Today's Liberal News

Biden outplayed Republicans on infrastructure, but it only counts if he gets a reconciliation deal

“We have a deal,” President Joe Biden announced Thursday, celebrating the framework of a bipartisan infrastructure deal worth $1.2 trillion, only about $580 billion of which would be new spending.

“They have my word, I’ll stick with what they’ve proposed,” Biden said, flanked by a core group of Senate Democrats and Republicans. “And they’ve given me their word as well. Where I come from, that’s good enough for me.

It could have been worse—Trump wanted to use active duty military to clear the streets of D.C.

The Insurrection Act, allowing the president to deploy military forces within the United States, was signed into law in 1807. Of the course of that 214 history, the law has been used for vastly different purposes. In 1871, Ulysses Grant used it to position federal forces against the Klu Klux Klan after Klansmen conducted waves of lynchings killing thousands, including hundreds of Black politicians, across the South.

What the U.S. Loses When Americans Save Too Much

For two generations, economists and other custodians of financial propriety have chastised Americans for not saving enough. Getting the public to pay attention took a pandemic. Facing a real possibility that COVID-19 and the resulting economic havoc might leave them unable to pay their mortgages and feed their families, moderate- and middle-income Americans began saving as much as they could—and are now socking away now perhaps too much to support a healthy expansion for the U.S.

The Soft Radicalism of Erotic Fiction

Pleasure, in the novels of Jackie Collins, tends to be abundant but hard-earned—imagine Pandora, having opened the box containing every sin plaguing humanity, retiring to a beach house in Malibu with two Weimaraners and a finely muscled masseur. The titles of her later books nod to desire and its cost: Lethal Seduction, Deadly Embrace, Dangerous Kiss. And in life, the British-born author emanated a similar combination of tough glamour.

Summer Is Hot, but This Is Abnormal

Summer is hot. This is among the most basic weather concepts that we learn as children and accept without question. Heat and even heat waves have always been a reliable hallmark of the season between the June solstice and the September equinox. And yet recent weather has far outstripped that norm. For most of last week, the daily high temperature in Phoenix reached or exceeded 115 degrees, breaking records even in that desert city.