Today's Liberal News

Eric Adams is Making White Liberals Squirm

More than 20 years ago, I sat down to talk with a Black cop from New York City. He had a weightlifter’s powerful hands, a quick-trigger tongue, and a scar on the back of his shaved head from his days in a youth gang.At the time, the relationship between police officers and Black residents was raw. This was Rudy Giuliani’s New York, where a white New York cop sodomized a suspect with his baton and police killed an unarmed Black immigrant in a blizzard of gunfire.

News Roundup: Full FDA approval for COVID-19 vaccine; Americans support asylum for Afghan allies

In the news today: The first COVID-19 vaccine gets full FDA approval—and a truly terrible brand name. A new poll shows near-universal American support for allowing Afghans who aided U.S. war efforts to come to the United States. The fascist pro-violence group Proud Boys continue their violent riots, and Portland, Oregon’s police department continues to assist them in doing it.

New Jersey advocates applaud law banning new ICE contracts, urge release of detained immigrants

With the stroke of a pen, New Jersey has become the fifth state in the nation to severely limit or outright ban federal immigration detention. Advocates across the state (and country) celebrated when Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy on Friday signed a historic bill that bans new Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) contracts in the state and prohibits the renewal of existing agreements.

The FDA Really Did Have to Take This Long

After months of anticipation, Americans have a fully licensed COVID-19 vaccine. Today, the FDA announced the approval of Pfizer-BioNTech’s shot for people 16 and older—the first complete thumbs-up among the three vaccines available in the U.S.The pervasive mood has been: Finally. Pfizer’s shot was given its emergency use authorization—the vaccine’s training wheels—back in December, and the company submitted its application for full approval in May.

The Death Toll of Delay

This morning, the FDA granted full approval to the Pfizer vaccine for use in people 16 and older. Although “the vaccine approval was the fastest in the agency’s history,” as The Washington Post noted, serious side effects have proved extremely rare. Nevertheless, anti-vaccine activists—and the politicians and pundits pandering to them—have criticized the accelerated approval process as rushed.