In the news today: The undoing of a century of science and social progress at the hands of a “conservative” fascist movement looking to bring back horrors ranging from McCarthyism to polio. And that’s not hyperbole.
Democratic Rep. Jim Cooper announced Tuesday that he would retire, a declaration that came one day after Tennessee’s Republican legislature passed a new gerrymander designed to turn his 5th Congressional District red. Cooper’s existing seat, which includes all of Nashville, backed Joe Biden 60-37; however, by splitting the city between the 5th, 6th, and 7th Districts, the GOP has created a new 5th that would have favored Donald Trump 54-43.
Since it’s already quasi-legal for teenagers to kill protesters in Wisconsin, Badger State Republicans are hoping to further enshrine the kiddos’ right to be public menaces. Call it the “Kyle Rittenhouse Will Blow Your Face Off for Giving Him the Stink Eye, but this Time He’ll Have a Permit” Incel Aggro Act of 2022.
On Monday, famous rock ‘n’ roll musician Neil Young reportedly posted an open letter (now deleted) to his management team and record label demanding that his music be removed from music streaming juggernaut Spotify. Rolling Stone reports the letter highlights Young’s dissatisfaction with the streaming service’s support of podcaster Joe Rogan’s show The Joe Rogan Experience.
“They can have [Joe] Rogan or Young. Not both.
Tonya Ferguson gave a presentation to the Reno County, Kansas, commissioners on how essential oils—which she just happened to sell—can help fight COVID-19. “I like to use an immune support, which is like putting my body in a bubble. It’s a powerful tool to combat viral and bacterial threats,” she says on the video. She claimed to have “protocols” to either protect from or treat people suffering from the virus.
Gerald Brady was arrested just days after announcing that he was resigning for health reasons.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki noted that it’s “crazy” the governor is “still advocating for treatments that don’t work.
The Florida Republican railed against the “reckless spending” contained in the measure, which passed with wide bipartisan support last year.
“Ivanka was like, ‘Come on, dude. You gotta do it,’” Falwell told Vanity Fair.
State Senate candidate Anthony Kern used donor funds for unspecified travel and lodging around the time he went to Washington for the “Stop the Steal” rally.
While Democratic strategists say these attacks are baseless, arguing that no one is being denied pills based on their race, they warn they may prove effective.
In memory of Thich Nhat Hanh, the world-renowned Buddhist monk, antiwar activist, poet and teacher who died Saturday, we reair a speech Hanh gave at Riverside Church in New York in 2001. Shortly after the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center, Hanh urged the audience to embrace peace in the face of anger, citing his experience of witnessing suffering on both sides during the war in his native Vietnam. “The real enemy of man is not man,” says Hanh.
As the Biden administration reviews U.S. nuclear weapons policy, over 60 advocacy groups, including Veterans for Peace and CodePink, recently issued a joint statement calling for the elimination of hundreds of U.S. intercontinental ballistic missiles.
The U.S. has prepared some 8,500 troops to deploy to Eastern Europe in the event that Russia invades Ukraine, which Russian President Vladimir Putin denies is his goal. On Wednesday, officials from Russia, Ukraine, France and Germany are scheduled to meet in Paris to negotiate resolving the crisis. “The security of Europe ought to be principally Europe’s business,” says Anatol Lieven, senior fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.
Usually, a story like this starts with a quick roundup of alarming statistics and a reminder of all the latest climate disasters: heat domes, floods, hurricanes, etc. I’m going to skip that part. Most of us get it already. We understand with our rational minds that the climate is changing, and we feel that it is changing in the deepest pit of our gut, where dread and fury live.
When the CDC recommended COVID-19 vaccines for 5-to-11-year-olds in early November, adult publications rushed to explain what the move meant for families, schools, and the pandemic at large. While most of the media competed for grown-up attention, a different network of sources targeted the group most affected by the news—but first, it had to explain what a vaccine is.
The moments I felt most viscerally in Maggie Gyllenhaal’s The Lost Daughter, an intermittently dreamy and menacing exploration of maternal ambivalence, weren’t when Leda (played by Olivia Colman) confesses, weeping, that as a young mother she abandoned her children, or when a worm wriggles out of the mouth of the doll that Leda has stolen, as if to literalize the movie’s themes of love and caretaking corrupted.
In the early phases of the pandemic, as the coronavirus spread in the United States and doctors and pharmacists and supermarket clerks continued to work and risk infection, some commentators made reference—metaphorical reference, fast and loose and over the top—to ritual human sacrifice.
Jacinda Ardern was to have been married next weekend.
The ruling Communist Party is stepping up enforcement of its “zero tolerance” strategy.
A flurry of regulatory, testing and logistical issues is complicating the rollout.
If the pandemic is to turn endemic — a situation top Biden health officials say they could more easily control — the U.S. needs to overhaul the nation’s public health workforce, she said.
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.
Congress needs to create a new safety net for such lenders — not let regulators squeeze them out of business.
Inside the White House, there is still optimism: “President Biden was elected to a four-year term, not a one-year term.
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.
The jump is the latest evidence that rising costs for food, rent and other necessities are heightening the financial pressures on America’s households.
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.
In the news today: After still-disgraced, still-disgraceful Newt Gingrich told a Fox News audience that those probing the Jan. 6 insurrection could be jailed if the Republicans regain Congress, the two Republican members of Jan. 6 special committee responded to Gingrich’s fascist outburst.
New Jersey’s Legislative Latino Caucus says the state’s unjust reallocation of tens of millions of dollars intended for workers left out of federal pandemic relief is “beyond comprehension,” noting it found out about the diversion of funds at the same time as shocked immigrant residents.