Today's Liberal News

Family wants answers after 22-year-old Black man, Amir Locke, shot and killed during no-knock raid

On Wednesday, Minneapolis police executed a no-knock warrant on a downtown apartment and then in the next nine seconds, proceeded to shoot and kill 22-year-old Amir Locke, as he lay wrapped up in a blanket on a couch. Interim police Chief Amelia Huffman told reporters that the shooting took place around 7 a.m. The officers who entered the apartment were SWAT team members acting on warrants in service of the St. Paul Police Department.

Settlement reached after police dog mauls teen and deputies fire so indiscriminately dog is killed

A South Carolina county is set to shell out $700,000 in a civil settlement after a teen girl was “mauled by a police dog and shot five times by deputies,” the victim’s attorneys announced in a news release Tuesday. The injured teen, a white girl who wasn’t identified in the release, was 16 years old at the time of the incident on Aug. 11, 2020 in Anderson County. Deputies shot her without a clear line of sight, civil rights attorney Ben Crump said in the release.

Looking Beyond Affirmative Action

Sign up for Conor’s newsletter here.Earlier this week, I asked for your thoughts on racial preferences in college admissions. For context, Pew found in 2019 that “most Americans (73%) say colleges and universities should not consider race or ethnicity when making decisions about student admissions. Just 7% say race should be a major factor in college admissions, while 19% say it should be a minor factor.

Yellowjackets Is So Much More Than a ‘Female Lord of the Flies’

Attempts to summarize the Showtime series Yellowjackets have mostly had to rely on creaky comparisons: a female Lord of the Flies … a ’90s Stranger Things … a teen Lost, but in Canada. The coming-of-age horror story is indeed tough to categorize, but nonetheless thrillingly addictive. The show follows a championship-bound girls’ soccer team that crashes in the wilderness in 1996, threading their story with that of the surviving members as adults in 2021.

The Age of the Unique Baby Name

These days, if you hear about the birth of an Olivia or a Liam, you might feel a pang of sympathy—the poor child has been cursed with the most popular name of their time and might be at risk of sharing it with a kindergarten classmate.This wasn’t always considered an undesirable outcome.

Attending an HBCU Has Always Been an Act of Courage

On Monday, campus life at at least seven historically Black colleges and universities was interrupted by bomb threats. School leaders alerted students, faculty, and staff. Law-enforcement officers swept the grounds. By midday, some campuses had issued an all-clear while others continued assessing the situation.

The Internet Is Just Investment Banking Now

Twitter has begun allowing its users to showcase NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, as profile pictures on their accounts. It’s the latest public victory for this form of … and, you know, there’s the problem. What the hell is an NFT anyway?There are answers. Twitter calls NFTs “unique digital items, such as artwork, with proof of ownership that’s stored on a blockchain.

Ex-Chicago Cop Jason Van Dyke Freed Early over Murdering Laquan McDonald; Activists Seek Fed Charges

We go to Chicago, where protests erupted Thursday over the early release of the white ex-police officer Jason Van Dyke, who was convicted of killing a Black 17-year-old named Laquan McDonald in 2014. Van Dyke — who was the first police officer in the United States to be charged with murder for an on-duty shooting — was sentenced to nearly seven years in prison but was freed early for “good behavior” after only serving a little over three years of his sentence.

GOP Grill Fed Nominee Sarah Bloom Raskin over Climate Views; Her Husband Rep. Jamie Raskin Responds

We speak with Rep. Jamie Raskin about his wife Sarah Bloom Raskin’s grilling by a Senate panel Thursday over her qualifications to be President Biden’s nominee for the top bank regulator, the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. Republicans argue her past comments on climate change show she could use her position to discourage banks from lending to fossil fuel companies. Raskin said if she was confirmed, she would not be able to take such actions.

News Roundup: Republican coup plot nearly dragged in NSA; Iowa Republicans want to spy on your kids

In the news today: There seem to be few parts of the government that Republicans didn’t try to subvert in the attempt to topple the United States government last January, and you can now count the National Security Agency among them. There also seem to be few parts of the plan that Trump’s alleged “legal” team weren’t directly involved with.

Outside of Washington, D.C., Republican attacks on schools are only heating up.

Daily Kos Elections 4Q 2021 Senate fundraising reports roundup

Quarterly fundraising reports for federal candidates covering the period from Oct. 1 to Dec. 31 were due at the Federal Elections Commission on Jan. 31 by 11:59 PM ET. Below is our chart of fundraising numbers for every Senate incumbent up for reelection this cycle (excluding those who’ve said they’re retiring) and any notable announced or potential candidates.

As always, all numbers are in thousands. The chart, and an explanation of each column, can be found below.

Daily Kos Elections 4Q 2021 House fundraising reports roundup

Quarterly fundraising reports for federal candidates covering the period from Oct. 1 to Dec. 31 were due at the Federal Elections Commission on Jan. 31 by 11:59 PM ET. Below is our chart of fundraising numbers for every House incumbent (excluding those who’ve said they’re retiring) and any notable announced or potential candidates.

As always, all numbers are in thousands. The chart, and an explanation of each column, can be found below.

Black Trumpkin pastor in Virginia brags about issuing 17,000 religious exemptions from vaccines

It may seem that the Republican Party is willing to condone racism. After all, Donald Trump still has the GOP very much in his thrall, despite his penchant for blowing racist yacht horns—like calling Democratic lawmakers “savages” when he was attacking a Latina, two Black people, a Palestinian, and two Jews. But the GOP is okay with people of color—just as long as they’re line-drawing conservatives. Take the word of Sen.