Today's Liberal News

Why Did We Ever Send Sick Kids to School?

Staying home to avoid catching and spreading the coronavirus during the pandemic, for all the fear and anxiety it has caused, has come with one unexpected benefit for my family: My kids haven’t been sick once, not even with the common cold. My husband and I noticed this with a sense of relief after months of virtual schooling.

It’s All Rigged

As of January 10, nine brokerages had set the one-year target stock price for GameStop at about $10.But that’s not where it would stay—at least for a while. It climbed in price because a subreddit, r/WallStreetBets, engineered a short squeeze.That kicked off a wild ride, revealing many things not just about how digital technologies are transforming our world, but also about how they are not.

“Work Won’t Love You Back”: Sarah Jaffe on Toxic U.S. Work Culture & the Fight Against Inequality

Amid the economic crisis and precarious working conditions for millions of people during the pandemic, we look at a new book by Sarah Jaffe, an independent journalist and author who covers labor and economic justice. “Work Won’t Love You Back: How Devotion to Our Jobs Keeps Us Exploited, Exhausted, and Alone” looks at the unsustainable expectations of fulfillment around work and how the “labor of love” myth has contributed to the rise of toxic workplaces.

Teacher Unions: We Want to Reopen Schools as Well, But We Need Vaccines & Resources to Do It Safely

As school districts across the U.S. debate how to safely bring children into the classroom, we speak with two leaders of the teachers’ union movement on what’s at stake as schools reopen. Stacy Davis Gates, executive vice president of the Chicago Teachers Union, says years of underfunding and privatization have left many school districts ill-equipped to meet the needs of students, as well as educators. “It’s not just the context of opening schools.

COVID-19 Cases Are Dropping Fast. Why?

Editor’s Note: The Atlantic is making vital coverage of the coronavirus available to all readers. Find the collection here. One month ago, the CDC published the results of more than 20 pandemic forecasting models. Most projected that COVID-19 cases would continue to grow through February, or at least plateau. Instead, COVID-19 is in retreat in America. New daily cases have plunged, and hospitalizations are down almost 50 percent in the past month.

Lancet Report: 40% of U.S. COVID Deaths Were Preventable. The Country Needs Universal Healthcare Now

As the U.S. death toll from COVID-19 approaches half a million, a new report says nearly 40% of the deaths were avoidable. By comparing the pandemic in the U.S. to other high-income nations, the medical journal The Lancet found significant gaps in former President Donald Trump’s “inept and insufficient” response to COVID-19, as well as decades of destructive public policy decisions.

Conservative Lawyer Bruce Fein: Trump’s Acquittal Gives Future Presidents License to Break the Law

As the Senate votes to acquit former President Donald Trump for inciting the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, we speak with constitutional lawyer and former Reagan administration official Bruce Fein, who says the insurrection was not just an attack on the U.S. Capitol, but “an effort, basically, to destroy the rule of law and the Constitution itself.” Fein says failure to convict Trump will give license to future presidents to break the law.

Tuesday Night Owls. Dorceta Taylor: ‘Environmental justice demands listening’

Night Owls is a themed open thread appearing at Daily Kos seven days a week.

When Yale Professor of environmental sociology Dorceta E. Taylor wrote The State of Diversity in Environmental Organizations in 2014, she learned that minorities made up just 14.6% of the staff of environmental organizations even though people of color make up 38% of the U.S. population.

What’s happening to Adam Kinzinger is frightening … and telling

As many Americans are aware, Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger is one of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Donald Trump for his role in inciting the insurrection of Jan. 6. The conservative Air National Guard veteran, currently serving his sixth term in Congress, is one of the few Republicans who declined to fall in behind Donald Trump in the wake of the lethal riots at the U.S. Capitol.