Today's Liberal News

Would You Patent the Sun? Polio Vaccine Inventor Jonas Salk’s Son Urges More Access to COVID Vaccine

The total number of deaths from COVID-19 in the U.S. is set to top 400,000 before Joe Biden’s inauguration on January 20, but rollout of coronavirus vaccines has been slow, with many describing a vexing amount of red tape standing between them and the shot. We look at the development and distribution of another vaccine during the polio epidemic in the 1950s with Dr.

From Charlottesville to the Capitol: Trump Fueled Right-Wing Violence. It May Soon Get Even Worse

As security is ramped up in Washington, D.C., and state capitols across the U.S., the FBI is warning of more potential violence in the lead-up to Joe Biden’s inauguration on January 20. Federal authorities have arrested over 100 people who took part in last week’s deadly insurrection at the Capitol, and The Washington Post reports that dozens of people on a terrorist watch list — including many white supremacists — were in Washington on the day of the insurrection.

Dr. Ali Khan: U.S. Needs to Quickly Ramp Up Vaccinations as COVID Kills Over 4,000 in Single Day

As the United States breaks all records for coronavirus cases, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warns another 92,000 could die in the next three weeks as complaints grow over the slow distribution of COVID vaccines. Across the country, hospitals are overflowing, and ICU beds are in short supply. In Los Angeles County, an epicenter of the outbreak, a staggering one in three residents has gotten the coronavirus since the start of the pandemic, according to new data.

The Battle to Keep the Pandemic’s Best Data Running

When a hospital is in trouble, the signs are unmistakable. The number of COVID-19 admissions rises quickly. The number of patients who remain hospitalized grows steadily—and the bar to be admitted gets higher. The percentage of patients in intensive-care units increases. Supplies run low. As an ICU nears capacity, sick people get less care than they would have. More people suffer, and more people die.

The Atlantic Daily: What to Read This Martin Luther King Jr. Day

BETTMAN / GETTYToday, we reflect on the legacy of the civil-rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. amid a pandemic that has disproportionately devastated Black communities—and as the country faces the ongoing threat of white-supremacist violence.“This year’s celebration feels like it carries some extra weight, especially in the face of insurrection and potential future violence,” our senior editor Vann R.

Trump’s gains with Latinos were most pronounced in three heavily Cuban districts in South Florida

Our project to calculate the 2020 presidential results for all 435 congressional districts nationwide ventures down to Florida, where Republicans flipped two House seats and again captured the state’s 29 electoral votes. You can find our detailed calculations here, a large-size map of the results here, and our permanent, bookmarkable link for all 435 districts here.

‘It’s like I’m banging my head against the wall’: Doctor sounds off on vaccine rollout disaster

The COVID-19 vaccination rollout in the U.S. is not going well in the majority of states. On Dec. 14 in New York City, Sandra Lindsay became the first American to receive the coronavirus vaccine, ostensibly just one of 20 million scheduled to do so by the end of 2020. Instead, only 3 million Americans had gotten the shot by then, and that number was only up to 4.6 million by Jan. 4.

A Troubling New Pattern Among the Coronavirus Variants

For most of 2020, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 jumped from human to human, accumulating mutations at a steady rate of two per month—not especially impressive for a virus. These mutations have largely had little effect.But recently, three distinct versions of the virus seem to have independently converged on some of the same mutations, despite being thousands of miles apart in the United Kingdom, South Africa, and Brazil.

MLK Day Special: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in His Own Words

Today is the federal holiday that honors Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He was born January 15, 1929. He was assassinated April 4, 1968, at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. He was just 39 years old. While Dr. King is primarily remembered as a civil rights leader, he also championed the cause of the poor and organized the Poor People’s Campaign to address issues of economic justice. Dr. King was also a fierce critic of U.S. foreign policy and the Vietnam War.

When the FBI Spied on MLK

The Martin Luther King Jr. who is introduced to most American schoolchildren is a tragic hero—not just in a colloquial sense, but also in a mythological one. Greek tragedy is driven by characters just like the King described in textbooks. They’re brilliant and virtuous, yet doomed by a small error in judgment. King’s flaw, we are taught, was his idealism, which both made him a civil-rights hero and brought about his downfall.

Parler’s Rise Was Also Its Downfall

On the last day of Parler, the vibe was electric.It was the weekend after supporters of President Donald Trump had stormed the Capitol in an attempt to disrupt the certification of the election. With just more than a 24-hour warning, the “free speech social network” and aspiring Twitter alternative was being cut off by its cloud-hosting provider, Amazon Web Services. There were all-caps claims that “antifa” was actively taking over New York City, dressed in riot gear.

30 Things Donald Trump Did as President You Might Have Missed

Trump’s presidency may be best remembered for its cataclysmic end. But his four years as president also changed real American policy in lasting ways, just more quietly. We asked POLITICO’s best-in-class policy reporters to recap some of the ways Trump changed the country while in office, for better or worse.