Price spikes threaten to ground Biden’s big-spending plans
The government reported Wednesday that the consumer price index, the most widely watched gauge of inflation, hit a four-decade high in December compared to the previous year.
Today's Liberal News
U.S. consumer prices soared 7 percent in past year, most since 1982
The jump is the latest evidence that rising costs for food, rent and other necessities are heightening the financial pressures on America’s households.
Powell’s warning to Congress: Inflation a ‘severe threat’ to jobs
The potential clash over the Fed’s plans to tighten monetary policy could be a harbinger of conflicts to come with Democrats and even some Republicans.
Who Is Aafia Siddiqui? Synagogue Attack Renews Focus on Pakistani Neuroscientist Imprisoned in Texas
During Saturday’s synagogue attack in Colleyville, Texas, the gunman Malik Faisal Akram repeatedly called for the release of Pakistani neuroscientist Aafia Siddiqui, who is serving an 86-year sentence in a U.S. federal prison located just miles from the synagogue. Siddiqui was convicted in 2010 on charges that she intended to kill U.S. military officers while being detained in Afghanistan two years earlier. However, many questions remain unanswered about her time in U.S.
News Roundup: Senate battle for voting protections; Supreme Court rejects latest Trump gambit
In the news today: Tonight saw the latest Senate battle to protect voting rights even as Republican-held state legislatures pass unprecedented rollbacks targeting those rights. What’s next is unclear, but Democratic leaders organized the vote tonight as a move to force the two Senate Democratic holdouts—as well as all Senate Republicans—on record for blocking the urgently needed protections.
Florida suspends county health officer for daring to encourage vaccination among his employees
Republicans are really on a roll, aren’t they? First, they support Donald Trump, then Vladimir Putin—and now they’re using the copious political capital they’ve built up with the pig-ignorant half of America to go all-in for COVID-19. I shudder to think what’s next. Maybe they can repeal car-seat laws so toddlers are free to catapult into chemical freight trucks, as God and the Founders intended.
Why Biden Had No Other Choice on Voting Rights
On the eve of the January 6 insurrection, the twin special-election victories by Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff of Georgia gave Democrats the Senate majority they desperately wanted, and simultaneously burdened incoming President Joe Biden with something far more fickle: hope and expectations.
Republicans are known for dodging questions, but this Tennessee lawmaker takes it to the next level
Tennessee Republicans are hoping to turn the “blue bastion of Nashville” red by splitting it up between two more Republican-strangled districts. Since every move the Republican Party makes seems to spit in the face of the law (at least for now, since so many right-wing activist judges have lifetime positions), the constitutionality of their gerrymandering moves is always in question.
‘I’ve got two negatives’: Utah Senate President fails to mention positive tests before session
We are two years into the pandemic, yet some Republicans do not understand the depth of the issue. Across the country, GOP members are not only failing to comply with safety regulations put in place to stop the novel coronavirus but in some cases even lying about test results. In one incident, a Utah lawmaker tested positive and lied about it—not once, but twice.
Harvard immigration clinic sues ICE after request for records goes ignored for more than four years
The Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinical Program said it submitted a number of requests to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) through the Freedom of Information Act back in 2017, seeking records on the mass detention agency’s use of solitary confinement. The practice has been condemned as torture by human rights advocates.
Eric Trump Pleaded The Fifth More Than 500 Times In Deposition, Court Filing Says
The former president’s son was interviewed by the New York attorney general’s office in its civil probe into the Trump Organization.
Supreme Court Rejects Trump Request To Keep Records From Jan. 6 Committee
In an 8-1 decision, the court agreed that Trump cannot stop the release of White House records to lawmakers investigating the attack on the Capitol.
More Republicans Take Credit For Infrastructure Funding They Voted Against
Iowa Rep. Ashley Hinson touted “game-changing” funding aiming to modernize locks and dams on the Mississippi River — even though she voted against it.
Do Uyghur Lives Matter to Americans?
Sign up for Conor’s newsletter here.In 2024, you can appoint any American citizen to one term as president, so long as your choice has never run for president before. Who do you appoint to the White House, and why would you choose them? What would you expect to be their biggest contribution and their biggest failure? Email answers to conor@theatlantic.com. I’ll publish a selection of answers in Friday’s newsletter. If you aren’t subscribed, sign up here.
What America Lost by Delaying the Vaccine Rollout
The first COVID-19 vaccine could arrive before Election Day, Donald Trump avowed in the summer of 2020. But government regulators wanted things to work out differently: “The deep state, or whoever, over at the FDA is making it very difficult for drug companies to get people in order to test the vaccines and therapeutics,” he wrote on Twitter. “Obviously, they are hoping to delay the answer until after November 3rd.
Texas GOP Candidate For Governor Won’t Fire Staffer With Deep White Nationalist Ties
Don Huffines, a candidate with harsh anti-immigrant views, says dismissing Jake Lloyd Colglazier would be “cancel culture.
How many health care workers are vaccinated? It’s anyone’s guess.
Without more precise data, “you don’t know what’s happening and you don’t have the ability to say how at risk is the health care workforce,” said Celine Gounder.
Opinion | Why Are Minority-Owned Banks Disappearing? Washington Holds the Smoking Gun
Congress needs to create a new safety net for such lenders — not let regulators squeeze them out of business.
Supreme Court Justices Dispute Report Of Gorsuch Denying Requests To Wear Mask
An NPR report claimed Neil Gorsuch won’t wear a mask on the Supreme Court bench despite Sonia Sotomayor’s preexisting condition.
CDC: Vaccinated Americans with a prior infection fared the best during Delta
The study did not explain why protection against reinfection and hospitalization grew among those individuals with a prior infection during Delta.
‘In the Name of God, Go’
“In the name of God, go!”If you wanted to choose a quotation to wound Boris Johnson—a man who wrote a biography of Winston Churchill as a coded advertisement for his own virtues—then this would be it. When Johnson’s fellow Conservative David Davis stood up in Parliament today and said these words, he must have intended them to be a fatal blow. Davis was not comparing the prime minister to his hero Churchill.
An Electrifying Adaptation of a Murakami Short Story
Drive My Car involves a lot of driving, but in one of its best scenes its main character is simply describing driving. Yusuke Kafuku (played by Hidetoshi Nishijima) is an actor and director who, because of his developing glaucoma, has been assigned a chauffeur, Misaki Watari (Toko Miura), by the theater festival he’s working for. Asked how her driving is, he says, “I think it’s great. When she speeds up or slows down, it’s very smooth and doesn’t feel heavy at all.
Angela Davis on Reissue of Her 1974 Autobiography, Her Editor Toni Morrison, Internationalism & More
Activist and scholar Angela Davis has released a new edition of her 1974 autobiography, first published and edited by Toni Morrison nearly 50 years ago. The book details Davis’s remarkable early life, from growing up in a section of Birmingham, Alabama, known as Dynamite Hill due to the frequency of bombings by the Ku Klux Klan, to her work with the Black Panther Party and the U.S. Communist Party.
Scholars Angela Davis, Gina Dent & Beth Richie on Why the World Needs “Abolition. Feminism. Now.”
Abolitionist scholars Angela Davis, Beth Richie and Gina Dent discuss their new book, published Tuesday, titled “Abolition. Feminism. Now.
Judge Approves Puerto Rico Debt Restructuring, But Unelected “Junta” Could Remain for Years Longer
In a major development, a federal judge on Tuesday approved a plan to restructure Puerto Rico’s massive debt. The proposal was presented by the territory’s U.S.-imposed Fiscal Control Board, and it reduces the biggest portion of the island’s debt, about $33 billion, by some 80%. Last year, union leaders pressured the board to remove cuts to pension plans from the current version of the debt restructuring deal.
How Omicron ruined new mayors’ honeymoons
The Omicron surge didn’t just upend mayors’ inaugural fetes. It’s overtaken their first days and weeks in office, jeopardizing their approval ratings before they get a chance to push their agendas.
Abortion pill fight could ensnare Biden’s FDA pick
Dozens of influential anti-abortion rights organizations are mobilizing against Califf, sending letters to senators arguing he has “a track record of rubber-stamping abortion industry demands.
Biden’s first year: A tale of 2 presidencies
Inside the White House, there is still optimism: “President Biden was elected to a four-year term, not a one-year term.
Beijing to offer Olympic tickets to ‘selected’ spectators amid pandemic
Beijing had already announced that no fans from outside the country would be permitted at the events, and had not offered tickets to the general public.
‘Not a tolerable situation’: Patient groups take aim at CMS over Alzheimer’s coverage decision
Their goal is to strong arm the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services into covering Aduhelm, the $28,200-per-year drug, for far more people.