Today's Liberal News
Ted Cruz spends big bucks protecting himself from guns while striving to make the rest of less safe
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz has a choice few other Americans ever face. He can either help make the country safer for everyone, or he can continue to make it safer for Ted Cruz. Gee, which option do you think he’ll choose? Honestly, if he picks the former, I’ll eat my “I Ate the Worm at the Congo Bar in Cancún While Texas Families Froze 2021” bucket hat.
DOJ Won’t Charge Mark Meadows, Dan Scavino For Contempt Of Congress
The action came the same day as the Justice Department said a grand jury had indicted Peter Navarro for his refusal to cooperate with the Jan. 6 committee’s investigation.
Latino civil rights group MALDEF sues Illinois landlord who threatened tenants with deportation
Illinois couple Maria Maltos Escutia and Gabriel Valdez Garcia entered a verbal agreement to rent a basement apartment in 2017, agreeing to pay Marco Antonio Contreras and Denise Contreras $600 a month. This verbal agreement continued on for several years until early 2020, when the Contreras’ asked for a signed contract, to which Maltos Escutia and Valdez Garcia agreed.
Ex-Trump Adviser Peter Navarro Vowed Revenge On Biden Before Being Indicted
The former trade adviser pledged to take Democratic “clowns and kangaroos” to court, but the next day he was the one who landed before a judge.
How Trump Paved Dr. Oz’s Path
Pennsylvania Republicans have rallied behind a celebrity former TV host and political neophyte, choosing a charismatic convert to conservatism over a rival who espoused a purer form of the party’s modern doctrine.The above sentence could have been written in 2016, when Donald Trump defeated Senator Ted Cruz in Pennsylvania’s presidential primary on his way to receiving the GOP nomination. But tonight it’s a description of Mehmet Oz, America’s favorite living-room M.D.
Majority Of Americans Identify As ‘Pro-Choice’ In Highest Level In Decades, Gallup Poll Finds
A poll director said fears that Roe v. Wade will be gutted have “jolted” a larger segment of Americans into “identifying with the pro-choice side” of the issue.
Why This COVID Wave Feels Different
In mid-March, I began to notice a theme within my social circle in New York, where I live: COVID—it finally got me! At that point, I didn’t think much of it. Only a few of my friends seemed to be affected, and case counts were still pretty low, all things considered. By April, images of rapid tests bearing the dreaded double bars were popping up all over my Instagram feed. Because cases had been rising slowly but steadily, I dismissed the trend to the back of my mind.
More cases of monkeypox expected as CDC warns of community spread
Since May, there have been more than 700 global cases of monkeypox identified in countries outside West and Central Africa where the virus is endemic.
The Bittersweet Silliness of Hulu’s Fire Island
What Fire Island, the movie, understands about Fire Island, the place, is that paradise can feel like purgatory. The smart new comedy does depict the New York vacation spot’s famously titillating amenities: outdoor dance parties whose rhythms echo for miles, ornery drag queens wearing cheery colors, physiques buffed and flaunted like Ferraris. But it also captures a stillness in the air, an emptiness in the landscape, and an ambient sense of tension and futility.
We Should Have Seen Monkeypox Coming
Nearly five years before an unusual cluster of monkeypox cases in the U.K. alarmed the world, doctors were dealing with an unusual cluster of monkeypox in another unexpected country: Nigeria. The virus is endemic to Central Africa, but Nigeria, far to the west, had not recorded a case of monkeypox since 1978. When an 11-year-old boy showed up with skin lesions in September 2017, doctors first suspected chickenpox. But no, tests pointed to the much more unusual monkeypox.
Learning How to Grieve in Public
To insist, as the journalist John Gunther did, that Death Be Not Proud deserved to be published was to insist that the boy it memorialized deserved to be remembered, not only by his family but by the world. As his 17-year-old son, Johnny, died of cancer, Gunther drafted a candid portrait of his grief. When it was published, in 1949, his level of disclosure was still considered uncouth, and Gunther knew it.
Biden OKs $5.8B in Debt Relief for Corinthian Students; Pressure Grows to Abolish All Student Debt
The Biden administration this week canceled almost $6 billion in student loan debt for borrowers who attended the now-defunct network of for-profit schools known as Corinthian Colleges, which defrauded thousands of students before being shut down in 2015. We speak to two activists from the Debt Collective, a group working to end the student loan crisis, about the ongoing fight for full federal student debt cancellation.
“We Can’t Jail Our Way Out of Poverty”: San Fran. DA Chesa Boudin Defends Record Ahead of Recall Vote
We speak to San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin, who was elected in 2019 after promising to end cash bail, curb mass incarceration and address police misconduct. He now faces a recall campaign, with opponents blaming rising crime rates on his policies, even though sources like the San Francisco Chronicle report that crime rates have returned to pre-pandemic levels.
“This Is Racist Terrorism”: Ex-Buffalo Cop Says Gun Violence & White Supremacy Must Both Be Addressed
As President Biden calls on Congress to enact new gun control measures, we go to Buffalo to speak with Cariol Horne, a racial justice advocate and former Buffalo police officer. She says the nation must address white supremacy, as well as gun control, following last month’s massacre in Buffalo, when a white supremacist attacked a grocery story, fatally shooting 10 people, all of whom were Black.
Can long Covid lead to death? A new analysis suggests it could
The CDC is beginning to look at death certificates that indicate more than 100 people who died had long Covid.
Vaccine injury compensation programs overwhelmed as congressional reform languishes
One program covers nearly three times as many vaccines today as it did when it was created three decades ago. Despite bipartisan calls for change, Congress has failed to act.
America’s hospital regulator wasn’t designed for a pandemic
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is responsible for safety regulations. It is ill-equipped to enforce them.
Austin pushing to effectively decriminalize abortion ahead of ruling on Roe
The state’s so-called trigger law, which would take effect 30 days after a Supreme Court ruling overturning Roe, includes the nation’s harshest criminal penalties on abortion.
CMS turning attention to hospitals with Covid outbreaks
The nation’s hospital regulator is probing hospitals where patients were likely infected with Covid after a record spike in transmission this year.
China’s fragility feeds the doom-mongers in Davos
Fêted at the World Economic Forum in 2017, Xi Jinping is now accused of torpedoing the global economy with his disastrous Zero Covid strategy.
RIP Davos Man, long live globalization
Open markets aren’t what they used to be. A more complicated, more regional economic system is reshaping the global order.
U.S. economy is in a ‘period of transition,’ White House economic adviser says
Despite high inflation, the U.S. is “moving from the strongest economic recovery in modern history to what can be a period of more stable and resilient growth,” Brian Deese said.
U.S. inflation hit 8.3% last month but slows from 40-year high
On a month-to-month basis, prices rose 0.3% from March to April, a still-elevated rate but the smallest increase in eight months.
Fed set to launch fresh assault on inflation in new era for economy
Rates this year could reach their highest levels since before the 2008 Wall Street crash if surging prices continue.
Civil Rights Orgs Challenge Racist “Insular Cases” Used to Legally Discriminate Against Puerto Rico
Civil rights groups are challenging a series of racist U.S. Supreme Court rulings that have been used for over a century to legally justify discrimination against people in Puerto Rico and other U.S.-occupied territories.
News Roundup: Miami GOP embraces Jan. 6 seditionists; Biden wipes $5.8 billion of student debt
As the Biden administration ponders how aggressively it should confront the student loan crisis (which more accurately might be called the grifting college crisis), at least some students will be seeing full relief. The administration announced that the federal government will erase all of the nearly $6 billion in student debt incurred by those defrauded by the now-defunct Corinthian Colleges.
Ukraine update: Fighting continues in Severodonetsk, and things are definitely not going as expected
A funny thing happened on the way to Russia’s capture of Severodonetsk. After reports from Ukrainian officials that Russia held about 80% of the city, and a full week after Chechen forces claimed to have taken the whole city (which never happened), Ukraine now appears to hold more of Severodonetsk than it did on Wednesday.
Some statements are now going as far as saying that Severodonetsk was a trap to lure in Russian soldiers.
Ukraine update: Russia pushes out from Lyman, but runs into a very familiar obstacle
The area east of the Izyum salient continues to be the zone of hottest contention, and on Thursday the pattern there hasn’t changed—Russia, having concentrated heavy forces in the area, is slowly grinding forward, capturing more villages, and moving closer to major targets like the cities of Slovyansk and Kramatorsk.
Kooky MAGA tour starring Roger Stone and Mike Flynn inspires fierce pushback in upstate New York
The best way to picture the ReAwaken America Tour is as a sort of flat-Earth conference for political junkies. The second-best way is to get one of those Ronco inside-the-shell egg scramblers, attach it to your skull, adjust the setting to “Don Jr.,” and commence pureeing your brain until Mike Flynn, Roger Stone, and Mike Lindell appear in your mind’s eye, screaming bilious nonsense about the “stolen” 2020 election.