Today's Liberal News

A Synagogue Shouldn’t Be a Fortress

A few years ago, in response to the deadly 2018 attack on the Tree of Life congregation in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the synagogue where my children and husband are members asked me to advise its new security committee. Easy enough. It is what I do for companies, public entities, schools, and sports teams. My job is to assess risk and buttress defenses in response to those risks. That’s it. I do cold calculations, not emotion. On that occasion, however, dispassion was a liability.

MLK Day Special: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in His Own Words

Today is the federal holiday that honors Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He was born January 15, 1929. He was assassinated April 4, 1968, at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. He was just 39 years old. While Dr. King is primarily remembered as a civil rights leader, he also championed the cause of the poor and organized the Poor People’s Campaign to address issues of economic justice. Dr. King was also a fierce critic of U.S. foreign policy and the Vietnam War.

We Booped the Sun

Kelly Korreck is still thinking about the time her spacecraft flew into the sun, how one moment, the probe was rushing through a stormy current of fast-moving particles, and the next, it was plunging somewhere quieter, where the plasma rolled like ocean waves. No machine had ever crossed that mysterious boundary before. But Korreck and her team had dispatched a mission for that exact purpose, and their plan worked.

Where Marx Meets Migos

Sign up for Caleb’s newsletter here.“You know something, we ain’t never really had no old money,” the Migos member Offset begins the trio’s 2016 megahit, “Bad and Boujee.” “We got a whole lot of new money, though.

The Silent, Vaccinated, Impatient Majority

Politicians rarely set out to piss off their constituents, much less admit to doing so. So when French President Emmanuel Macron expressed his desire to antagonize France’s unvaccinated citizens into receiving COVID vaccinations, observers and many of his rivals were appalled, and some were a bit confused. Macron is up for reelection in April, and a quarter of his country remains unimmunized.

The COVID-Risk Social Contract Is Under Negotiation

“Three people walk into a bar …” What once launched a thousand jokes now sends a frisson of anxiety. What’s their vaccination status? Are they masked? Did they test before going out?Nothing in life is risk free. I live in the United Kingdom, where every year several people die, according to the official statistics, by falling from a lower surface to a higher one. I’m still puzzling that one out.

“Who We Are”: New Film Chronicles History of Racism in America Amid Growing Attack on Voting Rights

As the United States heads into the Martin Luther King Day holiday weekend, attempts by Democrats to pass major new voting rights legislation appear to have stalled. We examine the new award-winning documentary “Who We Are: A Chronicle of Racism in America,” which follows civil rights attorney Jeffery Robinson as he confronts the enduring legacy of anti-Black racism in the United States, weaving together examples from the U.S. Constitution, education system and policing.

John Nichols on How “Coronavirus Criminals & Pandemic Profiteers” Hurt World’s Response to COVID-19

We speak with The Nation’s national affairs correspondent John Nichols on the occasion of his new book, “Coronavirus Criminals and Pandemic Profiteers: Accountability for Those Who Caused the Crisis,” which takes aim at the CEOs and political figures who put profits over people during the coronavirus pandemic. The chapters cover notorious figures such as former President Trump, Mike Pompeo, Jared Kushner and Jeff Bezos.

Confessions of a “Human Guinea Pig”: Professor Quits Vaccine Trial over Moderna’s Corporate Greed

Jeremy Menchik, a self-described “human guinea pig” who volunteered for Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine trials, dropped out to protest the company’s greed in reaping profits from the ongoing pandemic while doing little to resolve global vaccine inequity. Menchik is launching a new website — mrna4all.org — where other vaccine trial participants can join the effort to pressure vaccine makers to scale up production to vaccinate the world.

The Bloody, Brutal Business of Being a Teenage Girl

Yellowjackets, the Showtime series about a high-school girls’ soccer team stranded in the wilderness after a plane crash, can be extremely stressful to watch. The drama, which ended its first season tonight and has been renewed for a second, is relentlessly violent, and the writers seem to delight in attacking or killing off the most lovable characters.

As employers expand pool of workers, formerly incarcerated people see opportunities and risks

by Ray Levy Uyeda

This article was originally published at Prism.

“Help Wanted” signs have gone up and stayed up in storefront windows around the country as the COVID-19 pandemic has caused widespread loss of life and fueled the Great Resignation. Still, criminal justice advocates say the worker shortage could be turned around if employers hired those most willing to work in a pandemic and in need of a job: formerly incarcerated people.