Today's Liberal News

Latinx COVID Deaths Soar 1,000% in Los Angeles as Communities of Color Lag Behind in Vaccine Rollout

Throughout the coronavirus pandemic, Black and Latinx people in the United States have died at higher rates, and new data shows that they are getting vaccinated at much lower rates than white people. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports more than 60% of those vaccinated were white, while just 11.5% were Latinx, 6% were Asian, and just over 5% were Black. The CDC data is based on details gathered during the first month of the U.S.

Monday Night Owls: President Biden should go on a hiring spree of federal workers

Night Owls is a themed open thread appearing at Daily Kos seven days a week.

Eleanor Eagen of the Revolving Door Project writes at The American Prospect—Why Recent American Governments Have Fumbled Crises. While our population has doubled in the past 70 years, the number of federal employees hasn’t increased (in case you wonder why our pandemic response has lagged).

In the nearly seven decades since 1952, the U.S. population has more than doubled.

Compassion or capital punishment? Survivors push for an end to execution

As assistant chief investigator in New Jersey’s Office of the Public Defender, Dina Windle knows the ins and outs of the criminal legal system. And a survivor of violence herself, she understands the parts of the system that most people fail to acknowledge—especially when it comes the death penalty and the lack of justice afforded to nearly everyone involved.

The Brazil Variant Is Exposing the World’s Vulnerability

Editor’s Note: The Atlantic is making vital coverage of the coronavirus available to all readers. Find the collection here. Even in a year of horrendous suffering, what is unfolding in Brazil stands out. In the rainforest city of Manaus, home to 2 million people, bodies are reportedly being dropped into mass graves as quickly as they can be dug. Hospitals have run out of oxygen, and people with potentially treatable cases of COVID-19 are dying of asphyxia.

Photos: A Second Weekend of Protests in Russia

For a second weekend, tens of thousands of people in cities across Russia protested the jailing of the opposition leader, Alexei Navalny. An outspoken critic of President Vladimir Putin, Navalny was detained on January 17, after returning from Germany, where he had been recovering from a near-fatal poisoning that he blames on the Kremlin. According to the Associated Press, more than 5,100 protesters were arrested yesterday—1,000 more than had been detained the previous week.