Today's Liberal News

“Disaster Patriarchy”: V (Eve Ensler) on How the Pandemic Has Unleashed a War on Women

The pandemic has led to a sharp rise in gender-based violence, job losses in female-dominated industries, greater parenting duties for mothers, and other pressures that primarily fall on women around the world. These effects amount to a kind of “disaster patriarchy” in which “men exploit a crisis to reassert control and dominance and rapidly erase the hard-earned rights of women,” says V, the artist and activist formerly known as Eve Ensler.

U.S. Finally Offers to Send Vaccines Abroad, But Lack of Global Plan Leaves Poorer Nations in Crisis

The Biden administration on Thursday announced that the U.S. will donate 25 million surplus doses of COVID-19 vaccines to developing countries, pledging to donate a total of 80 million doses by July. Economist Jeffrey Sachs says rich countries have enough production capacity to speed up vaccine distribution and immunize the whole world within the next year. “There’s massive supply, but there’s no plan for allocation,” he says.

“The Second”: Carol Anderson on the Racist Roots of the Constitutional Right to Bear Arms

Do African Americans have Second Amendment rights? That’s the question Emory University professor Carol Anderson set out to answer in her new book, “The Second,” which looks at the constitutional right to bear arms and its uneven application throughout U.S. history. She says she was prompted to write the book after the 2016 police killing of Philando Castile, who was fatally shot during a traffic stop after he told the officer he had a legal firearm.

“The Minister of Chaos” — For The Atlantic’s July/August issue, Tom McTague profiles Prime Minister Boris Johnson

Many Americans view Boris Johnson as the U.K.’s answer to Donald Trump––a perception that the prime minister desperately wants to dispel. “I’m laboriously trying to convey to an American audience that this is a category error that has been repeatedly made,” Johnson says in a revealing and fascinating new profile on the cover of The Atlantic’s July/August issue.

How the Characters of Pose Built Their Own Church

This article contains spoilers through the series finale of Pose.In a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter, the actor Billy Porter explained the monumental meaning of his role in the FX drama Pose, which aired its series finale tonight. Yes, he won his first Emmy in 2019 for portraying Pray Tell, the cantankerous fashion designer who moonlights as an emcee in New York City’s underground ball scene.

Boris Johnson Knows Exactly What He’s Doing

This article was published online on June 7, 2021.“Nothing can go wrong!” Boris Johnson said, jumping into the driver’s seat of a tram he was about to take for a test ride. “Nothing. Can. Go. Wrong.”The prime minister was visiting a factory outside Birmingham, campaigning on behalf of the local mayor ahead of “Super Thursday”—a spate of elections across England, Scotland, and Wales in early May.

Who’s paying the human costs of plastic pollution?

This story was originally published at Prism. 

By Yvette Arellano and Mariana Del Valle Prieto Cervantes

All too often, the issue of plastic pollution is reduced to plastic straw bans led by clipboard-carrying college students, VSCO girls, and bracelets made with a promise of saving turtles. It conjures images of a wad of plastic grocery bags or perhaps a garbage island floating in the middle of the ocean somewhere.

New study shows conservatives hear, and believe, far more fake news than liberals

This isn’t exactly earth-shattering news. Earth-shattering news would be Donald Trump getting a good night’s sleep for the first time in 10 years, realizing he’s been acting like a drunk pelican with a Hot Pocket stuck in his throat for most of this century, conceding the election, apologizing profusely to Joe Biden, and telling Eric (but not Junior) that he loves him.

But while this might not be that kind of news, it’s news nonetheless.

Unknown Bird

Photo illustrations by Miki LoweW. S. Merwin was a man of many callings. He was an incredibly prolific poet—he won the Pulitzer Prize twice, along with nearly every other major literary award. He also dedicated his life to environmentalism: After moving to a barren pineapple plantation in Hawaii in 1977, he painstakingly restored it to its natural state, growing back hundreds of species of palm.

‘Our Next Option Was the Back of My Pickup’

Deep in the densely forested foothills of southern Oregon, near the town of Butte Falls, Lanette and Steve Martin lived with their son and his family—until last year, when a wildfire chased them away from their home. As embers the size of charcoal briquettes landed on their front deck, the retired couple and their family jumped into their cars, leaving behind five chickens and a cat.