Rep. Adam Kinzinger Says He Won’t Run For Reelection
The Illinois Republican used his announcement to denounce “leaders that don’t lead.
Today's Liberal News
Lana Del Rey Is Still Searching for Happiness
When the coronavirus pandemic first interrupted life around the world, you likely felt fear for your loved ones and confusion about the future. You might have experienced some less dire pangs too: an urge to stock up on chocolate bars, some relief at not having to commute. Maybe you even had a thought like the one Lana Del Rey shares in her new song “Black Bathing Suit”: “If this is the end / I want a boyfriend.
Hey, Facebook, I Made a Metaverse 27 Years Ago
In a booth at Ted’s Fish Fry, in Troy, New York, my friend Daniel Beck and I sketched out our plans for the metaverse. It was November 1994, just as the graphical web was becoming a thing, and we thought that the 3-D web could be just a few tweaks down the road. In our version of the metaverse, a server would track the identity of objects and their location in virtual space, but you’d render the objects locally, loaded to your hard drive off of a CD-ROM.
When a Film’s Message Doesn’t Match Its Spectacle
Every Edgar Wright film to date has been a bubbling cauldron of movie homages, winking visual gags, and genre tributes. The British director emerged as a noteworthy filmmaker in 2004 with Shaun of the Dead, a “rom-zom-com” that chucked classic George A. Romero–style zombie movies in a blender with a comedy about a man-child who just needed to grow up.
GOP Efforts to Ban Toni Morrison’s “Beloved” Now at Center of Virginia Governor’s Race
Virginia’s Republican gubernatorial candidate Glenn Youngkin caused public uproar this week when he released a political ad featuring a white mother who advocated banning Toni Morrison’s novel “Beloved” from schools. The woman, Laura Murphy, describes the book as “some of the most explicit material you can imagine.
Virginia Governor’s Race Tightens as Focus Grows on “Parents’ Rights,” Abortion & Trump
We look at the Virginia gubernatorial race, where former Democratic Governor Terry McAuliffe is facing Republican Glenn Youngkin, the former CEO of a private equity firm. President Joe Biden, who has campaigned with McAuliffe, warns Youngkin is an extremist in the vein of former President Trump.
“Shadow Units”: How Secretive Border Patrol Teams Shield Agents from Accountability
A human rights network of 60 organizations working along the U.S.-Mexico border released a letter to Congress on Wednesday urging them to investigate “shadow police units” that have helped cover up beatings and killings by Border Patrol agents for more than three decades.
“A Pivotal Change”: Economist Darrick Hamilton on What the Build Back Better Act Could Accomplish
Democrats in Washington remain divided over two key bills at the center of President Biden’s domestic agenda: a $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill and the $1.85 trillion Build Back Better plan, which has been cut down from $3.5 trillion. Even though Biden’s latest framework is almost half the size of the original proposal, conservative Democratic Senators Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona are still refusing to commit to its passage.
‘Bereft’: How Operation Warp Speed’s decisions left the world waiting for a vaccine
U.S. officials bet on Novavax to provide a shot that could easily be shipped overseas. But its manufacturing problems have left global distributors without enough shots for poor and middle-income countries.
Trouble ahead for Dems: A barrage of attacks over the economy
It’s not just Republicans who are assigning responsibility to the administration for the rocky economic recovery, polls show.
California’s In-N-Out sparks latest pandemic culture war
In no time, the Fisherman’s Wharf In-N-Out was a top conversation topic at Fox News.
FDA advisers endorse Covid-19 vaccine for kids 5-11
Panel members voted 17-0 to recommend the shot, with one abstention.
Democrats pitch industry-friendly Medicaid workaround to win Manchin’s support
The latest idea is an attempt to save a pillar of the party’s health care agenda as members rush to broker final agreements on their sweeping social spending package.
Birx: Trump adviser squeezed out health officials to downplay seriousness of Covid-19
Scott Atlas had rapidly consolidated power on a platform that downplayed the seriousness of Covid to most Americans.
Yellen expects inflation to linger, then ease later in 2022
The most recent Consumer Price Index showed prices have gone up 5.4 percent in the past 12 months.
Opinion | How Corporations Keep Their Own Workers in Debt
Too many employers are imposing crippling debt on workers. Biden can do something about it.
The political peril that Biden didn’t see coming
The current inflation spike now appears to be on track to persist deep into 2022.
Lawyer Steven Donziger, Who Sued Chevron over “Amazon Chernobyl,” Ordered to Prison After House Arrest
The environmental and human rights lawyer Steven Donziger joins us just before he is ordered to report to jail today, after a years-long legal battle with the oil company Chevron and 813 days of house arrest. In 2011, Donziger won an $18 billion settlement against Chevron on behalf of 30,000 Indigenous people in Ecuador for dumping 16 billion gallons of oil into their ancestral land in the Amazon.
Hunger Striker Out of Hospital Demands Biden Keep All Climate Provisions in Build Back Better Plan
We speak with one of the group of five climate activists who have entered their eighth day of hunger strike demanding President Biden pass the full $3.5 trillion Build Back Better plan to combat the climate crisis and expand the U.S. social safety net. The climate programs drafted in the bill face opposition from Democratic Senator Joe Manchin, who has made millions of dollars from coal companies in his home state of West Virginia since taking office.
Biden’s New Climate Framework Is Maybe, Barely Enough
It has to pass, it has to pass, it has to pass. It has to pass! It has to pass. It has to pass. IT HAS TO PASS. Pass, it must. It. Has. To. Pass. Nothing happens if it doesn’t pass! 𝓘𝓽 𝓱𝓪𝓼 𝓽𝓸 𝓹𝓪𝓼𝓼. Senator Joe Manchin has to vote for it; Senator Kyrsten Sinema has to vote for it; all the Senate Democrats have to vote for it.
News Roundup: Seditionist Mark Meadows clams up; another inside trading probe of Sen. Richard Burr
In the news today: As Democrats continue to negotiate with holdout Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema to support some version of an infrastructure bill that will not send the state of Florida underwater due to rising seas, the House Select Committee on the Jan. 6 insurrection has lost patience with another subpoenaed Trump ally.
Sinema plays silly games with Mitt Romney as world impatiently awaits her answer on Biden agenda
I half expected Sen. Kyrsten Sinema to show up on the Senate floor today dressed as Ramses II, arriving on a pink, three-legged Shetland pony before airily plucking imaginary Skittles from Rand Paul’s leonine mane of laissez-faire locks. Turns out I should have bet the over.
Watching Sinema “legislate” is a little like watching H.R. PufnStuf on acid, only orders of magnitude more maddening. She and Sen.
Build Back Better Act is historic. Daily Kos has set up a historic campaign to pass it
President Biden’s Build Back Better agenda may be the largest and most substantive social legislation since the New Deal and Great Society.
Passing it will make transformative investments in jobs, the care economy (including child care and pre-K, the child tax credit, home care, and more), combating climate change, delivering relief for millions of immigrants, and much more. That’s why Daily Kos has put all of our resources to help make it pass.
God apparently told Rachel Hamm Trump left office ‘because he’s a good father,’ not because he lost
If she were running in any other state, I might be tempted to take Republican Rachel Hamm seriously, but she’s running for secretary of state in California. Her goal is to align with other Republicans to fill the top elected positions in states throughout the country so they can avenge their beloved former President Donald Trump by flipping his 2020 defeat into a win. That’s her goal, and like many a Republican before her, Hamm is using God to achieve it.
This Week in Statehouse Action: Writer’s Block edition
I’m back!
(I went to Portugal, by the by, and I love all of you who voted in last edition’s poll. I did, in fact, drink a LOT of wine, and I also got some quality zzzzzzs.
Dems’ drug pricing dreams crash into reality in social spending tumult
President Joe Biden’s Thursday pitch to Capitol Hill eliminates any effort to crack down on drug prices, a coup for the industry that has spent months pouring millions into lobbying and advertising campaigns.
Oklahoma Carries Out Third Consecutive Botched Execution After Years-Long Hiatus
Before Grant’s killing, a federal judge suggested his execution could provide evidence for a trial over whether Oklahoma’s lethal injection protocol is unconstitutional.
Sen. Burr’s Brother-in-Law Called Stock Broker One Minute After Call With Senator
After Sen. Richard Burr dumped more than $1.6 million in stocks a week before the coronavirus market crash, he called his brother-in-law, according to a new filing.
Wall Street Journal’s Defense Of Trump’s Lie-Filled Letter Backfires Badly
The paper said it printed Trump’s falsehoods without any kind of fact check because it trusts readers “to make up their own minds about his statement.
Sens. Kyrsten Sinema And Mitt Romney’s Weird ‘Ted Lasso’ Cosplay Is Making Twitter Gag
“You stripped middle and lower socioeconomic of programs that would be life-changing and kept drug prices up and you think that’s funny?” a Twitter user said.