Today's Liberal News

How the U.S. Could Slash Climate Pollution by 2030

President Joe Biden has been giving climate advocates heartburn.In April, soon after rejoining the Paris Agreement, he set a goal: The United States would cut its greenhouse-gas pollution by 50 percent from 2005 levels by 2030. The White House promised that “a careful interagency process” had produced that goal, and at least a dozen reports from outside scholars and nonprofits argued that such an ambitious cut could be done.

Is That Wasp Nest … Glowing?

On a muggy spring night in 2016, the chemist Bernd Schöllhorn was tromping alone through a forest in northern Vietnam. Into the inky darkness, he raised a black light—and saw an extraordinarily bright shape winking at him in eerie shades of yellowish green.“I thought it was somebody else,” Schöllhorn, a researcher at the University of Paris, told me. But when he cut his own light, the stranger’s torch instantly extinguished as well.

The Way Forward for Movie Theaters Is Clear

Last week, I attended my first film screening that required proof of vaccination against COVID-19 upon entry. I presented my Excelsior Pass and photo ID and swanned on in. The entire process took 15 seconds, and in return I received the invaluable assurance that my fellow cinemagoers had also been inoculated. My experience was in line with New York City policy, which mandates proof of vaccination for many indoor activities.

The Coronavirus Could Get Worse

If evolution is a numbers game, the coronavirus is especially good at playing it. Over the past year and a half, it’s copied itself quickly and sloppily in hundreds of millions of hosts, and hit upon a glut of genetic jackpots that further facilitate its spread. Delta, the hyper-contagious variant that has swept the globe in recent months, is undoubtedly one of the virus’s most daring moves to date.

Voting Rights Groups Launch Civil Disobedience Campaign at the White House Urging End to Filibuster

With the Democratic-led House of Representatives expected to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, pressure is growing on the Biden administration and Senate Democrats to abolish the filibuster, without which new voting rights legislation and other Democratic priorities have no hope of passing the Senate. We speak with Ben Jealous, president of People for the American Way and former president of the NAACP, as voting rights groups protest in front of the White House.

David Gilbert, Ex-Weather Underground Member, Granted Clemency by Cuomo. Will Parole Board Free Him?

Outgoing New York Governor Andrew Cuomo used his final hours in office to grant clemency to six men, including former Weather Underground member David Gilbert, who was sentenced to 75 years to life in prison for his role in a 1981 robbery of an armored truck that left a security guard and two police officers dead. Gilbert, who is 76 years old and has been incarcerated for four decades, will now be able to apply for parole.

U.N. Warns of “Humanitarian Catastrophe” in Afghanistan Amid Political Turmoil, Economic Crisis & Drought

The United Nations warns Afghanistan is on the brink of a humanitarian catastrophe, as the country faces political upheaval, a worsening economic crisis and a devastating drought. Humanitarian groups are vowing to keep working in Afghanistan following the Taliban takeover, but they are facing new hurdles, from working under Taliban rule to concerns about the international community providing much needed foreign aid to restrictions at the Kabul airport.

Eric Adams is Making White Liberals Squirm

More than 20 years ago, I sat down to talk with a Black cop from New York City. He had a weightlifter’s powerful hands, a quick-trigger tongue, and a scar on the back of his shaved head from his days in a youth gang.At the time, the relationship between police officers and Black residents was raw. This was Rudy Giuliani’s New York, where a white New York cop sodomized a suspect with his baton and police killed an unarmed Black immigrant in a blizzard of gunfire.