Today's Liberal News

Anti-BDS Jewish Orgs Back Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream Sales Ban in Settlements Despite Israeli Pressure

Israel has launched what has been described as a maximum pressure campaign against Ben & Jerry’s and its parent company Unilever, after the iconic ice cream brand announced it would halt sales in Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank. Israel has asked 35 U.S. governors to enforce state laws which make it a crime to support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, or BDS.

Human Rights Watch Accuses Israel of Apparent War Crimes in Gaza Assault; Urges ICC Probe

Human Rights Watch is calling on the International Criminal Court to open a probe into apparent Israeli war crimes committed during its recent 11-day assault on Gaza that killed 260 Palestinians, including 66 children. We discuss a major report HRW released this week that closely examines three Israeli strikes that killed 62 Palestinians civilians in May. U.S.-made weapons were used in at least two of the attacks investigated.

“This Is Not a Climate Bill”: Leah Stokes on Why Bipartisan Infrastructure Deal Doesn’t Go Far Enough

Senate Democrats have announced that they have joined with 17 Republicans to vote in favor of taking up a $1.2 trillion infrastructure deal. The plan includes new spending on climate and environment measures, but critics say it falls far short of what is needed. Democrats say they hope to include additional climate measures in a $3.5 trillion reconciliation package that could advance without being blocked by a Republican filibuster if it is backed by all 50 Democrats.

Community Spotlight: Bring in the home repair experts

In 2006, claude, a contractor and self-described “grumpy old man” who specializes in adobe construction, decided that Daily Kos needed an expert’s corner for do-it-yourselfers. He started the Saturday Morning Home Repair Group; the first installment, eponymously titled “Saturday Morning Home Repair blogging,” offered a lesson on how to change a light bulb.

MAGA secretary of state candidate says she knows Trump won California … because she’s an empath

You know, if we’re just going to go with our hunches about political races and assume they mean something, then I must insist that Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election by a final score of 154 million to, I don’t know, 8. Total votes, that is. Because I simply can’t fathom why anyone not named Trump would ever vote for anyone who is named Trump. It would be like putting up a big, star-spangled yard sign to let your neighbors know you have chlamydia.

Democrat Carl Levin, whose 36-year stint made him Michigan’s longest-serving senator, dies at 87

Michigan Democrat Carl Levin, whose service from 1979 to 2015 made him the Wolverine State’s longest-serving senator, died Thursday at the age of 87. Levin, who twice led the Armed Services Committee, was an influential figure during his time on Capitol Hill, and he played an integral role in passing the 2010 bill that ended the military’s discriminatory “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy.

Matt Gaetz is poised to marry her sister, but Roxanne Luckey wants the world to know he’s ‘a creep’

Young adults and Gen Z close to Republicans are taking to TikTok to expose them. First former White House aide Kellyanne Conway’s daughter went viral for sharing suspicions that her mom and others contracted COVID-19; now 20-year-old Roxanne Luckey, sister to Florida Congressman’s Matt Gaetz’s fiance Ginger Luckey, has taken to the platform to share her thoughts.

26 million workers have gotten a raise thanks to the Fight for $15, this week in the war on workers

The Fight for $15 kicked off in November 2012, with a relatively small—yet also historically large—group of New York City fast food workers making what seemed an audacious demand: $15 an hour minimum pay and a union. The latter goal hasn’t advanced much since then, but $15? That has become solidly mainstream, and has brought big wins. A new report from the National Employment Law Project quantifies just how big.

The federal minimum wage remains just $7.

When Pursuing Love Is the Only Option

In the final episode of The Pursuit of Love, Linda Radlett (played by Lily James), the dazzlingly romantic and impractical heroine of Nancy Mitford’s 1945 novel, is taken shopping by a formidable French aristocrat. Linda parades a series of outfits, blowing kisses and laughing, then feigns abashed surprise when Fabrice (Assaad Bouab), her new lover, declares that they’ll take it all.

Who Owns Amanda Knox?

Does my name belong to me? Does my face? What about my life? My story? Why is my name used to refer to events I had no hand in? I return to these questions again and again because others continue to profit off my identity, and my trauma, without my consent. Most recently, there is the film Stillwater, directed by Tom McCarthy and starring Matt Damon and Abigail Breslin, which was, in McCarthy’s words, “directly inspired by the Amanda Knox saga.

I Watched Cuba Crumble From the Inside

The author standing with a tank by Havana’s Malecon in 1988 (Courtesy of Jorge Felipe-Gonzalez)
Every Thursday at 5 p.m., my grandmother would go into her bedroom in Havana, lock the door, and tune her Soviet-made radio to Radio Martí, a Miami-based station run by Cuban exiles who had fled Fidel Castro’s revolution. She always set the volume barely above a whisper. “Walls have ears,” she would say.