Today's Liberal News

Ukraine Update: Severodonetsk is exposed, isolated, under assault. Why doesn’t Ukraine retreat?

  • by

The United States’s decision on whether to send MLRS/HIMARS rocket artillery to Ukraine has been painfully long and torturous, but they’re reportedly on the verge of making it happen. According to CNN’s sources, the problem is fear “Ukraine could use the systems to carry out offensive attacks inside Russia … The MLRS and its lighter-weight version, the HIMARS, can launch as far as 300km, or 186 miles.

Happy 20th anniversary, Daily Kos! And the 2022 Koscars go to …

A 20-year-old person can’t even drink legally in the U.S., but many a glass will be raised today in honor of the Daily Kos 20th anniversary. Whether you have wine, beer, sparkling water, Ardbeg, or oat milk in your glass, it doesn’t matter: Propose your own toast to 20 years of reading, ranting, laughing, crying, and changing the world together.

Trump is looking just vulnerable enough to challenge in 2024, and he knows it

Donald Trump is still the most dominant Republican in the country, but his very mixed primary record has left his air of invincibility in tatters.

As The Washington Post’s Aaron Blake notes, Trump has a 30% problem. While several of his endorsees won their races convincingly, most of them either won or lost with a less-than-middling 30-some percent of the GOP vote. They include:

Rep.

Where Were the Police?

My advice, if you are in an active-shooter situation, is the same no matter your age. Listen for the source of the shooting. Give yourself at most two seconds for this task. Those are not firecrackers. Then run as fast as you can in the other direction, and do not stop running until the only thing you hear is the sound of birds chirping, wind in the trees or grass, and the beating of your own heart.

The Review: Top Gun

Top Gun: Maverick is out soon! But can any movie with fast planes, Tom Cruise, and beach volleyball truly compare to the classic fighter-pilot movie about, as writer Shirley Li puts it, “cute boys calling each other cute names”? And do audiences have an appetite anymore for what Megan Garber called an “infomercial for America”? Find out with Shirley, Megan, and David Sims, and explore the moral (but fictional) simplicity of an earlier era: the Cold War ’80s.

The Amber Heard–Johnny Depp Trial Is Not a Joke

The first time it happened, she said, she thought it was a joke. On the stand in her defamation trial a few weeks ago, the actor Amber Heard shared her account of the first time her now-ex-husband, Johnny Depp, allegedly hit her. She’d asked him about one of his tattoos: the one on his bicep (the one he’d famously had edited) that to her looked like a muddle of black ink. The tattoo spelled out wino, she said he told her.

How to Fix Twitter—And All of Social Media

Those debating the future of Twitter and other social-media platforms have largely fallen into two opposing camps. One supports individuals’ absolute freedom of speech; the other holds that speech must be modulated through content moderation, and by tweaking the ways in which information spreads.  It sounds like an old-fashioned confrontation between the idealists and the realists, but in this case both sides are peddling an equally dismal vision.

Patrick Cockburn Warns the West’s “Triumphalism” in Ukraine Could Prolong Conflict Indefinitely

As fighting continues in Ukraine, we speak with journalist Patrick Cockburn, who says Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is peddling a “vague triumphalism” which is “obscuring just how dangerous and how bad the situation has become.” His recent CounterPunch piece is headlined “London and Washington are Being Propelled by Hubris — Just as Putin was.

After the Uvalde Massacre in South Texas, Will Migrants with Key Info Be Protected from Deportation?

The Department of Homeland Security announced Wednesday it would try to temporarily pause “immigration enforcement activities” in the town of Uvalde, Texas, so families could freely seek assistance and reunite with their loved ones following Tuesday’s massacre at Robb Elementary, which left 19 students and two teachers dead. The school’s population is nearly 90% Latinx, and Uvalde is part of a heavily militarized border zone in South Texas.

“Enough Was Enough”: How Australia Reformed Its Gun Laws & Ended Mass Shootings After 1996 Massacre

After the 1996 Port Arthur mass shooting, Australia passed sweeping new gun control measures that largely ended mass shootings in the country. We speak with Rebecca Peters, an international arms control advocate who led the campaign to reform Australia’s gun laws after the massacre. She recalls how in just 10 days the prime minister brokered a deal with local officials to pass higher standards around gun safety that would prevent any mass shootings for the next 20 years.

“A Uniquely American Problem”: Pressure Grows for Gun Control After School Massacre in Texas

As people mourn Tuesday’s mass shooting that left dead 19 students and two teachers, Republicans who still oppose any new gun control measures face growing outrage. “This is a uniquely American problem, and it’s happening with such frequency and such devastation, it’s almost hard to wrap your mind around,” says Robin Lloyd, managing director of the gun violence prevention group Giffords.

News Roundup: Texas death toll increases; gun violence apologists scurry to dodge blame

The death toll in the Uvalde, Texas, school shooting now stands at 19 elementary school children and two teachers, with at least 17 others injured. The state’s Republican leaders immediately launched into defenses that tried to push blame onto everything other than their own efforts to reduce even the flimsiest hurdles standing between Texas mass murderers and weapons of war. The National Rifle Association is still planning to hold its convention in Houston this weekend.

Ukraine update: Russia is blockading Ukraine, but it’s blackmailing the world

On the ground, Ukraine’s military has been remarkably effective at halting Russian advances and extracting a price for every inch of ground surrendered. Oryx currently has Russia’s verified losses at over 4,000 pieces of equipment, including 715 tanks. By comparison, Ukraine’s documented losses are at just over 1,000 pieces of equipment and 177 tanks. Russia has been losing equipment at a rate that’s 4 times that of Ukraine. It still is.