Today's Liberal News

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.

Each Sentence Is One You Can Feel

Margaret Atwood came to fiction by way of poetry, as did Michael Ondaatje and Wole Soyinka. In their novels, as in those of the Japanese writer Mieko Kawakami, who wrote songs and poems before turning to fiction, the attention to sensory experience is particularly keen, concise, and meaningful. Kawakami doesn’t just assemble a tactile detail and park it in a scene. Sensation itself drives her scenes, the way the senses can steer a poem.

The Election Denier Who Could Run Michigan’s Elections

In the weeks after the 2020 election, one particular Michigan woman was trumpeting claims of fraud as loudly as she could. Kristina Karamo, a community-college professor who’d previously accused Democrats of having a “satanic agenda,” went on Fox News again and again to describe how illegal ballots supposedly had been tallied for Joe Biden at the TCF Center in Detroit, where she worked as a poll watcher.

Kids Are Far, Far Behind in School

Starting in the spring of 2020, school boards and superintendents across the country faced a dreadful choice: Keep classrooms open and risk more COVID-19 deaths, or close schools and sacrifice children’s learning. In the name of safety, many districts shut down for long periods. But researchers are now learning that the closures came at a stiff price—a large decline in children’s achievement overall and a historic widening in achievement gaps by race and economic status.

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.

I can’t rant about religion because that’s a generalization

Over the last few days, we’ve had some diaries about religion and the impact of religion on the world and on politics. I understand the frustration with religious leaders who offer viewpoints that are damaging, not based in science, and harmful to the rights of others. Graphics, comments, quotes—they can all add up to a set of conclusions in novapsyche’s diary. Comments showed others putting forward their own thoughts, and I find everyone’s experiences meaningful.

Ukraine update: Seriously, stop panicking about Popasna

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As usual, War Mapper has the best visualizations of daily battlefield changes: 

Updates: 🇷🇺 captured Novoselivka, Northwest of Lyman. 🇷🇺 continued its advances in the vicinity of Popasna, taking control of the villages of Viktorivka and Vyskryva. pic.twitter.

From fake customer accounts to fake job interviews, Wells Fargo is just the worst

Wells Fargo is once again making headlines for being a terrible, unethical company even by the poor standards of the financial industry. Just over two years after the bank paid a $3 billion fine for opening millions of fake accounts in the names of actual customers, current and former employees are alleging that they were told to conduct fake interviews to fulfill Wells Fargo’s diversity policies.