Today's Liberal News

The Way Out of Brain Fog

Debbie Gustafson of Dresher, Pennsylvania, was on the trip of a lifetime, touring the Galápagos with her family last March, when she began to feel the effects of COVID-19. Though her physical symptoms—diarrhea, dry cough, chills—were considered mild by doctors, her fatigue was crushing, and her mind was trapped in a fog. Once an avid reader, she couldn’t get through a page. “My eyes darted everywhere. I had no focus,” she told me.

Prince Philip, a Man of His Time

Like other members of the British Royal Family, Prince Philip’s reputation is now defined by his portrayal in The Crown: a stern father, a reluctant consort, a man’s man who struggled to play second fiddle to his wife. It could be worse.The Queen’s husband has died two months short of his 100th birthday, and his death inevitably invites comparisons between the world he was born into and the one he has left behind.

The Books Briefing: Miss the Movies? Read the Books.

After I became a parent, I created a secret ritual: Once a year, I would take a vacation day from work, tell absolutely no one in my family about it, and go see the latest Marvel blockbuster. In the mostly empty theater, I’d forget about the long hours commuting in standstill traffic, the dark circles that had formed under my eyes after a child woke me up multiple times a night, and all the other mundane sources of suburban exhaustion.

Biden Calls U.S. Gun Violence an “International Embarrassment.” Will Congress Finally Act?

President Joe Biden has ordered a series of executive actions on gun control in the wake of mass shootings in Georgia, Colorado and elsewhere, calling gun violence in the U.S. an “epidemic” and an “international embarrassment.” The most significant executive order aims to crack down on so-called ghost guns — easily assembled firearms bought over the internet without serial numbers, which account for about a third of guns recovered at crime scenes.

How Cuba Beat the Pandemic: From Developing New Vaccines to Sending Doctors Overseas to Help Others

Since last year, approximately 440 Cubans have died from COVID-19, giving Cuba one of the lowest death rates per capita in the world. Cuba is also developing five COVID-19 vaccines, including two which have entered stage 3 trials. Cuba has heavily invested in its medical and pharmaceutical system for decades, in part because of the six-decade U.S. embargo that has made it harder for Cuba to import equipment and raw materials from other countries.

“This Agreement Protects Jobs”: Four Unions at Rutgers University Reach Historic Deal to End Layoffs

After a year of layoffs, cuts and austerity, the faculty and staff of four unions at Rutgers University have voted in support of an unusual and pioneering agreement to protect jobs and guarantee raises after the school declared a fiscal emergency as a result of the pandemic. A key part of the deal is an agreement by the professors to do “work share” and take a slight cut in hours for a few months in order to save the jobs of other lower-paid workers.

Photos of the Week: Plastic Lake, Van Cat, Burning Judas

Ballet in an empty Syrian market, a forest fire in California, releasing turtles in Israel, a briefing by the Easter Bunny in the White House, riots in Northern Ireland, a giant sand dune in France, a wheat harvest in India, sunny weather in New York City, and much more.

Republican congressman claims corporations standing up for voting rights is ‘fascism’

Wait, I’m confused. I thought we lived in a free-market democracy in which corporations are “people” with sacrosanct “opinions” (which, for some reason, usually come in the form of gobs and gobs of campaign cash).

So when corporations literally write their own legislation, it’s A-OK. That’s just what the Founding Fathers envisioned as they grew hemp and curated their expansive STD collections.