Today's Liberal News

Alan Dershowitz whines that he’s now a pariah on Martha’s Vineyard just because he enabled Trump

You defend one wannabe fascist dictator by saying his boundless lust for power means he should be able to do anything he wants, and all of a sudden progressives don’t like you anymore. It’s brutally unfair, and we shouldn’t stand for it. Every American has an inalienable right to be invited to exclusive dress-formal cotillions on Martha’s Vineyard, no matter how many absurd arguments they’ve trotted out on behalf of lawless autocrats.

Ukraine update: Russia asks for ‘green corridor’ to evacuate encircled troops north of Kherson

Back in early May, I wrote an update on Ukraine in which I insisted that that the tide had turned and that Ukraine was about to do big things in Kherson and Kharkiv. Which, yeah, that didn’t exactly pan out. Though to be fair, at the time Russia still occupied some areas right outside of Kharkiv, and Ukraine was just beginning the move that would net Staryi Saltiv and drive Russian forces back to the border in some areas, so … it wasn’t completely wrong.

Ukraine, Russia agree to UN-backed deal to restart grain exports; global food crisis may be averted

A catastrophic global food crisis may just have been averted, even though Russia continues to wage war throughout Ukraine.

Ukraine and Russia separately signed a U.N.-backed treaty in Istanbul on Friday that would allow Ukraine to export millions of tons of grain from blockaded Black Sea ports. Russia will also be able to export fertilizer products through the Black Sea, even though sanctions remain in place.

“Today, there is a beacon on the Black Sea,” U.N.

Starbucks union hits major milestone despite ongoing union-busting, this week in the war on workers

Get your expressions of stunned awe ready here, because the Starbucks union has reached a truly amazing milestone: 200 unionized Starbucks stores. Of those, 52 voted unanimously to unionize, labor reporter Steve Greenhouse notes, with the union winning about five out of six stores to vote.

Last summer, when the organizing drive kicked off in Buffalo, unionizing one corporate-owned Starbucks seemed like a long shot.

The Torment of Odesa

A most predictable rocket attack hit Odesa today—announced shortly before it happened by an air-raid alert on my phone, but also a full day before, when Russia and Ukraine struck a tentative deal to let Ukraine ship grain from Odesa and two other ports. This morning, rockets landed at the port itself, which was soon in flames. Russia could not let a point of accord pass without spicing it up with discord. Let no agreement blossom into celebration.

The Era of Climate Change Has Created a New Emotion

From above, an open-cut coal mine looks like some geological aberration, a sort of man-made desert, a recent volcanic eruption, or a kind of terra forming. When the Australian philosopher Glenn Albrecht first gazed at a series of such mines while driving through his home region in southeast Australia, he stopped and got out of his car, overcome “at the desolation of this once beautiful place,” he wrote in his book, Earth Emotions.

Is Democracy Constitutional?

Every American child in public school learns that the U.S. political system is one of checks and balances, in which the judicial, executive, and legislative branches constrain one another to ensure that no one branch of government exercises too much power. One pending case before the Supreme Court asks: What if they didn’t?In Moore v.

Mike Pence Is Trying to Send a Message

You may not have predicted that Mike Pence—a man who once praised Donald Trump 14 times in a span of three minutes—would ever publicly defy his former boss. But 2022, it seems, is a brave new world in Republican politics.In the Arizona GOP primary for governor, Pence is, in essence, campaigning against Trump.

“Morons”: George Monbiot Compares PM Race to Viral British TV News Clip Questioning Climate Science

Following the resignation of British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Finance Minister Rishi Sunak and Foreign Secretary Liz Truss have advanced to a runoff to succeed Johnson as Conservative leader, which would also make them prime minister. Both candidates would be “utterly devastating” for the U.K., says Guardian columnist George Monbiot. “What these people have to do to become prime minister is really to appeal to the worst instincts of humanity.

D.C. police officer Michael Fanone harassed by protesters in minutes following Jan. 6 hearings

As if Metropolitan D.C. police officer Michael Fanone hadn’t been through enough while fighting a violent mob during the insurrection on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, now he’s forced to deal with protestors harassing him.

According to reporting from The Washington Post, as Fanone, who retired from the police force last year, was leaving the House select committee hearings on Jan.

Democrats are gaining, Republicans are faltering as the months tick down toward November

The fundamentals of the 2022 midterms increasingly reveal a cycle that is departing from the historic norms most pundits have relied on as touch points for their analysis.

In particular, the generic ballot trend lines appear to be decoupling from President Joe Biden’s job approvals by the day. FiveThirtyEight’s generic ballot aggregate, for instance, had tightened Thursday to a mere 1-point advantage for Republicans, 44.3%-43.