The Washington Post has published a quasi-profile of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. It is a halfhearted attempt at pretending that the man who led the Republican Party to do nothing except deregulate and lower taxes on the wealthiest Americans and corporations while fostering the rabid bigotry of a disenfranchisement-fearing white voter base (which led to electing Donald Trump) is somehow in a weird place now.

As chair of the Commerce, Science, and Transportation committee, Sen. Maria Cantwell has a lot of work to do on nominations and not much time to do it. There are several weeks of purely concentrated hell before the Senate, starting when they return next week (they’re taking this week off) and then resuming again after they take the Thanksgiving week off.

In the news today: As Ted Cruz grouses that teaching children about vaccination amounts to “propaganda,” fellow Senate seditionist Josh Hawley says he’ll be adopting “masculinity” as his new central political theme.

Tech companies are failing at combatting Spanish-language disinformation, lawmakers and advocates said during an online panel last week. NBC News reports that while tech companies flag or remove English-language posts, the same often doesn’t happen for Spanish-language versions of those posts.

“Platforms use the vast majority of their resources to (remove) misinformation within English language content,” New Mexico U.S. Sen.

The United States has a long, long way to go when it comes to protecting, honoring, and respecting LGBTQ+ people. There have been significant wins in relatively recent years—marriage equality, for example, and the growing number of openly LGBTQ+ elected officials—but we’ve also seen hateful legislation signed into law and violence against vulnerable queer groups continue year after year.

The coronavirus pandemic’s shake-up of the U.S. economy still hasn’t fully resettled, and it’s clearly visible in reporting on businesses looking for workers and workers looking for jobs. On the one hand, top retailers say their industry is heading into its busiest time of the year desperate for more workers—so much so that some top retailers are raising pay or offering signing bonuses or referral bonuses.

A number of House Democrats have asked the Justice Department to open an investigation into the border “shadow police unit” that human rights groups said in a letter late last month has covered up agent abuses for years. The Southern Border Communities Coalition (SBCC) said in its Oct.