Today's Liberal News

Joe Biden’s Late Goodbye

“Our best days aren’t behind us, they’re before us,” President Joe Biden said last night at the Democratic National Convention.
It was a poignant line. A statesman must believe that what he is doing will benefit his country after he exits the stage, but Biden’s speech was on the first, rather than the last, day of the convention because his fellow Democrats had concluded that his own best days were behind him and nudged him to step down from the nomination.

Policy Isn’t Going to Win This Election

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One of the great myths of American politics is that detailed policy positions are crucial to winning elections. Yes, policy matters in broad strokes: Candidates take general positions on issues such as taxes, abortion, and foreign policy.

The Plan to Take Down the Hyde Amendment

For nearly 50 years, the Hyde Amendment has been considered an unassailable fixture of the United States budget. First passed in 1976, just three years after the now-defunct Roe v. Wade ruling, the amendment prohibits federal programs from covering the cost of most abortions, with exceptions for cases of rape, incest, and life-threatening pregnancies.

The American Con Man Who Pioneered Offshore Finance

The financier and bon vivant Wallace Groves had little use for the law or social norms. His wife, a former Hollywood starlet, left him in 1937 after he’d had their infant son briefly kidnapped from their glittering Park Avenue triplex apartment. A day after the supposed abduction, authorities arrested Groves on the tarmac at Newark airport, in the company of two women whom Time magazine coyly described as his “girl friends.

Phil Donahue, Legendary Talk Show Host Fired by MSNBC for Airing Antiwar Views, Dies at 88

The pioneering TV host Phil Donahue, who revolutionized daytime television by tackling major social and political issues in front of a studio audience, has died at the age of 88. The Phil Donahue Show, later renamed Donahue, ran from the 1960s through to 1996, and the affable host won 20 Emmy Awards and received a Peabody Award throughout his career. In 2003, Donahue was fired from his primetime MSNBC talk show for airing antiwar voices during the run-up to the U.S.

We Still Need to Trump-Proof America

What will happen if Donald Trump secures a second term as president? Polling remains close—and though a Democratic victory seems far more likely than it did before the Biden-Harris swap, it’s hardly assured. Should Trump pull out a win in November, voters might imagine that they know what to expect: more chaos, more grievance, more all-caps rants on social media. But a second Trump term would be much more dangerous than the first.

The Exonerated: Meet Two Chicago Men Wrongly Imprisoned for Decades, on Police Torture, Death Row & More

As Chicago hosts the 2024 Democratic National Convention, we look at the city’s long history of police misconduct, including the use of torture under police commander Jon Burge, accused of leading a torture ring that interrogated more than 100 African American men in Chicago in the 1970s and 1980s using electric shocks and suffocation, among other methods, to extract false confessions from men who were later exonerated.

Kamala Harris Is Reaching Out to Arab American Leaders, But Will There Be Any Change in Gaza Policy?

Arab American voters could significantly impact the 2024 presidential election, particularly in Michigan, home to the largest Arab community in the United States. Many of these voters, incensed at U.S. support for the Israeli war on Gaza, have mobilized over the past year to pressure the Biden administration to change policy, including by casting hundreds of thousands of ballots for “uncommitted” in Democratic primary elections to signal their demand for policy changes.

Voices from the Streets of Chicago: DNC Protesters Call for Gaza Ceasefire & Economic Justice

Democracy Now! is in Chicago for the 2024 Democratic National Convention, where protesters have actions planned throughout the week. The demonstrations kicked off on Sunday, on the eve of the convention, with the March for Bodies Outside Unjust Laws, which was organized by a coalition of several different activist groups to demand action on reproductive rights, LGBTQ rights and an end to the war on Gaza.

Rev. Al Sharpton: Jesse Jackson Helped Reshape Democratic Party & Paved Way for Kamala Harris

Reverend Jesse Jackson, the civil rights icon who worked closely with Martin Luther King Jr., ran for president twice, in 1984 and 1988, and founded the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, is expected to appear on stage on the opening night of this year’s Democratic National Convention. We play footage of an event held Sunday in Chicago to honor Jesse Jackson, which featured fellow civil rights activist Al Sharpton and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, among many other speakers.