Today's Liberal News

As U.S.-Russia Tensions Escalate over Ukraine, U.S. May Stumble into War, Warns Katrina vanden Heuvel

President Biden said Wednesday that Russian President Vladimir Putin will pay a “serious and dear price” if he orders his reported 100,000 troops stationed along the Russian-Ukraine border to invade Ukraine, a scenario Biden says is increasingly likely. This comes as U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with Ukraine’s president on Wednesday, similarly warning Russia could attack Ukraine on “very short notice.

Who Is Aafia Siddiqui? Synagogue Attack Renews Focus on Pakistani Neuroscientist Imprisoned in Texas

During Saturday’s synagogue attack in Colleyville, Texas, the gunman Malik Faisal Akram repeatedly called for the release of Pakistani neuroscientist Aafia Siddiqui, who is serving an 86-year sentence in a U.S. federal prison located just miles from the synagogue. Siddiqui was convicted in 2010 on charges that she intended to kill U.S. military officers while being detained in Afghanistan two years earlier. However, many questions remain unanswered about her time in U.S.

News Roundup: Senate battle for voting protections; Supreme Court rejects latest Trump gambit

In the news today: Tonight saw the latest Senate battle to protect voting rights even as Republican-held state legislatures pass unprecedented rollbacks targeting those rights. What’s next is unclear, but Democratic leaders organized the vote tonight as a move to force the two Senate Democratic holdouts—as well as all Senate Republicans—on record for blocking the urgently needed protections.

Florida suspends county health officer for daring to encourage vaccination among his employees

Republicans are really on a roll, aren’t they? First, they support Donald Trump, then Vladimir Putin—and now they’re using the copious political capital they’ve built up with the pig-ignorant half of America to go all-in for COVID-19. I shudder to think what’s next. Maybe they can repeal car-seat laws so toddlers are free to catapult into chemical freight trucks, as God and the Founders intended.

Why Biden Had No Other Choice on Voting Rights

On the eve of the January 6 insurrection, the twin special-election victories by Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff of Georgia gave Democrats the Senate majority they desperately wanted, and simultaneously burdened incoming President Joe Biden with something far more fickle: hope and expectations.

Republicans are known for dodging questions, but this Tennessee lawmaker takes it to the next level

Tennessee Republicans are hoping to turn the “blue bastion of Nashville” red by splitting it up between two more Republican-strangled districts. Since every move the Republican Party makes seems to spit in the face of the law (at least for now, since so many right-wing activist judges have lifetime positions), the constitutionality of their gerrymandering moves is always in question.

Harvard immigration clinic sues ICE after request for records goes ignored for more than four years

The Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinical Program said it submitted a number of requests to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) through the Freedom of Information Act back in 2017, seeking records on the mass detention agency’s use of solitary confinement. The practice has been condemned as torture by human rights advocates.

Do Uyghur Lives Matter to Americans?

Sign up for Conor’s newsletter here.In 2024, you can appoint any American citizen to one term as president, so long as your choice has never run for president before. Who do you appoint to the White House, and why would you choose them? What would you expect to be their biggest contribution and their biggest failure? Email answers to conor@theatlantic.com. I’ll publish a selection of answers in Friday’s newsletter. If you aren’t subscribed, sign up here.

What America Lost by Delaying the Vaccine Rollout

The first COVID-19 vaccine could arrive before Election Day, Donald Trump avowed in the summer of 2020. But government regulators wanted things to work out differently: “The deep state, or whoever, over at the FDA is making it very difficult for drug companies to get people in order to test the vaccines and therapeutics,” he wrote on Twitter. “Obviously, they are hoping to delay the answer until after November 3rd.

‘In the Name of God, Go’

“In the name of God, go!”If you wanted to choose a quotation to wound Boris Johnson—a man who wrote a biography of Winston Churchill as a coded advertisement for his own virtues—then this would be it. When Johnson’s fellow Conservative David Davis stood up in Parliament today and said these words, he must have intended them to be a fatal blow. Davis was not comparing the prime minister to his hero Churchill.

An Electrifying Adaptation of a Murakami Short Story

Drive My Car involves a lot of driving, but in one of its best scenes its main character is simply describing driving. Yusuke Kafuku (played by Hidetoshi Nishijima) is an actor and director who, because of his developing glaucoma, has been assigned a chauffeur, Misaki Watari (Toko Miura), by the theater festival he’s working for. Asked how her driving is, he says, “I think it’s great. When she speeds up or slows down, it’s very smooth and doesn’t feel heavy at all.

Angela Davis on Reissue of Her 1974 Autobiography, Her Editor Toni Morrison, Internationalism & More

Activist and scholar Angela Davis has released a new edition of her 1974 autobiography, first published and edited by Toni Morrison nearly 50 years ago. The book details Davis’s remarkable early life, from growing up in a section of Birmingham, Alabama, known as Dynamite Hill due to the frequency of bombings by the Ku Klux Klan, to her work with the Black Panther Party and the U.S. Communist Party.

Judge Approves Puerto Rico Debt Restructuring, But Unelected “Junta” Could Remain for Years Longer

In a major development, a federal judge on Tuesday approved a plan to restructure Puerto Rico’s massive debt. The proposal was presented by the territory’s U.S.-imposed Fiscal Control Board, and it reduces the biggest portion of the island’s debt, about $33 billion, by some 80%. Last year, union leaders pressured the board to remove cuts to pension plans from the current version of the debt restructuring deal.