Today's Liberal News

Kevin McCarthy tweets recycled pro-police video just days after skipping Jan. 6 moment of silence

“RT to thank the men and women in blue on #LawEnforcementAppreciationDay,” Kevin McCarthy tweeted from his account earlier this month. The very produced one minute and nine second-long video featured the Republican House minority leader riding bikes with law enforcement and handling memorial wreaths. The tweet, dated Jan. 9, ends with the words “thank you to our police.”

But just three days before that tweet, on the anniversary of the Jan.

Did you read more books than the average American adult in 2021? Let’s find out

Unfortunately, here in the United States, we tend to be inundated with wellness advice that basically sums up to: Do more, try harder, and be better. There’s much to be said about how capitalism ingrains itself so deeply into our personal lives that we experience, say, a difficult period or traumatic event and turn to self-improvement (as opposed to widely accessible mental health care, for example).

The IRS is broken, just as Republicans intended. It’s what they want for the rest of government

Tax filers in 2022 will face the same frustrations and delays that have characterized tax season for years now, heightened by the pandemic. Treasury officials recently spoke to reporters in a conference to begin the process of lowering taxpayers’ expectations.

The IRS, they told reporters, is dealing with the pandemic and the fact that it has just 15,000 employees tasked with customer services, expected to handle more than 240 million calls.

Either John Cornyn is an idiot or he thinks you are

It doesn’t get any more dimwitted than this. Last week, Sen. John Cornyn of Texas claimed that Democrats’ focus on protecting the right to vote was in response to a “manufactured crisis.”

To support that claim, he pointed to a Pew Research Center poll conducted just after the November 2020 presidential election that found more than nine in 10 voters said it was easy to vote in the election.

Why volunteering for Obama in 2008 gives me hope that we can still save democracy

The first time I got involved in politics in a real way was the 2008 presidential election. A friend of mine convinced me to volunteer to make calls in support of this junior senator from Illinois named Barack Obama.

I must admit, as much as I loved the idea of playing a part in getting the first Black president elected, I thought there’s no way in hell this guy can win. I mean, his middle name is Hussein. No way white people will vote for this guy after 9/11.

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.