Today's Liberal News

The other crisis: As Trump incites insurrection in Washington, COVID-19 rampages everywhere

On the same day that Donald Trump sent his followers to capture the Capitol and threaten the lives of lawmakers in an attempt to overthrow the nation, COVID-19 killed over 4,000 American in a single day. The 4,100 who were tallied at WorldOMeters by the end of Wednesday was, by far, a new record. That record held all the way until Thursday, when 4,200 died. Thursday also brought 261,000 new cases in a single day, also a new record.

Had Republicans even shreds of principle or spine, they’d be joining calls for impeachment. As if.

A handful of elected Republicans—most notably Adam Kinzinger—have taken a stand in favor of giving the squatter in the White House the 25th Amendment treatment and ousting him from power. This is happening against the backdrop of some Cabinet members resigning to get themselves out of having to vote on the amendment so they can launch the process of scraping the Trump taint off their résumés and reputations.

Dark money group behind Republican state attorneys general organized protest before the insurrection

As more and more detail emerges about the events in the nation’s capital Wednesday, it becomes clearer that this was a planned revolt and that it was organized within the Republican establishment. So much so that the Republican Association of Attorneys General (RAGA)—the chief Republican law enforcement officers for their states—used its dark money group to help organize the mob.

Listen: John Bresnahan Helps Us Understand What the Hell Just Happened

John Bresnahan has covered Congress for decades, previously as Politico’s Capitol Hill bureau chief and now as co-founder of Punchbowl News. On the podcast The Ticket, he describes what he saw inside the building as a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol this week—and what implications the searing event could have going forward.

Listen: How Badly Is Vaccination Going?

Operation Warp Speed pledged to vaccinate 20 million Americans by the end of 2020. We fell far, far short of that. How worried should we be?Juliette Kayyem, a former assistant secretary of homeland security and an Atlantic contributor, joins staff writer James Hamblin and executive producer Katherine Wells on the podcast Social Distance. She explains what’s going on, what the problems have been, and why we shouldn’t be too concerned (yet).