Today's Liberal News

Jury says private prison profiteer must pay $17.3 million to immigrants forced to work for $1 a day

On Oct. 27, a court determined that GEO Group violated Washington state’s minimum wage law by paying immigrants detained at the Northwest ICE Processing Center (NWIPIC) just $1 per day for their forced labor. The next step was for the judge to determine how much the private prison profiteer “unfairly gained from its wage law violations spanning more than 15 years,” which could total millions, the Associated Press said.

Wyoming librarians won’t face obscenity charges over stocking sex ed, LGBTQ books for youth

As Daily Kos previously covered, a large-scale controversy has targeted a small library in Campbell County, Wyoming. Why? Anti-LGBTQ+ hysteria, of course. As you might remember, several community members were upset to realize that children’s and young adult books about LGBTQ+ issues and sexual education were available for check out at the library. These complaints resulted in 27 books being challenged, a process that any library patron can initiate for any book.

The Myth of Root Canals

Do you know what’s going on inside your teeth? I had never even contemplated the matter until April, when one of my molars began its revolt and my teeth became the only things I was capable of contemplating. As anyone who’s been in this position knows, the quaint discomfort that the word toothache implies doesn’t capture the incredible misery that a toothache can produce; sometimes, the pain was so bad that I found it difficult to use my laptop.

America Has Lost the Plot on COVID

We know how this ends: The coronavirus becomes endemic, and we live with it forever. But what we don’t know—and what the U.S. seems to have no coherent plan for—is how we are supposed to get there.

Protests at COP26 Climate Summit Call on U.K. to Block Massive Cambo Oil Field Off Scotland’s Coast

As the U.K. government tries to claim the mantle of climate leadership at the U.N. Climate Change Conference, we speak with Mary Church, head of campaigns at Friends of the Earth Scotland. She describes how activists are calling on U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson to block the development of the giant Cambo oil field off the coast of Scotland, which would run counter to the U.N. goals of phasing out fossil fuels.

Many Voices from Global South Shut Out of U.N. Climate Summit as Vaccine Apartheid Limits Travel to U.K.

This year’s U.N. Climate Change Conference in Glasgow may be the whitest and most privileged one ever, with thousands from the Global South unable to attend because of lack of access to COVID-19 vaccines and travel restrictions. The global inequity in vaccine access mirrors the disproportionate impact of the climate crisis that has fallen mostly on poor countries least responsible for emissions, says climate activist Dipti Bhatnagar in Mozambique.

The Cancer Celebrities

I was 16, living for a year with my family in Ireland, and I was viciously homesick. I was an American teenager, and I wanted Coca-Cola with cracked ice, Lip Smackers, Sticky Fingers jeans. Ireland in the 1970s was still under the provisional rule of the Irish Taliban—even condoms were illegal, not that I needed any—and there was one television channel.

Josh Mandel Might Be Craven Enough to Win

Back when the Ohio Senate candidate Josh Mandel was a young man in politics, he had a spiel in his stump speech about bristling when people told him to wait his turn. Now, as Mandel approaches middle age, it seems that those people were onto something: Mandel just had to wait for the right moment, when his brand of cynicism would be the mainstream of Republican politics.Much national attention has focused on Mandel’s primary opponent J. D.

“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.

News Roundup: School boards under attack; COVID-19 boosters; music for a spooky Halloween

As a climate summit gets underway in Glasgow, Virginia prepares for a tense election day, and the souls of the dead rise to demand mostly chocolate, here’s some of what you may have missed on an otherwise quiet news day:

• ‘F*** you, we’re taking over your school boards,’ says conservative 1776 PAC leader

• Will BIPOC have the same access problems to booster shots as they did with the vaccine?