Today's Liberal News

Nuts & Bolts a guide to Democratic campaigns: Choice is an issue on every single ballot

Welcome back to the Nuts & Bolts guide to campaigns. This week I want to talk about issues, and why steering away from some out of fear is just bad, bad campaigning. If you haven’t guessed, I want to talk about the importance of being willing to discuss, and own, pro-choice positions in your campaign. Too often, candidates get trapped into the idea that they need to “hold back” because Republicans will tag them or that it will hurt their campaign.

SNL’s Sharp, Frustrated Take on Abortion Rights

In seeking historical precedence for the upcoming Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, Justice Samuel Alito stretched far beyond the ideology of originalism—the guiding precept among a certain conservative faction that constitutional law should not stray far from the Constitution.

Why the Puzzle-Box Sci-Fi of Severance Works

At a time when the American office is anywhere a Zoom window can be opened, the notion of truly separating work and home is an alluring one. Take that thought to its furthest extreme and you have the Apple TV+ thriller Severance.

In the Hospital Rooms of My Country

Translated by Ilya Kaminsky and Katie FarrisLetters of the alphabet go to war
clinging to one another, standing up, forming words no one wants to shout,
sentences that are blown by the mines in the avenues, stories
shelled by multiple rocket launches.A Ukrainian word
is ambushed: Through the broken window of
the letter д other countries watch how the letter і
loses its head, how the roof of the letter м
falls through.The language in a time of war
can’t be understood.

To Create Art, a Mother Must Forget About Her Children

While still a student in the late 1960s, the artist Mierle Laderman Ukeles, pregnant with her first child, encountered a famous sculptor. She recalls him declaring, upon seeing her round belly, “Well, I guess now you can’t be an artist.” He wasn’t, she later realized, entirely wrong; once she had a baby, Ukeles found herself trapped in the kind of mindless automated work that defines early motherhood—bottle, diaper, rock, repeat.

“I Was Raped by My Father. Abortion Saved My Life”: Prof. Michele Goodwin on SCOTUS & the New Jane Crow

As the Supreme Court is poised to strike down Roe v. Wade, we speak with law professor Michele Goodwin, who has written extensively about how the criminalization of abortion polices motherhood. She discusses how on the eve of the court’s oral arguments in the Dobbs case in November, she wrote about how an abortion saved her life. She describes how the U.S.

Premature “Normalcy” Could Backfire as U.S. COVID Death Toll Passes 1 Million & New Variants Spread

Governments around the world are eagerly returning back to pre-pandemic conditions by relaxing preventative restrictions, lifting mask mandates and pulling back public funding. Dr. Abraar Karan, infectious disease fellow at Stanford University School of Medicine, says these moves are overly optimistic and that the U.S. is not prepared for new variants spreading around the country. “We’re trying to say it’s over. It’s not true,” he says.

Historian Timothy Snyder: Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine Is a Colonial War

We speak to Yale University historian Timothy Snyder about his latest article for The New Yorker, “The War in Ukraine Is a Colonial War.” Snyder writes about the colonial history that laid the foundations for the Russian war in Ukraine, such as Russia’s imperial vision and how leaders including Hitler and Stalin have aimed to conquer Ukrainian soil on different premises. “The whole history of colonialism … involves denying that another people is real.

Where the Language of Democracy Is a Cover

On Friday afternoon, supporters of John Lee gathered for what his adviser described as a preelection rally, a final push in Lee’s campaign to secure victory in the election to be Hong Kong’s next chief executive.Don’t let the vocabulary fool you. No members of the general public attended Lee’s event, a stage-managed flourish to a weeks-long show masquerading as a contest.

Cartoon: Roberts did this

Chief Justice Roberts is presiding over the end of Roe v. Wade AND the legitimacy of the US Supreme Court. Thanks to right wing creatures like Mitch McConnell it’s filled with lying right wing politicians instead of jurists. They have to fence in the court to keep the public from tearing it down, but all we want is for justice and precedent to prevail.

Former defense secretary: Trump wanted to fire missiles into Mexico and pretend someone else did it

As bad as Donald Trump’s presidency was, rest assured it could have been way, way worse. And believe me, I get how bad it was. On its best days, it was like a happy-ending massage from Edward Scissorhands. On its worst days, it was like a shiatsu massage from Edward’s younger brother, Larry Used-Heroin-Needle Thumbs.

And yet some people still think he could—and/or should—be president again. Yeah, him. The scamp who attempted to 86 Western democracy.

Ukraine update: Russia can’t stop getting snake bit

Maybe Ukraine’s patron saint isn’t actually St. Javelin, but St. Patrick. Whoever is running the show, they don’t seem to like Russians who hang around Snake Island. 

#Ukraine: A birdie flew past & gave us another angle of the Ukrainian TB-2 strike against a Russian Tor SAM system on Snake Island- another TB-2 was watching no less than 108km (67mi) away. Seems the missiles went a little crazy after the strike.https://t.co/eft74Bgj2H pic.twitter.

High school association now requires youth to compete on sports teams that match birth certificate

Thanks to Republican hate and queerphobia, trans youth are already suffering. As Daily Kos has covered, trans and nonbinary youth are uniquely ill-protected when it comes to basic rights and dignities, including everyday things like having access to bathrooms that align with their gender identity. We’ve also seen efforts to ban already difficult to access safe, age-appropriate, gender-affirming health care.

April jobs report shows continuing strong job creation

The April jobs report was strong, with 428,000 new jobs and unemployment holding steady at 3.6%. Black unemployment ticked down to 5.9%, which, while it’s far above white unemployment the Economic Policy Institute’s Elise Gould notes is the first time it’s been under 6% in the pandemic recovery.

That’s the good news. There are key areas of weakness:

The private sector has now gained back 97.