Today's Liberal News

What Is Life Like When We Subtract Work From It?

If you’ve ever wondered whether a life without work would be blissful, well, Lorie Kloda can confirm that it pretty much is.Kloda really likes her job as a university librarian in Montreal, but she still really liked not doing it for a year. During a paid sabbatical that ended this spring, she deleted the work-communication apps from her phone and regularly forgot what day of the week it was; she read, went to museums, picked up tennis. She stopped getting the Sunday scaries.

“His Name Is George Floyd”: Two Years After Police Murder, His Life & the Struggle for Racial Justice

This week marks the second anniversary of the police murder of George Floyd. We speak with Washington Post reporters Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa, who have just published an in-depth new book, “His Name Is George Floyd: One Man’s Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice,” that tells the story of structural racism in the U.S. through Floyd’s own story. “This is an American story.

Greenslide: Climate Crisis Spurs Green-Labor Win in Australian Election Over Pro-Coal, Right-Wing PM

In what is being described as a “greenslide,” voters in Australia topple the prime minister, ending nearly a decade of conservative rule. The main issue? Climate change. Voters elected Anthony Albanese of the center-left Labor Party as their new prime minister on Saturday, ousting the right-wing, pro-coal Scott Morrison, who had served as Australia’s prime minister since 2018.

After Which Failed Pregnancy Should I Have Been Imprisoned? Rep. Lucy McBath on Reproductive Rights

During a meeting of the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, Democratic Congressmember Lucy McBath of Georgia shared her personal story about accessing reproductive care after experiencing a stillbirth. In doing so, she pointed out how anti-abortion politicians and legislators fail to see the medical necessity of abortion in instances such as hers. “We can be the nation that rolls back the clock, that rolls back the rights of women, and that strips them of their very liberty.

Amy Littlefield on Oklahoma’s New Total Abortion Ban & the Long Fight Ahead After Roe Falls

After a leaked Supreme Court draft opinion revealed the intention to overturn Roe v. Wade, abortion has increasingly become a state issue, with conservative states criminalizing the procedure. Oklahoma approved a bill on Thursday that outlaws almost all abortions beginning at fertilization. The measure is modeled after a Texas ban that encourages private citizens to sue abortion providers and people who assist in abortions.

Buffalo: India Walton on the Racist Massacre & Community’s Need for Gun Control, Good Jobs, Housing

As Buffalo, New York, mourns the loss of the 10 people killed Saturday in a racist rampage at a local grocery store in the heart of the city’s African American community, we get an update from longtime community activist and former mayoral candidate India Walton about the lack of attention to the structural issues that made the Black community vulnerable and the ineffectiveness of police.

Lessons for Buffalo? Meet the Activist Who Sued the White Supremacists Behind Charlottesville & Won

The Buffalo shooter wrote racist screeds online before targeting and killing people in a majority-Black neighborhood. We look at the incident’s similarities to other white supremacist killings, particularly the deadly 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. Amy Spitalnick is the executive director of Integrity First for America, a nonprofit organization that successfully sued the white supremacist organizers of Unite the Right.

News Roundup: Extremism in politics; support for Roe is steadfast; Wells Fargo remains terrible

Republicanism is rapidly merging with all manner of domestic extremism, and a new study paints a grim picture of just where things stand. As the Supreme Court’s new conservative wing sets its sights on unraveling federal abortion protections, support for abortion rights remains steadfast among Americans not pushed into lifetime judicial positions by Republican nihilists. Republicans continue to support lowering taxes on the wealthy while ratcheting taxes up for the non-wealthy, but Sen.

Nuts & Bolts—Inside a Democratic campaign: Don’t let others redefine you

Welcome back! Every week here on Nuts & Bolts I take time to look at issues surrounding big and small campaigns, and with the help of campaign staff, candidates, and organizations nationally I try to come up with a picture of what goes into a successful campaign, what we learn from the most recent elections, and the trends we think are emerging in the way we communicate our message to voters.

What Kate McKinnon Gave to Saturday Night Live

From Kate McKinnon’s first sketch on Saturday Night Live in 2012, it was evident she’d be a star. Appearing in a Pantene commercial as Penélope Cruz, alongside then-host Sofía Vergara, McKinnon delivered Cruz’s Castilian Spanish accent with a winking twist.

Lilies

The poet Mary Oliver was a legendary observer of nature. She chronicled scuttling hermit crabs and mossy hollows, “freshets of wind” and the “wild, clawed light” of the sun.Her reverence for the natural world was clear—not just because she described it so frequently, but because of her exquisite detail. Oliver wrote with the kind of precision that came from the heightened attention of deep love.