in from towns now liberated from Russian control.

The Downballot: We open our mailbag and answer your questions! (transcript)

This week on The Downballot, we open up our mailbag! Listeners sent us questions on a wide range of topics, including Wisconsin’s Senate race, legislative elections in Georgia, how Democrats should address inflation, whether handwriting postcards to voters is an effective tactic, and much more. David Nir and David Beard answered those questions.

Nuts & Bolts—Inside the Democratic Campaign: Talking about Trump will not win elections

Welcome back to the weekly Nuts & Bolts Guide to small campaigns! The old saying is that Republican voters fall in line and Democratic voters fall in love. There is a lot of truth to that statement. Along with that statement, we need to include something else. Voters in general like to hear some positives about your candidate’s accomplishments and reasons why they deserve to be elected. 

Occasionally, you can run against the scandal of your opponent.

Americans are using credit cards to pay for everything. What happens when the bills come due?

The promise of economic recovery has rung in America’s ears since the false promises of an end to the pandemic in 2021. Lawmakers, business owners, and speculators assured us that hallmarks of our consumer life, like casual spending on nonessentials, were returning, and that this would mean the society that houses the world’s largest economy could finally assume a new normal.

Incarcerated voices: Why do they matter?

Last August, an incarcerated friend of mine asked me to help him get into contact with his counselor, whom he hadn’t been able to reach. From that point on, I became an advocate and messenger. My friend had the support of his community; his loved ones sent money to deposit into his commissary account and to make sure they could talk to him via the kiosk system.

SNL Couldn’t Help Itself

Six days after the Oscars Slap came to dominate America’s cultural conversation, Saturday Night Live joined the fray with not just one joke but a torrent of them. Perhaps this was inevitable: The now-infamous pop-culture moment—an attack on a comedian, no less—is clearly within SNL’s wheelhouse, and the show latched on to the moment with zeal. But it was too much, too late.

All Creatures Great and Small

It’s striking how many stories and pictures from the war in Ukraine involve animals. One of the first Ukrainian civilian victims was a woman killed by Russian shelling as she tried to bring shelter dogs to safety near Kyiv. During the evacuation of the city, railway platforms and trains were crowded with pets of all kinds. A woman carried her infirm German shepherd a dozen miles on foot to cross the Polish border.

Mysterium Lunae

Last night  
I saw that the moon
Was empty in the sky.The stars around did
What they do.
They areMillions of miles
Away,  
Or millions of years,And are totally exhausted.
But the moon is blank,
Just a space to show  Where it might have
Been. We will tell
Whoever will attendThat the moon used to catch  
Light from the sun
And waxed and waned:Full, sickle, half-
Moon.

The Last of the Establishment Republicans

On the afternoon of March 3, 2020, Governor Mike DeWine stepped to a lectern inside the Ohio statehouse to announce his most difficult pandemic decision. Ohio, the governor announced, would bar most spectators from the upcoming Arnold Classic, a bodybuilding and fitness festival hosted annually by Arnold Schwarzenegger that draws a quarter of a million people from 80 countries to Ohio’s capital city. “Everything in life is a risk,” DeWine said.