Today's Liberal News

Facebook Bans Trump for 2 Years, But Its Design Still Marginalizes Key Voices in Public Discourse

Social media giant Facebook has announced it has suspended former President Donald Trump’s account until at least 2023. He was initially suspended from the platform for comments to supporters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6 and is permanently banned on Twitter. Facebook’s move could have implications for other world leaders who use Facebook, like Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Biden’s DOJ Vows to Stop Spying on Journalists Months After Placing Gag Order on New York Times

The New York Times has revealed shocking details about an unsuccessful attempt by the Trump administration, and then the Biden administration, to secretly obtain the email logs of four reporters at the newspaper. As part of the campaign, the Biden Justice Department placed a gag order on the Times in March to prevent many at the paper from even knowing about the request until a federal court lifted it.

Historic But Inadequate: Joseph Stiglitz on G7 Deal to Back a 15% Global Minimum Corporate Tax Rate

Finance ministers from seven of the world’s wealthiest nations have backed a plan to set a minimum global corporate tax rate of at least 15% on multinational companies. The agreement, which was reached during a meeting in Britain of the G7, or Group of 7, is “historic” but should have aimed higher, says economist Joseph Stiglitz. “If you have too low of a tax rate, that minimum tax becomes, de facto, the maximum tax,” he says.

The Pandemic Has Undone South Africa’s National Parks

An hour’s drive south of Cape Town, at a small beach hidden from the main road by suburban houses, you’ll find one of Africa’s top tourist attractions: the Boulders colony of African penguins.These birds usually nest on hard-to-reach offshore islands, but at Boulders a cordon of residential blocks shields the beach and the surrounding dunes from land-based predators like the caracal lynx, and the penguins feel safe enough to breed.

“Disaster Patriarchy”: V (Eve Ensler) on How the Pandemic Has Unleashed a War on Women

The pandemic has led to a sharp rise in gender-based violence, job losses in female-dominated industries, greater parenting duties for mothers, and other pressures that primarily fall on women around the world. These effects amount to a kind of “disaster patriarchy” in which “men exploit a crisis to reassert control and dominance and rapidly erase the hard-earned rights of women,” says V, the artist and activist formerly known as Eve Ensler.

U.S. Finally Offers to Send Vaccines Abroad, But Lack of Global Plan Leaves Poorer Nations in Crisis

The Biden administration on Thursday announced that the U.S. will donate 25 million surplus doses of COVID-19 vaccines to developing countries, pledging to donate a total of 80 million doses by July. Economist Jeffrey Sachs says rich countries have enough production capacity to speed up vaccine distribution and immunize the whole world within the next year. “There’s massive supply, but there’s no plan for allocation,” he says.

“The Second”: Carol Anderson on the Racist Roots of the Constitutional Right to Bear Arms

Do African Americans have Second Amendment rights? That’s the question Emory University professor Carol Anderson set out to answer in her new book, “The Second,” which looks at the constitutional right to bear arms and its uneven application throughout U.S. history. She says she was prompted to write the book after the 2016 police killing of Philando Castile, who was fatally shot during a traffic stop after he told the officer he had a legal firearm.

“The Minister of Chaos” — For The Atlantic’s July/August issue, Tom McTague profiles Prime Minister Boris Johnson

Many Americans view Boris Johnson as the U.K.’s answer to Donald Trump––a perception that the prime minister desperately wants to dispel. “I’m laboriously trying to convey to an American audience that this is a category error that has been repeatedly made,” Johnson says in a revealing and fascinating new profile on the cover of The Atlantic’s July/August issue.

How the Characters of Pose Built Their Own Church

This article contains spoilers through the series finale of Pose.In a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter, the actor Billy Porter explained the monumental meaning of his role in the FX drama Pose, which aired its series finale tonight. Yes, he won his first Emmy in 2019 for portraying Pray Tell, the cantankerous fashion designer who moonlights as an emcee in New York City’s underground ball scene.

Boris Johnson Knows Exactly What He’s Doing

This article was published online on June 7, 2021.“Nothing can go wrong!” Boris Johnson said, jumping into the driver’s seat of a tram he was about to take for a test ride. “Nothing. Can. Go. Wrong.”The prime minister was visiting a factory outside Birmingham, campaigning on behalf of the local mayor ahead of “Super Thursday”—a spate of elections across England, Scotland, and Wales in early May.