July tends to be a slower month for us at Daily Kos: the sun is shining, summer is in full swing, vacations are happening, and our staff and readers are taking advantage. Despite all that, we’ve still got some new things brewing that I’d like to highlight in case you missed it last month.
I’ve been in a minor funk the past few days after getting in an online tiff with an anti-vaxxer family member. I was called a “bully” and “judgmental” for refusing to join hands with this relative and leap into the fatuous fairyland where career civil servant Dr.
The new program to “unlock New York City” will begin Aug. 16, with enforcement set to start Sept. 13, according to City Hall.
I had to do a double-take when I read that a police union went to bat for a cop at the U.S. Capitol—at least that’s what I thought it said. I assumed it was for one of the brave Capitol police officers who fended off an armed and violent insurrection. Police unions, such as the Fraternal Order of Police, which used to count Capitol Policeman Michael Fanone among its members, is the largest and loudest law enforcement union in the nation.
School districts view the mask mandates as a matter of life or death.
Anti-maskers took their ignorance to a new level during a St. Louis County Council meeting last week. The session, attended by hundreds of maskless protesters, ended with the council reversing a day-old countywide mask mandate. In the following days, many attendees reported that they had contracted COVID-19.
Tell me I’m wrong about what’s really going on.
But Newsom enjoys several advantages in the deep blue state, including a huge war chest and a lack of well-known challengers.
The Right to Vote Act would allow voters to challenge any restriction of their access to the ballot.
We didn’t realize we were such an anomaly.
The State Department is looking into the apparent disappearance of a bottle of whiskey given to then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in 2019.
The hands-on science labs will have to wait.
Asa Hutchinson, a Republican, is now trying to get the state legislature to overturn a law banning mask mandates in schools.
Officials have recently accelerated their work and now hope to finalize approval in a matter of weeks.
Judge Amy Berman Jackson said Karl Dresch was a “big talker” who “placed his trust in someone who repaid that trust by lying to him.
At least 20 water protectors were brutally arrested in Minnesota as resistance to the Enbridge Line 3 pipeline continues, and they say state and local police have escalated their use of excessive force, using tear gas, rubber and pepper bullets to repress opposition to Line 3, which, if completed, would carry Canadian tar sands oil across Indigenous land and fragile ecosystems.
The $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill is making its way through the Senate this week. The outcome of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which calls for $550 billion in new spending and reuses some unused COVID-19 relief aid, will set the stage for debate on Biden’s much larger $3.5 trillion package, which Democrats hope to pass with a simple majority using the reconciliation process in the Senate.
The Biden administration has issued a new two-month moratorium on evictions, covering much of the country, after facing public pressure from progressive lawmakers led by Congressmember Cori Bush of Missouri, who was once unhoused herself and slept on the steps of the U.S. Capitol in protest after the moratorium on evictions lapsed on July 31.
Pressure is growing on New York Governor Andrew Cuomo to resign after the state’s attorney general, Letitia James, released the damning findings of an independent investigation Tuesday about how Cuomo sexually harassed at least 11 women in violation of the law. “The report is devastating, and it is disturbing. And unfortunately, it’s not surprising to anyone who has spent time in Albany,” says New York state Senator Julia Salazar.
If you’ve traveled internationally this summer and have had to navigate a labyrinth of COVID-19 tests, quarantines, health-authorization forms, and scarce flights to get there, you are one of the lucky ones. Many people have been unable to travel at all.Few would argue that governments ought to fully reopen travel now, especially with the threat of the Delta variant.
“You’ll want to read this,” my wife said, handing me the Sunday Boston Globe. The cover story that week in late September 2020 was about a 62-year-old woman who had colon cancer that had metastasized. She died in a local hospital; her husband was also in poor health and could not take care of her at home. After she died, he moved into an area facility. Reading of someone so close to my own age succumbing to a highly preventable disease was a bit unsettling.
Nic spent most of her childhood avoiding people. She was raised by a volatile father and a mother who transferred much of the trauma she’d experienced onto her daughter. The combination left Nic fearful and isolated. “My primitive brain was programmed to be afraid of everybody, because everybody’s evil and they’re gonna hurt you,” she told me. (Nic asked to be referred to by only her first name to protect her privacy.
At the end of the 2020 election, California’s Republicans had reason to feel hopeful. Although Joe Biden won the state by a landslide, Donald Trump won more votes (6 million) there than any other Republican candidate had ever. Increased Republican turnout led to victories in four competitive House races with large Latino populations. One of those districts even elected the state’s first Republican Latino congressman since 1873.
Parenting advice on behavior charts, competitive swimming, and pronouns.
Aggressive developers looking for a way in—or desperate homeowners looking for a way out.
Nearly 18 months into the pandemic, there’s no consensus on how to keep students and staff safe.
The country decided it’s time to get back to work. No one asked workers what they needed first.
I’m worried my brother-in-law will steal it.
