Today's Liberal News

News Roundup: Republicans threaten debt standoff; Mike Pence is no hero; Texas vs. tech companies

In the news today: The nation slides towards another self-inflicted crisis as Republicans once again vow to block a debt ceiling boost. The reason? So their party can campaign against Democrats for keeping America’s bills paid. Yet another book of the Trump era explores the depth of the Trump team’s depravity, including the effort Mike Pence went to to try to meet Trump’s demand that the United States presidential election be nullified so that Trump could maintain power.

Northern Idaho hospitals allowed to save beds and ventilators for those ‘most likely to survive’

As hospital workers desperately try to save lives with limited resources and dwindling available beds during the COVID-19 pandemic, public health officials Idaho activated a “crisis standards of care” for northern hospitals last week that would in rare cases allow hospitals to save beds and ventilators “for those who are most likely to survive,” The Associated Press reported of the guidelines dated last year.

Inspiration4 is another space tourism venture, but it’s not like the ones we’ve seen before

In the last two months, we’ve watched two billionaires fly their personal rockets on suborbital flights that they celebrated with lots of self-aggrandizement. On Wednesday evening, another billionaire will launch, not on his personal rocket, but on one he’s renting from billionaire No. 4 for another tourist flight. Which, on the face of it, seems like more of the same.

Advocates call for hate crime charges after white woman calls ‘visibly Muslim woman’ a ‘terrorist’

I’m sure we’ve all heard the horror stories about Spirit Airlines, which are primarily known for their cheap but often unpleasant flights. In this case, though, the story isn’t about the inconveniences of flying with Spirit; it deals with the issues of flying while Muslim.

While the phrase is often associated with security and service staff mistreating Muslim travelers, a Muslim woman was harassed and mistreated by another traveler in this incident.

The Space Tourists Are in Control Now

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla.—Before liftoff, the moon was the brightest object in the sky, followed by the tiny, shining pinpricks of Venus, Jupiter, and Saturn. Then the rocket rose with a roar, a white-hot needle casting the dark evening in a soft gold. A crew of four sat atop it, strapped inside a small capsule. And none of them—not one—were professional astronauts.The passengers who launched today are SpaceX’s first-ever private crew.

Anti-vaxx Chronicles: A terrifying blow-by-blow recap of a COVID illness

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Facebook is a menace. COVID-19 is a menace. Conservatism is a cesspool. Together, those three ingredients have created a toxic stew of malevolent death and devastation. We can talk about all those things in the abstract, look at the numbers and statistics, and catch the occasional whiff of seditionist right-wing rhetoric.

The California Recall’s Warning for Democracy

Governor Gavin Newsom of California defeated yesterday’s recall election by a large enough margin to squash earlier Republican threats to challenge the results no matter the outcome. But the proliferation of those allegations of voter fraud before the election, including ungrounded claims from former President Donald Trump that the contest was “rigged,” points toward an ominous future in which more GOP candidates challenge the results of any election that they do not win.

Another Unpretentious, Melancholy Farewell From Clint Eastwood

Clint Eastwood’s first Hollywood swan song was 1992’s Unforgiven, a dark, bitter Western that bade goodbye to the genre that had made him famous. He was 62 at the time, and after some 30-plus years of riding horses on-screen, the actor-director seemed ready to retire from the fictional range. Since Unforgiven, Eastwood has made 23 more films, starring in 10 of them, and many of those projects could also be considered curtain calls.

Theranos and COVID-19 Testing Are Mirror-Image Cautionary Tales

Last week, prosecutors and defense attorneys made opening statements in the criminal trial of Elizabeth Holmes, the former CEO of Theranos, who is accused of defrauding investors and patients with false promises of cheap, rapid blood tests. The next day, the Biden administration announced a plan to purchase 280 million cheap, rapid COVID-19 tests—an action for which some lawmakers have been advocating for more than a year.

Forced Entry: NSO Group Spies Secretly Seized Control of Apple Devices by Exploiting Flaw in Code

Apple has released an emergency software update to fix a security flaw in its iPhones and other products researchers found was being exploited by the Israeli-based NSO Group to infect the devices with its Pegasus spyware. The security exploit exposes “widespread abuse that we have associated with NSO Group and other companies like it,” says Ronald Deibert, director of the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab, which discovered the security flaw.

20 Years Later, Undocumented Immigrants Who Aided 9/11 Recovery & Cleanup Efforts Demand Recognition

Following the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, advocates are calling for lawmakers to establish a pathway for legal residency for as many as 2,000 immigrant responders and cleanup workers at ground zero. An estimated 6,000 undocumented immigrants took part in the recovery efforts after 9/11, but many didn’t seek medical help or went uncounted for their symptoms because they feared deportation.