Today's Liberal News

Formerly incarcerated chef serves up a menu that’s ‘made out of love’

This story was originally published at Prism.

Sharon Richardson had been incarcerated for 18 years when she was granted a visit to the hospital where her mother was in ailing health. This would be the last opportunity for Richardson to say her goodbyes. When she arrived back at the prison, however, she couldn’t have expected what was in store: her friends, women she lovingly now refers to as her sisters, had been allowed to cook an entire meal for her.

LGBTQ student-athletes feel supported by teammates more often than you might expect

Republicans have taken a running leap into transphobia when it comes to keeping trans youth out of sports. Across the nation, state lawmakers have introduced bill after bill that aims to prevent trans youth—more often than not, trans girls—from participating in school sports. Unfortunately, their focus on the non-issue has given the topic unearned legitimacy among moderates and even some progressives.

Kim Kardashian Didn’t Break Character on SNL

You don’t get to the status Kim Kardashian West occupies without knowing exactly what people think about you and using it to your advantage. So when the mogul, former reality star, and Instagram powerhouse walked out onto the Saturday Night Live stage for her hosting debut, her outfit—a skintight turtlenecked bodysuit made of fuchsia crushed velvet that covered her from the tips of her fingers to the points of her stilettos—said more about her than her monologue did.

Ode to Joy

Friedrich Schiller called Joy the spark of divinity
but she visits me on a regular basis,
and it doesn’t take much for her to appear—
the salt next to the pepper by the stove,
the garbage man ascending his station
on the back of the moving garbage truck,
or I’m just eating a banana
in the car and listening to Buddy Guy.In other words, she seems down-to-earth,
like a girl getting off a bus with a suitcase
and no one’s there to meet her.

Should Princeton Exist?

One recent fall morning at a coffee shop in Princeton, I overheard two students chatting about upcoming deadlines for the Rhodes, the Marshall, and the Mitchell—three prestigious postgraduate scholarships so coveted that they’ve become mononymous on elite campuses.“I don’t love the Rhodes dude from the 1800s,” one student confessed to the other. “Wasn’t he, like, racist?”Indeed.

1 Billion TikTok Users Understand What Congress Doesn’t

Many people think of TikTok as a dance app. And although it is an app full of dancing, it’s also a juggernaut experiencing astronomical growth. In July, TikTok—a short-form video-sharing app powered by an uncannily good recommendation algorithm and owned by the Chinese company ByteDance—became the only social-media mobile app other than those from Facebook to ever pass 3 billion downloads. At the end of last month, TikTok announced it had more than 1 billion monthly users.

Family of Henrietta Lacks Files Lawsuit over Use of Stolen Cells, Lambasts Racist Medical System

The family of Henrietta Lacks has filed a lawsuit against biotech company Thermo Fisher Scientific for making billions in profit from the “HeLa” cell line. Henrietta Lacks was an African American patient at Johns Hopkins University Hospital. Doctors kept her tissue samples without her consent for experimental studies while treating her for cervical cancer in 1951.

Filipina Journalist Maria Ressa Wins Nobel Peace Prize After Facing Years of Threats & Arrests

The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded Friday morning to Filipina journalist Maria Ressa and Russian newspaper editor Dmitry Muratov for their work to “safeguard freedom of expression.” Ressa has repeatedly been arrested by the government of Rodrigo Duterte for the groundbreaking work of her news site Rappler, which has exposed Duterte’s deadly war on drugs that has killed tens of thousands.

Ethiopia: New Reports Expose Ethnic Cleansing & Illegal Arms Shipments on Commercial Flights

Amid the mounting humanitarian crisis in Ethiopia, the Ethiopian government has been using the commercial airline Ethiopia Airlines to shuttle weapons and military vehicles from neighboring country Eritrea since the beginning of their civil war, according to a new CNN investigation. This comes as the United Nations estimates more than 5 million people in the country’s Tigray region are now in need of humanitarian assistance in order to survive, but U.N.

Britain’s Distasteful Soccer Sellout

In the northern English city of Newcastle upon Tyne, there is no Duomo di Firenze or Sagrada Familia standing tall, representing the city, its soul and spirit. There is no St. Paul’s Cathedral, Notre-Dame, or Basilica di San Marco. No, in Newcastle, the cathedral and castle are of secondary importance—so too the Roman wall built by the emperor Hadrian. In Newcastle, the soul of the city is its great, hulking, lopsided (and somewhat dilapidated) soccer stadium, St.

Community Spotlight: I Got The News Today remembers our military and consoles their loved ones

2004 was a dark year in the U.S. By April, American troops had been in Afghanistan for two and a half years, and in Iraq for just over one year. One member of the Daily Kos Community, i dunno, had had enough. Not only was President George W. Bush not attending the arrival of troops at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, but, i dunno wrote, “the public is not allowed to see the flag-draped coffins returning from Iraq … No pictures on the nightly news.