Today's Liberal News

Abortion care mutual aid funds see spike in calls as omicron surges

This article was originally published at Prism

At a time when abortion care providers are already overburdened, clinics across the country are struggling to operate amid staffing shortages caused by COVID-19 outbreaks among staff. Simultaneously, abortion funds are reporting that more people are seeking financial support for their procedures than they did last year, and patients who test positive for COVID-19 are having to push procedures back in order to quarantine.

Kevin McCarthy promises to keep his district’s undocumented farmworkers vulnerable to deportation

Kevin McCarthy is campaigning for speaker on a pro-mass deportation platform, vowing to refuse to take up any immigration legislation putting undocumented immigrants on a path to citizenship should Republicans take the House and install him as leader.

McCarthy made the promise to white supremacist rag Breitbart, and “reiterated” that pledge to Axios, a report said.

‘The Timeline You’re All Living in Is About to Collapse’

Saturday Night Live’s first episode of 2022 attempted to make up for the strange, empty show that ended 2021 amid the rise of the coronavirus’s Omicron variant. The cast was back, the masked audience was back, and the show, as they say, went on. But it couldn’t escape the world outside of 30 Rock’s doors.

Requiem With Remission

— for L   After the last surgery. After
hearing you wake within the breached levee   of your whole life. After water-hymn,
as I washed your body’s sutured beauty,   the stone doubt in both our faces whetted
by cancer.

Congress Should Step Up on Pandemic Policy

In November, when the Biden administration imposed a federal coronavirus-vaccine mandate on all employers with 100 or more workers, it did so through the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, a federal agency that Congress created in the early 1970s to ensure safe working conditions. Now the Supreme Court has blocked OSHA’s action, ruling that the agency lacked the authority to order large employers to require all workers to be vaccinated or frequently tested.

How Encanto Explains America

In Disney’s latest blockbuster, Encanto, a magical family called the Madrigals have escaped the violence and chaos of their homeland by crossing a river into an enchanted paradise that endows each with wondrous gifts that they use to protect and enhance their community. As the generations go by, however, the magic of the new world starts to fade and the family buckles under the pressure of their responsibilities while struggling to maintain the illusion that everything is fine.

“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.

Trump Soft-Launches His 2024 Campaign

FLORENCE, Ariz.—Tonight, deep in the Arizona desert, thousands of people chanted for Donald Trump. They had braved the wind for hours—some waited the entire day—just to get a glimpse of the defeated former president. And when he finally appeared on stage, as Lee Greenwood played from the loudspeakers, the crowd roared as though Trump were still the commander-in-chief. To many of them, he is.“I ran twice and we won twice,” Trump told his fans.

You want something positive to listen to? Here’s a compilation of Daily Kos’ The Brief podcast

This past year, Daily Kos’ Markos Moulitsas and Kerry Eleveld began hosting a podcast called The Brief. With loads of help from Daily Kos’ Cara Zelaya, Carolyn Fiddler, and Dorothy He, and myself, we have rolled out a year’s worth of episodes, with interviews with elected officials, political advisers, legal experts, grassroots organizers, and our own in-house elections experts and reporters.

Cops destroy lives by lying about evidence, but are rarely held accountable

The phrase “police brutality” has often been associated with officers beating or killing innocent people, most often people of color. For over a year now, what often comes to mind is the Facebook video of George Floyd gasping for breath under the knee of Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis officer who has since been convicted of Floyd’s murder.